As many of you know, I am considering a fourth duplex purchase. I submitted an offer on this short sale early this year, and it was just approved by the bank last week.

I’ve had some hesitations, most of which were centered around what this purchase would do do my liquidity (I’d have to put down 25% and get bank financing), but I decided to discuss it with my family and get their input.

To my surprise, my parents seemed to be all for the idea. My mother even asked if/how we could “go in on it together.” Confused, I started stammering about how it would be tricky to split the costs, set up another entity, or apply for a joint mortgage. But then I realized she meant that she wants to be involved simply by lending me money again!

I balked, asking incredulously if she meant she wanted to lend me the whole purchase price. She said she couldn’t afford that (it would put too much of a dent in her cash reserves), but that she’d be happy to lend me the down payment amount of roughly $50,000. I could hardly believe what I was hearing; I haven’t even made the first payment to her on the last loan yet!

She explained that she makes X amount per month but spends about X+$1000 each month. She used to take the extra $1000 from some account or the other, but now rates are so low that she’s not making that anymore. She’s planning to use the loan payments I’ll be making to her to cover that difference from now on. And I guess she likes the arrangement so much that she’d like to lend me some more!

That money is just sitting in cash for her, and the income opportunities in “safe” investments like CDs and bonds are just not there compared to what I pay her for a loan.

I explained that I liked the idea as well because though I have the money, I’d have to take it out of my trust account. And once it’s out I can never get it back in. I’d rather leave as much in there protected from creditors and lawsuits as possible.

SO I’m applying for the mortgage. Hopefully I can get it!

My account is showing an incoming wire of $170,000 from my mother! I just emailed her my signed promissory note this morning, promising to pay back this sum over 30 years at a 6% fixed rate of interest.

And tomorrow I’ll close on my first foreclosure! The purchase price is $165,000, and I’ve already put $5,000 towards it in escrow from my savings, so I’ll have about $10,000 leftover from my mother’s loan to use for minor renovations and to establish a cash cushion.

Woo Hoo!

I just had lunch with a former colleague who I haven’t seen in about a year. And once again I’ve found myself caught in between a business interaction and what felt a bit more like a date.

I think this quote from a previous post on the topic (linked above) pretty well sums it up:

It’s usually difficult to draw a hard line between socializing and networking, for instance. The most successful individuals generally make sure the two overlap. But it can also be difficult to draw the line between flirting and networking in certain circumstances, which can consequently blur the line between dating and a professional lunch/dinner meeting.

It is often really difficult to tell whether somebody is flirting, particularly in certain cultures (including the American South) where many people are open, friendly, charming, witty, and/or charismatic by habit with pretty much everybody.

So here is the background on the person/interaction in question:

The Business History
I met this person several years ago when I started at the firm; he was in another department but the same office, so we regularly interacted; even after I left that office I would always stop by to chat whenever I visited. Our conversations were always light and involved mostly work related things like office gossip, company issues, how his team was performing, and how my rotations were going. He gave me advice on how to deal with other managers, etc.

He moved to a position at another company at some point last year, which I found out last month when he contacted me via linked in. He told me to call him sometime, mentioned where he was working now, and also asked for the contact info for a former colleague of mine contact (she had just been laid off and he wanted to see about getting her an interview with his firm).

I responded on linkedin and gave him her contact info and also suggested we have lunch sometime to catch up. It’s always good to stay in touch with other bankers to develop a referral network and also keep the line open for job opportunities.

He then emailed me directly and said we definitely should catch up – “lunch or drinks.” We exchanged a couple more brief emails about my old colleague and her job prospects, and then a month later he emailed me to congratulate me on my CFP Designation (which he’d seen on a linked in profile update). He mentioned lunch again, so I agreed and we scheduled it for today.

The Personal History
As I mentioned before, I always used to pop into his office to chat (the walls are glass so everybody mingles pretty openly like this). I enjoyed those conversations (which did often include our travel adventures and even our dating lives) because even though I was dating somebody at the time I did have an ever so slight innocent kind of crush on this man. He is one of those older (than me) but sexy men (a la Pierce Brosnan, for instance) who is very charismatic and can get away with things like winking at people without coming off goofy or creepy.

He is roughly 20-25 years older than I am though; I didn’t think it would occur to him or anyone else that I might find him attractive or that our interactions were anything more than work-friendly. But he was single – at first. Then he started dating an age-appropriate single divorcee in another division. They went public with their relationship and then got married pretty quickly one year (all of which I heard about through the grapevine as I’d moved to a different office).

I noticed immediately that at company events he no longer approached me or talked with me for very long (whereas before we’d all be at the bar chatting in a group). And his new wife openly glared at me whenever I saw her. So of course I delicately and nonchalantly avoided her husband from that point on.

The Lunch
Until now. The restaurant – which I chose though I hadn’t been there in years – had a much darker and more intimate feel than I remembered. We greeted with an awkward fake business-like hug and sat and talked freely for awhile about his new job and things where I work, the economy, etc.

I noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Somehow he worked into the conversation that he wouldn’t be married much longer and started telling and asking me about places to go out around town. We compared notes of popular restaurants and bars for singles in different age groups. He asked about my dating life as well, along with what else was going on with me including my current travels.

We made it back around to his situation after awhile and he made a point to mention that he was living in a hotel (a very nice hotel) and trying to sell his house (a very expensive house). We hadn’t talked in so long that I felt a bit weird for him to be opening up like this; but I went along with it as though we were old friends, offering my regrets for his situation, which he brushed aside, referring to the whole thing as a “mistake.”

At the end we exchanged business cards – both of which have our cell numbers on them – and pulled out our iphones to input the data. I showed him the “Bump” application and then he taught me to sync my facebook friends and their pics to all my iphone contacts. We were like a living iphone commercial.

We side-hugged goodbye, and as I walked out he said we should meet up for some good wine sometime (we’d discussed local wine bars). Without thinking I called back “definitely!” as I walked out the door. Shaking my head in a daze from the encounter and the blinding sunlight.