you can wipe your ass with my damn house

welcome to my life right now.

Aside from starting the day dealing with FECESCAPADE 2.0, it was a relatively normal day. Did lots of laundry, cleaned in the kitchen, cleaned more in Oksana's room (found more hidden pockets of cat pee, and lots more toys that need to be cleaned thanks to that), took care of animals and kids. Talked to OJ about our 2012 budget and wrote out a document that lays out where the money should go from each paycheck. Butted heads a couple times over how to best deal with money. Agreed to start taking the Financial Peace University class that starts next Tuesday. I'm sure we'll butt heads some more, but I think the group support will be good for us.

Right now our financial strategy consists of figuring out which steps would fuck us over the most for the longest, and then taking what appears to be the best path in that minefield. Walk away from the house? Short sell? Declare bankruptcy? Can we declare selective bankruptcy and keep some of our accounts out of it? Just stop paying some of our credit cards and wait until they sell them to collections and settle then? Pay off all the rest of our debt? Keep deferring things like student loans for the rest of our godforsaken lives? Decisions like that, where none of them are any good but some are (I guess) better than others.

I was surprised today when my mother told me that one of my cousins, whom I've always considered very savvy, thinks that the best thing for us is to walk away from our home. I know some of my other relatives think that's the case, but to hear that someone who is wealthy, intelligent and well-informed on a lot of matters like this agrees kind of surprised me. It's still hard for me to wrap my mind around. I mean, I understand that our house is worth about $100,000 less than what we owe on it... and that there's a good chance we'd never even get back to up to amount we owe on it in our lifetimes. But it was a risk we took, an obligation we signed up for, not to mention an emotional investment as well... and it's just hard for me to say 'ok, time to walk away'. Part of it feels right, but a lot of it feels wrong. I hate welshing on obligations and I hate the idea that my decision will make the overall economic climate worse.