Still working on the mortgage refinancing process. Earlier this week, I emailed in 54 pages of signed documents. That was fun.
Yesterday, the appraiser showed up. I had about 20 hours notice on that, which meant that my house was not in the condition I would want it to be in for someone to come and take pictures. I was so apologetic about the mess. My house is clean, but cluttered as I have a couple of projects going on, so items have been moved from their permanent place to a temporary holding spot. He said that the week before, he had appraised a true hoarder house, so this was nothing. But it was still embarrassing.
One thing that the appraisers are looking for is any sort of real damage to the house, which was incentive to get to patching the bathroom wall. It’s still a work in progress – I’ll probably finish it by the end of the weekend – but at least this way it didn’t look so bad. Was a tiny bit of wall damage going to lower my value? Probably not, especially since I had gotten the roof repaired, so this was really just cosmetic damage. But I wanted it done.
I’m starting to wish I had locked in sooner. I’m getting a good rate – 3.625% (we had a slight scheduling issue and had to do a 45 day lock) – but rates were lower. I don’t know what kept me from going for it.
I’m definitely going to keep my eye on the rates from now on though. For our economy’s sake, I hope they don’t drop significantly, but if they do, I’m taking advantage!
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
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