Um, I don't need YOU to make me feel stupid too Mr. Chase Mortgage guy

I feel stupid enough without you every day as I try to raise a child with no idea what I'm doing.

I called Chase yesterday to ask about Refinancing our house. We have lived in it for 2-1/2 years and I hear the interest rates have gone down and you can "refinance" and get a lower interest rate and your mothly payment will go down. That was my basic understanding of the process. I talked to a nice pre-qualification guy first and gave him my info and he said I would qualify and passed me off to the real mortgage guy. The conversation went something like this:

"Hello Mrs. Harvey, let me see if i can help you. What does your house appraise for?"

I told him.

"Um, you don't qualify for this"

"Why Not?"

"You don't have enough equity in your home"

"What do you mean?"

"There is not enough equity in your home to qualify for this"

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are saying, I was just told I qualified and now you are telling me that we don't. Can you explain further?"

"The equity in your home is not great enough for you to qualify" obivously annoyed at this point.

I wanted to say: "look, i'm an interior designer, not a finance major, i do not understand what you are telling me, you might as well be speaking french, please explain what equity is and how i get more of it. I cannot be the only person in the world who does not understand this!"

But i said: "are you saying I need to have owned the house for longer or made more payments?"

"yes"

"but I owe less than it is worth, we have paid the balance down"

"yeah, like $15,000" might has well been followed by duh, idiot lady, it's amazing they let you buy a house with your obivous lack of knowledge of how this process works. Do you have a degree in stupidity. Please let me off the phone so i can help someone who actually knows what's up.

I thought $15,000 sounded like a lot. I thought that since i had made faithful on time payments for the past 30 months that I deserved to be able to refinance based on good behavior. i thought that since I owed less than the house was worth that was a good thing.

"so there's nothing else i can do?

"no"

Ugh. I know, many of you are laughing and think i'm an idiot too BUT you are doing it behind my back and that is better, I will never know about it. This guy could have just explained what "equity" meant is 2nd grader terms and we would have all gotten through this much easier. I'm so glad i didn't major in finance, we would be bankrupt by now, clearly I don't have a talent for it.

So dear house, we will continue paying the same amount for you as always. Maybe I can get my student loans suspended since I had a baby. I can imagine how that conversation would go.

"i'd like to suspend my student loans please"

"why"

"i had a baby"

"do you still have a job?"

"yes"

"then why exactly should i suspend your loans?"

"i can't stop buying the baby dwell clothes at target, i could buy many more if i didn't have these pesky student loan payments hanging around"

"are you serious?"

"yes mam, i am"