Chapter 1

Buoyed in part by the courage of a couple in LA who have made their foreclosure worries public (as well as the fact that, despite the financial shambles they find themselves in, they remain happy and in love), I have decided to come clean publicly too.

Just reading Stephanie Walker’s blog has reassured me. No, everything is not all worked out, and no, we don’t exactly know what we’ll do and whether our home will be stable… but yes, everything is going to be ok. Well, hey, the Internet is not a place I feel comfortable telling this story, but the fact is that no matter how or where the story is told, it’s simply an uncomfortable story. Maybe one person who reads this will feel a little bit more courage in their own life, and the chance for that result makes this effort worth it for me. Here goes.

How do decent people get themselves into a mess like this?

It’s just not in my personality to blame others when I’m having a hard time. Deep inside, I maintain full awareness that I got myownself here. It was not speculators and hedge funds and risky assets that turned toxic… it was me. We made gigantic mistakes that any idiot could have identified.

Our future success was dependent upon these things occurring simultaneously: a) I would find a job immediately after graduating with my master’s degree, b) both of us would retain our full-time employment at all times, c) real estate would never lose value.

Since then, of course, we’ve readjusted our definition of success. And like Stephanie and Bob, we have also redefined happiness. It has much less to do with jobs, credit union balances, and real estate value than we had assumed.

But in order to catch up to that epiphany…. I need to back up and start closer to the beginning. Since my life today was shaped by every moment since I was born, it would be most accurate to go back to January 9, 1970, around 7:26 pm, Pacific Time. Neither of us has time to read all that, so I won’t. However, I still need to back up several years to set the stage properly.

1)      Stuck against a ridiculous glass ceiling and dragging my single mom butt through rotating shiftwork in my job as a weather forecaster with the National Weather Service, I decided to leave the job in 2003. Life was like a roller coaster that year. I got married, had surgery for a partial hysterectomy, accepted an invitation to attend University of California Berkeley, went to France for the honeymoon, sold my home that I LOVED for a huge profit and moved into a teensy apartment so that I could be ready to hit the road the moment I was able to go. My husband moved on to Berkeley to begin his PhD and to wait for me.

About right then, my whole world went wonky. I didn’t begin to recover until 2009. Which is recent. Which means I am not yet well.

Listen to this: The guy I married dumped me on our one-year wedding anniversary in February of 2004. Two days later a beloved friend of ours died at age 24. That same weekend, California courts said that if I chose to leave town to go to a University then they would award primary custody of my daughter to her recovering crack addict father.

(Can you hear the brakes of life skreeeettching to a halt?!)

2)      So, I enrolled in a local community college to earn an Associate in Science and an Associate in Arts while I dedicated myself full time to the insane California Family Law court system and to being the parent I had always wanted to be, but couldn’t previously, because of the rotating shift work inherent to the field of weather forecasting. I bagged the Berkeley idea because I no longer wanted to be anywhere near that guy. I accepted an invitation to attend Brandeis University instead, which was about as far away from all the misery of California as I could get. And then I asked for a one-year deferred enrollment so that I could work out my personal life and decide whether or not to move to Boston. Bite Me, California Family Law Courts: I will take charge of this despite you!

(Keep in mind I’m leaving all the details about personal life catastrophe out, but there are CHAPTERS I could write on what it was like to live through that. My intent is only to set the stage for financial meltdown.)

 

Chapter 2

This is Chapter 2 of the story that led to our current state of not really feeling as though our housing situation is stable. Read Chapter 1.

3)      During the 2003/2004 school year I used the profits from the sale of my California home to live on, pay court fees, and to hire an attorney. The GI Bill paid for my classes, which were $11 a credit back then – nice!

I chose my classes so that I had a regular daytime, Monday through Friday schedule, for the first time in my life. It was great to be able to attend morning assemblies with my daughter at Ridgewood Elementary School before she started second grade classes each day, and to be home to meet her at the end of the driveway when the bus brought her home. I was free for weeknight book sales and free to schedule parent-teacher conferences at a normal hour. If for no other reason, being able to participate this way in her expanding life was worth giving up my well-paying job as a weather forecaster with the National Weather Service.

Other than that, I had my doubts.

I wasn’t rich, but up until then, I had plenty. The kind of comfortable life where I could go buy a new winter coat for my kid when she lost hers (that seemed to happen a lot). When I fell in love with some real leather, knee-high boots, I could take them home. We could go to the movies on the spur of the moment. On a particularly lovely Fall afternoon, we took a Humboldt Bay cruise on the Madaket just because we wanted to, and then stop for ice cream at Bon Boniere on the way home. It was a very good life.

After I decided to leave my job and go to school instead, I made serious cuts in my lifestyle where I could. But life can be expensive.

At the end of the school year in Cali I was able to move to Massachusetts. I considered living in Brandeis dormitory housing on campus to save money, but just couldn’t bring myself to rent after having been a homeowner for so long.

4)      I took the gamble, which tends to be my personality. Big Chances = Big Gains (or Losses, as the case may be) I bought a house that was shockingly expensive for me, but I wasn’t worried. Real estate was shooting upwards like a rocket. Property values in the Boston area were DOUBLING every 12 months. Besides, this was my fifth home purchase, and I had learned that buying and selling a house was a sure thing. One year I lost $30 thousand of my retirement savings…and in that same year I gained $30 thousand in the value of my home. There was no way to lose in Real Estate.

I was a bit surprised to get the loan without a job. But… I put over 20% down, had thousands in savings, had thousands in retirement account that I could borrow against, I had a work history of 11 years of federal service, and my credit score was stellar. So it wasn’t that hard for me to believe a lender would take a chance on me. The lender asked me how I intended to pay the mortgage, and I said “with student loans.” I was serious. And ignorant. Everyone who goes to school gets a loan, right? At great rates right? In my mind it made total sense to get student loans to pay the mortgage.

5)      I thought maybe I’d rent out the lower level of the house. It was a spacious split level, and the lower level seemed like a decent space to rent. That would definitely help with the bills. But I couldn’t find a renter.

6)      I had some difficulty getting my financial aid into place. I got a threatening letter from the school that said something like, “If you don’t pay your tuition now, we will kick you out!” Having been out in the world long enough to think I had to handle everything on my own, I didn’t realize that the best option would have been to go to the Financial Aid Office and ask for help. Instead, I put my first year’s tuition on my credit card. Nope, not just a semester – the whole damn year. Duh.

Turns out, I didn’t get to live on student loans like I had assumed. (You know, there are a lot of assumptions to overcome when a person is the first one in her family to go to college) Turns out, there is a cap on how much a student can borrow. Turns out, owning a home is reflected as wealth when the Financial Aid Office crunches your numbers. Though I had a $1600 a month mortgage payment, the house was considered an asset, and thus reduced my ability to borrow.

My first bout with poverty struck, and it was a blow.

My spending continued to be outrageous, but I wasn’t getting much pleasure out of it. I ate Ramen noodles, but forked out the dough to purchase cross-country flights to continue my relationship with my daughter and to make my California court dates. (Still battling family law two years down the line. Little advice – never attempt to reorganize a family in California) I continued paying my attorney. I had to spend on basic upkeep of the home, landscaping, maintenance, snow removal, public transportation passes, and school books are expensive, even when you buy them used.

Needless to say, I began chopping away at my retirement account, which had recently made it above $100 thousand, but wasn't destined to remain above. I was selling stocks to pay off credit cards. It just didn't seem right.

It actually REALLY wasn't right, as my financial advisor told me later. But... how does a girl learn good lessons without some pain?

Chapter 3

This is a continuation of a brief history of what led up to our current threat of home foreclosure. We don’t have one of those crazy risky loans, and we found this modest home for a reasonable price. The problem mostly boils down to the fact that we managed to lose all our savings for other reasons (notably another home that sold for a loss), followed by Mark losing his job.

Catch up to this point in the story if you like, by reading Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

Viola! I found myself in a Boston suburb in July 2004. All alone, didn’t know a soul there, and was 34 years old preparing to enter college as a sophomore transfer from California. People said, “Wow, you are so brave.” But I knew the truth is that I can go to extremes to run away from my problems. Left my career, ex-husband, and beloved Pacific Northwest behind, in order to start out on a new track and see where it would lead.

7)      As I mentioned in Chapter 2, I put my sophomore year at Brandeis on my credit card because I was scared they would kick me out if I didn’t pay. My financial aid package finally kicked in around November, but by then I had a $17,000 balance with Bank of America. (Thank you Rita Fine '55 Memorial Scholarship people for keeping me from having a $34,000 balance!!)

Since my student loans were insufficient to cover the mortgage, the credit card payments, filling the heating oil tank (OMG!! New Englanders heat with OIL?!), buying monthly passes on the commuter rail train, etc. etc. Not to mention cross-country flights so that either I could go see my kid or she could come see me (because the custody and visitation was still unresolved), I was constantly broke. Because of her young age, flights for her also required a ticket for another adult, or huge chaperone fees. Because of unresolved custody, my flights usually included a bonus payment to Family Law Court in California for one reason or another.

8)      I was forced to begin pulling out money from my IRA. Twenty thousand here, Fourteen thousand there.

By the end of my junior year, the infallible courts of California had decided that my daughter had to stay with her father as long as I was going to be out of state. I was crushed and angry, and forced with an awful decision: quit school and go dragging back with my tail between my legs so that my girl could have me more often? Or bear the continued separation another year, in hopes that being the first in my family to get a classy degree would be the key to pulling her out of the white trash sludge I couldn’t seem to pull myself out of.

OK, ok, yes. The whole truth also includes the fact that I did not want to go back to live in the same small town as her dad who drove me crazy, and also the fact that I would have zero chance of getting my old job back, so I would have to scrounge around for whatever job was available there.

9)      I chose to stay in Massachusetts.

For her part, my daughter seemed fine with it all. I talked with her about it in kid terms, and – in kid terms – she begged me to stay in Mass. She loved the house, loved her friends there, and seemed to be healthy and happy. Happier perhaps, without her parents’ unspoken animosity charging the atmosphere. Her winter visits afforded her snow vacations for the first time in her life since she was a baby in Vermont. She felt very grown up to consider cross-country flights a natural part of life.

I took advantage of my distress, and piled on the schoolwork. I got myself into a program wherein I worked on both my Bachelor and Master degrees at the same time. I lived and breathed school, every waking moment.

10)       I never did find a renter, but Mark, my Massachusetts boyfriend, eventually moved in and began splitting the mortgage payment with me.

11)       In my last year there, and especially the Spring of 2007, I tried to sell my home but it didn’t sell. Something funky was going on in the economy. The stock market was faltering, real estate values were actually falling, and people weren’t so interested in buying. I heard that one of my neighbors had to move because her home was foreclosed upon. This news was my first exposure to foreclosure. It was disturbing to have it so close to me. I knocked thirty thousand off what I had purchased my home for, three years earlier, and still no one was interested in the asking price. It was a beautiful, new home. What was the problem?

Finally graduated in May 2007 with a BA in Cultural Anthropology summa cum laude, minor in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence studies. I also had an MA in Cultural Anthropology, with a focus on International Mediation. (Read this awesome profile my friend Dave Nathan wrote.)

For all the sacrifice, and the coveted sheets of embossed paper that apparently heralded my achievements… I was full of fear and doubt. I had so much debt it was staggering to think about it. Approximately $80 K in student loans, $230 K on my house, $26 K on credit cards. No job.

In the last year, my daughter and her father had moved to Portland, Oregon in hopes of finding a community that offered more job opportunities. He needed work and knew I would soon be needing work. It was a rare moment of cooperation. Approximately 72 hours after I graduated, I was moving West.

Portland seemed large enough to contain her dad and me together. It was exciting to anticipate my new town, my new career, new friends. I also was lucky enough to have a loving partner who had decided to leave his home state of Massachusetts and try out a new life on the West Coast with me.

I'll get back to the foreclosure story shortly.... but amidst everything; amidst all the drama and trauma and even amidst the joys.... life goes on without us.

And if we just stop a moment and take a look, everything else gets smaller in comparison. Look at this gorgeous planet of ours! Just look!

with happiness and love

Faith.

And no, this has nothing to do with any deity. I am the poster child for atheism. ha ha.

I am a dedicated believer that humans are all powerful, and the only thing that limits us is our inborn fears and lack of confidence. People who are powerful are those who BELIEVE!!!

Chapter 4

My story of how we arrived at this fearful point is a long one. (Sorry!) I am sure that for many people, financial insecurity is not the result of one factor. In our case, it was a dreadful chain of events filled with bad luck and bad choices. I’ve chosen to tell it in chapters. Today (October 2009), we are in negotiations with Wells Fargo that began around October 2008, and progressed significantly around March 2009, yet today remain unresolved. Will the three of us be forced to leave our modest little fixer-upper home? Right now, no one knows.

Catch up to this part if you like, by reading Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3.

Unable to sell my Massachusetts home the Spring of 2007, I found a renter. I asked for a rental fee that was reasonable for the blue-collar community I was in, but didn’t come close to matching the mortgage amount.

12)       The problems with my renter began immediately. She was almost a month late for her FIRST month’s rent. After a few sporadic payments, she stopped paying altogether. She eventually stopped answering her phone, and when I called her workplace, they told me she was no longer working there. I began researching how to evict a tenant in Massachusetts.

We were living at The Uncles outside of Portland while we looked for work. Mark’s unemployment check went to rent at The Uncles, and the mortgage payment, and I continued to rob my 401K to make up the difference. We spent the summer of 2007 just trying to make ourselves get up and be productive each day, and not succumb to fright or despair. Mark couldn’t take the daily reminder of his perceived failure, and took off into the desert for awhile.

All summer I filled out applications till they made me numb. I was invited to only a couple of interviews, and was not offered a position.

13)       In September I got a job with the VA. Not related to my degrees, but it was at least employment. In October, Mark got a job.

14)       School loans came due. I went into forbearance on the greater sum, and began paying Sallie Mae. They required a huge fee for a short deferral, and it was simply cheaper to make my monthly payments.

I was sent to Baltimore for training, and while I was there, Mark found a house he wanted to buy. (We love The Uncles, but after 8 months, were ready to be on our own)

15)       We still had faith that the Mass house would sell someday, and made an offer in January 2008. By the last day of the month, we owned our own home. It was a 1925 home, basement crumbling, roof mossy, stained walls and stinking of dog pee on the carpet, but… it was large and we could afford it! Well, we could as soon as the Mass house sold, which had to be soon. In the meantime, we made two mortgage payments every month.

16)      February 2008, my daughter’s father decided he wanted to move back to California and take her with him. I disagreed with the plan. Since we had no money left, Mark put the attorney’s retainer on his credit card.

17)       Still no communication from my renter, so I hired a Realtor in Mass to put the home on the market in March, and plunked down the credit card once again for a cross-country flight and got the lady out of my house with relatively little pain. I spent a few days putting the property back in order. The electricity had been shut off. She had drained the heating oil and the pilot light went out. The water was off. The toilet leaked. There were mountains of construction rubbish in the back yard. I hired a guy to pick up everything inside and out, and haul it away. I hired a landscaping company to take care of the lawn. $$$$$$$ I went back home about a foot shorter, shrinking under the weight of the world.

18)      June 2008, Mark lost his job. It was a shocking blow. Poverty hit hard. There was no way we could survive in the new home on my paycheck only. I was earning $42 K a year. We put up a clothesline. We washed and reused baggies.

19)      The custody skirmish was over only a few months after it began. We only spent $5000. That was a MIRACLE compared to what had happened to us in California. AND, for the first time the courts ruled in my favor. Barney moved to Cali like he wanted to, but our daughter came to live with me finally. For good.

20)       I asked my family law attorney to recommend a bankruptcy attorney. Both of them were fabulous and I would highly recommend either! I was advised that bankruptcy wouldn’t work for me. My major expenses included $60 thousand in student loans, which I would still have to pay. One of the only things that didn’t cost me much was my car, and they would take it from me. They wouldn’t even wipe out my credit card debt… just rearrange it and put me on a payment plan.

We put our heads down and pressed on. We focused on getting my girl into school for 6^th grade, settling in the house. Mark looked for work and tried not to sink into depression. We called Wells Fargo and explained that we were not going to be able to make our payments much longer. They told us that as far as they were concerned, our account was in good standing. We had paid every month, and on time, and our credit was great. “We can only help those people who have been delinquent for three months in a row or more.”

We began giving that statement some serious thought.

My baby girl's first party without adults. (well, they hovered quietly in the house, while the kids had their party outside in the back yard) She was very very excited all week, and then came home hyped up on grown-up-ed-ness and sugar.

A neighbor's kids threw the party for their 12- and 13- year old friends. They had obviously been planning it for at least a month. Invitations came out, with tickets for admission. The place was decorated to the hilt. It was so great.

As luck would have it, we had a warm airmass move in early in the day, and it stayed with us through nighttime while only dropping a light sprinkle here and there. So the outdoor Halloween party had excellent weather. Well, for the season and the particular holiday it was excellent. Though there were no stars, no one had to wear a jacket.

My work day was sorta fun. Our boss invited people to come dressed up. It was surprizing to me, because it's normally such a STODGY office. But currently we are in between Regional Office Managers, and our Service Center Manager is out of town. And the acting officials covering for the missing bosses are much more employee-friendly.

I'm not a company girl. I despise The Man. The way government runs itself is a constant embarrassment and a travesty to me, a government employee. But I try to make my points in supportive ways. If we dressed up for Halloween every year, I would ignore the event at work. But since I am highly in favor of treating employees like people who deserve some fun and respect, I came in costume. Hardly anyone else did, but that was ok by me.

The fun part actually, was the reaction to my costume. People loved the wig! I had three different people tell me I should do my hair like that permanently. Ha ha. My cube was a popular spot during the day, as visitors came by to say Wow. I went out to lunch with work friends, and the woman who knows us said, "I just want to keep looking at you." I said "Oooh, hey, tonight will be my lucky night! I should go out!"



Actually, it was a lucky night, after Mark and I shipped our kid off to her party. But... that's another story. He thinks I'm gorgeous no matter what I'm wearing. (happy dance)