The day before we closed, Judith, our lawyer, sent me an email with a list of the closing costs and a note to bring “a lot of extra personal checks,” on top of the $40,000 cashier’s check we were giving the seller. The email included a list of all the various closing costs, which we had known about in vague terms (she had warned us we would spend close to an additional $5K all told), but until then we had never seen any hard and fast numbers. It’s crazy that Ken and I agonize over spending $40 on concert tickets, but on that day in July we didn’t think twice about writing a check for $1,700 for our lawyer (the remainder of the $3,000 total fee), $250 for signing fees, and close to $4K in bank fees. Needless to say, when the check-writing was all said and done, the lawyer gave us the keys, and I managed not to swoon on the hot streets of Park Slope, we didn’t exactly feel like toasting our success with Veuve Clicquot. We were gonna stick with the cheap stuff that got us here.