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♫Up up up up up up up UPPPPPP!♫
Jun. 9th, 2021 02:35 pmThe (sortof) first and (definitely) last line of the last song on Talking Heads '77, one of the beginning-to-end best records ever:
But which, today refers to:
* Me. I had the fasting appointment for ultrasound first thing this morning, which meant being awake first thing and rattling around with no caffeine for close to two hours. Despite getting four blocks away without the scrip for the thing, I still made it minutes ahead of my 7:45 arrival time. Which, apparently, was also at least four other patients' arrival time, yet not any member of staff's arrival time. So we waited in a two-chaired hallway for MR. MRI to show up, and let us into their waiting room. Which had the AC turned off all night.
We don't do hot and humid here very well. WHY DO YOU THINK WE MOVED TO BUFFALO?!? Fortunately, the paperwork was minimal, the wait beyond that momentary, and the tech was quite good at getting the pictures and getting me on my way for
* The new medicine cabinet. We ordered this months ago, and it has been sitting, boxed, in a corner while Eleanor worked on the wall tile below it and the paint and new trim around it. We've gotten a line on some people to do the major restoration work on the floor tile and below, so her work in there is just about done and we moved to the official installation of the cabinet last night.
It is so much bigger, so much cleaner, and yet lighter, than the one it is replacing. It also came in a nice big cardboard box that the boys immediately pounced into in their current expression of MINE! Now to just get all the traces of styrofoam off the floor;)
* My credit score. I've been waiting for this, but it was damn nice to finally see:
There is one main reason for that, and it's worth explaining in case your good deeds turn out to be punished as ours were.
About 15 years ago, we hit financial bottom. I'd been in a toxic work environment for a decade but the final several years of it were even worse, financially and emotionally. When I went out on my own 15 years ago this week, that decision, and others we made around that time, began to bear fruit. By 2016, the ill effects were long behind us, we'd refinanced (with some paperwork difficulty) into a somewhat better mortgage in 2011, but now we were seeing the excellence of our credit scores and we looked into another refi, just to get a lower rate, a shorter repayment period (the 2011 refi was a 30-year) and some flexibility.
Boy did Key Bank have Just The Thing! Our scores were so good, around 800*, that we got into a new loan for no closing costs, no mortgage insurance and no escrow! Even better, we could re-use the equity as we paid it down at a much lower interest rate- and it's tax deductible!** It was all done and signed up in weeks, without complex application processes, a driveby appraisal that was more than enough, and yay!
Until next time we checked, and I found my credit score had tanked. THEN, Joan explained: because it was a home equity mortgage line and not a home equity mortgage loan in a fixed amount, credit bureaus considered it as a very large credit card. Tip: large credit card amounts are bad. Plus, since this credit card had a 15 year repayment period, a large percentage of the "available credit" was in use. Also bad. We returned to Joan to see if there was anything we could do, and her answer was, How about a new mortgage?
We outlasted Joan on that one; she's someplace else now, and Eleanor sees her at the store at the time, firing angry invisible darts of borrower vitriol into her ass when she's not looking. We watched as the scores fluctuated in the 700s over the years between good and fair, as some things got reduced, others paid on time for a longer period, but then, another dip. The pre-Key mortgage eventually fell off our credit report last year, and just having a mortgage, and a "real" not "big credit card" one, is a positive factor in your score. So that, among other things, motivated the last refi that we completed in May. The big credit card is still showing with at least one bureau, but according to this site, it is now off Experian, and that bumped mine (and I presume will hers, as well) back into the upper echelons of excellent.
----
Finally,
*My spirits. Getting the one thing out of the way (won't get results until next week when I see our PA), the second hung, and the third bit of news all make me happies. So did Eleanor finding out that her new Medicare plan includes full membership at the gym she'd been going to in the Before Times, which we stopped paying for because she wasn't getting there enough to use it. Now that she's got that covered, I can use my own wellness card benefit toward my own gym membership; it won't cover it in full, but it will this month and next, and that's a nice cushion to have as the uncertainties of when various retirement related things for her will stop and start. She is now thinking about staying on maybe one day a week, more for the social interaction than needing the funds.
----
* Credit scores are a relatively recent development. As recently as the early 90s, we were telling consumers that "credit rating" was a case-by-case thing, not something quantifiable into A-B-C or 1-2-3. Then a company called Fair Isaac & Co. changed that up completely, and by this century, your "FICO Score" became the single biggest factor in what credit you could get and at what price. Although not exactly comparable, it's not far off from SAT scoring for a single part of that test in terms of range: 800 is excellent, low hundreds are bad. Anything around 700 gets you into more rarified air, and hitting close to 800 or even exceeding it will get you all kinds of things, including some unfortunately stupid ones like we did.
** Well, it was tax deductible when we took it out. Thanks, Trump! The Give The Rich People What They Want Tax Act of 2017 eliminated mortgage interest for anything other than purchase money mortgages unless you specifically used the proceeds for home improvements. But they jacked up the standard deduction so much that it wouldn't have made a difference for us, anyway.
*** Nothing. There is NO third thing.
But which, today refers to:
* Me. I had the fasting appointment for ultrasound first thing this morning, which meant being awake first thing and rattling around with no caffeine for close to two hours. Despite getting four blocks away without the scrip for the thing, I still made it minutes ahead of my 7:45 arrival time. Which, apparently, was also at least four other patients' arrival time, yet not any member of staff's arrival time. So we waited in a two-chaired hallway for MR. MRI to show up, and let us into their waiting room. Which had the AC turned off all night.
We don't do hot and humid here very well. WHY DO YOU THINK WE MOVED TO BUFFALO?!? Fortunately, the paperwork was minimal, the wait beyond that momentary, and the tech was quite good at getting the pictures and getting me on my way for
* The new medicine cabinet. We ordered this months ago, and it has been sitting, boxed, in a corner while Eleanor worked on the wall tile below it and the paint and new trim around it. We've gotten a line on some people to do the major restoration work on the floor tile and below, so her work in there is just about done and we moved to the official installation of the cabinet last night.
It is so much bigger, so much cleaner, and yet lighter, than the one it is replacing. It also came in a nice big cardboard box that the boys immediately pounced into in their current expression of MINE! Now to just get all the traces of styrofoam off the floor;)
* My credit score. I've been waiting for this, but it was damn nice to finally see:
There is one main reason for that, and it's worth explaining in case your good deeds turn out to be punished as ours were.
About 15 years ago, we hit financial bottom. I'd been in a toxic work environment for a decade but the final several years of it were even worse, financially and emotionally. When I went out on my own 15 years ago this week, that decision, and others we made around that time, began to bear fruit. By 2016, the ill effects were long behind us, we'd refinanced (with some paperwork difficulty) into a somewhat better mortgage in 2011, but now we were seeing the excellence of our credit scores and we looked into another refi, just to get a lower rate, a shorter repayment period (the 2011 refi was a 30-year) and some flexibility.
Boy did Key Bank have Just The Thing! Our scores were so good, around 800*, that we got into a new loan for no closing costs, no mortgage insurance and no escrow! Even better, we could re-use the equity as we paid it down at a much lower interest rate- and it's tax deductible!** It was all done and signed up in weeks, without complex application processes, a driveby appraisal that was more than enough, and yay!
Until next time we checked, and I found my credit score had tanked. THEN, Joan explained: because it was a home equity mortgage line and not a home equity mortgage loan in a fixed amount, credit bureaus considered it as a very large credit card. Tip: large credit card amounts are bad. Plus, since this credit card had a 15 year repayment period, a large percentage of the "available credit" was in use. Also bad. We returned to Joan to see if there was anything we could do, and her answer was, How about a new mortgage?
We outlasted Joan on that one; she's someplace else now, and Eleanor sees her at the store at the time, firing angry invisible darts of borrower vitriol into her ass when she's not looking. We watched as the scores fluctuated in the 700s over the years between good and fair, as some things got reduced, others paid on time for a longer period, but then, another dip. The pre-Key mortgage eventually fell off our credit report last year, and just having a mortgage, and a "real" not "big credit card" one, is a positive factor in your score. So that, among other things, motivated the last refi that we completed in May. The big credit card is still showing with at least one bureau, but according to this site, it is now off Experian, and that bumped mine (and I presume will hers, as well) back into the upper echelons of excellent.
----
Finally,
*My spirits. Getting the one thing out of the way (won't get results until next week when I see our PA), the second hung, and the third bit of news all make me happies. So did Eleanor finding out that her new Medicare plan includes full membership at the gym she'd been going to in the Before Times, which we stopped paying for because she wasn't getting there enough to use it. Now that she's got that covered, I can use my own wellness card benefit toward my own gym membership; it won't cover it in full, but it will this month and next, and that's a nice cushion to have as the uncertainties of when various retirement related things for her will stop and start. She is now thinking about staying on maybe one day a week, more for the social interaction than needing the funds.
----
* Credit scores are a relatively recent development. As recently as the early 90s, we were telling consumers that "credit rating" was a case-by-case thing, not something quantifiable into A-B-C or 1-2-3. Then a company called Fair Isaac & Co. changed that up completely, and by this century, your "FICO Score" became the single biggest factor in what credit you could get and at what price. Although not exactly comparable, it's not far off from SAT scoring for a single part of that test in terms of range: 800 is excellent, low hundreds are bad. Anything around 700 gets you into more rarified air, and hitting close to 800 or even exceeding it will get you all kinds of things, including some unfortunately stupid ones like we did.
** Well, it was tax deductible when we took it out. Thanks, Trump! The Give The Rich People What They Want Tax Act of 2017 eliminated mortgage interest for anything other than purchase money mortgages unless you specifically used the proceeds for home improvements. But they jacked up the standard deduction so much that it wouldn't have made a difference for us, anyway.
*** Nothing. There is NO third thing.