Learning The Hard Way

My two sons rented an X-Box game from a local store today.  For some reason beyond comprehension, they decided to pull the X-Box gaming console out from the cubby where we keep it stored, even though they could load the game perfectly well from where it was.  I saw this and advised that they should tuck it back in, to which I got the standard teenager ‘yeah yeah yeah’ with no following action on their part.

Fast forward 30 minutes - The start goofing around, my oldest trips over the X-Box, the rented game gets hopelessly scratched, my boys are out $40 to replace it.

Morale Of The Story

Listen to your momma

when she tells you how to prevent scratching video games.

Now onto another story from today.  A wonderful gentleman is buying a home and I have been helping him explore mortgage options for the last week.  The last time he bought  a home was 10 years ago and the process was very different then than it is now (interpret that as ‘waaaaaaaaay easier’).  When I asked him for the paperwork that I needed for his loan approval today, he got offended by the invasiveness of it and decided to go find a lender who would “give some credit to the fact that he’s paid his bills on time for the last 40 years”.  

Now, I’m not psychic, but I can fast forward 30 days and see the ending of this story.  He will find a lender who is uncomfortable with insisting on the paperwork upfront, so he’ll start working with them while thinking that I was making this harder than it needed to be.  

Three weeks from now, when closing is within days for him, he’ll find out that the other bank needed everything I’d asked for upfront, only now - because the loan originator wasn’t firm enough to get it when he should have - this good gentleman will be scrambling and sweating, trying to get what is needed at the 11th hour and very likely not closing on the intended date.  Even if he can get it all pulled together in that final hour, the whole experience will be chaotic and stressful, ruining what should have really been a very exciting and enjoyable experience.

Morale Of The Story

Listen to your Ruoff home mortgage lender 

when she tells you how to navigate the home financing process.  

I don’t know everything in life, but 

I know mortgage lending very, very well.  

(And I know how not to scratch rented video games.  Just sayin’, sons.)