Shackleton

When I started working for the federal government in 2008, there was this new program that the Bush administration had rolled out called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Under the program, if you worked for a governmental or non-profit organization for ten years and made all your regular payments, your federal student loans would be forgiven. Erased. Gone. Tax-free benefit.

At the time, I had about $110,000 in student loan debt thanks to the bait-and-switch of the University of Akron School of Law and, well, the high cost of higher learning anyway. This seemed like the thing. I checked the rules--the program required that you are making regular, standard payments or that you were enrolled in an income-based repayment plan. At the time, Carly and I had a pretty low communal income, so I qualified for a lower payment under the income-based plans. I enrolled, and off we went.

The first year went fine. Made payments, did my job for USCIS. The second year, magically, my payments spiked--almost doubled. I called to inquire. There had been some rules changes. Now, your income-based plans are based on your total household income. I argued, that was absurd! My wife only made a little more than I did, and she had crippling student loans also. So her payments would double, also. How can we fix that? Answer: file our taxes married-but-separate. This felt wrong. People do that when they're getting divorced, or one of them is being audited. So we took the risk, filed our taxes goofy, and payments went back to tolerable levels.

The following year, there were rules changes again--this time, income-based repayments were still pegged to your total income, but would be offset by your spouse's student loan debts, also. Great! Back to filing jointly.

Three more years pass and I finally get about to being admitted to the Ohio Bar. I wanted to maybe make good on that legal education and got certified so I could apply for some lawyer jobs. Part of the new lawyer training required by the state of Ohio included a seminar on financial management. I chose the one about repaying student loans--I figured, why not? Should be an easy one and maybe I will learn something. I did.

Under recent rule changes (around 2012), certain types of loan programs that had been discontinued (and I don't know the reasons) were not eligible for loan forgiveness. And I had one of those loan programs. Brilliant... five years of payments out the window. How to fix it? Re-consolidate the loans. Get on the proper payment program.

I re-consolidated and asked a lot of questions. Will this payment plan be eligible? Is this the correct kind of loan? Yes, yes, yes. At the time, one of the income-based payment plans was the extended loan term--25  years instead of 10 years. We had just had the Wolf, and Carly was out of work, so our income was low enough to qualify for that extended plan. We both rejiggered our loans and thought that was great.

Then, last year, in hopes of making federal loans easier to pay back for everybody, Congress passed an amendment to the program to allow any person to get an extended loan term, regardless of income. So this payment plan was no longer income-based. Which means that I was no longer in the loan forgiveness program. Another three years down the tubes.

I called my loan servicer and asked what I could do. Under the current rules, with my income, I would have to pay at least double my current payment in order to qualify for the loan forgiveness program. And that payment would be higher than if I was under a standard, ten-year payment program. So, effectively, they're telling me I should be paying off my loans before the term is due, based on my income.

Essentially, I have been hedged out of the program. I've been working in the government for almost 8 years and one of the incentives I had to start is just... gone. Sure, I have a great job. I get paid plenty. I have little to complain about. But I feel cheated. Maybe I could have gone over to the private sector a long time ago, gotten more significant experience, started working on things that I really want to do instead of the things I've kind of fallen into. It's disheartening at a time when I don't need to be disheartened.

The House in the Woods, Part 2.

Wow. So... four months later. To resume:

We called our realtor and asked her to set up showings of these three or four houses we hadn't had the chance to look at. They had all been on the market for a while and hadn't had open houses during the time we were looking. One of them she ruled out immediately--the house had a fire in recent history and regardless of how well it might have been repaired, "you never know." Another one she ruled out because it had an offer pending, but also some cryptic things where she didn't get a good feeling about it. The other two were scheduled, and just about all of them were in the same general area as COCKTAIL PARTY HOUSE.

The first one we saw was THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS. It was listed by a solo practitioner realtor and owned by an arcane real estate company based in Potomac, MD (Potomac is the venue for the latest "Real Housewives" franchise). The house itself was in great shape. Amazing, actually. Built in the 70's on a quiet road in a wooded neighborhood. The property hadn't been tended well (grass was nonexistent, weeds and strange growths taking over the lot, bees had eaten a flower box to bits) but it had hallmarks of a solid flip. The kitchen and appliances were all brand new. The floors and bathrooms had been replaced. There were deer in the yard. We saw a fox run through when we were hanging out. It was... pleasant.

It felt right. It felt like an empty space we could make our own. We could carve paths out of the wild backyard, fix some windows, and plant new stuff in the yard. It seemed like a place were the Wolf could have adventures; where we could sip tea on the porch; where we could live for a long, long time.

We set off to the last property--a staid old brick thing in another sleepy neighborhood which resembled a WANNABE FARMHOUSE. It was built in the 50s and had the hallmarks of catering to a builder who grew up in a farmhouse. The rooms were square and small. Showers were apparently a luxury, because the two we found resembled those you might imagine on a Cold War-era submarine. Attempts to update the kitchen were haphazard, unplanned, and appeared to be fixes for ancient problems. It was a good, solid house with a ton of rooms. The realtor said, "this is a lot of house... that needs updating." She frowned at the price (which was below market), and said that it should come down quite a bit before it will sell, but in any case, before we should buy it. We were equally skeptical. It was another one that felt like someone else's house. It wasn't ours.

While the realtor locked up the WANNABE FARMHOUSE, we had a quick conference. Carly and I knew, it was THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS. By the time the realtor met us by the car, we had agreed that we'd put in an offer on THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS. We set a time in the next few days to sign documents and plan out the rest of it.

The next month was a crazy back and forth with the owners. Details aside, they just didn't want to negotiate with us. They stonewalled on the most reasonable things, and argued with us over the quality of electrical upgrades (including loose outlets, exposed wiring, light fixtures just kind of sitting, loose, on top of insulation, never installed). It came down to the day of closing, where the seller showed us photos his workers emailed to him during the meeting.

Turns out that the company doing the flipping has two owners who fundamentally disagree on how to go about flips. One wants to do enough work and sell as is. The other wants to make sure the buyers are happy, but not lose money on a sale. In the end, the latter partner explained that they did lose some money on this sale, but it was acceptable. He seemed like a nice businessman who really took on the American Dream--an Indian immigrant who sold his IT business to Amazon logistics or something and decided to buy nicer jackets and trade real estate for fun and profit. Once we put a face on him, the tension of the negotiations faded.

Moving in took a few weeks. We had to break our lease, get movers, get radon inspections (and mitigation), a few other odds and ends. After a few months, we replaced those awful old aluminum windows. We've purchased so much new furniture. We've scraped up so many leaves and sticks. We've cut down trees and branches. I have all the yard tools I need now, including a chainsaw (more on that later). We've settled into a great house and can't wait to die here.