I have three new paintings that are nearly finished.  My thoughts are elsewhere, however.  Every month my expenses go up (okay, sometimes not every month – but January 2010 brought in many rate increases, like a $30 increase to monthly HOA payments), and every month my income goes down.   I was promoted to management two years ago -but still don’t earn a penny more than before the promotion and barely more than I made when I started five years ago. 

Luckily, I’ve always had alternate sources of income (don’t worry, perfectly legal).  However, those secondary sources have dropped down to nearly zero.  I say nearly, because I still pick up odd jobs from freelance clients every now and then, but I’m lucky if I can make $100 a month now, where on really good months years ago I could make twenty times that (from the same clients).  Jobs that were projected for three years got cancelled in a flash.  Whole businesses that provided reliable income every month for ongoing projects simply closed up shop.

Like a responsible citizen, when I was actually pulling in a decent amount of freelance work in 2007 and 2008 I socked away nearly all of that money.  If I hadn’t done that, I would be abandoning my home right now.  Still, those years weren’t THAT great, and I also poured a lot of it into retirement savings. 

Yes, this is all my fault.  Yes, I took out loans I probably shouldn’t have and listened to a “friend” in the real estate business that reassured me of things that weren’t true and convinced me to buy a house $100,000 over my original limit. Those who have invested in rental real estate should consider doing a regular rental checklist walkthrough to ensure that the units are up to code.

My worst mistake was leaving all the loan decisions (picking a bank) to this “friend’s” wife.  If I had put my money in Fanny, Freddy or any national bank’s pockets I’d be eligible for a slew of government refinancing programs right now.  Instead, my loans were chopped up and sold off all within three months of purchase – and so now are owned by loan holding businesses who don’t give a damn about helping me make sure I can keep paying (I’ve already called them). Of course, I also trusted this “friend” that my interest rates were good for my credit (which turned out not to be true).  I never considered myself a “victim” because it was my own fault for not reading the fine print.  However, isn’t that every victim’s story?   How many of those “bad loans” actually broke their own terms?  Surely those people stuck in adjustable rate mortgages had documents that said “adjustable rate” in them… right?  My realtor didn’t explain the terms to me either.  Am I that different or is it just a matter of perspective and feeling of entitlement?  I was definitely “taken advantage of;” my realtor even made verbal promises about buying appliances that he never followed up on and once the papers were signed he vanished off the face of the Earth – not even our mutual friends have heard from him since.  But, I always looked at the whole ordeal as my problem – my fault.   However, if I lose my house and others who didn’t think it was their fault keep theirs I’m going to be fighting mad.

After all that though, I’d still be fine if we weren’t in the worst recession in thirty years (although some are now wanting to stretch that figure back twice as much in time). 

I’m a numbers guy (although curiously not a math guy), so in those terms I’m making roughly 51% less than a year ago.  I have a few months left to make major changes (and believe me, nobody wants to touch my loans, I’ve inquired about that… repeatedly) or even my “emergency funds” will be down to zero.  I need to come up with another $1,200 or so of income every month just to break even.  To put that in perspective, according to Salary.com even the lowest earning 10% of marketing managers make $2,000 more a month than I do. Of course, in another year I’ll have to start paying back $70,000 in college tuition.  If I actually made what only the bottom 10% of my peers in the same town in the same industry made (according to the website, which may be inaccurate, but not THAT inaccurate) I’d still break even even with $800 a month in tuition loans to pay back.

More than one close friend has told me now to just “walk away” and take the hit on my credit score but keep my money.  For some reason I just can’t stomach that option, not yet anyway.  All it takes are a few things to work in my favor.  Every day I keep searching and hoping.  I can’t say for what – but I’m sure you get the idea.

Some people are out on the street.  Some people are in Haiti.  I guess I should be thankful that I still sleep on a bed at night, that I still have friends and family and I still (for now) have a job.  I also should be thankful for a special someone that’s been supplying me with delicious home-cooked meals lately.  I no longer sleep with heat though, trying to save money by not running the heater.  Thank goodness I live somewhere that only gets down to the 40s or 50s at night.