Maybe she took out a 2nd mortgage for that nice sofa and sponge painted wall
Posted on 03/27/2008 3:30:36 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
ALTADENA, California (CNN) -- When she was laid off in February, Patricia Guerrero was making $70,000 a year. Weeks later, with bills piling up and in need of food for her family, this middle-class mother did something she never thought she would do: She went to a food bank.
It was Good Friday, and a woman helping her offered to pay her utility bill.
"It brought tears to my eyes, and I sat there and I cried. I was like, 'This is really where I'm at?' " she told CNN. "I go 'no way;' [but] this is true. This is reality. This is the stuff you see on TV. It was hard. It was very hard."
Guerrero is estranged from her husband and raising her two young children. She's already burned through her savings to help make ends meet, and is drawing unemployment checks. She has had to take extreme measures to pay for her interest-only mortgage of $2,500 a month. In fact, her mother moved in with her to help pay the bills.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
How many Februarys ago was she laid off (to have already burned thru her savings)?
That savings account she burned through must have been a real whopper since she's only been paying enough on her home for the interest.
seriously! Are they saying in one month she went from middle class to the bread line? What is wrong with these people??
Move
Interest-only mortgage of $2500 per month?
That would make the principal something around $1/2 mil, wouldn’t it?
She had no savings. $70,000 income minus taxes comes out to maybe $55,000, and if she’s paying $2500 a month for mortgage that’s $30,000 right there. Take away food and utilities there isn’t much left. She was living beyond her means to begin with.
She was a processor of flipper loans.
She must have been living on the edge before she was laid off to have emptied her savings that quickly.
In CA, over-inlflated home values have plunged and I bet this woman is now upside down on her mortgage by 50K or more now.
If your interest payment is $2,000.00 and that is all you can afford, she should have hightailed out of California a long time ago when she had some savings.
Did she even have any savings?
Maybe she took out a 2nd mortgage for that nice sofa and sponge painted wall
I just read that! She was working in the industry that caused all this crap in the first place. By the looks of her, she can afford to skip a few meals anyway.
I feel for this woman, but she’s a common problem in current America - living rich without a thought for tomorrow.
Earllier posters have hit the nail on the head - no savings - where did her $70,000.00/year go? With a paycheck every two weeks and at a 35% tax bite, that still leaves her with $1,750.00 per pay period. If her mortgage is $2,500.00, that leaves her with $1,000.00 a month for everything else...
Get out of the dang house and get something affordable!
Sell the SUV and buy a junker or take the bus.
Eat beans and rice.
Cut up the credit cards.
Etc., etc., etc.
An interest only mortgage of $2500 per month? No wonder she’s not making it. She has too much house.
But, I guess it is somehow my fault... because I, along with others who insist upon living within our means will have to help bail her out.
I don’t mind helping out someone dealing with misfortune, but paying for THEIR mistakes grates on me.
Just more of the Clinton News Network soup kitchen bread line stories of gloom and doom to scare the sheeple.
Looks like she should cut her food bill in half
She can buy the route from the illegal alien lady who makes $38,000/yr stealing Pasadena’s recyclables.
Sometimes people get fired or laid off and it blindsides them.
Sometimes people make a mistake or two and lose everything they have.
Sometimes people don’t have enough savings to get through.
Sometimes people don’t have enough time to get a job and offer their kids the best possible care.
Some people lose their savings, some don’t have them.
Some folks’ savings are stolen.
Sometimes people get screwed by fate.
Sometimes neighbors and churches and synagogues and charities can’t or won’t help.
Sometimes people just need something other than a bunch of self-righteous jerks pointing and smirking.
It southern California, $1/2 mill is probably the current median
“From 70k to WIC in 2 months.”
Guerrero even applied for food stamps, but was denied.
Did you miss this?
And if her two kids are over the age of 5, they don’t quality for WIC either.
Dude. The lady bought too much house and is now whining about it so that I will have to pay for it. If being unwilling to pay for somebody else’s bad investments makes me a “self-righteous jerk” then I must have taken a wrong turn on the internet somewhere and ended up at SocialistRepublic.
Does not say when she was estranged from her husband. Maybe the husband was the major support (Bread winner) for this family
Unfortunately, there tends to be a lot of that bunch on FR.
There's a gray area in the $45,000 to $75,000 annual household income range for folks living in areas with high cost of living (try Northern Virginia or California). Folks who get stuck in the gray area are "rich" enough to pay high taxes but not poor enough to receive benefits.
And no amount of "you were stupid, move three states away and take up a totally different job" is going to help.
Exactly. We don’t even make half that and I guarantee we could make it more than her couple weeks. Helloooo, if she’s been laid off then she’s getting an unemployment check at the very least. Wanna bet she bought her kids each a PS3 and everyone has iPods and all the latest “in” clothes. It’s sickening because it’s most likely the lower income folks who donated to the food bank.
Amen brother. The ignorance around here is astounding.
I bought and recently sold a half million dollar house and I am just out of college a few years and climbing my up from no class to middle class.
Agreed with everything you said, but it begs the question...When does it morph from her problem/issue to society’s problem/issue? Are you and I called to help everyone who has had bad luck or made poor choices? If so, for how long? Should society pay more in child support than her ex? If so, why?
See my tag line.
Oh, and forgot to add that my house is paid off, (raspberry!).
I can tell you there is NO MERCY for anyone with mortgage broker, real estate agent, title company on their resume in California.
That’s the problem. Too many people thinking they can have an interest only loan that allows you to get a whopping big refund check once a year from IRS...all the while just banking on the value of the house going up enough so that when they ‘sell’, they make money, pay off the cost of the house, and have lived with their ‘rent, taxes, etc.’ being deductible and refundable to the tune of getting 1/3 back. Screw them. She and the others in similar situations are risk-taking opportunists looking for “the quick buck”. She, or her ex should have tried getting the old fashioned slow way by living within their means and not trying to get something for nothing.
It said the town of Altadena, where I was raised. Modest homes, but everything in CA is expensive, so your average home could easily be $500,000.
estranged is an interesting term
did he bail w/o child support?
In any event you’ll never see a story like this if there is a Dumbocrat in the WH.
Her industry caused all the crap? She pulled people in off the streets and demanded they take out mortgages? You get extra jerk points for remarking on her weight- does your mommy know you are online?
not anymore....dropping like a rock.
Statewide, median sales prices fell by a stunning 26% from year-ago levels in February, with home prices dropping at a rate of nearly $3,000 a week, the California Association of Realtors reports. Further, the CAR says the Fed’s interest rate-cutting campaign “will have little near-term direct effect on the housing market.”
—In the San Fernando Valley, losing a home to foreclosure is now almost as common for families as buying a home. The L.A. Daily News: “During January and February, there were 1,084 foreclosures and 1,335 sales of houses and condos in Valley communities from Glendale to Calabasas, according to the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge.”
“It’s bad. It’s really bad,” market analyst Nima Nattagh told the Daily News.
The California Association of Realtors reports median prices fell 27.2% from year-ago levels in the hard-hit Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, 30.9% in Sacramento, and 39.1% in Santa Barbara County.
On a percentage basis, the California price meltdown is more than three times as severe as the national decline of 8.2% in median prices reported this week by the National Association of Realtors. On an absolute basis, the California meltdown is even more severe: Nationally, prices fell over the past year at a rate of $338 per week; in California, prices fell at a rate of $2,788 per week.
I was wondering about that as well. And simply being "estranged" from her husband doesn't absolve him of the financial responsibility he owes his family.
exactly if unemployment is 4% and the population is 200 million
CNN could have 8 million people come and talk about how bad they have it
but dont worry come nov 2nd the economy will be fine becasue either the election will be over and they will stop talking down the economy or a dem will win at which point they will begin to tell us how great the economy is
Watch the video where she talks about having to take off her Tiffany bracelet, and not take her Coach purse, to go to the food bank. Boo Freakin Hoo
He had to be. No way would she qualify for a half million dollar loan on $70K a year. Maybe she needs to go after him for some child support if those are his kids.
Another thing, she made that $70K in an industry that has put a lot of other people into the same predicament she's in. It was all those mortgage companies finding three-martini appraisals that pushed the bubble up so far.
Great legislation.
Sounds like, if someone has the capital, “there’s gold in them thar hills.”
Title company, too? I mean, real estate agents and mortgage brokers made big fat commissions during the boom times, but title people just make ordinary wages, plus some overtime for giving up nights, weekends, and holidays just to make the commissioned people rich.
If it's an interest only loan it must have been a pretty large amount. I pay about the same amount a month on a 15 yr mortgage that I've converted to biweekly. I don't know what people are thinking when they take out ARMs or interest only loans. You're going to pay the piper at some point unless you're really lucky or you have a guaranteed income increase in the future.
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