Office Monkey

Everybody needs some monkey sometime

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September 2, 2005

Have you ever had an “Oh, Fvck!” moment?

As I wrote earlier today, getting approved for a mortgage has been, to put it simply, a hassle.

I managed to get free access to my Transunion credit report a minute ago. Nothing terribly interesting, everything I knew… except for one thing.

Way down at the bottom, an account I had zeroed out for this “mortgage” and “rescoring” bit had a balance.

*gasp*

I logged into my credit card, and sure enough, it had a FIFTY dollar balance on the account.

Why?

Despite my several thousand dollar payments, I had apparently missed one autodebit. So my ReplayTV billed me at the end of last month for $10. Where did the rest of the balance come from?

Since I didn’t have a zero balance at the end of the billing cycle, they take the average of my account balance over every day and apply the APR. I got billed interest for my paid off balance!

*grumble*

Filled under: Day-to-Day By: Andrew Posted on: September 2, 2005 2 Comments »

Ain’t she sweet!

So I paid for a joint expense, with the agreement that Mandrina would cut me a check thereafter to reimburse me for her share.

She handed it to me this morning while we were driving to work (after which point I had my tire go flat, so I was a bit distracted). I finally got a chance to start doing some of those nasty necessary things, and just got to the check she had written me.

The memo field reads, “FOR: Being cute.”

Love you, too.

Filled under: Woman By: Andrew Posted on: September 2, 2005 No Comments »

Mortgages take time and paperwork…

So my first post on getting a mortgage was on July 22nd. As of today, I should start actually applying for a mortgage.

Yes, that’s right. OVER A MONTH.

It’s not anyone’s fault, nor any incompetence. On the first run through, Charles determined my credit wasn’t good enough (a trip to Romania was a good idea until someone decided the flight should be first class) so I needed to do something about it. Several thousands of dollars later, I started rerunning my credit. I get a statement from my credit card company saying, “Andrew’s credit limit has been raised to ${insert insanely unusually high number here} and his current balance is $0.” I forward said letter to Charles. Charles talks to a company that will act as a go-between — verifying that new information with the credit card company and informing one of those blasted credit bureaus. Some time later, the go-between completes their communication cycle, and tells Charles that my credit score has changed to XYZ.

So we do this once. Then Charles comes back and tells me that one of my scores is too low — BY TWO POINTS. So I have to do the entire routine again.

Between the go-between taking WAY longer than expected, a Florida trip, and laundering money (legally), it’s just taken this long to get to the point where I can actually give Charles paperwork such as W-2s, paystubs, 401k statements, etc., in order to get a mortgage pre-approval started.

So sometime next week I might actually have a mortgage pre-approval so that we can go shopping for a house.

Filled under: Day-to-Day, Living, Real Estate By: Andrew Posted on: September 2, 2005 No Comments »