Win a little, lose a lot

Times were not always so rough, after several years of struggle in our twenties and thirties, we sold our first company for a million dollars.  We pocketed some cash and purchased a vacation home in Las Vegas (aka a house for my in-laws to live in).   

This is when we learned the first few lessons of starting a company.  One: always negotiate a release and non-compete.  This, we did not do and subsequently my husband was let go from the company he started, but was prohibited from working in the field for over a year.  Luckily we were able to continue living our lifestyle for a couple of years, but then the housing market crash came and our son was going to enter kindergarten.   

Living in San Francisco was fun and exiting as a childless couple, a little challenging after having a baby, and nearly impossible when we found out a second was on the way.  Driving around 20 minutes for a parking space at the supermarket got a little old when you ended up parking two blocks away with two kids in tow.  So with the mortgage looming and elementary school beckoning, we put our condo up for sale and moved to the suburbs.  This seemed like a great idea.  I knew that we would be facing a loss on the condo, but it seemed worth it because we would park it in the rental for a year or two and purchase a home …   

This turned out to be the worst idea ever.  The housing crisis got worse by the minute, and we sold our million dollar condo at an extreme loss, it was either that or go into foreclosure, but because of our little windfall, we would not have qualified for it.  So one year of roughing it in a rental turned into six years and counting.  Of course, in between the market recovered and skyrocketed into a stratosphere that has become untouchable for us to obtain.  Houses we made bids on five years ago, are now practically double.  In fact the shack that we are living in, we did make an offer on, for 1.4 million dollars.  1.4 million dollars with the idea of tearing it down and doing a million dollar remodel.  Our bid was rejected by the owner, citing tax write off reasons.  She couldn’t afford to by another house to write the taxes off.  The irony.