JDMCQ's Garage

We have a little trick that gets us ours in about 3-4 months I guess so hopefully I'll have mine soon, but for now I am doing non-secret work for other engineers and all of my training that I have to do.

 

And yeah 4-10's. It's nice while I am in town right now. Once I get my clearance it's a 45 minute commute so I have 12+ hour days...

 

Do you happen to be getting clearance for DoE work? My sister in law is currently doing the exact same thing you are. Training and waiting. . . .

 

...

 

Yeah I could take a bus. They said it adds about 30-40 minutes to your day though.

 

There are 3-4 of us that are going to carpool once we all get our clearances. Driving once a week sounds good to me.

 

Oops! the DOE doesn't like it when you tell everybody your clearance level.

 

Good thing I don't have a DOE clearance then although the DOD probably doesn't like it either but that's one's about done anyway.

 

Have any of you guys bought a vehicle private party that you had to finance? Can I go into a bank and get financed for X amount or something before hand like with a house or is there a better way to do that? We are going to go look at some CL vehicles and pretty hard to barter on a price if you don't have money in hand...

 

USAA has a pretty easy set up for private party financing.

 

That's a good idea. I forget they exist. I'm not active so I don't hear about them much.

 

There are some good things about them. Cheap insurance, no ATM fees, your paycheck posts to your account days before other banks, the insurance claim process is super simple (they just deposit cash into your account, you choose who fixes it), car loans are fast and easy, they send you a kickback every year (usually $75-100) etc. They get a lot of negative reviews from people who don't pay their bills, so if your credit score sucks it might not be the right bank for you, but if you uphold your end of the bargain they are fantastic.

 

My wife and I both had "Excellent" credit before we bought our house. That dropped it down to "Good" credit, based on the Fico scale. I'll look into them. Looks like their rates are rather comparable to my credit union though.

 

Any time you get a credit card or car or house, you score adjusts. Even just checking your score is supposed to affect it

 

Yeah. It drops about 5 points when pulled. Ours each dropped about 30-40 points when we bought our house.

 

Give it a few months and it will be back up

 

But we "need" another vehicle soon. Not sure how much life my car has left in it... it tried to die right before Thanksgiving but ended up just needing a new shift cable.

 

Wondering about my Camry, too....

 

Well with your luck lately...

Is all you plumbing back to normal? I missed the ending of that.

 

Yeah, tell me about it I called a plumber.... don't like messing with it and not sure how to do it, so just had a pro come do it. Wasn't too $$ Have to find a new washer... I know what I want, but not liking the reviews