End of Week Seven

Whoa – I think I’ve uncovered my hipbones!

Sorry I’m late on this one, but this week’s been pretty crazy at work. There’s been a lot of personnel shifts at the office and I’m having to take up the slack on a lot of projects as upper management tries to figure out who’s going to end up where.

Speaking of ending up somewhere else, my husband and I have been analyzing our living situation. We’re coming to the painful conclusion that we have to find a way to make more money. We’re both working our butts off, but because the cost of living in LA has become so impossible, either I’m going to have to take on a second job or we’re going to have to move out of Los Angeles; maybe even move out of California altogether. Neither of these options sounds very appetizing .

For example, we are renting a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house that’s about 1475 square feet (give or take a few feet) and we’re paying $1660 a month on rent. That does not include utilities – and the electric bill last month was almost $400, because it’s been so God-awful hot and we’re having to run the air-conditioning day and night. The house doesn’t have central air – it has three window / wall units spread throughout the house which are not only not very efficient in keeping the temperature down, but they also suck up a lot of power.

So, out of curiosity, I looked around in some so-called “less expensive” areas to see if we could get an apartment or townhouse rental that might help lower our monthly expenses. I was horrified to find that rental rates have gone through the roof! I found a modest ground-level two bedroom apartment with less than 1400 square feet, only one bathroom, and on-street parking for $2300 a month!! That’s criminal! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – rentals in trendy or popular areas of LA can be up to $4000 a month for an even smaller apartment!

The whole reason for this is because real estate prices are through the roof. I read an article that said only about 11% of the Los Angeles metro area population can afford to buy a house right now, and I think that figure is high. A house in my neighborhood recently sold for over $700,000 – and it was a crappy little two-bedroom fixer-upper with bad plumbing, sub-standard wiring and a dirt yard. That doesn’t make any sense at all.

So my husband and I are trying to explore our options, which at the moment seem rather sparse.