Boy can I relate to paulflyboy. I went with a friend of a friend and will never do that again. He is a mortgage planner and financial planner. I started the refi process in November. The paperwork is still not done and I finally told him forget it, give me all my paperwork back and I will shop around for someone else that will work for me. I gave him all the information in Nov that was on the checklist to refi. I didn't hear from him for about 3 wks and then finally emailed on an update. Oh he told me he was working on it but all his appraisers are booked. So I finally found an appraiser on my own who charged 300.00, I think this is high. The appraiser told me he would send the appraisal to my mortgage planner. That took about 3 weeks. I kept emailing him and asking him about my refi "We are waiting to hear back from the bank....blah...blah....blah. Finally on Febuary 18 he asked if I had time to meet with him and I told him of course, I was tired of waiting. When I got to his office him and his business partner talked about financial planning, nothing about my refinance. They want me to put my extra money from my refinance into a financial planning savings plan. I am like no way I just want my refi done and I will decide what I want to do with my money. They talked to me about 2 hrs and the next day sent me a questionaire about the financial planning. I told him I am not interested I just want my refi done. Long story short he called me today and kept pressuring me into his financial planning. I got fed up, hung up on him and wrote him an email to give me all my paperwork back. Here is my email: I need all of my paperwork back from you as soon as you are available. I am going to shop around for someone else to do my refinancing. It has taken way to long and you keep pushing me to do your financial planning and I am exhausted. Last time I refinanced it did not take this long and I got answers. When I met with you on Wednesday I thought we would be discussing my refinancing but I feel pressured into your financial planning and I am not happy right now. That was end of letter. Now at this point I am so frustrated I don't even want to start this process again so yes I can relate to the refi nightmare.

Current 30 year is 4.375% 15 year is 3.875% the special is zero closing costs if refinanced to a 5, 10, or 15 year. Current interest on HELOC is 6.5% I think. We currently pay $600/month $345 for MTG (escrowed) and rest on heloc. Plan was to continue to do that until heloc was paid off then throw everything at the MTG. Refinancing just the MTG with no payout our would increase or payments to $430 (escrowed) estimated about $100 more with a $10000 payout. As for other houses... That's the tough thing. I live in a very small section of houses similar to mine. None of them have sold recent enough to use add comps. I don't think. One down the street sold a little over a year ago for $70,000 I think. But it does have a finished basement and a slightly more updated kitchen. Our bathroom is bigger and remodeled more recently. Usually they have to use comps in the city, which are a few decades newer to begin with, have smaller lots, and less garage space. Hope this helps! Thank you so much for taking the time!

No, cmarlin, I was not talking about self-employed people. And as for 'Ughhh, I don't want to be like those other countries. Look at the total picture, do you really want to have that?' Yes, I would. Among other things, a system in which such things as healthcare are not at the whim of the employer would stabilize a lot of lives. If it weren't for the huge jump in my healthcare costs due to changing jobs - new copays are much, much higher - we would be able to keep our house. (Guess that's my own fault for having the bad taste to get a chronic illness and not recover or die. :-) I'm very grateful for the coverage I do have, of course, considering I spent the first 2 1/2 years I was ill with no medical care whatsoever. But it doesn't make it any more pleasant when a prescription that cost me $10 in December now costs me $50 or more.) 'How can a full time employee get no paid vacation? I work in employee benefits and don't understand that one.' Before I became disabled in the mid-1990s, I had never received either paid vacation days, paid holidays, or paid sick days: I didn't work, I didn't get paid, it was as simple as that. I don't know what there is to understand or not understand. I worked in the restaurant business - almost entirely for independents, not chains, since I preferred actually cooking to reheating and assembling prepackaged stuff. ;-) Most of my friends and family are at the lowest income levels (some of them make not much more than minimum wage) and work for smaller companies, and those two factors tend to drastically reduce access to benefits like paid time off. The more you get paid in the private sector, the more likely you are to get paid time off and other nice bennies... at the other end, you get to be happy you have a job at all. (Anyone read Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel & Dimed'?) In the US there is NO 'right' to paid time off of any kind; even the FMLA provides only for unpaid time off, which in the lower income levels is a joke. The Fair Labor Standards Act says specifically that there is no legal right to pay for hours not worked (even for Federal holidays where the employee may be involuntarily prevented from working because the workplace is closed). I have posted a link below to the report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research on vacation/paid leave time in the US versus other countries. Here is a link that might be useful: 'No-Vacation Nation'

Well, I've drawn out about a bazillion rearrangements, and out of those my husband and I selected about three of them for me to play around with a bit, to see if one shouts that this is the one to refine. I have to take breaks from this process often or I get too stressed out. Trying to keep it somewhat enjoyable. Graph paper speaks. It can make it obvious when the floorplan closes the house in too much, blocks views, etc,. Sometimes it shows that despite a room looking large, there is no good place to put couches, etc. because of walking paths to other rooms. The style house we are going to build is the old Florida "cracker style" home. It has a fairly steep pitched roof (metal), and a FULL wrap around porch. I don't want to bump out into or take away from the porch in any way. Most of the year we are able to use our porches. I've dreamed of this porch for years. It's more important to me than the sewing room, or anything else. An idea as to how we want the outside of the house to look like is to go onto the crackerstyleloghomes.com site and look at the "Fowler" That's the porch I want. I've come to the conclusion that I really don't want a loft. For one thing one never knows when they might break a leg. The other is I'm not getting any younger. After speaking with a few people that have lofts, many of them generally stop using them after awhile. Maybe it's the isolation thing. My husband and I also do not care for the extremely high vaulted ceilings that results over the unlofted area. The other issue is, lofts adds a huge, huge amount to the building costs. I'm afraid of having a half completed home if we do a loft. I know we have enough money to build a single story. I think. If we are very, very careful, and eat beans and rice. It's much cheaper to increase the base footprint, or build another structure than to build a loft and finish it off in nice wood. Some people will leave the floor joists exposed on the lower level, but I don't care for that look. I would want the ceiling portion done in tongue and groove like the walls. Heating and cooling costs also increase greatly with a lofted home, and they certainly aren't getting any cheaper!. The ceiling is so vaulted that it becomes wasted volume that is climate controlled. I think what I will end up with is a sewing room that is decent sized, but not quite as large as I would like. If I situate it properly, such as french doors that open into the great room, I can just wheel my cutting table into there to cut if I need more space. It doesn't bother my husband or I if I do that, and it can get wheeled back into the sewing room if company is expected. We really don't entertain much anyway, and if someone stops over unexpected to say hi, it doesn't bother me if they see my stuff out. I've been waiting to post a floor plan until we narrow the orientation of the rooms down to one we think will work. Then I truly want all of you to give me your thoughts on how best to refine it. I'll most liklely need help with the boxes that are storage areas and closets. Maybe with some prayer I will get to that point early this week. Moccasinlanding, I LOVE your storage ideas with stairs and such. They are excellent. I do like lofts....a lot. However, when I wrote down the pros and cons, the cons seem to be greater in number. Lofts can make less than "nice" things happen to the house, such as the high vaults. It certainly makes the house much harder to maintain, especially the outside structure being so far up in the air. (Think huge ladders). However, when it comes down to it, my main worry is running out of money mid construction. I refuse to get a mortgage or loan again. It's too nice living debt free now. My husband keeps saying how he can build me a sewing studio near the house (now to match it), for a reasonable amount of money. I've noticed that all the men I've spoken with LOVE detatched work areas. It must be a guy thing. They just don't understand my reluctance about it. The other evening we had a very violent thunderstorm. Bad lightning and rain, and we lost power for three hours. I pointed out that I couldn't see myself in a detatched studio in that kind of weather. In reality though, I wouldn't have stayed out in this imagined studio anyway. I love him dearly, but I swear the male species is from another planet. They probably think the same thing about women:) Maybe we women just feel more secure doing things within our homes, while men are genetically programmed to leave the house in order to hunt dinner for us. Sandy