What would we do without the Internet?

This post isn’t really about the internet but I was struck the other day on how much easier it is to get at information because of the internet, particularly when RG and I were at the bank doing some paperwork to refinance our house. During the process we needed to provide documentation on income, financial statements, tax documents, and other similar documentation. This is the third time I have applied for a mortgage so what they were asking for seemed pretty normal. What was different this time than the last two is that none of it came from a paper file. All of the documentation for the bank was electronic. On top of that I needed to produce further documentation and I was able to do it right then and there using the computer.

A few days later we had some more documents to fill out and sign arrive in the mail (which now I am wondering why we couldn’t fill them out on line) with a note requesting a few additional bank statements. Again I turned to the internet and downloaded some documents, scanned a couple others, and then emailed the package to our processer. What I find most amazing about the whole thing is that I expect to be able to do these things now as effortlessly as possible. Nine years ago when I applied for my first mortgage it was quite a different story.

Back then I remember getting the list of documents from the loan officer at the my real-estate agent’s office. Of course I had to travel home to begin the process. It took me most of the weekend to pull all the paper work together from my files. Then I had to get them all physically copied to give to her. Once that was done I physically took them back to the office and was given a follow up list of documents to get. This cycle went on for a couple of weeks and took up a good portion of my time. It was a huge hassle. Fast forward a few years and as I mentioned above all that has changed. I think the total effort I put in this time around in collecting the required documents was 1/10 or less of the old process.

I am sure these efficiencies were not even an idea when the World Wide Web was designed let alone when internet was originally conceived. But it is amazing how it has now crept into almost all processes in our lives.