Being bad with the maths and an ostrich by nature when it comes to money matters, I was startled yesterday when the bad economy almost literally hit home. Late yesterday afternoon I went for a walk in my neighborhood to shake off the work week blues. As I turned the corner, I came upon a cute little stucco house that had recently been sold. As I approached this time I noticed it was again for sale this time by its new owners: THE GOVERNMENT. Yes, a home foreclosure in my sweet little neighborhood. I had to take a picture of this unfortunate occurrence because it sent a bit of a chill down my spine. It reminded me of the reality of the news stories, and the credit crunch and the layoffs and everything else we've been hearing about lately.
While we tend to be relatively conservative in our spending and sometimes I question why we don't live a little better (closet space? what's that?), it's times like these that I am thankful that we don't have a lot of debt. We went through that when we were younger and took risks because we had an expectation of time to make up any losses. Now, I'm glad that we are living within our means, but like everybody, we're a lost job away from losing health insurance and eating catfood for dinner.
The other thing I do know is that these times will pass. We lived through similar times back in the '80s, and again when the dotcom bubble burst. And it does appear to be cyclical. So, riding it out, not looking at our 401k balances, seems the best way to go.
But I still feel bad about the neighbors.
3 comments:
It hits everywhere, Becks. 2 homes in my neighborhood in the last year.
its hitter really hard around austin which makes me leary about attempting to purchase a home now. One huge problem around here is people seem to want to buy something really more than they can afford...they may have the monies/month to pay for it...but they dont take into account emergencies and all. I'm trying to make that decision about wants/needs and my must have list when I buy.
It almost happened to us last year, Cathy. Scary doesn't even begin to cover it.
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