So in my previous post I told you about the whole Citi Mastercard thing. This is the continuation.

So I gave them a few days just so all the transactions get posted in their system. Then I called them up to request for the two reimbursements: one for the Stop Payment fee that my bank charged me, and the overnight postage that I had to pay so that the check gets there the next day. The first customer rep that I spoke to understandably transferred me to somebody else (I think an account manager) who can handle my request. Of course, I had to tell her the whole story again–by this time I had been telling it enough times that I can shorten it a bit by just narrating the highlights.

She was actually very helpful. She said that the postage, because I had used my Citi credit card to pay for it, she can reimburse right away, and as for the stop payment fee, I just needed to fax her a statement from my bank with the charge, as supporting documentation.

So that’s what I did, I printed an online statement from DCU’s website, circled the charge and faxed it to her. Within a few days, I checked my credit card account online and I saw that the two refunds were there now.

When I have applied for my so called I-485 application, I had to complete medical examination at USICS approved doctor and submit along with. These tests include MMR. TB and couple more and since my wife was pregnant one of the test/vaccine was not given to her and the same is mentioned in the application. I am well aware that this test would be due any time after the pregnancy. This happened in August 2007 and we were through the pregnancy in January 2008. I don’t know why but I have completely forgot about the pending test.

I sent my family to India on June 21 2009 and before their departure date I was talking to Sridhar and recalling the fact that the test is pending and what shall be done if the request from USICS is received. Guess what, I just received the request for initial evidence or RFE requesting the remaining tests for my wife.

These are the following option we were working on.

Option 1: Since I have only 30 days to send the reply, bring only my wife to USA for a week time and complete the tests. Costs me $1200 for round trip.
Advantage: I get to see my wife.
Disadvantage: Our kids have to be alone with grand parents for a week to ten days.

Option 2:Bring all of them and they will be here till my vacation time and we all go together and return as per schedule. Costs me $2200 for all of them.
Advantage: Get to be with the family totally
Disadvantage: Expensive.

Option 3: Change the return dates of the current tickets and bring all of them here and cancel my vacation and live happily ever after. Costs me $600 to change the dates.
Advantage: Get to be with my family.
Disadvantage: I get to cancel my vacation and my parents will be upset.

If I had planned the test or at least thought of this well in advance their vacation, I would have been free of these brain storm and money. At the end of the day, I did learned a good lesson. As you have all guessed, I may be going with option one but would have saved a lot of money.

In my first post, I wrote about figuring out the reason why you would want to buy a house. In this post, I’ll write about how to figure out if you can really afford the house.

So let’s say you have convinced yourself that you really need a house. The next question then becomes: can you afford one? Whether or not you can afford one really depends on two factors: the price of the house, and how much you can spend. As long as how much you can spend is more than the price of the house, then you should be all set. The rational thing to do then, is first figure out how much you can spend, before you can even start looking at houses.

How do you do this? In its most basic form, it’s just Income minus Expenses. The Income part should be fairly straight-forward; this is basically your net paycheck. Figuring out the Expenses part will require a little more effort. This will include everything that you spend on right now, whether on a regular basis or not. This will mostly be comprised of your bills (electricity, gas, water, auto insurance, phone, cable, internet, etc.), groceries, clothing, and other occasional stuff like books, electronics, dvds and dining out. Expenses that are specifically related to renting, such as rent and renter’s insurance, can be left out because you won’t be spending them if you buy a house. Make sure you list all your expenses, even minor ones such as your morning coffee.

Next, you sum up all of your expenses. When you sum them up, get the total for the whole year. This way you get a better scope of all your expenses and you avoid missing any seasonal expenses that you may have. Compute for your annual net pay, then subtract from this your total annual expenses. Divide the resulting amount by 12, and you now have the monthly mortgage that you can theoretically afford.

Why theoretical? Because, even though this number represents the money that you can use to pay for a mortgage loan, there are many other expenses that you should also anticipate. At this point it might be useful to talk to some of your friends who already own houses and ask them what they routinely spend for maintaining the house. If you have mostly lived your adult life in an apartment or you used to live in a place where the the climate or seasons are drastically different, then your knowledge about what things you need to consider might be limited.

Some things you can probably determine with a little research, like taxes (yes, you will now have to pay school, property and county taxes), water, sewage and garbage disposal. Remember when you didn’t have to pay for these? Well now you have to. (Still wanna buy a house? Read on then)

Some stuff though you just have to get from a homeowner. Things like what equipment to buy (lawnmower, snowblower) and how much would you typically spend for house upkeep. And even with your best efforts you may still miss some. In our case, we didn’t realize we needed a water softener. The effect, in addition to the expense of having it installed, is that we now have an additional regular expense: water softener salt.

Put all of these together, pad it a little (maybe 20-30%), and you have a decent estimate of your anticipated additional expenses. Subtract this from your theoretical budget above, and you now have a realistic budget for buying a house. Now you can start shopping