When we first came to visit San Francisco Peter and I were really tight on money. Everything either seemed ridiculously expensive or had tales of bed bugs on Yelp. All it takes is one account of someone crying bed bugs for me to run. I’m sure that’s not fair to the hotel. Any disgruntled customer could claim to find bed bugs and I would not stay there, but it is how it is. After an insane amount of searching we came across Casa Loma Hotel. This little hotel was a godsend. I’ll warn you that it’s a European style hotel in the sense that the toilet and shower are not attached to the room. There are a couple of toilets and a couple of showers (separate from one another in the hall). Although it was a bit weird, I never had to wait to use the bathroom and they were always clean.
{All images via Casa Loma}
For around $50/night, this was a great alternative to a hostel. While on vacation and while interviewing, I knew I had a safe, clean place to stay.
I feel like a character in some horrible TV show. I have budget sheets (like this one from Thrifty Little Blog), credit card bills, and lists of expenses spread across the table–and if it were a bad TV show then you would be able to see the cartoon numbers floating around above my head. If we needed a 20% down payment and I’m saving X amount each month then I would reach that number in…wait, almost four years? Why are houses so expensive?
So, what sparked this frantic urge to save? We’ve been talking about buying a house for awhile now but we’re so far away from it that it seemed unnecessary to start an actual fund. That is, until I found the perfect house. Well, almost perfect. It’s too big, it’s in a city that Peter and I would probably never move to, and the price is a little high but everything it stands for is perfect. Here’s a little peak:
It’s just SO beautiful. This may not be our house but our dream house is really kicking us in the butts to start that house fund (which I’m happy to say that I did–right between pining over this house and pining over it some more).
Images courtesy of Realtor.com
