So I got up the courage and I emailed an acquaintance, Russell's cub scout den leader, and he gave me the number of a loan officer. And I actually called.

She sounded very encouraging. We talked at length and everything and she was very encouraging.

Then I ended up talking to a friend of a friend who's a realtor. She hooked me up with this other loan guy. He ran our credit and basically we can qualify for a loan. It's not the best loan, but it's a loan. The problem is that in the county we're in, we can qualify for a loan that's about $20K below the asking price on this house. If we consider the county in the next city over, we can get $20K more and I've already looked and we can get some serious square footage and actually OWN our home. We have to come up with about $5000, but we have figured out some ways to do that within about 6 months, so we're getting pretty excited.

Mike and I talked and figured, we could move up there, which is closer to his work for 5 years,and probably turn around sell it and then move back down here. We don't want to give up this house, particularly, but we can't get a loan for it and because the owners are strapped for cash, I don't think there's much leeway on their part. They're greedy people and if their behavior as landlords is any indication, we're not really keen on trying to deal with them, if we can't get the loan for the full amount because there won't be much room for finagling it, so that we can actually manage it.

Bizarrely enough, I'd just put an application for another job in, and was actually considering pursuing it, but it's a pretty substantial pay cut and with the house purchase looming, I really can't afford to take a pay cut of nearly 25%, even if it does mean actually having a job where I could interact with folks. The other thing is that if we lived where we are, it'd be okay, but if we move northward and this job is southward, that's a lot of commuting.

I'm thinking of just going to the interview anyhow and seeing how it goes, but I also don't want to waste their time.

I suspect that there's going to be a lot of bachelor food eaten in our house over the coming months and we're also probably going to give notice and go live in a cheaper apartment in order to save money toward our down.

Oh, and because we own our cars free and clear, we're applying for a refinancing title loan on the cars in order to pay off our credit card debt at a lower rate of interest -- 10% versus 20%+.

I feel like a regular financial wizard. I've learned a bunch about handling money in the past week. Much of it, I certainly wish I'd learned sooner!