Posted on 01/25/2009 3:52:00 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Deep in Debt, and Now Deep in Worry
By BEN STEIN
NOT long ago, a woman in California called me for advice. She is divorced, with two children, and has a series of interlocking financial problems.
She lives in a lovely home in a stylish inland enclave. It has an interest-only mortgage of about $2.2 million that requires a payment of $12,000 a month, very roughly. It was last appraised at $2.7 million, but who knows if it’s now worth anything remotely close to that price.
The woman, whom I’ve known since she was a teenager, has no job or other remunerative employment. She has a former husband, an entrepreneur whose business has suffered recently. He pays her $20,000 a month, of which roughly half is alimony and half child support. The alimony is scheduled to stop this summer.
She has a wealthy beau who pays her credit card bills and other incidentals, but she is thinking of telling him she is through with him. She has no savings and has refinanced her home repeatedly, always adding to indebtedness and then putting the money into a shop she owns that has never come close to earning a dime. Now she is up all night worrying about money. “Terrified,” as she put it. She wanted me to tell her what to do.
What could I say? I did the best I could, but I had to tell her that she was on very thin ice.
Ever since, I’ve been thinking of the troubles of this sweet woman, consumed with worry about money.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Not to be cold but $20,000 per month alimony. Do you know what I could do with such an amount...The squirrel in me would be hiding it away for many rainy days. I feel for the lady because it sounds like it is all about ready to come crashing down around her and that is as scary as can be.
Instead of teaching sex education (if that’s what you want to call it) and fisting in schools, basic self responsibility and how to handle money courses would help.
Sweet woman? LOL!! She's a leach! About time for this lady to pay the piper.
Reminds me of my first wife. A southern Californian who was first married to a MD. She just loved that lifestyle and would do anything including cheat the IRS and run herself into bankruptcy to keep it. Similar situation, but my ex had gainful employment when I married her.
Long story short, when our divorce rolled around, I was lucky to get out of there with the shirt on my back.
I’m afraid I’ll insult the delicate sensibilities of our younger members if I suggest what this “lady” is qualified to do for a living now. Remember honey, always get the money first.
Yes indeed.
Well all know what she is, now we are just haggling over the price!
She’ll be on the Mortgage bailout list for sure...
Time for Ben Stein to give this Sweet Lady some advice....comeon Ben tell her the truth, your advice ain’t worth a wooden nickel and it is Time for Ben and his ho-buddie to GET A REAL JOB!
It’s of vital national security to protect the multi million dollar home industry. This particular industry employees a disproportional amount of illegal Mexican maids, service personnel, landscaper. With out this work and the dollars extracted out of the economy, and sent back to Mexico, Mexican billionaires like Carlos Slim would not be able to charge 5 dollars for a bag of his ready mix cement for the poor to build their hovels. The whole Mexican economy would collapse, sending waves of even more illegals pouring north. Not to mention Slim would not be able to loan The New York Times $250 million at 14 percent interest.
See how everything is connected?
Did I leave you out? Well, that’s because you are a working stiff and don’t figure into the grand econonational calculus of big money politics. Don’t be sorry though, neither do I or most Americans either. We are basically modern day peasants.
$12,000\month mortgage payment? I can’t feel sorry for her.
You wrote: It’s of vital national security to protect the multi million dollar home industry. It should read: It’s of vital national security to protect the multi million illegal's home industry.
How dare you be insensitive to this woman's plight when she is just trying to live like our mis-SPEAKER of the House or the shemale Senator from CA; or for that matter any other member of Congress.
Maybe this woman should invest in an old south and west Texas house that was so popular with our Hispanic breatheren a century and a half ago; the jakal (pronounced "ha call" or "ha cal").
A jakal is a traditional south and west Texas hut. Its walls are made of upright branches, cactus staves or sticks chinked with mud. The roof is usually thatched and it is floored with hard-packed dirt, sometimes further hardened with ox-blood, and swept with a broom. And I can tell you that it does stink inside because of the dried blood on the floor. A randy billy-goat smells wonderful compared to one of these.
This woman needs to also have the so-called "House Rules" posted on the entry way; which could read:
"Gents are requested not to spit on the walls !"
" Keep their boots off the bed clothes !"
"Empty chamber-pot when leaving building
"Do not clear nostrils on the floor."
With all of the land where her house sits on, she could run a regular gated "affordable housing community." With half-a-dozen mud-huts neatly thatched with straw and open sheds attached for culinary purposes, where the kettle hung suspended over a wood fire, in real gypsy fashion, while an old weather-beaten crone bent over, stirring the pot-au-feu of frijoles that were to make the evening meal.
As a Jacal is a Mexican hut, then she could use about nine-tenths of her land for such houses as she could house all of her wait-staff on her premises. With such dwellings, and as a jacal is a den hardly fit for a jackal to live in, then she could feel right at home with any inhabitants,
This affordable housing consists of one room, 12x12, and is constructed by driving a number of poles into the ground, very slowly -- that is, as it takes an illegal about half a day to plant one post, and the other half of the day to lie on the ground and look at it from different directions to see if it is set straight.
The posts are planted close together, and the space between is daubed with mud. The roof is made of cane, thatched with tule. There is an opening in the side of the jacal for the entrance and exit of the inhabitants. A blanket with enough holes in it to justify being washed by the dozen, usurps the place of a door.
The inside walls are decorated are adorned with cheap and highly-colored pictures of saints, or other members of the democratic administration or party, with blue legs and purple hair. These saints should bear a striking resemblance, in facial expression and general anatomical construction, to those high personages, the king and jack of diamonds. I use these analogies for the "House of Cards" that Freddie-Mae and Freddie-Mac have all sold us.
There is no attempt at gorgeousness in the way of furniture. A couple of benches and a few goat skins comprise the parlor set. The library, dining room, parlor, stable, kitchen, picture-gallery and sleeping apartments are all in one room on the ground floor. When the owner is influential and opulent, a goat pen may be discovered in the neighborhood, and a few lean donkeys browse around in the adjacent chaparral.
Here in Texas, these jacals were the same as a puerto, harbor, haven or port. One small hut called a jacal built from rock, earth,and plant fiber was built by Gilbert Luna in the late 19th century. Gilbert Luna lived in this small house with his 38 children born by six different wives.
Welcome to Obama's idea of equality, for all of us to live the exact same way as his brother George does back in Kenya.
Old Patriot
That was freaking hysterical! Granted I was viewing it with 20/20 hindsight, but he and the rest of those against Schiff come off as financial imbeciles who should be run out of town. Stein's advice to go into Financials was the worst advice I have seen in 40 years of investing.
Peter Laffer is another droid over his .01 bet with Schiff. Laffer was recently on some show with Mather, promoting his new book, and when Mather needled him about that bet, he blew it off with "That's why I only bet one cent." That's more than HIS advice is worth. If anyone who hasn't yet seen that video, please do so, but don't be drinking anything at the time or it will be all over your keyboard and monitor.
I wonder how many years this woman has been collecting 20K/month alimony? It’s nearly a quarter million a year! If she saved only half and “suffered” on 10K per month (how I wish I could suffer so), she could sock away 120K per year. In about 8 years, she’d have a million in the bank.
She’ll be a cleaning lady or a hooker next year.
Should that bimbo call me, I have a few pieces of advice at the ready:
Get a JOB
Sell the McMansion, try renting if you have no equity
Don’t rely upon the largess of gigalos.
Oh, and while not mentioned, dump the Mercedes, get a Honda.
Vince
I’ll bet her brain is in her bra, the men’s brains are between their legs.
Then he could have told her to run, not walk, to the nearest place offering Financial Peace University and sign up.
Then sell the cars and buy beaters. And sell the house and rent something within her means.
That's what ordinary people have always known to do.
And if I had an indigent 21 year old that just married another indigent 20 year old- their choice of restaurants would be which one to work in, not eat in.
That was before women started piercing their tongues with vibrators ,and tramp stamps on their backs, Before abortion made birth control easy, before equal employment laws made companies hire women for men’s jobs.
Today’s woman think as yesterday’s man using their plumbing as their brain.
Hey Ben, could you send me the phone number of the soon-to-be ex-beau? I have some bills that need to be paid.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.