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A House Looks Good On You


There are times when I come home from the grocery store, set the bags on the counter, and start unloading the bags’ contents to place them in the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer, and the thought hits me: I just shopped like my parents are out of town for the weekend and they handed me some cash to tide me over until they return on Sunday evening!  Just as I’m on the verge of setting up an intervention for myself, I spy a package of frozen spinach under an opened bag of tater tots, collect my wits about me, and take a moment to calm down.  (There’s not a chance I’m going to come close to thawing out that package of spinach, but it’s the thought that counts.)

Tired of the multiple fad diets being pitched and talked about on the internet and other forms of media, a man took it upon himself to prove he could eat ONLY junk food for a month and lose weight – and thirty days later, he had lost eleven pounds!  Now, he didn’t lock himself inside a Dunkin Donuts and eat his way through their entire inventory – I understand I’m killing the dream for many of you by saying that, and I’m sorry.  He did, though, eat lots of M&Ms, cupcakes, Oreos, chips, crackers, etc.  In doing so, he made sure his daily intake didn’t exceed 2,000 calories by reading the packaging and following the serving sizes that spelled out the number of calories. 

The scales weren’t the only thing that was affected by this special diet: his bad cholesterol went down, his good cholesterol went up, and he lost two percent body fat.  While his doctor would not recommend such a diet, mainly because losing that much weight in such a short period of time is not optimal, no one can argue with the results and this simple fact: it’s about moderation, and if you burn more calories than you eat, you’re going to lose weight – even if your “dietician” is Little Debbie or Hostess. 

Regularly, we get people coming to us for a mortgage who have run the financial equivalent of the diet gauntlet with multiple other lenders and failed.  They’re dejected and wary.  Many of them have gained even more “weight” (more debt, a renewed lease because they couldn’t close and have to keep renting, etc.).  Some are on the verge of giving up entirely and almost dare us to prove we can help them fit into that little black dress of a house. 

Remember, the key to the junk-food gentleman’s success was simple: he read and FOLLOWED the serving-size instructions to assure he was consuming a specific number of calories.  Unlike so many other mortgage companies, we send out a Loan Status Update every Friday to all parties to a transaction to help them know what’s been done (consumed) and what needs to be done so they can FOLLOW those instructions.  When a mortgage company doesn’t keep everyone focused, the equivalent of midnight snacks (shopping for and buying – usually on credit – new furniture before the home sale closes) and bingeing (adding more and more addendums to the real estate contract) can and will sabotage the process.  Stick with us and when we’re finished, you’ll be leaner (in a good way) and happier – we’ll bet a box of Twinkies on it!

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