Hold Your Horses

Today I talked to a Financial Planner that was referred to me by a coworker, Nancy. This coworker and I, whenever we are around each other, our conversation turns into a 1-hour gab fest. During our gab fest last night before leaving work, I told her about my quest to buy a house, and my confusion about whether we can truly afford it......about whether or not we should sell or refinance our rental property.....and a whole host of other things regarding homebuying.

She was so helpful! She gave me suggestions (e.g. possibly re-fi the rental property and take cash out to use for the downpayment, along with the sell of our condo), as well as helping me look up affordable homes online in her neighborhood.

She also gave me the phone number to her Financial Planner and her accountant.

I called the Financial Planner today: in the business for 37 years.....has known Nancy for 10 years and her mom for 15 years.....sounds genuine and willing to help, even though he normally doesn't do consults like what he was offering for me and Kwasi. So I really appreciate the favor.

He told me that he will give me his opinion, and we're free to accept his opinion or not, and we can just sit and talk for about an hour. I am really looking foward to meeting with him--to just have a professional opinion about our financial health and outlook.

I think that I will need to meet with the accountant, too, to have some numbers run for me. But first we will meet with this Financial Planner next week and get some ideas and thoughts flowing.

He pointed out to me that I do not need to rush into buying a home--he believes it will be quite some time (a few years, maybe??) before prices come back, and that we don't need to feel like we're rushing to buy a house tomorrow. Doing it for the tax advantages is no reason to buy a house, he said. Now, if we're doing it because we want and need the extra space, then that's a whole different conversation (he's right).

I actually really liked being told that I'm allowed to hold my horses on this one. It doesn't mean that we're not going to do it, but it also means that with this kind of decision, it doesn't have to be something we jump into tomorrow.

Dinner Last Night

Last night I met up with Vanda, my agent, and the loan officer that she referred me to, along with his assistant. The loan officer was a squat of a man that looked like he was about to keel over from heart disease. He was very boisterous and fast-talking, especially with his numbers, as he scribbled on his pad all the numbers that would magically make homebuying work for us. At one point, I purposely put such a blank look on my face so that he could read: "You've lost me, pal."

I had thought that he would come with some spreadsheets or somet hard-core numbers for me. Instead, he had his sloppy pad of numbers--pieces of paper that I couldn't even walk away with. What I needed was some actual numbers that I could carry home and ponder over. And I didn't get that.

Last week he told me that when we met, he would give me a website that I could enter sample W-4 Withholding information so I could determine how many extra exemptions I would be allowed to enter based on a home purchase price of "X" dollars. So when I asked for it last night, his assistant had to leaf through his BlackBerry for the address. What about coming prepared, buddy?

And the funniest joke of all was when he referred me and the agent to read a copy of a book, and instead of bringing us an actual copy (which would have been impressive), he gave us a photocopy of the front page of the book. WTF?? That's pretty cheap, if you ask me.

Anyhow, I walked out of there past 9 p.m., wanting to hurry home to my beautiful Kwabena anxiously awaiting Mommy putting him to bed. I didn't feel like I had really learned anything, except for the fact that if we are going to buy a house, it's truly going to have to be something that I decide for myself, NOT something that some loan officer can talk me into with "fuzzy math" (LOL, thanks, George Dub-ya). I also know this fact, but just meeting with the agent and loan officers reinforced the fact that if this is something we want to do, then I am going to have to go out on my own to get the math run......to see if the numbers truly look right, or if I am just having smoke blown up my ass.

Well, more on this saga later!