Patrick Gentry

The Lord really does move in mysterious ways.

When I was in college in the late 00s I was introduced to the website woot.com. Their premise was really clever. Every day at midnight they would post an item of some sort at an excellent discount. This item would be available until it sold out or until midnight the next day.

Simple right? Well to add to the fun, every now and again they would sell a mystery item they lovingly called a bag of crap(BOC). This would be a random assortment of items of dubious quality and origin. There were no guarantees other than there would be at least three items and a bag of some sort included.

Over the years I’ve been lucky/unlucky enough to snag several of these bags. The contents have ranged from miscellaneous Roomba parts to decent quality mechanical pencils to vacuums. It’s always fun and cheap (only 9.99 shipped!)

Steffani and I have had a few different family expenses (braces mostly for the boys) we’ve been planning towards. We like to avoid financing things when possible and so this expense and how to tackle it has been on my mind recently.

Enter the most recent BOC. While I was rocking the baby it was delivered! I opened it up and inside (among other things) was none other than a Tameron 150-500 mm lens! If eBay is to be believed this can be sold for between 800 and 1100! This will go a long way toward taking care of the braces need we have.

The Lord provides in mysterious ways indeed and always just in time.

“All pages, even if they are blank…”

If you’ve purchased a home in the last several year you may have seen some version of a request like this from your processor in regards to documents needed (usually bank statements). I’ve seen some pushback from customers in regards to this request and it felt like a good question to address on a larger scale.

On the face of it, yes it’s absolutely silly that a lender would need the blank pages of a bank statement. butwhy.gif From a sales perspective it’s great to remember that we don’t want to have to request any documents that aren’t absolutely necessary. Every request we make could be the bridge too far that makes an otherwise good experience a bad one. We are acutely aware of this and want to avoid at all costs. So why do we ask for it?

It all comes down to, we don’t know what we don’t know. If we get a document that says page 1 of 10, and the document sent to us is only 6 pages long, we have no idea what’s on missing 4 pages. They may be blank, but they also may contain additional transactions that require other documentation. We simply don’t know, and therefore have to ask. This is usually the cause of the other complaint I hear often which is: “You asked for the same document multiple times!”

As always, if you have questions you can email me here or you can schedule a hassle free call here.

Growing up very modestly has made the topic of personal savings very close to me. It doesn’t help that my taste tends to skew expensive high value. But with some patience and strategy over the years (and some help from my wife) it has been possible to stretch my beer budget to match the occasional champagne taste.

By necessity my approach to new purchases has been a lot of planning and saving. This has worked well however, since I will have a lot of time to consider how useful/fun a particular purchase will be. Sometimes I miss out or am late to the party for something more zeitgeisty, but I’d rather be late than not be there at all!^1

About a month ago I came across a great deal on the ROG Ally Extreme on Facebook Market and was able to jump in on the experiment of portable PCs. I have been saving up for this for about 6 months (primarily completing Prolific surveys in my free time). And wow the wait was worth it!

Windows on a handheld is every bit as fiddly as you would imagine (Windows update amIright?) but having easy access to all the various storefronts without having to dive into the even more fiddly Linux side of things is a welcome trade off.

I hate “calls to action” but I’m genuinely curious how you might approach purchasing “toys.” Drop me a line!

^1Why yes I am an extrovert😅

For the mortgage nerds out there… Closing costs are high on home purchases and refinances without a lot of ways to reduce them (most title companies are going to charge the same fees). However, a little used option folks can use is premium pricing. In effect you take a higher interest rate in exchange for your lender paying a portion of closing costs. This can be handy especially in a situation where you will be selling or refinancing your home again in the near future.

www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/clos…

Congratulations! Buying your first home is no small thing! This guide isn’t meant to replace your loan officer (but if you have questions beyond the guide I’d love to talk, email me here).

Do’s:

• Talk to a Loan Originator early in the process
  • LOs want to help you get ready and a good one doesn’t mind talking to you months or even a year in advance to help you get ready!
• Have your financial house in order
  • Do you need to have perfect credit? No, but the better your score the more options you will have!
• Know the roles of your team
  • Your loan officer will be the person who helps navigate the financials and loan programs.
  • Your realtor is a local area expert, they are there to help you navigate the contract and offer process and be your advocate speaking with the seller’s side of the transaction.
    • Loan officers don’t make for good realtors, and realtors don’t make good loan officers!
• Save for down payment and closing costs
  • In general you should plan to save up for a down payment of 3 or 3.5% of the purchase price. (100,000 x 3% =3,000 ). Closing costs vary from state to state, but a good rule of thumb is planning for an additional 6000 to 10,000.
• Have an idea of what your maximum monthly payment needs to be. Your loan officer can back into ideal purchase price with this number.
  • Most online mortgage calculators actually do a pretty good job of calculating your payment. Be aware that they often will sell your information to online lenders who will then proceed to call you… a lot.
    • Here is a calculator from a reputable company
• Ask your loan officer about special programs, down payment assistance etc. Not all programs are right for all people, but always ask!
• Get an inspection.
  • I recommend getting your own inspector who is not referred by your realtor (or even your lender). Having a true, uninterested third party separate from the transaction can save you a lot of headache in the future!

Dont’s:

• Add additional debt
  • Will this disqualify you on the spot? Not necessarily, but a lender has to get explanations for any credit pulls you have gotten recently and if you’ve added debt these have to be accounted for and added against your budget. It basically adds more paperwork and friction for you (and it may disqualify you due to budget if things are too tight).
• Quit your job!
  • Seriously, income is one of the most important factors on your loan, you need to keep your job situation as steady and predicable as possible. Don’t start changing your schedule, or how you’re paid (going from salaried to hourly, or from hourly to commission, or W2 to 1099, or full time to part time).
• Commit to a realtor or LO at first contact
  • The beautiful thing about being the buyer is nothing happens without you! No one gets paid, and a home doesn’t get sold until you commit to buying. This is too important of a life event to work with someone who isn’t treating a multi hundred thousand dollar transaction seriously.
    • Do remember that LOs and realtors are paid a commission however, if you know you’re moving onto someone else, we would appreciate the “breakup” call or text so we can move on. No one likes working on the weekend for a deal that’s not going to happen.

Basically all these points could have an “in general” behind them, but if you follow these guidelines you will be largely setup for success! Again, email me here with questions and I’ll be happy to touch base with you!

Technology is an expensive hobby, but one I love very much! Having grown up “on a budget” and very much still there, it often has meant I jump onto the latest and greatest new thing late. So it was with Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme (what a mouthful). I picked up this beauty off of Facebook Marketplace for 300 bucks!

But oh wow was it worth the wait! Having been an on and off PC gamer for years I have a fairly healthy Steam library of games, not to mention the collection of freebies I’ve gathered from Epic (which is also why I opted for a windows machine vs a Steamdeck). And even more interesting, with the Z2 generation being announced at CES and the power seemingly not that big of a leap over the Z1 generation] . I really am quite pleased!

As far as what I am doing with the machine, mostly it’s just catching up on a bunch of indies I hadn’t yet gotten around to playing. This thing is no slouch on AAA games. I picked up Jedi Survivor on sale a few weeks back and Ally run it well on low settings. My only quibble is battery life, if you’re running a AAA game on 15 W mode, you’re going to not even hit 2 hours of battery. This is fine for me since I’m just playing around the house and rarely play more than an hour at time, but it’s no Switch on the battery department.

If your needs are similar to mine and you value portability over graphics, then this gets a hardy thumbs up from me!

As we enter yet another week of higher interest rates, it just seems like complete foolishness to talk about a new mortgage, much less a refinance… right?

It’s worth noting that the cheapest way to borrow money still is borrowing against your home.¹ So if you have a need, even with these higher rates, it can still make sense! There are two major things you want to consider before jumping in. If you want to talk about your specific circumstances, you can check out my about me page.

The first consideration is closing costs. These are the costs your lender charges, plus third party fees(title, credit report, appraisal, etc). Every time you do a mortgage loan (purchase or refinance) these fees apply. This is important to remember when refinancing when rates are a bit higher, because you will likely want to refinance a second time when the rates come back down. These costs can add up quickly! Thankfully there are options you can take to reduce or eliminate these extra costs in the form of credits. Often lenders offer an option called premium pricing. This is when you will take a slightly higher interest rate in exchange for lender credits. These credits can be used to offset your closing costs. This is a great way to not be “moving backward” with mounting loan costs by doing multiple refinances.

The second consideration is your term. If you’ve been paying on your mortgage for a few (or many) years going back out to a 30 year term can really impact your long term interest expense. I know most of you know about the 15 year mortgage (Dave Ramsey thinks this is the only mortgage worth getting). I’m here to tell you a less commonly known tool is the 18 year mortgage, the 21 year mortgage or the 27 year mortgage. Not all lenders offer custom mortgage terms, but several do and it’s worth discussing what a couple of years would do for your interest savings with your loan officer.

As always, there’s a lot of nuance when it comes to borrowing money. Not everything comes down to what interest rates are doing today.

^{1. In general. If you make enough phone calls you may find one weird lender who has crazy rates doing some crazy niche program.}

Check out part 1

The decline of Window Phone was just sad and it showed the difficulty of breaking into the American Smartphone market. As I started seeing the writing on the wall, and the slickness of the newly announced iPhone 5s (and and my wife was an iOS user). I decided to jump ship for the first time.

I’ve always traded in or sold my previous phone to fund the purchase of the newest shiny thing, but the iPhone 5s is unique for me because I still own this one (somewhere). This was the device that introduced Space Gray to the world! It was a cool color, but a touch disappointing coming off the really cool black color that the 5 had. This was also the phone that introduced Touch ID and that was the “wow” feature that really got my attention and helped pull me across from Windows Phone.

Next in the line up for me was the 6s Plus (yes I avoided bendgate on the 6) This one stood out to me for 2 reasons: 1. It felt HUGE for the time. 2. The battery life was amazing. Getting 2 solid days of battery on a smartphone was just incredible. It’s a shame that with all the advancements we’ve made since that phone has come out, getting a day of battery is still the standard. At least it hasn’t gotten worse?

Given that the 6 and 6s series was quite a bit more boring than the preceding models, I decided I would check the temperature over in Android land! Enter the Samsung Galaxy s7! It was a time of firsts, my first glass sandwich (ew), and my first Android phone. I was pleasantly surprised coming off the iPhone how everything was mostly just… the same. In the edge of cloud and cross platform apps, switching was (and largely still is) easier than one might think. It was these lack of differences that ultimately meant my trip down Android highway would only be for one brief exit. It turns out I’m just not that into customization (at least not in the few limited ways Android allows). And so, back to iPhone I go!

It was the year of a redesign! Arguable the most interesting and impactful redesign to the iPhone since the 4! The iPhone 10 X had arrived! And I opted for the 8 for some reason… The much forgotten about iPhone 8. It was basically a reskinned 7, except it added wireless charging (yay!) And traded a high quality plastic case for… glass (boo!). That was really it, this one was pretty boring. And so like the flip flopper that I am, I switched to Android again for the last time…

The Pixel 3 was a super fun refinement year. It lacked some of the really outstanding colors that came before(thinking of the blue of the pixel 1), but otherwise it was a fantastic phone. Even today in 2024 looking back on those pictures and seeing the jump in quality from the iPhone 8 to the Pixel, it was just an incredible leap in quality. Sadly I don’t have a good scientific set of photos to compare against here. The software was also really fun. I really enjoyed the “iPhone” like approach Google took with the Pixel line. It’s stock launcher was fantastic, but I still had all the world of launchers I wanted in the Google Play store if I decided to veer from the course. The only blemish for me with this device was battery life. I almost always had to top up at around 2:00 PM every day… ouch.

The paper cuts of not being on iOS (iMessage and the like) with my wife finally got to me when it was upgrade time again. And so I switched once again to the iPhone 11! This was a great year to swap over as the camera improved a lot over the X and Xs and was basically a step sideways from my beloved Pixel 3. All the other niceities of iPhone were still here. The screen size was a real stand out as well at 5.8 inches. It was a smidge smaller than the Pixel but still big enough for activities. I had no complaints with this device!

Next the penultimate device, the 13 Pro! This is where things get less exciting as we are very much in the modern era now. And the 13 Pro was totally “fine” in every way! Great camera, great screen, I even liked the blue color of the 13 Pro, (though it wasn’t as nice as the blue on the 12 Pro line). My only quibbles with this device was the slight size increase (5.8 to 6.1 inches) and the weight… this thing was a brick! I like the shiny look of the stainless steel but the weight was terrible. It was on this device that I opted to get a cellular Apple Watch so I didn’t have to carry the phone with me on walks.

And finally… the 16 pro! Even with Apple Intelligence MIA, this phone is probably one of my favorite iPhones I’ve purchased! The weight has been cut down slightly from the 13 pro, the Dynamic Island is neat, camera control makes for a nice camera launcher, the always on screen is useful, the 5x zoom is welcome as well. My only quibble is the color options on the 16 pro line are somehow even worse than the 15 line.

It’s been a fun journey! At this point I’m “all in” on the Apple ecosystem, I don’t see myself jumping ship (certainly not back to Windows). It will be interesting to see what the future holds on my next upgrade in 3 years.

Data in almost all of it’s forms is fascinating. Macro (think country, state, even world data) all the way down to the most personal (my own health data tracked over years on the Apple Watch). Digging into the context for any particular bit of data is passion of mine.

Years ago after listening to the No Dumb Questions podcast discuss making an annual playlist to replicate the feeling of radio and albums you would listen to over the course of a year. It felt like a really obvious and fun way to use music as a time travel device. I now have 6 years of music playlists to travel back and get those feelings from those years. I thought it would be fun to take a look at my 2024 Playlist and see what data I can pull out!

Starting with the macro… I grew up on country in the 90s and have held a strong affinity for that particular flavor of country. Modern country on the other hand is largely a no more for me… dog. My tastes in the last 10 years have gradually moved into a more folk/roots/Americana feel and those flavors are heavy in the 2024 list.

Getting a touch more micro, I really enjoyed The Ache by Brandon Heath this year and with all the time spent on that album it shifted the Spotify algorithm into a more Christian acoustic direction and I’m not even mad.

With the birth of my daughter in November Ben Rector has been in heavy rotation, especially Daughter. There are probably more tidbits to pulled out, but at this point I’m curious what will be served up going into January.

Also known as “starting over.” As my little girl turns 3 weeks old the age old debate of having kids young vs in one’s 30s is tumbling in my head. In this stage, parental sleep is at a minimum, and unknowns are still at a high. What will her personality be like, what side of the family will she look like, when will she sleep for more than 3 hours at time? What still remains to be seen is the answer to my headline question. But as of now I have feelings.

Having yet to return to work, my feelings will likely change, but experience feels so much more valuable than raw youthful exuberance. It’s not even a feeling of “it’s all going to be alright.” Having lived more life, I’m far more aware of what can be thrown my way. No, a lot of my feelings of assurance come from having leaned on the support structures of my life, knowing those structures have held up continue to lend confidence for the future.

God has been faithful through difficult circumstances, from financial, to health, family and beyond. Additionally my wife has grown and matured (more than me by a long shot) since our first kid and her strength is a sight to behold. I could go on, but given the maturity of our care network, the idea (and reality) of having kids in our 30s has been far less daunting than I would have imagined it to be in my 20s. We’ll see what I think a year in.