I Bought Too Much House–Mind Feeding My Kids?
This woman is the poster child for privileged yuppies who gambled with their childrens’ futures and lost, but are unwilling to let go of the gamble to, you know, feed the kids:
When she was laid off in February, Patricia Guerrero was making $70,000 a year. Weeks later, with bills piling up and in need of food for her family, this middle-class mother did something she never thought she would do: She went to a food bank.
Oh, goodness! Why, we’re all just a paycheck away from doomsd- wait, how do you blow through the savings you can earn with a 70K/year job in a month? Oh, right, you keep hoping your house gamble will pay off:
Guerrero is estranged from her husband and raising her two young children. She’s already burned through her savings to help make ends meet, and is drawing unemployment checks. She has had to take extreme measures to pay for her interest-only mortgage of $2,500 a month. In fact, her mother moved in with her to help pay the bills.
This is like the person who complains they’ve done everything to lose weight, and nothing works. Well, you know, everything except diet and exercise. Lady, you have a house. Sell it, and move in with your mom wherever she was before. Or move into the apartment you can afford off your husband’s child support and unemployment. But if you’re hanging on to an interest-only loan, it’s because you think the market is going to turn around any day now and you can flip it for a profit.
But wait, we’re not done with her “extreme measures”:
Guerrero even applied for food stamps, but was denied.
“I never used the system. I’ve been working since I was 15-and-a-half. I needed it now and it turned me down,” she said.
Maybe because they look at your balance sheet and say “Hey, what about this house thing you have listed under ‘assets’? Maybe you could sell that?”
If you made $70,000 a year, and presumably your husband made a little something too, then the idea that you’d gamble your children’s ability to eat on whether you could flip a house you’re not even paying principal on is pretty sickening.
To have burned through her savings in a month means she burned through $2,500 plus utilities and food. But with a $70,000 a year job, she should be bringing home around $4,000 a month. Which meant that despite making $1,500 over her housing cost, she couldn’t salt any of that away. And remember, this is before help from Mom or the soon-to-be ex.
What all that means is that this wasn’t “oh but for getting thrown out of work, there could go you or I,” but it means she had to make poor decisions and keep making them repeatedly to get into the mess she’s in. I feel bad for her kids, but I really can’t feel sorry for her. You made your bed, lady, now try really sacrificing like actual poor people do.
The rest of the article tries to be scary but can muster precisely zero data. All we have is a woman who kept making bad decisions and wants us to bail her out. As someone who didn’t jump on the house bandwagon, I’m pretty pissed off. I’d like to have a house, too. Who’s willing to pay my food bills to make that happen?
March 28th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I really admire Patricia also because I’ve been there done that, myself…only
this happened to us in the early 80’s. My husband was making 6 figures a year
and worked in the computer industry…I also worked and we had 2 young children.
Because of his career we moved a lot and lost money in buying and selling houses..not
much we could do about that. We were hit with a double whammy….1. the change in
technology from the large computers to the birth of the P.C.(which made us obsolete
all of a sudden in the field of computerization and 2. He came home one day with
a look of shock and said he had just been given 2 months notice and a severance
package after we moved our family across country & about 2 months after we had
just closed on a new home with a monthly mortgage payment of $1500.00 Huh! That
may be common place now …but the terms “downsizing” & “out sourcing” had not yet been coined…He wasn’t fired and he didn’t quit…so
what was this that was happening…. We found out through the course of time that
we were not alone as initially thought ….it happened to a lot of others also at
that time….but it wasn’t talked about in the news…which made it harder for
the those it was happening to, because those with jobs didn’t understand and
judged harshly those who couldn’t find work. I don’t think there are any
words to describe the insanity we went through for many years …there were no real
jobs…we tried to start a business for about 7 years and it finally went under
after never really being able to stand on it’s own…it took our home and every
cent we ever made. I might mention that even though we had made good money, we
were never big spenders…we just didn’t know the scope of the problem…there
didn’t seem to be any help either in the interim…when I think of it in my
minds eye…I see us in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight, treading water
not knowing for how long …all the while the sharks were circling.
We did anything we could find….cleaning, cooking, mail/newspaper/truck delivery
service etc..during those at least 10 years we didn’t sleep more than 2 or 3
hours a night if that…I held several part time jobs…60 to 80 hours a week at
just one of them. As we slipped through the proverbial cracks our health and sanity
went with it…but! I’m happy to report that we did come through the other
end of the “black hole”…I know we may have lost a lot, but I gained
the knowledge of my strengths…and although I will have to work for the rest of
my life, it could be a lot worse. I believe you can get through anything if you
just believe in yourself and stay focused, don’t let the “hecklers”
get you down….that was what made it more difficult …the condescending attitudes
and judgements of us from other people’s ignorance. Now I look at people that
live on the street with more respect and I always wonder what THEY went through
that made them give up!
Blessings. xoxo G
March 28th, 2008 at 11:42 am
You “admire” her? Really? “Pity” or “sympathize” I could understand, but admiration…has she done something admirable? What about everybody who plans ahead and doesn’t buy above their means…do you despise them?
I guess my reply to you would be that you did get out there and work, and you didn’t (by what you said here) ask anyone else to pay for it. Seeing someone take a dangerous loan because they “have to” have a house (you never have to have a house, ask a New Yorker or a European) and then go for assistance rather than work the crummy job is a far cry from what you describe doing.
As for the threat of layoffs–everybody is aware of them now. Hell, I work in the computer world, and I’m painfully aware that my entire company could be gone in a matter of months. And I plan accordingly. And it frosts me that some people enjoy the things I’ve denied myself in order to be responsible and then ask me to pay for it.