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Thursday, August 09, 2007

Everyone wants a piece of my pie!

Does anyone else feel like the world is out to get you? It feels like we work so hard and everybody just wants our money. And we have to jump through so many hoops just to do what we're supposed to do.

Here's what happened today. We're trying to refinance our house. We got approved for a loan, and last week the bank ordered the appraisal. Well, apparently the appraisor said that our house is zoned "R-3", which means it can only have 2 units. But ours has three, so it's illegal. they didn't say whether they'd be able to move forward with it or not, but I called the city today and they said "I can't believe you got it through title like that." So apparently the previous owner was very shrewd and somehow fudged his way through. The city guy said we could apply for a "variance", which basically means it's illegal but we have permission to keep it that way, but he didn't think it would be approved. He said we should get permits to convert it back to 2 units. I figure the guy who converted it in the first place must not have used permits, so why would we need permits to convert it back? it doesn't make sense to me. Besides that - we've been considering converting it back, but not THIS MONTH! If we could just get the dang mortgage refinanced we might be able to afford to put some money into the house!

Does anybody hear what I'm saying? Does anybody else feel this way? Like everyone wants a piece of your pie? They're always dipping their hands into our pockets. I can't stand it. I wish they would all just leave me alone and let me live my life. I wish that just for once, something that involves the government would go smoothly. That people would stop trying to take advantage of us. I wish we could spend some of our hard-earned money on ourselves! I'm not trying to be selfish or materialistic, it's just that Derrick makes a decent living, but we're still unable to save money on a regular basis - the more money he makes, the more they take! Anytime we want to do something it costs money! Not just the money to do it, but fees and taxes and charges on every little thing.

And here's another thing - the house is illegal as a 3-unit, but yet the tax assesment office can tax it as a three unit without causing any trouble. Yeah, when it's money in their pocket they're not going to complain, are they?

I don't know, I probably sound pretty stupid because I don't really understand economics and government and all that. All I know is, it's frustrating. We work hard, we're good citizens, we don't try to take advantage of the system, but we feel like we just get picked on all the time. And on top of that, our neighbors come knocking on our door asking for money, as if we have any.

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