what started it all

It's hard to know where to start. DH & I are such normal people. We have an average income, young kids, decent college educations, normal cars, normal house, normal friends...there is nothing about us that would make anyone think we're in serious financial trouble! It's hard to know when it all started - but my guess is that it started a few months before we were married, about 7 1/2 years ago.

DH had this duplex. He lived in one side and rented out the other. Don't even get me started on that. Anyway, I suspect to buy my engagement ring, he took out a home equity loan from the evil legal loan sharks known as Citi Financial. I really do think that we might have made it if not for that. I don't know, though. Anyway, that was pretty much the start of our troubles - and I didn't even know it! We weren't married yet and because we were not smart, we didn't really talk about money the way engaged couples need to. Idiots! (a la Napoleon Dynamite)

Let me say that over the course of these last 7 years, we have paid a total of about $17K on that $15K loan. Do you know what the balance on that loan is today? A little over $15K. Yep. We have struggled and scratched and clawed and sacrificed and all that other stuff largely because of this loan, and there is absolutely nothing to show for it. I have known for the last several years that if we didn't start throwing gargantuan chunks of money at that thing, we could literally still be paying for it well into our 60's or even 70's - or maybe never pay it off at all. It's entirely possible. BTW, we're in our 30's right now, to give some perspective.

So there was that. It kept us from being able to sell our rental house. It kept us from being able to make a profit on the rent. With that 2nd mortgage, we were barely breaking even on the rental house. And when a tenant would leave....that was bad. Stressful times. Crying on the phone and "free deferments" from CF. Thinking they were actually helping us. The feeling that we had this weight around our necks that was pulling us to the bottom of the ocean.

Each of us had a little minor credit card debt, probably not even $2K between us at the time. I'd definitely say that that 2nd mortgage was the start of it all.