crazy closing story #1

I don't know how many of you knew this, but closing on a house is freaking expensive. Silly naive little me thought that if the sellers were covering the closing costs then that meant that they were... well... covered. Meaning A) you could no longer see them because they were underneath something, B) they had been topped with cheese at Waffle House, or C) they were taken care of. Mostly I assumed it was C. So imagine my shock, horror and dismay when I find that not only do we have to have money at closing (on top of what we paid for the home inspection (cause we had to pay for that too, fyi)), we have to have A LOT of money at closing. As in THOUSANDS of dollars. But Joe handles the money stuff in our little family, and he assured me that we would indeed have the necessary thousands (THOUSANDS) no sweat.

Joe was wrong.

Call it what you will... miscalculation, a mathematical error, ill-advised spending, bad timing... but we ended up a few hundred short. Fortunately we realized this ahead of time and I have a very cool sister-in-law who agreed to loan us the money until Joe got his next paycheck (at which time we will of course be rolling in dough). Money was transferred, problem was solved. Right?

Of course not, 'cause I'm writing a blog entry about it.

Due to some kind of mental issue on the part of the people who work at sister-in-law's bank, the "next day" transfer won't show up in our account until Monday. Which, for those who are keeping track, is 3 days after closing. So that doesn't so much work.

So to make a long story slightly shorter and get to the punch line... wanna know where Joe is right now? At 9:15pm the night before we close? Driving to Atlanta. To get a check from the same sister-in-law. Which we will then attempt to cash and deposit at 8:30am tomorrow, get a cashier's check for the amount we owe at closing, and hightail it to said closing at 9am.

Cause we live life on the edge, folks.