Feeling like a salmon

Posted on 05/02/2010 by RLW3

We looked at a very interesting house after church today…

A 5  bedroom, 3.5 bath house with a view of a lake!

The bank listed it a little over one month ago but has already dropped their asking price  by 12%. We offered 12% below than that.

This house hunt has shown me how easy it is to be sucked into buying more house than one can afford.

I have written several posts making light of the numerous houses that I have looked at thus far. However, why is that? Because it is very difficult to find a house within my proposed budget. It would be VERY easy to pick out a VERY nice house if I was willing to pay 40+% more. After all, we make enough to qualify.

However, I asked my lender to qualify me on just my salary. Why? Because my wife will likely earn no income while she is attending nursing school in 2011-2012. While she is earning no money, I will still have to pay for that house.

And then, I asked him to limit my pre-qualification below that level. Why?

What if something happens to my income? You don’t think it couldn’t happen? No one ever does.

What if gas goes to $5.00 gallon? With health care now passed, how much will my taxes go up in the next two years? If our government passes the “Cap & Trade” bill, what will happen to my energy costs? Each of these three events will have the same effect as a pay cut.

I work in the aerospace industry. The Boeing machinists just authorized a strike in June. My hiring at the company I now work for was delayed by three months because of a Boeing strike. What will happen this time?

I don’t know. So, I am being very conservative. I am looking at houses that I will be able to afford even if the sky falls. And most of those aren’t all that nice. Either the house or the neighborhood or both are less than desirable.

And so, the search goes on…and I keep swimming upstream against the current.

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The old way is just fine with me

Posted on 05/01/2010 by RLW3

I am noticing a theme here…

Last night, I came to terms with the fact that I had missed out on my opportunity to get a $6,500 tax credit for buying my house. That would have meant that I would pay no income taxes this year!

Tonight, I made another decision to miss out on something else…

About one month ago, I finally took the plunge and upgraded to Apple’s latest operating system, Snow Leopard. After all, it was released nearly six months ago. It was about time.

Well, I spent most of the day downgrading my computer back to my “old” operating system.

I don’t care that it is not “as good”. I don’t care that is not nearly as powerful…or fast. I really don’t care if I will be missing out on the latest and greatest. I liked my computer the way it was. Besides, I don’t want to spend a bunch of money updating all of the third party software so it will play well with Snow Leopard.

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We gave it the old college try

Posted on 04/30/2010 by RLW3

Emotions are so tricky. In order to qualify for the $6,500 home buying tax credit, I had to have a house under contract by the end of the day.

My realtor e-mailed me three more possibilities while I was at work. I drove by all three of them on my way home. One of them was worth a walk through.

Our realtor quickly scheduled a showing. The house looked great from the outside…a nice yard with beautiful trees, a brick front. However, when we opened the front door, smelled the cigarettes and saw the small, cloistered kitchen, I knew this wasn’t for us.

Bye, bye tax credit! It isn’t like we didn’t try! But, what is the sense of buying a house that you don’t really like just to get a tax credit!

I passed…We’ll just keep looking.

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Victimized by an invisible, sneak attack

Posted on 04/29/2010 by RLW3

On Wednesday night, my wife and I went to our mid-week Bible study. A sharp, middle aged couple that has just relocated from Florida started attending two weeks ago.

Towards the end of the meeting, we broke up into groups of 2 or 3 people to tell our story of how we came to Christ.

I was in a group with the new man and the pastor. I learned that the new man had been a youth pastor for 13 years and an assistant pastor for 15 more in a Pentecostal church in Florida. He met our pastor when he spoke at their church.

Towards the end of the meeting, the pastor announced that there will be a men’s breakfast this Saturday and the new guy was going to be the speaker since the scheduled speaker cancelled at the last minute.

Before I knew it, out of nowhere, a dart of disappointment stabbed my heart. Where did it come from?

In several private meetings, the pastor has repeatedly told me how highly he thinks of me. He knows that I have a strong desire to teach and preach the Bible at some point in the future. I have had no illusions that anything was immediately on the horizon. In fact, I have been very peaceful and in no hurry. I realize that I am still a relatively unknown new comer.

Yet, before I realized what happened, when that little announcement was made, quite unexpectedly, my heart was pierced.

Oh, my head could make sense of it…The man has been in the Pentecostal church his whole life…he knows the pastor. More importantly, the pastor knows him and trusts him. Somehow, that didn’t help my heart…

Oh well, it’s not the first nor the worst disappointment in my life…onward and upward!

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My new night job

Posted on 04/27/2010 by RLW3

What did you do tonight?

I looked at houses.

What did you do last night?

Me? Oh, I looked at houses until 9:00.

The more houses I look at, the more sure I am…We want the yellow house!

The last that I heard, the investor having inspections done on the house. I called my realtor for an update.

It is under contract and is supposed to close on the 27th! What am I going to do?

I talked with my wife and learned that we are thinking along the same line.

I asked my realtor to see if we could buy it from the investor. If they close on the 27th, we’ll buy it from them on the 28th

How much profit do they need?

Stay tuned…

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Superman finally gets introduced to cryptonite

Posted on 04/22/2010 by RLW3

I called Big A this morning to see how he was doing.

His weight was down to 167.4 but he was not doing well. He was so weak that he couldn’t wrestle this morning! After all, he has lost 16 pounds in less than a week.

So, we decided that he should not go to the tournament…I guess that makes my vacation day decision pretty easy.

This is a pretty tough pill to swallow. Like he said, “I’ve always been able to get down.”

But, I think the fact that he has been able to cut weight on the last day and still perform relatively well on the next day has finally hurt him. His finally gained more weight than he could lose.

So, he will have to forego the national tournament and set his sights on a much smaller, local tournament the following weekend.

The pain of having to watch your child learn the hard way…

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I’ve got to make a decision

Posted on 04/21/2010 by RLW3

Big A keeps making progress. He is finally under 170. He has 6 more pounds to lose in the three days.

In the meantime, I have to decide if I am going to go. The tournament is in Cleveland, Ohio. That is less than eight hours from Philadelphia. However, it is 13 hours from Kansas City!

He doesn’t start wrestling until 9:00 A.M. on Sunday, Even if he loses his first two matches and gets knocked out of the tournament, I still won’t be starting the long drive home until the early afternoon.

That means that I will have to take Monday off.

Is it worth it?Vacation days are like gold to me…

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This is so much better

Posted on 04/20/2010 by RLW3

The more I think about it, the better I feel about the FILA tournament.

First and most obvious, he will be wrestling against guys his own age.

Second, he doesn’t have to weigh in until Saturday afternoon. He would have had to weigh in on Thursday morning for the USA Open tournament.

Third, since the weigh in begins at 4:00, he won’t have to leave Philadelphia until Saturday morning so he should get a good night’s sleep. In the other tournament, he would have had to miss two days of school, including a test in Physics on Friday!

I can’t wait to see how this will turn out!

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Back from the dead

Posted on 04/19/2010 by RLW3

Last Thursday afternoon, back when we were planning to have Big A wrestle in a national tournament, I left messages with two men on the USA Wrestling board. Since Big A red-shirted this year and didn’t win any big tournaments, I wanted to ask them how they would seed the wrestlers for the USA Open.

Last night, at about 9:00 Central time, just before I went to bed, one of them called me back…

“Sorry for taking so long to get back to you but I just got back into town today and I fly out tomorrow morning. What can I do for you?”

“Unfortunately, nothing.”

I then gave him the short explanation about our foray with the USA Open tournament.

“Now, you do know that there is another national tournament that same weekend in Cleveland?”

“No, what is that one?”

“The FILA Junior Nationals. That is a qualifying tournament for the U.S. Junior World team.”

“Would he qualify for the Junior division?”

“It is for those born between 1990-1992.”

“What about being enrolled in 9th-12th grade?”

“It includes college freshman.”

He sent me the links while we were still on the phone. It looks like Plan B is back on again!

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At the same exact place eight hours later

Posted on 04/18/2010 by RLW3

Yesterday, I spent about 8 hours looking at houses. Do you know what I concluded in the end…

I really like the house that we placed a bid on!

I have to figure out a way to make this happen.

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