In Focus

Everyone’s dollar is getting stretched to the limit, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon. 

Bills, gas, groceries, and taxes are all increasing, and more and more people are pinching their pennies to survive. Some are going into debt just to survive. I was one of those.

It’s amazing how fast someone can accumulate debt without even trying. Realizing I was in trouble, I looked into refinancing my house to pay it off. This was a terrible idea.

The process started simple enough. I asked questions of my mortgage company and anybody local to get an idea of how refinancing and home equity lines of credit work. So I looked at pulling $20,000 for mine and mom’s debts. Preliminary numbers looked okay, but that all changed very quickly.

These people are picky. They wanted a current bill with my name on it. They didn’t like what I submitted because it didn’t have a graph. Really? I wasn’t the primary account holder on the electric bill so that wasn’t good enough either. After getting a printout of all my water usage bills for the past year, they finally accepted it.  What a pain.

Then they wanted pay stubs. My boss had to reprint all of them for me to meet their specifications. 

Then came employment verification. This turned into harassment. They wanted my employer to verify my employment. It should have been very simple. Well, they didn’t like the answers they got. They called and chewed me out because they didn’t like what the boss wrote. Then they repeatedly called the office, trying to receive verification from other employees. I sent them everything they asked for, but they wouldn’t accept it because it came from me, not the boss. It was beyond irritating. 

They wanted all this info from us, but I couldn’t get a straight answer from them. They kept sending documents that I refused to sign until I had my answers and I wanted to know what this process would cost me. 

Finally, I got a call from the hundredth random person from the mortgage company saying I was getting $8000 back after debts. The representative explained everything but come to find out they were taking $25,000 out of what I asked for. They finally sent me a breakdown in black and white. They failed to mention that my down payment assistance for the home was still active (I thought it was completed), and if I touched the equity in the house, I had to pay it back. There was no way around this. I still hadn’t agreed to anything.

They didn’t correct the amount they planned to take out of the lump sum I was to receive. And the reps don’t communicate because I had three different calls about the dollar amount and I told them it was wrong and no one would listen. I canceled the application.

It took about four more calls to explain I was not going ahead with this because it was predatory and going to cost way too much, and they didn’t even listen to me. It would have doubled my house payment and added an additional $45,000 to my current loan, which makes no sense!

I cannot wait to get away from these greedy predators. It will be just a few more years before I can transfer the house to my bank.

This is just a friendly reminder not to sign anything until you have all your questions answered and everything laid out in plain text.

As for my debts, I went a different avenue and they’ve been taken care of.