dear blog, my husband (of 21 years) and i have never been good with money. neither of us is formerly educated so jobs are just that...jobs, not careers. although money has always been tight we always participated in 401k plans (because i can't keep money in an accessible savings account to save my life) and i've been incredibly blessed to be able to stay home and raise my children. we had to file bankruptcy once, not a finer moment in our lives and perhaps we didn't have to but it was to save our sanity. with a clean slate, a better understanding of how things like credit and credit scores work and a meager paycheck we sacrificed a lot until we could buy our first home. we lived in a trailer for 5 years, drove the shittiest of shitboxes and really...we lived within our means.
fast forward 5 years - with a high recommendation from people hubby did repeated work for we sought out and received mortgage help from one mr lincoln skein. they had done lots of business with mr skein. he was great - give him a try. okay, so we gave him a try. he told us we could afford a home upwards of $300,000. hmmm...are you sure about that mr skein? hubby drives a school bus part time and installs hardwood floors part time. oh no, no...$300,000 and all you need is $1,500 down payment.
thankfully, we had our wits about us and didn't carried away. i won't lie - a $300,000 house after living in a sweatbox, i mean trailer for 5 years sounded really, really good. but what we did was find a cute little, modest house in a village that we loved and it was only $91,000. well.....month after month after month we still had no closing. i'm really happy the house was a foreclosure cuz i'm sure if it had real owners and not a bank - we'd have lost the house. we needed this document and that document and proof of this and proof of that and we needed reprove this and that. over 3 months into the cluster fuck we said "thank you, but no thank you. we'll just wait until whatever was screwing us up was cleared up and try again later".
frustrated and hurt we went out and bought a new car. it was only a year old! ohhhh...it was so nice!! air conditioning, no plastic covering the busted out back window, the heat worked in the winter time, it was just so ducky.
then mr skein calls and says we got a closing in a few days bring your checkbook and this and that and your all done. wow..!!! really?!?! well, yes...really!! we closed on the house 7/25/2005. or at least we thought we did. we lived for a few years being really strained with money because we now had a car payment (something we wouldn't have bought if the house had gone through) and we had a house payment and taxes. omg taxes!!
fast forward to the fall 2007 - a whirlwind of health issues hit me and my husband. surgeries, constant pain & ill health, heart viruses that kept him from going back to work from september to january - we were fricken toast. we had to borrow (it was given to us) money to keep the house and car and i still wasn't healthy. life was truly a mess. we let the car get repossessed, which helped but not enough. november 2009 hubby lost his job, was unable to collect unemployment because his boss couldn't stand up for him like hubby stood up for him and kept him from losing his job (yes, i'm still angry) and we were fucked. really good too. we were on the verge of losing our american dream.
fast forward again to spring 2010 and the letter from the local tax collector. she sent the tax bill with a note asking "why aren't your names on the tax bill? why is a mortgage company listed? you are no longer able to collect the STAR rebate because your name isn't on record." what. the. fuck. totally confused and soooo feeling like things were going from bad to worse - we contacted a lawyer.
i love lawyers. and i hate lawyers. apparently mr skein took the money and ran as fast as he could. he's no where to be found. the title company is no where to be found...closed business and bailed, too. the lawyers never filed the deed, the mortgage and no one even has a deed to the house. it's gone. no paper trail. just us...squatting in someone elses house. it's so sad that it brings tears to my eye just typing this up. our american dream has turned into an american nightmare.
the lawyer is excited because in his 30 yrs of practicing law - he's never seen anything like this. he assures us this isn't our fault. we have done nothing wrong here. we got screwed. we've talked to family about our problem but they don't get it. they only say that we're lving here without paying on the mortgage. "if i didn't pay my mortgage, i'd get foreclosed on" like this is some kind of friggen joke. we say we went to a lawyer - they tell people we filed bankruptcy. as if anyone has to wonder why we distance ourselves from our families.
so...fast forward again, this time with an empty 401k because mr lawyer wants $10,000 (we're $3k short and making payments for the rest) but mr lawyer says he can get us our house back. even though the mortgage company has sued us to turn the house over. actually, they want us to turn the deed over, too. we can't, of course but that didn't stop them from suing us. mr lawyer says "don't do anything. don't talk to anyone, don't pay on anything, don't do anything." he's gonna get our house back! ( ihope) we have no savings anymore so if we have to move, we're fucked. hubby still isn't working full time - he chose to focus soley on starting his flooring business officially for at least year trying to cash in on not having to pay a mortgage bill. lving paycheck to paycheck would be a welcome thing right now...LOL
i guess if anything has come from this it's that i learned that you need tokeep your eyes open at all times. you need to be educated. ignorance is a shamefull thing..and a painful thing when it comes to losing your home and having to move your 4 children somewhere, anywhere because someone else made a mistake. it's awful. i only hope that i can finish up my associates degree and get a somewhat decent job before the house goes up in smoke, so we won't have to live in my really shitty suburban.
so welcome to my american nightmare. i live in a sweet, little, modest house and i feel as homeless as i would if we did have to live in my truck.
i have to admit, blog, that it feels good telling you this. hubby and i have talked it to death but i just need to get itout, ya know?
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