Nobody said that life is always fair…

In a conversation with a potential client about what to do with an upside-down home the owner said, “It’s not fair. We’ve worked our butts off to get where we are and we’re trying to do the right thing, but I can’t afford to make up the difference between what I paid for this place 2 years ago and what it worth now.” In the back of my mind a little voice was saying, “Well Virginia, no one ever said that life is fair.” Of course, I stifled the urge to let that little voice out and lent a sympathetic ear; however, let’s be honest here – life is not always fair. At least it’s not fair from our own perspectives.

In the case above, life is indeed fair. This owner has lost no more value than any other owner in the same area, so one could say that they lost their “fair” share. Life did not single this owner and this house out to be the only house in the neighborhood to lose value. That seems fair. Our state has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, which is unfortunate and is contributing to our houses woes, but could hardly be called unfair.

It seems to me that claiming that the circumstances one finds themselves in is unfair is just another form of denial. It is searching for some way not to have to take responsibility for the series of decisions that were made a while back that led up to this moment. Sure, you may have a case that you were mislead by some slick-talking mortgage person into refinancing and taking the equity out of the place to buy something else or pay off another debt. You can say that when you bought they told you that real estate always goes up in value and that you believed them. I guess we all believed that. Unfortunate? Yes. Unfair? Not really, since we all were of that same belief and, yet, we all didn’t make the same decisions.

So what are these people who have been “unfairly” put upon by life to do? They could just walk away from the homes that they can’t afford to sell, but that would devastate their credit ratings, which, of course, most believe would be (can you guess it?) “unfair.” After all, they argue, they just did what everyone else was doing and followed the advice that everyone was giving them at the time. I recall some advice my mother used with me as I grew up – something about “Would I jump off a roof just because everyone else did it?” I’d use that with these people, but that might be unfair of me.

Often it comes down to this: You have a hand that life has dealt to you. You can fold it and take the consequences of that or you can try to play it out and see if you can somehow make a winning hand out of it. To continue the poker analogy, you’re all in and you’ve seen the (market) flop. So far you’re drawing dead, but there’s still the turn card and the river card to go. The bank is showing a pair of aces but you have a chance at an inside straight. It’s a horserace and you’ve at least got live cards. Life’s not always fair – sometimes it’s a gamble, but living it is always better than the alternative.