Hi there.
So, I’ve done it. After a few days of contemplation I now have an anonymous blog (and in English!).
The things that have happened in Iceland in the past weeks are just too much to take in. That being said I realize that other normal people all over the world have experienced much bigger catastrophies of all sorts, be it of natural causes, warfare or anything else. However, for a relatively well off modern nation to become suddenly completely bankrupt is pretty drastic to me.
Had we decided, one year ago, not to buy a new flat, hold on to our 8 millions (my in-laws gave us the rest) and rent a flat from someone, I’d probably experience the situation very differently.
Let’s go over a few facts:
We’re relatively well educated people, we’re college graduates and I now also have a Master’s degree (finished last year). We’ve got two lovely children. We’ve got a pretty normal car, it’s 8 years old but works perfectly fine. We don’t spend much money on clothes and we hardly ever travel.
Since we moved into our flat a year ago we still haven’t been able to put proper curtains in all windows, finish the lighting nor furnish the way we’d want to, but that’s not a big deal. We were trying to save for those things, like normal people do.
For the first year after we took the loan we watched our 30% get smaller and smaller and eventually vanish. However, we were aware of the risk of taking such a loan in the beginning. So, no tears were shed, there was no talk of bankruptcy and there were certainly no thoughts of starting an anonymous blog.
What then happened was so crazy that there is no way to consider that “just a part of the risk“.
Now I have been focusing on our particular problem, but of course the whole society is affected. My mom lost between 20% and 30% of her life savings, possibly even more. Most of my friends are having troubles paying there bills. People are losing there jobs, wages are being cut down… need I go on?
What pisses me off the most it the myth that in the past decade we have been blinded by some overwhelming wealth and spending money like crazy on useless things while neglecting our friends and family, particularily our children.
Who came up with that?
Let me just speak for me and my husband, most of the time we’ve been broke as hell, after studying and working part time jobs during the studies to avoid the (evil) study loans. After graduating our older child was already on the way and well, to make a long story short we never came across that overwhelming wealth. The 8 millions we owned appeared mostly out of luck, as prices of properties went up during the time we owned our first flat.
Some people say that we, the home-buyers who took the foreign currency loans, were stupid all along. They say that had we known anything at all about money we’d never have taken it. Well, they might be right, none of our degrees are in economics. But how come I don’t feel guilty about that? How come I just feel like we did all that we could to gather the best information available at the time when we bought our new home?
After all we’ve never sought any financial risk (before). We’re just normal people, doing our best. And sorry about the clichee, but this just isn’t fair.
