After Such a Long Absence...

I have not vlogged in several years now. Honestly, the issue has been one part lazy, one part computer troubles to where I cannot log in properly to my YouTube channel now (the site freaks out when I try to do anything administrative). I said I didn't know what was next a while ago, but that I was still around, and, truly, I was, except, I didn't really stay around this blog site. In an attempt to have a bit of a do-over, I started a new series of pages - first making blogs based on very specific topics, then, eventually, running back into my overly-opinionated problem of having a need to say something. That latest venture has become http://tryingtomom.wordpress.com So, as a courtesy to my loyal followers, I have uploaded my blog posts from there to here (and vice-versa). In the future, however, I think updates will be a very rare occurrence on this blog, and since I am running multiple blogs off of the other account, I will expect to be pretty exclusive over there. I may check in here from time to time, but, I'm pretty non-committal to this blogging project right now. Thank you for everyone who has been a part of my life journey so far, and who have suffered through my complaints, ideas, and theories. And to the haters. Well, haha, I really don't give you guys much of a second thought these days. I used to, and it used to really urk at me, but, I have to thank you for giving me the gift of desensitization and teaching me to grow in the art of not-give-a-fuckery.

PCS Moves

This doesn't apply to every move. I have never done an international move, and I have heard that, due to increasing budget cuts, do-it-yourself moves are not as profitable as they used to be. But, here are my how-to's and two cents.

Quicken Loans: The Review

I am only reviewing the home mortgage process, I have no experience with their refinancing!

If you look back at my Wells Fargo review, that bank fell extremely short of my expectations. Quicken Loans, on the other hand, made things happen.

We worked with Brian Cook, and, in a one hour phone call, he accomplished more than Wells Fargo did in a month. At first, we just called in for some basic information on their fees and rates. It was the first of the three banks we spoke to that did not try to pressure us or make us feel guilty for shopping around. Brian's exact response was "do whatever's best for you."

The day after we got some quotes, we found out that our current banker at Wells Fargo had left for vacation and would be unavailable for two weeks. That was my last straw before asking my husband to just go through with switching mortgage companies.

Unlike Wells Fargo, Quicken Loans' Brian looked up multiple loans, gave us the rates, details, and explained everything clearly upfront. We made a decision on a type of loan and went forward that day.

Now, the most unsettling issue, though, was the upfront price. They requested $500 to get the process started, but the money was to be used for the total purchase price of the house. It made me uneasy, because we had only given Wells Fargo $11 before everything went downhill, and I was very concerned that having a larger sum of money upfront might kill Quicken Loans' motivation get things moving. I was also afraid that, if everything went sour, we didn't get our loan, or needed to change banks again, then we just lost $500. So, I asked for that fee to be added to my Chase Visa, because, I know from experience that, if there is a dispute, they are very good about getting to the bottom of things and refunding their card holder's money.

It turned out not to be a problem in the long wrong, but I would advise everyone to exercise the same level of caution, just in case. Within the same night, we had access to an online site called myql.com. There, we uploaded all the documents we needed for our application, and, within 48 hours, we were in underwriting. I really liked this online upload site, rather than having to email attachments, because, Wells Fargo would forward attachments around and they would end up lost or corrupted. At Quicken Loans, it was saved into their database so that everyone involved in the loan process went to the same place to get the same access to everything. After the loan closed, myql.com turned into our payment center - no knew accounts, no headaches.

What I also appreciated about Quicken Loans is that they outlined everything upfront. I had my loan number, locked in rate, house information, and everything, right there in myql.com. I could also see what part of the process that I was in, and how many more parts were left to complete before the loan was closed. That's really a great feature that other banks are idiots for not implementing a similar system themselves!

We did run into a problem, however, about two weeks into the process. Due to a lack of specific orders (due to the top secret nature of my husband's work), we were bounced to a specialist. The issue was, apparently, that, because we didn't have orders showing a specific date for relocation to this new state, the bank was unable to green light the loan. It was resolved, easily enough, with a letter from my husband's chain of command. Overall, this bump in the road only took three days to repair, as it were.

After that, it took about another month for the seller (Fannie Mae in this case) to send the title over for review. But, once that was logged, we had the paperwork in hand within a week. After that, we only had to notarize the document, have it returned to Quicken, and we were closed.

A major downside though, was that we were charged to get "points" to get an interest rate, which upped our closing costs by almost $2,000. I'm still not sure what that system is about, but it was a frustration to deal with. That was not likely a Quicken specific issue, but more so due to the fact of the type of loan that we were going with.

Now, I've heard from some reviews that mortgages are sold within three months to other banks, which is frustrating for many. I can't verify whether or not that's true for everyone, but I have not experienced a brokered mortgage thus far.

Overall, Quicken Loans was fast, easy, mostly hassle free, and they delivered on time. I would recommend them, and no, I am not being compensated for this review.

Why I'm Glad to Leave Military Housing

You know you want to watch the drama that is this video. And now I can safely post it because I live a dozen states away from the psycho next door!

A Real Live Prairie Dog

This is boring, but this was my little friendly neighborhood prairie dog when I lived on post. Cute little fella, I hope the next occupants let the hose faucet drip for him. Good luck li'l guy.

Positive Vloggitive

Through my tags online, I learned about Project Positive after posting this video. Not sure if it qualifies, but, eh, why not?

Family Fueding

I think this video sums it all up, but, if you have nosy, busybody families, you can relate.

Rumblefish - Quit Claiming My Personal Content!

This video was made prior to hearing back from Rumblefish, a company that wrongfully put a copyright claim out on my video. Within 24 hours of posting this video Ben, a Rumblefish employee, wrote back and released the claim on my video. Since then, the same video has been reclaimed two additional times.

If this happens to you, I suggest writing YouTubeContentID@rumblefish.com, as well as dispute the claim with YouTube.

Superman Left the US?!

So, I just learned that Superman renounced his US citizenship in Action Comics #900. Apparently, this is a growing trend, and I can see why.

Military Spouses Selling Crap at Home

I have to vent. On the one hand, I support someone who is trying to earn income. On the other, I am sick to death of being told what a bad friend I am if I don't help so-and-so's bff make their Scentsy quota for the month. This work at home concept has gotten out of hand, and, much like everything else, if everyone could pay their rent hocking products from home, then everyone would. Only a few people make money for a reason, loves.

The Military Dependopotomus

Finally, the age old skank has a fresh, new name:

Wells Fargo, So Far You Wouldn't Go.

These bankers aren't serious about your money.

Overall
Rated 1 out of 5

The customer service in the beginning was great, and everyone I spoke with has always been very polite, but their work is not reflected in their social skills.

Before I go any further, and people start to make assumptions, my credit score is in the Excellent range, and almost has a perfect score. My husband's just shy of Excellent in the Good standing. We have no debt, aside from student loans. My husband's pay is stable, and we were never shopping for a house outside of our means. We actually did not look for houses that were more than half of what our pre-approval amount was.

When I was pre-approved, everything happened quickly. We found a home to make an offer on the next day, and had our offer accepted and locked in a contract within a week.

The minute the completed housing contract went to Wells Fargo, things started going downhill.

First, the sellers agreed to pay closing costs of $3,300. Our banker at Wells Fargo wrote it down in their system as $3,030. An easily made typo that I corrected her about, but has still yet to be fixed or applied to our loan information.

We then got a big contract packet in the mail. It listed $60k in debts that were not ours, and that did not appear in any of our credit reports. They said they made a note to fix this error, and, weeks later, that still hasn't happened. The most updated contract I has shows these debts with and * that says "Do Not Included in Total," but, if you look at the total amount of liabilities, they are being added in!

My absolute final straw was the unclear nature of their contract. I couldn't figure out if they were trying to cheat me or if the numbers were adding up properly (but extremely complicatedly), and no one could be bothered to take the time to go over these concerns. My biggest problem was that we were putting 10% down, and paying all closing fees upfront, yet, they claimed that our "Loan Amount" was higher than even the purchase price of the home. The "Amount Financed" section showed a slightly lower amount, but it still did not compensate for us paying fees and 10% down. If I am give the bank cash, then shouldn't my loan be for what I actually borrowed, not the total amount?

Just to give a numerical example (that are not my real numbers), lets say the Loan Amount was listed at $65k, the Amount Financed said $62k, but the house price was only $60k total. By my logic, and the logic of our second bank, if I put 10% down and pay all fees upfront, then Loan Amount should be $54k - period!

Since no one could explain why the numbers were adding up that way, I felt that this might be a way to scam in some extra bucks in interest by pretending that I borrowed the full amount and made a giant payment days later (since interested is calculated and compounded daily at most banks). Yeah, that smaller amount of interest might only be a drop in their bucket at a mega-giant like Wells Fargo, but if you do that to thousands of people, you could come up with billions in unjustified revenue.

My house was being sold via Fannie Mae, and so the contract was pretty tight and standard. They allowed ten days for the bank to do an inspection, and back out if they found any unacceptable defects. The day our contract was finalized and given to Wells Fargo, we were told that they would call us by the end of the week to get the inspection set up. We would have to pay $400 upfront (normal price) and they would take care of the rest.

THEY NEVER CALLED! The inspection/back out period came and went, and never once has anyone said another word about it! If you are dealing with so many home loans, I would think that you would have streamlined and organized the processes better that this. To this day they have still never contacted us to schedule any inspections.

My biggest frustration is with the underwriting department. Nothing gets done, they are slow, they ignore your closing date, they want documentation, and when you provide it, they want it all over again, or want a new set of information. Then, they take at least a week to verify each bit of information when you only have 30 days to close!

Wells Fargo also didn't know anything about their loan types. I was given information about VA Loans that I knew was false, but they assured me that they were correct. Well, a month into the loan process they "suddenly" discovered that they were wrong, but acted like it was my fault. So they screwed up, but do they offer to fix it? No, they wash their hands and tell me that going back and requesting a different type of loan meant that I had to go speak with the loan originator (I believe that's the right term), wait for them to respond and send it to underwriting, and then, after another week or two was wasted, I might hear back with a new list of demands.

Another thing that I hated was that our banker went on vacation right after sending us a list of required documents that they needed ASAP. With Wells Fargo, if your banker is gone, no one else will step up to assist you in their absence. I get that things happen and these employees are people with their own lives, but I want to be able to speak with ANY banker who can access my account and work with me when my designated person is unavailable for more than 24 hours. I just think that's good business sense myself.

They don't value your time or your business as a customer, and I will never attempt to bank there again.

As a side note, when we sent the earnest money to the realtor for the house, we had no local bank to get the required cashier's check, so we went to a local Wells Fargo branch, thinking that they would help us since our home loan was going to be through them. They wasted 45 minutes of our limited time (we had to overnight a cashier's check that day) trying to talk us into signing up for a bank account that we didn't want, claiming that no one at any bank would give us a cashier's check without first having an account with that bank and we would just waste more time if we didn't sign on the dotted line at that moment.

We didn't want another checking/savings account, so we left. Well, next door, the military bank gave us a cashier's check for a $10 fee! Funny how Wells Fargo claimed "no one" would do it when "someone" was just fifty feet away!

It all got to the point where I didn't trust them, and they had made enough errors that I really couldn't rely on anything that they told me. It was a headache, and I was so worried that they wouldn't get their rears in gear to close on time, so I left for another bank.

When I informed my realtor of this change, he said that it was no problem, BUT told me that, in his experience, Wells Fargo and Bank of America are both terrible in their mortgage department. He said that 75% of their home loans don't close for one reason or another, and if you search for either bank's names and reviews, you can see lots of people that agree with that sentiment.


Customer service
Rated 3 out of 5

The two bankers that I spoke with were very polite. But, no one could get anything accomplished. Every little thing needed a different banker to handle it, and the banker you needed always managed to be out of their office. On top of that, it seemed that no one was cross-communicated, which wasted a lot of my time. I don't mind to repeat myself when need be, but these situations were slowing our loan process down by days per issue.


Types/options
Rated 1 out of 5

They don't know their mortgage products, and they wasted a month of our time trying to get us into a mortgage that we don't qualify for. I researched online and found that, if you have a VA loan and pay x% down, you get a lower VA Funding Fee. Well, the bankers knew nothing about that, and claimed it was a false claim on my part, and that the fee was the exact same percentage rate, no matter the total of the loan (WRONG!). They also made claims that credit scores, debt, and down payments don't affect your interest rate when I know that is not true.

My Favorite Web-lebrities

Crazy Japanese 101 - Writing

Here is Katakana and Hiragana:








Far from flawless, but hopefully that points you in a right (or at least better) direction.

How Not to Use Your Credit Cards

This has a primary angle towards the groups I am familiar with - younger students and military families. Hope it helps someone out!

Resident Evil Military Coin - Geek Girl Post

Another neat little PX extra that I found.


And, as promised, here are the photos:

The Potato Girl

I am so torn with the Heidi Crowter story. On the one hand, I feel like "oh snap, that poor girl." On the other, I want to slap the mother for drawing more attention (and more meme's) to her daughter's image that she gave to the internet in the first place.

What's to be done? le sigh...

Commentary on Parental Flaming (or some jazz like that)

I am team XiaoRishu! Apparently, I need to update my chanting to "Team Spring Roll!"

Military Discharge Types

I've heard some spouses get confused about discharge, and, since my husband was in the service and discharged previously, I thought I would attempt to shed some light and give others an idea about what the paperwork means when you fulfill your contract in the military.

Is This Recovering Our Economy?

I see lots of "once in a lifetime" "best deal of the year" deals everywhere. If it's not on television or flooding my inbox, I'm getting a flyer in the mail about it. However, these "awesome deals" are usually reappearing (or getting even better) as soon as the last, limited time only, deal ended. This whole yo-yo market makes me insane, and, overall, paranoid, to purchase.