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For the love of Peter Bailey, the onslaught of paperwork has begun, and we haven’t even applied for a home loan yet! Tina and I attended a home buyers education seminar Saturday. We walked out of there five and a half hours later with literally five pounds of paper in tow. My head was swimming with far too much data for my cerebral cortex to process on a weekend.
It was like being in high school again. Everyone was taking notes. The instructor would hand a stack of forms or handouts to the closest “student” who would take one and pass the stack back. Hell, we even completed a form which required a #2 pencil and filling in little boxes. It was like taking the SATs again.
A couple of times, I thought I’d get in trouble for talking in class, and I found a pimple under my chin last night. Forty years old, and I have a pimple. No prom for me. We even got a certificate of achievement (diploma?) at end of the seminar. How special.
The conference room the seminar was held in was too small for 8 people. There wasn’t much room to spread out. I found myself stacking papers skyward and folding booklets over so I wasn’t encroaching on my neighbor’s desk space. Add cans of pop, coffee cups, paper plates with mini muffins, and an autumn-themed “pumpkin and gourd” centerpiece, and space on the conference table was at a premium. Anyway, guest speakers — an insurance agent risk assessment manager (whatever), and a home inspector — had to shimmy past the attendees’ chairs and the wall because of the lack of space. (On a side note, I had to ask Tina about the centerpiece being called a cornucopia. Such information is not in my vernacular, because I have a penis).
In all, it was a good seminar and we learned quite a bit. Of course, the seminar was a required step in the process of applying for state programs for first-time home buyers.
As I mentioned, we’ve begun the paperwork gathering process. Jebus H. McChrist, man. Pay stubs for the past 30 days, W-2 forms and tax returns for the past two years, bank statements for the past 60 days, investment statements for the past two quarters, plus any other alternate credit sources, like IRAs, 401(k)s, savings, etc. Fuck. I’m so unorganized. It’ll take a miracle for me to gather up all this shit. I guess I should be happy they don’t want a semen sample, blood work, and a genetic fingerprint… yet.
This financial easter egg hunt got me thinking. About eight years ago, I lived on a cash-only basis. I was paid weekly, and I’d cash my paycheck for greenbacks. If I ran out of cash, I didn’t buy shit. I didn’t have credit cards, I didn’t even have a bank account. I owned my 1968 Mustang outright, and paid my bills and rent either by money order or by going to the local utility office and paying with cash. Financially, I probably looked like a mobster or a drug dealer, but it was a good system for me, and kept me out of trouble.
But, hooking up with a woman changes one’s behaviors, goddammit. Now, I hardly use cash at all. My paychecks automatically go to my checking account via direct deposit. I’ve got a debit card, a credit card, and a reserve line. I pay ALL my bills (including rent) electronically; either by automatic payment, Visa debit card, or Bill Pay through my bank. I buy groceries, clothes, lunch, gasoline, bird seed… basically everything, with my debit card or credit card. The last time I registered the Mustang with the State, I paid online, and my tabs arrived in the mail. It’s quite frightening how we don’t really need cash any longer. Our society has fully embraced electronic payments, and that’s a scary prospect. One good computer virus could cause all kinds of fucked upness. Hell, even our government could freeze your finances with a few clicks of a mouse. I just know that somewhere deep in the basement of The Pentagon, there’s a Blue Gene running some profiling program that tracks our spending habits. It knows what I like to eat, the octane of gas I put in my truck, and the brand of toilet paper I use to wipe my ass. Fuckers. Cash is a good thing, too bad it’s so inconvenient and inefficient.
Shit, I’m such an American.
