Dec
16
Being an occasional Dave Ramsey listener, I frequently hear that phrase from callers on his program. I’ve longed for the day when Rachel and I could celebrate such a milestone.
Well, as of today we’re debt free … if only for a short time. We closed on our Michigan house today which means we no longer have a mortgage. Ahhh, what a great feeling. It also means we no longer have a house.
Because we weren’t in Michigan for the closing, the title company sent us all 
the documents overnight, with nicely colored arrow stickers pointing out the places on each page we needed to sign. Several of the pages required a notary. It was nice that we didn’t have to go to a title company to sign everything, but because we had to get these documents signed and back in the mail the same day, we had to find a notary that was open on a Saturday. We ended up at our local Pak Mail store, of all places. That’s right– we closed on our house at Pak Mail. They charged $3 for every page requiring a notary stamp, so thankfully there were only a few. Pictured is Rachel signing some of the pages while waiting in line. (Incidentally, we were waiting behind numerous folks desperately trying to ship boxes of gifts to friends and family. After hearing what they had to pay, even for the “no guarantees on the timing” packages, the beauty of online shopping was reinforced.)
So we’ll try to enjoy being debt free during the holidays this year, for come sometime around January 16 we’ll have a new mortgage to pay. Yep, we made an offer on a house Thursday morning, and it was accepted with no counter that evening. Woo-hoo! More details about that as things progress. It’s been a busy week. Now we need to set a new target date for when we can once again say “we’re debt free” … this time hopefully while still owning a house. 
Nov
21
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy when I got email from Rachel with a subject of, “I miss paying city income tax.” What would cause her to write such a thing? She was discovering everything that needed to be done to transfer and register our cars here in VA, and while they don’t have city income tax here, what they have instead is a much bigger pain.
Our goals seemed relatively simple:
1. get VA driver’s licenses for each of us
2. transfer the title on each car to VA
3. register each car
4. get license plates for each car
In order to do that, we had to do several other things first: get new insurance policies in VA, get an emissions inspection on each car, and get a safety inspection on each car. (And why does the county government have the right to force an inspection on my personal property?) All that having been done, we were done with all the prep work … sort-of.
In order to accomplish all the goals above, we had to compile a multitude of documents, including but not limited to: proof of insurance on each car, existing titles for each car, marriage license, birth certificates for both of us, proof of passed emissions inspection for each car, proof of passed safety inspection for each car, proof of purchase price for each car (no, they were not purchased in VA), proof of paid sales tax on each car (again: no, they were not purchased in VA), proof of residence in VA, our MI drivers licenses, and our social security cards.
Fortunately, my wife is the queen of preparations. Thanks to her diligent research (including online, 
multiple phone calls to VA DMVs and the MI Secretary of State, and snail mail correspondance with the MI Sect. of State), she compiled all our documents and had all our forms ready to go. To our amazement, the DMV didn’t require anything that we didn’t have in hand and we were able to accomplish all 4 goals in one trip.
On the plus side, the VA DMV offices accept credit/debit cards (a novel idea yet to be adopted by the MI Sect. of State branches), and we got our new drivers licenses on site rather than having to wait for them to come in the mail.
Having accomplished all that, we still needed to get county registration stickers, because that can’t be done at the DMV. Those arrived in the mail last week.
One remaining hurdle is getting license plates put on the front of our vehicles, since there is no spot to attach them in front. (Must be cars made in MI where that isn’t a requirement, or something.)
Lastly, we need to pay to our county what they call a “personal property tax.” It’s a tax you pay twice per year on each car you own, and it’s based on the value of your vehicle.
Once that’s done, I think we can officially declare that our cars have successfully made the move to VA. If anything can make you miss filling out a city income tax form once each year, this process might be it. Phew.