going dave ramsey on you.

hello tuesday! you are welcome in this house!

sigh. that's because monday is always a blur. i'm thankful for a day in which my brain can actually think.

and thinking it does. i woke up this morning thinking about dave ramsey. even though i have never attended or heard specifics about one of his seminars, i know he's kind of a big deal. he helps people get 'freedom from the control of money' = which is a cool term my pastor uses.

he might be onto something. i am constantly amazed at how deceitful lenders seem to be. hidden costs are the norm, and lately i've learned that things have changed in the last 8 years since i bought my 1st house. i've been frustrated by the way things went in the buying/selling (particularly selling) process, because federal laws seemed to mandate very UNNECCESARY things now that they didn't then.

i'm not going to blame obama. i'm going to blame the fact that we are a money/consumer-based society, and there are ills that go along with that fact.

that being said, it drives me batty to have debt. i mean, really, seriously batty. unfortunately, the choice to move to a quieter, more peaceful part of town means i have to endure debt for a few more years. still, i attack it like a cancer. i want it gone (see, that is the dave ramsey part of me, or perhaps the nearly-50 part of me :)).

so, today i was quite surprised to open my mortgage online, and see that my bank is still charging me for what is called PMI insurance. for those that don't know, it's the mortgage insurance that is required for borrowers who don't have 20% to put down on their home purchase. since i already owned mabel when i bought fern, i did not put QUITE 20% down, so i had to get this stuff....to the tune of just under 20 bucks a month. no big deal.

except that after mabel DID sell, and i put a big chunk o' cash down on fern, the PMI is no longer required. or necessary. and 8 years ago when i did the very same thing, it just went away.

today, that has changed. i googled it, and here is what i found out:

In the past, most lenders honored consumers' requests to drop PMI coverage if their loan balance was paid down to 80 percent of the property value and they had a good payment history. However, consumers were responsible for requesting cancellation and many consumers were not aware of this possibility. Consumers had to keep track of their loan balance to know if they had enough equity and they had to request that the lender discontinue requiring PMI coverage. In many cases, people failed to make this request even after they became eligible, and they paid unnecessary premiums ranging from $250 to $1,200 per year for several years. With the new law, both consumers and lenders share responsibility for how long PMI coverage is required.

apparently, some new law is cooking that will uncover what is currently hidden. meaning that unless you pay attention, you are paying for absolutely nothing, and nobody cares. which i'm sure leads to millions of dollars in the pockets of the banks of america....ha. not that i am pointing out anybody specifically :)

for me, that means that $202 dollars a year that COULD support a child in haiti's education, would have gone to some greedy big guys.

except i caught it, and i 'requested cancellation' of something i shouldn't have been paying for in the first place. grrrrr.

i guess the whole point of this rant is to be MINDFUL, to be STEWARDS, and to be in charge of your own finances. don't fall for the lie that more is more, and don't buy things you cannot afford.

i need to remember that right now especially, when every day i seem to have the desire to push the big blue 'buy' button that keeps popping up on my 'puter.

:) happy day! let's not spend anything, okay?