Flippin Sweet Dude

Nathan : Me and my brother’s piano recital went very well.  I liked doing it and I thank my aunt who helped me play the piano so well.  I am glad that I started doing piano lessons and I’m glad I did that recital with my brother.  I think that we did very well.

Benjamin : My brother’s and my piano recital was yesterday.   I  played the following songs: row row row your boat,   love somebody, the Christmas parade.  I think  it went well.

We have been putting some great effort into simplifying our home and life.  Last week we bought new dishes, just 8 plates, bowls and cups.  It replaces a big pile of dishes that we never use, in fact I think we only used the same few dishes on top of the pile.   We also got rid of an entire cabinet of cups.  It has been really nice, we have enjoyed the new goods, and we made all kinds of room in our cabinets.

We have been revisiting rooms and areas that we’ve already purged, for a second wave of purging.   We have given stuff to 2nd hand stores each week, and that feels good.   Simplifying has reduced stress, made cleaning up easier and life a bit better.  I would highly recommend it to anyone.

If you have lots of different stuff to do each day, that require different clothes, like Erika and I do, they you often have half dirty clothes.  What I mean is when you have to put on a shirt and tie for 1 hour for a meeting at night, or need to put on jeans and a shirt for an hour+ dinner, or need to change shirts for a quick trip to the store.  You might not need a dress shirt the next day, or need those jeans till the weekend, but they certainly are not dirt enough to be put in the wash.

Often these clothes end up hanging off the end of the bed, or on the cedar chest.   However we found some really hand closet organizers at Ikea to help out.   Here is a picture of it.  It hangs from my closet, has 5 shelves for putting your stuff, and you can get drawers for it too.  They are less than $10, and the drawers are only a couple bucks each.

You can get the Skubb at Ikea.

Family worked on the deep cleaning the hall closet where we keep medicine, towels and sheets.  We have another pile of stuff to give to charity, 4th week in a row now, as well as a pile of towels to donate to the local animal shelter.  We are down to one change of sheets extra per bed, and two towels per person.  It is really thinned down from where we were at before.  We threw away all kinds of medicine, soaps, bug spray and sunscreen.

We had a miracle this week with our car.  The check engine light was on, for the past 3 weeks, and will not pass the safety inspection.   We are due for inspection this month.  The light turned off suddenly last weekend, after I started it.   Tuesday Erika and I were both sick, and I stayed home from work, so I took the car in and got it inspected in the middle of the day, and it passed with no problems.  The very next day, the light turned on when I was on my way to work.

The best kind of miracles are ones that you don’t have to do any work, and they still bless your life.

We recently refinanced our home to a 15 year loan, and with some luck will have our house paid for by the time the kids move out. 

My loan was purchased by Wells Fargo bank, and had been serviced there for 1+ years.  So far I’ve had these problems, and hopefully you can steer clear of them if possible.  ( or perhaps they can change the way the do business, to give much better service. )

1. They constantly call for upgrades for their services. For instance it is the 6th of January, and I’ve already had 2 phone calls this year, one to sell me mortgage insurance of some kind ( I think ), and the other to do a second mortgage loan.  These are the 2 worst ideas for a home owner.  They call back, even if you ask them not to call anymore.

2.  My local branch office is worthless. We stopped by today to ask some questions about paying extra payments on our loan, and setting up scheduled withdraws, and their loan officer/banker was worthless.  He could only give us a card with an 800 number on it and kept telling us to call it.  Thanks for the great personalized service, I’m glad I stopped by.  He had no idea about service plans, costs, options or anything.

3.  Their 800 number / Call Center / Home Office support stinks. After we left the unfriendly branch office, I called the 800 number.  After only 1 minute on hold, I had this conversation:  ( As best as I could remember )

a – I have a question about my loan, if I pay twice a month, are you going to hold the first payment and combine it with the second, and only apply the funds at the end of the month?  ( Country wide does/did this too, FYI )

wf – Well of course, we cannot apply money mid-month.

a – Why? I paid the money, and I want to reduce my principle, and pay on the interest early, it is a really good idea to get the loan paid off.

wf – I’m sorry, but as you know we can only calculate interest on a loan at the end of the month, it is impossible to calculate values mid-month, or make payment mid-month.

a – What? Are you kidding me?  If I pay principle mid-month, then my loan value goes down, and I will accrue less interest by the end of the month.  I will end up paying off my loan much earlier.   Don’t you have bi-weekly or bi-monthly plans, so people can pay more often?

wf – No we really are unable to apply money that way.  We do have bi-weekly and bi-monthly plans, but we hold all the money and only apply one payment at the end of the month.

a – Well that stinks.

wf – Do you know how difficult it would be to do the math to calculate interest on a daily basis?  This is really complex, you can only pay once a month.

a – Are you kidding me?

wf – No, sorry we cannot help.  If you want we can set up a bi-monthly or bi-weekly payment plan.  You’ll end up paying an extra payment once a year.

a – Thanks for nothing.

wf – Sure, call again if you need more help.

It is too bad that WF cannot hire one kid that took Math 1050 and have him explain how compounding interest works, and that there have been equation for calculating interest ( at any period ) for hundreds of years.   What a drag to have such poor service from my mortgage loan provider.   Perhaps I will call again, and see what other great service I can get from WF…..

I found this nice post today and thought it worth sharing.  http://beingfrugal.net/