Getting My Shit Together

After spending the better part of Tuesday in tears grieving the loss of 10%, the initial shock and indignation eventually wore off a bit. I calmed down at the end of the day and tried to come up with a plan to get through this and not lose the house. I decided that first, I had to talk to my boss at the client company to see if there is anything he or I could do even though I didn’t think he could do anything much, but that should be the first thing I should do anyway. Second, I would call my mortgage company to work out new terms for the loan. And last but not least I would have to figure out a way to reduce my expenses by several hundred dollars a month.

Since the only thing I could do at that time was to crunch numbers to save my monthly expenses, my brain got some unprecedented hard workout all evening while driving back home, taking the dogs out, holding Brandy, etc. At the end of the night, I came up with ways to reduce my expenses by $300 a month by 1) bringing lunch to work, 2) canceling internet connection at home, 3) limiting the dogs’ food variety to only fowls. I would have to come up with ways to reduce another $300 a month to remain at my current financial state of barely making it.

Having made some plans, I felt a little better and was even able to make some jokes when I talked with a couple of concerned friends over the phone. But sleep didn’t come easily at night. I woke up the next morning with an excruciating headache and feeling I had not slept at all. But I had hopes of some good results from talking to Countrywide, my mortgage company. But after very stressful and frustrating day I came home dejected and distraught.

My boss, as I thought, couldn’t do much understandably. Countrywide, on the other hand, can burn in hell. The stupid idiots that ever walked the earth seem to work at loan modification department, and they seem only to read from “guidelines” of some program after just glancing at my account. I don’t have patience enough, as some of you know, when talking to idiots. This is why my profession deals with computers, not people. I absolutely cannot deal with “talking to” to idiots and you can forget about “negotiating with” idiots.

Today I’ve been busy trying to see if I can find an agency who would negotiate this on my behalf, and at the same time, I’m talking to a mortgage broker to see if I can refinance. The reason I didn’t want to go with refinancing route was that I have piled up a lot of credit card debt resulting from last year’s multitudinous crises with my pets and I thought that it would be much harder. But no harm in looking into this. If anybody knows any reputable agency who can deal with Countrywide idiots on my behalf, please let me know.

The good news is I cried only once today. I’m tired. So very very tired.