Buying A House Feels Like 25 to Life

We're scheduled to close on our house later this month. Three weeks from Wednesday if my math is correct. After going through the home buying process over the last few weeks I feel like a convicted felon. Make no mistake, we're not going to be mistaken for a Trump, or anything close to it when it comes to silly things such as wealth, stature, hairstyle, or whatever else banks tend to put value on. But we do well enough and are able to enjoy a comfortable life style and work very hard for it.

So, when we went through the pre-qualification process somewhat swiftly I was encouraged. And then we got to initial underwriting and things have gotten a bit obnoxious. I fully understand and appreciate the fiduciary duty owed by mortgage underwriters and the various banking types to their shareholders, etc. But at some point it gets a bit ridiculous. An example would be with the credit report and plastic updating process.

I maintain an iTunes account on a credit card. It's easier this way in that it keeps activity on the account, but also is something that can be paid off each period. During this process we explained this to the underwriter who had told us to "live life as you've been doing". Imagine my surprise when a phone call (and subsequent email) came in asking why the credit bureau was showing a balance on this card. From the tone of it you'd have thought we bought the entire iTunes library or spent at least a few hundred bucks. Nope. The balance she was complaining about was a whopping $3.28. I don't think they sell anything on McDonald's Value Menu for that. And yet here was this lady frantic because I bought a pair of iPhone apps and a song.

By nature I'm somewhat of a private person (please disregard this blog's existence when reading that statement), and maybe it was the pressure of school, work, and other things hitting at once, but I was certainly not pleased she expended this much effort over something so trivial. Perhaps it was a validation exercise she needed to complete. Perhaps it was something else. But it's a good illustration of how we've had to live (at least in a self-imposed mindset) since we made our first offer on the home.

There is something to be said for living in a frugal manner, but when you are hammered over and over again by a third party for trivial things like this (and, yes, there are other examples) you often will find yourself over-analyzing every little expenditure. Maybe it's just because I dislike people looking over my shoulder in my private life, but I feel like this whole process could have been somewhat easier and not nearly as frustrating. Had there been a real problem I could understand it. But we've produced and documented everything required to close within moments of being asked for it. We could close tomorrow if the attorney had a spot. It'll all be over in a few weeks, but in the meantime I feel like Shawshank Mortgage Company could use some time management skills.