Detour

You know, I'm not very smart. I said this a couple of blogs earlier and I meant it. I'm not sure what it is with this week, but it's been a downward spiral that I think has finally reached its fiery crash.

I spoke to a Chase financial advisor in the mortgage department. He told me that the values of my property are actually lower than previously thought, at around 61k each. I decided to go online and check the values on different websites, and the average was about 75k. Both estimates are unofficial, but how can they be so far apart?! The way the advisor was talking, I got the feeling that he didn't want me to do an official appraisal-- going so far as to call it a waste of money. Maybe he gave me shitty advice because my mortgages weren't with Chase, I dunno. Hoping for some better news, I decided to get some advice from Jimmy Gage, head of the mortgage department at the bank where I work.

Instead of good news, he basically sunk any hopes I had of buying a property this year. My credit score, which was originally at 435, went up to 535. That's it?! After over $4500 fixing up my credit, I'm still saddled with bad credit! He also stated that, even after paying off ALL my debts, I could still have a bad credit score. I left completely devastated. And what does a devastated Roger do when his plans for the future get pushed back by almost 9 more months? He eats! I went with Sha, his wife, and his little sister to a buffet and cleaned out the buffalo chicken wings, teriyaki chicken, chicken nuggets, and their Habachi beef. It was a wonderful massacre. When I told Sha about the bad news, he gave me his "I told you so" speech, as he advised me early on not to do business with banks and simply buy properties with cash. I took his advice with a grain of salt, as he had help from his family when he first started. I had no help, still have no help and, most importantly, I don't have 70k lying around to buy properties!!! Either way, Sha was wrong.

My mistake was being dumb and not understanding credit or how it works. Had I remembered the things taught to me when I was first building credit, I would have held on to my "credit-fixing money" and consulted a credit repair firm to show me how to reduce the debt while building up credit at the same time. Reducing debt means nothing. I can pay off everything that I owe and still have a low credit score because I haven't shown that I can consistently maintain on-time payments.

I decided to hire Lexington Law Firm to help me get my credit back on track. I researched and found them to be near the top of the list as far as credit education and repair is concerned. One of the major things they showed me is to challenge debts that have already been paid, so that I can take them completely off my report as if they never existed. After that, I will have good enough of a score to start building my credit up again. By the time my credit is in great shape, I should be in the position to buy again. As if all this wasn't bad enough, by the way, my backup tenants for property Chi's upstairs apartment have already found places. This means that I have to put an ad on craigslist and show it this weekend! Ugh, property Chi can suck my dick.

Bad credit. More dreadful showings of property Chi. My future of retirement delayed by 8 months or more. It's times like these that I wish Mercedes was still around. I actually looked for her number but I guess I completely got rid of it. I saw Marla walking down the street again and was actually tempted to talk to her. Sex has always been a great end to a bad day, but it looks like that won't happen tonight. Instead I'm going to watch old episodes of Beast Wars Transformers, go to sleep, wake up and get back to work. I'd like to sulk and complain and all, but I have no time for that. As I stated in an earlier blog, I've reached the limits of what I can accomplish without knowing alot. Now I have to educate myself in both credit restoration and in property purchasing so that can get better at this game. Let the detour begin.