u/MortgageConfident791

Underground parking garages! If you live in a city, give your scardy dog a fun, tiring day while the sun is up, then go for a quick drive underground to wait out the noises. I’d highly recommend parking near the fan and setting up a WiFi camera for peace of mind if you’re going to go watch the fireworks yourself, but the risk is very low considering underground parking garages don’t overheat even if it’s hot out and have good airflow.

One of my dogs is terrified of fireworks and nothing has helped to alleviate that. Even drugs. She was adopted and was an outdoor dog in Oklahoma as a puppy so we think she probably experienced thunder and fireworks repeatedly to the point that counter conditioning has been extremely difficult for her despite success with all of our other dogs. We’re in a World Cup host city so there have been fireworks nightly for the past month, I can’t even hear it since it’s far away but she has been cowering and hiding in the bathroom nightly. She’s incontinent and when she’s scared she won’t go outside so there’s been accidents as well. It hurts my heart.

Last year we came up with the underground parking garage idea, and she slept through the night last 4th and was even comfortable enough to go on a night walk after so we doubt she noticed the fireworks at all. There actually were multiple other cars with dogs down there so it’s not an original idea at all, but I thought I would share.

I’m currently under contract for a house! Offered asking and it was accepted last week!

And I am absolutely losing my mind with stress. We are a 2 person household but for various reasons we are only purchasing based on my income. The plan was my partner will change jobs when we move. Of course per Murphy’s law (and probably because her employer realized she’ll quit when we move), she lost her job today. She’s not on the loan and the house is lower than I was approved for alone so the budget still works (the payment will actually be less than our rent), but still 😥

The inspection was 2 days ago and the sewer scope was today. Per the inspection the roof requires immediate replacement (not surprising), there’s some minor plumbing issues (not urgent) but we just got the sewer scope results and apparently the side sewer replacement 10 years ago skipped the last 5’ of clay pipe before connecting to the city and that portion has since collapsed. Under the public street. There’s still enough flow that it hasn’t backed up but it’s like 90% blocked and per city code it’s the homeowner’s responsibility.

We’re waiting on quotes for the roof and sewer before bringing it to the seller but they’ve already expressed wanting a quick deal and not wanting to do any repairs. I’m stresssssing. I have some buffer financially but this will probably be 30k which would take most of my emergency fund. And neither issue can wait for us to save up. The seller will probably agree for a credit or price reduction, my realtor wants to try to get them to do the sewer repair before closing though I doubt they’ll agree.

Any tips for surviving the weekend? I just need to stop thinking about this since there’s nothing to be done until we can get a quote on Monday.

We also missed locking in our interest rate Wednesday morning before everything went crazy so we’re still on that roller coaster too 😭

I’m currently under contract to purchase a house. I offered asking, and the asking price was reasonable but on the lower end compared to comps. The sellers are divorcing and in a rush.

My offer was countered with no change to price but adding the sentence “the buyer understands the house is being sold as - is, the seller will complete no repair work.”

My realtor advised we can still ask for credits or walk if an issue comes up in inspection, so we accepted that wording without a change to the price.

The disclosure form was ~75% “unknown” and 25% “no”, no issues were disclosed.

The inspection was just completed and there are indeed issues. One (of two) bathroom is unusable due to a plumbing issue, the roof is older than its design life AND was installed incorrectly (but doesn’t seem to be leaking luckily, however no attic access was available so that’s not for certain), small wiring issues, and chipping lead-based paint on the exterior. Plus some other small annoying things that are easier to DIY that we knew about before the inspection like stained carpet, missing light fixtures, and crayon on the walls.

I’m completely fine with the seller doing no work, IF we receive enough credit to make the project worth it. The house is livable and there are no structural issues, and the issues that there are are mostly just annoying and not required to be fixed immediately in order to live in it. Except the roof because of insurance, and without credit I won’t be able to get that fixed on my own dime.

However, I’m not sure how to approach this considering they added the “as is” language to the offer. I’m not sure if that weakens our ask for concessions or not. Ont he other hand they want a speedy deal, so maybe threatening to walk away if there are no credits has more leverage? Of course I’m consulting with my realtor for what to do, but figured getting some second opinions would be helpful.

I’ll be taking the light rail to work for the first time later this week, from the last Bellevue station to North gate. I’m very mildly disabled to the point that I don’t really feel comfortable using the handicap seats, but standing for that long is very challenging.

I assume it gets busy during the commute times. How early should I try to arrive to avoid it being busy enough that there won’t be regular seats available?

My plan was to buy a house planning to move in August or later, so to seriously search in July. For the time being, I’ve been getting a pre approval and procrastinating about calling buyers agents. The pre approval is in the works, with a pre qualification for $520k. Based on my own math, my maximum is $450k.

Earlier this week I saw a house on Zillow in the perfect location, with more features than the houses in my budget usually have (caveat, many cosmetic issues) and everything I required for a house plus many wants. Today I went to the open house, and it literally is perfect. Spent an hour talking to the seller’s agent, and he says it’s been on the market for over a month with not many tours and no offers, but the seller is motivated to sell and very willing to redo the floors/repaint (or offer a concession). The location is amazing too, walking distance to parks and the grocery store, 2 blocks from a major transit line, I could hear children playing while we were there. The yard is amazing, and it’s close to my family.

The house is right near the top of my budget at 440k, but i am absolutely obsessed. I want my children to grow up in this neighborhood. The garden even has my favorite plants and fruit bushes 😭 And just generally it seems to have very happy family vibes.

The issue is I don’t have a buyer’s agent yet, and pre approval still pending, and I know you shouldn’t impulsively buy a house. So I’m reining myself for the time being and just hoping that house doesn’t sell before I get my ducks in a row.

I’ve been struggling to find a buyer’s agent for a home purchase I am hoping to make this August (plus or minus). All of the advice I’ve found suggests word of mouth but I’m the first person in my friend group to buy, and no one in my local family has bought in over a decade. I’m a bit hesitant to give my contact info to those forms that come up when you search “realtor near me” on Google.

I’m a first time home buyer, would probably need quite a bit of hand holding, pre-qualified (pre approval in progress) for $525k but strongly prefer staying below $450k. We’d love to live in Duvall but I work remote and we have lived in several different areas and loved all of them so our radius is very wide and mostly based on price. It’s seeming like Tacoma will probably be where we end up buying, unless a lucky house shows up within the budget closer to family in Redmond/Duvall

Our only hard requirement is a fenced yard for our dogs, 1.5 baths, 2 bedrooms, within 3 hours drive of Shoreline.

I’m a residential structural engineer and have friends in various trades so fixers are OK, if the price is right we’d actually prefer that.

How do I find a realtor that would be a good fit? I’m worried that the fact that my search radius is large and my budget is small would make me a not very desirable client.

I’m in a position at work lately where I am relied on for several projects to be able to move onto the next steps, because out of the original 5 people who do the same things I do, for various reasons there’s now only 2 and I’m the only one plugged into a major ongoing project.

I’m busy constantly, and every day getting new tasks that are needed same-day, so it feels like even when I work 45-50 hours a week that I’m barely keeping up.

My fiance got a cold the other day so chances are I will too, and I’m noticing that my immediate reaction to the impending sickness was “I can’t afford to get sick right now” rather than my usual “woo hoo! Sick day!”. Likewise, my birthday is coming up and I usually take a few days to be lazy or camp for it, and I’m really fighting with myself to decide whether I should or not.

Just curious if y’all have ever been in a similar situation? Or, is it usually like this and my job was just cushy before? Any advice? Thank you

I have 1 YOE as an engineer in a relatively niche field at a small company. I enjoy the work we do and I’ve recently started to actually feel like I know what I’m doing.

That said, we are a team of 9, with 5 junior engineers, 3 managers and 1 principal. 2 of the 5 junior engineers changed jobs a few months ago. Of the remaining 3, 1 is exclusively drafting, 1 strongly prefers project managing, and so I’m now *the* calculations guy. We hired 1, I’m training her, but for now her training takes more of my time than it saves. The manager of the engineer that left has an ongoing project that sends in work frequently with deadlines within days of receiving the work. My direct manager has a new client we’re trying to keep pleased with similar but slightly longer deadlines.

Every time the manager that isn’t mine gets a project, it’s “high priority” and “needs to be prioritized”. I’ve been doing 50 hour weeks for 2 months now, and I’ve reach a point that whenever someone sends me a teams message I literally cry. I finished 3 “urgent” projects for this guy last Friday, so that I would have time to finish work for my actual manager today before a meeting tomorrow morning.

Got a message asking for a status report on the 4th (final remaining) one for him just now, to which I said the project for my boss is the priority today. Got a lecture that this needs to be done by tomorrow morning and is high priority. For fucks sake. I’m losing my fucking mind. He works a hard 7:30-3:30, never stays late. I’m about to have a nervous breakdown. I don’t even know what I’m doing, they’re supposed to still be training me but the two folks that were training me fucking left. I can’t keep crying at work. 2 months ago I loved this job.

I just woke up from a dream. In it, my dad had suggested that I watch a movie. Of course in the dream, when watching the movie it feels like I’m in it and movie-plot and real-life blended.

I don’t remember exactly what happened, but the plot of the movie was the main character (me) goes on a road trip guided by the love interest (my gf). They go into the woods and it’s cute, then there was some sort of mystery element involving some other characters at a nearby town that was incompletely resolved (like, they just forgot about it). They then go back to the woods, it’s snowing, they’re like “wow it’s snowing, that’s so cute but I guess we should go home” then drive home, for some reason it’s pitch black and the headlights aren’t working so the drive is difficult.

They/we get home, the drive home was precarious, but we make it, and that’s the end. My next door neighbor for some reason asks on my dad’s behalf if I liked the movie and I say “yeah it was great!” But I was thinking that it was mediocre.

Not long after, I realize we didn’t actually finish the movie and put it on. Again, because dreams, watching the movie is the same as experiencing what’s happening firsthand. Well, immediately after arriving home, the movie’s/my dream’s vibe becomes completely different. That unresolved mystery comes up, and ~4 people show up. They just look like normal people,, they’re decently friendly but a bit confrontational towards us. They’re trying to figure out whatever the mystery was and are suspicious of me and my gf. My neighbor is nearby and I’m Worried for some reason he will figure something out, so I look away from towards my neighbors house, thinking these people are about to just leave, but when I turn back around, my partner has stabbed one of them. I don’t want to go into too much detail but from there it became very gorey, slasher. I didn’t get injured at all and wasn’t at risk, my gf and I were the ones doing it. Mostly gf. In the dream/movie I’m thinking “why are we doing this?? They were about to leave???”

That’s when I woke up and now I feel freaked out. My heart was pounding. I just feel unsettled. I don’t understand why I would dream that. I can’t get back to sleep so I was hoping someone could help me understand wha that was all about. Sorry that I don’t really remember specifics.

I want to build muscle but my primary roadblock is motivation/fear. When I’m working out at home, I struggle to know what to do and work out regularly. When I go to the gym, I get scared of being judged and get what I would best describe as decision paralysis, so it’s very difficult to convince myself to go at all.

I miss the dynamic of being in PE class and sports at school where someone just tells you what to do and you do what they say.

I’ve gone to spin classes and Zumba and Pilates and enjoyed them, but I’m looking for something that either is focused on muscles like weight lifting, or something that is well-rounded and does a bit of everything, even better if everyone is a beginner at the beginning and progresses together over time sort of like a college class. Does such a thing exist for adults without paying for a private trainer? I was thinking maybe joining a sports team could scratch that itch but I am prettty wimpy so I wouldn’t be able to offer much to a team.