My Personal Credit Crisis

My stomach churning, I reached Patty on her cellphone as she was running errands. “We are out of money,” I snapped, skipping over any warm-up chat.

“What do you mean, we’re out of money?” she asked in bewilderment.

“I mean, I just checked my bank account, and we are out of money,” I repeated, my voice rising in panic. “We can’t buy anything!” - NYT

SHOOT: A cautionary tale for those that are outrunning reality. Hope this doesn't come too late.

clipped from www.nytimes.com As I walked out of the settlement office with my loan papers, I couldn’t shake the sense of having just done something bad . . . but also kind of cool. I had just come up with almost a half-million dollars, and I had barely lifted a finger. It had been so easy and fast. Almost fun. I couldn’t help feeling like a high roller, a sophisticated player who could lay his hands on big money at a moment’s notice. Despite my nagging anxiety about the gamble that Patty and I were taking, I had whipped through the pile of loan documents in less than 45 minutes. The icy slap of reality hit me two weeks after New Year’s Day in January 2005. We had been living in our new house for five months. I walked out of The Times’s Washington bureau, several blocks from the White House, and crossed Farragut Square to my bank. I had a bad feeling about what the A.T.M. would reveal about my balance, but I was shocked when I looked at the receipt: $196. We were broke.