The past few weeks have been so incredibly hot and humid here that I don’t feel like doing anything but taking a cold shower and sitting around in my underwear after work. Hence the lack of updates.
I started my new job as a loan processor at American Equity Mortgage about two weeks ago. Aside from the commute (30 minutes or more one way, depending on traffic), I enjoy it. I’m learning a ton about the mortgage industry and how one goes about buying a house. I’ve still got about two weeks of training before I’ll be doing the entirety of my job unsupervised, but I have been able to do some of my work independently.
My job basically consists of looking through people’s loan applications/refinancing paperwork to make sure that they’ve got everything they need and they’re making as much money as they say they do. It’s really interesting to have access to people’s financial lives. Even the best of friends don’t know the details of each other’s finances, but I get to look into complete strangers’ records and see that Jane Smith, age 32, is a single woman working as a senior VP for a publishing company making $30,000 a month (yes, a month) who uses 4 credit cards and still owes$7,300 on her student loans, but has no other debt. Not too bad.
However, I also get to see really depressing applications. Joe and Jane Smith, ages 68 and 64, both retired and earning combined social security and pensions of about $2,400 a month. Jane works at Wal-Mart and earns a lousy $7.00 an hour to net another $400 a month for the two of them. They have 17 credit cards, all near their limits. They’re refinancing because Joe needs a root canal and they want to consolidate some credit card debt. I flip through their paperwork, knowing they will most likely die hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
Most of the time, applications don’t fall into either extreme, but they’re still interesting. I guess it’s just the nosy journalist/real estate hound in me constantly wanting to learn about people and the places they live.
