Queercents

“A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul.” – Phillip Moffitt

For most people, the idea of home ownership is irresistible. Owning your own piece of dirt, with a house and a white picket fence is the American Dream. Unfortunately, in many parts of the country, it’s a dream that can be nearly impossible to attain. It is difficult to come up with the standard 20% down payment, and even with the down payment, the monthly expense can remain unaffordable. This combination has lead to our current housing crisis because people have been lured into crazy schemes to put them in houses they can’t afford.

High-priced housing has been a problem in California for as long as I can remember. When I graduated from college and returned to my hometown, I quickly realized that a house was well out of my reach. My first job paid about $25,000 per year, while a very modest home cost five or six times that amount. It seemed unthinkable.

When my (now ex-) husband and I started dating, I told him that home ownership was very important to me. He’d been married before and his first wife had ended up with their home. He doubted we could afford another, so we moved into a very nice rental. It was a new house, and we were the first to live in it.

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“I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.” – Oliver Goldsmith

Hindsight is always 20/20, and as I think back over my decade-old financial implosion, I’ve realized that one of the most important life decisions one makes is the selection of a mate. I was raised in a conservative family, and we didn’t talk much about money, sex or relationships. Had I had the benefit of that knowledge, I might have made better decisions.

I was an odd kid, and I didn’t date much during high school. I was interested in boys because it was expected, but I think my attempts to be feminine and attractive resulted in me looking much like a Mack truck decorated with ribbons and bows. I didn’t get dates because people could see in me what I could not.

Shortly after I went away to college, I learned there was a GLBT Student Union on campus. I thought about going over to talk, but was afraid of what it would mean. I knew my parents would strongly disapprove, and couldn’t admit to myself that I might be queer. I gave up the idea and didn’t date until a former landlord tried to play matchmaker.

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“In the business world, the rear view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” – Warren Buffett

As the media announces more and more bad economic news about the recession, the sinking real estate market and rising unemployment, I find myself growing anxious. As I read the stories of middle-class families losing their jobs, their savings and finally their homes, I can almost hear their cries of anguish. Their pain is real to me in a way that it might not be real to most people.

I have been there. I know firsthand what it is like to lose everything.

Although news articles might make it seem otherwise, financial implosions do not happen overnight, or even by surprise. In my case, it came about because of a combination of bad personal, financial and employment decisions, combined with a decline in real estate prices.

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Last week, I wrote about how the financial sacrifices we’ve had to make in recovering from my wife’s financial infidelity have been much easier than dealing with the emotional aftermath. As an illustration, I described my negative reaction to finding a credit card charge I didn’t recall discussing.

Several readers commented that they’d like to know how we resolved the issue.

It turned out that the charge was for something relatively small and completely reasonable. When I discovered the charge, I was angry, not because she’d spent the money, but because she had forgotten to tell me about it. I later apologized for snapping at her, and that put the issue to rest.

The larger problem, of course, is the fact that my trust in my wife is so eroded that when things don’t go as planned, I have a natural tendency to assume the worst. Paying off the bills has been relatively easy; trusting my wife again has been hard. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I was pouring over our personal money manager software. I’d just downloaded our banking transactions, and I spotted a credit card purchase I didn’t recall discussing with my wife. Suddenly, I was angry.

“You’re doing it again!” I accused.

“Doing what?” my wife asked, innocently.

“Spending money behind my back!” I complained.

As you can probably guess, a squabble ensued. Even though we’ve created a plan to clean up the mess created by my wife’s financial infidelity, working the plan has not been completely easy. Although the financial damage has been relatively straightforward to clean up, cleaning up the emotional wreckage has been much more difficult.

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Last week, I wrote about how my wife and I assessed the damage caused by her financial infidelity. Although I can consider myself fortunate that the amount she spent was relatively small, it still had an impact on our family finances.

To clean up the mess, we used a 4-step process:

Prioritize Debts
Whether this step is easy or excruciatingly painful largely depends on how much debt has been incurred. This is a time to take a good hard look at your financial needs, and make adjustments. If the amount you owe is large, this could mean scaling back on your wants, and limiting yourself to basics, such as housing, utilities and food, while you focus on debt repayment. Perhaps it might be time to trim back your visits to the local coffee house, to disconnect your cable TV or cut back on your cellular telephone service.

In our case, we were fortunate that the only debts we carry are our home mortgage and our automobile loan. Our credit cards were paid off last spring, so we were able to make this debt a high priority. The first time my wife committed financial infidelity, however, it was a much different story. We were substantially under-earning, and we carried quite a bit of credit card debt. This time, it was a relatively straightforward list. Last time, we had to make some vary hard decisions that ultimately involved refinancing our house. Read the rest of this entry »

The ugly truth was out in the open. My wife had committed financial infidelity, and it was time to assess the damage.

“How much do you owe?” I demanded.

My wife cried. Between sobs, she managed to choke out an approximate amount, which we later confirmed online. It was a hefty sum, but I actually felt very lucky. The amount wasn’t nearly as much as she had secretly charged in a similar incident years before, and we are in a relatively good financial position at the moment. For the past couple of years our business has being doing well, so my wife’s indiscretion was not going to put us in any serious financial jeopardy.

I still felt angry and betrayed, but it was a relief knowing that we wouldn’t end up in the poorhouse as a result.

With the decision to work things out having already been made, assessing the damage was an important next step. We spent the afternoon at the computer, checking our accounts. We reviewed bank accounts, credit cards, our home mortgage and other credit accounts to make sure that there weren’t any other surprises. We each got our annual free credit report from all three credit bureaus. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll probably never forget the day I found out.  It was around the middle of October – our daughter’s birthday weekend – and we had gone camping. Since we were expecting quite a few well-wishers calling for our daughter, I’d forwarded our home telephone number to my cell phone.

At one point during the weekend, it rang, and a heavily-accented woman asked for my wife.

“Who is calling, please?” I asked.

The caller was somewhat evasive, again asking for, and mispronouncing, my wife’s name.

“She’s my wife,” I answered, “How can I help you?”

The woman was clearly surprised by my female-sounding voice laying claim to another woman as wife.  She hemmed and hawed, but wouldn’t give me any information.  At that moment, I realized it was a collection call.  I passed the phone to my wife, who answered, but the campground had poor cell coverage.  The call dropped. Read the rest of this entry »