Mary & Joseph's Excellent Adventure
“I’m driving in the car with Myron!” Amber sang at the top of her lungs as we sped away from campus on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
I raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Wow. Just – wow. That song’s gonna be a big hit. Especially among the teenagers.”
Amber flashed me a huge smile and started another verse. Despite her narrative singing, I was really glad that she was helping me with this project. Realizing that it would be a while before we reached our destination, I sat back, looked out of the window, and allowed my mind to drift back about two weeks….
Dr. Wentworth, my Personal Finance professor, paced back and forth with excitement as he explained the project that he wanted us to do. The project was relatively simple: we were to visit an open house, talk to the realtor, look around the house, collect information, go to a bank, discuss a loan, collect more information, go to an insurance company, get a quote, and then write a report about it all.
Okay…
Maybe it wasn’t all that simple, but as I would soon come to find out, there’s nothing simple about buying a house – even if it’s only for a project.
Getting more and more excited by the minute, Dr. Wentworth covered all the bases of “buying” a house for the project. “Make sure that your house is located in Southeast Tennessee or North Georgia! And don’t go to First Tennessee Bank for a loan! Some students went there a few years ago and made it seem like they were really interested in getting a loan. When the bank found out that they were just students, they were mad! Because of that incident, Southern students have been politely asked not to go there.”
I smiled. Dr. Wentworth was the only person I knew who could make taxes, insurance policies, and mortgages seem even remotely interesting.
“Is there anything else…? Oh! One More thing – this is very important!” I leaned forward, eager to hear the vital information. “When you go to the open house, make sure to bring someone of the opposite gender with you.”
My smile faded. That was going to be a problem.
The only person I could think to ask was Amber. Not only did she have a car, but she just so happened to be of the opposite gender. The problem was that I couldn’t just go up to her and say, “Hey, you wanna buy a house with me?” That would be weird.
Instead, I did what any rational individual would have done in that situation.
I sent it by text.
Me: this is gonna sound weird, but would you by any chance be interested in buying a house with me?
Amber: Bahahahaha sure i would love to buy a house with you! lol!!!
Me: wait... are you serious??? lol. you just accept? don't you even wanna know why I asked??
Amber: Hahaha yeah im serious!! i mean i would like a little explaination to what it means but yea!!!
“We’re here,” Amber said, pulling me from my thoughts. I glanced up at the pleasant brick house that looked surprisingly similar to all the other pleasant brick houses on the block.
“Great,” I mumbled as I lifted myself out of the vehicle. “Are you nervous?”
“Nope! This is gonna be fun!” she replied. “What am I supposed to do again?”
I started walking toward the front door. “Just evaluate the house, really. According to Dr. Wentworth, girls will see things that guys won’t and vice versa.”
Amber nodded. “I can do that.”
“Ready?” I asked. Unlike her, I was actually nervous.
She nodded again.
I rang the doorbell. A few seconds later, a short man wearing a dark blue suit opened the door. “Can I help you?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Talking to people really wasn’t my specialty.
Luckily, it was Amber’s.
“Yes,” she replied confidently. “We are students from Southern Adventist University, and we were wondering if we could take a look at the house for--”
“No! No!” the man yelled, tossing his hands as to say “shoo.” “Get out! I don’t like Seventh Day Adventists! Get out!”
I began backing out of the door slowly. “Well, thank you anyway for your time. We’ll just--”
To my surprise – and confusion – the man started laughing. “I’m just kidding! I’m a Seventh Day Adventist, too! Come in!”
Amber followed the man deeper into the house with a smile on her face, leaving me standing in the doorway trying to figure out what had just happened. Once I got past the fact that the man had been joking, I realized that of all the houses for sale in Tennessee, we had gone to the one with an Adventist realtor. Thanking God repeatedly, I closed the door and wandered deeper into the house.
The realtor, or Freddy, as he preferred we call him, was extremely helpful. Unfortunately, he may have been a bit too helpful. Instead of showing us the house, Freddy sat us around the dining room table and started throwing facts at us faster than we could catch them. In ten minutes, he had covered everything I had learned in Personal Finance so far, and he clearly had no intention of stopping.
“Now, you always need to have a backup plan,” Freddy explained. Amber and I nodded in agreement. “And when you have a house, the most important backup is an emergency fund.”
More nods.
“Let’s say, for example…” Freddy pointed at me, but suddenly realized that he didn’t know my name. Instead of asking me what it was, however, he decided to give me a new one. “Let’s say Joseph here had an accident, and now he can’t work. Guess who has to pay all the bills?” the realtor pointed at Amber, whose name he didn’t know either. “Your wife, Mary.”
I stifled a laugh, and from the corner of my eye, I could see Amber/Mary struggling to do the same.
When the realtor finally concluded his lecture, Mary and I were allowed to check out the house. Everything about the house could be described as “pleasant.” It was a pleasant size, with pleasant bed and bathrooms, a pleasant kitchen, and a pleasant porch in a pleasant backyard. I thought the house was okay – or pleasant, rather – but Mary had a totally different opinion.
Where I had seen “pleasant,” Mary had seen “problematic.” At first, I thought she was just being overdramatic, but when she gave me a tour of the house through her eyes, I started to understand why the asking price was so low. There was a high school directly behind the house, which seemed like a good thing until Mary, who grew up in the area, told me that there would be noise-polluting sports events every Friday night. As if the noise wasn’t bad enough, there was the possibility that teenagers would roam into the yard, as the only barrier between the properties were a cluster of short and feeble bushes. The lack of a proper barrier became even more a problem when Mary pointed out that the house was right next to a street that would be busy two times a day. If a child were playing in the backyard and his or her ball rolled into the street during rush hour…
All of a sudden, the house didn’t look so pleasant. It looked dangerous. Mary and I quickly said goodbye to the realtor and hightailed it out of there.
The next house we went to was much, much better. There was a huge yard for playing in and the house was surrounded by thick trees and an iron fence. The house itself consisted of reasonably-sized bedrooms, a home office, and a bar. Every room was amazing, but none could compare to the kitchen. The fact that the kitchen was stocked with all the latest gizmos and gadgets was impressive, but what really set it apart was its size. The marble kitchen was at least two times bigger than my dorm room (I measured).
The first thing Mary said after she picked up her jaw from the floor was, “We are getting this house.” After she familiarized herself with the marvelous kitchen, I decided that it was time to find out the price. We searched the house and found the realtor standing over a table examining some documents.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “Is it possible that you could tell us how much this house costs?”
“Sure,” the gray-haired realtor smiled. She flipped through the papers before her and pointed at a number. Mary and I leaned forward eagerly to see the price. What we saw took both of our smiles away.
As we drove back to school, a slight depression hung in the air. The second house we visited was better than the first by far, but it was also way out of the price range.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?” Mary asked for the third or fourth time.
“Nope. The limit is $175,000. I can’t really change that.”
“So what are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “I guess I’ll just buy the first house. The professor told us that we didn’t have to like the house we bought.”
“Okay.” She sounded disappointed.
“The house isn’t so bad,” I said. “The only thing we really have to worry about is Baby Jesus getting hit by a car while he’s playing in the backyard.”
Mary burst into laughter. “You know that I’m gonna call you Joseph from now on, right?”
I smiled. I had expected nothing less.
The single most important thing I’ve learned during the project is this: with all the taxes, insurances, and mortgages payments involved in buying a house, it’s probably a good thing that the real Mary and Joseph gave birth to Jesus in a stable.