The Bank of Bastards

Continuing on from the last post - fast-fowarding the boring bits. We've found the house down by the sea, paid the deposit, sold our house at auction and got all our securities worked out with our bank.

Settlement day was two weeks ago. Have we moved in to our seaside home yet? No! (you must have known this was coming). Although we had all our i's dotted and t's crossed, as far as finances go, our buyers were not enjoying the same efficient service from their bank, who had mislaid a deed, or some such important document, and left it until two days before settlement to worry about it.

We have to cancel our movers and because we had packed everything during the Easter break we have no beds to sleep on, no cooking equipment, limited clothing and the kids are starting at their new school... forty kilometres away. Fortunately I have relatives on the Peninsula who are kind enough to allow us to live with them so at least we have that.

We expect the buyer's bank to get their shit together by the end of the following week. The day before the rescheduled settlement day they announce they have failed again. We're told that the person who was handling the account had been off sick. What idiotic banking establishment leaves an already overdue settlement in the hands of just one person? Well, I could tell you but in a round-about way my employment contract forbids me. Let me just say that in Australia there are four major banks, known here as The Big Four and it's one of them. My bank is also one of them but not the same one. All of The Big Four make multi-billion dollar profits by charging their customers fees for anything and everything but cry that times are tough at the moment so they have to put their interest rates up; despite the Reserve bank moving their rates in the opposite direction. Needless to say all The Big Four banks are bastards, but in my opinion, the bank my buyer's are with are the biggest bastards.

Our mover is not at all happy about having a day's notice of us cancelling again but we have little choice. Our vendor is also pissed off because they had hoped to buy a new property but had to let it go because they don't know when/if they will actually sell their house. And on Monday they hit us with a Notice of Default, threatening to sue if payment is not received in 14 days. We, of course, passed a Notice of Default on to our buyer's and the whole affair suddenly looks a lot uglier... and it was already pretty damn ugly.

Yesterday, I am told, the buyer's resubmitted their mortgage documents with a new individual at their bank (who had better remain healthy until this deal is done) and they will be ready to settle in 2 to 3 business days (god forbid they work on a weekend or any overtime). This is great news, BUT, why didn't it take 2 to 3 days to sort out when they first realised there was a problem. And why was the problem only discovered a couple of days before the settlement day, which was planned nearly 2 months earlier?

So, we're now hoping to settle some time next week (no one can say exactly which day) and we have one last chance with our mover. I really hope it happens, because a week from Monday is D-Day (Default Day) and I do not want this to end in court.




You might say that, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a major problem, we still have our health and do still have a house. But if a bank can make billion dollar profits, it can at least try to function efficiently, otherwise they will lose their customers and end up going under... and then they'll cry to the government to save them with taxpayers money and then that will affect even more people than just the three families whose lives they're currently making difficult.

Same old spots on this leopard

See what happens when an easily distracted guy who doesn't take anything too seriously decides to make a serious effort at writing a Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk novel... with a smattering of humour, of course.

Ha, six years ago when I wrote that comment I thought that, by making the admission that I am easily distracted I would be encouraged to prove myself and break this character trait. Seems now like it's more ingrained into my psyche than I realised.

Recognising you have a problem is the first step. Isn't that what they say? Well I've done that. Now what?

I need to be tougher on myself. More competitive. More... more not like myself. Not an easy thing to do. But I'm sure it must be possible. There must be thousands of books and online articles on the topic. I should look it up. Problem is that when there's thousands of options it's too easy to just give up and make the easy choice... stay the way I am and deal with it.

Writing promotes writing, I read somewhere once. This I have found to be true. Maybe that's what I need to do regularly: sit down and just write. I have written a couple of short stories in the last 18 months and they did bring about some ideas for Coma City, but so far not enough to get it finished.

I thought that a change of environment would bring about some new ideas and inspiration. My wife and I had been talking about getting out of the burbs and moving to a more rural locale, where the family could enjoy fresh air and an outdoor life. So, after much procrastination and searching we found our desired locale. About sixty kilometres from the centre of Melbourne but with reasonably easy access via motorways (with a new one to open next year), the Mornington Peninsula had all we desired: beaches, green pastures, vineyards, excellent eateries and, importantly for the kids, good schools.

We found a house with magnificent views across rolling green hills to Port Philip Bay that took our fancy on the first day of property viewing, but we didn't buy it right there and then. I wish we were able to make snap decisions like that, but we decided to keep looking to see if something better came up. There were a couple of contenders but they were either more expensive or required more work than we were willing to apply. So, after about eight weeks we went back to our first choice, had a long chat with the agent and finally made the decision to go for it.

Turns out that was the easy bit. I'll continue the story in my next post... yes, I will make sure I don't get distracted.

Steve

Listening to: Stronghold by Röyksopp.