one week to closing

Yesterday we handed over a truly obscene amount of money and signed a massive amount of paperwork. I jibbed twice and D jibbed once over what exactly we were signing our names to, but we knuckled down under the combined glares of the escrow officer and the loan officer. (Nothing that I'm seriously horribly concerned with, mind; just... for example, we had to sign forms giving some unspecified person the right to look at some of our tax return information, unspecified because our lender could sell the loan... but I still don't like not having that specified.)

Because this is the sort of thing I do, a book review at this point: Mortgage Ripoffs and Money Savers (Carolyn Warren) was not actually very useful for us because no one (!) actually tried to rip us off... no last minute prepayment penalties tacked on or anything like that. Everything was almost painfully above-board (the best part was when the lender wanted us to document why our credit report had been pulled. Answer: YOU pulled it!) However, I still found the Warren very entertaining to read, and I can imagine that it would have been really useful three years ago or so. I rather recommend it if you want to read crazy finance hijinks, or would like an insider's point of view with respect to the amoral meltdown that was the mortgage industry.

Closing is on Friday. (at which point, presuming all goes well, we shall invite you all to visit :) )