Money money money, moooooneyyyyy…

Well the purple PT is back in service, it was crazy expensive to get it fixed but from when I first made the call, to having it done took just under 24 hours. They even came and towed it from the parking lot at work. It ended up being right at $930 for everything. I got rolled a little bit on the cost of the parts but not too bad. If I had known exactly what easy needed I would have ordered the parts online and saved some money but overall I was happy with the service and at least we have both vehicles again. Hopefully there aren’t any other problems with that car for a while that will make this fix not worth what we paid for it.

We dodged another bullet money wise too. I guess after hurricane Sandy a couple years ago our fine government decided to revamp the national flood insurance program so that people would pay the full cost of policies in high risk areas for houses that are not protected enough from flood risk instead of being subsidized and not paying the true cost that it should take for the amount of risk for that particular house. In theory I agree with this when you see people build expensive homes in places where it’s completely obvious that they are going to get flooded. I mean, seriously, it’s just common sense right? Well it turns out that we are affected by it. Behind our house is a creek that runs through town and we are required to have flood insurance. Our house was built a year before the regulations went into effect and it didn’t have an elevation certificate so we were grandfathered in and didn’t have to pay the full rate that you would have to pay if your house was built after that in a flood plain and was below the elevation listed in the flood maps. Since the full rate is crazy expensive, like $1900 a year expensive and the grandfathered rates were still expensive compared to the rates for stuff a foot or two higher in elevation I thought it would be a good idea to get a surveyor out to get an elevation certificate, as well as give me the lot lines since our neighbors had their pool over the property line. I was really hoping that it would show that we were in the clear and in compliance so we could get the cheaper rates but… nope. They built the place 1 foot 4 inches too low and if I submitted the certificate I would be paying $1900 a year instead of the $1000 a year for a place without a certificate that was grandfathered. With the new law however they are fazing out the grandfathered subsidized plans for everyone who bought their home on or after July 6th, 2012, and for people before that if it isn’t their primary residence or of they have suffered major flood damage in the past. Guess when we closed on the house?

July 5th, 2012.

Holy crap… We beat it by one day! It’s like a $800 or $900 a year savings over what it would have been had we closed one day later that none of my neighbors are getting because their houses are just a bit newer and aren’t grandfathered. If we move out and rent it out and it isn’t our primary home then the rates will go full price and whenever we sell the place the new owners will have to pay the full rate too. It sure would have been easier if they would just have pushed another 16 inches of dirt in a pile and then built the place… What a pain in the ass.