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If you are a homeowner, then it’s likely you’ve felt the crunch. The ugly mortgage payments. The fact that your neighbor short sells his house for a fraction of its former worth. Or that the other neighbor up and leaves…giving you a lovely foreclosure in your neighborhood along with a likely case of blight due to a trashed house and yard.
Good times.
But wait. There’s this program. Have you heard of it? It’s called “Making Home Affordable.” (We’ll forgive the improper grammatical phrasing and basically awkward sounding name). You can go online and answer a few questions and see if you qualify for a possible loan modification, refinancing or other foreclosure preventative measures. Exciting, right?
But the reality is something that is not exciting.
If you truly cannot make your house payments, then you gotta do what you gotta do. Period. You need to pull out all the stops to see what you can work out with the bank to either keep your house…or perhaps decide to walk away. Over the past year, I’ve known several people to file bankruptcy, short sell their homes or look towards a deed in lieu of foreclosure as their only option to be able to make it day to day. These are not people who overextended themselves. They experienced divorce, job loss, decrease in wages and were hit by increasing interest rates.
But there are also a lot of people who feel the crunch and yet they can squeak by. And I should probably capitalize the SQUEAKING. So what about these people? What about the people who can make the payment but it’s TOUGH? What about the people who want to adjust their payments but can’t?
Well…according to the Making Home Affordable program, they still may be able to take advantage of it. However, it is not without its issues.
Imagine you submit your paperwork. Your bank finally gets back to you and you are told to start your decreased mortgage payment for a trial period. Sounds scary, but if you make the full payment (rather than the decreased trial period payment) you negate the whole modification process.
So you make your decreased payment. And your credit takes a hit. You tell yourself you don’t really need to have that credit score in the 700s…because you have no intention of buying anything in the near future anyway.
Except there ARE repercussions. Your current creditors can (and probably will) lower your available credit due to your new lowered score. They will also most likely raise your APR to extraordinary heights since you are now considered a risk. Lovely.
And then, months after making said trial payments, you are denied the final loan modification by your bank. You just don’t qualify. And now you get a letter saying you are in arrears (that difference in the reduced payment compared to your original mortgage payment over the duration of the trial period) and you need to cough up the money (typically in the $$ thousands) within a week or the bank will begin the foreclosure process.
Again, good times.
There are people out there who are losing their homes when they are trying to do the right thing. It’s BS and it’s infuriating.
I would love to do a modification. But we won’t chance it. And we can’t refinance…thanks to recent short sales and foreclosures in the area, our home is worth 1/2 of what we paid for it.It would never appraise at what we still owe.
This real estate crunch is a joke. It’s all a bunch of numbers on a computer screen for the banks. Here’s a simple idea that will never be implemented: How about EVERY home is re-valued at CURRENT MARKET VALUE? Everyone gets the mortgage re-worked to what the home is currently worth in today’s market. How many foreclosures would be stopped at that point. How many families would be able to afford to stay in their homes?
Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. But I’ve never been able to wrap my head around it. What’s up with joint accounts? I’m not talking bank accounts. I’m talking email and online accounts, such as Facebook.
Why would a couple need a joint account?
Is it because they DON’T trust each other and they need to set this in place? Or is it because they think they are presenting a united front (albeit a high school, “isn’t it cute…look at our joint account” front)? Is it because they now identify themselves as part of a unit, rather than separate individuals?
Really, I’d love to hear why a couple needs a joint account. For email. Or for Twitter. Or Facebook. Why?
I love my husband. But he has (gasp) his own email. And his own FB page. He has tons more friends than I do on FB. He’s more interested in keeping in contact with them. And while I can see his page, I don’t look at it that often, to be honest.
Same with email. If I wanted his password, he’d give it to me in a heartbeat. But I don’t need it and I don’t want it. He can converse via email with as many high school buddies, golfing pals and Army Guard colleagues as he’d like. Or what if his daughters want to send him an email? It’s their right to have a relationship directly with their father, without me having to be in on every little thing. In the end, he’s a big boy and I trust him.
Could we get a joint account? Sure. But WHY? I forward him anything that he needs to see. I talk to him (novel concept, I’m sure) about emails and anything pertinent. Heck, most of my email is on our desktop computer, in my MS Outlook box which is kept open 24/7 and doesn’t have a password on it. So really, he could access it any time he’d like. I have nothing to hide.
I have a sister who has a joint email account with her husband. I never understood why. But it definitely has put a crimp in what I send her over the years. I have no idea who is reading the email. And it’s not like I’m going to rip her husband up one side and down another…but maybe I want to write about personal “girly” stuff…well, I don’t because I figure my brother-in-law is reading it. Ick.
And now, a friend has opened a joint FB page with her man. We’re not in our teens. And I don’t like feeling I have to address the both of them if I post a message…what if I want to write to her only? Then I feel like I’m being rude because it is the page for BOTH of them, right? Annoying.
Okay, tell me I am way off base here. Tell me I’m being silly (and, usually I am, so you telling me that wouldn’t bug me anyway). I just don’t see why people can’t remain separate entities (just like they were born into this world) even when they are part of a couple. And if they don’t trust each other enough to have separate accounts then 1-they have more problems than joint accounts will fix and 2-they know little about technology (i.e. you can have multiple accounts, people).
(Yes, yes. I understand that I misspelled “dollar,” people. It was intentional. I’m feeling a little sassy and my title has a bit of sassified accent to it today.)
Baby steps. Of course. But we’re moving in the right direction.
I won’t bore you with snapshots of my receipts. (Okay, when I hit the motherlode and walk out of a store with $200 worth of groceries and only spend $20 or less, then YES, you shall see a snapshot of said receipt). But for now I’ll give you a quickie run-down of today’s success.
CVS: purchased 3 things; original price total = $22.57. After combined store discounts and coupons the total was $11.58 PLUS I received $5 worth of CVS Extra Care bucks (think store credit to use on my next CVS shopping trip). CVS SAVINGS: $10.99 (and that’s not counting that nifty store credit to use next time ’round)
SAFEWAY: Purchased 14 items; original price total = $25.40. With club card savings and coupons, the total was $15.56. SAFEWAY SAVINGS: $9.84
TARGET: purchased 4 items; original price total = $7.16. This is where I celebrated my happiest of moments…one item was a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli (I shudder to think of it, but the hubby will eat it, I guarantee you) I bought for 4 cents. The others – 2 packages of Bic ball point pens…I got for FREE and actually got 2 cents back!! They were on sale for 99 cents a piece. I had a Target coupon of “buy two, get $1 off” and a manufacturer coupon stating the same. Sweet! My total was actually $2.16 for these 4 items. TARGET SAVINGS: $5.00
So…I know seasoned couponers will laugh or get a bit of a chuckle out of my meager savings. But I’m excited! I’m starting to “get it.” Now if I can just get my well-meaning husband to not shop…especially when he doesn’t have a list and coupons in fist.
I’ve always considered myself pretty thrifty. When I shop for clothing I typically take enough time to pick things out and then put them back after talking myself out of spending the money. Time waster? Yes. But money saver? Definitely. I buy an Entertainment book every year at a discount and then always rifle through it to make sure I’m saving a couple bucks wherever I go. When I push my cart through Target I always hit up the Clearance end caps on the aisles. (Oh, and Target Pricing People – please take note that 30% does not constitute “clearance.” 30% is just a starting point). I mean, I know how to save a buck or two. Or at least mess with my head and end up saving a buck or two.
But grocery shopping. I wouldn’t call it my downfall, but it’s definitely not my strong point.
I use coupons. Sometimes. And I understand how using a coupon works. But the whole “couponing” movement is beyond me.
There are people out there who are getting food for free, or practically free. And I want to be one of those people. I just don’t get it.
I have a Master’s degree for crying out loud. And yet couponing has, to this point, been beyond my grasp.
I shall master it this year. Oh yes, I shall. I am now armed with a book – The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half – and am at page 59. And I have not had to scratch my head or throw the book across the room in anger even once.
You know, if you head over to You Tube and type in the search word “couponing” you will get 503 results. So there are plenty of people out there that know and understand the couponing secrets that I have decreed must be learned by yours truly.
Between the book, the videos and a ton of websites (including Coupon Mom – the site the book is based upon) there is a wealth of information at my fingertips. Now, if I can just get my brain to process it…
In this 66 page ebook, I explain how you can “trick” yourself into loving marketing (if you don’t already), how to use your passion and translate it into a megaphone for your business and how to navigate the time-sucking world of social networking.
