In 2003 I ended a very toxic relationship and found myself trying to figure out the next step in my life. I was 30 years old with another failed relationship and living at my parents house. To this day I thank god I followed my gut instinct and did not move in with my ex. It would have been one of the worst decisions I would have ever made.

On my 30th birthday I made a decision. I was no longer going to base my life dreams and goals on the notion of meeting man, maybe marrying him or simply moving in with him and having kids with him. Until that point in my life every life scenario I had included a man, maybe children and that would mean I was happy. But here I was at 30 still single with a great job and a whole life ahead of me. So I started to save and I started to really watch the market.

In August 2004 I stumbled upon a new townhouse complex that was under construction. After debating whether or not a townhouse was the right choice I finally decided to at least look at them. Turns out I knew the builders and the price might be doable. $214,900 seemed fair in this over inflated market. The unit was just being built it was just framed. I would be the first person to live there and I could pick out most of the finishes myself. So I found a mortgage broker and the get a mortgage roulette game began. At the time I had some outstanding debt and I would be doing 100% financing. But after borrowing from my parents and playing with some numnbers on paper I was approved for 100% in an interest only loan. For the first 2 1/2 years things were great. Then in July I was reviewing my loan paperwork and realized that in 6 months the loan was adjusting and would be interest and principle and the payments would be too high for me to afford. So I asked a friend to put me in touch with a friend of his who is a mortgage broker.

Let’s stop here for a minute because I have some advice for anyone who is about to purchase a home. If you have to resort to using a mortgage broker because a bank mortage specialist has turned you away don’t do it. See a broker will get you into a loan and they will tell you how great it is and how you can afford. My broker never mentioned that I had a year of payments and after that year my interest would adjust every 6 months. Well within that first year my lender New Century went belly up and my 80/20 was sold to two different banks, Wells Fargo and Chase.This further complicated things because I now have two lenders to contend with.  When I refinanced in 2006 I refianced for $235,000 because I wanted to do some upgrades in the unit.I remodeled my full bath, I installed hardwood floors, upgraded carpets and light fixtures. This was done based on the fact that the market kept going up and up and surely I would get my investment back I sold.
And then some. Right?

In February 2007 when I realized I had to refinance out of my current loans I contacted a broker. Everything was great until the Appraisal. Over the past year several units in the complex had sold and one had foreclosed.Now I had to come up with a plan. In six months the loan would adjust and the payments could possibly increase, I could try to refinance or I could try to sell, cover my bets and get out when the getting out was good. For the next 6 weeks I hustled and tried to pay off some bills and get the place sparkling so that a realtor or appraiser would see it at its best. The decision to sell was leaning heavily on my mind. Over the past year or two some of my closer friends had sold and moved out of the complex. The new owners weren’t the same caliber of people I was used to living next too. Parties that went late into the night and result in fights in the parking lot were becoming a problem. Units with multiple owners or roommates were using the visitors area and firelanes to park excess cars. The management company was maintaining the place but they weren’t going out of their way to keep it really nice.

In April 2007 I brought in an extremely reputable realtor who delivered the first of the bad news I would the over the next few years. The unit appraised at $195,000. I would have to bring a lot of money to the closing to cover the outstanding debt and break even. If we could find a buyer. Well I didn’t have thousands of dollars to bring to a closing so I had to come up with another plan. So I scrambled and took my tax return and my yearly bonus from work and I put them in the bank and I didn’t touch them. In July the payments adjusted and increased $200 a month. I was barely keeping up with my overinflated payments and I had to dip into my savings to keep floating the loan. At this point I was using my credits to pay for all my other bills because my mortgage, insurance, taxes, condo fees and water bill were eating up my paycheck.

This went on for two years and over those two years the prices kept falling and the complex became more and more unbearable. The condo association board was made up of a bunch of nasty ladies and I finally because so enraged with their blatant discrimation that I joined the board. Not that it did any good. In January 2009 I had been floating my loan with tax returns and bonus savings for 2 years.
I was managing by using my credit cards to cover my bills and I was lucky to have no car payment. At this point I am current on everything.  Then right after the holiday I was out running errands and was hit head on by another driver. I was ok but the car was totalled. There was no way I could afford a new car so I battle for 2 months with the insurance company to not total it and let me put it back on the road. I finally one and against the advice of the auto body I was driving my old car. 

That January my beloved grandmother passed away and I wanted more than anything to buy her house. But I couldn’t because my property was underwater and I couldn’t get rid of it. The house sold in July 2009 and my spirit was broken. I was house poor and bills just kept growing and growing. I was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.  My friendships were suffering because I didn’t have money to go out anymore, I couldn’t afford to host parties or girls nights at my house.  There were friends that I had helped out when the were struggling financially who didn’t reciprocate. Life was looking pretty awful and I needed to do something to help myself. At that point my pride was strong enough that I refused to let this situation get the best of me. I refused to wreck my credit by short selling or foreclosing. So I made a decision. I asked my parents if I could move in with them and rent out the unit. If I could bring in some extra income I would be able to make payments directly to the principle and start to lower the balance owed on the mortgage. The plan was in place I would move Labor Day weekend. I had found a property manager and the search for a tenant was on. The decision to rent was a hard one to make because I worked so hard to buy the place. I put so much of myself into every aspect of the house from the color, to the lighting choices to the upkeep of the unit.

My mom date was ironically enough the same day the buyers of my grandmothers house were closing. It hurt that it wasn’t me moving into the house and it wouldn’t be in the family anymore. But life has a funny way of working things out. A few weeks before the closing the buyers came back and wanted my family to make more financial concessions on the sale.They wanted us to pay their closing costs and pay for a new spetic system even though the town was running a sewer line up the road within the year. After a week of haggling they finally admitted that they wouldn’t get their financing if my family didn’t help them defray the costs. So my mom and her siblings had a meeting. And they decided that they weren’t going to contribute money to the purchase of someone elses house. So I was offered the chance to move into the house with conditions. I pay all the bills and repairs and when I sell my condo I buy the house from them. Life was good for a while.

My first tenants were dream. They paid enough in rent to cover the first mortgage and they stayed for 9months. There were no problems and I was able to pay down the mortgage balance to $228,000. We were making some ground. Until the next tenants arrived. They were a middle aged couple from Chicago. Lifelong renters who wanted a two year lease. Perfect. This was a match made in heaven. You see the condo association members were not happy that owners were resorting to renting their units and they were discriminating against renters. So the less problems my tenants created the better. On July 1st they arrived and on July 6th first of what would be months of problems began. The head board member started to send letters of complaint against my new tenants. The complaint ranged from the moving truck being in the firelane to complaints that they had stuff stacked in their parking spot in front of the unit. Over the course of the next 6 weeks I would get 33 letters of complaint. They included complaints over wind chimes, the trash was put out too early, they put up a flag, there was stuff under the deck, they didn’t park straight and on and on….

Now my tenants were no prize and did in some cases break the condo rules. But a lot of units (mostly board members) were breaking the rules. The tenants were creating their own problems. They complained the place wasn’t clean enough and it cost me $2000 in maid and carpet cleaning costs before they were happy. When they moved out the place was so dirty it had to be completely repainted and the rugs had to be pulled up. They were there for 9 months. They threatened to sue me for the harassment by the condo association and I had to hire a lawyer to protect myself. Then in December they just stopped paying rent and dared me to evict them. Evictions could take years and at this point it was costing me money to have this unit.

I was mentally and emotionally exhausted at this point and I just didn’t care anymore. I was almost bankrupt and my nerves were shot. So made some decisions. I called the realtor who sold me the unit and start the short sale process. I stopped paying the mortgage and used the money to start paying off some of the massive credit card bills. I also found a way to get the tenants out without having to go to court. I demanded to do a walk thru and when I say that these people were hoarders I am not exaggerating.  He worked for a fire safey systems company. He was also violating fire codes by blocking the sprinklers with his crap. I called the fire department and the police. I had them come out and enter the building and inspect for fire safety violations. The violations were so bad they issued a condemnation order and gave them 60 days to vacate. That was in January. At the end of the February I sent a copy of the fire safety inspection report and the condemnation order to my tenants HR department. Within two weeks they had packed up and left without telling me. When it comes to people messing with my money I don’t kid around.

In April after two weeks cleaning the unit was listed for short sale. We got a P&S in June and we were finally able to close in September. Until the closing I had mixed emotions about walking away from my debt. But once the closing was done and I was free of the stress and anxiety of an unafforable house I realized how badly this whole situation was affecting my health and my personality. It wasn’t the decision that I wanted to make but now I realize it was the best decision to make.

And that is why I walked away….

BANKOK — From the titans of high technology to teenagers armed with iPads, millions of people around the world mourned digital-gadget genius Steve Jobs as a man whose wizardry transformed their lives in big ways and small.

Google, Sony, Samsung, Microsoft — corporate giants that have all been bruised in dustups with Jobs’ baby, the technology prodigy Apple — put their rivalries aside Thursday to remember the man behind the iconic products that define his generation: iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.

“Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote.

Fans for whom the Apple brand became a near-religion grasped for comparisons to history’s great innovators, as well as its celebrities, to honor the man they credit with putting 1,000 songs and the Internet in their pockets.

“I was so saddened. For me it was like Michael Jackson or Princess Diana — that magnitude,” Stephen Jarjoura, 43, said at the flagship Apple store in Australia’s biggest city, Sydney. He said Jobs’ legacy would surpass that of even Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison.

“The digital age has lost its leading light, but Steve’s innovation and creativity will inspire dreamers and thinkers for generations,” Sony Corp. President and Chief Executive Howard Stringer said in a statement.

Few companies felt Apple’s rise more than Japan’s Sony, whose iconic Walkman transformed the music listening experience in the 1980s but which proved no match for Apple’s iPod after it launched in 2001.

News of Jobs’ death Wednesday, after years spent battling pancreatic cancer, spread swiftly in the online world, which was alight with expressions of sympathy. Zuckerberg’s comments on Facebook were “liked” by more than 215,000 people within hours. The most heavily trending topics on Twitter in the hours after Jobs’ death included the phrases “RIP Steve Jobs,” ”thankyousteve” and “iSad.”

Internet search behemoth Google starkly listed Jobs’ name and the years of his birth and death on its home page, with a link leading to a Jobs memorial on Apple’s home page.

Thousands of celebrities and fans took to Facebook and Twitter to leave remembrances about him. Some noted that they learned about his death via one of his products, such as the iPhone.

Amalia Sari in Jakarta, Indonesia, said when her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer just over a year ago, she decided to go on a monthlong pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. She bought an iPad for her mom to look at photos sent home and to keep in touch via Apple video conference.

“Without Steve Jobs and his crazy inventions, that kind of thing would never have been possible,” she said, adding that after getting the first tweet about Job’s death she logged off because she couldn’t bear to hear more about it.

“I was really sobbing. It is great loss for me, and for the world as well,” she said.

In China, one of Apple’s fastest growing markets, Henry Men Youngfan said he was shocked by the news that his hero had died, remembering how he felt when he entered graduate school at Peking University’s college of engineering.

“My teachers asked me what kind of person I wanted to be and I told them I wanted to be like Steve,” Men said in Beijing.

Li Zilong, who was listening to his iPod in front of a Beijing Apple store, worried that Apple’s innovation may have died along with its co-founder.

“Jobs was a legendary figure; every company needs a spiritual leader,” said the 20-year-old university student. “Without Jobs, I don’t know if Apple can give us more classic products, like the iPhone 4.”

Competing companies that watched as Apple’s sales — and its stock price — took off over the past decade posted messages of admiration.

“Steve Jobs was a great visionary and a respected competitor,” said Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, co-CEOs of Blackberry-maker Research in Motion.

“For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve iimmensely,” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said.

The chief executive officer of Samsung, which is locked in an intensifying court battle with Apple over patent rights, called Steve Jobs an “innovative spirit” who will be remembered forever.

The South Korean electronics giant put aside its rivalry with Apple to praise Jobs as the man who “introduced numerous revolutionary changes to the information technology industry,” G.S. Choi said in a statement.

Even the White House mourned.

President Barack Obama remembered Jobs as one of America’s greatest innovators and said the world had lost a visionary. The president also said Jobs exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity.

In a tweet sent separately from his statement, Obama said, in his words, “There may be no greater tribute to Steves success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

—The Associated Press

Up here in Boston we are anxiously awaiting spring. We are coming off a very rough winter. Not only was it horribly cold, snowed a lot and seemed to start really early, it doesn’t seem to want to leave. April and May have been unseasonably cold and it has rained most of May. Those of us with yard work to do are anxiously awaiting the great weather so we can get outside and get dirty!

I have been neglecting my blog lately. I have been working on another blog that I was supposed to writing with friends. The problem with working in a group is that one person always does the work while the others ride the coat tails and reap the praise. After finally putting my foot down (and enduring a week of vicious cyber bullying) I finally decided to write the other blog myself and get some creative input from a friend. After finally getting some creative juices flowing I was able to write a bunch of posts for the other blog which ultimately frees up some time for me focus on this blog. The story of my life. It’s good to be back!

Society expects every man and woman to wed, preferably before the age of 30, and to have at least one child (two is perfect). Even though the term “old maid” is no longer politically correct, many still respond with surprise if an older woman remains unhitched. Single women are supposed to date regularly.

I am a single woman. I am single because I choose to be. When I graduated high school my focus was to get into a great college and graduate. I did both and even managed to be a Magna Cum Laude when I did graduate.  After that came my first job.  Over the years I have done my dues moving from entry level positions in small companies to my current position as a executive assitant to the President of a major textbook publisher. I did all this while surviving the ups and downs of my disfunctional relationships with the men who have come and gone in my life.

Being in a loving relationship has its benefits, no doubt about it. Someone to talk to at any given moment, someone to rub your sore shoulders after a hard day’s work, someone to do things with, someone to keep you warm at night, someone to buy you gifts at Christmas time and Valentine’s Day, someone to make you feel special, and someone to whisper “sweet nothings” in your ear.

Looking back at my 20’s and 30’s I realize I spent most of my valuable time sitting at engagement parties, wedding showers, rehearsal dinners, weddings and then the baby showers and so on and so forth. I realize now that I probably spent the equivalent of a small honda buying some stupid gift off a registry for a couple who didn’t even last 5 years. Yes, dare I say. Those couples who were so in love, the ones who belittled me because I was single and “still doing the bar scene” are now divorced. These same women who are now knocking on 40’s door think I am insane for not wanting to spend every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at a college bar getting drunk and hitting on guys who are not much older than their children. So much for the loving relationships huh?

So while these women drop thousands of dollars on divorce lawyers I am spending my money on exotic vacations. The micro mansion on the golf course is now a pawn in the divorce settlement. Ironic how they all threw in my face the fact that I had a “little townhouse” and they had big beautiful house. Now who’s laughing? While you are begging a judge to make your ex pay mortgage, my “cute little townhouse” is an investment property and I am living in the house I have wanted to live in since I was a little girl. Suddenly I am the girl with too many houses.

Oh and I just bought an Audi. Not that its relavent but it is really fun to roll up to a four star restaurant in Back Bay and valet…the Audi! Oh and one more thing. It’s paid for. And since I have never had a husband or a boyfriend to help with car related issues I also negotiated my own sale and walked away with cash still in my pocket. And if I absolutely have to, I can change my own tire. Just saying. I am not afraid to take my car to the mechanic. I also think nothing of hanging out in the repair bay and watching to make sure he does what I am paying him to do.

Friends, family, and coworkers love to set singles up with blind dates (and we all know how satisfying those are). The message couldn’t be clearer. It’s not okay to be alone. Sometimes, singles are excluded from “couples” nights or activities or they’re advised to “bring a friend.” This has been happening to me a lot over the past year. And everytime it happened I would think to myself “what is wrong with me?” “Why can’t I find a guy?” “Why am I being excluded from social outings?” Well the events of the past week (which directly relate to the first line of this paragraph) have made me realize that there is nothing wrong with me. It’s other people. I have finally realized that some people who are in couples are uncomfortable around single people. Never mind that I can pretty much talk about any subject from business, politics, sports, construction, cars and travel you can’t get past the fact that I am alone. And what bothers some people even more is the fact that I am ok with being alone.

Don’t get me wrong. Spending my life alone was never in the plan. But its the way life turned out for me. And I happy for that. Because it means I have never been divorced. I don’t have kids from a broken family. I am not bitter because I was dumped. Being single allows me to live my life exactly that way I want to. Not too many of my friends have ventured out into the Adaman Sea on a speedboat. I don’t think anyone I know has eaten dinner near a rainforest while watching a volcano erupt. No one I know has zip lined, or snorkeled with barricuda while searching for the conch that will end up being your lunch.  Most of the people I have done these amazing things with have been my single friends. The bond between single women is one of the strongest bonds out there. Only another single woman can truly understand the challenges that those of us who don’t have someone in our lives goes through. 

Seldom seen as a choice, loneliness is more often seen as boring, depressing, sad, negative, and something to remain in for only a short period of time or to be altogether avoided if possible.  Single people are seen as bar flies, squandering money, buying outlandish gifts for themselves (to make up for dwindling self-confidence), and engaging in meaningless acts of sex with strangers. Either way, singles lack a positive image.

Being single can be a life-saving, rejuvenating experience. In fact, one can’t truly be successful in a relationship without being single for a time. Being single allows us to do what we want, when we want, and with whom we want without having to answer to anyone. Being single allows us to take full responsibility for paying our bills, cleaning and decorating, cooking our meals, planning our activities, and entertaining ourselves.

It allows us the time to sit in quiet solitude, to run naked around the living room, to belch as loud as we want, and secretly watch shows that no one else would actually ever admit to watching. This is because we have more time on our hands and are not avoiding looking at ourselves by focusing our energies on someone else.

Basically, being single affords each of us the opportunity to discover who we are, what we do and don’t like, how we deal with things, what we want out of life, what our expectations are, what our potentials and limitations are, what energizes and empowers us, and what discourages and disappoints us.