Friday, February 20, 2009

WTH?!?!

Let me preface this by saying that I do not choose sides politically. You'll never get me to tell who I voted for in the last election and I swing back and forth like a pendulum depending on the issue. I actually think Obama is smart, savvy, and seems to be a pretty good guy. Ditto about McCain, not that it matters a wit anymore. With that said...

Things not looking so good in the Fish Tank today. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that The Scientist has a job and works hard. We decided years ago that a reliable job was worth the pay cut if the alternative was less stability and higher pay. We have decided several times NOT to sell our house and upgrade to a larger one. Because of this, we can afford our mortgage and are current on it. Cramped, but current. We both took out student loans to get graduate degrees with and will be paying off said student loans until after our own children's college is paid for, most likely. But, we decided that education and being marketable in our fields was worth it (not that this fishy is using said graduate degree, but that's a minor detail, right?). We have tried to take advantage of wise retirement options when they have been offered (you can guess how that worked out for us in 2008).

You can see why things are not so sunny. Turns out that a wiser move may have been to go corporate instead of the public servant-type route, buy a bajillion dollar house, get underwater with and behind on the mortgage, lose the job when the market tanked, and then go on vacation with the severance package while we wait for our bailout money to come in to fix our mortgage issue. Do we have money issues? You betcha. Do we wish every night that the money fairy would move in while we sleep? Uhhh- yeah! But, for the most part, our issues have nothing to do with excessive greed or blatently irresponsible spending. And they're no more serious than the concerns of most other middle class families I know.

I guess I should just thank goodness the spending bill covers changing paper medical records over to electronic ones. Because that's really been weighing heavily on my mind. I can go to bed relieved tonight...

2 comments:

Joy said...

Well they want us who are paying our mortgage (even if it is barely paying your mortgage) to believe that it will help because your neighbors house won't get forclosed on therefor making your house worth less.

Whatever we bought a house a long time ago that we could afford, we scrape by every month and manage to pay the bills but noone wants to reward me for doing the right thing only those getting rewarded are those who have not done the right thing.

Beth said...

I'm with you on this! I'm normally a political middle-of-the-roader, but this whole bailout mess is really ticking me off.