First real meeting with Charles

Charles, of course, would by my apparent real estate agent — okay, “our” real estate agent. I wasn’t terribly favorably impressed with him initially, but since then I’ve had occasion to send a few dozen emails back and forth — this guy isn’t even sure he’s going to be our agent (his company doesn’t do contracts), and yet he’s answered me a few dozen questions, and provided me with consistently good and valid advice.

Of course, most important of all, Glitch liked him.

So Charles and I spent over an hour talking about money — mainly how to get my credit up high enough so that I can qualify for a lower interest rate on a mortgage, which would mean a higher amount approved for a mortgage, which in my more cynical moments means a higher commission for Charles…

But after a good hour and a half of evaluating credit improvement options, I think I have a rough idea of what to do — I’ll have him do a final run through once I have all my money setup (why, oh why, did Microsoft stock decrease now that I need it??) so that I can bump up my credit score. Manda was present but largely quiet for the money talk — a combination of math and discussing finances wasn’t her dream conversation, to say the least, but she agreed with my theories on why and how. Instead she took the time to draw adorable diagrams of what type of house she wants. Unfortunately, that was for Charles… I could have really used a copy, ’cause I have no idea what a “Bungalow” or “Craftsman” is. I thought the latter was a brand of tools, and the former something on a beach (I was wrong). Despite the fact that I haven’t been preapproved for financing, Charles is going to start keeping his eyes open for houses.

Unfortunately, Amanda wants a rather different house than I do — or more specifically, she has slightly different concerns. I’m worried about the size of the house, parking, commute, community, price, etc. She worries about what the outside of the house looks like. Not to say that the other things don’t matter to her, but they don’t matter as much — particularly commute time, Little Miss I Don’t Have To GO To Work Most Days. But I’m still optimistic that we’ll find something.

So I’m juggling money (electronically) for the next week, and then should meet with Charles end of next week beginning of the following. We’ll see what happens.