Housing Diaries: How I Saved $100 on a Radon Test and other life updates

Originally published/last updated on myearlyretirementjourney.com on Feb 20, 2020.

Feb 18, 2020

You’ll have to excuse yesterday’s post. It was an incomplete draft from a week ago that I just published. I endeavored to do a life update and a housing update as separate posts but it turns out this housing stuff is taking over my life!

Life Updates
I worked from home all last week and it didn’t suck.
I’m sinking my teeth into this next stage of my life (not applying to jobs fruitlessly, leaning into “peri-retirement,” securing long-term housing).
With the 6-year house plan, other things don’t matter as much.
I’m still not sure the house is the absolute best choice, but it’s the next best choice.

More thoughts on why I decided to buy a house I’m not that excited about
Psychologically, I would suffer from mental decline every time I had to renew my lease. In a sense, the house provides more stability. Case in point, my domain name for this blog needs to be renewed. That triggered a whole new decision spiral. Do I really want to keep paying for this hobby? Followed by at least a 1 hour search on 2 separate occasions on how to transfer blog to a free site. Not to mention the thoughts before and after.

An arbitrary inflection point. That’s what my apartment lease had become except it would last for at least the 60 days before my lease was up if not more. I would question my life, my career, my life (yes, you read that twice), every choice that lead up to that moment, etc…

Financially, the house meets a desired goal to lower my all-in housing costs. Barring catastrophe, I stand to save about $300/mon (not including transaction costs). If you include transaction costs, I stand to save about $300/mon after Year 2. Over 6 years, however, the potential savings vs renting is in the thousands.

Structure, Foundation, Structure. I touched on this a little bit in the psychological benefit. This section encompasses some of the reverberations of having that psych component soothed. The house adds some structure to my day, my life, and some decisions. The apartment made my life feel in flux; the house makes my life feel grounded.

Strangely, I know people say you’re locked into a house and can easily move out of an apartment, but somehow I feel like the apartment was more of a noose. If I renewed my lease in January and had to move in February, I could potentially be stuck with the lease for the rest of the year.  A $600/mon mortgage seems a little easier to stomach vs a $1,000/mon lease. Somehow I feel more in control of the housing situation with a house. I feel like I have more options. I could leave it empty; I could rent it out; I could sell it.

I can’t emphasize how much more grounded I feel not having to worry about where to live.  I’m shocked by the impact as I write this. And the fact that if all goes well, I plan to stay for 6 years just eliminates one more variable for me.

The Radon Test
So in the hundreds upon hundreds of pages of paperwork that has passed through my inbox was a recommendation for a radon test. A lot of the recommendations are fear driven. If you don’t do this now, and something happens, you’re now responsible for all the world’s problems. The realtor quoted a $150 radon test by a professional. Since I’d never heard of radon poisoning and I was asked if I wanted one (making it seem optional), I asked the internet.

My area is not a hotzone for radon and there’s a kit you can do yourself. It literally is sitting a small plastic dish of activated charcoal in your house for 2-4 days and then mailing it back to a lab. It was at my local Lowe’s for $16.07 (you can find it cheaper).

Total cost to me: $44.32
Kit: $16.07
Fuel for 2 rdtrps to the property: $20.68 (it’s 80 miles one way)
Postage: $7.57

Savings: $105.
I’ll take it! Thanks President’s Day for that lucky day off!