We didn't have a lawyer, but we did read every piece of the zillion pieces of paper a million times. Luckily, our mortage broker was a high school friend of a friend and when we said Fixed Rate and here's our limit, got us that loan, even though the ARM loans had lower interest rates.

For $500 a month that car had better give good road head while I'm listening to my books on tapes on the long drives

looks at my 2006 Honda Civic. looks at my latest payment statement of $507 from Honda Finance. looks back at my Civic--nope, still no provisions of oral sex. looks into refinancing with my bank since my credit rating has improved since buying the car.

Who's the dummy with the $1200/mo. car payment that averages out with my old $100/mo. one?

points to former clients at BMW dealership in LA.

They have to hope their Realtor and loan officer are ethical.

And I'll bet a lot don't know that most real estate agents represent the seller and not the buyer.

I must admit that I get a kick out of the letters we get regularly telling us how we can refinance to get this great low rate -- which is about 0.50% higher than the rate we now pay on our 30-year fixed.

He nationally syndicated?

If you look down the right-hand side column here: [link] you can get a whole list of stations that carry him and when, and links to stream them.

His book, The Total Money Makeover is pretty basic, but it has good charts in the back for budgeting. I think you can also access them on his website, but I did need the book to figure out exactly what he meant by the "debt snowball" for example.

When I lived in CO, our real estate agent was allowed to perform the duties a lawyer might normally do, although I still had a lawyer (not me!) there. A title company handled that closing.

When we closed on our house in NC, a lawyer does the actual closing, but I triple checked that she was representing us, and not both parties, or something like that. [eta: I wrote this before seeing Fred's comment, but I'm curious why the buyer wouldn't have their own agent. When we sold our NC home, the buyer's agent was another agent from our agent's company and I had to sign extra paperwork to okay that, after a very detailed and specific warning from our realtor about the risks involved.]

Do people buy houses with at least real estate agents? I think our agent in CO was crucial towards steering us towards a reputable mortgage company.

Who's the dummy with the $1200/mo. car payment that averages out with my old $100/mo. one? I mean, I bought a used car and everything, but -- WTF?

Maybe the average is for new cars?

I think the average new car goes for $20-25K (too lazy to google now) so the average car payment of $484/month makes sense to me. I was paying $300/month for my cheap new car....

We went with an agent (and we made sure she was a buyer-broker, so represented us) for our first condo. She steered us in the right directions -- in fact, the lawyer that handled the closing also prepared our wills.

When we moved up a few years ago, we bought a new home and so dealt with the builder directly.

I'm so glad things are working out for you, Liese! Glad you were able to do a large enough down payment to get rid of the PMI.

The second bank (our own bank) also would have given us the loan, but wanted us to go with an interest only program we felt was not good for us. Also they were rude and laughed at us when we asked questions.

If this is the same bank we discussed. I would let their higher ups know. They are not hesitant to get rid of people who aren't doing their jobs.

tommy- I am so angry at that law and the easy peasy credit I got when I was a student. Before the law went into affect, I knew I was going to be paying for the rest of my life, but I was pretty much fine with that. I could always make the monthly payments and my credit was good. Now that they have upped the minmum, it is a struggle some months to pay all three cards and my rent. I now have crappy credit and am paying about $500 towards credit cards (I only make $1600/month).