You Gotta Love It

Oh I just LOVE the all intimadating Bank Loan. I just did the math...

We bought my car for right around $14,000 because some teenager ran a stop sign and smashed up my $2,000 Geo Metro a year ago. Shawn REFUSED to allow me to pick out a cheap older car with no warranty so we bought the Mazda.

We've made 9 payments of $260 each. We've paid a whopping total of $2340 on the loan.

We've taken $1,394.54 off the total loan.

$945.46 of our loan payments went to interest.



I smell some fuzzy math goin' on around here!

On a lighter note, the mortgage company raised our house payment by $130 per month.

When we bought the house, we went to a local mortgage company. We spoke to real live people we could see with our own eyes. We could touch them and smell them, if we liked. The company sold our loan to another company somewhere in California, I think.

Can they do that? I suppose so.

Now we deal with electronic voices and elevator music. I can't see elevator music! I can't smell Mr. Electronic Voice!

Do we have an extra $130 a month just lying around?

No.

Well I suppose this spring when the money tree in the back yard is ready for harvest, we might. Ha Ha!!

When you own a home, the city charges you taxes to own it. The state charges you taxes to fix roads. The Wal-Mart charges you taxes on EVERYTHING YOU BUY. The nation charges you taxes so the members of Congress can rightly afford their little jet planes.

Where does it end?

Alright, back to the mortgage company. Once a year, the city supposedly send a little man out to each and every house in the city and he says, "This building is worth more this year than last year. Therefore, we can charge you more for taxes."

This happens EVERY YEAR. Ya know, if we could invite this non-existing man into our home, he would see that our house is actually less value this year and will be less next year because of all the breaking things and little punks running around our neighborhood.

We have a escrow account. We pay the mortgage company X amount of dollars each month, along with our actual house payment to put into this account. That money is is held until our home owner's insurance and taxes are to be paid.

In other words, the company get to collect interest on thousands of these accounts at our expense.

Sounds like a great deal! Ha ha!

A couple months ago, the company says our taxes were more than expected this year. "We need to pay them by april and you now owe $1000. You can pay it all right now, or we'll cover you and you pay a "little" a time with your monthly payment."

Still sounding like a good deal?

Then the mortgage compnay says, "Oh! But we have to cover next year's taxes too! We'll just a tack a 'little' more onto your monthly payment so you'll be paid in full!"

Confused yet? I've been confused since January when we received our first letter. It took several hours of pouring over neatly printed graphs and charts and speaking with dozens of phone operators.

After a while of this all you see is:

1864561864348605648947000187872364897964564

Just numbers.

And me and Shawn simply bending over and saying, "Here! Take it! I don't understand, but obviously you do, so just take our hard-earned money that we don't even have!"

We are currently discussing doing without the whole escrow account and just paying everything ourselves.

Why can't we choose our lender? Why can banks sell your loan to another company? I want a bank that is right down the road with a real live smelly person who will show me how these things work on a real live smelly calculator.

Mortgage Insurance? What's that? I do not know and no one can seem to explain it to me. But you must, you must have it!
Why? I do not know and no one can seem to explain that either.

Sigh...I suppose I'll have to plant another money tree in the back yard. Maybe I'll just a start a whole orchard. But I suppose the government would tax us on the use of soil and defeat the whole purpose.