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I haven’t written too much about this, because I’m trying not to pay attention/ get frustrated.  I just don’t understand how this could happen.  Were there no regulations in place?  How did the underwriters of these loans and insurance policies not see the coming disaster?  How did all these educated, wealthy, supposedly intelligent people miss the warning signs that the U.S. was approaching the brink of economic disaster?  And what does this mean for me?

To be honest, not all that much.  My variable rate student loan rate went from 6.5% to about 3%.  This is good, for obvious reasons.  But it doesn’t matter that much because the bulk of my loans are consolidated at 6.5% with Sallie Mae and this only affects $18,500 of the $100K+.  I’m in the process of reconsolidating everything with Direct Loans.  Interestingly, although you aren’t supposed to be able to consolidate twice, if you have a Direct Loan that wasn’t consolidated previously then you can consolidate that with previously consolidated loans (did I use consolidate enough times in that sentence for you??).  So, I have a $6000 Direct Loan from undergrad that my parents took out in my name (to get lower/subsidized interest rates) and were paying that never got consolidated, and it allows me to do this.  Yay!  This means I can at least lock in the 3% and it will bring my weighted average down.  

I’m not buying a house anytime soon, because of the state of the market and the mortgage crisis, and the fact that the money in the stocks that was going to provide some of the down payment has gone down.  Now, first of all, to be clear, the reason this situation exists is because we have a relative who is going to help with the down payment and live on the property.  This relative owns a house, which has to be sold before we can buy a new house.  This relative also had some of the money for the down payment in stocks.  This wouldn’t have been my choice, but it wasn’t/isn’t technically my money (its kind of confusing).  Fortunately, we hope that the stocks he is in have a reasonable likelihood of recovering soonish (he owns mostly oil and gold, not any Fannie or Freddie or disaster stocks, thank god!).  As far as the mortgage/underwriting standards, my credit is good but I need to establish a longer employment history and pay down my debts.  

I’m not worried about my job, thank heavens.  Neither is fiance.  Our relative is somewhat worried because he works in state government and there’s a budget crisis.  But, he’s very near retirement and pension vesting, so its unlikely they’ll fire him because it would probably look like they did it because his pensions about to vest.

So, basically this whole crisis affects me in that I have to wait a little longer to buy a house, which is probably for the best so we can pay down more debt; and that I’m constantly a bit stressed because of the pervasive stress of those around me; and mostly that I am annoyed that the government is bailing out anyone and everyone in sight, but no one is paying my $100K.