So we’ve decided to cut out of our apartment lease and move out at the end of the month. Some friends of ours have an empty 3 bedroom house not too far from where we work. And it’s less than a mile from their current house…. where we (and the dog) spend a majority of our time.

We collectively decided that paying them would be much better than paying “the man”, plus we could help them out financially. The place is much bigger… we’ll have a 2 car garage, storage, washer and dryer, and the dog will have a backyard to play in again.

Cost is cheaper (rent – he pays), but since we’ll have to pay water and garbage now (utilities – I pay) it pretty much comes out even. We will however have to pay an early termination fee to get out of our lease. This may eat my bonus instead of going to CC debt. Stay tuned.

In other news, I will be moving the blog off of the free Wordpress.com to a “self-hosted” Wordpress site. Dreamhost gives Wordpress users a great deal $7.95/month for a terabyte of space if you pay a year in advance. Their space is also WebDav accessible, which means it basically acts as an Internet Hard Drive. A very great utility for offsite backups, online storage, etc.

This is a great alternative for anybody that was looking at the $499 Apple 1TB Time Capsule – which included Wireless and a 1TB Harddrive. This is an offsite version – much better for your iPhoto library if your house floods or sets on fire.

Stay tuned for my new blog – it will be getting a new Theme and a total site redesign. I have a lot of projects going on right now, so it may be slow going, but it will happen. Probably by the end of the month.

-K

I have canceled my $10/month Usenet account since I have discovered BitTorrent. Not only is it easier to use, but it is free and has more content than my old Usenet group. That’s $120 per year back in my pocket. (I wonder if I can snowflake the whole $120 at once or if I should do it monthly?) This also fits in well with my new mantra – KISS Keep It Simple Stupid. The more stuff (or subscriptions, or whatever – we have – the more we have to maintain. This takes otherwise valuable time away from doing what we really want to do with our free time instead of maintaining our crap!  I think that’s why I like the USAA Home Deposit service so much. Scan deposits in from home. In your underwear. Instant funds availability. What’s not to love? No more waiting in line. Looking for deposit slips – being pissed off that the guy infront of you used the last envelope. I sure wish more banks offered this service. It is phenomenal. Especially if you have a great great grandfather (or other distant relative) who was an officer in the military – beg borrow or steal to get yourself an account. It is the single best thing I’ve ever done for my financial life. And for my financial sanity. I only wish I had found it much earlier! In other news, I am actually thinking of trading this expense in for a $99 per year .Mac account. I know I said I didn’t want to pay for it earlier – but I’m finding it useful more and more. And it works very well with the mantra – Keep It Simple Stupid since it’s such a “Set It and Forget It” application. For now I’m still holding out for Google’s GDrive application.