Tag Archives: finance

The Quickening…

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The problem with having bought a house at the height of the real estate boom in 2007 while also being responsible enough to keep up with all the necessary payments is that you’re metric shit loads of cash underwater on the mortgage and no self-respecting bank wants to refinance a loan for a mortgagee who’s not teetering on the brink of foreclosure or bankruptcy. In other words, you have to be the proud owner of a “troubled asset” to qualify for many of the refinance options available. Alternately for a standard refinance through most conventional avenues, you’ve got to owe less than 80% of the value of the property. Without delving too deeply into my finances, I’ll go ahead quickenand say I owe way, way more than 80% of the home’s current market value. Because I played by the rules of the game, didn’t skip payments, and avoided becoming a general deadbeat, my options had mostly winnowed down to one: Sit down, shut up, and take it like a man.

While sitting at home on a snowy weekday, I saw a commercial for Quicken’s brand of mortgages. I don’t remember what I was trying to avoid doing, but whatever it was made spending time on the phone with another bank that was probably going to tell me no seem like a good idea by comparison. Surprisingly, a couple of phone calls, a few emails, and a dozen uploaded documents later, I’d locked in a rate and was preliminary approval on a refinance that decreased the life of the loan and lowered by interest rate (and monthly payment) significantly.

The whole process went from first contact to closing in just a hair over 30 days. That’s not bad for something any number of the large national lenders told me simply couldn’t be done. I’m not getting a dime for shilling for Quicken Loans based in this post. I’m doing it because I had a first class experience with them and realize that some of you might just be in the same boat I was. If that’s you, it’s well worth your time to give them a call and see if they can work some financial black magic for you too.

Gone secesh…

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I hesitate to say the idea of Western Maryland seceding from the rest of the state has started to gain traction, but it has recently garnered some interest from at least one of the local Baltimore newscasts. I’m a contrarian by nature and generally tend to come reverse2down on the side of rebels, troublemakers, and malcontents, but on the issue of a free and independent Western Maryland, I’m not sure the concept is fully baked.

The idea of a small, less obtrusive government sounds delightful (and in line with my own general beliefs about the just and proper role of the state), but there are issues no one is discussing. They’re the issues of how such a new state would raise revenue and on what its economy would be based. Maryland writ large has tax money flowing from the defense industry and federal government, the Port of Baltimore, financial services, and yes, agriculture, aquaculture, and a host of other large and small businesses. I have to ask what are the equivalent economic drivers to make Western Maryland viable as an independent state? Tourism, agriculture, and scenic beauty aren’t going to get the job done by themselves. Ask Allegany County how well the “tourism gambit” has worked out for them over the last 30 years.

The state has an obligation to provide a host of public services – police, education, infrastructure, protection of natural resources, to name a handful. Until those who seek to cleave off the western five counties of the state present a clear plan for how they will govern rather than simply offer the complaint that “Annapolis doesn’t listen to us,” I can’t even consider the idea, let alone endorse it.

But despite my misgivings about this plan, it comes down to this: Even when the fortunes of work and responsibilities led me far afield, I’ve always considered myself a Marylander, a loyal son of the Old Line State. I’ve risen and slept my entire life under the quartered banner of Calvert and Crossland. I’ve been duly awed by the majesty of the old Wye Oak and rightly impressed by the tenacity of the St. Mary’s settlers who carved their colony out of Maryland’s primeval wilderness on the lower shores of the Chesapeake. Anyone who wants to throw that legacy over the side will need to make an awfully compelling argument for why 382 years of history should be turned on its ear.

To my brethren in Western Maryland, all I can say is we hear your cry on the Eastern Shore. They hear it in southern Maryland too. Annapolis no more listens to us than it does to you… but I can’t quite bring myself around to thinking the best we can do is slice off the three corners of the state and leave them to their own devices. Would it not better serve us all to unite the three rural sections of this state against the middle rather than continuing to let the middle play us off one against the other?

As for me, I’d rather go down fighting under the cross bottony than have the colors of any other state, old or new, raised above my head.