I thought I knew what to expect finan­cial­ly in own­ing a home. I was ready for mort­gage pay­ments, lawyers fees, gas bills, title insur­ance, land trans­fer tax (which is a sep­a­rate pay­ment from the name change fee), and any oth­er ran­dom thing that may cost me mon­ey.

What I was­n’t ready for was the rapa­cious urge to pur­chase things. Things that cov­er win­dows, things that illu­mi­nate the cor­ners of rooms. Things that go in hous­es, things that look nice. Things to play, things that orga­nize oth­er things.

So I spent some mon­ey. Got the living/dining room and two bed­rooms pro­fes­sion­al­ly paint­ed. Bought a 53″ Widescreen HDTV Projection TV. Of course, I need­ed a pro­gres­sive scan DVD play­er to go with it (as well as com­pos­ite cables for that and the Gamecube, which cost more than the DVD play­er itself). I even bought four games — Paper Mario, Viewtiful Joe 2, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, and Pikmin 2 — so that I could take advan­tage of widescreen and pro­gres­sive scan sup­port. There were also a few cost­ly trips to Ikea, Homesense, Home Depot for things like tables, bowls, king sized pil­lows, and Egyptian cot­ton pil­low­cas­es.

I’m in debt for the first (and hope­ful­ly last) time in my life. I was up to sev­en grand at one point, but the small­er part of it (all on cred­it cards) was paid-off with the help of my last pay­cheque, and the larg­er half hap­pens to be inter­est-free. I have to men­tion, though, that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of what’s left has been reduced, to the gen­eros­i­ty of my par­ents. $2000 of it was towards a set of cus­tom-sized mir­rored clos­et doors to be installed in my room and in the coat clos­et, and they decid­ed to pay for them as a house­warm­ing gift. Pat also got me a bar­be­cue that fits per­fect­ly on my back patio, along with cov­er, cook­ing uten­sils, and wire-string brush.

My goal is to pay off the debt as soon as I can, and start putting 10% of my pay into a high-inter­est sav­ings account. I’d also like to save 2% of my annu­al salary for house repairs and upkeep, while look­ing into high­er RRSP con­tri­bu­tions and pos­si­bly an extra mort­gage pay­ment by the end of the year.

This’ll be hard, how­ev­er, because I’m itch­ing for a new com­put­er. I admit that I could­n’t help but take advan­tage of a great deal on Dell’s 19″ view­able flat pan­el mon­i­tors, so I bought two. Unfortunately, with a lap­top, I can only use one for the time being. I’ve been look­ing at the new P4 Extreme Edition proces­sors, which are dual core with hyper-thread­ing on each that can sim­u­late four proces­sors. I’m try­ing to wait until the price drops a bit, see­ing as how one of these costs as much as an entire new sys­tem. Normally I would­n’t even con­sid­er spend­ing so much on a CPU, but I can eas­i­ly jus­ti­fy it with all the video encod­ing and pho­to manip­u­la­tion I’ve been doing late­ly. I’ll prob­a­bly be able to afford one by the time they become rea­son­ably priced.

So this is where I live now: an attached con­do­mini­um town­house. My unit is sec­ond from the right, and goes under­ground. The white win­dows fac­ing out on the main floor are part of the break­fast nook. There are still box­es every­where though, and it’ll take at least half a month to get every­thing cleared out.

It feels good to wake up in my own house, and as such, I now have to ful­fill all the promis­es I made to myself on the sat­is­fac­tion of such a con­di­tion.

• I promise to floss every day.
• I promise to vac­u­um more often than I did before (how non-com­mit­tal of me).
• I promise to smoke less weed.
• I promise to stop pour­ing cook­ing grease down the drain.
• I promise to film Dolly run­ning her fat ass up the stairs (she nev­er expe­ri­enced stairs until I moved).
• I promise to walk more often than I ride the bus.
• I promise to get my finances in order, which involves enter­ing all my incomes and expens­es into Quicken XG then set­ting up (vir­tu­al) sav­ings accounts for retirement/emergency/pleasure spend­ing.
• I promise to keep my room spot­less.
• I promise to read more than I watch movies.