So it has been an interesting couple of months for my wife and I. We have ventured into the dark and fathomless pit that is the realm of home buying! Yes and what a dark and piteous place it is… A horrible land where venom drips from the fangs of predatory real estate agents, straining against their fetters held by the dark lords of mortgage lending, who sit atop their wicked thrones on high in stygian fortresses, cyclopean in their nature!!!
Ahem…. Yeah so it’s no cake walk…
But it looks as though we’ve found the place…. and we’re going through the motions now. Getting approvals from the bank, puting together a down payment, you know, all that good stuff. And an interesting correlation has appeared… I have discovered a relationship between buying a house… and having a baby! Yes it’s true!!! Now I have not yet produced any spawn of my own, however I have had the opportunity to see these things happen to a few of my friends and co-workers this year and there really is a major similarity. And here it is… No other event in your life will foster so many unsolicited opinions, critiques, advice and supposed fact quoting! Now I’m not trying to say that I don’t appreciate it. After all, those people are just trying to help. I have no doubt that all this information is being offered to me with anything less than good intentions. But the reality is that we have put time and effort into this decision and we both feel that we are prepared for any problems that might arise.
The other thing that has been happening is that I have had the opportunity to benefit from my innate skepticism! I have been “informed” that there are “great opportunities” available in variable mortgage rates from various banking organizations… But as I have learned over the years, nobody tries to push something on you unless they are almost POSITIVE, that doing so will greatly benefit them in the long run. I’m no fool, I am aware that banking, like anything else, is a business… they want my money…. and anything that they offer that looks too good to be true… probably is. This method of thought has been bolstered lately by the fact that I have been recently listening to an audiobook called: “Freakonomics” by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. Much of it is old news to me as far as critical and skeptical thinking goes… but it’s a good book. If you aren’t a skeptic, I suggest you pick up this book and give it a whirl…  (Just do your best to overlook the glaring contradictions and over simplified assumptions)  There are a lot of people out there ready to take advantage of others…and being a skeptic could save you from becoming a victim….just remember that there is a fine line between skepticism and cynicism.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.