[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to casual talk radio, where common sense is still the norm, whether you're a new or a longtime listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit
[email protected] and now here's your host, Leister.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I'm a bit tardy. I apologize. I am a bit tardy. I have a good reason for being tardy. I'll provide an update. Thank you for joining. Thank you for joining. Again, depending on your situation, casual talk radio, my name is Leister and I am your host.
Situation was this without over specifics in the new. So back up. There was a time for contracting reasons. So for my own, you know, work, where I was working independent, I used to have, you know, travel was a frequent thing for me, for anybody who may have been traveling for work or anything else, whether you, you know, we're talking flights. I don't do it anymore. But back then, so what would happen from mine is I got sick of TSA. I got sick of what you can and cannot carry in the bag. I got carried sick of the, you know, the bottle can only be this size and, you know, soaps and none of which is going to really keep you safe, but that's what they defaulted to because they're stupid. But I figured, okay, I'm not doing this anymore. So what I decided after fighting it for years is rather than taking stuff with me, like all my different shampoos and soaps and all the liquids, you know, shaving stuff, I figured I would just buy what I needed, travel size. When I got to the destination.
And although, you know, it's like $20 or something, although it's an expense and it's not reimbursable, it was better than dealing with the nonsense of TSA.
So I would get to the destination.
I would find the nearest Walgreens. In most states I've been in, Walgreens is 24 hours. They're open 24 hours. I have not seen until I came to this place, a Walgreens that was not 24 hours. I get here and one morning I had an issue, and the issue actually originated back when I was 18. The only person, and I'm assuming she's still alive, I haven't talked to her in a while, but the only person who knows the specifics of that situation is my first girlfriend. She was there when it happened. I don't know if she said anything to anybody she might have, but as far as I know, she's the only one that knows at that time that issue happens and then it starts reoccurring roughly every five years like clockwork.
Then five years passes and it doesn't happen again. So I figure, okay, I'm cool. Well, I woke up this other morning about two days ago and it happened again. And I didn't expect it because it had been so long since it happened and it had just went away later or earlier today I have a different issue. But this one, this major, I consider major issue because I could have died, came back, and then I needed something very simple.
And usually I can get it from, usually I have it and I have crates for all my bathroom supplies, and it's usually in there because I don't use it on a frequent basis, I can always fall back to it. And I left them in the crates. I'm in the middle of the move, right?
And I left the crates here on purpose for like a week and a half because I wasn't sure if I was going to need anything out of the crates. And I'm just like this. If I think that I'm going to need something out of it, I'm hesitant to move it. First week and a half passes, don't need it. All right, take the crates up there to the house. It's roughly 2 hours away.
I get back here, and then that following morning, 05:30 a.m. i get up, situation happens. The one thing I need that would have helped me is in the crate 2 hours away. And I have to do something. Now in my head, I'm figuring, okay, I'll just go to Walgreens. Fine. So I go to, I'm looking at Walgreens in this place. There's only one Walgreens that's 24 hours. And it's, it's not crazy far, but it's further than I would like because I'm used to having a walking distance. All the other ones are like, yeah, we open at seven.
Here I'm again, it's 05:30 a.m. but they're not 24 hours. They only open at seven and they close at nine, which is nuts.
So I drive all the way up to this 24 hours Walgreens thinking, okay, fine, whatever. I'll get up there, get what I need. I also need stamps.
I get to the Walgreens. I'm looking for the item. It's not here. I've always gotten it from Walgreens. It's always there because it's a common, it's actually a very common item. And it's only a dollar. It's not like it's, you know, asked to lay behind the counter. Yeah, we haven't seen that here. Deep, deep, deep. I'm like, what are you talking about? You haven't seen it in a year. This is a common. What do you mean, you don't carry it? Anyway, so apparently they stopped carrying it. Just stopped carrying. So now I have to drive all the way back down to my place, which is the apartment I'm sitting in now.
And there's a store nearby, which is a. It's basically a grocery store. It's a local grocery store. Go in there, and lo and behold, it's there. A grocery store has this item that has nothing to do with groceries, but yet Walgreens, where the item belongs, is not there. Whatever grocery store has five left. I clean them out. I just bought all five. Screw it. Because I'm not dealing with this. If you're discontinuing it. I don't think they are. I think they're just being stupid. But I just cleared them out. Got all five.
The grocery store doesn't sell stamps. Like, God, you're so.
And you're like, go to the post office. I can't. The post office out here is essentially a glorified bungalow somewhere in the sticks. It's far. It's not close, so I can't do that. They don't have, like, a postal annex. They don't have the. You know, if you're from these big cities, you understand, you can go to postal annex. You can go to this place, this place, and the post offices all yanked. Or they. They might have that machine.
The one that's close doesn't have the machine. The ones that have the machine, they don't take cash. And then they used to have the little standing like it looked like a gumball machine, but you could buy stamps in there. They got rid of those.
So it's harder to buy stamps than it used to be. They want you to go to the site and print stamps. I need the stamps for regular letter size envelopes. The ones you print won't fit on those.
So I can't get the stamps I need from this grocery store. I got this other item. That's fine, but I still need to get some freaking stamps. So now I got to go to a different place, which is actually right down the hill from where I'm at. They sell stamps. Got it. Got the book of stamps. Fine. But now it's been an hour, and so the issue has already gotten really bad. And the item that normally would work isn't working like it usually would have. So now I'm not freaking out, but I'm concerned because I can't function when this happens. I have no full range of motion. Even now with a different issue, I have no full range of motion. This. This is a different problem. But that one, no full range of motion. I can't really walk straight. I can't do anything. I can't function like I'd like to because of the situation that is exacerbated by the walgreens not deciding to be 24 hours like I need them to. And I just. Luck of the draw, the one item I need, I happen to have moved it 2 hours away.
So now I'm dealing with this. And that affects basically the yesterday upload, because I can't. I can't function. I can't do what I need to do in order to sit down and record for you guys.
It finally stopped, or I should say halted briefly. And that would have been early this morning. I think it was early this morning. Pretty sure it was. If not early this morning, it would have been yesterday. I can't remember late yesterday, but one of the two, it temporarily stopped, and then I sneezed. And when I sneeze, it makes it. It just restarts all over again. It's debilitating. It's not fun. Unfortunately, allergies. The. It's horrible out here. So I sneeze, it starts up again, and I'm struggling to stop it. I'm not having very much luck, and so I'm having to struggle. I got to get back up to the house because that's where my Internet is. That's where I'm doing the work. I do have backup Internet, but it's limited. I can only have ten gigs on the hotspot.
So I do what I can to mitigate it, so I can get the frick up there.
Knowing that my item doesn't work because it took too long to get it started. I get all the way up there, and then, you know, I'm doing the best I can to function, and eventually it's starting to slow down, and I can see that it's slowed down, and it's now not as bad as it was. That's good. There's a little bit of something, but it's not as bad as it was. So, okay. I go through the day looking, seeing it really be nice to freaking finish my office painting. I'm trying to repaint it, finish my office, get it cleaned up, get my desk installed, and I can't because I'm dealing with this thing, I'm basically useless. And then I'm fighting vendors because I'm trying to get other stuff done on the house.
And that's not fun. Later in the day, I check, looks like it's passed. This issue's passed, at least for now.
I sneezed again when I couldn't control it. Didn't start up again. I had again the different issue started, but that's a different issue. But the main issue didn't start again. So it looks like it's calmed down for now, at least for another five or ten years, assuming I lived that long. And I figure, okay, let's go ahead and try to get some painting done. So I finish up the painting in the office, painted the ceilings, painted the walls, did all the stuff off and then let it air out. I did most of the painting in the master. I didn't get done because I ran out of paint. But after this, then I get a pain. And it's muscular pain because I'm painting ceilings, I'm painting walls, I'm doing moving stuff. It just. It's not fun, but I have to do it. But I had been useless for so long that I'm not as. I don't have the same strength that I normally should have.
That's where I am right now. So then I came back here in pain, and I'm in pain right now, and my high level recording stuff is back at the house and I forgot to record there. So I'm recording on my backup. This is actually my old school Ars Technica 2100 that I've had for a decade in a plus.
Amazing microphone with a, with a pile recorder. And the pile recorder is part of what I normally record on for you guys. But I didn't need to because this audio technical is amazing when you could hook it up with some other sound cards. So that's what I. That's what my past couple days have been like. Fighting freaking vendors, fighting freaking pain, fighting freaking nonsense. And then getting older. On the up note, I guess, up note, I finally found a dealer that's willing to actually fix my fricking car, the one I want to keep. The downside is that for them, they're going to need to have my car for a couple days. That means I need to get the backup up there.
That means I need to drive the backup up there. I've never driven that car anywhere near this. It's like a close to 100 miles distance. You might think it's not a big deal, but I've never driven that car that long. So I don't know, you know, there could be something that happens. I'm not sure. So now I've got to carry my backup stuff, like my emergency phone and all my supplies and stuff to hopefully get him up there. But I have to figure out how to do this because I'm 100 miles away.
So I'm trying to get a mover to see if they can deliver the car up there as part of the move, and they're not calling back. That's why I say vendors that don't want to call back. This is my life, ladies and gentlemen, is fighting fricking vendors, fighting freaking pain, fighting freaking age. That's my life. And that's what I've been struggling with. So, yes, I do have a compelling reason for why I'm late for the episode. It's because I'm too busy fighting nonsense. Instead of being able to relax for a change. Somebody my age should not have to deal with stupidity like this.
I think I'll accept a bit of karma.
I'll accept that because it is true that I pissed a lot of people off. That's true. So I'll accept there's a bit of karma.
At the same time, it's like a level of bad that I even. I never expected. Anyway, that was. That was my story and I'm sticking to it. It was not the topic. Believe it or not, I know I ranted for a while. That was not the topic.
The topic is back to home buying and more specifically, escrow.
So for anybody who is in the process of or considering being in the process of buying a home that has never done so before, this is for you. If you've done it before, you'll know what I'm talking about. Either you heard about it or you're familiar with it from direct experience.
There's the concept of an escrow, and the escrow is an account held by your mortgage company from which they use the funds to pay off things like homeowners insurance, your taxes and everything.
And then they create a lump sum payment for your monthly. So let's say your mortgage is $1,200 a month, and as part of the escrow, they expect you to pay in, let's say, $500 a month into escrow. And then that gets paid out to different entities on your behalf. So your payment is actually $1,700, not the 1200 that you thought it was going to be. There's nothing wrong with that because you still have to pay those things.
However, I opted out of escrow this time, the first time I bought a house, I did an escrow. I'll never forget I had bought this home. It's in Washington state. And the mortgage payment, I wanna say it was like $1,400. It was nothing. Cause the rent, when I bought it, rented it, rather, it was 1500 something, 1525.
When they were going to renew it, they came back with like $2,200. And I was like, screw you, bro. Absolutely not. Which was the only reason I decided to buy, because I couldn't find another rental that had all the features I wanted for a decent price. So I decided to buy. They came back with a $1,400 rent.
Now, the mistake I made is, number one, I did fha.
Number two, I did less than ten or 20% down. I think I did like 5% down or some crazy something. It was not. It was nowhere close to the 20% that I'm telling people you should do. So I did. And it was a state program that was a scam. More on that later.
Between the fact it was FHA, the fact that I did 5% down, those two forced me to have mortgage insurance. MIP. MIP.
As well as an escrow. It forced you to have it. So the $1,400 quoted number ballooned to over $2,000. I believe it's $2,300.
You're like, why the heck was it so high?
You had taxes. Taxes are sky high out there. That's how they get you. So even though there was not. Even though there was not the concept of which one, I think it's. I think they didn't have sales tax, one of the two either. They didn't have sales tax, income tax, I think I didn't have sales tax, but there's no tax. So the taxes on the home are higher. The mortgage insurance, which is 300 something dollars alone, homeowners insurance, you know, all these different fees and all this stuff every month. And. Yeah, it was like $900 on this business above and beyond the 1400. So the 1400 essentially is a scam.
And because I did the state program, that's where they scammed me. When my boss, at the time, I was making a certain level of income, and I was right at the threshold to get what's referred to as a mortgage certificate. The mortgage certificate, if approved, was going to give me $3,000 as a tax credit every year. And I qualified when I applied, when I got to the closing table. By that time, my boss had lobbied to get me a raise.
The raise is only like 6%. We're not talking a lot of money, but it got me close to the threshold for this mortgage certificate. When I got to the closing table, they said, well, we can't, you can't do that. Well, why not? Because you got that raise and you might get the same raise again next year, which it would disqualify you if you did. And you might end up going like, the raises are discretionary, it's not guaranteed. You don't get a raise every year. And I can give you docs. I got HR to offer to write a letter to tell them, this is not discretionary. It was a one time raise. It's highly unlikely he'll get it again.
They said, the whole process, they said, will you put in writing that he will never get another raise? NHR wouldn't do it because they can't guarantee. That depends on what's going on. So they took that mortgage certificate, they wouldn't let me sign it. The 3000 per year tax credit. A tax credit is, if your bill is $3,000 and you get a tax credit of $3,000, your tax bill is zero. It literally takes away from the bill.
So it meant I was never going to have a tax bill because my income was nowhere close to what it is and it was refundable. So some of the money would come back if I was under the threshold. So losing it, not only am I paying more money because of this escrow, but because I'm losing this, it's basically putting me in the red. That's why I say the state program is a scam.
The escrow then because it was required, because I did less than 20% down and it was FHA, I was doing research on my current, because my current mortgage got sold to a different company, I was doing research on them and I noticed a pattern of feedback, which was that people were pissed off at pretty much every mortgage company possible.
And it was a common thread. It was all related to the escrow. Everybody was complaining about how much higher it makes your mortgage payment because they dictate your servicer how much the escrow monthly has to be, and they can require you to pay over and above the actual amount that's due because they want to have pad, they want to have extra money on hand.
So everybody who has negative feedback, it's not just me, I wasn't going crazy. Everybody who had negative feedback, it's because of this escrow business.
As such, my advice to you is this, if you're considering buying a home, if at some point in the future, you're going to buy a home. If you're in the process of buying a home, I'm going to advocate that you figure out a way, although not easy, but, but that you figure out a way not to pay less than 20% down.
Figure out a way, if you can, not to do FHA. FHA, being a government program is a scam, in my opinion. And I would say do 20% down and then tell the, whoever you're trying to get the loan through that you don't want escrow, you don't want it, you'll pay the taxes directly, prepay the homeowners insurance for a year, do everything you can to minimize that monthly. So it's predictable, easily managed, easily dealt with.
This is a recommendation. You can do whatever you want to do. But I'm telling you from experience that that was brutal. Brutal for me, brutal for other people. And I wouldn't want to see other people get stuck in a groove where your, this beautiful mortgage of $1,400 that gets you out of rent of $1,800 turns into $2,300 simply because your servicer thinks is a good idea.
So that's escrow. It's a joke. It's a scam. In my opinion, personally, so is Fha. I think it's a scam. State programs, I think it's a scam. I don't and will never suggest that it's easy to do it without these things I'm saying. I would recommend trying not to use them if you can, because I think they set you up for failure. I think they're a trap.
Separately, then let's talk about this business of Joe Biden. Medical bills. This just happened recently, but Joe Biden passed an executive order that was pushing, or I guess he put in a, submitted a proposal or whatever, but it was pushing to make it to where medical bills that you owe and you're behind on, which I haven't been in the situation yet, but that you're behind on, don't jack up your credit score, because the thought was that it's affecting people's ability to buy a home or ability to get loans or ability to do things. Turns out most of the credit bureaus have already adjusted their score algorithms to weigh against it less. What they're trying to do to is Biden is make it not count at all. Some people say, well, that means they're not going to pay the bill if you don't have a disincentive to do it.
I say if you're going to make the argument that we should not ding people's credit because we're concerned about the ability for getting more loans, which is really about the economy at the end of the day. Like, if you think about it, if they're not able to get, you know, take out more debt, take out more loans, credit cards, whatever, it's going to hurt those banks. But that's what the banks wanted. They wanted this credit score. That's discriminatory. That's what they asked for. They got what they asked for. You wanted a system that purposely discriminates against people because of whatever, and you assume that they can't pay you back whether it's a medical bill or not. If you're going to do it for one, we should junk the whole damn system because it's not doing its job.
If you can't trust the number that you're given because it's telling you that because people have these medical expenses on their credit that they're not, you know, they're not pay the bill to the point that the Biden administration wants to try to negate the impact on credit scores. You have to make that case for pretty much everything because it's the same problem if somebody can't pay a medical bill. Let's say there was a story about a lady who had a bunch of medical expenses. They came out of nowhere. She didn't expect them. She can barely make her ends meet, but she has this medical bill. She chose not to pay it. Well, the whole point of the credit scoring model in the first place was to identify where somebody simply chooses not to pay the bill. Get sent to collections, the collection is going to ding you. A lot of those debts are bought. They're purchased by collection companies. Collection company dings your credit. So it could be hospital main. Takes your, takes a hit. Collection company takes a hit. Everybody's taking a hit. Why is it okay to then wash those from the credit scoring but not, say, a credit card? Let's say you had your credit card and you maxed it out on medical expenses because you had no other way to do it. You maxed it out. You couldn't pay it back because you just lost your job, or let's say you were disabled again, it's a slippery slope. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't do something. I'm saying if you're going to do that, you should probably do it across the board to be fair and equitable. The whole damn system is corrupt. The whole credit scoring system is corrupt. It's telling. It's using computers to tell banks, lenders, even rental companies who is not trustworthy. And it skews largely towards those that don't need the money. If you don't need the money, your credit score is going to be higher. I actually stopped. There was points, multiple points over my lifespan. Multiple points where I just flat out stopped paying stuff. What happens? My credit score goes up. When I'm paying for stuff, my credit score goes down. Explain that. I can because I used to work for the bureau. It's simple. If you stop paying on something that is a debt or collection or something else. If you just don't pay, let's say it's collection.
It's all dependent on the amount. If it's like a $5, $10, $20, it's not going to. It's going to ding you, but nowhere near as bad. And then time passage. The passage of time. The age of accounts plays positive in your favor. Assuming you're not applying for credit, because the inquiry that gets dinged whenever you ask for credit poses negative. So if you don't apply for credit, you let time pass. And assuming you have some positive accounts that were already closed, the age of accounts plays in your favor. That means you can essentially game the system. But again, it's biased towards people that don't need the money. Because if you're in a situation where you don't need to apply for credit while you're sustaining somehow, that means you don't need the money, you don't need loans, you don't need credit cards, you don't need the money if you are not applying.
Which is why I'm saying that the system is slanted towards those people who never needed the service in the first place. That's why it's a scam. That's why I'm saying that if Biden wants to do this with medical bills, they could do it across the board and choose not to. They could have done it during COVID which is when it really mattered. Any negative anything? No negative reporting for the span of COVID And you cannot go retroactive. Act like they never happened. Give everybody a fresh start. They could have done it. They didn't do it. So I was kind of pissed seeing it. Again, not that we shouldn't do anything, but you could have done more. You could have done more for more people, and you chose not to. And that's my beef with all that business.
Anyway, I'm gonna wrap up today. Today it actually wasn't a short episode, but I ranted a bit. But I think, you know, it's difficult to say this, but I don't like, I don't like what's happening recently with this, with Biden and all these things that he's doing now that he should have been doing the moment he walked in office instead of listening to the greater tunbergs of the world, because these are things that he should and could have been doing the moment he went in office and he probably would have better scores than he does now. And now that he's doing it at this point, it's like he's pandering. This is a guy who threatened Americans and all of a sudden he wants to do right by Americans. Come on, you're transparent. We see right through you, bro.
Meanwhile, I'm going to get back on my stuff. In pain though I may be, I'm going to get back on my stuff.
I'll apologize again for the lateness of the episode. Hopefully you understand.
I had a real strong mitigating reason. It was not by choice. It's not even by choice that I'm this late. I actually plan to record it and release it at least 8 hours ago. Unfortunately, other stuff got in the way and now I have to play catch up. The next time, of course, my episode will show up will be next this following Monday, and hopefully by then I'll be fully moved out of here. Because if I can get a mover, which is on hopefully to get Saturday or Sunday to get a mover out to get my stuff, because I don't have a lot left. I've already moved some of the critical stuff out of here. I don't have a lot left. Just the stuff that's in storage at this point. If I can get it all done, we're looking good. And then I'll just have one throat to choke a place to live, and that'll be a really good thing. And then once I get my studio set up, we're on the, we're on the road and we're back in business. And I may go back to twice a week I think about that one. Fortunately, there hasn't been too much craziness to talk about. I know there's the whole Hunter Biden business. I'm not going to talk about that. There's the Trump business. I'm not going to talk about that. What I may decide to talk about, though, is the forthcoming election, because there are some thoughts I've got about that for some people, based on some videos I saw from a certain demographic who at one point, swore that they would always vote Democrat and now have flipped the script. Perhaps I'll dig into that on this coming next Monday's episode and share my thoughts on what I felt. I'll even play some audio if I can track it down again.
