Check this out. A family has had some tough times. Now it appears they were saved by their house. I tell you great. Here's their story folowed by my response:Our Story: My wife Grace, my daughter Beth and I have lived in our dream home in the Santa Cruz mountains for over 10 years. We were devastated when Grace was diagnosed with cancer 4 ½ years ago. She spent a year in and out of the hospital battling the disease and struggling with the cure. The treatments required her to miss work as an elementary School teacher for an entire year. Before we could regroup and get back on our feet again, I was diagnosed with a different type of cancer. With surgery chemotherapy and radiation, I was also unemployed for over year. Due to the financial burden caused by this long term debilitating disease, we were forced to take two equity loans on our home just to stay afloat. Our daughter had to leave college, working a part time job and running us back and forth to cancer specialists at Stanford just to help us survive. Now with the interest rates going up we are unable to pay the higher payments. We have tried working with both of our lenders to no avail. They have no programs to work with people who are trying to restructure their loans and forestall foreclosure. I was told by one of the banks that the best they would do is make it “less painful” when they took our home from us. We are trying desperately to recover from the hardships imposed on us by cancer and save our home. If you have any suggestions, contacts, donations, or prayers all are welcome. I know there are others that have been in our position that can help and I would like to share any information I gather to help those finding themselves in this position as well. So please spread the word and if we work together, maybe we can help each other to survive with dignity. Thank you for your help.
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My response: I am so pleased that you were able to trade your house for your health. Not everyone is given such a gift. I share your joy at being so lucky after so much bad luck. With your restored health and supportive family and backgrounds it is a sure thing that you will be able to afford a different house in the near future. I join you in thanking those banks for their willingness to take a risk and help save you both. One question; why do we need to give money to two healthy people who cannot afford their mortgage? This isn't a "trick" question.
Credit: The artwork is http://www.hankgross.com/Evicted-53K.jpg
26 comments:
I think they want suggestions or contacts more than money. Surely we could refer them over to Casey and Damion who will have suggestions for them
Oh and first
Ho Ho Ho - It's Santa Flipper Clause
Sorry to change the subject, but I have posted Tibet and Cho Oyu pictures (as some of you requested) on Flickr at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15147477@N04/
Please tell me if the link does not work.
Thanks,
Santa F. Clause
Nice painting.
Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit (tm) will save us and restore the market to normalcy (tm). Right up there with Sweet Passive Income.
Good take, Dawg. They extracted an enormous amount of money in order to save their lives. Instead of being grateful, now they are begging for money to keep their house. I'll trade my house for my life or the life of my kids. There's nothing wrong with living in an apartment for a while to get finances back in shape. Or do they measure their worth by their house in the Santa Cruz mountains?
I'll tell you way dawg, it all goes back to the entitlement mentality. They are entitled to good health (no one else gets sick why should they?), and they are entitled to own a home (why should they have to lose their home so that they can live?). In their world, the government should pay for their health insurance and costs, and the government should also pay for their mortgages....oh wait, that's already happening...so what the hell are they bitchin at? Hell, the government already pays for people being a bunch of greedy morons...
I swear Dawg I thought that was Casey Serin in that painting - I really did!
flipper clause,
Awesome pictures. I'd like to go there some day.
This why Long Term Disability (LTD) insurance is so important if you are a breadwinner.
They save maybe a grand a year. Now they lost.
Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.
Fun read
Nothing really new but one of the nicer assessment of the situation in the mainstream media....
h simpson....so true. first thing I did when I found out my wife was pregnant was go out and get life insurance and disability insurance. if something happens where im not dead but permanently disabled its taken care of until im 65. you don't save much opting for the 5 or 10 year term disability. I don't understand why you would go that route. usually once disabled it's not temporary!
sweet cashback,
good read indeed. paints an even bleaker picture IMO.
I also read the article linked in that article.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/28/news/economy/sloan_bernanke.fortune/index.htm
again. something EN'ers already knew.
I missed alot.
Thats what getting married and honeymooning does to you.
Hows it going everyone?
R-Boy,
Welcome back. Pull up a chair. Things are a lot quieter and more polite these days.
It (their web page) doesn't say that they are now healthy. They may still be fighting cancer. Right?
welcome back r-boy.
Glad to hear from you. a couple weeks back some guy was hit by a drunk driver walking from the metro near the elementary school(I believe a few blocks from cameron street. seemed about the same age as you. anyway, glad your back and congrats on the marriage.
When articles talk about the U.S.'s "negative savings rate," does that include contributions to retirement funds such as 401(k)s and such? Or is it just money in banks?
Welcome back R-boy!
@all things good staff
hey guess what, they are still dying, just like the rest of us. I swear cancer survivors these days may as well just wear a giant pink ribbon and use that as a trump card for everything in life. I want to buy this car at thalf price..hey I'm a cancer survivor you heartless piece of shit. I don't want to lose my home..shit I'm a cancer survivor what more do YOU expect me to deal with? I'm not paying taxes anymore..hellI 'm a cancer survivor I already paid my dues.
6:30 Arron
It is more than just for married people or folks becoming parents.
I had a little sister who at 21 was the picture of health. Played sports, attractive, had a great sales job, fiance etc.
One day she had a headache and went into the office anyways. She woke up in the ER. 2 days later they broke it to her she had a rare type of brain tumor and had 3 years to live.
She lasted 11 years, but from the first operation to remove the tumor, she was parlyized in major portions of her body. Her fiance took off for the hills the minute this got serious.
Luckily she had opted for solid health insurance and LTD at work.
She was able to keep her own place with health providers she paid for and family coming in to help out right up until the last 6 months.
Never complained and never asked anyone for help.
If one does not have both Health and LTD insurance, you are surely going to become a ward of the state or bankrupt your family in no time should your health fail.
Bad enough you are going to be sucking up their time and being a wet blanket at every family gathering. You want to bankrupt them too?
The odds are so long the price of LTD is very reasonable. So why risk it like the 2 chuckleheads in this article?
H.
1 more thing
About 5 years into her ordeal, my sister got a small ranch house.
CW had no problem underwriting a 30 year mortgage on a person riddled with cancer who was suppose to have died 2 years earlier.
She have a valid income from the LTD.
Some things never change..
h.
Short play:
I bought some puts yesterday in the face of the negative reaction to M-LEC:
DSL Nov 45 puts.
C Nov 45 puts.
There are other short opportunities in this same space: KEY, FITB, ZION, NCC, STI, and MTB to name just a few.
it's this kind of sob story that drives people to flock to hilary clinton to give us full on socialized medicine.
what they don't realize is that if it were government funded health care, they would be dead now instead of worrying about keeping their house.
Cancer sucks, lost my mom to it 2 years ago, so I hope this inspires people to go buy some private disability insurance so this doesn't happen to them, or set aside a chunk of income.
If I had found myself in their position, I think I would have just sold. I've seen what prolonged cancer treatments do to a person and I would not want to live with a loan like that over my head while I'm trying to survive the treatments.
With the DRHorton announcement I cannot imagine any of the HBs holding on to recent recovery levels.
We need to start another dead pool. Beazer anyone?
Zin,
Unfortunately I see the path of inevitability for the US going to socialized national healthcare. All the existing programs plus all the industrial (GM) competitive issues plus demographics and voter preferences point to it. Luckily just like it took Nixon to go to China and Moses could never enter the promised land so too Hillary cannot be the one to bring national healthcare to the US. If she wins (30%) then the plan loses. If she loses to Guli or Mitt (even odds between them in the primaries, 40% either one in the general) then we might see the first steps under a Rep President.
For those of you following the nitwit, the divorce has made it onto the calender
Serin vs Serin
Wait, you mean that's not Serin in the painting? :D . . . and I'm feeling very guilty about the fact that, if I lived in the area, I'd be very tempted to attend the hearing.
Back on topic (sort of), we need to put an end to the spiralling healthcare costs in this country--and there are two ways to do that, nationalized healthcare or simply letting the system collapse under its own weight (as in, all the healthy people opt out of plans until the plans are overrun with costs from the unhealthy people and go bankrupt.) As much as I dislike nationalized healthcare, I'm not sure it's worse than the alternative.
We should have gone with what I call GEICO healthcare, which is where people pay highly variable rates based on their risk factors, just like auto insurance. But we're too far down the company-sponsored one-size-fits-all "solution" to turn back now, and of course there's the looming nightmare of funding Medicare as the Boomers retire. It may be better to put it all under one government roof and cut healthcare services to a minimum so that the economy can become competitive again.
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