I read this over the weekend on Reason - I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. What a couple of complete imbeciles. So now they are broke, and basically living in their house as squatters, because so many other dumbshits are just as stupid as they are, the bank doesn't have time to evict them all.

Even now, my bank says we can qualify for a mortage that is just over twice what our current mortage is. I can't imagine trying to commit to that. Obviously, the house payment would double, but so would the insurance, and our taxes would be over $10K a year.

This dude never even had a hope of being able to afford the house. His income after obigations was less than mine, and I could only afford our $200k mortage if we had minimal (no car payment, liablility-only auto, keep the AC off, no dinners out, ever) expenses.

His wife appears to be an even bigger dumbass than he is. I'm going to read the whole story after I get some coffee and a breakfast taco... these people make me feel like a financial genius.

> I didn't know whether to
> laugh or cry.

Let's go ahead and laugh. McArdle did two posts about this. In the first first, she says all the sympathetic things about the life of an ink-stained wretch you'd expect from a sister in the trade. In the second her economist identity takes over, kind of like a twisted inversion of playboy Bruce Wayne putting on the bat cape: This guy had no business getting married again and taking responsibility for another set of children, let alone buying a fancypants house.

Favorite line from Cavanaugh: I love that "what the A.T.M. would reveal about my balance," as if going to the bank is roulette or something.

I was pretty sympathetic to this guy until
"in the previous December alone, we charged $2,845 on the Chase card for Christmas gifts, food, gasoline, clothing and other expenses. The charges included almost $350 for groceries, $700 in clothes from J. Crew, $179 at GapKids and $700 for airplane tickets for two of Patty’s children to visit their father in Los Angeles. Our balance climbed from $14,118 to $17,135, and in January 2006 we maxed out at our $19,000 credit limit. And there were other expenses on other cards."

I see it with people in our neighborhood- they complain daily about money, worry how the mortgage will be paid, but still rent the houses on Priest Lake for the summer.

Engrossing writing though.

I read this and I wonder about the sense of this woman. Who in their right mind would commit to purchasing and house and moving across the country with no job and an out of date job history? The whole thing was stupid, and their spending was outrageous, but seriously, who does that?

-Julie

guess you file this under: it can always be worse. Life is hard, life is harder when you're stupid. I have been so too, I'm not throwing stones...

but the dangerous assumption in our lives is one of entitlement. We speak on it alot about government programs and such, but it is pervasive.

Why do you buy at j. crew, when you only have the money for Target, or REALLY, the clothes you have will last another year? Why do you have that astoundigly big house? Because you think, "I'm worth this, I deserve this." Couple that to thinking that the life you have now will simply continue, coupled to the feeling that you will "just make it happen somehow". You are entitled...

Put all that inside the echo chamber of everyone you know doing the same thing.... and it doesn't SEEM that wrong. It IS, but it doesn't seem to be. This is how I deluded myself too, highly edumacated or no. The 2X4 to the head was divorce, but there are still many in my former neighborhood that are still trying to keep all those chainsaws in the air.

This is the disconnect between your inner view, and what people see on the outside. It's stupid from the outside, but somebody has to tell you it is from the inside. Or you just learn the hard way. The bookwriter is learning that way, but slowly. He still has that great millstone over his head. He and his wife are trying to keep a somewhat smaller millstone up there still. It is scary but liberating to let it go.

I just read a bit over at Megan Mcardle's site where she speaks of an earlier truth for this guy Andrews... He should never have gotten re-married, he couldn't afford it. As a lot of the commenters there have noted, anyone who gets re-married is taking a huge risk, with tons of downside. This is a case of 2 wammys...

e should never have gotten re-married, he couldn't afford it.

It should not have been solely his responsibility though. In many ways, it appears that it was.

-Julie

I don't think it's the second marriage that's the issue... it's the second marriage to a stay-at-home mom with kids at home who had to have been living off of alimony until her met her...

"I don't think it's the second marriage that's the issue... it's the second marriage to a stay-at-home mom with kids at home who had to have been living off of alimony until her met her..."

I guess sensible and useful terms like "damaged goods" and "baggage" have gone out of style.

Amy-Slightly OT but-

If you really are 'learning to cook at the age of 45' I highly recommend getting a copy of The Joy of Cooking. It's much more than recipes; it explains to you *why* and *how* to do stuff in the kitchen. That's pure gold when you're just learning. I've gone to my copy so often for help it's literally split in half.
Get a copy and just sit down and thumb thru it some evening. You'll wind up saying "Oh, *that's* why you do that," every few pages, and suddenly everything about cooking will seem much less scary.

I also recommend "How to Cook Without a Book." It's great for sharpening your ability to put together meals with ingredients you already have.

Well I'd place the blame smack dab at the feet of his two wives. The ex-wife is a stay at home and the new wife is too. Almost no one can afford two stay at home moms. $4k per month in support payments, that's what you get for letting her stay home. While you can't force her to go work you can make her life unpleasant, yeah she'll divorce you for it she was going to do it anyway.

I buy the absolute cheapest eggs (no organics!) and meat, and started cooking at age 45.

Oh cool, MonicaP! I'll look into that one myself. In this economy it's all about leftovers, baby.
Sorry. I promise not to hijack the thread with cooking stuff. Apologies.

vlad, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice? It's not like he wasn't there... They share all this, but he is the one who will go to jail if he is held in contempt for child support. Sounds like the second wife is stickin' it out. So she may be the one with the real cajones. Downward spirals are really really unpleasent.

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere did I see him indicate that while he was spoiling his kids with vacations and unnecessarily expensive clothes, he was also saving up for their educations. Or, even if they were expected to pay for their own schooling, how he sat them all down and said, "Do as I say, not as I do", because if they're learning at the feet of the master, these kids will be in debt before their 18th birthdays. What a horrible role model. In spite of the fact that he's written this article as some bizarre act of contrition, he still has whiny excuses splattered throughout. Grow a spine, tell the wife and kids NO more often than not, and they'll respect you more for it, compared to what he's got now.

I saw the guy on NBC's Today show -- All I could think is "You are an idiot." Granted, I bought a house at the middle high end of what I could afford on my income alone, but my lady contributed a to make it not so tight.

After she passed -- I was tight again -- but with a refi I ended up in ok shape. Not great -- and I expect my income to stay steady in this economy.

<ot>Stir-fry meals are about the best for a new cook to learn how to do. And if you do it right -- even with store bought sauces -- you can cut the calorie count from a third to half of what you get from take-out.

Basically fry your protein first with some spices and a little of the sauce to about 90% done. Remove from pan. Fry your veggies to about medium tender adding more spice and sauce towards the end. Throw the protein back in. Server with steamed rice.</ot>

> (Tim, ya gotta do more of these.)

Kaus used to have a service called Series-Skipper™.

Amy is not going to start dressing her own steaks! She's not cooking for dozens of lumberjacks. Don't be absurd.

Amy--c'mon over and my husband will give you a cooking lesson.

What got me was 'the icy slap of reality hit me' going to the ATM...hello-o-o, nobody's home!

And this--

"Patty and I were now **unwittingly** tapping into our credit line at a terrifying pace: $5 overdrawn because of school supplies for Patty’s daughter Emily — $100 from the MasterCard. Fifteen bucks over because of gasoline? Another $100 from the MasterCard. Groceries for $305? No problem! Uncle MasterCard would front us $400."

It was the aliens.

(The Fanny Farmer Cookbook is great too, nice basic old-fashioned cooking.)

Seriously, J. Crew, where children's coats are now on sale for $150 (I just checked)? Why weren't these people shopping for kid's clothes at Target, or garage sales?

And I have one word for you, Amy: crockpot. (though it might be two.)

Loved Kaus' Series-Skipper™!

Amy barely cooks. I made myself a cheeseburger, still mooing, with Brie, for lunch, and string beans with bacon.

I buy that 30 percent fat hamburger at the supermarket, and chicken thighs. Cheap and nice and fatty. Cook them basted in olive oil with a little garlic under the skin and that Old Bay seasoning Eric told me about.

The ironic thing about all this is, well...let's consider the regal and fiery wife for a moment. Her job, when she had it, paid about $40,000/year. Assuming she would have roughly a proportionate tax burden as the writer, that leaves her with about $27,000 per year. Which isn't chump change, but...if you decide that you're going to become an extensive but careful user of coupons, mend clothing instead of buying new, read a book from the library on cutting hair and cut your family's hair (and your own), scour discount stores when clothing wears out, eschew dry cleaning, almost always cook in, avoid virtually all child care costs etc. etc., you could probably make up a good chunk of the $27,000. Throw in not having to pay regular commuting fees (be it parking or mass transit tickets) and you get even closer. Also, given what the author of the piece does for a living, having a stay-at-home spouse who could presumably handle the bulk of the day-to-day tasks of the household (especially stuff that needs to be done during working hours) could theoretically free up the breadwinner to take on a freelance job or something to earn some extra bucks. Or, it could free up his time enough to reduce his stress burden so that he could spend less on other means of reduction (drinking, yoga, whatever - c'mon, you know there's something). I know a lot of women who have done all of these things - some related to me.

Of course, this woman appears no more capable of doing the things I describe than she does jumping over the Eiffel Tower unaided, and one must always take benefits offered by one's hypothetical job into consideration before deciding that staying home makes some economic sense - failing to build up 401(k) can have negative long-term effects. And she's not dealing with day-care costs; if the kids were little, I'd say the family would most likely end up with more take-home pay left over after expenses if she stayed home than if she worked. But her failure to get a job didn't have to precipitate a crisis situation for this couple. Rational people could have worked out a scenario in which both people were happy - she didn't have to work in an office, he didn't have to spend any more time on the phone during the workday arguing over misfiled insurance claims, etc. etc. (In a case in which the female half of the couple was the one with higher earning potential, I'd switch the pronouns there.) Having stay-at-home spouses *can* afford people freedom and flexibility that allows them to maximize their career potential - for example, by moving overseas, or taking on an 80-hour-a-week position for a certain time. The problem comes when the stay-at-home spouse is unwilling to economize in order to afford her/his total lifestyle. Which doesn't typically include beach houses for the fam where I come from, but perhaps I've lived a limited life...

(Before anyone asks, I am in the category of people for whom it will pretty much always make financial sense to work, unless the fiance and I end up having octuplets or he gets offered a position paying several times over what he makes now that requires him to live in an isolated island with no Internet connection. But then again, I'm not regal or fiery, so I had to do something to make myself an attractive candidate on the dating market.)

> Loved Kaus' Series-Skipper™!

He used to have a lot of fun with it. When he saw one on the horizon, he'd release his readers: 'Enjoy your weekend! Take in a film, stroll out for a picnic, peruse a bookstore... Kausfiles has it covered!'

Well Amy, if you're already basting with olive oil and dabbling in garlic and spices, it sounds like you're on your way. You're a smart, creative person- you might actually find you have knack for this.
Added bonus: no matter what the economy is like, making a home-cooked meal for your sweetie is an always-appreciated gesture of love.
And I'd bet your guy can also cook a bit.
Maybe the two of you could put together and entire meal. It's a fun, cheap date.

Having stay-at-home spouses *can* afford people freedom and flexibility that allows them to maximize their career potential

My husband and I are living proof of that. However, we aren't renting beach houses or buying clothes at JCrew. We have managed to pay off 90k of debt over the past 5 years with one income and frugality. It hasn't been easy, but we were the ones stupid enough to incur the debt, so it is our job to pay it off. No bailouts, no big houses.

We will probably be in a position to buy a house within the next year or two. When we buy it, we will have earned it and will have the foresight to buy less than we can afford. That cushion will likely help in the future.

-Julie

His take-home income was slightly over $33,000 a year, and they chose to buy a nearly half-million dollar house, take beach vacations, and shop at J Crew instead of Target? These people are assholes.

Sure, a family could live on that, but it would be hard. They didn't even try. I think that, in this specific case, having one spouse stay at home was NOT a good option. She obviously had no clue as to handle a household budget, and the kids were in school, thus not in need of a SAHM. If she had found-and KEPT- a part-time job making just $20k a year, that proably would have been fine if they had ANY interest in living within their means. They didn't, though. Fuck 'em.

I guess sensible and useful terms like "damaged goods" and "baggage" have gone out of style.

Posted by: Jim at May 19, 2009 12:40 PM
--------------------

Doncha know, thats because they're too judgemental.

well now, cat's outta the bag... Andrew's second wife also had 2 bankruptcies, one with her first hubby, one with Andrews. Conveniently left out of the narrative. McArdle comments on it:
HERE

This certainly undermines the whole idea of "we were idiots and the banks are mean..." There's all sortsa bad stuff that can put a person on their back with that, BUT THE SECOND TIME? Guess she didn't learn from the FIRST. That also explains why husband number one wasn't paying very well... HE was broke, trying to pay for the first one.

CF all the way around.

Click on my sig for the whole story.

>> Old Bay

What a memory Amy! That was years ago, I think! Try growing some tarragon- it's like a weed and wonderful with chicken baked in white wine.