As I’ve written about before, our daughter will be going to UC Berkeley in the fall. This, of course, means we’ll be paying for college for a few years. So, in addition to our daughter working on the scholarship side, I’ve been doing a bit of work on the expense reduction side. I’m pleased to report it is bearing fruit:
- We have a HARP refinance in process. This will take our interest rate down from 5.125% to 3.875%. This will be a fair chunk of change each month.
- We just changed auto insurers. We had been with AAA, and they wanted $2765 for 6 months. Other quotes we were getting were equally outrageous: eSurance was $2988, Safeco was $2666, Liberty Mutual (with the UCLA Alumni discount!) was $4135.60, and Progressive was $5,530. However, GEICO was much less — $1690, plus about $400 to add umbrella liability coverage.
- The County Assessor sent us some mixed news: our housing value has gone down (the bad), but the good is they reassessed us at the lower value, meaning our property taxes will go down
We’re still looking into some other avenues to reduce monthly costs, plus our food and fuel costs will assuredly go down once the teen is esconced up at Berkeley.
Music: American Idiot (Green Day): Jesus Of Suburbia / City Of The Damned / I Don’t Care / Dearly Beloved / Tales Of Another Broken Home
