Moving innovations

Although not strictly a new year resolution, I decided at the end of last year that I should really go and buy a house. Either that, or do some serious redecorating in my current house, and getting a new house just sounded like a lot of fun. The whole house-search thing got triggered by an offer to buy from the housing corporation that I'm currently renting from. It's not that I don't like my current house, but it has gotten a bit too small (read: I've collected to much stuff) and I can raise a few other points I don't like about it anymore.

After starting the house hunt in earnest in January I very quickly found a nice house for a good price. Today I signed the contract. Now all that is left to do is to get a mortage and hopefully I'll be able to move in in a couple of weeks. Weeeh!

Talking about mortgages: what a fun topic. I would seem to be simple: you lend money to buy the house, you pay it back, and in the mean time you pay rent. Not in The Netherlands, where there is a whole bunch of legislation to make things more complicated, especially fiscally. So now I'm lending the money to buy the house, but I won't pay back the loan, because it should be easy to make more money by saving and investing that the interest on the loan minus the government tax discount will be. Weird.