Movement!

Yes! Movement!

After my confronting personal finance investigation, leaving me with a spedings which kind of makes my stomach go a little shaky for the least, I felt the urge of movement. Some of my biggest expences where rent and my car. Especially travelling to and from work kind of kick in, as you could see. Problem is, where I lived (in Dordrecht) there was no way I could get to work in time using public tranportation. By bike wasn't an option eather with times up to 1,5 hour single trip.

This got me looking for a place closer to work, but I didn't want to spend more on rent. Well, that made things a bit more difficult since rents in Rotterdam are 750 and upwards (more 1000 and upwards if you don't want to rent a place you never ever want to be). Excluding utilities, that is.

 
With the goverment regulating rents on a social minimum base, it's almost impossible for me with my income, to rent a place with a lower rent than the 750 border from a social housing corporation. Hmm. I had to look further since no way I was planning on spending my saved fuel costs on more rent. And then I found an advertisement for a little community who had a place for rent. On a 30 minutes distance from my work (by bike, public transportation (which is free for me since I work at a public tranportation company in Rotterdam) and even by car).

I send them a message with my story and to my surprise I was one out of five who where selected for a further introduction / meeting. That was exciting and scary at the same time since moving into this community meant living more closely with a lot of "strangers". But the introduction felt really good. The people where nice, conversation was nice and I had a good feeling about it. But, there where still four other people who had a chance... Oh my nerves :-) Yet in a day or so they called me and told me I was in if I wanted! WHOW! YAY!!!

Things really went fast then. I heared the news last week of januari and could move in half februari. I told my landlord I was leaving, he didn't make a problem out of it and so up and away I got.

There where things to be done before I could live there. I needed a fridge, a stove (and I use the oven a lot foor cooking so a combination was high on my wish list). Also there was some painting to do and I committed myself to sanding the complete floor so I could repaint it. The floor is actually underlayment without a top cover, but I really liked the industrial style. Later on I changed all the cupboard and dresser doors in the kitchen and placed a wall mounted hood since it's a studio kind of appartment and I don't really like sleeping in cooking odeurs...

But. Now. I'm. Here! My rent went down for about $ 150 net (in Dordrecht my rent included utilities, here it doesn't so I had to take that in account) and my porpect of fuel will be a saving of about $ 100 a month. That's 3K on a years base. 3K I can really really use to do more downpayments to my personal loan!!!

This feels like being able to stand in the deep side of the pool again, since this gives me a way to get rid of my loan more than twice as fast, with the remaining 90 months going down to 45 months. WOW! That's like speeding up to 200 m/hr on the highway!

This hellride to freedom might become fun after all.........?