Square pegs and round holes

For the last two months I've been trying to refinance my house. I hate this stuff. I would have been perfectly happy to stay with the credit union that had the house mortgage, but they were bought out by a bigger, less personal CU. They also messed up the way I did business.

Let me tell you things certainly have changed since the 2008 implosion of the housing bubble. Banks are much more persnickety about a person's finances.

For me, that's a problem. My lovely wife and I don't pay taxes or work normal jobs. So that means no things like income tax records, W-2s, 1099s, and all those other things that people have to prove what their finances are like. It took some doing to gather up alternative paperwork that was acceptable. From the time I was told we were “all set,” we had to provide more documentation three more times.

Then there was the assessment of the house. The assessor lady didn't quite know what to do with the dome and the alternative energy things. For me a dome is an asset. It can deal with tremendous wind and snow loads. For the assessor it's non standard housing. Not sure what she made of some of my other little projects. Her assessment came in on the low side, significantly lower than the town's assessment.

Fortunately our needs are modest and we were able to do what we needed to do. In fact, I'm going to take her assessment to the town and demand that they lower my taxes, so that's actually a win.

We are greatly simplifying our financial life and taking advantage of a much lower interest rate. Our finances will be set up in such a way that we can basically ignore them for months at a time. Life is too short to deal with this financial crap every darn day.

-Sixbears