Planner's Daughter

I am the first born child in a row of three.  My dad spent his career as a planner for the county of Nevada, in California.  I think it is my lot in life to be a planner.  Sadly, I plan out of fear, and have terrible attention to detail and terrible follow through.   This is why I have Silas.  Silas has silly ideas like inventions that don't do anything useful: a compost taker-outer is a good example (to his credit, he can be imaginative, I am just more-so).  Together, we seem to be yin and yang. I have better ideas, he has the ability to make better ideas work.

Here is the timeline, in terms of planning, thus far:

2006:  Move to Nevada City, buy a modest house which we can afford, even though they are really expensive and sparse.

2008:  Replace the roof with steel, build an addition, put in a wood stove and woodshed with savings.

2009:  Pay the mortgage as housing prices drop.  We start to question the safety of our real estate investment.  We start asking questions and having ideas/hesitations.  We call our lender and ask for a modification.

Dec 2009:  Try to refinance to get a better interest rate on our home loan.  We discover in the process that we are so underwater that we can not refi without bringing more money than we have saved in our lifetime to the table. We called our lender to ask for a modification but alas, they could not help. 

Jan 2010:  Research!!  We met with our realtor, we paid for a visit with a real estate lawyer, called the lender asking again for a modification, worked the numbers on a spreadsheet for every scenario we could think of, called the lender asking for a modification, talked to folks who had dealt with modifications, talked to our parents, talked to each other, talked to friends, talked to God, talked to the lender, made check-lists, and thought about it.

Feb 2010:  Called Citi Mortgage to ask them to stop the auto pay on our mortgage account.  As it turns out, auto-pay at Citi Mortgage is like Hotel California, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.  I had to get my bank to refuse the draft from my account, as Citi Mortgage does not let you stop paying your mortgage automatically in the same month as your payment is due.  It worked and we missed our first payment.

There are many things that could happen to us because of our choice to short sale our house.  We may not be able to short sale the house, and have to foreclose.  All of the outcomes are somewhat negative, even if we stay in our house.  We have been thoughtful and careful so far in our lives, and this seems more risky to some, but to us, it seems sensible.  All the numbers, for the short term and the long term, point to renting, and buying another home when our credit is good again.

We have been very open to the mortgage company being the hero in the story, we call and ask for help often.  I don't think "mortgage company" and "help" can be in the same sentence (their choice).

I know it may seem, if you started reading this blog on Monday, that we just thought of this idea this week, though we have been working on it a while.