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Thursday, December 02, 2004

Ouch! 

We got our first property tax bill today. Well, technically it was a past due notice. Apparently King County sends off one tax bill in February with payment slips due at the end of April and October. Since we were still mortgage owers back then, the escrow company got the bill and we never saw it. I was half expecting some sort of screw up in this area. But the weird thing is that on one part of the paperwork it said that there would be no penalty charges if it was paid by December 27, on another, it said that there would be a penalty assessed if the envelope was postmarked after October 31st. Go figure. I went ahead and sent off the check. If I get charged, I'll consider it the cost of my homeowner's education.

Paying the bill gave me a somewhat odd feeling. When I've made out the mortgage payment in the past, I've never felt resentful or anything. But with the property taxes--even though it was not that much more than a mortgage payment--I was grumbling. I'm thinking that when I was paying the mortgage, my subconscious was thinking "house" instead of all the different expenses that made up that payment. "House" is a good, warm, fuzzy type thing... except when you need to fix something. But the property tax bill listed all the various taxing agencies: city tax, school tax, county tax, SWM tax. (I was going to protest and point out that I haven't been a single white male for years, but then I saw it stood for Surface Water Management.) Essentially, "governement". "Government" isn't a concept that inspires the warm fuzzies. Oh, well. Guess I better get used to it.