hi,
I live in a semi-detached house for last 4.5 years. I am not able to afford this house with the expenses for 2 year old twin kids maintenance(wife is not working anymore and also no EI). We have accumulated some debts using the equity of the home and credit cards debt too as my wife took the babies to india for 9 months. It is now going beyond my control. I want to sell the house and clear all the debts as most of the bills are pending. Mortgage is also pending three (biweekly) payments.

My wife is not agreeing. She thinks i want to divorce her so she says she will not sign if tried to sell. My credit score has gone down to 500s because of lot of late payments. She says she does not care about that. But it is affecting my job prospects as now many employers are insisting on credit check.

Is there any other way to sell ? I am not able to convince my wife to even sit and talk abt this.

Can somebody give me some advice or suggestions ?

Any one of the mortgage brokers would be in a position to help you, At the same time you will still need the signature of your wife to renew or renegotiate it.

Compile and make a list of all of the expenses that you currently have.

Like wise make a list of all of all of the assets and equities you have. Don't leave out even a small item.

Then approach any credit counseling services and pay just a very small sum to get their opinion. They will be the best people to help you.

You have the option of renting out your current place of residence. Make it look very clean and presentable. When you do that, make sure that it covers all of the home expenses and you make at least a hundred bucks or more on top of all of the expenses associated with the home. If and when that happens, you can heave a sigh of relief.

Rent it fully furnished. You can take your entertainment units and your telephone out of there. Do not try to move anything else out of it. Then get a small room, "A roof over your head", where you can stay and think how to go about your life. Work your but off at any job that is available to you. That should put a loaf of bread on the table.

Then, you make arrangements to just pay the minimums on the credit cards or get them to write off most of it.

Once you get the breather, you can plan a very frugal life till you get settled down in a nice job that you always wanted and progress slowly in life.

It is very hard to get adjusted to changes. We always say try and do it. You are at a very critical point in your financial health and it needs drastic cutting down and re-adjusting in life till all of thsi blows over.

You are not the only one at cross roads like this there are about a million individuals with and without families at a similar juncture. It is about to get worse or even crash. So, do your best to get out of it.

You came to the right place to seek help and I am sure there will be many more who will join me in helping you.

Freddie.

I will offer the most practical advice, taught by the great teacher called \\\"life\\\".

STEP 1:

To start with you need to write down (and not mentally visualize), the issues that affect you. While doing so, you need to be dispassionate, unemotional, and practical. The truth is that when we get emotional, we can not think clearly.

STEP 2:

Do the math (which you possibly might have done already). On one column, write down to the last cent, every source of income (like salary, employment insurance payment by the government, child tax benefit, rents etc). On the other column write down all expenses to the last penny (starting with mortgage, taxes, groceries etc - this list is not comprehensive). Now you will know if you can afford or can not afford the house, and based on this, you can go to step 3.

STEP 3:

Do an evaluation of where you personally, and where your wife's situation is - career wise. If you have work, see if you can take a second job (like on the weekends). Look into the possibility of your wife taking up employment - if this is not possible, examine the avenues possible for home based employment or business like baby sitting, tutoring or a small catering business. You have to discuss this with your wife in an unemotional setting. In situations like this, there is always the blame game played by both partners - you will need to discuss the issue threadbare, without tempers flying high.

STEP 4:

If there is no possibility of any headway in step 3, please examine if it is worthwhile retaining the house. If you have built some equity, and can get a good broker, sell the house and move to an apartment or basement. If you can not afford a broker, there are several online sites where you can sell the house like \\\"by the owner.com\\\", \\\"private real estate . ca\\\" etc. You might end up spending up to $ 1200 to sell through these sites, plus legal fees (that might cost $ 500 to $ 700).

If selling the house is the only visible solution, you will need to convince your wife that there is no ulterior motive in doing so.

If you wish to rent the house, do a credit check at the expense of the renter, and make sure that you rent it to someone who doesn't smoke and doesn't have pets. I do not want to offend anyone, but my neighbors just spent over 8 grand to renovate their house - they rented their house to someone who had \\\"only one cat\\\". When the renters were forced to leave, the OSPCA and the city (animal control) found at least 2 dozen cats, which had wreaked havoc in the house.

I personally am not a great fan of credit counseling. It lowers your credit further, and could effect your FICO scores further. This is more a case of personal opinion. Of course you should take a second third or even a fourth opinion in this regard.

If you need any advice or further information please do not hesitate to send me a personal message.

My prayers and good wishes that you come up the right and early solution.

Dear Destiny10,

Very sorry to hear about your state of affairs.

I pray to god that all your problems will be solved and you will get back to normalcy within the next few months.

If you believe in Indian astrology, I strongly suggest that you show your kundali to a good astrologer and take his views. Sitting in North America you may think my suggestion is foolish. This is based on pure experience. Recently I had a relative going through a tough time and went through hell since September 2008. He lost his job, sold his car and had to take up a much lower paying job and had all sorts of problems. He consulted a few good jyothish in India and did all the parivarthan poojas and now he has got a good job with a good pay and his life is back to normal.

Everybody goes through suffering and it is called Karma. Some go through it early in their life and some go through it later in life. If we do not suffer then we will not think about god.

I want to salute you for posting this here as many of Desis are in a rat race and first thing they do on landing is chasing the Credit Creation Maya. They get their credit cards and then borrow on it and then they get into a vicious cycle and it hits them only when a mortgage is due and they do not have a job.

Losing a good paying job is something one has to live through and it cannot be narrated. You are going through that and you have the guts to say it on a open forum. While the post just below is that how to buy a 300K to 400 K home in Canada. We all know high paying jobs are going down the drain, the top wages are coming down to 20 bucks an hour while the bottom wage will go upto 10.25 this February 2010.

Many are not realizing the concept of 42 to 45% of Gross Income Amount needed to service a mortgage and get into neck deep without thinking about the consequence. We shall NOT blame the Canadian government because they advertize and inform us about this ratio and also critical insurance. We bend the law by boosting our gross income and going for a higher value home with the sweet dream that it will rise in value and we will flip and make money.

Yes it will make money but after you pay the bank, your mortgage consultant and also your/buyers home realtors, closing cost including your attorney cost and all incidentals. What will you'll be left after that is something no one will tell you when you buy a home.

My suggestion to you is to sit down with your wife and talk in a quiet way about the problem and get a mutually agreeable solution. If required give her a document(notary certified) that you will not divorce her and any profits after paying up the debt will go her and your children.

Cut the loss and run away from credit card, mortgage and other financial instrument..

Lastly do not take it personally but it is due to your karma that you are going through this and you'll come out of it.

Please pray that you will deposit Canadian $1 into Tirupathi Venkateswara Mandir hundi when you sell your home and see the magic. When you pray, pray with your full heart and see what happens.

Please update us about your progress and we want to hear the happy ending maybe next week or six months from now.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

What I wrote earlier, is based on what an unemotional person would offer.
I am somewhat inclined to respond about the astrological advice that Vandemataram has offered. I must add however that matters such as God & astrology are matters of personal opinion - that said, it would also depend on how strong a believer you are in matters concerning \"karma\".

I am a believer in Karma, and consequently astrology. There are conflicts because I know some who believe in destiny, as a consequence of karma (both in the current and previous births - provided that you believe in rebirth). That said, there are others who will argue that if there is such a thing as destiny - you can't avoid what will happen - so why fight it?. On the other hand, astrologers will advice you that should you pray and appease a certain deity, your suffering will disappear.

I believe in astrology, and a supreme creator - God. Speaking from experience, there is no astrologer on the face of the earth that can foretell your future with
100 % accuracy. Varahamira the famous astrologer-mathematician (505-587 AD), and author of Brihadsamhita, himself said that astrology was a science of tendencies, adding \"who else but Brahma the creator can foretell your future with 100 % accuracy\"?

Astrology is an abstract science, in the sense that predictions depend on various factors, and their interpretation. That said, if you were to show your horoscope to more than one astrologer, you will get different views, depending on how well each of them is able to interpret the planetary positions, their strength and the current dasa.

The one thing that I can say with experience is this - Prayer will certainly help you gain strength, but if an astrologer tells you that he can make your suffering vanish simply through some yagna or worship, please take that with a grain of salt. Prayers can diminish the effect of malefic planets, but they won't make the effect go away. Instead it will give you the strength to withstand the trials and tribulations.

If you do know an astrologer who someone can recommend, meet with him or her - stay away from those who charge a high fee. Keep up your spirits and your faith in God. He never lets down his believers - I know this from experience.

Please send me a pm if you need any information, and I will be more than glad to assist or advise.


God bless you!