I'm coming full circle. When we moved to Portland 8 years ago, I got Comcast triple play (voice, TV, internet) for $115, it was such a good deal! Well, over time it went up and up and last year, when it was $230 or so, I dropped voice and replaced it with a $12 extra line with our cellular carrier. That took the Comcast bill from $230/mo to $130/mo This weekend I dropped TV, something my kids have been telling me to do, since we hardly ever watch cable TV. That takes my Comcast bill to $95/mo for just 50 MB/s internet. I will also drop my TiVo service at $15/mo. I can reduce it to $85/mo by downgrading to 25 MB/s internet, or I can drop Comcast entirely and get internet from our local telco. They charge $80/mo for 40 MB/s, but there is a 1 year introductory $30/mo price, and I'm told they extend that for another year if you call and state your intention to drop. We are paying for $16/mo for Netflix and Hulu Plus. I might subscribe to an online sports streaming service for another $10/mo. In the summer, I might pay $30 to watch the Tour de France online. TL:DR version - "I was paying $245/mo for Comcast + TiVo, I am now $123/mo for Comcast + Netflix + Hulu + a cellular home phone, and I can get it to $58/mo for telco internet 1-or-2-year deal + Netflix + Hulu + cellular home phone." I will spend about $200 one-time for a used modem, Roku, cables to connect Mac to TV, maybe an OTA antenna. We are still figuring out the limitations of Netflix and Hulu. For example, my son asked how he could watch the current season of Doctor Who. Turns out that BBC UK streams it but only to the UK, and by going through a free proxy server in the UK, you can watch it in the US.

I agree, thank you so much for sharing the details of your trip! It sounds like you are truly having the adventure of a lifetime :-)

Well, thanks for the clarification of what I thought about the crediting thing. Sounds like it's a better deal for the buyer than it is for the seller, unless the seller's getting a big enough profit that the amount of the credit isn't going to hurt much, or there's room to raise the total price to balance out the amount of the credit. This is basically a semi-starter tract-type house (it may be 4br/2.5ba but it's small with small rooms, doesn't have a big yard or a family room, so it's pretty different from most of the other 4/2.5s around)... it's the kind of cookie-cutter generic vinyl siding, vinyl flooring, oak cabinets, Formica counters, fiberglass baths type house that was built in vast quantities in the 1980s and early 1990s (this one in 1994, but we joke that the builder was cheap and bought all the 1980s style stuff no one else wanted because it looked like it should have been built in 1986). It looks like it should be in a subdivision but it's not. Yeah, it's got a spiffy - if rather idiosyncratic - master bathroom we put in when we were expecting to stay here another 15+ years, but trying to bring the rest of the house up to par with that would run us easily $50k+. I had picked out a neutral speckly laminate (Wilsonart Milano Brown), not one of the expensive high-def laminates, but not something cheesy either. Because of the cabinet layout we wouldn't even be able to use the stock postform counters, which I know some people think of as being "cheap". Granite or solid surfacing would be inappropriate for the rest of the house - not to mention being yowza expensive, because there's a lot of counter for the kitchen size. , but it's handy; at this point there's a different stove and hood, different lighting and hardware, the floor's in boxes stacked in the laundry room... :-) Turnkey houses and "handyman specials" (the two ends of the spectrum) seem to be selling the fastest, but of course the serious fixer-uppers are selling for commensurately low prices. Our realtor did send us off to look at the competition/comparables, and we've gone to some OHs, few of which really seemed to be really close - similarly priced houses were either nice looking and smaller/fewer BR/BA, or comparable in BR/BA/SF and needing a lot of work. We had planned on asking a sensible price from the start, allowing for imperfections (we're not blind to the property's failings!), without completely screwing ourselves. But MY thought is that if people are thinking "gotta fix this, gotta fix that" every time they turn around instead of "hey, I can just move right in" when they're viewing the place, I expect they'd be likely to drop their offers even lower (which is exactly what I would do, and exactly what we did when we bought the house!). I'm trying to minimize the "worn" look particularly in the kitchen and baths, and get it closer to looking just move-in-ready rather than trying to make it look like new construction, which would be lame because it's not. For instance the once-shiny brass-plated plastic on the "OMG how 80s" contractor's-caselot lighting fixtures was peeling; I spent a few hundred dollars on new ceiling fans and light fixtures and the difference was overwhelming. As for hurryup-timing the listing, can anyone do something about the weather? :-) We've got at least two, probably three solid weekends' worth of outdoor work that can't even be tackled until the weather improves a good bit. We'd be lucky if DH can get that stuff even started next weekend - gotta love this spring weather, it's been snowing/sleeting/icing for the second dadratted weekend in a row! The property looks absolutely wretched outside - curb appeal? What's that? Don't make me laugh! Our deadline for listing is 5/25, being ready 2 weeks before that would be great but there is no way we can be ready much before that unless miracles happen right darn quick. And since Murphy's Law has gone into effect with an absolute vengeance in the last couple of months, I really cannot foresee any miracles. :-(

Someone asked on a different thread how it's going. I don't want to hijack the other thread, but it's been WONDERFUL!!! My days are so much less stressful & DH is now spending his evenings in a bad mood, trying to learn 6th grade math (at least the lessons SD is being assigned)~She lied about turning in an assignment & when he told her to redo it to humor him since online shows a zero, she wrote a bunch of math answers on the page & handed it to him, knowing he is not great at multiplying fractions ~ so he asked me to explain one word problem "If you give each cat 3/4 cup of food & you have 16 1/2 cups of food, how many cats can you feed?" SD said 2. so he knew that was wrong & I looked at the page & saw all the answers were wrong, she had written down anything that looked like a math answer & I guess she figured daddy isn't good with math so he won't check it... so he got out the text book & started learning the lesson so he can check it. I thought that was GREAT! and he's getting his mom involved by taking SD everyday during Thanksgiving week, while he's at work. (let her put her money where her mouth is since she has acted like I am just so evil to SD because I don't let her do anything or I won't buy her whatever she wants.... grandma gets to step up & taste it now) SD has to do remedial work for each failing grade. She failed every academic class, except social studies teacher bumped her to a D-, even though she had 54%. (I thought 54% was an F) but whatever, so the school requires her to do 'tutorials' online for each failed grade. MIL is going to have her do them from her house & he will drop her off on his way to work, pick her up on his way home. BM wanted to have her for the weekend to go cut their Christmas tree but DH told her no, she has to stay here to do school stuff because of her grades. I thought that was a great consequence... to miss out on something she really wanted to do since she just acts like she could care less when we take things away or don't do things with her. It's interesting to see DH realize just how much stuff I really did for her... a lot more than he thought! Even stuff like taking care of her bus fee. SD 'lost' the paper at the end of October. I asked her to get another one but she didn't so I didn't pay it. Finally the bus driver told her she had to pay to ride the bus & DH has to wait until he gets paid again to pay it... so he tells me that I am going to have to pick her up from school. NO I'M NOT, YOU HAVE TO. So then he says, well can you call the school & let them know I'll take care of it next week? NO, YOU CALL THE SCHOOL & TELL THEM YOURSELF. I think he's finally getting it... all the stuff I do, but get ignored by SD until she wants from me, lied about to her mom & grandma by SD to try & get me in 'trouble', the power struggle over homework, the daily lying about everything, the stealing... Now he knows why I am fed up & done. I was worried he would resent me putting it back in his lap but I think he's developed a better appreciation. SD on the other hand completely ignores me. She waits until I am giving the baby a bath to come out of her room & ask DH for anything. She does not talk to me at all. She comes to my office after work & sits there pretending to study when I am looking. (others have told me she grabs a book when she sees me coming) and she will talk to my dad when I leave the office for any reason. That part of dealing with her is still unpleasant but I've decided to ignore it & let it go. She doesn't have to talk to me & it really doesn't bother me too much anymore. It used to bother me a lot because I wanted us to have a relationship but she has made up her mind & now I wonder if she has ever really liked me from day 1. I think back to the manipulative things she's tried since the beginning & wonder if the times that we did get along were genuine or fake? But I don't spend too much time thinking about that anymore either. She's a product of her parents & I'm still very sad for her, but there is nothing I could have done to change what her mom puts her through & how she reacts to it. That's my update.