Rent?

In June I took one of the biggest steps of my life. I got married. Since my apartment was hardly large enough for me alone, staying there was never really considered as an option. Since she was living with her parents, moving there was also not an option.

So there we were, several months before the wedding, looking for a place to call our home. We looked at some apartments for well over a grand per month- that's nothing unusual around here, but it made us think about owning. Furthermore, it seemed like for a little bit more we could tighten our belts and have a house if we were lucky enough to find one we could afford. Well, we did find a house (be it ever so humble) and our renting days were over.

It doesn't feel that way, though. One of the advantages, or so we thought, of owning would be the relatively stable monthly payment. Oh, how naive that sounds now. A few days ago, the mortgage company sent us a letter detailing our revised payment that we will soon be paying. It seems our property tax on our nice little cape cod overlooking the parkway went up by $800. That's over 14 percent! Say what you want about the advantages of owning. If property taxes continue to rise at this rate for a couple of years, we will have to consider moving. Our jobs most definitely not keep up with raises. It certainly feels like we're paying rent. I never had my rent go up more than 5% though.