There’s been quite a bit of confusion and concern about Lissa Cunneen’s mortgage over the last two weeks. Today, the former administrative assistant for WaMu’s home loan department tries to explain—and admits to having been confused herself.

7a9d/1235023091-lissacrop.jpgLast week I decided that I should seek professional advice concerning my mortgage rather than continuing to wring my hands. I fully expected to have all my worst fears confirmed but this was not the case! True, my underemployment makes me less than the ideal candidate for a refi, but as it turns out I don’t really need one.

For those following along with calculators and critiques at the ready, here’s the deal: At the time I bought it, my condo went for $250K. Brand new properties in my complex are now listed at around $200K to $225K, but no one is buying. I put $100K down and owe around $150K now.

I was under the impression that my loan—which is one of those interest only adjustable rate mortgages that has a fixed rate for an initial period—was going to begin adjusting A LOT sooner than it is, and was relieved to find out that I have until 2017 before that happens. I was also under the impression that my condo had lost a lot more value than it actually has. That was me being panicky and not looking into it closely enough. I regret to say that math makes me need to lie down.

I am so glad that I did the research. While the value of my condo has certainly gone down, theoretically if I were to sell it I would not be underwater as I had previously and erroneously supposed. If, of course, anyone was buying. Which they’re not. Not even brand spanky new condos. But still, Yay!

Additionally, my existing loan, it turns out, gives me flexibility that a 30-year fixed would not. I can pay both the interest (which is currently 5.75 percent) and a little of the principal every month, just as I always have, but if other expenses need more immediate attention (like, oh, I don’t know, the cable bill) I can just pay the interest without worrying that I will be digging myself into a huge hole.

In 2017, assuming my situation is similar then, I could refi into a 30-year fixed at whatever the interest rate turns out to be—and, of course, would have to start paying a set amount of the principal as well as the interest. If the interest rate then is lower than 5.75 percent, woo hoo, I win. But my payments will go up either way since I will have to pay down the principal rather than just having the option to. Worst case scenario, the interest rates will be much higher than what I have right now and my payments will be huge. This is why it is so important to always pay even a little bit on the principal every month now so I don’t have to pay so much interest later.

Now, that’s all well and good but I still have to pony up a fair chunk of change each month, not to mention my home owner’s dues, which amounts to an additional $250 a month. So this week I will take a serious look at accessing my savings, by which I mean my IRA. I would really rather not touch my IRA if I can avoid it, for a number of reasons. One, because I’ll take a tax hit for it, and who knows if I’ll have the money next year to pay a big tax bill. And two, at my age, this strategy amounts to robbing Peter to pay Paul.

This money was supposed to make sure that I would not be destitute in my old age, and I feel the clammy breath of my old age upon my neck a bit more acutely than many of you feel yours, gentle readers. I’ll be 46 on Monday, and my IRA, not big to begin with, is quite a bit smaller now due to These, Our Troubled Times™. That scares me. A lot. Of course, the fact that I have an IRA to draw upon, let alone angst over, is a privilege that many—including, it seems, my fellow unemployed posters—do not share. It means that I probably won’t have to face the decision of which family heirlooms to sell off like some. At least, not in the near future.

The more distant future is murkier, and that impending gloom informs the decisions that I must make today. I don’t just need a job. I need a job that will keep me from that cardboard box I mentioned in my first post. I mean, we can’t all marry money now can we?

So I will keep looking for a job for which I am qualified, not because I think I’m too good to work minimum or near-minimum wage. (Been there, done that. Oh wait! I’m doing that now!) But because I do not have that luxury. Being poor sucks. Being old and poor sucks more by an order of magnitude. I’m not there yet. I have options, which makes me insanely lucky, but as things get worse and worse out there in the big wide world, and more and more middle class people start their unimagined descent into poverty, I wonder if there will be enough luck to go around.

I hope that this crisis will bring people together. That those who can will continue to help. That compassion rather than judgment will be the first impulse. Not necessarily compassion for me. As I’ve said, I’m one of the lucky ones in this mess. But for those who may have been a little unwise, or a little too trusting of the forces of the marketplace. I hope that we can remember that old union song that speaks to not just the need for bread, but roses, too, and not begrudge people the little things like text messaging, or nice produce or, you know, cable. We’re all in this together.

Have an unemployment story to share? Write to jobless@thestranger.com.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

34 replies on “Notes from the Unemployment Line”

  5. Interest-only mortgages are known as sucker mortgages for a reason. You got suckered. It’s extra shitty that it was your own company that did it to you; you have my sympathies.

  9. Eli time to go do some reporting by talking to people who NEVER benefited from the knowledge economy instead of waiting for worried condo owners to email you about the lack of certainty in their 10 year financial plans.

  10. @5: I’m glad you clarified. I read that post three times trying to figure out if it was just missing a word or somehow meant something other than what it says.

    It doesn’t even make sense, unless your boss is a mortgage broker…

  11. I’m glad you talked to your bank as more info is always better. You probably know this, but I’m compelled to write it anyway: selling property costs the seller. Banks generally assume that cost is 10% of sale price – realtor fees, taxes, etc – though it might more likely be between 7 and 10%.

  12. A “sock puppet,” according to my _Dictionary of Interwebz Terms, Rules and Memes_, is a second account used by a regular poster to back up the regular poster’s opinions, or alternately to object to the regular’s points with easy-to-rebut straw-man arguments. For instance, *my* hypothetical sock puppet (named George D.) would follow up this post by saying: “What Lee said. That’s always how I’ve understood the term ‘sock puppet.’ Noobz.”

    What 1 did is known as A) Pretending to be someone else and saying gross or humiliating things in their name; B) Hoping to, maybe, please, finally graduate from third grade this year.

  14. I agree with 4, that was incredibly boring. Today I went to the coffee store. I was worried that I wasn’t going to have enough money to get a flavor shot in my latte. When I actually took the time to count my money I found out that I did.

  15. @11 – Yeah, I’m kind of sleep deprived right now, so I briefly had a “did I already comment here?” Fight Club-type moment. My Tyler Durden apparently fucks her boss for a better mortgage rate. I’m not sure how I got such a boring fantasy life…

    @13 – I always just understood it as “pretending to be someone else on a message board”, which is, I think, how it’s been used around here. Sock puppet or not, #1 and #9 are not me.

  17. I would also like to hear more stories from those who have never had $100K to use as down payment on a condo. Did all those unemployed “regular” folks already flee Seattle?

  18. Gosh, what would prevent problems like trolling sock puppets? Hmm, it’s on the tip of my tongue…hm…something like “user registration”? No, that’s not it…

  19. @3 – She can’t refinance, her income is too low and I’m guessing her credit is fucked as well. You have to have a credit score of 750 or so to get a loan these days. No one wants to take a risk.

  20. Best wishes to you, Lissa.

    Thank you for sharing your story and wit.

    P.S. You may want to look into if you qualify for an IRS approved hardship exception, which may alleviate the 10% early withdrawal penalty for the IRA.

    In this economy almost anyone could lose their job without warning. I also hope that this crisis brings out the best in people. It probably won’t, though.

  22. It’s good to read some (sort of) good news for one of these contributors. Good for you for seeking information! (I hate math too.)

    Don’t listen to the haters. Nothing pleases them.

  24. I am not sure why people don’t want others being judgmental. We all are judging all the time. I think pedophiles are creepy, people who rip off old folks are scummy and gang members ruin society. Maybe what the current down-and-outers are saying is they don’t want to be condemned for their current situation?

    But it’s kind of hard to have sympathy for a few of these guys who couldn’t see the obvious coming at them and then fumble around denying simple fixes.

    And yes, I’ve been unemployed, disabled, spat on, beat up, lost my savings and ignored by innumerable people in my past, too. The sun continues to come up every day ……

  25. It’s been 9 months since the Portland Mercury got comment registration and it seems like it’s working fine. It would make Slog much more pleasant and readable. WTF?

  26. The problem isn’t that people aren’t buying condos. There are plenty of homes being sold every day, just fewer than before (something like half as many). People are just not buying at the price sellers are asking. If you lower the price to the market price, somebody will recognize a good deal and it’ll sell. It’s all supply and demand.

    Also, please don’t raid your IRA unless you absolutely have to. You’ll need that money when you retire. Things will be a lot worse when you’re old and for some reason unable to work.

  28. Lissa, if you’re even still reading the comments at this point, thank you for posting. Thank you for sharing your story. You are indeed correct, we are all in this together and, one way or another, These, Our Troubled Times™ are going to change us – individually and collectively.

    Take heart Lissa – maybe I’m just an optimist but I have a feeling that things are going to be looking up…..

  29. @25: Are you seriously suggesting that spending unemployment insurance money (which, by the way, is *earned* income) on cable internet, while searching for a job, is not only a crime, but a crime on the order of raping children?

    Well, no, of course you’re not suggesting that. You’re just using the most repulsive and extreme examples you can think of to demonstrate why you think it’s okay to “judge” people.

    And you know what? It is okay to judge people. The problem is that you, and all the others who are assholes in the comments here just *aren’t very good at judging people.*

    This writer didn’t ask for your sympathy, and never claimed that the sun will stop coming up. Yet your “judgment” of her story is that you have no sympathy with her, and that you’ve had worse.

    So fucking what?

    This story is about one of many, many people whose long-term plans fell apart, leaving her with drastically reduced options for the future. This is someone who’s trying to be responsible and plan way ahead, and who got hit pretty bad by a collapse that very few experts foresaw. Do I “feel her pain”? Not really, since I have my own problems to worry about. But I definitely appreciate stories like this as yet more information about what can go wrong and what one needs to do to really ensure one’s own long-term financial security.

    With every single one of these unemployment posts, we’re getting several people saying “I feel no sympathy, it could be worse, and you should live under a bridge like real poor people do.” Some of these are pure trolls, but my point is aimed at the genuine ones: your comments are judgmental without being critical, competitive without having any prize in sight, and spiteful at those who have never wounded you.

    Let’s stop asking if people “deserve” our “sympathy” and start asking what we can do to prevent people from having their lives turned upside down, and how to help those to whom this has already happened.

  31. @30 Wow. You projected a shitload of your own crap there Lee. I didn’t say nearly any of that.

    This is the COMMENTS section. People make comments.

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