Dealing with the Building Department, Round 6.5

I actually don't know what round this is. Really, I don't think there are rounds. It's more like a continuous melee.

But whatever.

Yesterday I got a letter from the Building Department telling me my building permit expired. Well, duh. The next step is masonry. I can't exactly do masonry in below freezing weather, now can I? So, why would I renew the permit until I can actually work?

They also said my temporary residence permit expired. What? I was under the impression that it didn't expire.

So I go down there.

Getting the building permit renewed: $125. I knew that. No paper work involved, so there's a bonus.

The residence permit didn't expire. She said my surety bond expired.

Oh, boy.

When we first got started on this project, I read about the surety bonds. These bonds are a guarantee that once building was complete we would remove the temporary residence from the site. Some of the county's sources said we would have to pay a bond for the travel trailer, others said we didn't. So I asked John, the first inspector I worked with. He said we didn't have to pay it. There was no reason to pay it because a travel trailer doesn't have to be removed; we just stop living in it.

But, nooooooooo. Now it's a different story. Now they want a bond. A $5000 bond.

They have to have this bond. How else will can they be sure that after we build our house we won't live in a trailer next to it?

Who does this?

No one. No. One.

No one builds a house so they can live in a trailer in the back yard.

It's already against zoning regulations to do so. We could be fined for doing so. But it is such a threat that they have to have a bond to make sure that they can fine us and get paid.

Really?

Really.

Yeah, really.

So, I'm getting bond quotes now. Later I will eat country ribs and beans. And whiskey.

UPDATE: One of the bond underwriter people persons called us back. He can't give as a quote because he can't write a bond to guarantee something like this. So, there this saying about asses and holes in the ground...

Etsy, Google Sheets, Smarty Pig, and Managing Debt Free Home Building

Since El Nino has run out of steam and our unseasonably warm weather has left us, I have a moment or two to catch up here. Briefly, we've been winterizing the little house, making some handmade Christmas gifts, and putting Jack in fuzzy sweaters.

Draw me like one of your French Girls

Raising money through Etsy

As I've stated in previous posts, I have supplemented our income by selling off our possessions, most notably my massive collection of My Little Ponies. I had to stop while I was working on the house, but I started back up in mid November.

The last round of pony sales went on eBay. I've been selling there since 1999, but over the past several years I have grown to HATE that venue. Their website is clunky, their fees suck, and sellers regularly get screwed by unscrupulous buyers.

Fortunately, since the items I'm selling are vintage I have another option. I have been selling handmade items on Etsy since 2010 and I LOVE selling there. I have opened up a new shop for my vintage items and it has been going pretty well. In the six weeks it has been open I've been able to raise over 75% of the money we need for our next step.

It's mostly stocked with collectibles and household items ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s right now, but I have so much more to add. There are more collectibles and boxes and boxes of ponies that need to go.

See all the things here

The profits from every sale I make are directly funding our homestead. In order to keep the funds organized, I have employed a couple different tools.

Google Sheets

The first is Google Sheets. Google Sheets is simply a spread sheet program that you can access through your Google Plus account. This is very handy considering how often I bounce from computer to computer. Here's an example of how I have mine set up:

The first column is the price that I sold the item for. The next column is what I originally paid for the item. This is an important figure to have as it will be needed come tax season.

The next two columns are Etsy fees. Etsy charges $0.20 for listing an item for three months, and processing fees after it sells.

If you use PayPal, you'd want to include those fees as well. However Etsy now has a feature that manages direct payments and PayPal payments through their account manager.

The next two columns are the total profits and self-employment tax. Total profits are figured by taking the sale price and subtracting the item cost, listing fees, and processing fees.

Since I am selling items at a profit, I must pay taxes on the income. One of these taxes is the self-employment tax. The self-employment tax is your FICA taxes: social security and Medicare. The rate is 15.3%. So, to find your total tax, multiply your profit by .0153.

You also have to pay income tax, however since we alway have extra withheld from my husband's paycheck, I don't bother saving for that.

The next column is an adjustment column. Most of the time, I only put the net profit into savings. However, on some items (mostly ponies), I want the initial cost of the item to go into savings as well. This column allows me to offset the initial cost being taken out of the profits.

The column marked "Total for SP" is the amount I put into savings. The last column helps me keep track of which sub-account that total is deposited into.

Speaking of sub-accounts, that brings me to:

Smarty Pig

When we first started packing money away so we could buy our land, I started shopping around for a place to stash our money. I don't like having it all in our checking account (darling husband is a spender) and I wanted to earn a little interest.

My Google Fu led me to Smarty Pig. Their interest rate was attractive. Well, as attractive as interest rates get in this day and age (which is pretty sad).

State of this country's banking system aside, Smarty Pig is a really great tool for saving money. The feature that I love the most is the ability to create sub accounts within your Smarty Pig account. These "Savings Goals" really fit into how we are financing this build. Here's their info page on creating goals.

When we first started planning how to do this, we were torn between buying a kit house like a Katrina Cottage or buying plans and building it all ourselves. One benefit to kit houses is that they would be easier and faster to build. A down side is that we would not be able to do any work on the house until we had saved 100% of the money.

This would be a big problem when it came to our temporary residence permit. Most counties (ours included) will want you actively building to keep your permit.

With the DIY house plans, we have the ability to save funds for each piece of the house, and build it as we reach each individual savings goal.

For example, late last winter, I calculated out the material cost for each part of our foundation. I started savings goals for the footings, the rebar, the cinder blocks, and the mortar. (I had to combine the funds and shuffle things around because of the re-design, but the funds were there nonetheless).

Smarty Pig lets you set automatic payments into your goals, or if you're a control freak like me you can transfer funds manually. It seems that they used to require a monthly transfer, but from my experience that is no longer the case.

A word of advice concerning goals: it may be wise to keep your goals small or even divide larger goals up into a couple smaller goals. Once the money has been transfered into a goal, you cannot do a partial withdrawal. If you have an emergency crop up and need to free up some funds, you have to close out the goal and withdraw all of it. This isn't a HUGE problem. You can just transfer it all back to the bank, and then create a new goal and transfer some of the money back to Smarty Pig. That's a little clunky, but not the end of the world.

One you reach your goal, you get to close it out and go buy things. This can be done by transferring it back to your bank, or you can put it on a gift card. They incentivize the gift card option by offering a bonus cash boost. There is a hardware store on the list of retailers, so this can really help on a project like this. Here's their page with gift card info.

I've been able to integrate this into my Etsy shop and use it as a tool to show customers exactly where their funds are going. Recently, the most aggressively funded goal has been the architectural blocks.

With each purchase I'm including a thank you note that tells them what part of the building project their purchase will go to. 

I'm going to try to update with more detail on each piece of the build so people can see exactly what is being saved for, where it fits into the house, and when it is purchased and installed. Until then, I have some Etsy orders to fill.