Real Estate Class 🏡

 I wasn’t going to announce this until I was licensed, but I’m taking real estate class through an online source called AceableAgent. I believe it’s available in ten states, and for Texas, I must take 180 hours to be able to take the proctored state exam for a real estate license. Aceable divides this up into six 30-hour classes, and I just finished the first 30 hour class. All I have to do for that is take the final exam, but I’m spending my time taking practice tests first. The final exam after each 30 hour class is online. When I finish all 6 classes, I’ll take the state exam in a testing location. 

Last night I quizzed my mom on one of the practice tests. My parents got married in 1967 and my dad passed away in 2020. They bought and sold 11 houses in 3 states, rented out 3 of those houses, sold two or three by owner, and my dad took this real estate class in the 1990’s. My mom knows that I am hurt that they never taught me any of this stuff. I often feel hurt that they pushed a useless college degree and never homeownership. My mom’s response to my expressing this is usually some form of “well I didn’t know any of this stuff either, just enough to buy and sell 11 houses, rent two or three of them out, sell two or three of them by owner,” etc. to which I always say, that’s the point. That’s literally the point. Those actions have been very lucrative for you. It’s not worth arguing with my mom though. She is a master gaslighter, and it’s best just to keep peace, know in advance what topics she gaslights on, and avoid those topics. 

But last night I quizzed her using my practice test as a guide. If I knew the answer, I just let her guess. What happened is that she ended up going on such wild tangents with each topic that I couldn’t tell if she knew the answers to the questions or not. So I gave up about a third of the way through. 

I could write a whole book on all the things I learned in this class that I didn’t know, but here on this blog I’ll just list one. I didn’t know that married couples who are homeowners always own their homes 50/50. I didn’t know that. I was literally always taught that women don’t own anything, don’t have any rights, and are always screwed and left penniless in divorces. But no. Even if the husband makes a million a year and the wife doesn’t do shit, she still owns half the house. She owns half of all their property. So I’m thinking, she wouldn’t exactly be penniless and starving in the event of a divorce would she?  I was never a homeowner, not even when I was married so I wouldn’t know. And these are things that I was told by my extended family when they didn’t want me ever getting married and having children. They wanted me to focus on career and education instead. They were trying to scare me. 

I’m not sure where I’m going with this class. I am not trying to become a real estate agent. I’m happy with where I’m at in life. However, if I become an agent, then that’s great. I just want to learn this stuff. I’m going through an entire crisis where I feel like many things I was taught about life are wrong. That’s a whole other post. Is it a midlife crisis?  Maybe. 

If there’s a concept that I don’t fully grasp or need more help with, I listen to Travis Everette’s lectures on YouTube. He’s not only adorable, but a great teacher. He is in North Carolina and seems to have a seething hatred of South Carolina. It’s hilarious. 

Student Loans

 As many of you know, we were supposed to receive student loan forgiveness but didn’t. There was a 3 year pause on payments and interest accrual due to the pandemic. In the spring of 2020 when that began, I checked my balance and it was at $20,146. So I paid $146 and whatever change in order to make the balance an even $20K. 

Biden’s plan was to grant $10K in forgiveness to everyone and $20K to Pell recipients. I was a Pell recipient since I was a single mom at the time I went back to school. So I would have gotten just enough to pay off my loans. 

With the forgiveness not happening, and the interest accruing again starting in September, I submitted my income information to the new loan servicer and check it whenever I feel like I have a surplus in my checking account. Then I make a small payment that brings the balance down about $10 less than I brought it down to last time I did this. This is to prevent the interest from ballooning up to about $100K by the time I retire. I keep a note on my phone keeping Track of how much I’m paying on what day and what that brings the total down to. When I log on, it always says I have $0 due, even though they never sent me any statement saying what I owe monthly based on my income. Maybe it’s zero who knows?  But if I let it go, I will be in trouble. I’m posting this just to help expose how predatory these loans are. Since September 1, I paid about $320 to bring the balance down by $130. Interest accrus daily  

$21.10 payment made 9/5/23 bringing balance to $19,990

9/14/23 payment of $34.97 bringing balance to $19,980 

$31.10 payment on 9/18/23 bringing balance to $19,960

9/20/23 $25.56 payment bringing balance to $19,940 

$23.84 paid on 9/25 bringing balance to $19,930 

10/13/23 paid $59.77 bringing balance to $19,920 

$21.55 paid on 10/19 bringing balance to $19,915 

21.51 paid on 10/25 bringing balance to $19,910

$35.50 payment on 10/27, bringing balance to $19,880

$45.64 payment on 11/9 bringing balance to $19,870