It looks like we’re good to go with our mortgage refinancing. In addition to now having a higher principle and extended term, we also had to get a supplementary loan for some more money. (Ironically, we’ll effectively be paying off our first loan with the refinancing, then just getting this other one.) The extra $25,000 equity on our condo (that’s the amount it went up in value due to 2003 properly tax assessements) had a big part to play in our being able to get this.

Due to some annoying bureaucratic red tape, we were unable to qualify for the refinancing if we had both our credit card debt and our car lease. Since we couldn’t do anything about the credit cards, we decided to pass our lease over to somebody else we knew, qualify, then take it back again. It turns out that once the lease is signed over (in this case to my mother) we’re not able to take it back again. So, she’ll end up being the “owner” of the car but everything else will stay the same. (Although it may cost us a bit more in insurance.) The bank is insisting on the updated lease papers showing that we no longer “own” the car – so it’s not possible to just claim that we don’t and get on with things.

The stupid point of all of this is, of course, that the bank should be looking at what our financial situation will be after we’ve got the money to pay off our debts, not before. It’s the height of Catch-22 absurdity, to say we have to get rid of our car, in order to qualify for money that will let us pay off our credit cards, which will then bring our debt/income back into line again – and put us in a situation where we can afford to pay for the car. By then, of course, it will be too late… The “best” option would have been to borrow $50,000 from somebody for a couple of weeks in order to pay off our credit cards, get that debt out of the way, qualify for the refinancing, get the money, then pay that person back – perhaps with a little extra for their time. Unfortunately, we didn’t know anybody with that kind of spare cash lying around. (Nobody who we wouldn’t be afraid of dealing with anyway!)

Still, it will all work out – even if it will be in this convoluted fashion. Even better is that while the refinancing is in process, our mortgage payments are on hiatus. So we get about a month of a “payment holiday” in the short term. Hmm. I haven’t had any “spare cash” in quite a while now. I’m not quite sure what I should be doing about it. Oh, yes. We need new tires on “our” car…