0086 - I should be sleeping

I should be sleeping, but I had Horchata. It's a delicious drink made with rice, milk, cinnamon and sugar. I've seen recipes and wanted to try it - and lo and behold, there was a little store inside the local HEB selling drinks... and they had horchata. It was even better than I had imagined it would be. But it seems that I am horchata intolerant, so here I am, very gassy, regretful, and thankful that Mike is asleep. I've been pretty miserable for the last couple of hours, and hopefully it will run its course soon so I can go to sleep.

We were turned down for a loan, which is very disappointing. I'm not used to that. But we aren't quitters, we don't give up, we just find another way around the obstacle. I did some research, and since Mike would be a first-time homebuyer, an FHA loan seemed like a good option because it is more forgiving. As much as I would like to stay local, if I get turned down by a local lender, I'm going for the big guns, so we called Quicken Loans.

The lady we spoke to was so helpful that I'm glad we did it. She explained that what's hurting Mike's credit score is the fact that he doesn't have any... he has cards, but there are no balances on them and the only way a company can determine your credit worthiness is if they see that you charge to the card and make payments. All this time I thought adding him as an authorized use to my cards was helping boost his score, but I was wrong. So we broke out an unused card and put everything we bought today on it. It will get paid off, we don't intend to carry a balance, but we need to use the card to (here's the irony...) get credit for using credit. She also told us to apply for a new card in his name, she's seen people's scores go up 100 points in a month just for that. We've been intending to get some gas cards that offer discounted gas, so instead of applying in my name, we applied for one in his. So basically, instead of 3-6 months like the local lender told us, we can try again in 30 days. They also have a program to help you get your credit in shape for a loan, if it's free we may take them up on it, otherwise we'll do it on our own.

We don't know that this is the house for us, but we don't want to lose the opportunity to find out. That said... we are really hoping this is the house for us. The idea of a historic home with all the extras that come with it, in a town that we adore, is exciting and we are imagining all kinds of things we can do with it. It's time for something to work out for us.

People went to see our property today, not the ones who seem most excited about it, but still... one of the prospects. They were disappointed in the layout. I'm afraid that everyone else will be too, because I will admit it - I was. I think if someone is willing to terrace the slope and do some work to it, or just wants a hunting property, it will sell, but it's not something most people are going to look at and be able to envision life on. Our realtor also says there are about 20 other properties in the price range with better layouts and/or easier access to utilities. I hope we don't have to go down in price... we're already losing money on it. At the same time, we want to be rid of it. It's money that's tied up in land we don't want, that we could use as a downpayment on something we do want.

We're on the cusp of something better, just have to get through this last little bit of bad luck first... and then I hope that's the end of the bad luck for a while. We've done our time.