Stressful Times!

Our lease runs up on January 1st.  An awful time of year to move, because who wants to be packing up at Christmas, right?  We finally talked to the landlord, and he said he's fine letting us out early, we just have to give him the new end date in writing, this month.  Making this decision has been kinda agonizing for me.

When "fate" was telling us that we had to be out by a certain date, it was easy enough to just accept that that was the way things were.  But now, having the power to choose the date the lease ends, I find myself getting so stressed about it.  If we choose a day that ends up not working out well with the new home that we find, it will be my fault.  Tom thinks we should just move it a month earlier, to December 1st.  "But what if we don't find a place to move by then?" I keep saying.  He doesn't understand what the difference is in one month. 

I know it's the usual thing to start/end a lease on the first of the month...but the practicalities of actually moving necessitate that you do so on a weekend.  December 1st is a Thursday.  This has me all worried too.  "What if we're kicked out in the middle of the week?  We can't move on a Thursday! What will we DO?" You'd think I've never moved before!  Somehow, I know, it always works out.  Landlords are flexible.  They let you move into the new place a week early...or stay at the old place a week late.  But I still keep fearing that something will go wrong. 

It also doesn't help that every place available for rent up on Craigslist is looking for immediate occupancy.  The usual time to start/end leases is the summertime.  For places that are renting "out of season", it seems as if most landlords don't post to Craigslist until a month before their houses are available!  This means I can't even start looking for a place until November?  That's ridiculous! I do NOT like working against a deadline like this.  I can't comfortably "sign away my rights" to the house I'm living in now, not knowing for sure that another good place will turn up in time.

It's frustrating too because we know we're going to need to spend a little more in rent on this next place.  Not only are we looking for a bit more space, but we're hoping to move further into the city which tends to be a little higher cost.  Right now, there's no room in our budget to put another penny towards rent.  Tom does have a raise coming to him on October 1st.  To my continual irritation with his company, no one has been able to tell him how much this will be.  It could be anything - 25 more cents per hour, or thousands more a year.  We're basically banking everything on the hope that his salary increases enough that we can put a couple hundred more towards rent.  But we have no indication that this will happen either!

So....I'm being asked to just leave a lot to chance now.  Or maybe I'm being asked to just trust a lot to God now? 

Stressful times!