Rural residents cling to the old ways

Foreclosure Trouble Spreads to Those Who Bet the Farm (Wall Street Journal): "'We overstepped common sense with regard to debt,' he says. '[My] income was always pretty decent, so you always felt like you could make it up down the line.'"

I've read about lots of urban/suburban homebuyers walking away from their homes, saying it's not their fault, they shouldn't have to repay their loans, even claiming that the buyers who don't pay their loans are somehow "victims." Even the Wall Street Journal's tax columnist recently said of short sales "it doesn't seem fair that you could have a $100,000 tax gain from a sale that leaves you $50,000 in the red with your mortgage lenders".

But when it comes to rural residents and farmers, the victim claims don't seem to be surfacing. Instead, we get crazy statements about personal responsibility, living up to one's agreements, learning from one's mistakes.

But those crazy hicks know something that a lot of us smart city-folk seem to have forgotten: Taking personal responsibility is empowering, and those poor hicks are going to have a better life because of it. I can't control the world economy; I can only control my own earning choices, saving choices, and spending choices. I can't wish liars and crooks out of existence, but I can read my contracts carefully before I sign them. I can't change the fact that I've been laid off, or that my business revenue has hit the skids, but I can learn from it, start building up a "rainy day fund," resolve to never again make a critical, expensive, long-term obligation (like, oh, say, a mortgage?) without giving it a lot of thought and carefully considering whether I can meet that obligation over the long haul, in sickness and in health, through booms and busts and births and deaths.

One of my high school classmates had the world on a platter. She was smart, athletic, pretty, healthy, popular, and she was going to her first choice college. Until winter of her senior year, when her father died without insurance. Her mother had been a stay-at-home mom with no job prospects. Suddenly their entire world was destroyed; the prom dress was returned to pay for groceries, and the family spent graduation week moving out of the house as it went into foreclosure. What is ordinarily a joyous time for a young person - celebrating completion of high school, anticipating the promise of college, envisioning a bright future - became a crash course in the real world. Losing a house is hard - losing a father, a house, a college plan, a mother's confidence, and one's faith in the world, that's a real loss.

In a way, my classmate gave me a glimpse of the future. Her family was upper-middle-class, capable of providing financial security OR "the good life." They chose the larger house, nicer clothes, better vacations, superior summer camps. All good things to have, but all luxuries. Had the parents experienced a bit of a strife earlier on, perhaps they would have taken life insurance or put away a little cash for emergencies. While you cannot absolutely prevent death, layoffs, and other life-altering experiences, you can plan and reduce their impact.

We all feel great compassion for those who die younger than expected. We feel compassion for folks who are laid off. It's a little harder to feel compassion for someone who experiences the shock of: their mortgage payment rising to the level spec'ed out in their mortgage contract. Yet these are all life-changing events, and they are traumatic in inverse proportion to our preparation for them. If we cannot tolerate the mere thought of such things, we can at least build up a cushion of savings, keep good, organized records, find a way to prevent the preventable and take the sting out of the unavoidable.

(Older post that got stuck in my queue and I just discovered it today.)