A lot has been going on lately; none of which I’ve mentioned (typically). Foremost, we may be very close to finalizing a loan on the house for $55,000. This would pay the balance on Loretta’s equity loan ($30,000) and leave us $25,000 for improvements. It still won't put our names on the deed (mine & Mara's), but it's a step in the right direction. Now all we have to do is get our names on the deed, get all the bills changed over into our names, and we're home-owners with a chance of building some credit (and possibly a future).

I wish we didn't have to do this. I feel a bit like a greedy son who is trying to take something that isn't his. I'm not sure why. The only reason I wanted to try for the loan was to make sure that, if we paid off a $30,000 loan that wasn't ours, that we got some credit out of it. The extra $25,000 for improvements was mama's idea. I considered it a long-shot from the beginning, but damned if we didn't get it. Well, they say we got it. No one at the bank seems to be in a hurry to finish the paperwork.

In other news, we're going to be talking to Wade Ford next Monday about a 2003 Windstar SEL mini-van. It's a really nice ride. We had planned to wait until next spring to buy something, to give us time to build some credit with the home loan and to clean up my credit report, but then I realized that 2003 is the last year for the Windstar, and Ford is offering a $5,000 cash rebate until the end of this month. That's mainly why we decided to go for it. We'll just wait and see if our current run of good luck holds out long enough for us to be approved for an auto loan on a $34,000 van (though I’m hoping that a trade-in (the Aerostar) and $1,000, plus the $5,000 cash rebate and an additional $500 web rebate from ford will swing the pendulum in our favor). We'll see.

Credit-wise it would certainly help us to have a home loan and an auto loan, if both are well handled and paid on time. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed, won't we?