Having a life philosophy of any kind is pointless unless it works. Anyone can make up philosophy and claim it’s the greatest, but if there are no successes attributed to the philosophy, then the claim carries no weight.
In the last post, I explored how having Boredom as my Goal taught me how to enjoy boring tasks that in turn allowed me to complete a long-running but unachievable passion project. In this one, I’d like to explore another accomplishment and how I feel Boredom helped to complete the project.
This week's topic is buying a home. Since I moved to Los Angeles 8 years ago, I've been a renter. The high cost of home ownership in coastal SoCal has always been a deterrent. Becoming a homeowner again has always been a desire but never a top priority. There has always been something more important to apply focus.
Recently, in the middle of starting this new philosophy, my wife’s desire to become a homeowner peaked. That finally kicked us into gear. To her credit, she did the bulk of the upfront work finding the right property while I set my sights on preparing our finances. Since this isn't a story about finding the right home, long story short, we found a home. For this area of town, cash offers are king, and every listing ends up in a bidding war. Contrary to that, not only were we able to have an offer accepted without a bidding war, we were also able to negotiate a lower price than the original list price — unheard of in this region.
The side effect of our negotiated lower price was that the listing agent played hardball the entire time. After accepting our offer, he had received a cash offer for more. He couldn't force us out due to our signed contract, but that didn't stop him from attempting every legal means possible.
The story now comes back to being Bored. The last time I had to deal with the banks on a new mortgage was back in 2006 when banks were giving away free money to anyone with a pulse. I knew things were more thorough these days, so I expected more legwork. Unfortunately, I greatly underestimated how much legwork was required. The bank started digging. And digging. And digging. Every day was a new batch of documents they wanted to see. I didn’t even realize my finances were this complicated. In the end, I had sent over 108 documents to one bank (who rejected us in the end) and 40 documents to another (who ended up approving us).
It was insane and exhausting. Mind-numbing and frustrating. But it was possible. The amount of time required to pull together this many documents is incomprehensible. Some records were available online, and some needed calls to a financial institute. Some required digging through my unorganized document box. It was endless, every single night. And in truth, we missed some dates in our contract. You can bet top dollar the listing agent immediately issued a Notice to Perform, but we were able to scramble to close things out in time.
Combining the amount of legwork required to go through the loan process with our lifestyle before being time-starved and it becomes evident to me there was no way I could have stayed on top of the document requests. By embracing Boredom, it freed up my plate both in terms of energy and time. It gave me plenty of breathing room to handle a scramble. If I didn’t have that breathing room, I’m sure we wouldn’t be living in the house we currently live in now. We might still be looking for a home or might have just given up like so many of our peers. It’s possible we would be renting if not for Boredom is my Goal. Paying someone else’s mortgage and missing out on a considerable net worth builder and tax advantage and still trying to build our home in someone else’s house.
(Written 2019.01.12)
In the last post, I explored how having Boredom as my Goal taught me how to enjoy boring tasks that in turn allowed me to complete a long-running but unachievable passion project. In this one, I’d like to explore another accomplishment and how I feel Boredom helped to complete the project.
This week's topic is buying a home. Since I moved to Los Angeles 8 years ago, I've been a renter. The high cost of home ownership in coastal SoCal has always been a deterrent. Becoming a homeowner again has always been a desire but never a top priority. There has always been something more important to apply focus.
Recently, in the middle of starting this new philosophy, my wife’s desire to become a homeowner peaked. That finally kicked us into gear. To her credit, she did the bulk of the upfront work finding the right property while I set my sights on preparing our finances. Since this isn't a story about finding the right home, long story short, we found a home. For this area of town, cash offers are king, and every listing ends up in a bidding war. Contrary to that, not only were we able to have an offer accepted without a bidding war, we were also able to negotiate a lower price than the original list price — unheard of in this region.
The side effect of our negotiated lower price was that the listing agent played hardball the entire time. After accepting our offer, he had received a cash offer for more. He couldn't force us out due to our signed contract, but that didn't stop him from attempting every legal means possible.
The story now comes back to being Bored. The last time I had to deal with the banks on a new mortgage was back in 2006 when banks were giving away free money to anyone with a pulse. I knew things were more thorough these days, so I expected more legwork. Unfortunately, I greatly underestimated how much legwork was required. The bank started digging. And digging. And digging. Every day was a new batch of documents they wanted to see. I didn’t even realize my finances were this complicated. In the end, I had sent over 108 documents to one bank (who rejected us in the end) and 40 documents to another (who ended up approving us).
It was insane and exhausting. Mind-numbing and frustrating. But it was possible. The amount of time required to pull together this many documents is incomprehensible. Some records were available online, and some needed calls to a financial institute. Some required digging through my unorganized document box. It was endless, every single night. And in truth, we missed some dates in our contract. You can bet top dollar the listing agent immediately issued a Notice to Perform, but we were able to scramble to close things out in time.
Combining the amount of legwork required to go through the loan process with our lifestyle before being time-starved and it becomes evident to me there was no way I could have stayed on top of the document requests. By embracing Boredom, it freed up my plate both in terms of energy and time. It gave me plenty of breathing room to handle a scramble. If I didn’t have that breathing room, I’m sure we wouldn’t be living in the house we currently live in now. We might still be looking for a home or might have just given up like so many of our peers. It’s possible we would be renting if not for Boredom is my Goal. Paying someone else’s mortgage and missing out on a considerable net worth builder and tax advantage and still trying to build our home in someone else’s house.
(Written 2019.01.12)
