<p>Cardinal that explains it, just desserts! Now I want to read the book but no way I’m paying for any more J Crew in any size.</p>
<p>hmom5 – I know several non-working wives who were ablet ot keep house at least while kids in school - but in any event with 4K alimony and CS, I supsect if wife # 1 worked, it was at best part time. </p>
<p>I supsect wife # 2 had the best of the best for furniture. </p>
<p>Agree, I am not buying book (but I admit, may borrow from library)</p>
<p>And I do think when one spouse already has the next one lined up, he or she is in more of a hurry for a divorce, which makes negotating more difficult.</p>
<p>The author of the article is on the Today Show this morning. I can’t watch it but would love to hear a recap if someone here sees it.</p>
<p>I did watch it. He and Patty were on. They said the house was still in danger and I kept waiting for one of them to say–‘unless you buy the book’. Yuck to the whole thing. But I must add, Patty had on a chic suit and looked quite fit!</p>
<p>I’ld like to know if he is up to date on alimony and child support and how they intend on those kids to get through college. I’ld like to know how much Patty’s kids get to see their father. But I guess Patty’s suits are more important.</p>
<p>The video of this morning’s appearance is on the Today show website. Matt Lauer interviewed them.
The author kept harping on this great love of his life, and focusing on how the worst part was this crisis almost destroyed this great love of his life by turning them against each other. He sounded like a dramatic teenage girl! The other thing was he said he felt “cool” when he was able to get nearly a half million dollar mortgage so easily. He used that same phrase in the article. Man, you’re 48 years old with a wife and kids-are you still doing stuff to feel “cool”? How “cool” did you feel when you borrowed $15,000 from your mother? At the end of the interview he said people like him were “enticed” into this mess and shouldn’t be too hard on themselves.</p>
<p>I am wondering if Patty gets child support for the two kids that live with her. It seems Andrews was covering a lot of their expenses (he mentions paying for dental work, school supplies, airline tickets for the kids to visit their father, gapkids clothing, etc.) Since she was a stay at home mom in LA for 20 years, wouldn’t you think her ex makes a good salary? Also CA is a community property state-the author makes it sound like she came into the marriage with no assets other than an Italian lamp and a Biedermeier chair-everything was put on him.</p>
<p>Do you think he has any college savings for the kids? He alluded to his sons being teens.</p>
<p>Feh. The whole situation is distasteful. And this guy’s an idiot – he assumed that Wife #2 would make enough money to maintain the house, but he didn’t bother to check with HER? Doesn’t sound like he learned much from that “bruising” first marriage. I won’t read his book, but if Wife #1 chimes in, I’ll be listening!</p>
<p>When it comes to medical catastrophes, autistic kids, death in the family, employers going belly-up…that’s bad luck, and it can bring any family down. But luck has nothing to do with the fact that these clowns dug themselves a grave and jumped in. I feel sorry for the seven kids involved. It’s serious bad luck being born to parents who favor instant gratification over common sense.</p>
<p>Here’s what Andrews had to say on NPR:</p>
<p>“I really don’t think I need to apologize for my mistakes because the country was in a situation at that moment where the whole financial system was enticing and enabling and encouraging everybody to borrow as much as they could”</p>
<p>And yet some of us – younger than you, and with fewer responsibilities – just said no. You don’t need to apologize to me, but you do need to apologize to your kids.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s one thing if some uneducated elderly person is preyed on by lying, unscrupulous mortgage brokers. It’s quite another if a finance writer for the New York Times, who makes $120 thousand a year in base salary (plus bonuses!) buys a house that he can in no way afford, and then refinances it with a mortgage he doesn’t understand. He knows many people who could have explained it. In five words: You. Can’t. Afford. This. House.</p>
<p>He should be hard on himself. He should feel deeply ashamed.</p>
<p>I wonder how much alimony he’ll have to pay for this marriage.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Right. Accept no responsibility and blame others. Isn’t that the American way?</p>
<p>Katie, as to Patty not bringing any property to the party, I suspect one or both of </p>
<ol>
<li><p>She and her first husband ran through money also.</p></li>
<li><p>Her first husband bargained hard, and said if you want to take kids across country, either we fight out custody or no property. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Frankly, if I were Patty’s first husband I would fight her for every nickle, becuase Patty doesnt seem to care where college money will come from. </p>
<p>Cardinal – I agree with you, many uneducated people were suckered into bad mortgages. People without high school degrees, some who could barely read. It was terrible. Fraudulent appraisals, etc.</p>
<p>This guy is an absolute clown from the circus. He deserves no respect or sympathy. He should be zero’d out and living in an apartment.</p>
<p>Here it is
[TODAYshow.com:</a> Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Ann Curry, Al Roker, Natalie Morales - Video, News, Recipes, Health, Pets](<a href=“http://today.msnbc.msn.com/?dst=ggl|today+show|Today+Show|G_TodayShow2009]TODAYshow.com:”>http://today.msnbc.msn.com/?dst=ggl|today+show|Today+Show|G_TodayShow2009)</p>
<p>Click on Watch the Show
Wait for the commercial
Scroll down until you see “How NYT financial reporter …”</p>
<p>Watching that Today show interview, I wanted to throw things at the couple. They’re so in luhhv that nothing is their fault. Not their fault they left their spouses and families for each other, they were in luhhv! Not their fault they are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, the bankers forced them, forced them I tell you, to take the mortgages! And they were in luhhv.</p>
<p>He would have been better off with a sportscar for his midlife crisis.</p>
<p>I wish I could figure out a scam this good to promote my next book.</p>
<p>he says ‘those of us that got caught in this’. he should have said “those of us that walked WILLINGLY into this with full knowledge of what we were doing”.</p>
<p>MORON.</p>
<p>Sounds like a classic case of ENTITLEMENT to me…they think they deserved to live this way whether they could afford it or not.</p>
<p>Okay, honestly. I do blame the guy, but c’mon, look at that house? Is that worth $500,000? Insane real estate prices are the reason many people went under. In my very modest apartment building in Manhattan, two-bedrooms are going for $4,000 a month rent. It’s just crazy.</p>
<p>A lot of us make mistakes with finances. I am not rolling in sympathy for the writer, but I am not about to be scornful about his mistakes either. Not much sympathy because I know too many other situations that are truly devastating involving death, pain, illness, catastrophe, etc. </p>
<p>We, too, bought too much house. We are in an area where housing costs have spiraled upwards in recent history. It looked like a smart thing to do. We had never bought a home with even a thought of investment in it. It was a place to live, our home, and we would hopefully get close to what we paid for it. This time around, we fell into the trap of thinking about the appreciation and justifying the expense as a forms of savings, investment. </p>
<p>However, we have been saved from the writer’s predicament because we are so risk adverse that we just could not, would not buy beyond what we could afford. So though we are stuck with more house than we currently want, we can still afford it and could sell it without defaulting on the mortgage. We are in the same situation we have always had with our houses. The disappointment comes from the loss of our hopes and expectations of a windfall. But I can tell you that I sure as heck can see how the writer got into his predicament and it makes me shiver a bit, as, yes, but for the grace of risk adversment, goes I.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, that house took all of his discretionary income. All of it, leaving them no money for anything else. How was that ever going to come out well?</p>
<p>I just watched the clip, and the guy is no media babe, that’s for sure. He looks as if he slept in his clothes for a week, or maybe didn’t sleep at all, and he’s hardly glib. And his wife just looked embarrassed.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang, I got the feeling from the article that he expected his wife’s new job to pay all the other bills. And maybe on paper it didn’t seem that implausible.</p>