27 February 2010
Owen and I walked to the park today. As we approached a cross-walk, I pointed out a large plastic square with a ‘3’ on it just lying in the snow. I picked it up and showed it to Owen. “Look at this big 3 just sitting here in the snow,” I said.
He said: “What’s your idea for what it’s there for?”
“Well,” I said, I think it fell off this sign,” and I pointed to the large SuperAmerica sign directly above us. I showed Owen how there were removable numbers on the sign that the employees put up there to display the price of gas.
“What was your idea?” I asked him.
“I thought the 3 was there to show that we live on Earth,” he said. I guess he figures that there are ‘3s’ liberally sprinkled throughout the planet so that would-be intergalactic travelers can quickly identify which planet they’re on. (And, yes, Earth does = 3 because it’s the third planet in line from the sun.)
This evening, the three of us went to a nearby Mexican (and El Salvadoran and Peruvian) restaurant for dinner. While examining the menu, Jennifer asked: “What’s the difference again between a burrito and an enchilada?” Since I didn’t know, precisely, how to answer her question, I referred her back to a joke my old friend Joel used to say: “Everything at a Mexican restaurant is just the same three ingredients in different combinations.” We both laughed.
It’s true, you know. I mean, I think 3 is an exaggeration, but no matter what a person orders at such a place, they are going to get a plate with a tortilla stuffed with cheese, tomatoes and lettuce, with rice and beans on the side. There might be some beans inside the tortilla, and the tortilla itself might be hard or soft, but, essentially, there’s no point in fretting over whether to order #5 or #33.
It’s funny how something as innocuous as that can make me miss Joel. I only started getting to know him in the last few years that I was a Witness, but we had a lot in common, and I always enjoyed being with him. In 2006, he and his new wife Laura even moved a couple towns away from us (which was close comparatively), and I was excited to have him so close. We saw movies together, we worked on some films together, and we joked about all manner of pop culture lore. We had some great email exchanges, too, and I knew any link he sent me was bound to be compelling (or, at least, a time-waster).
Then I left the religion, and he said he wasn’t gonna be my friend anymore. Actually, he didn’t say anything, so I emailed him to see if he’d come over one evening to watch a movie with me. He declined, saying he’d heard I might be detrimental to his faith. He said if things ever changed, he’d hook up with me again.
Still waiting…
28 February 2010
Today I kept thinking about not having a new house for the baby. At the time Jennifer got pregnant, I had reason to believe that we’d be moving into a house within six months. But thanks to some end-of-the-year rulings in Congress (fuck you, Democrats), we now have to wait three years. As Jennifer pointed out, we never miss an opportunity to fail, and this is just another instance of that. I’m not sure how the whole home-birth thing will play out now. I wanted our newest edition to be born in a home – our home, the way it’s meant to be…but I guess a short sale from two years ago means I can’t have a house.
This is, of course stupid. For one thing, had we declared bankruptcy two years ago, we’d be eligible for a house, so I guess we should have stopped paying all our bills instead of just one. It’s hard to see how the government can support such a contradiction logically, but this is the same government that will give me 90 days in prison for mugging someone, but 5 years for downloading a song. Go figure.
One option is to have a friend or family member buy a house and then rent it to us for a year until we are eligible to buy it. Even though I’d be happy to make this profitable for whoever would be willing to do it, I don’t think there are any options here, either. I mean, we are better with our money than, well, pretty much all of our peers, but there are still some big issues. For one thing, most of our friends are poorer than we are, having been likewise screwed over by their parents (via a cult), too. Then there’s my Dad, who might actually be willing to do such a thing, but having lost his rental property last year, and currently on unemployment, I don’t think he’s in a good position. My mom would likewise be willing to do such a thing, but she’s married to a guy that won’t even talk to us, so I don’t think he’d be willing to do business with us.
Maybe Jennifer and I should’ve hit up our relatives for cash back in the ’90s, back when all our siblings were doing it.
On another note: check it out – I’ve successfully written about something everyday for two months now. After reviewing some of my posts, I realize all my posts are either depressing or sarcastic. This probably explains the lack of interest in this blog. I’ll try to keep this going a little longer, if for no other reason than so that I don’t look like a loser to my future self reading these posts, but there are only so many depressing thing to write sarcastically about.
Either way, so long February, and good riddance.
Don’t quit your daily blog, I enjoy it. Most people aren’t brave enough (myself included) to allow everyone to see their personal lives.
The short sale house deal from two years is messed up. I never understood how people could declare bankruptcy and come back in a couple of years in a better position than those who paid all their bills off properly. My Dad went bankrupt in the eighties and he could not buy a house for seven years. I guess those credit restrictions have been lessened recently and people know how to work the system.
I feel strongly that if a person can pay his bills, he should pay his bills and not expect someone to bail him out. Good for you for paying your debts! Often the stable, reliable people get overlooked in a society that values appearances over integrity.
…that sounds like a fortune cookie.
Yeah, I used to get annoyed at a few different people we knew who bought lots of things, then declared bankruptcy, while Jennifer and I were stuck with crappy old stuff. Doesn’t make sense to me.
I’ve also learned that, if you’re really bad with your money, then everyone comes running to your aid all the time (for example, all my and Jennifer’s siblings), so there’s not too much incentive to start a budget or pay off your debts or pay your bills on time. You’d think that the government would look at a good credit score, no car payments, low credit card debt, and a salary that’s only gone up in the past two years and think that we are capable of paying our bills (we’re never late), but I guess not.
As long as you’re doling out fortune cookie proverbs, do you have any lucky numbers for me?
Too bad about Joel. Maybe he’ll see the light someday…
Yeah, it’s too bad. He’s a great guy, and even though I didn’t know him since I was a kid (like the other people I miss), I really think he and I had the potential to be good friends for a long time.
Another funny thing about Joel is that he never was “into” the religion that much anyway. At the time I left the religion, he was not even baptized (which is something most people who are born into the religion do when they’re teenagers). He and I never talked about the religion. Heck, I didn’t even know which congregation he belonged to. I don’t think he ever went door-to-door, either, which is pretty much the defining practice of a Jehovah’s Witness.
Like me, the only thing keeping him in the religion was a sense of community and the fact that he’d been doing it since birth. I keep hoping he’ll call or email me one day.
It wasn’t a “ruling from congress” that changed things at the end of last year. HUD is a cabinet department and was responsible for the change. Also, this guideline is for FHA loans specifically. You could get a conventional loan, for example.
Declaring bankruptcy would not have changed anything. You would still have had the house to deal with.
Thanks for the correction. I can’t really think of a more boring combination of uninteresting human endeavors besides politics + economics, so I didn’t double-check the origin of the policy. Nevertheless, my comment regarding Democrats still stands, it just shifts from the legislative to the executive branch.
I realize I could get a conventional loan, but for that matter, I could also pay cash for a house, too. Since I am too poor for either of those options, it renders them out of my reach financially, if not legally.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear on my comment regarding bankruptcy. My thought was not that I should have delcared bankruptcy instead of doing a short sale, merely that I did not feel the penalty for the latter should be steeper than for the former. For example, I mentioned the penalty for downloading music vs. robbing someone. In that case, too, I’m not suggesting people who plan to download music just, instead, go hold-up people at knife-point, I was merely commenting on the absurdity of the law.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be pedantic about where the guideline originated. I was just getting this sense that you were saying, “Those stupid Democrats are screwing me over, making it so I can’t get a house.” Instead it’s those stupid Democrats that have programs set up to allow people who lenders wouldn’t normally touch with a ten foot pole (or at least not without unbearable terms) to get houses.
The guideline change was due to people who “take advantage of declining market conditions and purchase a similar or superior property” with an FHA loan after having had a short sale. They are the ones who deserve your expletives in my opinion.
I don’t agree that the difference in “penalties” between bankruptcy and short sales is absurd. I don’t think people are taking advantage of bankruptcy the same way that they are short sales.
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I was originally going to comment on your analogy, but I assumed it was hyperbole.
The MAXIMUM prison sentence for copyright infringement is five years. The longest sentence I could find was 15 months and that was for someone who was at the center of a huge piracy organization — on the distribution end. The fifteen month sentence was for his second offense in which he, again, was at the center of a piracy ring, mass-distributing copyrighted material before it was released (didn’t even have a legal copy himself). If you only get 15 months for that, I can’t imagine what you’d have to do to get the MAXIMUM five years.
As far as I’ve found, no one has ever served any jail time for “downloading a song”.
On the other hand, the MAXIMUM sentence for mugging is life in prison. I don’t doubt that someone out there got as little as “90 days”, but I’d be interested in knowing the circumstances. For example, I could say, “Give me that dollar or I’ll punch you in the throat.” That would be mugging even if you didn’t give me the dollar! Ninety days indeed.
“I was originally going to comment on your analogy, but I assumed it was hyperbole.”
…Yes, it was. Still, a few years back I read the book “Free Culture” which told of people charged with enormous fines for downloading music. Earlier this week, on MPR, was a story of a woman who fought to get her song-downloading fine lowered from <$100,000 to ~$20,000. (Sorry, I can't recall the specifics.) My point just was that the law is unusually strict on 'stealing' a song, while it's been too lenient on other, REAL crimes.
I'm sure people are taking advantage of short sales, much as there is someone out there taking advantage of any program we can think of. I guess my comparison was based this way:
Stop paying for your house = can't buy a house for 3 years
Stop paying for everything you own = can't buy a house for 2 years
I've known a few people to do short sales recently, and in each case, the short sale was warranted. Basically, the person bought a house for $200,000. A few years later, their mortagage jumped up from $1,200 a month to $1,500. They found this difficult to afford, and thus tried to sell their home. But, now their home (despite their increased cost) was only worth $150,000. They couldn't afford it and they couldn't sell it. My case is similar to this in some respects.
Conversely, I've known several people to take advantage of bankruptcy. I had this one friend who charged dining room furniture, living room set, bedroom sets, and a new vehicle. When he couldn't pay for that stuff, he declared bankruptcy. Not sure why he needed this stuff in the first place…but he declared bankruptcy and still enjoys all of the stuff he charged, without having to ever pay for it. He could have sold this stuff and recouped a large part of the money, but he didn't. Also, it's not like his dining room table payments suddenly jumped from $25 to $75 a month. At least, in a short sale, the person who has abandoned their loan does not also get to keep their house.
At any rate, I'm not saying people who do short sales shouldn't be penalized, I am just frustrated at the change in rules.
I think it’s just a big disappointment because we were told for 6 months that we could buy again, and we filled out all the paper work and wrote a letter to the bank explaining what happened in the past and why it wont happen this time, and then suddenly the day before we are going to go out and look at houses we are told that we can’t get one after all. If they would have said 3 years up front, I would have thought, “well, that makes sense, we did mess up and stop paying our mortgage”. But when they told us 2 years all along and then suddenly change it to 3, it seems unjust somehow, though in reality it probably really isn’t, on a personal level it seems so.
Also, it isn’t just that banks were stupidly talking people into ARMS, and that people were stupidly taking them. In addition to an ARM adjusting, in the three years we lived in Big Mistake, the entire economy turned around. Suddenly, practically every single bill we payed, from property taxes to our gas and electric bills, to the gas we put in our cars, to the food we bought to eat, pretty much doubled in price. Obviously people know their ARM will adjust in the allotted time and they do their budget and figure they can pay that. But, when every single other thing you pay for doubles in cost, and then your ARM adjusts, and then the bank wont lower your mortgage payments by readjusting your loan so you can do the honorable thing and pay for it, you are left with little choice. Now we know how quickly things can turn around and how much extra money you need when you pay a mortgage, and that ARMS are stupid. At the time I had no idea that in only 3 years every single bill I payed could increase so significantly – that had never happened in my lifetime as long as I was aware of finances.
You guys are right, the worst part is the change. If it were a law it would probably have had an effective date and you guys would be fine. I mean, according to the letter, the intent was to slow down future short sales not penalize past ones.
And the fact that, at the time, the bank wouldn’t even consider you for a short sale unless you stopped making payments and now the FHA guidelines changed to favor those who stayed current is also frustrating.
But I want to be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with short sales and I don’t think anyone should be penalized for it. These are financial decisions benefiting all parties.
It wasn’t completely on you guys to understand all the economic factors that could impact you. That’s why the lender collects all that information when you get a loan. They are professionals who are supposed to know what you can afford and are supposed to be able to see when a deal might not end well. If they couldn’t see what was coming, I don’t think you should be expected to have.
Really I was just commenting on some of the details of the post, not the big picture. I mean, if we were in a position to help, we would. But like you said, all your friends are poor too. 🙂
True. I don’t mind a ‘penalty’…after all, it’d be tough to buy a new home right while short selling an existing one. But, yeah, the rule changing is frustrating in any situation (who doesn’t hate it when, halfway through a board game, someone says, oh, actually, you can’t do that, I just forgot to say it earlier?).
I’m off to find some wealthy friends…