Free guide · for new homeowners
Free First 30 Days in a New Home Guide
Nobody hands you a manual for a house. You get a folder about the transaction — the loan, the title, the disclosures — and then the door closes behind you and the building is your problem. This is the first month, in the order it actually wants doing: four jobs that improve nothing and make everything afterwards cheaper, the deadlines nobody tells you about, and one worked row of the arithmetic that turns a house into a monthly number.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Starts with the ten minutes that matter most — find the main water shutoff and turn it, because a valve nobody has turned in fifteen years is often a valve that no longer turns.
- Gives you week one as four jobs, each with why it matters and what skipping it costs: the shutoffs, the manufacture date on every smoke alarm, the whole dryer vent run, and the water heater's age.
- Lists the five paperwork windows that close on a new owner inside the first weeks — warranty registration, the homestead exemption, storm-damage filing, a builder warranty, and the address changes that carry statutory deadlines.
- Works the repair-reserve arithmetic on one system in full: replacement cost divided by service life, so a tank water heater turns out to cost about $18 a month to own before anything goes wrong.
- Shows what the one percent rule gets wrong on a real example house, with both numbers side by side.
- Six pages, US Letter, and it arrives already filled in — there is nothing to set up and no blank table waiting for you.
Own it, don't rent it
Want the other eleven months?
This is month one of twelve. The full playbook is 119 pages across four PDFs and adds the other eleven months, the complete 32-system reference with four warning signs each and the annual reserve every one implies, the split between the half of the number you must automate and the half you can flex, a years-remaining ranking that gives you a dated spending order, the seasonal rhythm and why each task exists, forty common jobs pre-sorted into yours or theirs, a contractor's quote taken apart line by line plus the arithmetic that turns the cheapest headline into the most expensive job, the insurance and escrow chapter, a 54-term glossary, and a one-page annual calendar.
A one-time purchase, four PDFs you keep. No login, no signal, no subscription — and they will still open in ten years, when the water heater you wrote a date on this month is finally due.
General guidance for homeowners, not professional, legal, insurance, tax, or contracting advice. The service life and cost figures are typical bands for orientation and arithmetic, not a quote — they move a long way with climate, water chemistry, install quality and local labor rates. Where a job is genuinely dangerous, the full guide says so and tells you not to do it. The example house is invented; the arithmetic is real. American in its assumptions. Free to use; please don't resell or redistribute.