Flutterby™! : Awaiting Foreclosure but Making $120k 2009-05-19 17:04:42.275205+00

Awaiting Foreclosure but Making $120k

2009-05-19 17:04:42.275205+00 by ziffle 5 comments

Sad story of Every American - Financial Journalist has a Base Salary of $120k but is waiting for the foreclosure to happen.

I thought I knew a lot about go-go mortgages

And more interesting commentary on the article;

Everyone you write about makes more than you. Most of the people you know make more than you. And you come to feel that shopping at the farmer's market, travelling to Europe, drinking good coffee, are minimum necessities. Your house is small, your furniture is shabby, and you can't even really afford to shop at Whole Foods. Yet you're at the top of your field, working for one of the world's top media outlets. This can't be so.

Looks a lot like Affluenza

#Comment Re: made: 2009-05-19 18:57:57.055517+00 by: meuon [edit history]

His own quote: "...who wanted to stretch their finances far beyond what our incomes could justify." Damn him to hell. It's his fault.

The justification in the early 80's was, the government does it, it must be alright. I have no idea what the current justification is.

Instead, those of us that bought a modest home and kept their living expenses low so they could afford the occaisional $3 coffee or $30-$50 meal are now facing paying for all of those people whom cheat, lie and live way beyond their means.

If you job doesn't pay well enough to support your life style.. you have the following choices:

#Comment Re: made: 2009-05-19 19:56:01.777581+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

I think Andrews drank his own Kool Aid: If you spend your days shilling for the shysters, it is hard, after a while, to remember simple arithmetic, like $700 per $100k per month times $400k is not less than his after child support income of $2.7k. His mistake was that while he was singing the party line he wasn't stashing it away like the folks he was shilling for.

But McArdle has some good points. One of the conundrums hanging out with folks who have more income than you in the hopes that their habits and circumstances will rub off is indeed the difficulty of not living that lifestyle. There've been times in my life when I'm good at this, and times when I haven't been, and when many of one's friends pay in taxes more than one makes, sometimes that discipline is difficult.

As Dan so succinctly points out, expectations and hope are dangerous bed partners.

McArdle follows up further, his second wife (the one he bought the house with, has filed for bankruptcy twice:

<blockqutoe>Moreover, pesky bad luck isn't really the picture painted by either filing. Rather, Ms. Barreiro seems to have spent most of the last two decades living right up to the edge of her income, and beyond, and then massively defaulting. If you structure your finances so that absolutely everything has to go right, it's hard to blame the mortgage company when you don't quite make it.

Being single I guess I'll just find some lady I hate, who has a really low credit score, buy her a house and consider it all easier than actually getting married.