Friday, November 16, 2007

Victory!

Yesterday we officially paid off our first credit card. We had decided back in the summer, when I first took the new job, that we would wait on buying a house until we had paid down some of our debt. We had done some calculations and discovered that while we could afford a house, we couldn't afford a house AND make headway on debt. We could do one or the other, but not both at once. So, the somewhat responsible people we are, we waited and focused on the debt. Yesterday we mailed the final check to pay off the first card we focused on. It had a decent balance on it, and the interest rate was ludicrous. And now it's gone! Ryan photocopied the check before he mailed it, and we plan to make a "Wall of Shame-turned-Fame," showing our progress. We don't plan to have it all paid off by spring (which is our tentative timeline to buying a home), but we should have made a serious dent by then, which will in turn probably get us a better mortgage. We're also saving a lot each month, so we might have the beginnings of a real down payment.

I find it interesting that the last loan officer we spoke to about mortgages said he thought it was fairly silly to worry about down payments anymore....most folks don't have the traditional 20%, and it doesn't knock that much off your overall monthly payments from a bank perspective. However, when we were seriously looking at one house and even went as far as to get a pre-approval for it, our lack of down payment meant we had to get mortgage insurance. Mortgage insurance adds as much as $200 per month to your payment. To me, that's significant and thoroughly discouraging. And yes, it only lasts as long as it takes you to accrue that 20% equity, but that takes a long time if you're only paying the minimum--and let's really face the irony here. They're essentially making the people WHO CAN'T AFFORD THE DOWN PAYMENT pay more. Does that make sense to anyone? Or am I the only one who finds it a little strange and illogical?

Granted, I understand that the mortgage companies need the reassurance that, should you default on your loan, they won't be socked with hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid mortgage. I understand that concern. However, perhaps the real determining factor should be repayment histories--examining a potential customer's credit score and seeing how well they've managed their obligations. We take great pride in the fact that, even when things were at their very worst financially speaking, we somehow managed--on one income!--to squeak through with only one late payment on our records. Only one! And that was a 30-60 day payment, not a complete non-payment. Just mailed it a little late. I think that should count for more in the scheme of things, because it really was an accomplishment. But who asked me? No one, that's who. *laugh*

NANO
I'm still about a day behind in my NaNoWriMo word count, but it's still the best I've ever done, and really the most fiction I've ever managed to write. I can feel myself hitting the wall a little bit--since I didn't start out with a clear direction for the story, I'm fumbling with what to do next, and how things are going to resolve themselves.

Word count: 23536/50000

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1 Comments:

At 1:23 PM, Blogger Kell said...

Homebuying: difficult. We were so lucky to find our house. I saw the ad, we were the first to look at it (the price was suitably suitable and perfect for us) - We'd looked a millions of houses (seemingly) that wanted more money - and were tiny... so we just waited...

Then, for the down payment, what I did was borrow some of my 401K that will be paid back in full when we get our tax refund next year... So I only borrowed from myself - and I didn't borrow that much... so I'm not paying interest on money I borrowed... so that's how we did it with some success - if that helps.

Congrats on the credit card thing. Good for you -

 

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