Please Save our Home!
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We have been struggling. But the future is not dark. We are going through a rough patch that will end. On July 1st, We received notification that our lender is accelerating our mortgage, due in full on 7/14/2016. It was called because of our persistent inability to bring our $713 payment current (now 60 days behind). It has been close to a year now. We need to catch it up. Now. We have a special financial situation with a brighter future than our present indicates. We need just to get through these lean times to our retirement years and everything should be OK. Health problems play a role. The lender has lost patience. We have no immediate financial remedy. WE NEED HELP!! This house is supposed to be our retirement cottage. If we can just get over this hump we can keep the mortgage paid. We know this because we have been doing it. Standing between us and residential security is 5 house payments....oh, and a year of property taxes....we got behind on those during an illness.
We are trying to be brief but we want you to know all the details. If you want to know more, read on. The more you read, the more granular the detail will be. And this will be a VERY long story.
"We" are Dave and Becky Daniel of Iowa City, Iowa. We have owned our small home here since 2004. It is the first home we have owned in our 61-year lives. From that you can figure out that we have always been in the bottom half of the income spectrum. That is to say, we have struggled, schemed and scraped to accomplish whatever financial gains we have made. Through a combination of smart moves and dumb ones, we have managed to build a life, raise a child (now age 22) and prepare for retirement. During that journey, life has dealt us our share of challenges. Specifically, we have both been plagued with health problems that have challenged our economic productivity. I will spare you the "gory details" of our illnesses and simply state that Becky qualified for Social Security Disability in 2012, reducing her net income from $1300 per month to $900. We adapted. Then David realized that his health had declined to the point it was seriously affecting his work and, with a good deal of urging from Becky, applied for Social Security himself. It is not easy for David to admit weakness so this application took some hard swallowing. As that process goes, David has made two appeals and found an attorney to help pursue his claim. They say that if you can find an attorney to take your case, approval on the second appeal is fairly assured. After all, if the attorney is not successful, they don't get paid, as their compensation comes from Social Security proceeds. David's income prior to his SSDI application was about $1400. Recent earnings have been about $700. This reduction has been largely due to reduced work hours. David is always scouring the job market for new opportunities, and he finds them, but health-related failings interfere. So there are the income numbers. Net bring-home income in 2011 was $2700. Now it is $1700. If Dave gets his SSDI approved (the hearing has not yet been scheduled) our household income will increase to more than $2200 Rules allow part time work while receiving benefits, so add about $500, bringing us back to $2700, maybe more. For anyone considering a substantial contribution to our campaign, more verification details can be provided.
7/9/2016 - We have until 7/29/16 to come up with $2800 . That's what the collection guy said. The good news is, though, that, if we manage that, The mortgage acceleration goes away and we do get to keep the house. That is very good news!
7/10/2016 - So how do you know that we won't just get bailed out by strangers and then start sinking all over again? Simply this: Things are being restructured so that every month on the third, Becky's Social Security payment ($904) will go, by Direct Deposit, into a savings account at the lender's office. The lender will be authorized to immediately debit that account for the $713.43 needed to cover our first and second mortgages. The remaining $191 will sit in that account, sequestered from all other pay-out activity, accumulating each month to pay the $1200 property tax payable every six months. All other bills will be paid from a different account that is in no way connected. We know it works. We did it this way for 10 years until Becky went on Social Security Disability. Then, David made a mistake. He had the payment Direct Deposited to our Main checking account. He had his reasons but they were an error - and boy does he regret it. The change is being made this week to put things back the right way, Our mortgage payment will never be late again!
I've become a little confused about Updates and where they are stored compared to what I put here in the Description.
7/17/2016 - From David
I believe in personal responsibility. In the end, what I will be left with is a pile of consequences of my own choices. I also believe it never pays to sit around stewing in my own juices moaning about my lot in life. Something must be done.Another job? I have held 17 of them over an equal number of years. My inability to hold a job in spite of my above average intellect is at the center of this situation. Why have I lost so many jobs? More than anything e...lse, it is because I am so confounded slow and easily confused. I also seem to have a trouble with receiving and processing new information (e.g. instructions). I find myself alternately easily distracted from tasks and stuck on details nobody else even notices. I have been like this all of my life. My elementary teachers routinely checked the boxes on my report card next to "not working to potential", "needs prodding", and "does not pay attention". I have always been "slow on the uptake" as they say. I found my way around these limitations by ensconcing myself in a sales career where speed didn't matter as much as the meeting of goals. I was a pretty good salesman of advertising and, later, insurance, But of course I never made as much money as I would have if I were fast, to boot. Still, no none noticed much (they did, some) as long as I was meeting THEIR expectations. And then I left sales. I was just tired of it. And that attitude was decreasing my results. The fact was, I was tired of everything. I had developed a chronic fatigue and a lack of motivation that was getting in my way. An I couldn't seem to concentrate even as well as I used to. I was breaking down into a state of mind that I recognized from an earlier time in my life. I was depressed - clinically depressed. I sought some treatment as I had done before and asked if there was some testing that might uncover other problems contributing to my increasing loss of focus and concentration. As it is, Depression itself can have those symptoms but I learned that I also had some serious deficits in my mental performance compared to others at my IQ level. The diagnosis was Attention Deficit Disorder - Primarily Inattentive Type. No wonder I couldn't seem to think straight. I spent the next couple of years seeking effective treatment for my ADD. It turned out the stimulant medications usually prescribed had no effect on me. None. The other behavioral treatments are simply the good old fashioned time and life management techniques I already knew and used as a matter of habit. So, to this day, I remain a victim of chronic depression (the worst of it did go away when I got medicated) and untreated Attention Deficit Disorder. Livin' the dream - NOT!
Through all of this, there was one job I managed to hold onto - pizza delivery driver. It was supposed to be a stop-gap position until I could find something "more appropriate. 14 years later....I became too slow for them. It was a valid criticism. I regularly got confused in my directions, missed turns, forgot the addresses or boggled some other detail that slowed me down. Then in 2012, I took an on-the-job fall that severed my quad tendon and separated my AC joint in my shoulder. After being out on Workers Compensation for a year, I recovered from that injury (kept the house paid for too!) and came back to work. After that, I never had trouble pleasing my immediate manager but the Area Manager seemed to have a problem. Through a rather complicated and sneaky manipulation (why not just fire me outright, I will never know) I was refused a return to work after taking some personal days off. Job lost for unknown reasons after 14 years.
If I may rewind the clock here, I'd like to tell Becky's story leading up to her status as permanently disabled. Becky and I shared earning a living for the family. THe last 9 years of her working life were spent at a call center handling beneficiary service calls for 1-800-MEDICARE. She liked the work. It was detailed and technical enough to engage her and she was able to help people with their Medicare problems. For her employer, it was a matter of being paid a certain dollar amount per call. The more calls, the more money. The pressure was always on. Performance standards were always tightened more and more. Becky became involved with a movement to bring a union into the center. She was not appreciated by management for that. I recognised the symptoms of stress-induced depression taking her over but Becky is not one to talk about her feelings so everything continued to build until the night of June 28, 2011, she decided on impulse that the best solution would be to kill herself. There was life insurance to pay down the mortgage and she figured everything would be fine. Thank god she did not succeed - though it took 3 sessions of CPR to keep her alive - and she remains with me today. The episode left her with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and a doctor-ordered abstinence from any kind of high pressure work. She applied for and recieved Social Security disability after a two year fight and she remains on it today.
My dysfunctional memory and organizing skills were always apparent to Becky and my son, Kevin, and, even in the midst of her own crisis, she was persistent in pointing out that I was dysfunctional to the point of disability. She told me that I, too, should be on SSDI and she pushed for me to apply. They wouldn't take my application at first because I was earning more than the rules allowed. But when I lost my pizza delivery job, I took the opportunity to start the process. I think it was the right thing to do. Since 2014 holding on to a job has gotten tougher as the work I find stresses me more and pays me less than ever before. I have found an attorney to take my case and he seems to think he can make a fee out of this off my arrearage payment. So it looks like I am headed for disability. I won't go into how that feels other than it was NOT where I had expected to be at this point in my life.
to be continued.......
We are trying to be brief but we want you to know all the details. If you want to know more, read on. The more you read, the more granular the detail will be. And this will be a VERY long story.
"We" are Dave and Becky Daniel of Iowa City, Iowa. We have owned our small home here since 2004. It is the first home we have owned in our 61-year lives. From that you can figure out that we have always been in the bottom half of the income spectrum. That is to say, we have struggled, schemed and scraped to accomplish whatever financial gains we have made. Through a combination of smart moves and dumb ones, we have managed to build a life, raise a child (now age 22) and prepare for retirement. During that journey, life has dealt us our share of challenges. Specifically, we have both been plagued with health problems that have challenged our economic productivity. I will spare you the "gory details" of our illnesses and simply state that Becky qualified for Social Security Disability in 2012, reducing her net income from $1300 per month to $900. We adapted. Then David realized that his health had declined to the point it was seriously affecting his work and, with a good deal of urging from Becky, applied for Social Security himself. It is not easy for David to admit weakness so this application took some hard swallowing. As that process goes, David has made two appeals and found an attorney to help pursue his claim. They say that if you can find an attorney to take your case, approval on the second appeal is fairly assured. After all, if the attorney is not successful, they don't get paid, as their compensation comes from Social Security proceeds. David's income prior to his SSDI application was about $1400. Recent earnings have been about $700. This reduction has been largely due to reduced work hours. David is always scouring the job market for new opportunities, and he finds them, but health-related failings interfere. So there are the income numbers. Net bring-home income in 2011 was $2700. Now it is $1700. If Dave gets his SSDI approved (the hearing has not yet been scheduled) our household income will increase to more than $2200 Rules allow part time work while receiving benefits, so add about $500, bringing us back to $2700, maybe more. For anyone considering a substantial contribution to our campaign, more verification details can be provided.
7/9/2016 - We have until 7/29/16 to come up with $2800 . That's what the collection guy said. The good news is, though, that, if we manage that, The mortgage acceleration goes away and we do get to keep the house. That is very good news!
7/10/2016 - So how do you know that we won't just get bailed out by strangers and then start sinking all over again? Simply this: Things are being restructured so that every month on the third, Becky's Social Security payment ($904) will go, by Direct Deposit, into a savings account at the lender's office. The lender will be authorized to immediately debit that account for the $713.43 needed to cover our first and second mortgages. The remaining $191 will sit in that account, sequestered from all other pay-out activity, accumulating each month to pay the $1200 property tax payable every six months. All other bills will be paid from a different account that is in no way connected. We know it works. We did it this way for 10 years until Becky went on Social Security Disability. Then, David made a mistake. He had the payment Direct Deposited to our Main checking account. He had his reasons but they were an error - and boy does he regret it. The change is being made this week to put things back the right way, Our mortgage payment will never be late again!
I've become a little confused about Updates and where they are stored compared to what I put here in the Description.
7/17/2016 - From David
I believe in personal responsibility. In the end, what I will be left with is a pile of consequences of my own choices. I also believe it never pays to sit around stewing in my own juices moaning about my lot in life. Something must be done.Another job? I have held 17 of them over an equal number of years. My inability to hold a job in spite of my above average intellect is at the center of this situation. Why have I lost so many jobs? More than anything e...lse, it is because I am so confounded slow and easily confused. I also seem to have a trouble with receiving and processing new information (e.g. instructions). I find myself alternately easily distracted from tasks and stuck on details nobody else even notices. I have been like this all of my life. My elementary teachers routinely checked the boxes on my report card next to "not working to potential", "needs prodding", and "does not pay attention". I have always been "slow on the uptake" as they say. I found my way around these limitations by ensconcing myself in a sales career where speed didn't matter as much as the meeting of goals. I was a pretty good salesman of advertising and, later, insurance, But of course I never made as much money as I would have if I were fast, to boot. Still, no none noticed much (they did, some) as long as I was meeting THEIR expectations. And then I left sales. I was just tired of it. And that attitude was decreasing my results. The fact was, I was tired of everything. I had developed a chronic fatigue and a lack of motivation that was getting in my way. An I couldn't seem to concentrate even as well as I used to. I was breaking down into a state of mind that I recognized from an earlier time in my life. I was depressed - clinically depressed. I sought some treatment as I had done before and asked if there was some testing that might uncover other problems contributing to my increasing loss of focus and concentration. As it is, Depression itself can have those symptoms but I learned that I also had some serious deficits in my mental performance compared to others at my IQ level. The diagnosis was Attention Deficit Disorder - Primarily Inattentive Type. No wonder I couldn't seem to think straight. I spent the next couple of years seeking effective treatment for my ADD. It turned out the stimulant medications usually prescribed had no effect on me. None. The other behavioral treatments are simply the good old fashioned time and life management techniques I already knew and used as a matter of habit. So, to this day, I remain a victim of chronic depression (the worst of it did go away when I got medicated) and untreated Attention Deficit Disorder. Livin' the dream - NOT!
Through all of this, there was one job I managed to hold onto - pizza delivery driver. It was supposed to be a stop-gap position until I could find something "more appropriate. 14 years later....I became too slow for them. It was a valid criticism. I regularly got confused in my directions, missed turns, forgot the addresses or boggled some other detail that slowed me down. Then in 2012, I took an on-the-job fall that severed my quad tendon and separated my AC joint in my shoulder. After being out on Workers Compensation for a year, I recovered from that injury (kept the house paid for too!) and came back to work. After that, I never had trouble pleasing my immediate manager but the Area Manager seemed to have a problem. Through a rather complicated and sneaky manipulation (why not just fire me outright, I will never know) I was refused a return to work after taking some personal days off. Job lost for unknown reasons after 14 years.
If I may rewind the clock here, I'd like to tell Becky's story leading up to her status as permanently disabled. Becky and I shared earning a living for the family. THe last 9 years of her working life were spent at a call center handling beneficiary service calls for 1-800-MEDICARE. She liked the work. It was detailed and technical enough to engage her and she was able to help people with their Medicare problems. For her employer, it was a matter of being paid a certain dollar amount per call. The more calls, the more money. The pressure was always on. Performance standards were always tightened more and more. Becky became involved with a movement to bring a union into the center. She was not appreciated by management for that. I recognised the symptoms of stress-induced depression taking her over but Becky is not one to talk about her feelings so everything continued to build until the night of June 28, 2011, she decided on impulse that the best solution would be to kill herself. There was life insurance to pay down the mortgage and she figured everything would be fine. Thank god she did not succeed - though it took 3 sessions of CPR to keep her alive - and she remains with me today. The episode left her with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and a doctor-ordered abstinence from any kind of high pressure work. She applied for and recieved Social Security disability after a two year fight and she remains on it today.
My dysfunctional memory and organizing skills were always apparent to Becky and my son, Kevin, and, even in the midst of her own crisis, she was persistent in pointing out that I was dysfunctional to the point of disability. She told me that I, too, should be on SSDI and she pushed for me to apply. They wouldn't take my application at first because I was earning more than the rules allowed. But when I lost my pizza delivery job, I took the opportunity to start the process. I think it was the right thing to do. Since 2014 holding on to a job has gotten tougher as the work I find stresses me more and pays me less than ever before. I have found an attorney to take my case and he seems to think he can make a fee out of this off my arrearage payment. So it looks like I am headed for disability. I won't go into how that feels other than it was NOT where I had expected to be at this point in my life.
to be continued.......
Organizer
David Daniel
Organizer
Iowa City, IA