Rant #3,201: With a Little Luck

Now, the fun really begins for my family and I.

We have to sell the house, because we cannot possibly cover the mortgage.

And the quicker it sells, the better we will all be—mentally, physically and emotionally.

The house is a hollow shell without my mother in it to begin with, and now is the time for my family to disengage ourselves from calling this “our home.”

The problem is a major one: we really don’t want to leave.

If somehow the house can be sold to someone who wants a ready-made tenant in the upper portion of the house—paying them rent and thus, helping them to pay their mortgage—then this is the perfect solution for us.

But if not, we have to sell the house and move on to another dwelling, a very dicey situation given our financial status, which is really bad right now and probably has no way of getting better in the foreseeable future.

And look, we have a major emotional attachment to this house.

I have lived in this house for the better part of 50 years or so.

My wife has called this home for more than 30 years.

Our son knows no other home in his 28 years of life.

And we have more than 50 years of memories—and things—in this house, and it would be very hard to give it all up—

But unless we get a miracle, we are going to have no choice but to look for another place to live.

We are restricted in where we can live.

We would like to stay in the same area, and we have to stay in New York State, on Long Island, and in Nassau County because of the benefits my son gets by living here.

Anyone in our relative situation knows exactly what I am talking about.

The disabled get more benefits in New York State, and in Nassau County, than probably anywhere in the country, if not the world, and with our son also having a steady job—about three quarters of his peers are not so lucky—there is no way that we can leave the county and the state.

So we are hoping for a miracle, a miracle that will keep us here and in the same home we have called home for decades.

If not, we are going to be looking for accessory housing in the county, which is going to be very difficult, especially with our financial status, which stinks, in plain English.

The three of us each gets Social Security, which is OK until you total up exactly what we get, and it isn’t much.

I had to take early retirement, my wife chose to, and our son could not live on what he gets if he really had to.

My wife and I are working, but we are making a mere fraction of what we should be making at our freelance (me) and her newly started part-time (her) jobs.

My wife and I both had 401K plans at our last full-time jobs, but mine was stopped a few years before the place I worked for went out of business, and it was the only 401K plan I had in my decades of work, so what I have does not amount to that much.

My wife’s plan also did not afford her too much, and we have placed this money is in the stock market, so who knows where that will take what we have?

My son just received his own 401K plan, so we can’t touch that at all.

So we are in a pickle, and it isn’t just sour, it is literally a rancid situation.

We have a broker who is going to handle the sale of our house, and will help place us in a new living situation if we need it.

Maybe we need that proverbial four-leaf clover to help us out …

I had a long talk with my son yesterday, and I told him that prayers are in order for us, praying to God for a break, something good after the horrors of at least the past four years since I lost my job, then lost my parents, and then, possibly, in the process of losing this house.

I told him that when I was a kid, I used to pray to God to get me something, like a toy I wanted, or something along those lines.

I said that now, the prayers would be for something more important, and it is not anything bad to step up the prayer process after all these years.

Heck, I prayed last night, and will do so until this situation is resolved.

We might just need that divine intervention to help us out of a situation that seems to be an impossible one, one that was not of our own creation but one that we have been saddled with.

I have started to spread the word about the house, and maybe, with a little luck, we can reach a resolution that is good for everyone.

Looking for a house?

I have just the house you are looking for … .