Wednesday bullet point Weecap

Dear Internets,

• Both my grandmother and one two of my best friends were in car accidents yesterday. Their cars are totaled and they are sore, but otherwise they're fine. I feel so thankful that we live in an era of relatively safe cars. Wear your seat belts Internets!
• Wedding plans are chugging right along. The nice part of the whole "Wedding Industry Machine" is that it has created a really clear process that just sort of sucks you along until you somehow show up on your wedding day with everything done. Sure, going along with what the Wedding Industry says can leave you thousands of dollars poorer, but for the super disorganized like myself their "you must do Thing 1 now, and Thing 2 precisely 17 minutes after Thing 1" drill sergeant approach can be really helpful. I don't know how many of their rules or recommendations I'll actually follow, but their 93 page checklists and constant nagging help me feel more confident that I'm not going to forget to hire an officiant or something. (Now if only I could build this sort of structure into my day-to-day life...)
  
• I need a good tailor if anyone has (local) recommendations.
• I am procrastinating about everything lately: from health stuff to updating the sidebars in both of my blogs, to cleaning out my car and taking stuff to Goodwill. I know I just need to sit down and make a list of everything I need to do and start tackling things one by one, but I'm just feeling a little buried.
• Speaking of buried, I'm afraid to even look at my Google Reader. NaBloPoMo is totally overwhelming me and I'm not even participating.
• For the past few days, I kept thinking I was coming down with swine flu. I'm pretty sure it's actually a combination of stress and allergies. Yay for immune systems!

I hope your week is going well Internets. I promise I'll tackle my feed reader... soon...

Love,
Jane

Things that make me say "whee!"

Dear Internets,

Achilles, Bailey and I spent the weekend in Corpus visiting an old friend of mine from junior high. The trip was lovely. We stayed at a dog friendly hotel on the beach, so we had a lot of time just to hang out and play in the water and see the sights. The Texas coast is much cleaner than it used to be.

You know how after you haven't eaten for a while, and you get really, really hungry, the food tastes even better than normal? I think that was what happened with the vacation. It had been an awfully long time since I had two days off in a row, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

In other news, I just paid off my car loan. Now my only consumer loan debt is my last (fairly smallish) student loan, which has a fixed interest rate of 2.85%. I can live with that!

Hope your week is also off to a good start.

Love always,
Jane

Roommates

Dear Internets,

What are your thoughts on roommates? I have lived alone by choice since college graduation. Despite a sometimes tight budget, I haven't really considered getting a roommate. But... a friend just asked me if she could stay with me for three or four months until she can move into a house with another friend.

I am wary of roommates, mostly because I'm terrible at living with other people. During college, I tried living with a roommate three times. My first roommate was essentially a stranger (we technically met each other while visiting the college as high school seniors, but didn't really get to know each other until we lived together our freshman year in the dorm). The roommate relationship was OK, mostly because she was super easygoing. (I was a terrible roommate - somewhat messy, depressed and weird, boyfriend around all the time, etc.) We kept in touch off and on after we moved out of the dorm, but lost touch after I transferred to a different school.

My second roommate was my high school best friend (now forever known as Psycho Ex-Roommate). She was bipolar/borderline personality with a boyfriend who was over all the time; I was stubborn yet conflict-avoidant and going through a messy breakup. The living situation (and the last remaining shreds of our friendship) ended with her throwing a rock through my living room window. We don't speak.

My third roommate was a coworker. She was a neat freak, so I did my absolute best to curb my messy tendencies. She was mostly good-natured about my few lapses (including unknowingly tracking tar all over the apartment), and I did my best to be a considerate roommate. She did have a lot of friends stay over on our couch (including my ex-boyfriend), but overall, we got along OK. Although neither one of us wanted to renew our lease, we're still friendly.

I thought I was done with my roommate days, but I guess I'm considering it again. I don't know if I want to live with another roommate, though, even for a few months. My friend has cats; I'm allergic. She has told me more than once how annoyed she gets by roommates with boyfriends; I have one of those as well. I'm fairly sure her clothes collection (she has more than will fit into her 10'X6' walk-in closet) will not fit into the tiny closets in my condo. While I like fish, I'm not sure her 100 gallon aquarium will fit in my tiny living room, and it's definitely too heavy for the flooring upstairs. Also, I have a history of alienating roommates, and don't want to jeopardize our friendship.

On the other hand, I don't want her to be in a tight spot, and I wouldn't mind a little more flexibility in my budget for a few months. But I think I still have to tell her no. Does that make me a terrible person? Be honest, Internets.

Love ya,
Jane

Lions and Tigers and Credit Bureaus (oh my!)

[A warning to my lovely, sweet readers... This is a bit of a rant. While I don't want to offend anyone by getting too political, I figured I should get this off my chest - I was so caught up in thinking about this issue that I accidentally wore my shirt inside out to work today. (Bill and Jim would be so ashamed!) If you are feeling non-political this morning, feel free to go read about unicorns instead. XOXO, Jane]

Dear VantageScore,

You are officially on my poop list. I check my credit report three times a year, once from each bureau. Every so often, I pay $6 to see my credit score (and the credit bureau's "interpretation" of my credit score). Yesterday, when I pulled my report from AnnualCreditReport.com, I figured I'd check out my credit score on the new VantageScore model.

Now, I suppose I should mention that I am not actually angry about this new scoring model on my own behalf. I'm not planning on applying for credit any time soon, and my score was fine anyway, so I have nothing really to worry about. But there are a few things that bugged me, VantageScore, and I'm pretty sure that you are ageist, classist, and (after a little research) quite possibly racist as well. Also, I think you hate single people.

Sigh. Where to begin?

(From report)

"Top Negative Factors Affecting Jane's Score:

1) The average loan amount across open, recently reported real estate accounts, such as a mortgage, is too low. Having low loan amounts has a negative impact on your credit score.

Now VantageGuard, that just offends me. I bought my condo by myself*. Sure, I would have liked to buy one of those beautiful condos in a high rise downtown, but I knew I couldn't afford a huge mortgage payment with my current income. Does having an affordable housing payment make me a riskier borrower? I can't think of a logical reason why.

I can, however, think of a logical reason why this is the top negative factor on my credit report. By heavily weighting mortgage information (or lack thereof) in determining a person's credit score, VantageScore provides a way for lenders to legally justify charging young, single, or poor borrowers higher interest rates** on auto loans, credit cards, personal loans, and mortgages without violating the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (or other anti-discrimination laws), even if these borrowers have previously used credit responsibly. After all, what groups tend to take out smaller mortgages (or not have mortgages at all)?

2) The balance amount paid down across your open real estate accounts, such as a mortgage, is too low. Paying down the balances on your real estate accounts can have a positive impact on your credit score.

Fair enough, I suppose. I've only had my mortgage for a year. But again, why is there so much weight placed on homeownership? I wonder.

3) Your report shows that the available credit across your open, recently reported revolving accounts, such as a credit card, is too low. Having low available credit amounts on revolving accounts has a negative impact on your credit score."

Um, VantageScore, now you're just smoking crack (oh yes I did go all 1995 on you!)(Oooh! I did it again!). I calculated my percent of available credit used across all of my available credit lines (based on the balances on the report YOU provided), and I only used 2.5% of the credit available to me this month. I went back a few months, and my credit used never went over 3% of what's available. Even on a single card, I never used more than 10% of what was available to me.

Now, I know you use "complex, proprietary algorithms" to calculate my score (best not to get me started on how this completely undermines Truth in Lending), but how does using 2.5% of my available credit make me look irresponsible? Shouldn't it all be based on how much (or little) I use my cards? Why are you punishing me for having lower-than-average credit limits?

Wait a second... "Experts" recommend that credit limits be proportionate to income. Silly me, VantageScore. We all know that income in the U.S. is evenly distributed across different age, race, and gender groups.

OK, OK, VantageScore, I will tone down the sarcasm. It's not very nice of me.

According to the credit bureaus that created you, you were developed, VantageScore, to address problems with the more common FICO score, such as score variability between different credit bureaus, non-predictive scores for borrowers with limited credit history, and consumer difficulty in understanding credit scores. (Ha.)(Sorry, couldn't help it.) Allegedly, your creation was not just an attempt to get a piece of FICO's cash cow and suck up to banks by offering up a convenient scapegoat for the mortgage crisis.

Why should I be so upset that you provide credit scores that (essentially) factor in a person's income (and/or net worth)? Well, credit scores are generally the main factor in determining the interest rate a borrower is charged when s/he gets a loan. Thus, if more lenders begin to use VantageScore, people who are not older, white, and married will have to pay higher interest rates to borrow money. Not particularly fair in my book.

See you later, VantageScore. I'm off to go turn this into a letter to my congressman.

Not your friend,
Jane

*Remind me someday to write a love letter to the State of Texas for requiring me to sign all my mortgage paperwork as "Jane X____, A Single Woman." Gotta love community property states! (And I thought my cousins were bad.) I asked my mortgage officer if I could cross out "A Single Woman" and write "Spinst-ah Witch!" He was not amused.

**Despite (somewhat) popular misconception, credit scores are not generally used by lenders as the sole means of determining who does or does get loans, how much money is issued to a borrower, or if the borrower has the means to pay back a loan. (That is what banks hire loan officers to do.) Rather, one of lenders' main uses for credit scores is to set normalized (i.e. fair, non-discriminatory) interest rates.

According to a loan officer at my credit union, lenders used to set interest rates based on a borrower's "relationship" with the lender. (You can imagine how that would lead to some pretty icky rate-setting practices.) If you're a nerd like me, here is a really interesting article from PBS) about the history of credit scores.

Shopping

Dear Internet,

Please stop making it so easy for me to buy things... Sure, I don't go overboard with the *spending*, but I'm beginning to think even the looking is becoming problematic.

Sigh...

-Jane

Oh the appliances you'll buy...

Dear Washing Machine,

Enough with the strange noises and weird attitude. I know about Murphy's Law and all, but three (expensive) appliances breaking in less than six months, despite semi-consistent maintenance? That's just ridonkulous.

Yours (FOREVER, DAMMIT),
Jane

It's not Enabling, it's Helping

Dear Closet,

As you know, I've been doing a lot of work to clean you out and pare you down to the bare essentials. Race t-shirt from 2003? Out! Skirt that, while cute, only matches that one shirt that never really fit me that well in the first place? Both gone! Non-moisture-wicking athletic socks? They get the boot!*

You may also know from speaking with my debit card that I've been trying to cut back on my spending so that I can afford things like annoying special condo fees. I've been doing pretty well.

However... You know how sometimes you may not need new clothes, but you kind of need new clothes? I think this is one of those times. I bought a couple of surprisingly cute dresses that were on super-sale at Target (I guess they are not being sold online, so unfortunately I can't link to pictures - but they are really cute), and my appetite has been whetted. The dresses themselves will probably require me to buy a new slip, and it's probably time to buy some cute, work-appropriate shoes for summer too. So a little extra shopping while I'm at it wouldn't be too terribly bad, right?

Don't worry Closet. You're not enabling me. You're just giving me the space I need to grow**.

XOXO,
Jane

*Hardy har...
**Ok, no more puns, I promise.

A-holes, cupcakes, and bicycles.... Oh my!

Dear Internets,

The past couple of days have provided a weird mix of ups and downs.

On the one hand, my condo association are a bunch of a-holes (in addition to raising my fees, they informed me that my door is "in violation of community standards"; the previous owners painted it to match all the other doors in the community, when *obviously* it should have matched the windows)(of course, this is the first I've heard about any of it), my property taxes are going up 14%, and I'm soooooorrrre from all of the cycling I've been doing.

On the other hand, people have been giving me random small gifts like framed pictures and unicorns and cupcakes, and my triathlon times are on track to kick my former manager's rear.

On the third hand, I started a second job, which should help with the budget but cut into my free time. I don't think it'll be too terribly hard, though.

Anyway, I hope you're having a great weekend!

Love ya!
Jane

Budget Woes

Dear Condo Association,

When you charge a large mandatory "special fee" every year, I really feel that you should not be allowed to tell my Realtor that association dues have not gone up in the past 7 years. This makes me very sad, and also very broke. I guess my globe trotting itch will have to wait until next year to be scratched.

Depressed-ly yours,
Jane

It's the economy, stupids

Dear Media,

Please stop trying to make me care about preachers and imaginary bombs and red phones... In case you haven't heard, we have a little bit of a WAR going on, gas is a zillion dollars a barrel, and lots and lots of people are losing their homes.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Jane