Buying Monkeys For a Song

“Let’s buy this one.” Six years ago that’s what MyEx said. And after exploring myriads of SoCal houses, I agreed: We’d found our home. I agreed so strongly, that when we split, I stayed. I knew the risk, but deed was done and it, and the loan were in my name. Why not? At that point, the house was all I had left to lose, and I wasn’t giving it up.

“…and this chair! I’m keeping this chair!”

Besides, selling my home was out of the question. I was a seller in a buyer’s market. Ten other houses on the block were offered, and others sold for a song. No, really, a song. Billy Ray Cyrus had picked up a new achey breaky home.

House sales were that bad.

I put David Hasselhoff on speed dial.

No! I didn’t want to sell. I didn’t have to. I had a job. I could face the music until the house value returned. Two lean years later I lost weight eating my words and ramen, and I lost my job. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret my decision. My pride was just bigger than my wallet—or my luck.

I mean really? Who predicted the perfect financial storm: wife, job, money? I’m really an average guy trying to eek out an average life. I just blog about it.

EEK!

Yeah, sorry readers, you bear the brunt of that decision. My point is, though is that the average guy doesn’t see all these things happen unless he has a serious monkey on his back. And yet, right now that monkey is the US economy and I am the average guy, and my monkey had come home to roost.

Monkeys roost. Who knew?

Half of America found out the hard way. We’ve got a mortgage monkeys on or back stealing our roost and flinging poo on all we see. But I can’t complain too loudly, I’m not the only one going through this. So this is what I did:

“Hello? David Hasselhofff?”

No, I tried weathering it out.

“Tut, tut, looks like rain.”

Yeah, I was a poo writer floating on a balloon payment I couldn’t afford. The writer’s job market is also a buyers market. So was the job market for machinists, carpenters, architects, police, pilots, copy assistants, backscrubbers…

I know. I applied for all of them. Ok, maybe only backscrubber. I heard Scarlett Johansson was needy, and I had a lufa. I did what I could do. Over the last ten months I tried convincing my mortgage company that they could reduce my payments. Maybe something affordable on unemployment? Unlike most of my readers, they laughed.

Monkey laughter still ringing in my ears, I’ve started packing life into u-haul exodus boxes. That’s my job now. This job is hard. Not only is the house filled with six years of stuff, it’s acquired six years of memories too--some with MyEx, some without. This work is like divorcing again. Not like divorcing MyEx, just divorcing, and leaving someone who shared some good times and bad. Someone who was a close companion, and someone who will no longer be a part of my life again. It’s hard.

There’s another familiarity too. Like divorce, there’s the feeling of failure. I told somebody, “Yeah, I’ll pay for this.” And now it’s like, “HAHA! Gotcha!” I’m not that Gotcha kind of guy. I do my best to pay my debts.

And yet my best won’t do.

It’s not even like I’m overextended. I mean other than the mortgage. I pay all my other bills. Everybody’s happy. Except them. So now what? Well like I said, I’ve been packing things into boxes. I don’t want to go, but I need a backup plan. This week I talked to the Pirate Queen on the phone.

“Let me ask you a question.” She says.

“Okay,” I sit down on the ladder in the garage. It’s a good time for a break. My trash barrel is full. The dust from my old shelves coats my hands and cloys my lungs. The sweat runs mud rivulets down my arms dripping to the floor. I won’t get much further today anyway.

“Can’t we use my income to try and keep your house?”

I’m silent. This is the first time we’ve breached this topic. It’s moot anyway. She doesn’t make what I was making with my last employer and even then I was barely making my payments. I spend the next few moments explaining this to her.

“So we talk to your mortgage company. Maybe they’ll reduce your rates.”

“I tried.” I then explain that process with her. It’s a long ugly story that includes them sending me forms. Me filling out forms. Me sending them forms. Them sending the same forms and ask why I never filled out the first forms. Repeating this process twice until I FedExed their forms back, with a signature required. They stopped sending forms after that. They sent me a new letter:

“Hey dude! Since you’re not filling out our forms, we’ve decided you don’t qualify for a loan modification.” Yeah, I paraphrased. Anyway, that is what they said. I sent them another letter explaining my feelings, and we haven’t talked since.

Still, my queen has instilled hope. Maybe with her income, we can do it. Spitting grit, I push the trashcan to the curb. Maybe I can unload my boxes!

As I’m rolling out the can, the PQ says, “I don’t know why we haven’t talked about this before.”

“Which?” I ask.

“The house. Why we haven’t talked about me helping you there.”

“Oh,” I dropped off the can, whipping dust against my pants. “I know I never mentioned it because it was my debt.”

There’s silence, then “What do you mean?”

“It’s my house. It’s something I bought with my ex. It’s something that you weren’t a part of, and I didn’t want to ask you to pay for that problem—especially when I wasn’t helping with more than unemployment.”

“Well,” she said. “We’re getting married, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“That’s something that married people do. Married people talk about these things. I’ve got lots of debt, that when we get married, you’re going to have to take on.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“Right now, you make the money.”

“Trust me. It won’t always be that way. Now what can we do to save your house.”

It was the weirdest feeling. I’d depended on myself for the past three years, and I forgot what it was like to have somebody to lean on.

When I got home, I called Springboard. Springboard is an intermediary. They’re a non-profit. They don’t ask for money. Their goal is to help reconcile relations between lenders and borrowers. After 45 minutes on the phone, they said, “We’ll see what we can do. We’re going to recommend loan modification for your situation.”

Whoo Hoo! I knew it wasn’t a guarantee, but at least somebody was trying to work with me. That felt good. That was my yesterday in the sun.

Today I got my answer. I drove to my house to check the mail. Sifting through my pile of bills and ads I looked up. On my door was a note:

NOTICE OF TRUSTEE SALE.

They’re auctioning my home.

It hurt. I was losing the one thing I’d fought to hold. But my hurt didn’t last. The house wasn’t the only thing I had left anymore. I can let go of the past. I have a future with my queen. I’ve boxed the screaming mortgage monkey and left him on the lawn for some other homeowner. I’ve also mailed a copy of the sale information to David Hasselhoff. You never know what a song can buy these days.