For a lot of different reasons really. But - especially because of financial reasons at the moment. We're still making it so far, that's not the issue. I was reading an article in the news about foreclosed homeowners (is that an oxymoron?) suing lenders for foreclosing on their homes. The comments at the end are what got me. Most of the people commenting seemed to be sick of the "lazy" people sitting on their fat-@$$es and getting bailed out. They suggest that people facing foreclosure are greedy and idiots and getting what they deserve - and if they really want to keep their house than they should just work harder. And if they're not willing to do that, then they shouldn't have bought a house they couldn't afford anyway.
Fine. I'm sure some of the millions facing foreclosure did bite off more than they could chew or chose to spend their money frivolously and now are unsure how to make ends meet.
But what about people like us? Yeah...we probably bought a bit more house than we should have. But we thought TH was going to get a higher paying job. And we thought I'd be done with school in a year, and then our income would double. We banked on an economy that tanked right as we needed it. True - we counted our chickens before they hatched, but despite that, we were making it work. TH didn't get the higher paying job - I got a job and then was fired the same day the economy tanked. And now I'm back in school - but all the while we were careful and made our mortgage on time. This past May TH was FIRED. Fired from his job for an incident in which he was assaulted and he's been told that if it had happened at any other time he would not have been fired for. So our primary income is gone. He's looking for jobs - but it's tough in this economy. I don't think anyone appreciates just how tough unless they're actually trying to find a job right now. I feel like most people still assume there are always a few jobs out there - you just have to go out and ask for them. Well - there are jobs out there, but there are way more job-seekers than jobs at this point. You can't just ask anymore - you have to ask faster and better than 10 other people for each job. The odds aren't in your favor - sure, you'll probably get a job eventually, but right now eventually could mean 5 months...that's a long time to go without substantial income.
So what does this mean? Do you think we're lazy and should just be working harder? Are we greedy? No one foresaw this economic bust - I don't care if you've "been saying it for years" or you "knew it was coming". Yeah - we all KNOW that a big earthquake will hit LA - but do you know when? Do you know exactly where in LA? Do you know HOW it will strike? No. Without that kind of specific information your predictions are useless - and we bought a house at a time when we had no reason to believe the house would be worth less than half what we paid in just 2 years. At the time we bought EVERYONE was saying it'd be a great investment - it should only increase in value, even in just 5 short years. So what are we supposed to do? It IS worth half what we owe. It looks like it will take much longer than 5 years to get BACK to the value we bought it at.
Yet we're still making our mortgage...but we don't know for how much longer. Foreclosure is a real possibility unless TH can find work reasonably soon. If it does come to foreclosure...really America? Is it entirely our fault? Are we a bunch of lazy sob's getting what we asked for? What we deserve?
No comments:
Post a Comment