Lots of stuff

Em has been bugging me for a week or so now to post ..... ;-)

Since the last post we have been keeping busy.

On the bad side, several members of both of our families have had medical issues in the past few weeks. As it stands right now everyone is ok or doing better which is a good thing.

Even Jolie wasn't able to get past the last few weeks without seeing a doctor ....she has had three seperate "minor/treatable" issues since we got her. First was an ear infection (lab + shar pei ears = problem area). Next was a cut on her lip where she bit herself chasing a squirel. Finally, she is currently having some gland issues which we are treating. :-(

As far as the good stuff ....

Em started up at work again and has had some good, unussual and terrible parents to deal with. I have been plugging away at work also; this is the last week of our current project so we are trying to clean up all of the loose ends. In a call this past week with our client, we were informed that a new listing had gone up on their site that we had to check out. This place is CRAZY. If it weren't for the fact that its listed at 5.5 million, I would so think about buying it just to check it out. Who needs drugs if you live in a place like this?

A week or so ago I had to call Charter (or cable company) up to dispute some charges on our bill and while I was on the phone I mentioned a very random ad I saw on the TV a few days prior saying that if new or current customers called up they could get HBO+Cinemax / Showtime + XXX / some other premium channel free until the end of hte year. Well, it worked and now we have HBO and Cinemax free until next August (the ad said until Jan, but the women told me 12 months, so I didn't complain). I would never pay extra for the channels, but for free they are great!

A while back Em finally found Mariokart at a Target while she was picking up some other stuff so she bought it for me. I will post/send my friend code out if anyone who reads this still plays. Its a pretty cool game and I am enjoying working my way through all of the levels. Toad for the win!

Last week was Em's and my 3 year aniversary. Wow, I still can't believe its been that long already. To celebrate we went out to a nice dinner at the Top of the Riverfront. Its a local restaurant downtown at the very top of the Millenium hotel. The main feature is that the restaurant is circular and the whole thing rotates slowly so you get some amazing views. The views were great and the food was good. Plus, they were having a special that week with 24 other restaurants downtown where you could get a 3 course meal at any of them for $25. :-)

Finally, my father in law pointed me to a piece of legislation I had missed in the last few months. It seems that will one of the economic/housing bills passed this year to attempt to shore up the economy, was a provision for a federal "tax-credit" for first time home buyers who purchase their first home between April of this year and sometime in the spring/summer of next year. I still haven't fully researched it, but from what I have read, it isn't so much a tax-credit as an interest free tax-loan. Basically if you purchased your home this year you can get up to 10% of your home's purchase price up to $7500 as a tax credit on your '08 taxes (below the line, meaning straight savings). The catch is that you have to pay this money back. Thats right, no free ride here. Basically, a year after you get the credit you start paying it back in the form of $500 extra on your taxes each year for the next 15 years. If you sell your house before hand, you pay all of it back that year out of your procedes. If you die, its forgiven. So, basically its an interest free loan with really slow pay-back terms. Will this help the economy? I don't know. Will I gladly accept the money and use it to either A) make the final push past 20% on the house so that I don't pay PMI any more or B) buy a TV and laptop. I haven't decided but either way it should be good. :-)

Bye Bye Money, moving, and a new-new mower

Its been a busy few days with the new house. We closed last Thursday and have spent good parts of each day over at the house cleaning/fixing/gardening/packing/unpacking/etc. Em has been a huge help in moving tons of the smaller stuff over there the past few days and will be there most of the week as delivery people start bringing stuff.

Empty dining room from the living room and kitchen minus fridge


Living room facing backyard and backyard from kitchen


Our out front living room windows

Some of the highlights of the last few days and of the next few are below:

• We are hoping to have almost all of our smaller items (things that will fit in a car) moved before this weekend.
• We bought our washer and dryer last week from Lowes. We decided on the pair we really liked despite the fact that the dryer was too big for the doorway. Saturday Em's dad and I knocked out one side of the frame to make room. Easier than expected.
• We bought a refrigerator from a local retailer also last week. We were on the fence between and expensive one and a more expensive one (we got it for a good deal under list price luckily) ... and decided to go all the way b/c it something that should last 10+ years and while the amount more wasn't nothing, given the nicer features it was worth it.
  
• Note: when purchasing ANY appliances or things that are bigger than you can carry in your arms ... verify that it will fit where you want it before you buy ... and verify that it will fit through every room/door way between your front porch and where you want it before you buy (we realized that our fridge will only fit INTO the kitchen without the doors, which they said wouldn't be a problem for the delivery people) .... also, if your spending 1k+ at a store, you should be able to get free delivery if you push them for it.
• We bought our furniture last week too (yeah, it was a helluva week for the our wallets). We got a really nice looking bedroom set and couch+love seat from Ashley furniture. They had the living room stuff in stock, but had to order the bedroom set so we won't get either for ~3 weeks. We wanted it earlier, but were willing to wait.
• We are contemplating re-sealing our hardwood since right now is the best time we will ever have to do it before we move everything in and eventually get a dog ... still not decided though.
• Its still amazing how much stuff you have and even more amazing that it could all fit into a rental truck (or our new living room) if so motivated.
  
• I rented a truck this past week for Sunday from BudgetTruck.com. While I was checking out I noticed their promo code box and figured I would try for one last time one of the random web catalogs for those kinds of things. Well, for the first time I found one that worked and RetailMeNot.com came through with a 20% discount!
  
• Its also amazing how big a house feels without anything in it and how much you need to buy to feel like its full
• We dropped a few bills at Home Depot this weekend getting stuff for the yard/outside/house. Some of the highlights were caulk which Em used in the bath to seal a tile, an electric trimmer, hoses, rakes, hardware, a couple tools, and a mower.
• Em has spent a good deal of time cleaning up the landscaping and has made some excellent progress.
  
• The mower. Initially I was contemplating a cordless electric mower and joking that it would be funny to try a manual push mower .... I ended up purchasing a self-propelled gas mower. :-) I went this route b/c there was a deal at Home Depot for a really nice one which should serve me well for many years and with the hill in our front I didn't want to push a heavier (b/c of the batteries) electric mower up it ..... but wait theres more.
• The mower is a Toro with a Briggs and Straton engine. Setup consisted of unfolding the handle, clicking it into place, adding the included oil, and filling the gas tank. Simple. The thing started on the first pull and ran really smooth .... HOWEVER the handle bar that initiates the self propelled feature was installed wrong and I can't get it to go. I can push it ... but I didn't pay the amount I did to have to push anything. So I call around: Toro customer service says to bring it into a service center to be fixed under warranty. Home depot says to bring it back to get a new mower (I opted for this). Today I convince my father in law to bring his van by, we load it up and take it to the store (not far), bring it in and the guy at the return desk says this:
  
  "Sure we can exchange that .... oh, does it have gas in it?"
  To which I say, "Yes, of course, I just filled it up".
  "Oh, well I can't take it back if it has gas in it. You have to take it somewhere else and drain it or run it dry before you can return it"
  
  A bit or arguing, talking to a manager, and watching the father in law make a guy look stupid later ... I had to go buy another gas can and go in the parking lot to drain the mower. Its not like a gas can costs a lot .. but when you buy something that expensive and heavy/awkward and it turns out to have a manufacturing defect ... the last thing you want to be told is that you have to drop another $4 just to return the damn thing. 10 minutes later I had a new mower.
  
  First let me say that while I understand the policy (fire hazard), it still doesn't make it right from a customer's perspective. What is the first thing you do with a mower ... fill it up! I understand you don't want to be responsible for random customer's gas coming into your store ... but you sell gasoline engines for pete sake ... have some policy and/or procedure in place beyond "we can't do it, take it somewhere and bring it back empty".
  
  That being said ... despite my frustration I ended up a fair bit ahead. Before we left to drain the mower Em's dad said in no nice terms that the manager should go get us a new mower while we did it so that we could leave as soon as we were done. When we got back a new mower was on a cart waiting for us .... and it was the next model higher than the one I had purchased. I noticed right away b/c they have big numbers on them so that you can find them on the floor away from the display models ... but figured either A) the manager had done it on purpose to compensate us for the hassle or B) I wanted it for compensation for my hassle and the guy had grabed the wrong one. I decided to not say anything figuring that the guy ringing up the return would probably catch it and have to get another one or that I would find out he meant to do it. Well there was no mention of why I was getting a #12 and not a #11 but I kept my mouth shut and now am the proud owner of a 6.75 HP mower (instead of 6.5) with self pacing features (you gently push the mower forward and the handle adjusts the speed automatically so that it matches your speed without you doing any work ... instead of a manual lever) and it has an automatic primer instead of a manual one. So all in all I am happy, questing my morals, but happy :-) original .... new hotness
  

Thats about it. Friday I have all day meetings at work at Windows On Washington (the other portion of the same place that we had our wedding reception) and then on Saturday we have our company picnic. Sunday is the big move with the rented truck and should be our first night in our new home! :-D

I thought I had lots that I wanted/needed/should do before. Well, my new To Do list puts the old one to shame.

Grab Bag and Insurance

Lots of little things have been going on lately

• I won my companies Cardinals tickets again (almost missed out b/c I thought they were for the following week) and went with Em and my parents. It was good time even if they lost.
• Our car is back to normal (and has been since the repairs). No lasting ill effects I am happy to report
• Work has been all over the place: hard at work developing one week, a week of documentation and writing installers for our code, and this week has been waiting on the client and helping out another group while we wait.
• I have been able to muster a small amount of time for some personal tech projects lately (some notes about them and work on my tech blog here)
• Last weekend Em, myself and several members of Em's family partisipated in charity walk at a local park for brain cancer research (a relative of Em's died from it) which was a good time and a great cause.
• I got 3 or 4 recruiters messaging me on LinkedIn in the past two weeks including one from someone who works for LinkedIn about a new team they are starting. Its always good to know you could get a new job if you needed to (and its even better to know you love your current one :-) )
  

I am sure there are other things I am forgetting.

Other than that the only big thing to report is that I have been looking into homeowner's insurance which I will probably be deciding upon tomorrow. Luckily it looks like the company we have our auto insurance through has some decent deals so that will work out well. Its amazing how complex the stuff is, how many options you have, and how its just one more thing to pay for when getting a house :-p

Once I decide I will post some details of what we got, or at least why I got/didn't get things.

Fun stuff!

All over the place

I am tired!

Partially b/c while my generic Zertec has been working well, its not fool proof.
Partially b/c its been a busy couple weeks.

Up until today it was all good stuff.

A couple weekends ago we went to Louisville for Nate's wedding. Its always great seeing the gang and hanging out, plus weddings are tons of fun (especially when your not worrying about anything). Surprisingly, I didn't take too many photos (I haven't been taking many lately anywhere) but here are a few of my favorites:

Captions and a few more pics after the jump...

Last Saturday Em had a very busy day involving detention (administering, not sentenced), going out with some of her Truman friends to Bailey's Chocolate Bar (she said it was amazing) and found time in between to play beautifully at church.

Well, church is an understatement. My aunt is a nun and a member of the School Sister's of Notre Dame. This past weekend was a large mass and celebration of their 175th year of existence as an order, and their 150th year in the St. Louis area. 150 years ago a small group came from Germany and started teaching in downtown St. Louis at the then St. John's church. Today, the Shrine of St. Joseph is a huge and remarkably restored church. Last weekend several members of the family and I took in mass with a whole gaggle (I am not sure what the term for a group of nuns is ;-) ) of nuns at St. Josephs where Emily played with the orchestra and decently sized choir and heard mass from Arch Bishop Raymond Burke. It was very interesting and inspiring sitting through mass with that many people who all REALLY believe and love their calling.

To round out the good stuff, Em finally had her official interview for the counseling position she is currently working in (she filled in for a woman on maternity leave this year) and from all accounts it went very well. I am confident and she is nervous. I bet I win out ;-)

Oh and we won our softball game!

Now for the bad ......

It took me 4 hours to get to work this morning b/c of car trouble. Actually, it wasn't really car trouble so much as it acted a little funny as I was leaving for work and the check engine light came on. I took it to Auto Zone but they couldn't read the diagnostic code so I drove out to the nearest dealership and waited 2 hours (1 before they could see it, 1 to diagnose) to ultimately find out that my fuel pump had a bad seal and that they would be ordering me a new one an fixing under warranty (thank God). So then after waiting for Enterprise to pick me up (yay free rental), waiting for my car and then driving clear across town to get to work, I finally got there 4 hours later. So for the time being I have a Mazda 6 and need to call in the morning to find out when my Sonata will be fixed (first problem of any kind).

Also today we got a letter stating that the funds from a check we deposited in JANUARY has in a round-about way, been un-deposited b/c of a banking error. From the little we could gather its b/c of a probably typo either when the check was issued or when it was processed but in either case we are left with a annoying mess to straighten out without anyone easily to blame, 4 months of interest in limbo and an account missing a decent chunk of $$$ that was there yesterday .... and through no fault of our own. Good thing is is that it won't effect us in any immediate financial way (it came out of our emergency fund) and won't effect the house buying, but its still a huge hassle.

Oh and it has rained a ton the last two days and I have tons of work to do. Interesting and fun work, but still work. Bring on the weekend!

What are YOU doing with your stimulus check?

I still haven't decided. And since I haven't gotten mine yet, I am not committing the money to anything until its been cashed. But its still a good question. What are you going to do with a free $600 - $1200+ check?

From what I have read, the checks are not to be taxed income and will not effect next year's tax returns (if anyone can cite something that says otherwise, please let me know). That being said, assuming the money is free as in beer and freedom ... then I still don't know what I am going to do with it. From what I understand Em and I will be getting $1200 (married filing jointly) but we shall see.

My initial thought was to use it to buy some of the stuff we were going to buy anyway for the house ... but in the end that just means I stuck it into our saving account which doesn't seem very fun ;-)

Today when I had a few free minutes I came up with the following list, aprox. in increasing order of "fun" (which happens to be the inverse of the "responsible" things to do):

• Add to emergency fund
  
• Mortgage - hurray for saving interest and money for whenever we sell the house
• Em's last school loan
• Car loan - thats 4 months of of payments!
• Retirement - I took a small hit switching companies before all my money was vested, the new pay was worth it but most of that is going toward house improvements at the moment
• Upgrading some of the purchases we are going to make for the house irregardless (e.g. buying really nice washer/dryer or refrigerator instead of just nice)
• Extra misc house stuff we would like but aren't planning on buying
• Vacation fund - Em and I want to go on a big trip next year .... maybe
• LCD TV for downstairs (e.g. something like THIS)
  

Yep, the TV is sounding nice.

However, after making that list, I turned the piece of paper over and wrote down everything we want/need to buy in the next couple months related to moving into the house. Some of that list included.

• Bedroom furniture
• Living room furniture
• Yard stuff (rakes, shovels, mower, hoses, trimmer, patio furniture, etc)
• New exterior door
• Mattress, linens and towels for guest bedroom
• kitchen island thingy
• bookshelves for the office
• refrigerator
  
• washer/dryer
• window treatments
• paint
• cleaning supplies
• Ethernet cable and wall adapters (I want to run it throughout the house)

So, since that list is bigger and much more immediate I think we are just going to sock it away to use on some of those thing and the tons more that come with home ownership, moving and suddenly living in a space 3x bigger than you were a week ago.

So ... what are YOU doing with your rebate?

All sorts of things

The past week or so I feel like I have been going a mile-a-minute. Some of the highlights have been ...

The other night I went to another different Java User Group (link to my thoughts on my other blog) meeting and hearing a very interesting talk on Domain Specific Languages. I also posted some info about my first project with Python.

Em and I attended out first Fish Fry of the season at Sacred Hear Church and were very pleased with the experience.

Em and I went by a Lowes the other night and began trying to get a very rough idea how much various home improvement projects might cost (hardwood floors, new doors, appliances, etc) and get a good idea of some of the things we will need to buy when we buy a home (e.g. a mower). Its amazing how fast this stuff adds up. I am trying to put together a list of probably early home expenses and rough estimates and will post the link when I have a bit more data.

Also on the home front the other weekend Em and I looked a few more houses and have gotten to the point where we have a pretty good idea of what we want and what we can get in a number of areas around town. Or next step is to talk to a few banks and try and get some financing information together. I am also putting together a big list of questions/thoughts I have been having. I will hopefully keep it up-to-date with the answers I find .... which might be helpful to other people if they are thinking of staring their own search.

I started, stopped, tried to continue, and got fairly confused about our taxes. Having worked in multiple states, in several locals, and having some strange investment data has me confused. I am hoping to work through it this week so that I can submit it early. My guess is that we will have to do the long form and not e-File, so I want to try and get it in as early as I can.

Yesterday Em and I went on an adventure up North of town to try and see some of the bald eagles who summer along the Mississippi River near Alton, IL. We saw around 6 eagles at various random spots along the river and Em saw another swooping down to get a fish. We were pretty lucky on our first time out together since we didn't have any particular places to look in mind and went looking in the middle of the day.

On our way back we dined at a cool local restaurant in Grafton, IL ... The Fin Inn. We both had some good fish dishes, but the selling point of the restaurant was the fact that they have some HUGE AQUARIUMS next to the tables and you have very large native fish watching you as you eat. This might not be for everyone, but we enjoyed ourselves. After we left it was dark and I got a couple good shots of the very unique bridge near Alton that goes over the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi River while looking for eagles


The Clark Bridge at Night

Finally, today we ate brunch at the Adam's Mark downtown to celebrate my Mom's birthday which is next week and tonight I made some great Beef Short Ribs that were amazing. Falling of the bone and fork tender. Mmmmm.

Thats all for now ... I need another nap. :)

(Oh, one other thing. I updated my New Year's Resolutions post. I am doing well in some areas, not so great in others ... but I am fairly happy so far)

A stimulated economy is a happy economy

If you haven't heard, Bush spoke to the nation (yes to all of us, even if we weren't listening) today about the need for immediate and temporary government action to help ward off the possibility or effects of a recession. Such action would come in the form of some sort of economic stimulation package (sounds dirty).

I don't want to get into a political debate on if/why/how of the plan that was talked about today without any details being given ..... I would like to instead draw your attention to the last paragraph of text taken from a CNNMoney.com article describing possible ways the package might be implemented, in what form and when ....

A payroll tax rebate would not affect your Social Security benefits or the long-term solvency of the entitlement program, Furman said, because it would really serve as a tax credit. In other words, money from your paycheck would still be taken out and put towards Social Security, but the federal government would send you a check that would serve as an advance on a refundable tax credit on your tax return.

I understand that this is taken out of context and I am not an economic or government jargon expert, but even WITH the context, I am not sure that last sentence can make ANY grammatical, logical or make-believe sense. I didn't know that "In other words" was a license to just pick random ones and put a period at the end.

"money from your pay check" ... "taken out and put towards SS" ... "send me a check" ... "as an advance" ... "on a refundable tax credit" ... "on your tax return"

... so they are going to take my money, then send it back to me, (so that I can spend it), and then maybe owe less on my taxes later? It sounds like they are loaning me my money back to me ... or maybe I am just confused.

Sooo Full

Tons of time with the family +
Thanksgiving +
second Thanksgiving +
leftovers +
lunch at the new Original Pancake house in town +
Em's grandparent's anniversary dinner =
lots of food.

Granted, there are worse things in life than having too much food ;-)

I was able to cross a number of my to-do list items off this week: adding window insulation things, errands, Christmas and birthday shopping, looking at a few more houses, etc.

On my uncle's suggestion, I went to an local IBD user group meeting which was very interesting even if it was way over my head. Its funny .... go sit in a room of people who track the stock market everyday, probable work(ed) in a field related to it, are heavily invested themselves and you find that despite all of there ideas, they still have no idea what the next big thing will be or can keep from losing some money. Granted, they seem to do much better than the average Joe, but not as much as you might think. Its also crazy to think about how despite how much faster a computer can track and analyze pieces of information, they still can't outdo there human counterparts by much when it comes to picking stocks.

Other than doing family stuff and errands I found out some very interesting news. You may remember that a while back I took the SCEA exam offered by Sun b/c they were beta testing a new test and it was free. I knew at the time that I would fail b/c I hadn't studdied and while the material was not very tricky, it involved knowing how and where all of the Sun sanctioned Java technologies fit together. Well, as it turns out, I passed! Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. To make a long story short (which will hopefully be the prompt for a longer discussion of technical certifications on my other blog) I now have the privelage of trying to pass the second and third parts of the certification. Without going into too much detail, the second part is a architecture assignment while the third is an essay regarding your design choices in part 2. Wish me luck! So far, I have even less hope for part deux. :-/

This week I have a ton of work to do while my boss is around trying to get things tied up before the holidays really hit and everyone is gone for weeks at a time. I am also waiting for a shipment from Amazon.com. I while back I asked for suggestions on how to use a $25 gift card I had received. Well, in the end I threw caution to the wind and purchased something on none of my lists. I ordered an immersion blender which I saw had been given high praises on America's Test Kitchen. Some of the other choices were more practical, but I love creamy soups and going back and forth between the pot and the blender is a pain. Not much other than that besides gearing up to watch more Mizzou football next weekend. Last night's game was great (I don't pretend to be anything more than a bandwagon jumper, but hey, its fun to watch teams with a hometown feel do well).

Customer Service

Its been a great 24 hours for customer service.

Last night we went out for dinner with my parents and some other parts of my family to a great restaurant here in town to celebrate my Dad's birthday and had an exceptional meal, time and service. The Piccolo Fritto had some type of pumpkin in it as one of the vegtables which was amazing. I had a bite of my dad's terrine which was pretty good, Em loved her goat cheese and beet salad. She had the gnocchi which melted in your mouth, and I had the amazing New Zealand rack of lamb. mmmm mmm good. Em had a great mini chocolate cake for desert and I had Affogato (espresso over ice cream). Soooo good.

Today I called USAA (hands down the best phone customer service of any company I have ever dealt with) and was able to close my old checking account, transfer funds, and find out some other info in just a couple minutes. Example of above average service ... the first guy who answered couldn't cancel my account and let me know I would have to talk to someone else. Instead of transfering me, or giving me some other number or whatever, he put me on hold for about 30 seconds, got someone else on the line who could do what I needed, explained the whole situation and then asked me if I had any other questions for him and let the girl take it form there.

Finally, I called Charter Communications (cable) to cancel our digital service. Currently we have digital + showtime (freebie for 3 months) for ~$50. We don't watch too much cable and would rather do other things than sit in front of the TV all night so I wanted to cancel. Well the lady I got wanted to try and keep me as a customer and offered me several deals. I wasn't trying to get a better deal, just cancel it after our current bill was up, but she was determined and very nice about it so I let her talk for a couple minutes. In the end I got december free via a credit and if I don't cancel I get the digital - showtime for $39.99 garaunteed for 12 months. Not bad for a 10 minute call.

Now its time to run errands. Tonight is a coworker's son's birthday party. Gotta go get a toy!

$25 Amazon Gift Certificate

I have narrowed my list of possible uses for my $25 Amazon gift certificate to those found on my Amazon wish list (found here).

Anyone have any suggestions/thoughts on what I should get?

If your interested, I will try and setup a poll on the side bar so you can suggest what I should get. You will have to use the wish list link, however, to see the items.

[EDIT] The poll has been added. Stupid thing allows you to click a link and add more entries, but if you add any more than one, it only saves the first "new" one. It took me several tries to get them all to show up.

Also, a couple of them are much cheaper than $25 and are meant to pad any that are under $25 so that I can get free shipping and use the whole gift card.

When your blog ... (Finances)

... no longer shows up in your history ... you need to post. In an attempt to NOT have just one really long "month+ recap" post, I am going to do individual posts for various topics and whats been going on in my life. That way, no post seems too big to do and I will actually post them. Pictures to follow.

Finances

Em and I are trying to decide how best to use our new found income. Various plans/ideas we have been tossing around including paying off a good chunk of her student loans, socking the money away to go toward a house next spring/summer, investing it, or blowing it all on an amazing trip to either Alaska or Hawaii. ;-) Unfortunately, paying off debt and saving for the house are the most likely candidates.

The trip is a real idea, for next year or the following one at least. I have mentioned before that we starting initial planning of a trip to Glacier National Park and Yellowstone but we will probably put that on hold until the following summer so that we can focus on getting the house and won't have to worry about reservations, dates, cash, etc.

I am also begining work on trying to hammer out some more concrete numbers for a house budget. Our goal is to figure out our best guess at how much the house could cost us and to start working toward saving that extra money each month starting now. Its a lofty goal, I will admit, but it will make things so much easier when we don't have to change any of our spending habits later ... just cancel the automatic savings and write out a check instead.

Along with the budgeting, I am trying to consolidate some of our money into fewer accounts and make sure its not wasting away in low yield accounts when we dont' need it. I had put together a spreadsheet of online savings accounts & CD rates but that was about 2 weeks prior to the interest rate drop by The Fed and soon after everything changed. If/when I start shopping around again, I will post what I find.

Finally, over the past month or so I had a lovely run in with our Health Insurance provider and some rather imcompetent sales people. To try and make a very long story short, over a month ago Em had an eye exam performed and got a pair of new glasses. Over the ensuing weeks I had to battle with the eyecare people to get them to understand the coverage that our Health Insurance people quoted me every time I called, to charge us the rates that they told Em when she was there, to NOT charge us for stuff Em didn't ask for, to teach them how taxes worked, and to convince them that I was NOT going to pay for things they had already submitted claims for and had been paid for. It was a big hassel but after numerous phone calls and me sitting in front of the guy for 45 minutes telling him I wasn't leaving until it was resolved ..... it got straitened out. Stupid Clarkson Eyecare.

House Hunt Part 2 - What I have Done, What I want to Do

Thanks for the comment Kooz. It perfectly transitions me into my next post: What I have done so far, and what I want to do in the near future...

Things I have done so far...

First, after a gracious offer form a relative, we got a copy of our FULL credit report and scores. Last year when we were shopping for a new car we did the AnnualCreditReport.com thing and received our report and scores. This "soft" pull was not very detailed but helped us ensure that there weren't any glaring problems on our report and an idea of where we stood. The good old Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 allows all Americans the ability to request this information once every 12 months for free. This is extremely helpful when researching any large purchase or credit application.

The report we received recently was a full "hard" pull. From what I can gather, "soft" pulls will not effect your credit score in any way and only pull the basic information. The "hard" pulls can effect your score if there are too many in a certain period of time (depends on each credit bureau's formulas). It is truly amazing how much information they have about you. Every piece of credit you have ever had, what your monthly payment are and have been, how many inquires have been made on your credit in the last few months, your exact balances, any late payments you have made or other interesting notes...... it goes on and on.

Luckily for us, and because of our anal paying of bills on time and not over extending ourselves, our credit report was squeaky clean. The only negative remarks on it (its nice, each bureau gives there scores as well as some reasons why they have been lowered from perfect) related to the length of our established credit history, the number of accounts it showed us as having with balances and the number of inquires we had recently.

None of these were really bad, but they were the only things cited as having lowered our scores. The credit history thing, we can't do anything about except let time pass. We don't really have that many balances, but Em's student loans are broken out into various accounts and our names are on some old accounts with our family (which is good b/c it greatly increased our credit history since they dated back a number of years). Finally, since we had moved and every utility and service runs a quick credit check to make sure you will pay your bills .... ours was slightly lower b/c of that (electric, apt. complex, home phone service ....)

As I said, overall they were great (the average credit score being around 770). Its good to know that everything is correct, up to date and looking good for when we apply for a loan.

The other thing I have done is to finally start tracking and looking at our spending and finances. Quicken to the rescue! After ~2 years of threatening to do it, I finally sunk my teeth into it just before the beginning of August and I have to say, I am loving it. Each weekend I spend about 20 minutes entering in transaction from the past week, making sure all of our accounts are up to date, etc. It gives me a good feeling having a much better idea of where our money is, where it is coming from, how fast its leaving and what kind of return we are getting on our investments. I will probably post more on this subject and related ones when I start my personal finance posts, but for now ... Quicken is a good thing. Its going to give us much better concrete numbers as to how much our expenses are and what percentage of that is needs/wants.

Next steps...

• Start putting together all of the information I have read and can find out about the various mortgage options out there, what the trade-offs of each are (pay more now or later, more tax deductions or not, less money down or higher payments....). I would like to have a good idea of this before I start talking to lenders so that for each one I can circle the ones they offer, and after plugging in there rates, be able to see the short term and long term impact of each.
• Research what programs are available in our area to help first time home buyers
• Keep looking around at homes in various areas to get a good sense of what $$ will buy you what in what part of town, what our theoretical price range can get us, and what kinds of features can alter the price of a home.
• Look into what lenders are our best bets when it comes to mortgages and try to better understand the buyer/seller/Realtor(s) relationships and services

My thought is to post an article about each of these as I get through them or at least find out some real information. I have many more things on my ToDo list, but those are the ones I want to work on in the immediate future. If anyone has any suggestions, would like more information, or thinks my thoughts are crap .... please let me know. ;)

Little Things and Questions

Nothing too interesting lately.

"Rented" V for Vendetta from the library the other night. I thought the movie was just ok. It had what I can only describe as about 3 different decent movie plots in a single movie without a whole lot of closure. I guess I just never really felt convinced in any of the character's emotions; I never found myself really rooting for or against them. Not bad, just not great. I would have to put Jarhead into that same category. Another library rental, gotta love free. It was ok, but didn't give a whole lot beyond the "here is an alternate view of what war is really like" like other movies have done. Better emotional acting though.

Last week Emily took the Sonata in to a body shop to be looked at. At some point a month or two ago, someone decided that our car wasn't quite complete and that a small scratch on a lower door panel was just the ticket to finish it off. Well, according to the first place we took it, that little scratch requires $100 in stuff and $400 in labor to fix (take apart door and refinish whole panel?). Which sucks. I need to have it looked at by a few other places before I am ready to fork over that kind of cash to get a 3-4 inch scratch fixed. I DO want it fixed b/c its pretty deep and I would prefer to spend money now than have to replace a door or get a ton of rust replaced later when the paint starts falling off. But $500 bucks!? I was thinking more like 200 and they could just clean up the scratch and fill it in. I don't mind a small color difference or blemish .... I just don't want my dark blue car to have Rust Red racing stripes!

This past weekend Em went down to the lake for a bachelorette party which from all accounts was a great time for everyone involved. I stayed home and had a busy weekend of errands and small projects around the apartment (putting up some of our SnapFish photos, finally finding room for some of the junk in the office, researching safety deposit boxes, a small project that will remain nameless until I have photos and a know it worked ;-) ).

A quick aside about safety deposit boxes. Its something I have wanted to get for quite some time given that we have a large number of documents in our apartment that would be a huge hassle to replace if there was a fire/theft. It turns out they are quite affordable. Our local bank branch, who we have our checking through and who is all of ~300 yards from our apt., has them ranging from about $30-$70 a year with a 3" by 10" by "long" one at about $45. Thats the one I am probably going to go with since it will mean that we won't have to fold any of our documents. Anyone else have any experience with safety deposit boxes or home fire safes? That was the other option I was considering, but this is convienently located, safer from fire and theft than our apartment and allows me to have copies here and the originals there for dual locations in case of an emergency.

...................

This week is shaping up to be a busy one. I have been having a ton of meetings at work while I attempt to get as much knowledge from the other developer before he leaves as well as several meetings with our users about all of the things they want to change with the app before we start '08 programs.

...................

I want to post a ton of house hunting resources I have found and my thoughts/questions on the whole process but this post is already pretty long, and I don't have any of it really put together, so everyone will have to wait for that. Actually, would anyone really be interested in reading about that kind of stuff, or am I just thinking its interesting b/c its interesting to me? I don't know exactly how many people read this, I can get close estimates from StatCounter and feed burner but not fully and most of you probably read it out of curiosity but not really interest. I guess, if you have a minute and don't mind .... if your a reader and might be interested on my thoughts on Em's and my house hunting adventures and/or personal finance stuff I have been reading and thinking about. Leave a comment. Please.