Filed Away

I’m getting creamed on my house, pure and simple. When we bought it in 2002 we took out a 147K mortgage, paid 10K down and wound up paying less in Principle, Interest and taxes than we would have on a 3 bedroom apartment in our old neck of the woods. But it was an older house, built in the early 60’s and it still had an original front door, windows, even (from the looks of things) driveway, plus a septic system that would not pass Title V requirements in Massachusetts, but weren’t an issue in NH- the inspector told us to pump the tank and the drywell once a year and we ought to get a decade or two out of it.

So there were, happy first-time home owners. First order of business was the doors and the windows- that ran about 18 grand, so after our first year there we went to the bank and got the ubiquitous Home Equity Line of Credit, or HELOC for short. New windows, new doors and a serious drop in our winter heating costs. Like a very, very many foolish people we also spent that money on some pretty spurious crap, including paying off one of the cars. Still, we were making plenty of money and  the bills were pretty easy to pay…

The kids got older, and more expensive. We started leaning on credit cards. We refinanced the house to wrap up the HELOC, credit cards and the other car payment- and got screwed on the mortgage because of my own stupidity- it was an accelerated equity deal, but they didn’t escrow and as soon as I heard that I should have stood up and walked away (I literally discovered this as we were sitting down to sign the papers- entirely and inescapably my fault and my failure). Like an idiot I did it anyhow.

We struggled with that mortgage for 9 months before refinancing again, this AFTER spending thousands on credit cards to meet tax upward-spiraling property tax payments as well as car insurance from our oldest’s hobby of collecting speeding tickets.  This DID NOT stop us from buying things that quite frankly we could have done without, including a third car (Why on God’s Good Earth did we think letting Speed Racer take a car to college was a good idea?).

Braces for the youngest- another $5500. Finally failed Dry Well- another $2500. Replace the exciting All Wheel Drive Racecourse we referred to as a driveway- $2700. It piled up fast and we ripped through our cash reserve in moments, falling back on- you guessed it- credit cards, to tide us over.

So, I have a mortgage of $232K on a house that’s worth probably $220K (the market here is not nearly as soft as in other places, but it’s still soft) and close to $40K in credit card debt.

Staggering, isn’t it?

Yet here I am with a six year plan to get out from under. We cut Christmas to the bone. Looked at our financial software and actually paid attention: Gee, what’s that tall bar every month- dining out? $400 a month? Yikes!  We have learned to cook in house again and are embracing the notion of leftovers. That extra life insurance policy for close to $100 a month? Gone- just don’t die, and if I do the insurance through my employer isn’t bad at all.  Dump the land-line and move the home phone number over to my wife’s cell phone. Cut the cable internet from the ultra-high-speed tier down to the ‘gee that’s damned fast’ tier. Rebuild my old computer as a media center and dump the DVR service.

Not counting the dining out we shaved close to $200 a month from our fixed expenses and are slowly building a cash reserve while putting extra money towards payments. The plan is to pay off the car first ( a normal $266 monthly payment) since I can pay it off fastest, then start working on the credit cards with the money that frees up.  The credit cards are all at mercifully low rates so they can wait… for a little while.

“But Wait!” you cry, “What if your job goes away!?”

A very real possibility that, though management seems to feel we have a handle on things since the company is carrying very little dept and has enough institutional and enterprise customers to stay afloat so long as things don’t REALLY spiral out of control. Still, yeah, I’ve thought about it, even talked to a bankruptcy lawyer just in case. His advice, and I quote:

“If you get laid off the first person you call is me, not your wife, not your creditors- me. The first place you go after you clean out your desk is my office, not home, not to a bar. Yeah, the laws have changed, but if you lose your job in this economy there is no point in pussyfooting around… unless you like sleeping under bridges?”

So I guess that end of things is as under control as it can be, as in it’s out of my hands. I get very mad at myself when I think about this because I saw it happening, I knew what I was doing was stupid and I just kept doing it because I didn’t know what else to do. There were so many times that it all seemed so easily controllable and then you take that one extra step (in our case I believe it was the septic system wiping out our cash) and that suddenly you are in a position where if you can’t change your life habits you are so royally screwed.

I have to count my blessings here- the job looks stable and if we stick to what we’ve been doing since October we can dig our way out of this mess on our own. Then it is just a matter of repeating over and over “Never Again” and “Always Pay Cash”.

Okay, whining’s done. Move on.

Saw Valkyrie with Tom Cruise tonight as the better half and I decided we needed a date. I liked the history being portrayed, but was skeptical that Cruise could pull off a decent German officer, particularly since he didn’t even attempt an accent. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn’t bother me at all, probably because in the beginning of the movie we see Cruise as Col. von Stauffenberg writing in his journal with his voice over in German and subtitled in English then segueing quickly into him speaking English. From that point forward it didn’t bother me at all.

The movie flowed quite well and there just weren’t any boring parts- I hate historical dramas that require you to sit through long scenes of fluff to establish their bona fides. Of course they took liberties with the facts (though not nearly as many as I feared they might), and of course we know from the start that the conspirators are doomed, but it did not matter. It was engrossing and entertaining and that is what I want out of a movie, after all.

I know there are some who are having a hard time with the recent spate of movies portraying Germans in Hitler’s Germany in a sympathetic light, and the movie laid it on a bit thick when some of the conspirators expressed a strong sentiment to avoid ‘destroying Europe just to wait for Hitler to die’, but it is the absolute truth that while the German professional military was more than happy to be invading Europe willy-nilly, many had very strong misgivings about the NAZI party in general and Hitler in particular. Trying to pretend that was not the case just to preserve the black and white nature of the Second World War serves no good purpose.

Take the movie for what it is: a dramatization of a very real event, involving very real people who laid it all on the line to stop a monster and try to save their nation. It was worth the few bucks to go see it and I left feeling happy I’d seen it. Enough said.

The first three parts of the 3rd Edition are now available at the Novel link.

Part Four will be following shortly- turns out I hadn’t finished fixing the epilogue, but it’s really just a paragraph or two. We had an extensive dictionary of the “Zsallic” language in the original editions- I’ve removed it from this edition and will probably post it as a separate page because there’s quite a story behind its creation that needs to be told.

Yeah, I know you’ve heard that before, but this time I really mean it. Honest.

I purged the Novel from 3500years.com as part of the preparation for beginning work on Book 2 and other small side projects. Unlike some writers I’ve researched I find that my mind works best when it’s allowed to wander off the beaten path from time to time, so I’ll start posting both here and on 3500years.com more regularly.

I freely admit that “more regularly” may well mean “once or twice a month”, but so be it.

I’m going to put up the full first novel on a separate page of this site very soon and may even make it available as a free PDF, though that’s not as certain. Either way, things are happening. Honest.

Over at Dean’s World there’s an interesting discussion regarding Zsallia Mareiko as the two of us seek to embarque on a sequel to book 1.

Well it’s been an interesting 20 hours or so here in New Hampshire. About an inch of ice fell, covering everything, closing most major roads and cutting power to about half a million homes and businesses… except right here where I live. Our power flickered a couple of times, the internet never failed and I’ve been working cozily from my basement office all day.

I remember the Ice Storm of ’98- I actually drove up into Maine in the teeth of the thing because a buddy of mine was stranded in his mobile home and needed som serious re-supply.  It was a stupid thing to do- the number of times i nearly bought it on the way up… I’d rather not recount it. Still, the news is reporting this storm is actually worse than ’98 and it just doesn’t feel that way to me.

The ’98 storm went on for 3 days if I recall correctly and as bad as it was in New England it was Canada that really got hammered by it. I suppose if we put it in perspective we would have to say that it is worse for us, but still doesn’t hold a candle to the total destruction wrought by the ’98 storm.

Anyhow, the sun is finally peaking out and the melting has already begun. Now it’s time for all those state and utility clean-up crews to do their collective thing and put it all behind us.

Trudy Schuett over at Dean’s World just posted a doozy of an idea, but got the math wrong by six digits. The idea was to foregoe all the banking bailouts and just give every American a million bucks. She claimed a cost of 300 million dollars- that’s where the six missing zeroes popped up- try 300 trillion dollars. Better spin up those printing presses!

Still, there’s some merit to her original notion- don’t bail out the banks or the auto makers, bailout the people. None of this paltry crap with $600 or $1000 “stimulus” payments.  I don’t know about you, but that money went straight to my creditors. I’m sure they appreciated it, but it sure as hell didn’t stimulate anything. Now, $10,000 or $50,000. and we’re talking some radical changes in behavior, such as paying things off and freeing up income for discretionary spending.

Hell, why not have the government simply pay off every first mortgage on a primary residence up to a max of say $400,000? If we’re going to have the government step in like this, make it count, but don’t go handing money to companies and banks who couldn’t help themselves even when they saw what was inevitably coming down the road. People have been talking about this financial meltdown for at least five years that I can recall, so why reward them for not doing anything about it?

So if they must give away billions or trillions of dollars, why not give it to the people instead? Try some Trickle UP economics for a change?

I know the tag line on this blog mentions opinions, but it seems of late I’ve been reluctant to publicly discuss politics at all. I live in Concord, NH which is a pretty Liberal city as far as New Hampshire goes and usually goes heavily Democratic in elections so my neighbors and I recognize our political differences and choose to let them go un-discussed most of the time. Policy talk? Sure, but nothing about candidates or elections. There was a gentleman’s agreement in our little cul-de-sac neighborhood to avoid putting up signs etc and it made things pretty peaceful while the rest of the city got caught up in the craze that was Election 2008.

I think John McCain would have made a fine President and I’m not in the habit of feeling good about Democrats holding total power, either at the state or the Federal level. Nonetheless I’m kind of proud that my nation elected Obama. It may sound weird from somebody who hoped he’d lose, but my biggest fear was that he’d lose because too many racists would simply refuse to tolerate a black man as President (channeling my inner leftist-moonbat, I guess). I don’t know how we’d prove something like that- it was just something I was sure we’d know if it happened. It didn’t, and even if my new President holds a lot of strange notions I don’t particularly agree with I’m still pretty proud to see him moving into the Oval Office.

Besides, the Democrats won big. Now they have to govern.

I do believe Obama is finished if he fails to get in front of this by tomorrow (Saturday, 9/13/08) morning.