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Abstract

his wasn’t the worst housing market in frickin’ history. There’s no massive crash happening soon. <a href="https://slate.com/business/2021/06/blackrock-invitation-houses-investment-firms-real-estate.html">Half of all houses are purchased by companies</a>, not humans. This means they don’t need to care about losing money because they have the long game of turning everyone into renters. There’s no risk of people defaulting on loans, causing the market to crash.</p><p id="5041">Renting is more than buying. And while the federal eviction moratorium got extended to July, in California they extended it through September. Taking the rental route to ride out this housing market isn’t an option.</p><p id="776a">I can’t buy a cute little place, because little places have Homeowners’ Associations, and those are roughly $400 a month. That brings my monthly cost to the same as my mortgage now. For a fucking four-bedroom house with a pool.</p><p id="0b9d">So my goal is to buy the cheapest, probably not up to code, detached house in any of the four cities adjacent to my kids’ school.</p><p id="2a9b">I just need to get enough to pay a little over 20% for a down payment. Otherwise, I’ll have to pay mortgage insurance and my monthly will be too much. While I do technically have the funds (barely), it leaves no money for movers or even a bed. Or an emergency fund. Or property taxes, including the one-time supplemental taxes they make you pay the first year you buy a home in California.</p><p id="e6ae">Anyone who reads my articles has heard me <a href="https://readmedium.com/financially-affording-divorce-4e87d825c7e">lament this bullshit over and over</a>.</p><p id="9409">This is my therapy. No really, it’s my <i>actual</i> therapy because I can’t even sacrifice the$ 240/month for poor man’s therapy through Better Help. Writing is all I have. It’s all I’ve ever had to keep me sane.</p><p id="1e63">Tonight I’ll wallow and panic.</p><p id="e4ba">Tomorrow, I’ll come up with a new financial strategy. I was offered a chance to do porn for someone’s OnlyFans account; right about now, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal to get cash (<i>if only I didn’t want to vomit at the thought of fucking this guy</i>). Wedding rings are worth only 20% of their purchase price, but I’ll swing by a local jeweler to see what I could get for them.</p><p id="24ed">I briefly thought about pawning my grandmother’s wedding necklace. And then I broke down with an anxiety attack that this is the level of financial need that I’m at.</p><p id="b5b1">My whole fucking <i>life</i> I focused on saving money and doing the right thing. Currently, my friends are gushing over the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale preview; two years ago, I would have bookmarked everything I wanted as well. My cheap self would have only kept maybe two or three items, but still I had the financial means to splurge on a $49.99 pair of shoes. Not anymore.</p><p id="ba0d">Speaking of Nordstrom, I’m shocked they haven’t banned my account. I have -2498 Nordy points. <b><i>Negative </i></b>two thousand four hundred and ninety-eight. My friends didn’t even think that was possible. That’s because I’ve been returning things I purchased for the last decade.</p><p id="a5d0">Fuck this anxiety. Fuck my fingers tingling and my arms going numb. Fuck my leg bouncing as I type, making the table jump. Fuck this feeling, like I’m withdrawing from my entire bank account to hand to my soon-to-be ex-husband. Fuck my rage that my MSA literally says something to the effect of, “Wife gets one dollar, Husband keeps the house.”</p><p id="3e54">Fuck that the onl

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y reason he has any of this life is because of <i>me</i>. The one who did all the work for 17 years <i>and</i> held a full-time job. I had to manage everything, like I was his secretary and mother. When I met him, he had absolutely nothing, not even a credit score above 580. Every day, I’m still in awe of how he functions based on his utter incompetency as a grown adult. I tell myself that he’ll see once I’m gone how much I did, but that doesn’t help me now, feeling like I’m giving up 40 years of work, paychecks, and savings.</p><p id="ff54">I would say that when I’m 67.5 years old, I’ll be so glad things went this way because I’ll have retirement. However, my retirement won’t grow as fast as the value of Southern California real estate does in the same time frame. And it’s only of value if I keep contributing to it and allowing the magic of compound interest to take over. Except that I had to stop contributing to it, so that I could focus on building more of a down payment instead.</p><p id="90c3">The <a href="https://readmedium.com/how-i-finally-convinced-my-husband-to-divorce-me-in-peace-b629d8bfb54d">reason for this divorce was my mental health</a>. And yet here I am, having a nervous breakdown, because I’m fucking <i>terrified</i>.</p><p id="c938">That’s how badly I need to get out of my marriage. I’m envisioning a future life of poverty, trying to catch up to the forty years of savings that I lost in a filthy one-bedroom condo just so that I can get the <i>fuck</i> away from my husband.</p><p id="5ba2">I realize I’m catastrophizing. But I just don’t see any other way for me to move out. And I can’t keep staying in this house. I just can’t. It took so long for me to get the courage to leave and I’m shackled to the prison I thought I escaped.</p><div id="05ca" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-descent-of-the-divorce-rollercoaster-aca65262cc3c"> <div> <div> <h2>The Descent Of The Divorce Rollercoaster</h2> <div><h3>It feels like punching yourself in the face, repeatedly, for months.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*wEFXLNHmEn-KWic8)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="7665" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/pretending-to-be-happy-takes-a-lot-of-energy-3b3b633aa21b"> <div> <div> <h2>Pretending to Be Happy Takes a Lot of Energy</h2> <div><h3>Jumping into the pain head-on.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*YwTWbYBzyk9SimeFLrr8SA.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="e4e2" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/divorce-and-separation-bring-awkward-moments-c3e52f22826b"> <div> <div> <h2>Divorce and Separation Bring Awkward Moments</h2> <div><h3>Learn to smile and grit your teeth.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*VROIsbcUzWwWqvUe)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

How Many Ways Can I Get Screwed in This Divorce?

Ironic since it was a dead bedroom

Today was a milestone in my divorce journey: the review of the final Marital Settlement Agreement (MSA). This document is the motherload document that allows us our freedom; the divorce itself is merely a formality.

If all goes well, this fancy-pants document will be signed and ready before the weekend.

I don’t know how it’s possible, given the number of meetings we’ve had, for me to realize that I’m so much more royally fucked than before.

I’m fucked because I did the right thing by saving for retirement. While Joseph took his paychecks and blew them on gaming books, board games, random nerd collectibles, and comics, I was putting all that extra dough into my 401k (retirement for non-US folks).

The problem with a 401k is that the money is untouchable until I’m 67.5. And most of my retirement is in IRAs, rolled over from old 401ks. For non-US readers, I put 15% of my paycheck aside for almost 20 years with some dollar matching here or there. That money can’t be touched and is growing at the speed of lard until I’m too decrepit to earn a paycheck.

While Joseph’s inheritance is legally his, my retirement is legally ours. Despite that, he made more. Despite that, he could have saved instead of blowing it on toys. Despite that, I am currently wearing pants a friend gave me for free and a tank top I bought from Costco when I first got a membership over a decade ago because it was the only way I could afford Calvin Klein for $9.99.

We live in a massive-by-California-standards home, newly renovated, and has a pool. The equity on it is ginormous. Like, mind-blowingly ginormous.

I get 3% of it. And that’s only because that 3% is to pay back the money my mom gave us a decade ago to help us with that house purchase.

Subtract his inheritance from that ginormous home equity. That doesn’t leave much. Then subtract half of my retirement. That nukes all of it.

I can’t buy fucking anything in this housing market, but I have to get the hell out. If I stay any longer, he’s going to want me to pay for part of the property tax bill when that comes in. I need to get off this loan.

The problem is that Joseph is acting like my benevolent God by giving me extra. This is a slap in the face when he originally said he’d split his inheritance as long as I got a post-nuptial agreement stating that when my parents die, he gets half of what I’ll get (which I believe is fair). Then he decided not to do that, but he’d let me have more of the savings. Well, now that amount has been halved.

It’s like being told you’ll get $400 only to end up with $25. And Joseph wants me to be ever so grateful for it.

All of this wouldn’t be so bad if this wasn’t the worst housing market in frickin’ history. There’s no massive crash happening soon. Half of all houses are purchased by companies, not humans. This means they don’t need to care about losing money because they have the long game of turning everyone into renters. There’s no risk of people defaulting on loans, causing the market to crash.

Renting is more than buying. And while the federal eviction moratorium got extended to July, in California they extended it through September. Taking the rental route to ride out this housing market isn’t an option.

I can’t buy a cute little place, because little places have Homeowners’ Associations, and those are roughly $400 a month. That brings my monthly cost to the same as my mortgage now. For a fucking four-bedroom house with a pool.

So my goal is to buy the cheapest, probably not up to code, detached house in any of the four cities adjacent to my kids’ school.

I just need to get enough to pay a little over 20% for a down payment. Otherwise, I’ll have to pay mortgage insurance and my monthly will be too much. While I do technically have the funds (barely), it leaves no money for movers or even a bed. Or an emergency fund. Or property taxes, including the one-time supplemental taxes they make you pay the first year you buy a home in California.

Anyone who reads my articles has heard me lament this bullshit over and over.

This is my therapy. No really, it’s my actual therapy because I can’t even sacrifice the $240/month for poor man’s therapy through Better Help. Writing is all I have. It’s all I’ve ever had to keep me sane.

Tonight I’ll wallow and panic.

Tomorrow, I’ll come up with a new financial strategy. I was offered a chance to do porn for someone’s OnlyFans account; right about now, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal to get cash (if only I didn’t want to vomit at the thought of fucking this guy). Wedding rings are worth only 20% of their purchase price, but I’ll swing by a local jeweler to see what I could get for them.

I briefly thought about pawning my grandmother’s wedding necklace. And then I broke down with an anxiety attack that this is the level of financial need that I’m at.

My whole fucking life I focused on saving money and doing the right thing. Currently, my friends are gushing over the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale preview; two years ago, I would have bookmarked everything I wanted as well. My cheap self would have only kept maybe two or three items, but still I had the financial means to splurge on a $49.99 pair of shoes. Not anymore.

Speaking of Nordstrom, I’m shocked they haven’t banned my account. I have -2498 Nordy points. Negative two thousand four hundred and ninety-eight. My friends didn’t even think that was possible. That’s because I’ve been returning things I purchased for the last decade.

Fuck this anxiety. Fuck my fingers tingling and my arms going numb. Fuck my leg bouncing as I type, making the table jump. Fuck this feeling, like I’m withdrawing from my entire bank account to hand to my soon-to-be ex-husband. Fuck my rage that my MSA literally says something to the effect of, “Wife gets one dollar, Husband keeps the house.”

Fuck that the only reason he has any of this life is because of me. The one who did all the work for 17 years and held a full-time job. I had to manage everything, like I was his secretary and mother. When I met him, he had absolutely nothing, not even a credit score above 580. Every day, I’m still in awe of how he functions based on his utter incompetency as a grown adult. I tell myself that he’ll see once I’m gone how much I did, but that doesn’t help me now, feeling like I’m giving up 40 years of work, paychecks, and savings.

I would say that when I’m 67.5 years old, I’ll be so glad things went this way because I’ll have retirement. However, my retirement won’t grow as fast as the value of Southern California real estate does in the same time frame. And it’s only of value if I keep contributing to it and allowing the magic of compound interest to take over. Except that I had to stop contributing to it, so that I could focus on building more of a down payment instead.

The reason for this divorce was my mental health. And yet here I am, having a nervous breakdown, because I’m fucking terrified.

That’s how badly I need to get out of my marriage. I’m envisioning a future life of poverty, trying to catch up to the forty years of savings that I lost in a filthy one-bedroom condo just so that I can get the fuck away from my husband.

I realize I’m catastrophizing. But I just don’t see any other way for me to move out. And I can’t keep staying in this house. I just can’t. It took so long for me to get the courage to leave and I’m shackled to the prison I thought I escaped.