Lost Weekend

I don’t know if it will be lost or not, it’s only just begun.

Love having this space where I can say anything, and nobody really notices. It’s pure blogging, nothing more, nothing less.

To live in Manhattan really successfully, you need, I think a second home. Unfortunately when many were still affordable, I didn’t realize that I could afford one, and I was into traveling far far distances. I couldn’t for a few years because I wanted to be within driving distance, not that I drive, in case something happened to my mother.

then 9/11 happened and my Mom died shortly after. I look too American, and only really speak English. I didn’t want to go to Europe and hear how horrible my country is. i didn’t want to have to wear a tee shirt constantly that said ‘don’t blame me….”

I do love this country passionately. After 9/11, I tried not to place blame on our government. I wanted war While that passed quickly, I was still stuck with the label “American.” Expats would come home for visits and tell us how horrible we were. I still resent that as they couldn’t know what it was like.

Now I’m free to go anywhere or do anything but feel stuck in place. I don’t understand how so many people can afford second homes. Do they think real estate, any real estate will always go up in value, and it’s better to own a second house, even if heavily mortgaged, than to invest?

That seems to me to be akin to borrowing money on margin, something I won’t do as I have seen the consequences. Do people care about consequences anymore? Or has the sum of action plus reaction changed to more action?

People talk so much about the wonders of mortgages and how they’ll just borrow….Then they will magically pay off the mortgage in five years and buy a bigger house, or pay just enough to afford to borrow more to buy a bigger house. They tell me that real estate speculation is still the future, and I’m missing out on a great thing.

The sub prime market is collapsing. I believe that will affect the entire economy but I have been told that I’m a pessimist.

Nobody wants to talk about the economy. Nobody wants to talk about how one action causes another action that….

We’re in the midst of an election that began too early for me because issues, real issues such as artificially low interest rates aren’t being addressed. Nobody talks about how entire areas such as metro New York are no longer affordable.

Thus many people who work in New York moved to the Poconos. They have to get up at 3AM to be at work at time, are exhausted, have no time to do homework with their kids, and still because of variable rates being adjusted upward default or risk default on their homes.

Usually they do have health insurance for themselves and their kids for their jobs, but if they work in the private sector, might not be able to afford to buy their share of the insurance. 401K’s? Most people who moved to the Poconos can’t afford to put the max in, and oft times now have to borrow from their plans just to pay bills.

Many people who move to the Poconos are single parents. Others divorce because of the pressures. Some leave their jobs because the pressures are too great. There goes the health insurance and 401K, plus the house. The kids haven’t really been neglected. It’s just hard to monitor their homework and lives when you’re exhausted all the time.

How are we supposed to move ahead as a society if we let one very hard working segment fail?

I haven’t heard one candidate address these issues in total, yet unless all problems are attacked together none will be solved.

If individuals fail, we usually put the blame back on them. They should have been able to afford the mortgage. They should have expected interest rates to go up. But mortgages were being handed out like heroin to a junkie, and everybody told them not to worry about the rates going up.

They’re not us. We’ll always do well. Yet if our equity is tied up in our homes, and we get sick then laid off, what happens? We become them.

Sometimes I hate how my mind works. I go from thinking about how I waited too long to buy a second home to how our society fails.

I just want one candidate to say these are all the problems: I don’t know all the answers but I sure know the problems, and I know how to find great minds that can work on these problems.