Gone With The Financial Cyclone

I was commiserating with sister Chris today about how tired I am and how I can't seem to get anything more accomplished once I put in my work day.  I'm just getting older and it's becoming too much to ask to do the second shift after I get home from the first shift.  There's so much to do all the time: taxes, real estate or rental issues, researching pet insurance, researching the new lawsuit for mortgage loan restructuring and trying to figure out what it means to my two mortgages, if anything, keeping myself in appropriate clothes, attending to Benji's needs, ordering medications, health spending account claims, etc.

I wondered, "What ever happened to the good ol' days when one could come home and the work was over, you could just relax in your house that was nearly paid off, find everything you need in the right places because you put it there and lived there for decades."  In my world, I'm forever needing something that I left at the other house.  Last trip I left my medications behind and had to have them shipped.

Then, I said to Chris, "I guess those days are gone like the wind, gone with the financial cyclone that has passed through this country."  It really feels that way, like we will work and work and work and hope to have a home, keep a home, keep from losing a home, or being stuck with something that on paper is worth way less than you owe on it...and then end up a ward of the state anyway, the thing you've been trying to prevent all along, struggling against and trying to do the right thing so you don't have to rely on the state.

But we're all going to end up in some state-run institution anyway because there will be no other options - no retirement income, no social security income, no way to keep the home you owe too much on, no way to sell the home you owe too much on.  It's very disheartening when you think about it.  While the Greatest Generation went through a terrible depression and worried about feeding the family day to day, we're going through a mental depression, worrying about what will become of us in a few years.  It's a different thing, completely, but still brutal.  How will our approaching-retirement generation face this?  Will we have a choice in how we face it, or will we just be swept along by the Financial Cyclone, with no choices, no real way to steer our own boats?  How does one step out of the Cyclone winds and get a grip?

I don't know.  I just asked a whole bunch of questions and I don't have answers.

I read the Mortgage Relief Act information and it looks like the date parameters they put on it will exclude me from any help on the Arizona place.  I should probably hire an attorney to help me sort it out, but they want so much money, up front, and the Act says that it will take three years to get any pay-out.  So how does that help us? An attorney over three years of filings and hassle would eat up any gain I might get.

Mom had a good old country phrase for that: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

But - I saw this little sign in a catalog this evening and have to share it.  It sort of boils things down to brass tacks and makes it all clear.

How to Handle Stress Like a Dog:
If you can't eat it or play with it,
then pee on it and walk away.