Monday, February 21, 2011

Short Sale-Shmort Sale!

I swear, every day feels like an eternity when waiting on someone else to say if you can buy the house of your dreams or not.  It has been two and a half weeks since we put the offer in on our new house.  It was accepted immediately (literally about 19-20 hours later we get the accepted response!) by the sellers, but because it is a short sale we still have to wait for the bank accept our offer as well.  Yes, I do realize that two and a half weeks is like chump-change in the world of short sales, but for me it's just ridiculous.  How hard is it/how long does it honestly take, to look at our financials, our pre-approval, and tell us we can have the damn house???  

It's strange, as much as we are in charge of our futures and are making the decisions that we want to make, we have absolutely no control over this it.  And it freaking blows!  We've done all that we can in regards to getting our selves prepared financially, determining the area we want to live in, scouring the listings, knowing our budget... and even with all of that the whole shebang is in someone else's hands.  We love that house!  We refer to is as "our" house, I've been telling the cats they are going to go to our new house... hell we even drove by it this last weekend just to look at it.

We did get good news though late last week.  The sellers agent talked to our agent, who emailed us and said that the bank had already ordered and received the appraisal for the house.  This is huge because that appraisal determines what the house is worth now (and not what the sellers bought it for eons ago and not what the remaining amount due on their loan says) and essentially tells the bank how much they might potentially lose out on due to the short sale and current economic state, and what they can reasonably expect to sell the house for now.  We hadn't heard anything in the two week period after the sellers accepted our offer so it was a BIG relief knowing that the bank was working on us and at least doing something!  Short sales can take months to go through and be finalized, and I don't want to be shoved to the bottom of some stack of papers that are just collecting dust.  By the by, why in the hell does it have to take months and months for short sales to go through?  It's as easy as a pre-approved buyer, a seller accepted offer, and an appraisal on the house.  End. Of. Story.  Seriously, I could do short sales here people!

Annnnnywho, things around here have been the norm for us!  Work is getting better for me and I'm starting to feel like I fit in there-slash-they accept me more now.  Valentines day was pretty freakin' awesome to boot!  The hubs took me up to a beautiful ski resort where we went ice skating!  I honestly haven't been ice skating for 15-18 years (holy hell I feel a decrepit old bag!!) and it was just so much fun.  We were like little kids up there racing each other and trying every we could to not fall on our asses.  I am proud to say that neither of us actually fell! For sure I thought I would come home bruised and looking like a rotting corpse from all the discoloration.  It was beautiful up there, I'll post pictures soon!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

To Insure Or Not To Insure?

Reason number 86 why losing your job totally blows?  Losing your insurance.  And when I say this blows, I really mean it!  I'm not a sickly person, but I do feel much better knowing I have coverage in case something does happen.  Car wrecks, freak accidents, terminal diagnosis happen every single day.  Those are just the huge issues.  It is flu season, food poisoning happens, trip and break your ankle... all likely possibilities that could require a trip to the doctor or urgent care or better yet the ER.  

About two years ago I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism.  (If you google this you'll see how non-serious it is and how common it is).  It was March of 2009 that I started going to the doctor, and I literally went every month  after that through October for follow ups and blood work to have my medication adjusted until the right dose was found.  EVERY month it was adjusted up, or down.  Also in March/April of 2009 my doctor told me "you have a lump" where my thyroid gland is (on your throat) and that I needed to have an ultrasound done to see what was going on.  Not only did I completely lose my shit when he told me, but I had to go and have a procedure done.  Turns out it was just an enlarged thyroid gland and no freakin' lump as he I had said.  Side note, can't we PLEASE make it illegal or something for doctors to use the word "lump"?  That was really not OK.  January of 2010 I went back to the doctors for a follow up, and my medication wasn't right again.  So I started going back to the doctor on a monthly basis with blood work being taken every month and my medication being adjusted all over the place.  Finally in June of 2010 I went to see a specialist (I felt like my doctor just couldn't get it under control, he miss-read my results at my last appointment which in turn had him adjust my medication incorrectly, and told me that if we didn't get my thyroid under control it would be very hard to get pregnant as the thyroid was a regulator of your body) and she worked more with me on what made me feel better vs. just what my numbers said.  I really liked her and felt like she listened to me.  She ever so kindly reassured me that my thyroid levels were so close to normal that I shouldn't have any side effects/complications in trying to conceive-whenever that may be.  

Hypothyroidism really isn't a huge deal.  It just means that my thyroid doesn't produce enough "stuff" to function properly.  Without the medication the biggest side effect is being sleepy all the time.  I used to take a 2-3 hour nap almost every day after work and then usually a 2-3 hour nap on either Saturday or Sunday.  I was always sleeping.  My grandma has it, and so do millions of other people.  I'll most likely be on some sort of daily medication for the rest of my life, and I'm OK with that.

So, as you can see, I was very fortunate to have insurance during that time.  For almost a year straight I had monthly doctors appointments and monthly blood work done at the lab.  Not having insurance now just makes me nervous.  Before starting at the job I got laid off from, I didn't care if I had insurance or not.  It never really mattered.  Now it's just a necessity like gas for the car.  The issue I'm running into now is just how expensive insurance is.  My last job paid a set amount towards your coverage and you got to pick from like 15 different plans.  If your plan cost less then what the company paid then you didn't have any paycheck deductions.  If the plan you chose cost more, you paid the difference.  I was paying about $36 per check  for my health insurance AND vision and dental.  Apparently that was a really sweet set up.  To be added on to my husbands insurance is $400 per month.  Did I mention I ended up taking a $4/hour pay cut in accepting this new job?  I could get insurance through my job now but it's only a temporary position so in about six months, if they don't offer me a permanent position, I'll lose that insurance too.  I could have done COBRA and extended my insurance from my last job, but that was close to $360 a month.

I've been looking getting private insurance, so no matter what my job situation looks like I'll still have coverage.  I don't know if my little thyroid-fun-times is considered "pre-existing" or not, so getting something and getting established as soon as possible is a good thing because you never know what will happen.  I've found some pretty reasonable prices on private insurance, as low as $100 per month.  Granted, it's not as fabulous as the insurance I had, but it's better than nothing.  The downside though is that no one wants to cover maternity through private insurance.  I've contacted a handful of companies that administer private insurance here and they all have given me the same info: basically no.  Knowing how expensive my husbands insurance is to put me on it, the best thing for us is for me to get private insurance and get myself established and past any sort of waiting periods there may be.  There are two private insurance plans that will cover maternity, however they aren't an option either.  One is $400 per month and the other is $450, and BOTH have a twelve-month waiting period.  A-can't afford either one (if I/we could afford the $400 per month then I'd just be on my husbands insurance) and B-you can shove your damn twelve month waiting period.  Granted, that's not forever from now but I'm always worried about the what-if's.  What-if we got a surprise before the twelve-months were up?  Then what?  Also, I don't want some company telling me when I can or cannot choose to do things in my own life.

A gal at my new work, who is a temp like me, happens to be pregnant and told me about this program called Access to Healthcare Network, or AHN.  Its not insurance, but a discount program.  No co-pays,  no invoices or bills, nothing like that.  You have to meet income requirements (hey lookey here, I totally meet those now!) and pay a membership fee ($288 for one year) for how long you want to be in the program.  Essentially you have a membership-type card instead of insurance cards, and you pay at the time of your visit/exam/procedure and greatly discounted prices.  There's no waiting period, no restrictions, nothing that isn't covered.  I've been looking into and think that it might be a good option for now.  My thyroid is under control right now and I don't have any other issues that I know of LOL, so at least if I had to go to the doctor I know I wouldn't be turned away for not having insurance and I know that I wouldn't get some crazy-ass bill in the mail.  The gal at work is using it for her current pregnancy (this is her second kid and she used AHN with her first because her husbands insurance is too expensive for her and her first-born), and she hasn't had any issues or been denied any sort of care.  

We'll see.  I sent the link and info to my husband to look over so we can make a decision on what we should do.  I really hate being up in the air with this and feeling like almost every option there is isn't a viable one for one reason or another.  I'm always convinced that the worst thing is going to happen in every situation, so of course I think that during the time I don't have insurance something,  ANYTHING is going to happen to me that is totally going to screw us over.  All we need right now is to get some couple-thousand dollar hospital bill.  

Saturday, February 5, 2011

I'm BAAAA-AAAACK!

So I totally suck.  And I know it.  But you'll forgive me, right?  Of course you will!  It was not my intent to take an almost two-week hiatus on this here bloggy thing, but thats what ended up happening.  Speaking of happening... a lot of shit has gone down these last two weeks and I shall enlighten you...

So I have been at my new job for two weeks now-it has its up's and down's.  The job itself is pretty easy, and it's pretty slow there.  That's the upside.  The downside?  I'm kinda bored out of my mind for most of the time (they aren't really teaching me anything just kinda leaving me out there on my own), and I kinda-sorta feel one of the girls isn't my biggest fan.  If I want to something to do there or want to be taught, I have to ask.  It's very strange from I'm used too in being the newbie and being taught everything.  Although, I do really like that it's very chill and laid back there.  There is definitely no taking work home with you...I'm not thinking about work at home or anything.  I also feel like I could run the place already after just two weeks,  so I'm not being challenged in anyway.  BUT, I'm working and having money coming in so really I have nothing to bitch about LOL.

Hubs and I are moving forward with the house-buying.  I for sure thought that my job losing was going to royally screw with all of our plans, but it turns out that removing my income from the pre-qual process for a loan didn't do anything.  NOT A THING.  Apparently, compared to my husband, my income was pretty insignificant.  Fabulous isn't it?  It didn't bother me at all, I was genuinely surprised that I didn't eff the whole thing up.  Seriously, we qualify for the exact same loan amount with or without my previous income in the equation.  (Looks like I totally married up!!)  

We decided to go look at houses last weekend and just get started with the process.  We've been doing a lot of online "window shopping" with the houses around here, and I kinda think that the hubs said we should go look at places in person to try to get me out of my funk.  Well, it worked and then some!  We looked at some places last Sunday and totally fell in love with one.  It was the very first house we saw, and at first we both thought that it was just alright and that there wasn't anything special about it.  Four or five houses later... including a foreclosure that was missing light switches (yes, the actual switch on the wall) and all the bathroom faucets, the first house was screaming our names.   We scheduled a second showing two nights later.  OH EM GEE did we freaking love that place.  It is in a great new-construction neighborhood about two minutes from hubby's work.  It has good schools (Yes, I've been thinking about that even though we don't have kids YET, but we plan to be in our first house for a while so there's a good possibility a kid of our [did I ever mention I wanted three?] will be starting school there), we love that area, and with the housing market the way it is we are able to buy a house we couldn't have even blinked at 3-4 years ago.  This was Tuesday night.  Wednesday we decided we wanted to put in offer in.  We just couldn't bear the thought of someone else snagging it from us.  We signed the papers after work Wednesday night.  Thursday afternoon at 1pm the sellers ACCEPTED OUR OFFER!  I couldn't even believe it... they accepted in less than 24 hours!   Who does that?!?!?!  The house is a short sale, so even though the sellers have accepted our offer we still have to wait for the bank to accept/decline/counter...whatever they are going to do.  It could be a few weeks to a couple of months until we hear anything from them.  

I can tell you right now everyday is like an eternity, and I know it's only going to get worse waiting and waiting for the bank to respond.  Our agent and the sellers agent are very optimistic and have both said that there should be no reason the bank doesn't accept and they are both very confident that we are going to get this house.  We are already referring to this house as our house.  It feels too good to be true, it has been less than a week that we started looking at houses and we already found one, made an offer, and got it accepted.  One of my best friends told me its not that it is too good to be true, but that this is meant to be for us.  I'll take it! 

So as you can see, a lot of shit has been going down here.  I am also feeling much better about everything, and am finally starting to believe that I didn't ruin everything we had going for us.  It is all still an adjustment for me, for us, but I am beyond thankful that our life is still moving forward in the direction we have planned and worked so hard to finally get to.  I am no longer using the phrase "twenty-eleven is going to be my year"... cause well we can all see just exactly how far that got me.  You can say I'm more cautiously optimistic.  

Oh- I didn't make my January goal of no fast food either.  EPIC. FAIL.  I had Panda Express on the 27th.  I debated whether or not it was fast food, and decided that because it was Chinese food it wasn't fast food.  I had blinded myself and was only looking at the Taco Bells' and McDonald's as fast food.  I honestly didn't think it counted, but the hubs said it did.  I was bummed about it, but it was my own damn fault.  I haven't set a February goal... not sure that I'm going to continue this monthly resolution or not.  I'm not as excited about it as I was before!  I will start blogging more frequently though.  I've been in such a depressing funk I didn't want to write it out and let everyone into what I was experiencing.  Not even the hubs knew what was going on, I was like a corked, depressed bottle.  I'm still a bitter-betty about the whole thing, but I'm functioning again and doing better.  

Until we meet again bloggy world!