Adjustment of Status - I-485

No lawyer, NYC filler. F1 to marriage greencard, from Dec 2018 to Jan 2020.

---------------------------- Timeline -------------------------

PD: Dec 13, 2018. Filled together: I-485, I-130, I-864; I-765 & I-131 filled separately later.
Fingerprint fee receive: Dec 17. Fingerprint was done in Jan 2019.
I-485: Case was ready to be scheduled for an interview: Jan 14, 2019.
I-765 RD: Feb 15, 2019. Expedited via call on July 25, 2019.
I-765: Approved on Aug 01, card received on Aug 09, 2019. (I have a post about this too)
I-131: RD: Aug 27, 2019.
I-485: Interview scheduled Nov 25, 2019. Notice was mailed out.
I-485: Received mail notice on mid of Dec, 2019. About 2 weeks of waiting.
I-485: Interview scheduled for Jan 13, 2020.
I-485: 12 PM, Jan 13, 2020. Interview took about 40 mins. And signed a white paper, and was told to wait for 2 weeks for decision. 5 hours later, our case status changed to “New Card is Being Produced.”

---------------------------- Interview document preparation -------------------------

I-864 related:
1, On the interview notice, it only says that to bring material that you submitted. However, if your application has been so long that you already have a more recent tax documents, bring the most recently one as well. I actually argued with my USC husband about this, and I insisted to put his tax documents in (tho, i had to put it outside the “important file category”). And we got asked for it. And that’s like the first thing that the interviewer wanted.
2, Because my husband is also my petitioner and sponsor, and we have a similar level of income. And on my expedition of my EAD card, our argument was that his own income won’t be able to sustain us in NYC for long. So I also brought my tax documents, my last 2 month pay-studs, and my salary-increase agreement with my boss 6 month ago to show that I am on my fast-growing career path.

List of documents we brought besides listed out on the interview notice:

Renter’s insurance with both our names on it;
Utility bills;
Wedding invitations that has our names on it;
Both of our IRA retirement account that lists each other as beneficiaries;
Bank account information of our shared checking account;
My pay-studs, my tax documents, example copy of my work emails;
Photos of us throughout years;
Lots of trip itineraries, we were long distance for the first year we were together, and we moved in and got married on the second year.
Wedding ring receipts
All documents we brought, we brought two copies or one original & one copy. There were two folders we prepared. The logic is that, one folder for them to take copies, one for us to keep as a record.

We probably spent a total 8 hours on the preparation work for this interview, including getting binders and getting familiar with the documents content and file locations. A good adivce I got from a friend is to use highlighter highlights out all date, address, name information on documents like bank account, or lease, itinerary etc.
 
We also arranged our photo based on timeline, so that the interview can review the photo and itineraries to counter check our stories.

---------------------------- Interview Quesitons -------------------------

She asked my husband lots of questions for the first 20 mins, I think the most difficult one is she asked him where and what is the job I had right before I met him. And also she asked why his USC parents who lives not too far from NYC didn’t come to our wedding. And she asked him lot about where do i work, and what’s my job. And asked me where does he work, and where is his job, and what does he do.

My husband loves telling story, so lots of question she asked, she didn’t get a direct answer, instead, she gots a story with the info she wanted in the middle of the story within one sentence.

So I was a little bit nervous about that, for example, our wedding was simple, with just his sister coming, because we didn’t want to wait until we figure out everyone’s schedule to do a big wedding. We gave his family a short notice, and one of his sister was able to come and be our witness. However, maybe my husband felt too nervous, or idk why, he told the interviewer, that the reason why this parent didn’t come was because his dad had a health issue, which is true...But the emergent health issue he was talking about didn’t happen 4 month after our wedding. And when the interviewer asked me when did the health issue happened, I said a date that’s also after our wedding. That was a problem there.

My take is that: giving details and stories are great, it keeps the conversation interesting, but don’t become too casual, this is not a beer chatting that you are having with your friends. After the interview, we immediately realise the timeline we gave about his dad’s health issue didn’t add up. Thought it did happen multiple times, but did not happen right before the wedding. So we got super worried, and started to plan for moving to China...and where we want to live.

So please always tell the truth, even though it may not sound good/serious enough, but life doesn’t happen or turn only because serious reasons.

----------------------------- Thank you and good luck to you all -------------------------
We went home, we were super anxious, and we decided to take a nap… lol that’s who we are.

And I woke up around 5:15PM. And checked my case status, and there it is: “New Card is Being Produced”

I am sorry this post is super long, but I think every piece of information can be helpful to someone during their process. And good luck to everyone of you.