Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Mortgage isn't all it''s cracked up to be
Kevin Kittredge
Grrr! is an occasional rant about things that don't work very well.
Recent columns
I was never one of those people who pined for a house and a yard of my very own.
I hate yardwork, first of all, and as a young man I looked at a mortgage as a potential millstone around my happily unencumbered neck. But eventually, I succumbed -- partly. I bought a cheap condo. The passing years have only proved me right.
My mortgage is the least of it. Homeowner's expenses are something else.
Last summer, one of my neighbors called to tell me there was a river of water coming from the vicinity of my water meter. This, as any veteran homeowner knows, is very bad. You can think of that water as a river of your own nickels, dimes and quarters flowing down the street.
By the time the damage was assessed, the waterline fixed and the water bill paid, I was close to $3,000 poorer. Then winter came, and with it a $400 electric bill. (For a condo!)
It took me two months to figure out the problem: My heat pump had quit working. Yep, just stopped. The backup system -- that little electric money pump designated on the thermostat as "auxiliary heat" -- had been heating my condo. This is a lot like burning dollar bills in the fireplace to heat your living room.
What with the sky-high electric bills and the repair bill, I'm out at least another grand. That's $4,000 already. Add a monthly homeowner's fee and $1,000 in taxes, too, and we're over six grand -- and we haven't even gotten to the mortgage yet.
Give me the good old days, I say, when the waterlines weren't my problem, or the heat pumps, either.
David Allan Coe should write a sequel to his 1977 working-class anthem. He could call it, "Take This House and Shove it."
Mailbag time
My Roanoke Times colleague Luanne Rife has a couple of Grrrs about airlines (but then, who doesn't?).
She would like to know, first of all, why airlines load passengers starting with the front rows, where the passengers immediately clog the aisles and block access to the rest of the plane, instead of from the back rows, which would leave the rest of the airplane clear.
She also wonders why airplanes don't charge people for carry-on luggage instead of for checked baggage. This would possibly eliminate those people who lug their too-large bags into economy class, then try to stuff them into the overhead bins.
Grrr reader Pat Simmons emailed us a poignant little rant about shampoo and conditioner bottles, and how hard it is to tell them apart in the shower without your glasses on. (Most people, of course, do not wear their glasses in the shower.)
"If the manufacturer would just put a big 'S' on the bottle it would solve my problem," she said.
We're with you on this, Pat. And those little hotel courtesy bottles with the microscopic print are the worst.
Can you think of something that really ought to work better? Let us know.
