<prompt> Human: Ive successfully budgeted moves to new places as a renter, but moving to a new house that I own has been an endeavor that has completely blown my budget in a truly epic way. As a cautionary tale for prospective homebuyers, here are my surprise expenses from the last month for my old 1920, but renovated and move in ready house. These are not ALL my expenses, but just the stuff I ended up spending money on that I did not plan for. 1 Small surprises: Plumber to check on some minor leaks Electrician to evaluate some weird outlets Lawn management stuff: lawn mower, weed wacker, round up, rake, shovel Junk removal Structural engineer to evaluate a scary crack on detached garage De-humidifier for basement 2 Stuff I didnt need and didnt budget for, but felt compelled to buy in my new-house excitement: Plants for the garden and landscape Outdoor furniture Some lovely but totally unnecessary pieces from our favorite used furniture store 3 Here is the list of crazy expensive, emergency fund busting expenses currently on the table: New roof insurance underwriters have liked the roof a whole lot less than our home inspector did At least 2K in electrical work due to some, ahem, super fun surprises People getting ready to close on a house: Be smarter than me! Double your moving budget and be ready for the unexpected. edit: Line breaks Edit 2: many have suggested we should have gotten a home inspection--which we did. There are several repairs that came out of that home inspection that we either had the seller cover or budgeted for ourselves. We also have a home warranty. What Ive posted about here are the things I failed to budget for--either because Im an idiot hello... lawn care! or because the issues were surprises.Edit 3: hey! Someone gave me gold! Can I monetize that to offset the cost of a new roof?? But, thats nice! Thanks!Assistant: Why didnt the home inspector catch any of these issues before you bought the house?Human: There was some stuff that turned up only when we were able to get an electrician in--you have to start taking off outlet covers and stuff, which inspectors dontcant do. Maybe in retrospect we would have had a separate electrical inspection, bit my understanding is that is not a common practice. A foundation crack in our garage, which turns out to actually be fine, you can only see if you get in the woods behind our property so I have no problem with him missing that. The roof is a point of contention--we arent happy with his assessment. We would seek legal action if it were possible, because we obviously would have negotiated very differently if we knew the roof needed to be replaced in such a short time frame. Assistant: Did your inspector actually go up on the roof? Ive heard that a lot evaluate the roof from the ground, which seems lazy at best IMO.Human: Ground. His company prohibited getting on the roof, presumably for liability reasons. Interestingly, we have had four roofers give us quotesassess the roof and only one was willing to get on our roof. Not sure if its laziness or just how things are done...  <response>: You have to physically go up to check the roof deck. You cant tell if the plywood is soft from the ground, or with a drone. If your inspector is not doing this, he isnt inspecting your roof, he is just taking a peek at your shingles.If your roofing contractor doesnt go up, be ready for some extra, unforeseen charges that werent on the initial quote. 