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The Most Important Things

By
Mortgage and Lending with Willamette Falls Financial

Spending all day pouring through client's income, assets, credit and the other items that make up a mortgage application can be pretty dry. We are all defined, at times, in this business by numbers. Credit scores, interest rates, home value, income, mortgage amount, mortgage payment.

And it is easy sometimes to lose sight of the fact that we are not defined...despite what the banks may think...by our credit score, our job or the size of our bank accounts.

I had a perfect reminder of that today. This was in an email forwarded to me from a client. He had asked his wife, as many of us do, to lay out the details of the family books for the purposes of this new transaction we are working on. It was so touching, and funny, that I asked him for permission to share it here. What follows is the first part of the rundown, from wife to husband...

"Assets
       

Villa Verde--house
Cash in Bank account
Irene--'84 300D Mercedes
Red Robin --'95 Geo Prism
Vacation International Time Share
5 Chickens--laying about 3-5 eggs a day
Cat named Henry

Investments:

Daughter, India, 7 yrs old.   Our biggest investment for the future.  Value:  priceless; Disclaimer:  Public perception weak during whining spells and tantrums but long-term value has steadily increased."

Reading this reminds me of that great quotation on parents and kids from an unknown author...

"A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of house we lived in, what kind of car we drove, or what our bank account balance was.  But the world may be different because we made a difference in the life of a child."

All good things to remember when we're fretting about our IRAs being sawed in half, the cost of health insurance, and the 1,000 other material things we all worry about from time to time.