I can't beat the greeting cards idea by arcanamundi -- nice one!
I can, however, whine and moan about mortgage lenders.
We went in July 2, 2003 to apply for the mortgage. We told them over and over again that we had almost no money to put down, or into closing costs (the builder provides $6,500 for closing costs and upgrades, so we were theoretically okay). The lending broker kept saying "no problem" and "you'll be fine". The next week, we got the phone call we'd been hoping to get -- "congratulations, you're approved!" ... and there was much rejoicing (yay).
Yesterday, a letter arrived from the lending brokerage. It all looked in order, except for two items. One, "we need a check for $279.00 for the appraisal," was quickly resolved with a phone call ("uh, it's a new house, and you said you weren't going to charge me for that"). The other was far more sinister:
We need to verify you have at least two months' mortgage payments in reserve in your bank account.
!@#$
Didn't I spend the last three weeks telling you idiots I don't have lots of cash? Why else would I be borrowing 100% of the house's value? Stupid buttmonkeys.
The most amusing part of all this is they just need to see my checking account's balance go up above approximately $2,100 long enough for them to verify it from the bank. Then they don't care. This can occur at any time between now and closing.
Now, I understand the need to verify my income. I understand they want to make sure I have the money to repay their loan. I don't have a problem with that.
But I would have thought that after providing two years' income taxes, letters of reference, statement of business relationships, months of bank statements, verification of employment, and apparently acceptable (i.e. average) credit scores, that'd be enough damned verification!.
Especially considering how !@#$ing idiotic this particular verification step is... they don't even care how the money gets there or whether it's even mine. They just want to see it. WTF is that about?!?!
...they could have at least told me they were going to spring this on me a month ago when I could have started a second job in time for its income to matter.
Thankfully, I appear to have nice parents. They kicked in the money we need to get up to that level, just long enough for these arses to verify the balance then get the money wired back.
I do not need this stress.