The condo is coming along swimmingly.  I went down there today because I had some extra time, and the tile was laid and the cabinets were in.  My new friend, Jake, was putting the hardward on in the kitchen.  Oh! And we have shower surrounds.  It looks really good so far, which is nice because you always wonder if everything you picked off of little samples is going to go well together.  So far, it is.

Now for the sombering part - we might not get it.  You see, when we pre-qualified for the loan, we put Matt's wage at $15/hr, because that was what he was supposed to be paid after training, which he was just about done with at the time.  Our mortgage guy said that, even with putting in the $12/hr he was currently making, it should have been fine.  We told him what our credit scores were, and he said he saw no problems in us getting the loan.  Huzzah!  At that time, we decided to move forward with the contract and builder's deposit.

Last week (? maybe the week before), we met with Clay (the mortgage guy) again to do the official application.  He pulled our credit that day, which was the beginning of the mess.  There is nothing wrong with our credit, but he did see we had student loans.  All but two are currently deferred, however, with the type of loan we are getting (Utah Rural Housing), they have to include part of the student loans against us.  Lame.  But all was still fine.  We had to give Clay another bank statement for all of our accounts, along with a new paystub. 

Here is where it begins to get depressing.  Matt's paystub still has $12/hr on it.  He had become complacent about it and figured his work just hadn't gotten around to changing it yet.  He'd mentioned it when we first talked to Clay, and it had sounded promising then, but it obviously never transpired. 

Clay talked to Matt today saying he needed a paystub showing $15/hr.  Thanks to having to have the student loans on the loan, $12/hr isn't enough for our debt to income ratio.  Matt went to talk to his boss about it and was told that they really don't have the money to pay him that and they aren't sure what hours are going to be like... blah blah blah.

So now he's really annoyed at work.  Truth be told, so am I.  I'm mostly pissed at the fact that they never actually told him until he came asking again.  Really.  Who does that? Oh wait.... It's crappy when it's work in general and you find out you're not getting a "raise" you thought you were, but it's made worse when you like your boss and she's your friend's mom.  I'm not saying they should bankrupt themselves to pay Matt what they agreed on, but they really should have, the second they found out/decided not to bump his pay, they should have told him.  Thanks to this, we may not be able to get our house.  I only make $10/hr where I work and I can only work 40 hours.  In fact, starting next week, I'm working less than that because one of our major projects isn't dialing for a month.

Options: Ask Matt's boss to pay him $15/hr for the month of April so we can get the loan.  Sell Matt's car.  Make more money at Primerica so we can either pay stuff down to help the ratio or make a large enough down payment that it's not an issue.  Pull money from Matt's IRA for a downpayment.

All sucky options.  Well, not really.  $15/hr would be nice - even if only for the month of April.  Making more money at Primerica?  Well who doesn't like money?  The other two are less desireable.  Selling the car - if you or anyone you know is interested in buying a nice car, we're asking $8,000.  Talk to us :)  It's just obnoxious because, come winter, we're going to have to buy another one.  IRA - doable, but crappy because it only has like $4,000 to pull - which might be enough to get us in the condo, but then we have nothing saved.

So .... unless someone is feeling generous - put the word out that there's a nice, black, manual 2007 Ford Focus with street package, 6cd changer, and steering wheel controls for sale.  $8,000 is the low blue book price.  Email or comment if you know anyone :)  Thanks so much!