Fun and Frolic With Long-Term Love

Today has been crazy. So far I've given myself a pedicure, taken my daughter to work and ran errands all over town. I am exhausted already. I haven't had time to even glance at my paperwork desk or pause outside to put away Halloween. I did run downstairs and take care of the baby kittens and mama. Their room is stinking pretty bad, but as of today we are switching from the natural pine litter to the clay clumping, since the babies are old enough not to eat the stuff now. I am going to pull my hair out though, as one of the little buggers - Scrapple - keeps shitting outside of the box, both on the floor and in one of the cat beds. Hopefully he likes the litter change.

Right now I am chilling on the couch and bitching over my budget. PunkRock's car repair is going to be a little over $200, so that is now scheduled for Thursday morning. As I was driving around in my own car though, THOSE brakes are now actually making a grinding noise. I'm like, FUCK. I can't let that go at all. Brakes are serious shit. I'm swearing right now, just thinking about it. PLUS as I was moving things around, I realized that I am already $600 short for everything I want to do in December. And I haven't even put in all the extra little bills that have popped up. FML, seriously. I'll get it worked out, but before that, STRESS.
 
Budgeting done. Thank goodness. I can be happy shit is going to get paid now. :)
 
No sex tonight. I'm too busy having a panic attack over these election results.
 
Watching the markets tank, and my heart is sinking even faster. We didn't take our 401(k) withdrawal before last night. I don't know why we didn't - it was a fleeting thought, but no way would Trump win, ya know? I greatly underestimated how terrible people can be.

So this morning, I was faced with the very real consequence of a potential smackdown on our housing plans. DarkKnight and I had a brief conversation, and together we decided to take the 401(k) loan this morning, so we'll at least have part of our down payment in hand when needed. I didn't wake PunkRock to consult him, because I figured he'd be able to see the math later today and agree with what we decided. It was honestly a no-brainer.

If the balance took a big enough hit, we could potentially not be able to withdrawal enough to afford the house we want. We've actually raised our price point recently, and I didn't want to have to pull it back down.

The only negative right now is that we had arranged that the payment of the 401(k) loan was to be completely offset by the drop in our medical insurance premiums. So we were going to take the withdrawal in January, when that drop happened. So now, for the next few pay periods, we'll have to come up with the payment using other means. Remember that budget I made yesterday? All blown to shit. Ugh.

Still, it's doable. We had to take the loan now - it didn't make sense to risk the value dropping further and not being able to get what we needed out. If the market rebounds quickly, we're only talking about 3-4 pay periods worth of interest and deposits. It wasn't enough of a potential gain to wait.

Of course, the entire housing market could be blown to shit. This has become a terrible time to buy. If we hit a recession - I guess we will at least have our pick of houses. At least DarkKnight has a private sector job - so many friends have husbands who work in government, and their jobs are not as secure now. I get to thinking that being tied to a house now is shitty - if the economy tanks, we're stuck staying in a specific area because we'd own and couldn't relocate.

I can only make the best decision at the time. Right now, it made sense to take the withdrawal immediately. We are going to hold and wait another month to see about getting pre-approved. Jesus, this is a clusterfuck.

And that's just the immediate clusterfuck for us personally. I ache for every single one of my LGBT friends. And for people of color. For immigrants. For women. For my youngest daughter who was so confused last night, her wondering how others could vote for bigotry and hate. This is the first time she's voted in a presidential election and she was really just questioning how anyone could consider Donald Trump a viable choice.

Ugh. I need to focus on something else.
 
Did you end up taking that withdrawal? I think the markets largely recovered by the next morning when the markets opened, so it might not have been all that bad. Not sure how things will go in Jan once he's actually in office though!
 
We did. I am much improved at the moment - I am having a good day and getting much accomplished. We spoke to a loan officer at our bank and he believes we will have next to no trouble securing a pre-approval. We are probably going to go FHA. I have received some advice recently that maybe we should do that now, so once I get the results from my last credit report dispute, we will set that up.
 
So yeah, overall yesterday rocked socks. I ran a lot of errands, and got a lot done.

First up was dropping off PunkRock's car to get the brakes fixed. The $220 price quote ended up being discarded because new rotors were needed, and the shop found that he had picked up yet ANOTHER screw in a rear tire. So it cost us about $350 total. Lame, but at least the car is good to go for now! His car is actually decent, and 100% paid off, without a ton of mileage. It's become quite a money suck for us lately though.

As I mentioned earlier, I did manage to talk to the loan officer at our bank. He was very optimistic about our loan application being approved, and said that just a quick look at our numbers has him feeling confident, and that we could actually qualify for a much larger mortgage. Of course, I absolutely know that, but we absolutely don't want more. lol I told him we were downsizing our housing costs right now, and that's all that matters to me. He listened to everything I had to say, and was really positive and friendly. He said that while we could probably go conventional, since we have the cash for the downpayment, but if we go FHA, we can pay less on the downpayment and have more held back to make repairs and such. We talked a little about a Streamlined 203k, but I don't really want to be locked into a program where I have to justify my choices to someone. lol So just from that brief conversation, I think we may go FHA, since the minimum downpayment is only 3.5%. We would put maybe double that down, and still have a lot of cash to work with. Of course, it all depends on the interest rates. I am 100% wanting a 15 year mortgage, and that has higher interest rates than a 30 year.

So! Hopefully I hear back soon from the last credit report dispute we sent out - that was on Oct 31, and on my others, we'd been getting responses within 2 weeks. I have to look at my schedule, but maybe we can call Monday and set up an official pre-approval meeting next Friday?

Oh, and the house we all liked in the small town near us is back on the market - for $10,000 less than it was listed previously! I am excited to finally go look at it inside.

Yesterday I also spent some time with PunkRock, working on his medical insurance stuff. It's open enrollment for him right now, and making the right choices is SO very important this time through, because he has two surgeries that he has to get next year - he has carpal tunnel in both wrists. So, we not only had to choose the best plan that would cover his surgeries, but also make adjustments to his flexible spending account and checking over his short term disability benefits.

We discovered that the amount he thought he'd be paying out of pocket - $1700 - was incorrect. It was $1700 PER SURGERY. And that was only the doctor fees. We also have to pay for the center rental and for the anesthesiologist. Gah! So we put the max into his flex account, which by federal law is $2550. That definitely won't be enough for the year, but its the best we can do, ya know? His insurance deductible is $1500, and then he's required to pay 30% of the rest. The next bump up in better insurance was a $750 deductible with a 20% payment on the rest, but the cost difference per year per paycheck didn't make sense. There was a lot of math in my life yesterday!

I also had to call again about PunkRock's CPAP machine, as we are still getting crazy bills in the mail. I am still pissed about how this went down - the sales guy told us the machine and parts were 100% covered by insurance as long as PunkRock was compliant with using it. We thought it didn't come up against the deductible. But nope, it did, and PunkRock didn't meet his deductible this year, so that means we have to shell out the $900 out of pocket. We didn't expect this or budget for it, or sock money into his flex account. So we're having to just magically find $900. The thing that is upsetting PunkRock is that he could have just bought the stupid thing on amazon for $400. We won't be doing business with this shady company again, that's for sure.

How we manage to swing everything financially with all this random shit happening always amazes me. But we manage to work it out.

Today I am up early because PunkRock had to be at work by 5 am. I have a field trip with my Astronomy kiddos today in Martinsburg, WV, so I need to be out of here myself a little after noon. A previous student of mine who is going to college for space science stuff is hosting a private event for me in a park. He's going to discuss rocket science - the different type of engines, how they are designed and used, and then shoot off some model rockets. It should be fun, but it is seriously not interesting to me at the moment - I have other things going on, you know?

Tonight our two 12-week old kittens have an adoption event to attend, and I will probably end up volunteering there too. I think it is at PetSmart. Last night PunkRock and I took the little itty bitty babies and their mom to the clinic and they got their first distemper shots. One kitten is big enough to be fixed, but the others are a little too small, so we are going to wait two weeks when their next booster shot is due and see what they weigh then. I think they are on track to be placed before Christmas as I wanted.

I haven't even mentioned DarkKnight in this entry. Um, he is awesome as always. :)
 
Update on my foster cats - My pumpkin spice pair, Reba and Conky, have yet to be adopted. They are getting up there in age - they were born on the 4th of July - and I am getting worried. They both stress out significantly when I take them to adoption events, so they keep getting passed over. Reba slept all day yesterday at the back of her cage, so other active and purring kittens went home, but she's back here with me. I am going to take her to PetSmart again today and hopefully she will stay awake and interact with some families! Meanwhile, Conky is an absolute mess.

On Friday, he would start crying whenever someone removed Reba from the cage and would not be consoled unless she was right next to him, and then he spent the entire time licking her. Yesterday, his anxiousness manifested itself as aggression. As soon as he was put into the cage, he started growling and hissing. No one could get close to even pick him up - he was growling at ME! I ended up taking him home, because he was so extremely stressed. He broke my heart! The minute we came into the house, he started purring, and never stopped.

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He is so freaking SWEET. Now I have to find a new way to market him - I cannot let him go to events anymore. He deserves calm. The Humane Society is going to feature him on their Facebook and website today and tomorrow (I think) and hopefully that will drum up some interest. He deserves a home!
 
Reba got adopted! I am so happy! So now, out of the PeeWee's Playhouse kittens, only Conky is left. This is SUCH a relief for me. And one less can of cat food that we are down each day. Seriously, we're spending $20 a week on just the wet food.

PunkRock and I spent a couple hours cleaning the garage today. We got a lot of equipment and tools in totes and ready for our move. We have a bunch of stuff we *might* sell, depending on the house we end up buying.
 
So, Astronomy class again today. :) This week's lesson is on the moon. It's easy peasy, thank goodness. Since we're watching Apollo 13, and that sucker is 2 hours long, I only have to lecture for an hour. I am exhausted this morning, so I am glad of that. So far this morning I have printed out all of the quizzes I need to grade, so I will be following up with those in a short bit.

Got my period this weekend, so that always leaves me tired and dehydrated. Still had amazing mind-blowing sex with PunkRock - twice yesterday and once the evening prior. I cannot get enough of him. DarkKnight and I, however, can't seem to find the time to fuck. Not that we don't try - it's just that when we are together, he just got home from something and is tired, or I am exhausted, etc. We had both planned on last night, but then my daughter came home with a movie he REALLY wanted to see, and then he was up late and wanting to go right to sleep. It'll happen, I am sure, at some point soon. That said, now that I am on my period, it won't be for a while, since he doesn't like to mess with that. It hasn't affected our snuggle time though - he is still just as physically affectionate. So that's always good. :)

I am still awaiting to hear the results of our last credit report dispute. I don't want to meet up with the loan officer and have him pull DarkKnight's credit until that tradeline is gone. It's making me antsy, because I want to go look at houses on Thursday night, already being pre-approved. The loan officer did already tell me that we have nothing to worry about over the phone, but that isn't the same as having a piece of paper - know what I mean?

There are still so many things that can go wrong - it makes me anxious just thinking about it! That said, I am calm in that I know if these things go wrong, there's nothing I could have done to change the outcome. We'll just rent for another year. Oh, I so desperately don't want to do that though. Moving is such a pain in the ass! But, I haven't bought a house in over a decade. It isn't something I do frequently!

We do have an appointment set with our realtor to look at 3-4 houses on Thursday night. DarkKnight, PunkRock and I went and looked at a couple from the outside, and were able to cancel out one house just by driving by. Even though I want a fixer upper, I do have some standards!

The max I want to pay right now is $130,000, which is tight for our area. We head west just a little and houses are nicer in that range. We could double that cap easily, according to the loan officer, but I don't want to. We could probably even go higher than that, but nope. Our goal is to not be mortgaged forever and not have all of our income being spent on overhead. :)

Anyway, the one house we all like in a nearby little town is back on the market for $10,000 less and it's well under our budget. This is the place where PunkRock and I ran into an old owner and he gave us the scoop on the location when we talked with him. The pictures of the inside aren't taken very well, but we are anxious to see the place. We really like the location, and the fact that we could use part of it as a storefront for a cat cafe - it has been given a commercial variance for years since it is on the main drag.

There's another house in a different small town, which is about as far south in Maryland you can go along 81, until you are in West Virginia! That house is freaking huge, cheap, and has gorgeous hardwood floors in the photos. It was built in 1787 or something. Anyway, that one we haven't visited to go look out on the outside yet, but I might sneak over there today. :) I don't like to get hyped up until I've actually walked around a house outside.
 
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Ah, well, shit. Um, got two surprises in the mail today.

Number one was a response to my credit report dispute. Rather than the "it's deleted" letter I was expecting, it's just a simple generic letter saying that they investigate stuff. So I am kind of aggravated that they are wasting my time with this garbage. It has only been 2 weeks, and they get 30 days to investigate by law, but it seems kinda mean for them to send me a letter that doesn't do shit for me. lol I flipped back through my folder of stuff, and it seems that the other time I received this letter, it was on the same day I got a deletion letter. So, I am hoping that tomorrow I will receive the deletion notification. Though, I can't really feel optimistic about that, as this was dated on the 9th. If they did delete something that same day, then the myfico.com service that we pay for that is monitoring all 3 reports should have triggered and let me know there was a change. Ugh. Keep your fingers crossed that something happens soon. I was really hoping to get a deletion letter today so we could schedule the official pre-approval meeting with the loan officer. I don't want to go with this tradeline on DarkKnight's report if I can help it. It's in the positive section, and it looks positive at a glance, but it has a negative comment on it. And it shouldn't be on there at all, as it is past the 7 years reporting date. Gah!

The other thing that arrived in the mail today was from the 401(k) loan. I thought it was going to be a letter telling us how many fees were being taken out, etc, and when to expect the check. Instead, it was the check. Holy crap, that was fast! Imma have to take it to the bank tomorrow. I don't like checks that large sitting around my house! It's exciting though. Things are moving forward.

Oh! I guess since I am here updating again today, I should mention that a friend of mine who lives in the town of one of the houses we are interested in (the cat cafe possibility one) actually went through and saw it this weekend. She said she was told she'd have to either pay cash or take out a renovation loan, because it had its furnace stolen, along with the piping, and that it needed a new support beam in the basement. She said it was her opinion that it would need new electrical to get up to code as well, but she wasn't clear as to why she thought that - it had been used as a business front as early as a year or so ago. I would think that everything would have had to be to code then. Anyway, that is sort of a bummer, but to be honest, I was already doubting that it would be a straight FHA loan purchase, as there is a bulge on the side of the house, that looked like it was signalling an issue. My friend said that her brother (who does contracting work) said that it was being caused by needing that new beam in the basement. So, hmmm. We could qualify for a 203k home loan, which is an FHA Renovation loan, but I am not sure I am interested in doing it for this property. I guess we will see. My friend was not seriously interested in buying this house - she was just curious to look, since she lives nearby. :)

I am actually kind of upset at my youngest at the moment. I wanted to drive over and take a look at the other house I wrote about earlier, since none of us have actually LOOKED at it in person yet. However, my daughter borrowed my car at 1 pm to go get her eyebrows done, and she hasn't yet returned. Now it is too dark out for me to be able to see the house, and she's out gallivanting around. We are definitely going to have to lay down the law on this - she's been borrowing my car a ton and though she puts gas in it, sometimes I need it and this can't keep happening. Ugh. Frustrated.
 
The 1787 house sounds cool, just to go see! I always wanted to own a victorian or older house but after years of reading about old houses I have concluded I probably don't want to buy one. Repairs, renovation, hidden problems, can be difficult to insure due to their age and the building methods used....though if I could find one affordable that someone else had finished dealing with all that...i might consider it.

Leetah
 
The house I used to own in western NY was an 1860 farmhouse Victorian. I loved it so much. Not so much the heating bill and drafty windows. Lol It was balloon construction with no insulation in the walls. $600 a month in the winter to keep it at 60 degrees. We froze all the time and would run out of fuel oil halfway through the month. So then we'd be toting kerosene cans for a week until we could get another $600 delivery. Ugh. Yeah, if we buy an old house - that shit won't fly again. That's the first thing I am upgrading!

We didn't have problems insuring it and we had it down for replacement cost because there was no way just in value that we could have ever rebuilt it for what it was mortgaged for! But that wasn't an issue at all, ever.
 
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Today is one of those days where I have a list a mile long yet I don't actually want to get out of bed. I got up at 6:30 am, went downstairs, farted around online and then came up to PunkRock's room at 8:30. I dozed off for a bit and now I'm all like, shit, I could have accomplished half this stuff already but instead, nope. Part of my problem now is that ColePorter - DarkKnight's BFF feral kitten that is now a year old - is all curled up on my leg. And he NEVER snuggles up with me. How am I supposed to kick him off?

Now he's purring, so I definitely have to stay put longer.

Gah!

When I do eventually roll outta bed, I need to spend most of the day cleaning. We are celebrating Thanksgiving next Saturday, so I don't have a ton of time to get my house in shape and decorate for Christmas. The decorating part is easy - I will do that on actual Thanksgiving. We've already decided we are going to order in Chinese, like we did last year. :) So other than board games, that'll be my day to decorate. My oldest daughter will be coming down the next day with her boyfriend, so that is why we are having the big family dinner on the Saturday.

Anyway, my house needs a deep cleaning. Part of this now though, is packing! I need to pack up and move three bookcases before I can even fit a Christmas tree in the living room. One bookcase (full of books) I actually finished up last night, but it is getting moved into the dining room to make space, and first the bookcase full of cookbooks in there needs to be packed. So that is next. That's my short term goal today.

I also have two big hampers of clean clothes to hang up and put away, and I need to color my hair something terrible. The hair is truly number one today, because after that I can shower, get dressed and then take off to go run errands - which includes dropping that big check off and going to sneak a peek at the 1787 house.

After writing all of this, I REALLY need to pee, so I think ColePorter is going to need to relocate. Ok, here goes my day! :)
 
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OMG I went and looked at the 1787 house and I am in LOVE. Course, I haven't seen the inside yet, other than peeking in the windows and a few photos online. Holy shit though ya'll, I am bouncing this afternoon, thinking about living there! It has a COURTYARD in the back, and then a further stretch of grassy yard that is way in the back and super private. It's all overgrown, but it made me want to put on my old clothes and start digging in the dirt again. It made me think of my flower garden at my old house I used to own.

The house itself is on the main drag of the town, but it's a cute town, so it isn't a deterrent. The canal towpath & park is like a block or two at the end of the street - lots of sidewalks and such for DarkKnight. I think when he gets out of work here, I am going to drag him down there super quick to take a look with me. I WANTS it.

The house is definitely old though. The front porch is small and needs to be torn off and a new one put up. There's a HUGE closed-in sunporch on the back, which is just perfect for the cats - it's next to the courtyard and seriously, exactly what we've been talking about for our kitties for over a year now. There's a big brand new piece of machinery on the side of the house - I *think* it's a central air unit, but I am not sure. It's freaking huge though, which would make sense, since the house is over 3,000 square feet.

Looking in the front windows, the living room is GINORMOUS. We probably would use it as the game room - it is seriously huge, and PunkRock could use half of it as his paint studio, easy. There is a den that we would use as the living room. The kitchen is blocked - it butts up to all of the rooms, so it's sort of centrally located, and we can't get a good look at it through the windows. So I have no idea if it needs to be gutted, or if it's livable, or if it is even an eat-in kitchen - no clue. Off the sunporch and kitchen there is this add on room, that I think would do well for DarkKnight's office.

I hope it's not a total shitshow when we get to go in on Thursday. The listing says it has electric heat, so that makes me pause a bit. I mean, yay! no fuel oil, but holy hell, 3,000 square feet with electric heat?! There are visible radiators, so I am not sure about what that means. Maybe they upgraded from those? I dunno. There are two visible closed-off fireplaces.

I am so very excited about this place!
 
I love looking at houses! What fun. :)
 
So, I dragged DarkKnight out to look at the 1787 house last night. :) He liked it too. :) He really was happy to see that there is a coffee shop a block in one direction, and he was glad of the canal towpath as well.

What's really cool is that a neighbor pulled up while we were looking at things, and he gave us some history. He said the courtyard area is a filled in swimming pool! Apparently, there was zero wrong with the pool, just the owner never used it and didn't want to worry about maintenance anymore. Crazy! He said that the house is actually considered a double lot, since it has all the extra yard behind it. No one else's property has that. Also, he said that the house, at one point, used to be owned by the mayor. In its heydey, it was quite the place! Along with the house on the other side of the neighbor's, this house was the first built in town, and it was done so in a grand way.

He did tell us that as far as he knew, the heat pump was new (it definitely looks that way) but there had been a roof leak previously. He said it was significant, but he never saw the damage personally. He didn't know if the damage had been mitigated, just that the leak had been repaired. That was interesting to find out, because online, there are zero pictures of the upstairs, and in the downstairs den, there is a brand new bathtub liner just sitting there. I wonder if repairs were started, but not finished.

If that is the case, then we would have to get a rehab loan for this property too. Actually, I am much more enthusiastic about doing the paperwork for this house, than the one in the other town. I have a call into our loan officer today and I am waiting for a response - I don't know if our bank does 203k loans or not. Apparently the requirements to qualify are the same - if you can get an FHA, you can get an FHA 203k - but the property itself is what drives the paperwork. The property might not qualify.

So, I am waiting to hear back on that, and eagerly wanting it to be Thursday night so we can check out the inside of this house! :)
 
Gah! Just as I posted, I got the call from the loan officer. They do NOT do 203k loans. So, if we want to move forward with any of these houses, we would have to go get pre-approved with someone else. Since we haven't started the process yet with our bank, that isn't a problem. I guess our next step is to go check out these places and see if we want to bother or not. I am going to message the realtor and check if she has someone to recommend for this type of loan.
 
I have a little time so I thought I'd pop back in and give another update. Our realtor had three recommendations. I called the second, and I was promised the broker would get back to me right away, within a few minutes. After an hour, I called the first recommendation. Fuck waiting. Anyway, that broker answered the phone and was full of info. She does lots of 203k rehab loans, and she sent me by email, a few pages of how the process works. So she was incredibly helpful. I am going to contact her back tomorrow and take over our papers - taxes, bank statements, pay stubs, etc.

Basically we will get qualified for an amount, and then when we put an offer on a house that needs rehab, we make the offer contingent on being approved for a total that takes into account the amount paid to buy the house, plus the amount of work that needs done. Then, an appraiser goes through the house and lists everything that needs to be done for the loan to actually fund. THEN, we take that list with our contractor, and he puts a bid in, listing how much it will all cost. If the numbers are good, we then got to underwriting like a regular loan. After we close on the house, the rehab amount goes into an escrow account, and the contractor has 6 months to complete the work, and he can take disbursements as the work progresses, with a sign off by us and the appraiser. At the end, we all sign off that things got done. If there is any money left, it gets paid toward the loan.

So, a lot depends on the contractor. The good news is one of my close friends has a husband that is a licensed contractor, and he always makes time for his wife's friend's work. :) I messaged them tonight, and I was told that he will be happy to help, and he has done 203k loan work before and is familiar with how the process goes.

Now I am excited again! Course, there is lots more that can go wrong with this sort of loan, so it is stressful - or, I am sure it will be more stressful when we get things going!

DarkKnight has read over everything so far, but since PunkRock is at work until 9 pm tonight, he has only the basic outline that I texted to him. When he gets off of work I am actually meeting up with him to drop my car off at the repair shop - I called this morning and got the brakework scheduled for tomorrow. I don't want to fuck around with it. They said they should be able to get it done before we are all meeting with the realtor to look at houses that evening. We need the car back so my daughter can take it to work. We'll be using PunkRock's car to tool around town. :)
 
I have been reading your blog over the past few days. I'm enjoying hearing about your house search. Good Luck, I hope it all goes well.
 
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