Confessions

[anunitu]

Re: Confessions

Not sure how that worked. Does the RM get the property after the person dies? Like if you get $50,000 out,the RM people get perhaps a $450,000 place for $50,000?

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Confessions

That really sucks. I thought RM's had a "for life" kind of thing in them.

[anunitu]

Re: Confessions

perhaps "read the small print" before assuming anything..

[ChainLightning]

Re: Confessions

Too much for the phone. It doesn't like letting me type. Lemme get on the pc, and I will confess the details we experienced.

[Heka]

You mean like the forum? Unless we've got a closet millionaire lurking around here, I don't see how anyone, at all, can help,

I feel dry fucked all ways from Sunday, by a freight train, at this point. But thank you for the offer!

Everyone go out and buy a lotto ticket!

[ChainLightning]

Re: Confessions

Alright. Sorry about that. The phone uses a virtual keyboard that doesn't stay open very long, for me to be able to type all that much at once. Once it closes, then everytime I reopen it, it takes less than a second before it closes again. Leaving MAYBE a chance to get a letter typed before having to try and get the damn keyboard to show up again. "Anyway, that's not what I came to tell you about..." to quote Arlo Guthrie.


Back before the market crashed, the 22-acre farm, was valued at about $365k. (We only own, actually, 10 of those 22 acres.) Directly behind this 22 acre farm is another 28 acre chunk of useless swamp that we co-own with my uncle (that owns the other 12 of this 22 acre piece). There's also a family owned gravel pit, or part of one, that is 10 acres and we've been trying to sell or otherwise unload that 10 acres for better than 10 years, now.

Then the market crashed. Hard. Our house, and land it's on, dropped to a low value of just $215k. Property taxes came to roughly 4-5 thousand bucks a year and were the same for the gravel pit, though my uncle paid the taxes on the pit, for which we owe him half.

Enter, the Reverse Mortgage.

With the house valued so unbelievably low, yet the taxes still falling a year behind the value, and money being in short supply, in a household of no less than 3 adults and 2 kids, Ma looked into RMS, at first as a curiosity. Then as a plan. They came out and checked around the neighborhood, valued the house (sellable for) about $190k. For which, they'd give mom a RM for close to $160k, to pay off the mortgage she had and a few other lingering debts. (The reason the RM was that much lower is that the principle of the RM increases over time. There's a formula, I guess, for looking at one's age and the value of a property in order to estimate where the principle will peak at the time of death. Or something like that.) She took it. Freed up a boat load of her fixed income and was left with a line of credit - the remainder of the RM cash, after paying everything else off - that would cover property taxes and repairs, or whatever else.

Then Alissa died. The entire cost of the funeral came out of that RM. So much so that the forum and a walmart distribution center came together in a HUGE way, to buy a headstone for that 23 year old girl, that lost her life to cancer. That was 2009.

Since then, I'm reluctant to admit, I spent two years trying to salvage my marriage, and living in Iowa to do so. Leaving my mom to fend for herself up here, and handle her own finances for a change. (There's a pile o'drama that even includes my mom calling the police and my wife and me, regarding her finances, prior to my [now ex-]wife's suicide attempt and subsequent departure from anything and everything even remotely related to my mother.) In that time, she paid no property taxes; she went months without propane, hot water, heat, cooking, hot showers and even electricity for a while; she spent her money how she saw fit and gave little attention to what needed to be paid.

Then my divorce.

I had to try and pick up the pieces of my own life, and overcome my own suicidal intentions, as well as work to get my mothers finances back under control. Going several hundred dollars overdrawn, every single payday, after all, is not a good thing. But there's no money left to do repairs on the house. And nowhere near enough money to even attempt catching up on taxes.

So, the RM folks intervened on the tax thing, and they paid the back taxes. Then paid them again. And again. And now, refuse to put her even more in the red than the $22k that she already is, with them. Even though the value of the house is going up. It's already back up to about $285k. However, because of her age, they can't refinance the RM since FHA will only allow about $195k for a mortgage and right now the principle, including the back taxes/overdrawn shit, is over $222k.

We can avoid foreclosure, for the time being, if we somehow manage to create $22,000.00 out of thin air. We can sell the property but because of unaddressed damages, it's doubtful we'd be able to get anywhere *near* what the county says the home is worth tax-wise (that $285k), let alone market-wise. The RMS suggests a Short Sale (for those that don't know: A short sale is a sale of real estate in which the proceeds from selling the property fall short of the balance of debts [secured by liens against the property] and where the lien holders agree to release their lien on the real estate and accept less than the amount owed on the debt.), which would leave us broke and homeless, or a Deed-in-Lieu (A "deed in lieu of foreclosure" is where the homeowner voluntarily transfers title to the property to the lender in exchange for a release from the mortgage obligation.) which would leave us broke and homeless.

The other option is to just talk to a realtor, put the home up for sale, and take the proceeds from that sale to pay off the RM and have a few thousand dollars left to buy a new place to live.

Which is why I'm looking at towns no bigger than a couple thousand people, at most, where home values are in terms of tens of thousands, like somewhere between $25k and, if we're extremely lucky, more like $90k. The needs, that both my mom and I have, involve moving southward, staying away from the coasts and tourist traps, while remaining close to major hospitals with really good cardiac facilities, possessing extremely low tax rates, and in very close proximity to forest and water. Whilst also having municipal water, phone, electric, cable, hi-speed internet, and natural gas (her peak propane costs HERE hit a max of $1300 in a single month, while I was in Iowa).

This confession also includes the fact that I can see, quite easily, that my mom's demands on where to move to are going to require massive compromises, settling for less than ideal, and possibly even having to cope with living in a home she vehemently despises and resents. Not to mention can't afford.

[anunitu]

Re: Confessions

So much for the American dream Chain. I myself am looking at a pre-paid cremation thing. No bills to speak of,and live in a low income apartment. Just want any expenses of my passing to not fall on my family. Wish I had hit the lottery kid,cause I would just send you a couple of Million just because.

[ChainLightning]

Re: Confessions

So much for the American dream Chain. I myself am looking at a pre-paid cremation thing. No bills to speak of,and live in a low income apartment. Just want any expenses of my passing to not fall on my family. Wish I had hit the lottery kid,cause I would just send you a couple of Million just because.

That reminds me...

I don't look at all these happenings all at once. I can't count how many people have said things like, "you don't deserve to have so many things go so horribly wrong." From getting my legs all busted up, way back in '86; fighting tooth and nail for disability and never winning the case; marrying into a family where one stepchild's father is in prison for killing his unborn brother's father; losing my stepdaughter to cancer and everything that entailed -- up to and including the massive car accident that revealed the 'anomaly' in her brain -- with inhome hospice at the end and being just feet away from her when she passed; the divorce and related plunge onto the jagged rocks below; the continuing saga of my mom's poor heart health, since my dad days, some 15 years ago; and mom's own brain issues since her spinal meningitis *brain-fry* deal, over 40 years ago: yeah, it's a lot to look at. And that doesn't even, really, scratch the surface.

It's just life. It doesn't all happen in an instant. It can be LOST in an instant. But events are just mileposts, marking how long one has been able to survive the real anguish of living. It's best to focus, basically, on the one right in front of you. All the other ones, behind you, don't count. They already happened and, as such, are irrelevant to the moment.

What I'm focusing on, right now, is trying to sort out *how* to micromanage my own lack of a future, while blindly trying to juggle my mother's ever-fragile "golden years". I need real help to do ANYTHING, myself. This "sell/move/start anew" situation, that we find ourselves in, is so extremely daunting that it defies comprehension. I have no clue what to do, who to talk to, where to turn, how to go about any of this... nothing.

I mean, seriously. I haven't the foggiest idea of how to spend the next few minutes, days, weeks, months. I confess that I truly wish I was among the deceased. I can't do this. I don't know, and I don't have the physical ability. I'm just stuck.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Confessions

The area around Mountain Home, AR might be worth examining.

[Torey]

Re: Confessions

That reminds me...

I don't look at all these happenings all at once. I can't count how many people have said things like, "you don't deserve to have so many things go so horribly wrong." From getting my legs all busted up, way back in '86; fighting tooth and nail for disability and never winning the case; marrying into a family where one stepchild's father is in prison for killing his unborn brother's father; losing my stepdaughter to cancer and everything that entailed -- up to and including the massive car accident that revealed the 'anomaly' in her brain -- with inhome hospice at the end and being just feet away from her when she passed; the divorce and related plunge onto the jagged rocks below; the continuing saga of my mom's poor heart health, since my dad days, some 15 years ago; and mom's own brain issues since her spinal meningitis *brain-fry* deal, over 40 years ago: yeah, it's a lot to look at. And that doesn't even, really, scratch the surface.

It's just life. It doesn't all happen in an instant. It can be LOST in an instant. But events are just mileposts, marking how long one has been able to survive the real anguish of living. It's best to focus, basically, on the one right in front of you. All the other ones, behind you, don't count. They already happened and, as such, are irrelevant to the moment.

What I'm focusing on, right now, is trying to sort out *how* to micromanage my own lack of a future, while blindly trying to juggle my mother's ever-fragile "golden years". I need real help to do ANYTHING, myself. This "sell/move/start anew" situation, that we find ourselves in, is so extremely daunting that it defies comprehension. I have no clue what to do, who to talk to, where to turn, how to go about any of this... nothing.

I mean, seriously. I haven't the foggiest idea of how to spend the next few minutes, days, weeks, months. I confess that I truly wish I was among the deceased. I can't do this. I don't know, and I don't have the physical ability. I'm just stuck.

You'll be alright, mate. You're one tough cookie. Okay, so you aren't a cookie, but you get my drift?

Really wish we could teleport you to Oz then you could come and watch roos and play zombie games with Rae'ya.

[MaskedOne]

Re: Confessions

You'll be alright, mate. You're one tough cookie. Okay, so you aren't a cookie, but you get my drift?

Really wish we could teleport you to Oz then you could come and watch roos and play zombie games with Rae'ya.

If you get a functioning teleporter before I do then I'm coming to borrow it.

[Heka]

You'll be alright, mate. You're one tough cookie. Okay, so you aren't a cookie, but you get my drift?

Really wish we could teleport you to Oz then you could come and watch roos and play zombie games with Rae'ya.

And me!!!!! Cmon!!! Hell, move to hawker! A house for under 100k!

In the meantime. I want to help.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Confessions

If you get a functioning teleporter before I do then I'm coming to borrow it.

They'll just beam you over and then send you wherever you'd like! I wouldn't mind beaming to Angelo's Pizza right about now myself.

[ChainLightning]

Re: Confessions

I confess that looking at all these potential areas, that we could move to - that none of which include Oz, sorry to say - I've found some of them are just as gorgeous as what I've been accustomed to for more than 40 years. I browsed a bunch of photos from the Mountain Home, AR area (Baxter County) and numerous MO counties, plus the couple of Iowa counties in the far southeast, and aside from soil differences, the geography is very similar to what makes me feel at HOME, here. That is, I found a whole host of others that didn't fit, at all. But some of these that look like a home, waiting to welcome this trio of senile ol' cynics, are amazing!

All we need now is a mortgage for some new place, a realtor to sell the old farm, and a ton of money to pay for movers to pack us up and ship us out. Oh... and some minor details, like health coverage, other banking, remaining property interests, income (particularly in terms of debt percentages), and our truck loan to be paid off YESTERDAY instead of next April.




I further confess that I think I should apologize for monopolizing this "Confessions" thread, all for what amounts to my family and me not wanting to become some homeless statistics. I'm just in no mood to split off the posts relating to this epic devastation we're trying to avoid. Hmm. That could count as yet another confession, come to think of it.

[Ophidia]

Re: Confessions

All this talk of teleporters is scary.

If you have to take me apart to get there, then I don't want to go.