The Early Call

The phone ringing awakened me. It was a bill collector. So begins the gigantic mess that is caused because our stupid auto loan lender can't figure out how to take only one car payment instead of two. We're still waiting for our money. The story now is we are supposed to receive a check by overnight mail. I don't believe them. If I have to borrow money to get to Nebraska, so I can personally ring their necks, I'll do it. They will never, ever get an electronic payment from us again. Wells Fargo� handling money for years, but they can't figure out the difference between one payment and two.

Because of them, the dominoes are in motion. One of the few credit cards we still have called me this morning wanting their money. We couldn't pay them, because their money was taken by Wells Fargo. I explained the situation to the woman on the phone, but being the typical pushy bill collector, she wanted a date and an amount we could pay. She also, get this, asked for a check by phone. That's when I let into the poor woman, but I didn't yell. I was just stern when I told her that I didn't know when we'd have the money, because as I said before, another bank took too much and hadn't given it back, even though they said they would several days in a row. I told her we have change in our checking account. We had to take out the last five dollars to buy milk and cereal and bread, but I didn't share that part of it. I did tell her we didn't even have money to buy groceries. I couldn't give her a date; I couldn't give her an amount; and I was certainly not going to be doing any electronic transactions. I did assure her as soon as we got our money back, they would be paid, and by that time, she was more than willing to accept that and get me off the phone. Call me at eight in the morning in the summer, dammit.

I also woke up hot, so that made me crabby before I even opened my eyes. Our air conditioning finally did get fixed last Friday, just in time for a lovely bout of cool weather that didn't require us to turn the thing on. As hot as it was in our bedroom, I feared it broke again, but it turned out to just be me. It's working fine, and my feet are absolutely freezing as I type this, not that I'm complaining.

That's one thing knocked off the list of worries about the house. We're to get a circuit box put in in place of the fuse box we have now. The faucet in the back still needs changed. The seals on the windows still need redone. The back gutter is leaking too. Those are just the things we know about. We still have to get a house inspector to look at the place. Meanwhile, we have a purchase option contract sitting on the desk right now, and it scares me to death.

We've made some big purchases, but this is a house. A house. If there is one thing you don't want to screw up on, it's a house. We made a bad decision on the truck, which is why our payment is so darn high. We've made bad decisions about lots of things, but I don't want a house to be one of them. That's why I'm so nervous about it. Are we getting a good price? Is the house ok? Will everything get done before it's ours?

Originally, we were going to continue leasing until we got enough for a good down payment, but lending rates are so low right now. We punched some numbers into an online mortgage calculator, and our house payment would be $200 less a month than our rent. If we had a payment equal to our rent, we could pay the house off in fifteen years. It only seems wise to buy now, but we worry about our credit being good enough. We qualify for a VA loan, so we could get by without a down payment, but can we get by with being in a credit counseling plan? I suppose we need to speak to a loan officer and stop wondering.

As soon as I saw how low our house payment would be, my mind immediately went to renovation. We could redo the kitchen and bathroom--no more tiny spaces there. We could get an addition. We could finish the basement. I could have a nice deck and patio with a wonderful garden. Our truck is paid off near the end of the year (goodbye Wells Fargo), so that is even more money to get things just the way we want. We can be out of debt, own a home, and pretend we're real adults. I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself though. Still� it's nice to dream.