How we got here, Part 3

When we last left this story, I told you that we felt we had no choice but to walk away from our condo. I wasn’t crazy about this idea at first, but after I thought about it for a few months, I realized that it was really what had to be done. We can’t continue to live here for another decade, and even if we could fit, I don’t know how I’d feel about continuing to throw our money away on an investment that has lost so much of its value. That’s neither here nor there though, because we just can’t stay.

So now what? Well, we stop paying our mortgage. The lender would foreclose on us…but wait, there’s no guarantee they’d leave us alone. In fact, in Virginia, they have five years to come after you for the balance that you owe them (in our case, this would be something $115K-$120K, maybe more depending on how much they could sell it for). Well, we can’t have that. My husband makes more than he did when we bought the place, but it’s still not a ton. He fully expects that within five years, though, that he will have moved on to a much more lucrative career, and we could actually have that much cash sitting around for the lender to take. That’s not a chance we were willing to take, so bankruptcy is the final step.