The Long, Long Move

It's been a rollercoaster summer.

We graduated a son, our youngest.  We dropped him off at college for the summer term.  We packed up a 3,000 sf house after getting rid of at least half of our belongings because of empty-nesting and downsizing (and mostly because we didn't want to pay ABF to haul a lot of unused stuff).  We left our home of 11 years and not in the way we would have liked.  We walked away from our home - yes, we defaulted.  We are in the process of foreclosure.  Something up until 8 months ago, I never, never would imagine finding ourselves in that situation.

After a bumpy 1,600 mile cross-country ride (a faulty auto-trailer) we finally made it to the southwest.  We found a nice rental (small!  1280 sf) and are still unpacking boxes. 

I got a letter from my former city public works department today.  Kind of devastating.  Basically saying that a complaint has been filed by one of our former neighbors due to overgrown weeds.  That's what happens when you have to walk away -- it kills me to think that the flower beds I once enjoyably tended are a weedy mess now.  The lawn that my sons mowed regularly is now an eyesore.  There was a time when I thought that people who got foreclosed on were flaky.  I'm that flake now.  But am I really?  Unemployment + illness + 7 months = financial disaster.  We borrowed from family.  We tried to talk to the bank - that went nowhere fast.  We went without.  We had a house with a lot of structural problems and weren't willing to rent in that condition, and didn't have the money to make the needed repairs.  And at the end of the day, that house was far away from our parents, children and grandchild, horribly underwater and no chance of getting our equity back within the next 20 years.  So when my husband was offered a job in another state far away, we made the decision to let it go.

The first month was hard -- it felt so unnatural to me to willfully not pay a mortgage payment.  At first it didn't feel right living in a house that we weren't paying the mortgage on.  It made me feel a little better to do the math and realize that the bank had still made a profit off of us with the interest we'd been paying those 11 years.  That helped relieve the guilt.   Also reading about the banks record earnings each quarter didn't hurt either. 

Watching our excellent credit score take a nosedive was painful too.  But we keep telling ourselves "we are not our credit score".  We have paid our other bills on time, and thankfully the foreclosure is the only hit we are taking for now.

I know there are lots of other people who are losing their homes right now... I am amazed at the compassion that friends and family have shown.  I can honestly say that not one person has made a rude comment to me about it.  I will say though that it is embarrassing when every person asks you "are you/have you put your house up for sale?"  I have learned the hard way never to ask that question to somebody again when they tell me they are moving.

The website Loansafe has been a big source of comfort to me.  It is full of ideas and strategies for people who are trying to save their homes, or how to walk away gracefully.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?  I hope I am getting stronger.  I think I am.