There is a stretch of moral quicksand out there that you really want to avoid. This is the situation in which a good friend or family member comes to you and says they need help making a mortgage payment or refinancing. It's very easy to get sucked into what seems like a kind thing to do, but is actually a tragedy in the making.
If a friend or family member is in trouble on a house or condo they bought in the last 3 or 4 years, put little or no money down and have an adjustable rate mortgage, offer to help out on the nine hundred bucks or so that a bankruptcy attorney charges. Otherwise, they're just delaying the inevitable, and if you go down with them, you'll be in no position to help anyone, including yourself.
This is one of those cruel to be kind things that you know is the right thing to do, because it's so hard. You may get yelled at. There will be words. Take it. Be the grownup. You're doing them a favor.
After the dotcom collapse, there were a lot of whining 20 something former VP's of something at a startup having a hard time getting work as sub-junior-assistants. "How long do I have to wait for the recovery so I can get my real deserved level job, title and pay?" I'll bet I told dozens, if not hundreds of them,"No job title held from 1997 to 2000 means anything in 2001."
Similarly, the "price" of your house in 2005, if you didn't sell it is substantially lower. Get over it. It'll be close to a decade, if history serves as a guide before it even approaches those levels. 7 years and 10 months ago, the NASDAQ hit a high just over 5,000. Right now it's at 2,297. I took a lot of crap 7 1/2 years ago for suggesting we might not get it back for a decade instead of a few quarters. We're talking about some of the smartest, wealthiest people out there, including 2 billionaires.
I was right.
They were wrong.
Sound familiar?
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