Subscribe...I was handing over $4,000 a month in alimony and child-support payments. That left me with take-home pay of $2,777...On a $120,000 salary, that means he has absolutely nothing deducted for retirement savings or any sort of 401k plan, either. This guy seems a little challenged where finances are involved.
May I be the first to offer the theory that most of the people who write about economics for a living have been deluding themselves and their audiences for many years and this just provides an obvious example?You may, but it doesn't follow from the article so it's not an obvious example at all. What follows from the article is that experts, whatever their field may be, are also human being and are, therefore, likely to commit human errors.
“Who am I to tell you that you shouldn’t do what you want to do? I am here to sell money and to help you do what you want to do. At the end of the day, it’s your signature on the mortgage — not mine.”Fuck that shit! He is not answering, he's reassuring the person by suggesting he is in control with macho tough life shit. All that matters is your FICO score, not your future cash flow income. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! But who allowed the salesman to act like that, bullshitting people with non reassuring non sequiturs?
In fact, I'd argue that what this guy did -- in terms of actual damage to others -- is actually worse than what landed a lot of people in the clink.I really don't understand this thinking. Yes, he should have been much smarter about his decisions, especially given the nature of his job. But surely the companies that lent the money out carry the brunt of the blame, no?
The terrifying implication is that it could happen to you--to anyone who leads with their heart and not their head.
But en route to that moral, it turns out the story has been tidied up a little. Patty Barreiro, Andrews' wife, has declared bankruptcy twice. The second time was while they were married, a detail that didn't make it into either the book or the excerpt that ran in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
Andrews' desire to shield his wife is understandable--hell, laudable. No decent person wants to parade their spouse's financial trouble in front of the world. But this is material information that changes the tenor of his story.
New York Magazine: NYT Mag Writer Edmund Andrews Neglected to Mention One Little Thing in His Mortgage Opus.
Huffington Post: New York Times Reporter Bankruptcy Saga Actually About Love, Not Money.
“This book purports to tell the tale of an Everyman who knew a lot about finance, yet fell victim to the irrational exuberance brought on by mortgage and credit lenders and a go-go housing market. He wrote this book in an effort to save his house. Like many, I read his story in the Times, and bought it wholesale. Could happen to anyone, right?
Except that he left out a whole chunk of the story.
This story is primarily about a nebbishy guy who gets taken for a ride by a high school crush. It's also a story about people insisting on having it both ways.
After one failed marriage, and given a second chance at love in middle age, Andrews falls head over heels with his high school gal pal, who is ‘brainy, regal, sexy, fiery and eclectic.’ This tacky description alone should tell you that this otherwise literate man is in deep. But this hoochie mama, as it happens, also went hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt during her first marriage, was sued by her sister for defaulting on a loan, and filed for bankruptcy -- twice.
Yet Andrews did not feel it necessary to disclose any of this as part of his boom-bust narrative. Indeed, in the ensuing foofaraw of this revelation, he argued that his wife's massive, debt-ridden history was not relevant at all, that it had never even occurred to him to mention it -- which seems pretty disingenuous coming from a seasoned journalist. Even in the face of hard evidence, he staunchly defends her. To hear him tell it, she wasn't responsible for any of it. I suspect this is the exact attitude that got her into trouble in the first place.
It's understandable that he wanted to protect her from embarrassment, in which case, he should never have written the book at all. But he wanted it both ways. He wanted readers to think he was being completely candid, while excising a rather significant portion of the story that would perhaps have made him a less sympathetic figure, thereby selling more books. The irony is that, as a capable writer, he probably could have told the whole truth, and made it just as compelling, if not more so.
But now we are left with story fragments. We know that even while profoundly in debt, his wife had not held a real job in 20 years; that she expected to continue not working after her marriage to Andrews; that she did not respond well to being held accountable for her spendthrift ways. Because he refuses to flesh out the rest of the story, and dimensionalize her character, she is now being vilified as a spoiled, lazy, freeloader, which, one hopes, is an incomplete, if not wholly inaccurate, description.
Surely, this ‘brainy’ lady, who thought her only job was to love her husband and the four children she brought to the union, plus his three, would not be so foolish as to try to keep up with the Joneses once she took a hard look at their negative bank balance. Surely, she would not be so shallow as to equate clothing one's family in J. Crew and keeping the refrigerator stocked with fine cheeses, with love. Surely, in the face of foreclosure, she would find sensible ways of keeping her family neat and fed without the help of luxury retailers, instead of going to war with her husband over it.
But left to fill in the blanks ourselves, the impression we now have is of privileged, entitled people living irresponsibly, and a husband in complete denial about his wife's near-pathological excesses. He writes a book in a desperate attempt to keep them in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed. The irrational exuberance he fell victim to cannot be blamed on any lender. Love made him willfully ignorant. And on that count, it's hard not to feel a bit of sympathy for the guy. He must have been terribly lonely to know what he presumably knew, and still marry her. It's hard to say at this point what his wife brought to the table other than her sexy eclecticism, a profoundly irresponsible approach to money and a tendency to shut him down whenever he broached the topic of reining in her spending.
I don't know what's worse -- potentially losing their home, or the fact that they are now stuck with each other. Andrews probably couldn't even afford divorce at this point if he wanted it. He can, however, come clean about the seriousness of his wife's problem and nudge her in the direction of taking responsibility for it. Or, hope she works her 50+ year old hoochie mama magic on some other guy and leaves this marriage without taking the remaining half of his paycheck with her. Provided the other guy has credit to burn.
Now, THAT might be a book worth reading.”
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Sure, blame everything on women and money.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:07 PM on May 14 [3 favorites]