It seems that everything is more expensive in my area. I used to pay $55.00 for DirecTV, no premium channels. I don't have a cell.....my land-line phone was $50.00 w/caller ID and 200 Min. Long distance. I had dial-up for $21.95 mo. I tried the cheaper ones and they were dreadful! I now have a combo package which includes Digital Cable + Stars & Encore premium channels and Tivo for 2 TV's, High-speed internet (will never go back to dial-up), and phone service still with caller-ID and unlimited long distance, and I now pay $118.00 mo. Not a great savings, to be sure, but with more options. I think it is a rip-off, the prices these companies get, especially for phone service, and scryn......I have never had phone service as inexpensive as yours, even when it was bare-bones. That must be awesome!! :>)

You may have been denied a decrease because nobody cares what the current market value of your home is. Assessed values may have little to no relationship to market values depedning on how often the state requires the town to update them. As long as all homes were assessed within a certain amount of time, then their assessed values will be consistently in line or out of line with market values and the town can simply change the tax rate against the aggregate assessed value to generate the revenue it nees. In other words, in our town, no one cares what the market value of your home is because the assessments are currently four years out of date. It doesn't matter because everybody's are off by the same proportion. If we all got assessed tomorrow and the "values" suddenly dropped, the town would simply up the rate to make up the difference. So check the tax records, not real estate ads or sources, for all the homes in your area that may be similar to yours. The tax records are public, you may have to go to town hall to view them and get copies. You want to find ones that match up as closely as possible that have a lower assessed value. The record should show the house "inventory"--footprint, square footage, # of rooms, # bedrooms, # baths, etc., as well as, perhaps, a condition/finish level and other factors such as structural age, view, etc.

Over a year of your time has zero value? Many people struggle with the DIY fallacy that it is too costly to pay a Pro to do an expert job quickly. Time has a value. Not always monetary. But, monetary as well. You can't get that year back. It's not like a year spend together as a family building a pool in the back yard. What is the cost of your attention and focus being on something that limited your focus on your job and family? What is the cost to your spouse to pick up the slack? How do you quantify that impact? If it saved you 10K, but cost you in another way, was that tradeoff the one you imagined it to be when you are 70 and can see the years running out fast? Which would you rather have? 10K? Or more time spent with your kids when they were young? Its the same trap as "I MUST have the big house with everyone getting their own bathroom and 5 places to eat,'' No, you don't need that. You need that time you spend working overtime to save for that giant house to be spent watching your kids recital. And make them share a smaller space.

If you made the interior height higher, the roof would be even taller. And uglier. The lower plate height is what determines the living space height. It has zero to do with the roof. There's your interior height. It has zero to do with the roof height. The roof height has to with the width it has to span, and the pitch. The wider it has to span, the taller it will be. The higher the pitch, the taller it will be. Those things are why a big wide and deep house starts lice with a big ugly tall fat roof. Add in a tall pitch, and you get the horrid eyesore that is a 30’ high roof on a single story home. It has nothing to do with the interior living space. Theres’s room for more than twice as much living space in a house like that if it were stick framed and had a second and third floor. Which it could. It’s a ridiculously bad design. https://mcmansionhell.com/101