Staying positive.
It's November, and I'm participating in NaNoWriMo again. That means I need 50,000 words (at least) by December 1st. I'm off to a good start thanks to some frustrating things that happened recently. I love channeling my emotions into productive things.
The secondary characters in my novel are a middle class family just trying to get by, dealing with financial hardships. I relate to these characters the most. Here's why.
The past few years in California, we've been dealing with increasing rent prices (like most people around here), and it's been exhausting. Every year our rent has gone up about $300 to meet market prices.
We started out years ago living in a 1 bedroom for around $1,400 a month. You can't even get a studio for that price in Mountain View anymore.
This year was the only year we've lived here when market prices have gone slightly down. The apartments around us in our complex were renting for lower prices--about $100 less than we are paying now. Yet our leasing office still raised our rent by almost $200 a month. They expected us to pay the increased rent, plus pet rent and utilities, for a two bedroom apartment with no air conditioning, a horrible dishwasher, no washer and dryer, and cabinets from the 70s. Did I mention we have a toilet with a crack in it and two-pronged outlets?
Well, we said forget it to this new rent increase. You come down, or we're looking for other places that will offer us more. The leasing office (or vague "corporate") stood their ground and wouldn't come down. Eric played their game, calling them for weeks and leaving messages with no call back. Finally they answered a call and said "corporate" would let them go down in price by $50. So we would only pay $200 more than our new neighbors. Okay, that's so nice of you.
Feeling pushed out, we went apartment hunting to see what we could find. We know that apartment communities don't really care about their tenants, so we don't expect to be treated better or have our rent not increase elsewhere, we just wanted to find something worth the rent increase. And we did!
We found a completely updated place, with double-pane windows, central heat, air conditioning, a full size washer and dryer, plus a back patio and dirt patch for Mia. It's pretty much the same exact layout we're living in now, except it's completely renovated. It's at the same price that we would've been paying at our current place when the rent went up.
We are giving up a little space and storage, but we are gaining a full size washer and dryer plus hardwood floors! Do you know how much time that will save in a month's worth of cleaning and laundry?
They also have cheaper pet rent and a gated community, and we are only increasing our commute time by a couple minutes, as it's just down the road. Did I mention the community garden? How about the lack of asbestos in the ceiling?
We decided, even if they raise the rent a lot, it will be worth it. Safety, health, time, comfort, and completeness will be worth the move.
So we put down a deposit and are preparing to move. Now that we've let our current rent go month to month, "corporate" decided that they wanted to keep us and gave us a better price by going down $115 a month. Oh really? I thought it was impossible to bring the price down more? Too bad, so sad. You lost us as tenants and will have to rent this place out for much less, losing money. You shouldn't have been so stubborn. We would have gladly stayed here if you hadn't played this game with us and tried to charge us more money than this place is worth.
No, we won't be saving money by moving. It will be about the same. But at least we won't be settling for less.
To top off the financial burden list, we found out today our healthcare costs have risen by 30%. That's a lot! However, when Eric told me this, it led to a wonderful character rant by my hardworking middle-class father which was a great start to NaNoWriMo. I guess I should say thank you to Obamacare for 2,698 words of infuriated literary genius. I love channeling negative things into something productive, hence, this blog entry.
