The Economic Benefits of Our Move

Moving can be a costly venture.  In most cases, renters are moving to home ownership, home owners are moving to more expensive home or high cost of living areas.  You don't hear a lot about moves made with the intentions of economical downsizing.  That is precisely what we are do on so many levels.  Here are some areas where this move is going to save us money:

• mortgage - We are significantly decreasing our mortgage.  This is a big one!  The interesting thing is we are getting a new house with more square footage and increased entertainment potential.
• property taxes - Our property taxes will decrease by about a quarter yet we will enjoy more amenities.
• insurance - The will be a reduction in both house and vehicle insurance.
• travel - Gasoline is only increasing in price and thanks to last year's introduction of HST on gasoline it is even more expensive.  This move will save us on average 40 km driving per day!  It will save having to drive for groceries or to some restaurants.  It shortens the number of kilometres for essentials like doctor visits, hospital and pharmacy. 
• utilities - Our hydro use will decrease somewhat although we do expect to use the AC a bit more in the warm weather.  We will no longer need to have lights on everyday and the house lends itself nicely to installing a couple of solar tubes so we will have lots of light without the cost.  That should be more than offset by changing to use natural gas for cooking.  Natural gas is about a third of the cost of hydro here in beautiful Ontario, Canada.  We should not see much of an increase on our natural bill because we are going back to charcoal and propane for the outdoor grill that is used almost daily during the warm weather.  Our outdoor grill is currently natural gas.  We will be installing a natural gas fireplace because they are quite economical.  The new one will be more energy efficient than our current circa 1980's gas fireplace.  Our water usage will increase with the pool.
• phones - Our basic landline service will remain the same cost but we are switching my cell phone to a pay as you go.  We may check out ooma.com for our landline but haven't decided yet.
• television - Our satellite television service will remain the same.  Satellite is pretty much the same price as cable and there is little point installing an antenna any more.
• internet - Our internet service will be changing from the high priced faux highspeed of satellite to lower priced, real highspeed!  A bonus is we will no longer have to put FAPing or almost daily satellite internet outages.  I fired the satellite service yesterday effective September 14, the day before our official closing date. 

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