Carl and Dewana Perry

“We’re a Navy family. One of the things Navy families do is move frequently. When we bought this place, we intended on staying in it at least until we retired and moved back down south to Mississippi, which was always in the cards.

“We worry about the value of course four, five years down the road if the taxes keep increasing. But it’s kind of hard to tear up a nest once you’ve got it feathered. We haven’t looked at moving [before retirement].

“We had kind of been noticing our tax bill going up, but we hadn’t been doing anything solid about it. We didn’t really realize the rate we were being taxed at until they hit us with a $3,000 increase.

“As soon as we got a $9,490 bill, we immediately started looking at our spending habits, our credit line and everything else to make adjustments to meet what the county wants out of us and still get stuff we need. It took a little bit of doing, but I think we’re back in a comfortable spot to pay down the bills.

“We don’t have the house paid off. And we have a [property tax] payment that’s larger than the mortgage and the interest that’s attached to the house that never goes away. Unless they pass some kind of legislation, we’re still going to be paying rent to the state to the tune of $10,000.

“We’re not sure it’s going to stop there. At the rate they’re going right now, within five years we could be paying $12,000 to $13,000. And when that happens the value of the home is going to go down.

“We’re going to have to move when we retire. We couldn’t afford the taxes.”

Carl and Dewana Perry
Zion, Illinois