Free Lunches & Presidential Pardons

Let me reminisce for just a moment. Those heady days seem like they were a long time ago. I put my co-op apartment up for sale, without using a real estate broker, and the first woman who came to see it said she’ll take it. I don’t think she was in the apartment more than 15 minutes before she decided, and she didn’t even bargain down the price. Not one cent.

This was 2005 and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. In less than seven years, the apartment had tripled in price. It was exhilarating. It was a thrill. It was as if I’d gone out west and found a pan of gold without doing anything other than living in the space and paying my mortgage on time.

With plenty of cash in hand when the sale was complete, I purchased an old farmhouse that needed a top-to-bottom makeover. I was able to buy the house outright with the proceeds from the sale but the renovation put me back in debt. It was a hard choice because I’d hoped to be debt-free. But in those days money flowed freely and I got a fixed-rate mortgage and a HELOC. I still had more than 50% equity in my house at the end of the day.

There have been many things my husband and I have needed to do to improve the house since but the policy around here is we only undertake a project if we can pay cash. Frugality helps. I wear underwear with holes, and my husband’s white, um kind of yellowish, undershirts are frayed. I can see the floor in my child’s room. We eat at home, a lot. WE DO NOT USE CREDIT CARDS.

Now I can’t help but feeling a little sour these days over the prospect of bailing out just about everyone else when I’ve tried to live responsibility. Go on, say it. “She’s such a righteous bitch.” I’m not, really. I’m just superbly tired of living in a culture that consistently enables and rewards bad behavior.

James Frey writes a phony memoir, then he lands a second book deal. People take questionable mortgages, game the system, and do it again when they put out their hand for handouts. Washington privatizes Wall Street with tax dollars. Talk about the biggest and most egregious presidential pardon ever.

I’m tired of pundits who tell us that bailing out Wall Street bails out Main Street. My house is worth less. My stocks are worth less. Through no fault of my own I’m a lot less endowed than I was just a few years ago.

I would like to view this as a karmic thing but when I’ve been in need in the past I’ve had to work my tail off to put things right. I’ve never known a free lunch but it seems the banquet is open for anyone with an appetite for disregard.