Have you looked into Montessori Schools in your area. We have our 4 y/o in it and we just switched our 14 y/o over to one last year from public school, we were sick of old bag tenured teaches verbally and mentally abusing him. He is a quiet kid and not academically inclined and the old bats were pretty brutal to him over the years. The last draw was last year when a teacher lied to us then accused our son of lying. We pulled him and the personality change in him since attending Montessori is amazing. Just in 1/2 of a school year he began to turn into a person not a depressed, repressed blob. It was the teachers, they were beating him down so bad he didn't like adults anymore. It was sad and it broke our hearts we did not realize what was going on sooner. All the nights I sat up with him doing homework and trying to teach him what his teachers were failing to teach and they did not care are over. He wants to learn now and the teachers work with him and make sure he understands the lasson and is actually learning. Imagine that....





Public Schools are Government agencies. Remember that. They run with the same efficiency as Homeland Security, Congress, the Pentagon (with their $500 toilet seats and $1 Million dollar shipping bills for 1 bolt) and your local DMV. Once you realize this you'll understand better what your dealing with. Don't blow a lot of money getting into the better schools that might not be better.



We bought a house in a more expensive county because the Schools were better. Now my kids are both in private Schools and I will do anything to keep them in there.



Your 15K in debt is nothing and it may not be worth it right now to move. Your property taxes are probably low, once you buy another house you will have to pay taxes based on the purchase price of the house. It might be smarter to just budget hard for a while and knock down that 15K.



Here is the plan I would go with, the housing market is in the middle of a huge adjustment. In my honest opinion I would sell the house your in and rent one. Here is a good rule of thumb to see if house prices are fair where your looking to buy. Check out the rent prices for comparable homes. Lets say your seeing $800 a month rent for a 3/2/2 home. the a fair sale price is $80,000. I bet they are asking more like $160,000 though. So in this case, as the market continues to adjust it would be better to rent that to own, why pay a $1600+ a month mortgage when you can rent? I joked with my wife the other day that we should sell for our house and rent one and save money. Especially with the insurance rate hikes lately.



I understand you really are not dealing with a mortgage here, cash only, but to buy in the middle of this adjustment would be like throwing money away. Why buy a house for $160K when you can wait 2 years and buy the same house for 120K?



You have lots to consider, weigh it out. Better yet consult with a financial adviser that will better be able to coach you along the right path. I have used one for over 10 years now and the only times I have hurt myself is when I ignored him.



Good luck.

 

Like anything there are good public schools, good private schools, etc, etc... Let's be realistic guys, schools located in areas with lower tax base aka the poor part of town get less funding. It sucks, it's true, it's something you have to consider when you have kids. Now, toss in the fact that the majority of Florida public schools rich or poor the education is lower then many other US states, teachers are paid poorly in relation to many other states, their teacher to student ratios are much higher (more students per teacher), etc, etc.. http://www.nea.org/edstats/RankFull06b.htm here's one of MANY sources which put Florida around the 30 mark out of 50, 1 being best. From what I've seen since I've lived here, I can say their fairly accurate. All of this leads me to one conclusion; you REALLY need to shop the schools, check out the facts and make a decision, a bad FL public school is worse then a bad CT school (for example).



Now you said the joint was made to be a duplex? Take a 2nd, finish it off, rent both halves and move to an apartment. 18 years down the road when the kids in college if ya love the place that much you can move back to it, or you sell it in the meantime, etc, etc.. (if that's feasible). I am currently finding it impossible to sell, so I have been exploring some other options. Rental, seller financing of the house or even rent to own, lease option to buy, etc, etc.

 

WTF, is that the same Jims5543? What's with the folks coming out of the woodwork lately?



I guess the best would be to talk to a financial planner. Luckily, I have an uncle here in town who is a CFP with his own business.

 

Yes its the same person. I was having problems posting and kinda like the new persona.





Scott, I feel your pain, I was kicked out of the house on Prima Vista by the city because I was running a business from it. They gave me 2 days to get out or fines were being levied. I rented it for a while, at a loss, I was paying $1500 a month mortgage and renting for $1000 a month, the the rentor went deadbeat on me sticking me with 2 months unpaid rent. I was approached by one of those ugly house buyer and went for it selling at a $50K loss. Something that eats a hole in me to this day and I would prefer to forget.



Your in a tough spot, as I see it we are about 2 years from rock bottom. I do not recall what you paid for your house but you bought at the peak of the market. I do not see those prices happening again for another 10 years. That is only if we do not see another hurricane over those next 10 years.



I am sure your insurance is skyrocketing like mine although I bet its no where as bad. I was just jacked to $6500 a year from $3200 which was $1200 before the storms. Its all a load of crap.



As far as public schools, I did a ton of research and some interesting things came to light. No Child Left Behind, and the FCAT scores are total bunk. Schools pre-test the kids. They find the ones that are borderline not passing and tutor them taking them out of regular classes so they can learn how to pass the FCAT. Then they take the ones that were too low to help, you know, the no child left behind kids, and they label them learning disabled. Their scores are not included in the schools test scores. You get the picture how this works out. Its all a load.



My son took a private school version of the FCAT and scored higher than he ever did in public school after only 6 months. Food for thought, how important is your child's education?



When I owned my MINI I found out a LOT of the owners on the MINI cooper Forum I was on were School teachers. Here is the advice they gave me and its sad.



You need to Volunteer at the school full time, you need to develop a repoire with the administrators. Learn who are the good and bad teachers and with your pull from volunteering you can get your kid out of those classes and into the good ones. Something regular parents cannot achieve. Understand the teachers know which kids belong to PTA parents and volunteer parents and they treat them better. This is a sad truth, you need to be involved full time in the school to get your kid a better education. Doing homework with them will not cut it. You need to be in the school all day to get the better deal.



Unfortunately for us, we had a baby and my wife could not volunteer at the school so our older son got stuck with some really crappy teachers that were very mean to him and he was afraid to tell us he was being yelled at by them. When we did know we were afraid that if we brought it up it would result in retaliation from the teacher.





My point is this, we bought in an area known for "better schools" they turned out to be just as bad except the administrators were better at spinning out that they were better. We paid about 30K more for our house due to the "better school district" and now we are paying for them to go to private school.



Back to the house, Scott had some excellent advise, it used to be a duplex? Make it back into one and rent one side off using the income to pay off debt. Its really hard to make decisions that will affect your kids, it gets emotional and that makes it hard to think clearly. Hopefully you can find a good plan for all of you.

 

PS. Thanks Scott, you rock.

 

It wasn't a duplex, but each floor has its own bedroom and bathroom (3 out of 4 of the floors, top floor is a small room with balcony).



I think our biggest hurdle would be selling our house at all. Since we didn't pay for it, I wouldn't be too worried about how much it's worth versus 5 years ago, since even if we sold it for less than it's worth, we'd still be able to buy our new house for less than IT'S worth.



I see what you mean though, the housing market is still moving downward. Maybe we can wait and see how low they'll go. In the mean time, I'm thinking of moving our debt to a home equity loan for the lower interest rate, and cutting up the cards.

 

Put it on the market. See if you can get your price. Or go to zillow.com and see what houses in your immediate area are selling for.

 

zillow seems to be pretty out of date to me. It doesn't show any houses for sale on my street although more or for sale then not. It did however lower the value of our house 45k since march........... which is prolly accurate

 

Well that would be nice!



But to compare, properties surrounding mine:

$201k

$182k

$123k

$43k

$54k

 

my hous eis on zillow, and its WAYYYYYYYYYYYY off



kevin.