Tucker and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month
Ok, I am using a bit of hyperbole there! But July has been a mish-mash of both good and bad. But it started terribly.
On July 1st – Canada Day – as our backyard was filling up with friends and neighbours, Mr. Tucker was pulled into a work call: they were laying off 50% of the company, effective immediately. I won’t bury the lede here: Mr. Tucker was not one of the people they let go. However, he was the only one left on his team. Most teams at his company are down to one, maybe two people. So his workload would be increasing exponentially – just as he was leaving on two weeks of vacation. It was absolute chaos at his company and it was absolute chaos at home as we speculated about what the future would hold. Of course, there are a ton of rumours flying around about the profitability of the company and whether or not there are more cuts to come (or worse, bankruptcy). This is very common when major changes occur at an organization and it’s hard to figure out what is speculation and rumour and what is the truth.
As I mentioned in The End Game all would be well if the condo had sold. It hasn’t. In fact, only 10 condos have sold in the area since January. Truly abysmal. Without the condo selling, we can’t afford to have Mr. Tucker retire so at least he kept his job. However, that puts us in the position of now preparing for the worst-case scenario, which is what we are doing. Currently on the agenda:
Reduce the interest rate on the mortgage: the mortgage is small but I took an open mortgage a> in an attempt to not get penalized should we sell and need to break it; and b> to wait for the prime rate to go down. The latter seems a bit silly but I knew that there was a chance that if the condo didn’t sell that we would need to rent the condo instead. Not ideal, but it was an option. So I did the math and figured that if the condo sold within six months of my renewal in June, the open mortgage would be less than the penalty I’d have to pay to break the mortgage. However, if we decided to rent the condo, we would renegotiate the mortgage at a lower rate. Considering the prime rate went down to 4.5% from 5%, it will be lower.
Rent it: we are looking to perhaps rent to a student or someone else who would like a shorter-term rental (but above 6 months, as per the condo rules).
Stuff more money into savings: the plan is to have at least 6 months of condo expenses in the bank in case something does go wrong and Mr. Tucker ends up losing his job. It would give us some more breathing room.
It feels like we just settled into spending more money and treating ourselves a little more when this all went down! Whomp, whomp or Sad Trombone is appropriate here. Still, while the news is bad we still have a lot to be grateful for: we can pay our bills, keep a roof over our heads, and food in our bellies. We even have money for extras – not as much as we once did – but definitely extras. We are in a far better position than a lot of people and I am grateful for that. We spent a lot of time building up our savings and paying down our house in case something like this would happen and while it hasn’t happened yet, it’s good to know that most of the worst crises could be averted.
I am genuinely upset for Mr. Tucker who was looking forward to a Staycation of taking up oil painting again, swimming in the pool with a few beers and making music. Instead, he spent a lot of his time ruminating about how it all went down, chatting with colleagues and people who were laid off and generally speculating about the future. It was such crap. So he didn’t even get to really relax on his vacation (that’s twice this year!).
In the end, we came out the other side relatively unscathed. After the dust cleared and we got out of PANIC mode, we realized that we would have been fine even if he had been laid off. Sure, the condo scenario sucks but it showed me that there was a small hole in our planning and that we do need a wee bit more savings to cover a loss for the condo. Because we anticipated that it would be already sold by now, we hadn’t expected to carry it this long and so we didn’t plan for it. But we should have! So now we plan a bit better and move forward. As Robbie Burns most famously said, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley” (The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry).