stupid first world achievements and successes

[Squee]

Just now, yekker said:

Congrats! Are there wedding bells in your future?

No, at least not in the traditional sense.

[Silent Member]

Congrats on the house! Looking forwards to hearing those untraditional wedding bells, I take it all of watmm are invited?

[zero]

6 hours ago, Squee said:

My girlfriend and I bought a house. We just need to sign the papers and that's it. I feel like throwing up and I'm worried about one billion things.

fun times ahead! my only advice (which is probably a no brainer) is try and get all the decorating and things you want updated/fixed done within the first few months. that's when motivation levels are the highest. after 6 months or so, it's just so easy to let things slide.

[drillkicker]

Untraditional wedding bells

 

[drillkicker]

Got an appointment

[drillkicker]

A disappointment

[LimpyLoo]

31 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

A disappointment

I dare you to go to a psychothapist for 3-4 weeks straight--as a complete pisstake of course--and report back on how awful and Orwellian the experience was.

How it made your life worse, how farther out-of-tune-with-yourself it made you, how they didn't/couldn't tell you anything you didn't already know, how naive they were compared to your learn-ed cynicism, how the fact that when you wake up in the morning you're filled with dread and apprehensiveness but hey that's the *appropriate* way to feel in this world amarite...

 

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by LimpyLoo

[drillkicker]

2 hours ago, LimpyLoo said:

I dare you to go to a psychothapist for 3-4 weeks straight--as a complete pisstake of course--and report back on how awful and Orwellian the experience was.

How it made your life worse, how farther out-of-tune-with-yourself it made you, how they didn't/couldn't tell you anything you didn't already know, how naive they were compared to your learn-ed cynicism, how the fact that when you wake up in the morning you're filled with dread and apprehensiveness but hey that's the *appropriate* way to feel in this world amarite...

I just took a piss and it was pretty good

[LimpyLoo]

10 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

I just took a piss and it was pretty good

Look I was just trying to give my two cents after you voiced your distress in FWP, I thought psychotherapy could be really helpful for you, but my thoughts are officially on the record now so I'll shut up.

[drillkicker]

Oh

[drillkicker]

I spent the whole day superstoned and eating lumpia while venting about really personal shit to one of my friends.  Well worth the five hours of driving I had to do to get there.

[sidewinder]

On 9/29/2021 at 12:19 AM, Squee said:

My girlfriend and I bought a house. We just need to sign the papers and that's it. I feel like throwing up and I'm worried about one billion things.

Congrats! My girlfriend and I are looking, too. We sold our previous place in April after just two years, just didn't see it working for us long term. Planned to enjoy the summer and start looking again in autumn, but we started looking pretty aggressively already by July. We have a pretty specific wishlist as well as discriminatory tastes, so it's been a challenge. Particularly considering how expensive this city is. In the 3 months or so, we've only put in 2 offers (and lost both clearly). Kinda glad about the first, but really disappointed in the second loss which was just last week. Not too many new & interesting things coming on the market each week so it's frustrating. Too much expensive garbage, everything appealing ends up over budget. I think that can be said at any budget unfortunately. Very tempted by another one we saw this weekend, both of us fell in love with it, but it falls short in two areas that are pretty high on our wishlist (garage/driveway space and kitchen size/functionality). Otherwise stunning.

I was about to post this in First World Problems but since you mentioned buying a house here, only felt appropriate. 

[Squee]

9 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Congrats! My girlfriend and I are looking, too. We sold our previous place in April after just two years, just didn't see it working for us long term. Planned to enjoy the summer and start looking again in autumn, but we started looking pretty aggressively already by July. We have a pretty specific wishlist as well as discriminatory tastes, so it's been a challenge. Particularly considering how expensive this city is. In the 3 months or so, we've only put in 2 offers (and lost both clearly). Kinda glad about the first, but really disappointed in the second loss which was just last week. Not too many new & interesting things coming on the market each week so it's frustrating. Too much expensive garbage, everything appealing ends up over budget. I think that can be said at any budget unfortunately. Very tempted by another one we saw this weekend, both of us fell in love with it, but it falls short in two areas that are pretty high on our wishlist (garage/driveway space and kitchen size/functionality). Otherwise stunning.

I was about to post this in First World Problems but since you mentioned buying a house here, only felt appropriate. 

Yeah, we've been in the exact same situation. Oh, and we haven't signed the papers yet because of our bank, but I'll tell that story further down.
But yeah, we've only been really interested in two houses. One was right next to a forest, but behind that forest was the highway. I was worried that once the leaves on the trees would fall we would be living in a noisy hell hole, which would be extremely problematic for me because of my job. So yeah, we have a bunch of requirements as well - one being that we both need to be able to work from home and that I need to be able to build a studio. 

I've been worried about the market as well. The prices are ridiculous. First time buyers have no chance of getting their hands on a house right now and from the looks of it the economy is doing too well either, so I'm worried that everything will collapse the moment we sign the papers.

But we haven't signed the papers yet. Our bank had promised us a loan with repayment freedom and then when we had been told that the current owner of the house wanted us to buy it the bank said, "oh no no no, we can't do that". Problem is that 2020 was fucking tough on my girlfriend's income due to COVID-19, so our idea of repayment freedom went out the window and our banker said that all in all it would cost us around $3200 per month. Oh, and we also had to throw in ALL of our savings and once that was done we were still $40500 short of getting the loan we wanted.
This shocked us quite a bit, so we sat down and tried to figure out what else we could do. We're not quite sure if I our bank tried to fuck us over what, but we've come up with a whole different approach which can easily give us a loan with repayment freedom for +10 years. It requires us to sell our current house first and still throw in a bunch of money but instead of paying $3200 per month we would instead pay $1500.

So in about an hour and a half I'll talk to realtor, tell him our situation and ask him if we can put up our house for sale now and then wait another month before taking over the new house.

I'm shitting my pants already.

[sidewinder]

7 hours ago, Squee said:

Yeah, we've been in the exact same situation. Oh, and we haven't signed the papers yet because of our bank, but I'll tell that story further down.
But yeah, we've only been really interested in two houses. One was right next to a forest, but behind that forest was the highway. I was worried that once the leaves on the trees would fall we would be living in a noisy hell hole, which would be extremely problematic for me because of my job. So yeah, we have a bunch of requirements as well - one being that we both need to be able to work from home and that I need to be able to build a studio. 

I've been worried about the market as well. The prices are ridiculous. First time buyers have no chance of getting their hands on a house right now and from the looks of it the economy is doing too well either, so I'm worried that everything will collapse the moment we sign the papers.

But we haven't signed the papers yet. Our bank had promised us a loan with repayment freedom and then when we had been told that the current owner of the house wanted us to buy it the bank said, "oh no no no, we can't do that". Problem is that 2020 was fucking tough on my girlfriend's income due to COVID-19, so our idea of repayment freedom went out the window and our banker said that all in all it would cost us around $3200 per month. Oh, and we also had to throw in ALL of our savings and once that was done we were still $40500 short of getting the loan we wanted.
This shocked us quite a bit, so we sat down and tried to figure out what else we could do. We're not quite sure if I our bank tried to fuck us over what, but we've come up with a whole different approach which can easily give us a loan with repayment freedom for +10 years. It requires us to sell our current house first and still throw in a bunch of money but instead of paying $3200 per month we would instead pay $1500.

So in about an hour and a half I'll talk to realtor, tell him our situation and ask him if we can put up our house for sale now and then wait another month before taking over the new house.

I'm shitting my pants already.

Oof, that sounds rough. Based on the market here we knew we had to sell our house first, in order to have money in our pockets and make a competitive offer with enough cash down (20% required). My goal, until this last offer, has been to keep some savings that we can use for remodeling, landscaping, etc. that may need doing immediately, but we've reevaluated and started shopping upmarket a bit because we just can't find what we need in our initial budget. So that means, like you, throwing everything we have into it (ideally keeping $5k so we're not totally cash-less), and accepting a higher payment. But that also means we need a house that needs less work, so it kind of balances out. We don't really want to do that much work anyway. Kitchen, bath, landscaping, sure, but we're not interesting in redoing an entire house. We're both working from home as well. My girlfriend's income was also impacted by COVID, as well as a broken wrist she suffered in 2019. Hasn't been easy – she didn't make that much to begin with. 

Do you think the sellers would be willing to wait until you sell your current house? Here that would be nearly impossible – most homes sell within a week of listing with multiple offers. If a potential buyer said they needed time to sell their home, the sellers would just accept the next offer.

What is "repayment freedom" btw? I imagine you're in the UK, and that's not a term I'm familiar with in the US. 

 

[ambermonk]

1. I completed another oil change on my car, plus replaced the air filter for the first time ever. Now it runs smoother and doesn't smell like old dish soap in the inside.

2. I bought my first Nintendo Switch two days ago just in time for Metroid Dread. Still have a ways to go til completing the game though.

3. The creator of the game Duskers DM'd me on Reddit thanking me for a post award.

[Squee]

On 10/5/2021 at 7:21 PM, sidewinder said:

What is "repayment freedom" btw? I imagine you're in the UK, and that's not a term I'm familiar with in the US. 

 

"Repayment freedom" is a thing in Denmark where if you pay +40% of the house up front you get access to a wide variety of different loan types that are exceptionally cheap. It also mean that you're not paying anything off of your loan, but on the other hand you can put money aside and dump that on your loan whenever you feel like it. You can get these types of loans for 10-30 years and that was what we were aiming for.

And even though what I'm about to say sounds like a first world problem it actually turned into a first world achievement.

My girlfriend and I actually ended up signing the papers for the house. After signing the papers you have 6 days to change your mind. If you change your mind you have  to pay 1% of what the house costs - unless your lawyer finds something iffy about the house. For every minute that went by I felt progressively worse. It was so much money and we were both slowly changing our minds. We had even contacted a different bank to find out if they could give us a better offer than our current bank and they couldn't. I didn't sleep for like 4 days and woke up feeling like shit.

Five days after we had signed the papers our lawyer called and said, "So, listen... I've just been told that the house is actually 30-35 square meters smaller than what is listed in the papers. Also, the two rooms you two were planning on using as your studios aren't listed in the papers either so the municipality can actually demand that you tear down those rooms if they find out".
The realtor said that it was a typo. Ha!

And that was our ticket out of the deal. We told him "we want out" and he told the realtor. So we are no longer buying that house. Phew.

[sidewinder]

6 hours ago, Squee said:

"Repayment freedom" is a thing in Denmark where if you pay +40% of the house up front you get access to a wide variety of different loan types that are exceptionally cheap. It also mean that you're not paying anything off of your loan, but on the other hand you can put money aside and dump that on your loan whenever you feel like it. You can get these types of loans for 10-30 years and that was what we were aiming for.

And even though what I'm about to say sounds like a first world problem it actually turned into a first world achievement.

My girlfriend and I actually ended up signing the papers for the house. After signing the papers you have 6 days to change your mind. If you change your mind you have  to pay 1% of what the house costs - unless your lawyer finds something iffy about the house. For every minute that went by I felt progressively worse. It was so much money and we were both slowly changing our minds. We had even contacted a different bank to find out if they could give us a better offer than our current bank and they couldn't. I didn't sleep for like 4 days and woke up feeling like shit.

Five days after we had signed the papers our lawyer called and said, "So, listen... I've just been told that the house is actually 30-35 square meters smaller than what is listed in the papers. Also, the two rooms you two were planning on using as your studios aren't listed in the papers either so the municipality can actually demand that you tear down those rooms if they find out".
The realtor said that it was a typo. Ha!

And that was our ticket out of the deal. We told him "we want out" and he told the realtor. So we are no longer buying that house. Phew.

Wow! I agree that qualifies as an achievement and not a FWP. I hate that feeling of regret after a purchase, especially something soooooo expensive. I'm really glad you had the option to think about it for 6 days and back out of the deal. The fact your lawyer found those issues was a life-saver! It would really suck to get into it knowing you weren't feeling good about it. I did that with my last house — my girlfriend and I saw a few things, and due to time constraints we agreed to buy a house that seemed to have everything we needed, but I had a feeling it was too small and would make me a little claustrophobic. I had some sleepless nights, upset stomach, etc. but we went through with it and I didn't really express my feelings. Two years later, we sold it. 1% is not a small amount of money, so I'm glad it worked out without you having to lose that. Hope you find something you really love.

Since my last post, we ended up putting an offer on the house I mentioned, after initially saying we would pass. We ended up losing that offer, coming in 2nd out of 6 offers ($10k short). However, we saw a couple other homes later that week that we really liked, especially the 2nd. The listing appeared Thursday morning last week, I immediately contacted my agent to schedule a showing (without even asking my girlfriend since I knew she'd like it), and we were able to see it that evening. We fell in love with it immediately, it's exactly the style we were looking for (well one of them, we had a few in mind), and has a lot of tasteful updates including electric and plumbing. We put an offer together that night, to submit early in hopes the sellers would review and accept it ahead of the scheduled review date 5 days later. They accepted our offer the next day, so we are under contract and scheduled to close November 1st. The main thing I'm awaiting and nervous about now is the appraisal, which was done yesterday. We won't hear back until next week, keeping my fingers crossed that it appraises at the price we're paying otherwise we have to pay the difference...somehow. I've already paid $50k in non-refundable earnest money to the seller. So, I'm a little nervous for that, but really love the house and we're really excited to move in. If I'd change anything I'd have a slightly bigger yard and garage, but there's enough for the dog and to have a vegetable garden and flower beds. There's always compromise no matter the budget.

[ambermonk]

Kind of a FWP/FWAS mix, but my left wisdom teeth are finally out as of four hours ago. Wondering when the bleeding will stop, but the pain meds seem to be working at least.

[user]

Experienced so many random acts of kindness the past weeks, fucking warms the heart.  

[Squee]

23 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Since my last post, we ended up putting an offer on the house I mentioned, after initially saying we would pass. We ended up losing that offer, coming in 2nd out of 6 offers ($10k short). However, we saw a couple other homes later that week that we really liked, especially the 2nd. The listing appeared Thursday morning last week, I immediately contacted my agent to schedule a showing (without even asking my girlfriend since I knew she'd like it), and we were able to see it that evening. We fell in love with it immediately, it's exactly the style we were looking for (well one of them, we had a few in mind), and has a lot of tasteful updates including electric and plumbing. We put an offer together that night, to submit early in hopes the sellers would review and accept it ahead of the scheduled review date 5 days later. They accepted our offer the next day, so we are under contract and scheduled to close November 1st. The main thing I'm awaiting and nervous about now is the appraisal, which was done yesterday. We won't hear back until next week, keeping my fingers crossed that it appraises at the price we're paying otherwise we have to pay the difference...somehow. I've already paid $50k in non-refundable earnest money to the seller. So, I'm a little nervous for that, but really love the house and we're really excited to move in. If I'd change anything I'd have a slightly bigger yard and garage, but there's enough for the dog and to have a vegetable garden and flower beds. There's always compromise no matter the budget.

Sounds awesome! What I've figured out is that if you don't get the house you were hoping for it's simply because you weren't meant to and something awaits right around the corner.
We're going to take a break looking at new places because this whole thing really wore us down.

[chenGOD]

On 10/5/2021 at 5:09 AM, Squee said:

all in all it would cost us around $3200 per month. Oh, and we also had to throw in ALL of our savings and once that was done we were still $40500 short of getting the loan we wanted.

Jesus fuck, $3200 a month is ridiculous. 
And 40k short of the loan you wanted? What fucking kind of system are they running in Denmark?

We bought in 2019, put down just over $40K and ended up with payments of like $2600 a month which is still kind of extortionate. 
 

Now sure, Ottawa isn’t a shiny metropolis like Copenhagen, but fuck, housing must be insane over there. 

[Squee]

9 hours ago, chenGOD said:

Jesus fuck, $3200 a month is ridiculous. 
And 40k short of the loan you wanted? What fucking kind of system are they running in Denmark?

We bought in 2019, put down just over $40K and ended up with payments of like $2600 a month which is still kind of extortionate. 
 

Now sure, Ottawa isn’t a shiny metropolis like Copenhagen, but fuck, housing must be insane over there. 

It's  because both my gf and I are self-employed. If we had had "normal" jobs it wouldn't have been a problem and it would have been a lot cheaper. But when you're  self-employed you're like this yucky stain on society that one knows how to handle. So when you make your own money you're automatcally a liability because you can't 100% guarantee what you'll make next month, so in order to make sure the bank doesn't end up with a client who can't pay up they have to put the price up. And as mentioned earlier, my gf's 2020 was a mess due to the corona virus. She made about half of what she usually makes which the bank couldn't see beyond and I don't blame them. People forget that a bank is as much a business as any other.

So yeah, I don't blame anyone at all though at one point I thought it was super unfair and I felt we were being steamrolled, but I also totally understand why.

[chenGOD]

@Squee that kind of makes sense but still, $3200 a month is nutso for a mortgage (imho bbq)
Anyhow glad you turned your FWP into a FWS!

[Squee]

4 hours ago, chenGOD said:

@Squee that kind of makes sense but still, $3200 a month is nutso for a mortgage (imho bbq)
Anyhow glad you turned your FWP into a FWS!

Ah right, the $3200 was with everything included - electricity, water, heating etc.

[sidewinder]

Y'all definitely don't want to know what my mortgage will be, without utilities.  It's a good thing the house doesn't really need any immediate work.

On 10/16/2021 at 3:55 PM, Squee said:

We're going to take a break looking at new places because this whole thing really wore us down.

We took a 2.5-week break at the beginning of September, it was incredibly helpful to reduce stress and recalibrate.