Tag: homeownership

Getting penalized for being competent

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Well that’s bullshit: program funded by $110 million federal dollars will provide up to $50,000 of relief to homeowners stuck in underwater mortgages; under specific conditions, none of which demonstrate the ability to be financially responsible much less competent at all

There’s no sugar-coating it, my home’s been underwater for the better part of, since I’ve lived in it.  The house was purchased in 2004, the value of the home rose a little bit for each of the first three years, and then the housing bubble popped, and the values of homes sunk faster than Yahoo stock.  My life was in a way different place back in the day, but I remember getting the first letter that stated that my home no longer had any equity that could be borrowed from, and as far as I know, that hasn’t recovered, even to this very day.

Needless to say, I’ve become very attuned to the concept of underwater mortgages throughout the years, and I should feel fortunate that my household has been in the minority of most underwater homeowners, and that we’ve always been able to pay the bills every month, and have been able to maintain good standing with all home expenditures throughout the years.  We’re actually getting to the point where the mortgage is practically whittled down to where we might be able to even hit a break-even point, with the underwater estimates.

At this point, a push is a win, and Jen and I can brush ourselves off from this failed gamble and figure out the next steps in our lives.

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Season’s Greetings!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my tepid enthusiasm for Black Friday shopping season, I still did a little bit of shopping.  Such is somewhat of a tradition in my household, and nothing says the holidays have arrived than spending a bunch of money on things that we don’t actually need, but still cave into the general consensus that it’s shopping time, when Thanksgiving rolls around.

So for the better part of the last few days, it’s been that Christmas-y feeling of checking the myriad of emails that have shipping tracking codes, and checking statuses, to see just what we can expect to arrive, unbox, and be excited to receive, because getting packages in the mail is almost always a fun thing.

A while back, a package was stolen from our front stoop; although never confirmed definitively, the fact that there was a delivery confirmation, but then no package, led to Jen and I determining that it had to have been stolen, given the fact that there are several hours of many of the work days in which someone might not be able to open the front door, combined with the fact that USPS, UPS and FedEx are all incapable of using common sense, and leave packages in plain sight in front of our front door, instead of the slightest of pivoting and placing them behind the shrubs.

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Have you ever tried to repair a broken window??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So in this Chase Bank commercial, Drew Brees’s son kicks a football in the yard; but because he’s the son of Breesus, it’s implied that he has some genetic football talent passed down onto him despite the fact that his dad is a quarterback and not a Gramatica.  That being said, the ball goes sailing at a high velocity, to such a magnitude it breaks through several houses walls and windows, much to the chagrin of Drew Brees himself.  Bewildered neighbors stare at the carnage caused by the lead food of Brees Jr.

But no problem, because Drew Brees is an NFL quarterback, Drew Brees is rich as shit.  And thanks to his handy new Chase banking app, he’s able to parlay chunks of his shit-rich to his various neighbors whose homes have incurred damage at the leg of Junior.

I’d like to point out the part where Drew Brees wires $200 to one of his neighbors for a broken window.  Because I am currently dealing with a similar situation currently, however I cannot say that a young place-kicking prodigy kicked a football through my window.  No, it was just a freak accident involving my landscaper, a mower, and an errant stone in my yard that went sailing into my glass, shattering it.  It is not a big deal at all, considering it technically happened last year, and I’ve just been too lazy to deal with it until more recently.

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It’s not you, it’s me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m going through an odd period, up in the noggin, if it hasn’t been obvious to my six regular readers.  I’m seldom excited by anything, I think I’m susceptible to some odd mood swings, and I’m often times feeling anxious or troubled by things that I’m not even sure I can really explain much less comprehend myself.  I stop wanting to communicate with people that I don’t have to communicate with, and I just want to kind of be by myself and hope the metaphorical cloudy weather passes without there being any harsh rains.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure things out myself, and it seems like each day brings another possible personal revelation to why it is I’m feeling the way I’m feeling.  However, as is the case with human beings, the mind is constantly moving, and some thoughts and ideas stick better than others, and some fade away or become forgotten.

Today’s thought process is surrounded with the desire to simply attempt to isolate and identify the things that are eating at me.  Granted, identifying them and trying to rationalize them isn’t going to instantly make me feel like I’ve found some miraculous cure or anything, but if for anything at all, at least it’s giving me something to write about, when the rest of the world is seemingly so stagnant and boring, or at least the rest of the world I feel comfortable seeking out, behind the prying eyes of a potential Big Brother.

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Musing about homes and living

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the things that I’d like to do with my home, is replacing light bulb sockets.  It’s gotten to the point where I’ve theorized that not every single bulb manufactured is a dud, but that it’s got to be something wrong with my home itself to where light bulbs are constantly going out way too quickly.

The question then became, how did the bulb sockets become so crappy to where they chew up bulbs like a pickup truck guzzles unleaded?  Sure, there’s probably something to be said about the shortcuts used and shoddy craftsmanship gone into the construction of my house, but at the same time age has to be a factor in this equation as well; I’ve lived in this house for ten years now, so the sockets are probably all charred and cooked after a decade.

But then I had to repeat that last part to myself: I’ve lived in this house for ten years.

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The weekend of productivity

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since the start of the new year, I haven’t really done much. Just about every weekend has been spent at home, where I ultimately have done nothing but play a lot of League of Legends. Now it’s not that I don’t enjoy the game immensely, but the bottom line was that I was not being very productive with my weekend spare time, and I think it began to creep into my head that I was really wasting a lot of time.

Wasting time is one of my biggest pet peeves, and you really haven’t seen me get bent out of shape until you see me when I start feeling like my time is being wasted; especially when it’s by circumstances caused by someone/something other than myself.

Long story short, I challenged myself to get off my ass and actually do something this weekend. At any given time, I’ve always got a project or three that I want to do, but have always sat on my hands and done nothing, until I felt they were warm enough to start spamming QWER keys and right clicking on LoL. So basically I said to myself to simply fucking do something this weekend.

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I haven’t really done this in a while

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Typically whenever I write, it’s at work, and I’m on some variant of downtime.  Currently, I’m actually at home, and the urge to write about something came upon me entirely while I’m on my very own spare time.  This hasn’t really happened to me in quite some time, so I figured out why not write and see what comes out.

I don’t want to say that the last few weekends have sucked by any means, but the truth of the matter is that I haven’t had any time to myself throughout the last three weekends.  That in itself was kind of problematic, and it got to a point where it began affecting my moods very obviously, as I hadn’t really had any time to unwind, decompress, or simply relax.  Given the circumstances, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again because that’s what friends do, but I’m also not going to deny that it really was taking its toll on me as well the longer it went on.

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