Why Obama made me cry

I received notice on my phone today that our President was calling a news conference.  Great!  I just knew that he was going to announce that the US would start sending troops into Iran.  Was I surprised, and relieved, when he didn't.

But what he did say made me sob...help for military members in this housing situation.  WHAT??  Relief??

Almost three years ago (May 2009), Chip received orders to PCS (Permenant Change of Station...move) to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.  We were living in our beautiful house in Warner Robins, Georgia.  At first, I was excited.  I would be ONE HOUR away from my family.  This would be the closest I had been in 14 years!  Then reality sank in as we looked at the housing market.  Our wonderful, beautiful, big house was not even worth what we had mortgaged three years before.  Like $20,000 less than what we paid.  Booooo!!!  We were unprepared to take that loss.  The decision was made.  Chip would move to Montgomery.  The kids and I would stay in Georgia.  Thus began our decent into a hole of debt and frustrations.

First, Chip bought a camper and lived in the campground on base.  He drove back to GA most weekends, unless the kids and I came to AL.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I was working two part time jobs and taking whatever embroidery jobs I could.  I also had to take care of the kids, everything house related, walk two miles in the snow to school...wait, wrong story.  We had to pay for the camper, gas back and forth, his lot rent, the house payment and all the bills.  It was a huge sacrifice on all of us.

After a year of this, we decided to see if we could refinance the house and get it on the crappy market to rent, sell, burn.  I called our mortgage company, then several others and they could not/would refinance because the house was worth less than our remaining mortgage.  This was NOT what I wanted to hear.  We always paid our bills, ALWAYS paid our mortgage on time.  Why were we being punished because Chip had to move because of his job??

A couple of months after this, we were hemorrhaging money.  We thought the best thing to do was for all of us to move to Alabama to be a real family.  A real estate agent planted a sign in our yard, we said goodbye to our awesome friends and we left Georgia.  By this time, financially, I was so far in the ground that there was no light.  I say 'I' because I had to pay bills with Chip's name on them or he would get in trouble with the military.  Whatever was in my name had to be paid whenever we had some money to go towards them.  But, always, always the mortgage on that empty house in GA was paid.  So much for my perfect credit score...

Here we were paying about $4000 a month for an empty house in GA and a broken down, too small overpriced house in AL.  My kids were having to do without.  We were having to do without.  My credit is in the pot.  Gas prices were going up.  Letting the house go into foreclosure sounded really appealing, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it.  

People have looked down on us "well, you shouldn't have got into a mortgage you couldn't handle".  Really??  We handled the mortgage just fine WHEN WE LIVED THERE.  We were quite comfortable and able to have a little savings.  All that changed because the country that my husband fights for decided that we needed to move.  The only choice we made in that situation was to buy a house.  We never expected that the market would crash.  We had to move and in moving, we HAD to have another place to live.  It was not like we bought a house that we knew we couldn't pay for or we were living out of our means.  There was a neighbor in GA who was BRAGGING that he hadn't made a house payment for a couple of years and the bank was still letting him live in the house.  He wasn't military and he & his wife sat at home doing nothing to make their situation better.  THEY were/are living beyond their means.

After sitting empty for nine months, our house finally rented. For less than the mortgage payment.  But hey, that's ok because it's better than having to pay the entire thing.  We have been able to start digging out of that hole, but Chip received orders to move again.  

When the President began telling me that relief was in sight for people like us, it was like the weight of the world was lifting.  I sobbed like a baby.  We are  not the only military people in this situation.  Several of our friends are in the boat with us.  I just hope that we can all jump out of this boat soon and began to live again without the words "FORECLOSURE" and "UNDER WATER" pushing us down.

*deep breath*