I belong to no organized religion but what I believe is a mesh of things that I have come up with from years of thinking about what I truly believe is the case as far as "God/Goddess", existence, love, etc. At least it's my own interpretation, if I have to die for it.
I grew up around Jehovah's Witnesses"around the truth" as they would put it. That means my mother chose them and I was forced along for the ride. I first rejected their beliefs as a 5 1/2 year old while she was still "studying". Yes, even then, I questioned everyone else's religious beliefs. I was a strange child, I know. I believe the particular issue I took offense to at that tender age was that males were somehow superior (according to my mother's JW friends). It's probable that, my being the older female sibling, I believed I was superior to my younger brother, thus the vehement rejection at that point. However, this was some kind of epiphany to me that has stuck with me my whole life. It was a knowledge that I did not have to believe what anyone else believed, not even my mother. It was my first conviction that I arrived at myself and never wavered from. The fact that I had that independent belief led to other independent decisions, some of which caused me pain and some of which saved my life, but all of them made me a separate independent person. It's the thing I like the most about myself and what I wish I could share with everyone else. A lot of people live their entire lives without that.
My problems with organized religions boils down to suppression of love, creativity and intelligence and most of all that independent thinking that I value so much.
Aside from listening to various priests, reverends, gurus, fathers, mothers, teachers, gods goddesses etc we listen to books written by, who knows. In my opinion all supposed holy books including the bible are still the words of someone else and therefore can only be looked at as possible inspiration, but not the final word of anything. I would rather think my whole life and come up with my own conclusions.
Taking a book's claim to be "God's word" just because it says so, is ridiculous. Really think about it this way.....
Hey, this blog is the word of God!
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Monday, September 13, 2010
What it's been like to slowly lose my home to this "Mortgage Crisis"
I bought my home in 2003. To be specific I closed and the home was mine September 30, 2003. I remember that date like it was the birthday of my child or an important aniversary, because it was.
Barely a month later kids from the neighborhood drove by around Halloween and threw pumpkins at my door and garage door. They broke the doorframe and dented the garage door and it's still that way now. Well the doorframe is patched up to allow it to lock now. That was my welcome to the neighborhood and a pretty good omen of my life in this house.
My house had only been lived in for one year before I bought it. I was sold on the new smell when you walked in and the large purple wall in the great room. The purple wall is still there, but the house usually smells like sewer gas. Something is wrong with the way the plumbing is connected in my downstairs bathroom. That isn't the only issue but the post is going to be long enough.
I didn't buy a house beyond my means like some people are accusing people who are losing their homes of doing. I was pre-approved for a $200,000 house. Now granted I didn't have a large downpayment, only a few thousand, but I bought my house for $149,000 so I was well within my financial means when I actually bought my house. In saying that, I don't mean to imply that I have been blameless in this whole mess. I didn't know how much homework I needed to do when buying a house, it's not like renting. You need to know the definition of escrow and points and percentages and appreciation and depreciation and equity. You need to know basic maintenence and how much it might cost as well. You need to know exactly what you need and what you can afford and be very good at managing your money. Let's face it, not everyone is that good at it. They should really rent.
A year, or so after buying the house, I was making ends meet but there was hardly anything left after all the bills. All I really wanted to do was lower my payments and cash in on the dropping interest rates. I met with a mortgage broker and was only offered an ARM because my house really hadn't appreciated that much and I had no big downpayments to add. It didn't really lower my payments more than $100/month but it put my insurance in a escrow account so I didn't have a huge bill at the end of the year. I guess I figured I could refinance again when the arm kicked out but the housing scene had already begun to change at that point. In hindsight I did get a sixth sense the ARM was a bad idea...... too bad I didn't listen. If I had kept my original loan, I probably would have stayed with my original 30 year mortgage and I definitely wouldn't be losing my home now. That was the biggest mistake I made but not the only one.
The next biggest mistake more of a personal mistake. I took a traveling job. To make it short I took a job that paid better but was basically a series of contracted jobs instead of a steady one. At that point I had nothing in savings, having wiped any of that out when I bought the house. I also left my then 18 yr old son in my house while I went to New Orleans (post Hurricane Katrina) for my first travel job. I just wanted to help out so badly and the pay rate was higher than I had been making.
During the time I was away the ARM finally kicked out and I began juggling bills to pay my mortgage that immediately skyrocketed to $1865!!! Yet, I managed to pay the payments, not always exactly on time, as I juggled things. This was coupled with being more than 1000 miles away from home and working 48+ hours per week. All this juggling affected my credit so I couldn't get a different loan. I have no idea why I didn't refinance right away before all of that happened but I'm sure it had to do with just not being in town long enough to go through a several month refinance process and being afraid that not having any downpayment would make them say no. Anyway, it really wasn't a very long period of time before the whole mortgage crisis came crashing down on my head.
When I finally returned home after a series of travel assignments (around late 2007 or early 2008), my house had been, esentially, trashed by the neighborhood teenagers and my son. The carpet was ruined. The banister broken, the lock on the front door broken and then shoddily replaced and cat urine on a section of the carpet since my pets had not had their litter pans changed often enough to use it and presumably had been hiding under the beds for months while my son had loud/wild parties that I knew nothing about. I had cigarette burns in the carpet furniture and on the sink and tubs in my NON-SMOKING house. I still cringe when I remember how pretty my house was compared to now. I can't afford to replace it and insurance doesn't cover destruction by teenager.
I returned home permanently about 2008. I did local contracts and "as needed" jobs at local hospitals. The hospitals were decreasing hours due to the economy. People stop coming to the hospital as much when they don't have any insurance. I was working in places I would not have chosen to work if there were better openings and that caused me to have a lot of stress on the job. All this time I was trying to avoid taking a permanent job because I wanted to go back to traveling. I still believed I could either sell my house or get some kind of arrangement where the payments were reasonable so that I could just keep the house and close it up while I traveled. I was really delusional about how bad the situation was getting and that I needed to make a permanent decision. My payments had began to drop and by early 2009 they were down to about $1250. This was still higher than my original 30 year loan monthly payment but might have been doable if I wasn't still trying to catch up that last month behind from when they were higher as well as unreliable hours at work. I arranged to get into the HAMP program through my mortgage company April 2009 ( but they will quote April, May or June depending on which of their teenaged employees you are talking to on a given day). Once again, nothing was really spelled out in detail and when I pressed I was told it was only a "temporary program until they could get my mortgage refinanced". It was supposed to be for 3 months and was going to take my payment down to $1063 during the "trial period". I was getting a wopping $187/month break for 3 months and then I would have a permanent payment that was reasonable and would not change. Nine months later I had been asked to resubmit the same documents over and over, stuff I knew they already had because I had the fax receipts with dates and after I learned better I even had follow up phone calls to clarify they had been received. Each time I faxed the information it cost me around $24 that I did not have. In November I left the job I had been at. The tension on the job had just been too much and I had known I needed to leave but couldn't because of.... you guessed it, the house. It then became a case of which came first. Did I leave the job because of the stress of the house or did I end up losing the house because of the crappy job I kept longer than I should have. I was unemployed for less than 2 months. The old job I had before I left for New Orleans welcomed me back and that is where I am now. I am only parttime/as needed due to school but I get fulltime to nearly fulltime hours whether I want it or not. It's nice to have one thing to come home to at least. The mortgage company dropped me from the HAMP program for not making the payments on time during those 2 months but I had made all 3 trial payments plus 4 more. I understand the concept of missed payments especially during a "trial period" and normally I wouldn't expect a break. But sheesh, they did nothing they said THEY were going to do during that "trial" period. I could also not go back to the original payment of around $1200 because they wanted $14,000 for back payments at that time. I wouldn't have had back payments at the time I lost my job if I had not gotten on that payment plan to begin with. I wanted on the payment plan predominately to get a permanant monthly rate. I had been working on getting everything caught up and was just about there when I got on the plan. Thus if I had lost my job and not been on the plan I would have been only a month or two behind when I got my new job and would have been able to make arrangements that were not in the range of $14,000 but in the range of $2,500. I am, by no means, saying I wasn't incredibly stupid several times in this situation. I am, by no means, putting all the blame on the mortgage company. I see how I got into this mess now, but I am saying that the mortgage company did not seem interested in finding a way to rectify the situation. I never did get anyone on the phone that sounded the least bit knowledgeable and when I got someone who was at least patient and not unpleasant they pulled her away from my account. The last two phone calls I made to the company I am sure I was talking to a 17 year old girl both times. They could not even quote to me the correct amount for my payment, not the original payment amout or the trial amount.
After the last phone call I sat on the couch for a few minutes and said what do I do now? I haven't got $14,000 and if I did have it I would rather do anything else with it than to sink it into the bottomless pit that I call my house right now. I realized that I didn't really even want the house anymore. I mean, The carpet looks like trailer trash and the house smells like sewer gas approximately 3-4 days out of the week. My garbage disposal is broken. There is a crack across one of the walls I can't keep up with the lawn care since my son isn't here any more to do it. I have a big house that I have no time to clean with mostly old furniture I can't afford to replace. So I contacted a lawyer.
What is this American dream of homeownership? Why is owning my own property suppposed to be more important than my sanity? What makes me a bad person for not caring about what letting my house go is doing to the economy? Who cared about my interests at any point in that scenario, but me? ..not even my own son, maybe my parents. What I wouldn't give now to have never bought the stupid house and to now be living in an apartment with a garbage dumpster and a pool. Better yet, what I wouldn't give to still be traveling and not sitting here in this stinky house staring at my once light bluegray carpet that now has patches of orange and red stains.
What keeps me here you ask? Why don't I walk away? I am currently waiting for the mortgage company to foreclose. It's been 8 months since a payment was made. I am working part time hours right now and going to school for a second degree, just in case nursing isn't as secure as I think it is. I plan on covering all bases in the future.
I am waiting to be served with a foreclosure notice now. My only real option is to foreclose at this point and yes I am sitting here waiting for it to happen. It is not a case of walking away to save a few dollars, it is a case of walking away because I have no other option and it's also to save my sanity and get me back to living my life. At this point, I am waiting on the bank's next move.
The government keeps giving more money to the mortgage companies without governing anything they do with it. I have since found out that the mortgage company wanted to get me into that HAMP program and keep me there indefinitely. No one ever gets out of the HAMP program. The government is giving them money as long as we are in it, there's no incentive to actually refinance anyone or do anything else to get it permanently straightened out. It's true, do the research.
Every day I look around at my things and think about how I am going to sort my possesions and give up my kitchen, that I love. I think about the shear magnitude of all the work I need to accomplish by myself (no one to help). I think about my options such as taking a crappy apt since that nice apartment is now out of my reach, most likely, because of my credit alone. I may have to live in a dump. I worry about how I'm I going to get back on track and keep my pet. People are giving up their pets left and right around here because of this. I'm not going to give mine up. How am I going to live with a bankruptcy on my record and how am I ever going to have friends or a significant other who will overlook my financial mess? Most of all, I worry about how I am going to get out of this town and what will happen if I don't.
In short, this mortgage mess has affected my relationship with my family, my confidence, my friendships and romantic life, my health, stress level and even my sense of purpose in life. I am depressed and running low on hope that it may end eventually and I may still come out ok and in enough time to still have a life while I still have a measure of health and energy.
I am luckier than most. I do have some job security. If worse came to worse again and I lost another job, I'm relatively sure I would eventually get another job especially if I was willing to move. That is a very good thing right now. I have the option of travel nursing again. That is a golden opportunity. They pay for the housing and reimburse for most of the travel and you get an hourly wage about the same as the rest of the nurses at the hospital. You live in nice housing and you can take your pets. The downside is some assignments can be really bad and we have already established that I do not do well with bad working conditions.
I have a few gray hairs now. My mother didn't get gray hairs till around 60 yrs old. It's this mortgage thing. Maybe I am wiser now or maybe not. I still don't understand escrows and depreciation and equity, but I do understand that I don't really want to own a home again for a long time and probably not by myself and definitely not without knowing for sure what I am doing and that it is the right thing. I know now that less is more as far as how many possesions. What I really want is a reliable vehicle full of the most important things to me which mostly include my pet, my laptop and phone, clothes, a comfortable blanket and pillow, a few cooking utensils, my favorite books and a good camera.
I have always admired a phoenix and I think I do have that same talent to burn completely to ash and then rise up new. I've even done it before. Right now, I kinda feel like the phoenix waiting on the fire to start, very old and very tired but impatient for the change that will surely bring on renewal. Bring on the foreclosure already and lets get on with it.
Barely a month later kids from the neighborhood drove by around Halloween and threw pumpkins at my door and garage door. They broke the doorframe and dented the garage door and it's still that way now. Well the doorframe is patched up to allow it to lock now. That was my welcome to the neighborhood and a pretty good omen of my life in this house.
My house had only been lived in for one year before I bought it. I was sold on the new smell when you walked in and the large purple wall in the great room. The purple wall is still there, but the house usually smells like sewer gas. Something is wrong with the way the plumbing is connected in my downstairs bathroom. That isn't the only issue but the post is going to be long enough.
I didn't buy a house beyond my means like some people are accusing people who are losing their homes of doing. I was pre-approved for a $200,000 house. Now granted I didn't have a large downpayment, only a few thousand, but I bought my house for $149,000 so I was well within my financial means when I actually bought my house. In saying that, I don't mean to imply that I have been blameless in this whole mess. I didn't know how much homework I needed to do when buying a house, it's not like renting. You need to know the definition of escrow and points and percentages and appreciation and depreciation and equity. You need to know basic maintenence and how much it might cost as well. You need to know exactly what you need and what you can afford and be very good at managing your money. Let's face it, not everyone is that good at it. They should really rent.
A year, or so after buying the house, I was making ends meet but there was hardly anything left after all the bills. All I really wanted to do was lower my payments and cash in on the dropping interest rates. I met with a mortgage broker and was only offered an ARM because my house really hadn't appreciated that much and I had no big downpayments to add. It didn't really lower my payments more than $100/month but it put my insurance in a escrow account so I didn't have a huge bill at the end of the year. I guess I figured I could refinance again when the arm kicked out but the housing scene had already begun to change at that point. In hindsight I did get a sixth sense the ARM was a bad idea...... too bad I didn't listen. If I had kept my original loan, I probably would have stayed with my original 30 year mortgage and I definitely wouldn't be losing my home now. That was the biggest mistake I made but not the only one.
The next biggest mistake more of a personal mistake. I took a traveling job. To make it short I took a job that paid better but was basically a series of contracted jobs instead of a steady one. At that point I had nothing in savings, having wiped any of that out when I bought the house. I also left my then 18 yr old son in my house while I went to New Orleans (post Hurricane Katrina) for my first travel job. I just wanted to help out so badly and the pay rate was higher than I had been making.
During the time I was away the ARM finally kicked out and I began juggling bills to pay my mortgage that immediately skyrocketed to $1865!!! Yet, I managed to pay the payments, not always exactly on time, as I juggled things. This was coupled with being more than 1000 miles away from home and working 48+ hours per week. All this juggling affected my credit so I couldn't get a different loan. I have no idea why I didn't refinance right away before all of that happened but I'm sure it had to do with just not being in town long enough to go through a several month refinance process and being afraid that not having any downpayment would make them say no. Anyway, it really wasn't a very long period of time before the whole mortgage crisis came crashing down on my head.
When I finally returned home after a series of travel assignments (around late 2007 or early 2008), my house had been, esentially, trashed by the neighborhood teenagers and my son. The carpet was ruined. The banister broken, the lock on the front door broken and then shoddily replaced and cat urine on a section of the carpet since my pets had not had their litter pans changed often enough to use it and presumably had been hiding under the beds for months while my son had loud/wild parties that I knew nothing about. I had cigarette burns in the carpet furniture and on the sink and tubs in my NON-SMOKING house. I still cringe when I remember how pretty my house was compared to now. I can't afford to replace it and insurance doesn't cover destruction by teenager.
I returned home permanently about 2008. I did local contracts and "as needed" jobs at local hospitals. The hospitals were decreasing hours due to the economy. People stop coming to the hospital as much when they don't have any insurance. I was working in places I would not have chosen to work if there were better openings and that caused me to have a lot of stress on the job. All this time I was trying to avoid taking a permanent job because I wanted to go back to traveling. I still believed I could either sell my house or get some kind of arrangement where the payments were reasonable so that I could just keep the house and close it up while I traveled. I was really delusional about how bad the situation was getting and that I needed to make a permanent decision. My payments had began to drop and by early 2009 they were down to about $1250. This was still higher than my original 30 year loan monthly payment but might have been doable if I wasn't still trying to catch up that last month behind from when they were higher as well as unreliable hours at work. I arranged to get into the HAMP program through my mortgage company April 2009 ( but they will quote April, May or June depending on which of their teenaged employees you are talking to on a given day). Once again, nothing was really spelled out in detail and when I pressed I was told it was only a "temporary program until they could get my mortgage refinanced". It was supposed to be for 3 months and was going to take my payment down to $1063 during the "trial period". I was getting a wopping $187/month break for 3 months and then I would have a permanent payment that was reasonable and would not change. Nine months later I had been asked to resubmit the same documents over and over, stuff I knew they already had because I had the fax receipts with dates and after I learned better I even had follow up phone calls to clarify they had been received. Each time I faxed the information it cost me around $24 that I did not have. In November I left the job I had been at. The tension on the job had just been too much and I had known I needed to leave but couldn't because of.... you guessed it, the house. It then became a case of which came first. Did I leave the job because of the stress of the house or did I end up losing the house because of the crappy job I kept longer than I should have. I was unemployed for less than 2 months. The old job I had before I left for New Orleans welcomed me back and that is where I am now. I am only parttime/as needed due to school but I get fulltime to nearly fulltime hours whether I want it or not. It's nice to have one thing to come home to at least. The mortgage company dropped me from the HAMP program for not making the payments on time during those 2 months but I had made all 3 trial payments plus 4 more. I understand the concept of missed payments especially during a "trial period" and normally I wouldn't expect a break. But sheesh, they did nothing they said THEY were going to do during that "trial" period. I could also not go back to the original payment of around $1200 because they wanted $14,000 for back payments at that time. I wouldn't have had back payments at the time I lost my job if I had not gotten on that payment plan to begin with. I wanted on the payment plan predominately to get a permanant monthly rate. I had been working on getting everything caught up and was just about there when I got on the plan. Thus if I had lost my job and not been on the plan I would have been only a month or two behind when I got my new job and would have been able to make arrangements that were not in the range of $14,000 but in the range of $2,500. I am, by no means, saying I wasn't incredibly stupid several times in this situation. I am, by no means, putting all the blame on the mortgage company. I see how I got into this mess now, but I am saying that the mortgage company did not seem interested in finding a way to rectify the situation. I never did get anyone on the phone that sounded the least bit knowledgeable and when I got someone who was at least patient and not unpleasant they pulled her away from my account. The last two phone calls I made to the company I am sure I was talking to a 17 year old girl both times. They could not even quote to me the correct amount for my payment, not the original payment amout or the trial amount.
After the last phone call I sat on the couch for a few minutes and said what do I do now? I haven't got $14,000 and if I did have it I would rather do anything else with it than to sink it into the bottomless pit that I call my house right now. I realized that I didn't really even want the house anymore. I mean, The carpet looks like trailer trash and the house smells like sewer gas approximately 3-4 days out of the week. My garbage disposal is broken. There is a crack across one of the walls I can't keep up with the lawn care since my son isn't here any more to do it. I have a big house that I have no time to clean with mostly old furniture I can't afford to replace. So I contacted a lawyer.
What is this American dream of homeownership? Why is owning my own property suppposed to be more important than my sanity? What makes me a bad person for not caring about what letting my house go is doing to the economy? Who cared about my interests at any point in that scenario, but me? ..not even my own son, maybe my parents. What I wouldn't give now to have never bought the stupid house and to now be living in an apartment with a garbage dumpster and a pool. Better yet, what I wouldn't give to still be traveling and not sitting here in this stinky house staring at my once light bluegray carpet that now has patches of orange and red stains.
What keeps me here you ask? Why don't I walk away? I am currently waiting for the mortgage company to foreclose. It's been 8 months since a payment was made. I am working part time hours right now and going to school for a second degree, just in case nursing isn't as secure as I think it is. I plan on covering all bases in the future.
I am waiting to be served with a foreclosure notice now. My only real option is to foreclose at this point and yes I am sitting here waiting for it to happen. It is not a case of walking away to save a few dollars, it is a case of walking away because I have no other option and it's also to save my sanity and get me back to living my life. At this point, I am waiting on the bank's next move.
The government keeps giving more money to the mortgage companies without governing anything they do with it. I have since found out that the mortgage company wanted to get me into that HAMP program and keep me there indefinitely. No one ever gets out of the HAMP program. The government is giving them money as long as we are in it, there's no incentive to actually refinance anyone or do anything else to get it permanently straightened out. It's true, do the research.
Every day I look around at my things and think about how I am going to sort my possesions and give up my kitchen, that I love. I think about the shear magnitude of all the work I need to accomplish by myself (no one to help). I think about my options such as taking a crappy apt since that nice apartment is now out of my reach, most likely, because of my credit alone. I may have to live in a dump. I worry about how I'm I going to get back on track and keep my pet. People are giving up their pets left and right around here because of this. I'm not going to give mine up. How am I going to live with a bankruptcy on my record and how am I ever going to have friends or a significant other who will overlook my financial mess? Most of all, I worry about how I am going to get out of this town and what will happen if I don't.
In short, this mortgage mess has affected my relationship with my family, my confidence, my friendships and romantic life, my health, stress level and even my sense of purpose in life. I am depressed and running low on hope that it may end eventually and I may still come out ok and in enough time to still have a life while I still have a measure of health and energy.
I am luckier than most. I do have some job security. If worse came to worse again and I lost another job, I'm relatively sure I would eventually get another job especially if I was willing to move. That is a very good thing right now. I have the option of travel nursing again. That is a golden opportunity. They pay for the housing and reimburse for most of the travel and you get an hourly wage about the same as the rest of the nurses at the hospital. You live in nice housing and you can take your pets. The downside is some assignments can be really bad and we have already established that I do not do well with bad working conditions.
I have a few gray hairs now. My mother didn't get gray hairs till around 60 yrs old. It's this mortgage thing. Maybe I am wiser now or maybe not. I still don't understand escrows and depreciation and equity, but I do understand that I don't really want to own a home again for a long time and probably not by myself and definitely not without knowing for sure what I am doing and that it is the right thing. I know now that less is more as far as how many possesions. What I really want is a reliable vehicle full of the most important things to me which mostly include my pet, my laptop and phone, clothes, a comfortable blanket and pillow, a few cooking utensils, my favorite books and a good camera.
I have always admired a phoenix and I think I do have that same talent to burn completely to ash and then rise up new. I've even done it before. Right now, I kinda feel like the phoenix waiting on the fire to start, very old and very tired but impatient for the change that will surely bring on renewal. Bring on the foreclosure already and lets get on with it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)