Credit 911: Secrets and Strategies to Saving Your Financial Life

CHAPTER 8

What If I Lose My Castle?

We’d all like to think that it could never happen to us—foreclosure only happens to other people. It only happens to people who made poor choices or just don’t work hard enough. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. To illustrate this point, I’d like to introduce you to Ryan and Kelly.

A hard-working couple in Southern California with a beautiful home and great jobs, they had purchased their home for $400,000 with a $40,000 down payment in 2006, two years before I met them. They felt very secure in every aspect of their lives, and the future only looked brighter when Ryan was offered a promotion at work. The position Ryan had aspired to and had studied so hard to someday achieve had become available. Ryan and Kelly celebrated this wonderful news and were thrilled at the fact that the new position offered a $50,000 increase in his current salary plus the potential for bonuses. The only downside was that they would be moving their family to Dallas from California to take the position. This was okay, they decided, since the cost of living in Texas was considerably lower, so the higher income would go even further.

After coming to the realization that the transfer was inevitable, they contacted their real estate agent to get their house listed for sale. Both of them felt as though the wind was knocked out of them when the agent provided their comparative market analysis—a tool used to determine how much their home is likely to sell for. The ...