The American Nightmare: 10 Years After the Financial Crisis | Full Documentary

my biggest fear and the biggest problem I think we have in this country today is that people do not remember how bad things were the the panic the anxiety it was the biggest thing since the Depression in the 1930s [Music] number of homes facing foreclosure has jumped 57% this will be a time of anxiety for Americans worried about their mortgages in their homes economists worry the housing slump will plunge the broader economy into a recession and let's do whatever it takes to keep the promise of America alive in our time we're always looking for that American Dream definitely help limit their nightmare so Rick's business was gangbusters we were in concrete we were the ground breakers you know we got in there we did this lab in the beams so we felt all the new building coming in when somebody new was wanting to build a house we were there ready to go and you know a business was just growing and growing we had people just knocking every day and he was having to turn business away and I was like oh there was a builder that we dealt primarily with and you know he said this market can't sustain forever and then I said well even if even if you know something was to happen we're good we have an outstanding reputation people are gonna stop building homes yeah it didn't work that way I found out I was pregnant and then the market died everything fell apart I was working at miami-dade County Public Schools so to apply for the mortgage with Dhai mortgage I had to provide all of my income back then I probably was close to $36,000 grows upon their review they noticed that I really did not make enough money to qualify for a mortgage loan through DHI or any other mortgage ur and they was like well we can state your income and I was like okay all I saw was keys new house my kids had their own bedroom I am the president and CEO of hope we are a 30 year old not-for-profit organization that fights housing discrimination you know I don't know if they would know that they were targeted because of their race I think the first piece is being an educated consumer and knowing that you're being offered a predatory loan [Music] well if you were black in this area you were three times more likely to get a predatory / discriminatory loan if you were Hispanic four times the city of suing Wells Fargo because they issued discriminatory loans and those discriminatory loans hurt the city I think we have to pursue it I think we have to continue to fight because otherwise the bank's just realized they can do whatever they want to and then they can drag it out and will go away how they were approaching it to many of us that you know you get into this mortgage which will be two years fixed and what they will tell you is before the two years are over try to reek wallah fie for a new loan I think there were some people that got caught up that didn't understand the adjustable mortgages and an adjustable mortgage of family they bought a property for fifteen hundred dollars for the first year or the first there's two years or three years and then in the third year whatever the adjustment came and they now of thirty five hundred dollars I don't think lenders at that time some of them some of the mortgage brokers may not have been explaining it to them properly and I felt sorry for those people so being an HR we had to look at duplicated positions duplicated roles then we had to look by seniority after we already identify positions that we had to let go due to the budget then I got a call and I was ok they called me maybe they want to check my report but no that was the call for me and I was eventually let go so I started using my savings to pay the mortgage and to pay my association fees monthly and as my savings kept depleting the stress came on like oh my gosh how am I gonna make the next month ok the next month ok it was really I mean I didn't have any help no one to talk to and thinking about it like this my mom never owned a home so she didn't understand my grandmother did on the home but it was no mortgage so she didn't understand either so who am I talking to my kids they didn't understand that when they knew is when they came and repossessed my car I was getting ready to take my kids school walked out the house and my car was gone that's when they know mommy something's not right I think one thing that I came away with very quickly was there's not a whole lot of difference between somebody making six figures and somebody down at the bottom end of a pay scale when both of them lose their money and they don't have any savings I was a real estate appraiser I was self-employed and I did that for 13 years we had a very nice lifestyle we were doing very well I mean I was making in the mid six figures hundred thousand range I mean our house was nice and we were doing well but we were not extravagant and we you know had our savings and our emergency fund and stuff and we weren't were not big spenders and so we just we could easily ride out all the other downturns but this one I knew that there was gonna be some kind of correction in the market I didn't realize it was gonna be as big and as as devastating as it was I noticed that the orders for appraisal requests were coming in slower and slower and then when the crash hit it's like things right up overnight the increase in the mortgage payments combined with no way out and losing their jobs all those things would contribute to the inability to make the mortgage payment and if you stopped making your mortgage payments sooner or later the bank's going to want the house back its Michos land and he had an old single white trailer there and he had his two kids and I had mine and we were talking about it we moved all together and one day he and I have and came back with a new car and a new manufactured home to be put on the lot and told the kids we were gonna be moving into this house and measured it out and got everything all set up for this new gorgeous house that we had just purchased it was so exciting and we were building our decks and planning and planning and Christmases were big with big trees and it was it was just great everything was going so well and then I went to Reno Nevada to help my mother who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer I'm an only child so I'm the only one that could go in and take care of her she was going through chemotherapy and radiation and not doing well with either one she finally went into a coma and my mom was gone within three hours and then I had to plan her funeral and and bury my mother and I came back to Georgia and I looked for job after job after job after job and so we were living on one income with two boys it got hard it got really hard we got behind on our mortgage payments and I was in a very bad state of depression and looked as much as my mind would let me and then I would crawl into bed and hide and under the covers until I got a job finally and I used to do the rob Peter to pay Paul thing pay the electricity this month and pay the mortgage next month I didn't know at that time that if you said a partial payment they don't have to accept it they can send it back to you and I just juggled bills for as long as I could and then I missed three mortgage payments [Music] I called the bank and I said okay we're not going to be able to make our mortgage payments what can we do and that's when they replied and said in order for us to help you you need to stop making your mortgage payments and you need to be behind by three months so we followed their advice this was totally against our philosophy and our personalities to just basically well just to stop making you not be responsible for you hold ourselves accountable for what we had what we owed once the three months came we applied for these financial aid programs took them over ten months to come back with an answer and the answer was no so by that time we were a year behind in our payments and there was no recovery were sunk yeah when I finished the house I appraised it for our four hundred and fifty thousand dollars it was worth about a hundred and seventy thousand when we finally got foreclosed on [Music] our mortgage was from refinancing 4300 a month and it was way way way beyond I mean it was crazy we got almost a year from non-payment but you know I had friends that were able to stay in their house for two and a half years without paying mortgage before the bank actually moved forward because there was such an onslaught the things roll in and you say can you give us another month you know what can you do for us can you know help us out we're not to be able to make it this month but I can give you a little we'll catch up you know here you are you paying all this time and you know you missed one month and they're like and we're shutting you down I get it but in the same breath you know it's horrible to have to hear we jump through every single hoop that Wells Fargo threw at us every time Wells Fargo was saying they'd help they were advertising you could get your mortgage amounts reduced if you refinanced they said send us this money and we'll rewrite your loan and make you a lower payment and so Mitch borrowed the money and they cashed the check and they had our money and I had two more weeks to get the rest of the monthly payment together and I was ready to pay it when the deputy showed up on our door and told us they sold the house on the courtroom steps and our next-door neighbor had purchased our house and the first thing I did was called the law office that was supposed to be helping us and she said don't answer the door and I said too late mitch has already gone out to meet him because he was someone Mitch grew up with and he handed Mitch the notice we were told we had 48 hours to get out of the house and it was like cutting a piece of my heart out I think this whole ordeal has you know strengthened me to put on a good facade to let people know that I got this and it's okay and it's really not we've actually lost our home we actually had to classify as homeless we actually had to I had to go to Dane County Public Schools and miss my kids as homeless by doing that they were able to stay in their school we were into the house for just shy of 500,000 you know after non-payment for so long you know they send the notices if you don't pay the threatens you know if you don't pay we're gonna foreclose if you don't pay we're gonna foreclose we've started foreclosures and then when you get served the the paper from whatever sheriff or whoever that comes and brings you the paper that says you have to go to court and then you go to court [Music] [Music] then you have to bring your family and your kids and strollers well I think in the office we all thought it was horrible I mean you know nobody wants to take anything from anybody if you're a decent person you want that person to be whole but you if you're given and responsibility your responsibility is to execute what the law suits and that's what being an administrative office so here we are foreclosing here we have judges that feel the same way we do and we're processing these loans now some of the people I was happy to see them you know but 90% of it you know is you just have to do it that's you know and and the people that got caught in the net that maybe shouldn't have they had ample time some of them to get out if they could but it's just a nasty business and nobody feels good about that and the judge was so understanding and I think we were in and out probably in 15 minutes I think he gave us two months to be out you know you could tell this was not his favorite day either we had to walk away from everything we couldn't pay the mortgage we certainly couldn't pay credit cards you know we couldn't pay electricity we couldn't pay water you know prior to the date of having to leave you know we spent a month in the house almost without electricity those were the worst days so I want people to think about what the economy looks like today compared to just a few years ago ten years ago you know as you do your daily Drive there's there's breweries there's restaurants on every single corner but if it's a recession or if it's just a little bit of a downturn how quickly things will turn badly because a consumer will start to pull back a little bit and when the financial crisis comes and believe me it's coming again we're gonna be in a much worse state than we were in 2008 and that's something that I really urge us all to consider very carefully it seems like everything just you know we never learned from our mistakes we just kind of keep as a society we just kind of keep repeating them over and over again and they just they happen differently but you know it just seems like it's the same cycles keep coming and going oh I see it happening again especially around here building is crazy right now developments popping up everywhere they're just building building building and I and I worry that you know it's the same scenario I'm just happening again ten years later you know and like everybody suddenly forgot that all this happened we have a crazy stock market that's out of control in ways that are dwarfed by what happened just a few years ago in the crash and there's no good explanation for that although we haven't got a bubble in the overall economy we've got some sort of frothy or bubbly sort of housing markets I worry about when I hear people say that they think that the financial system can never have another major crisis because I suspect we'll have another one it just won't be housing [Music] [Music] [Music] I just realized after looking for whatever opportunities you know were available that there weren't any that were viable to support the family but we had been doing the music mission part-time already had all the equipment in place everything was basically ready to go all we had to do was go out and do this I remember sitting our family down at the time we had seven children we now have eight and I said okay I think that I need to do this music ministry full-time I think that's the only viable thing that we can do to make a living right now but I'm not gonna do it on my own and they said yeah let's do it so everybody everybody was on board positive that was February of 2012 you know we've been going ever since for a few years we held on as long as we possibly could but by the end of 2011 it was evident that I can no longer make a living as a real estate appraiser anymore anymore so I had to find a way to make a living and during the concert I tell our story in a very you know truncated way by the way this is my daughter Marissa she is my 19 year old daughter my second oldest she just also happens to be my background singer because she's my daughter I don't have to pay her so that's nice it gives other people just the chance to be part of what we're doing and a lot of people have told us that they love hearing about our story and they're just amazed at what we do it took meeting other people across the country that went through the same thing for me to finally realize that it wasn't just me [Music] beautiful [Music] [Applause] [Music] my husband called here is the older sister and he's like I don't know what we're gonna do we're gonna be living in her you know in my car and his truck and she said hang on and she called another sister and that sister offered us here and so here we are seven years later I'm gonna go buy paint and try to make it make it real make I have to accept this is where I live it's are not where I would choose [Music] you know we bounced around we moved a lot and right before we had moved back in with my mom I decided that you know something had to change so I went back to school Rick feared that you know it was gonna take too much but the income that we had I was able to qualify for a lot of assistance for school so essentially my school was paid I didn't have to pay for school I knew I wanted to get health care because it would bring stability eventually there would be some sort of you know job that wasn't gonna go anywhere but let's say it was to two years officially as a recession but the unemployment rate stayed quite high for another three or four years and certainly there was the the remains of a lot of financial wreckage from people who had gone into debt and and still owed an awful lot more money than they could earn we've talked about a lot of things since then losing the house we've talked about bankruptcy about that that might give us a fresh start I have read and talked to several people who have gone through the bankruptcy who are able to buy a house in a couple of years another one would thought about its divorce because that would both make us head of households and we could file better income taxes but there's so many things that cross your mind when you go through this situation that you would never in a million years thought of never in a million years what I thought of divorcing somebody just to try to help our financial situation would just totally was not how either one of us were raised you just you don't throw in the towel you keep fighting you keep working and you do it you just keep going it was a lot of uncertainty when we actually had to leave like mommy where are we going where are we going I can't take mine such as such no you can't take that in Majorca you have resources you know you have families that are holed in Liberty City you have broken families you have people getting shot kill just you name it this is almost like a forgotten place it was a transition that just happened in Seoul very fast and I don't know if I was prepared enough for let alone my kids as a family we did everything we could to make the kids not feel like there was a giant crisis going on so you know you do every little thing you can to make that money stretch learn how to save the seeds from the plants to grow so that you can read plant them you know see where you can barter the lady down the street would take the vegetable peelings and things for eggs thankfully the place that we rented had some land so I had a huge garden I taught myself how to can did a lot of research started doing jams and jellies just to try it out and then realize that you can pretty much put anything you want up and if you buy a bag of beans so a bag of beans is you know $0.99 and you can make 16 jars of beans that's your saving 15 bucks at the grocery store we just move forward doing the best you can I don't need what I thought I needed so McLean Stevenson is like a regular in here now you know we're building our emergency fund back up and and our you know six-month living fund and all that stuff but yeah there are times when we're putting stuff back at the grocery store and and kids have to wait first stuff they have you know I've got holes in my shoes and you know that sort of thing but that's the way it used to be in America you war stuff out you appreciated what you had and you used it up so we're raising our kids with bat mentality partly through our choice and partly through necessity but somedays it's it's the food gets a little tight that's our biggest expense I sleep in girl done so girl dumb is just the back part of the trailer with the four bunks and there's no room for anything but for people it's small it's small for ten people and a cat and seriously the cat takes up more space than the rest of us it's harder than life in a house to some point but it's it's just an adventure every days there's something new so it's just it feels like there's no such thing as routine anymore we started out wanting to have a routine and trying to do routine but after life kicked in that kind of just all fell apart and now every single day it's just like what's gonna happen next the idea of having another house payment just is not something that I really feel comfortable doing I mean the freedom that we have now with no house payment and and the real freedom that we have just touring around the country that's priceless I you know I don't know how to how to explain that it's not very it's not a tangible thing but it's something that just every time we think about letting go of that it was like yeah you just we love doing what we're doing some people think that buying a house is the best investment you can make and that everybody should own one I think that's too strong a generalization I think what people need to do is they need to figure out they need to have a good household budget they need to know what their fixed costs are outside the house they need to think about the probability of losing a job or suffering diminishing hours they need to think about how much financial cushion they have and recognize that that loan is a big commitment and it's one that doesn't go away if you get sick that it bears some therefore some risk as well as the benefit of living in your own house or the benefit of a longer term capital gain so be careful with the loan we do hope we can buy a house I talked to a realtor and she had her landing guy call us and he said well your your credit score has to be above 510 it's a minimal get our lenders will will do and ours this I've just finally gotten it over 400 it's just taken a long long time Mitch thinks I'm a little nuts but I go through the sale paper every Wednesday like clockwork and write down what we use so that that's what we go and get we don't we don't get extras and I've learned how to pay my bills so that they're paid on time but they spread across three paychecks we struggle but we're making it it'll be all right that's what we keep telling each other they'll be all right yeah we definitely want to buy a house man it's no fun giving your money away to somebody else and I feel like that's all we're doing we're thinking about it you know that's the stage we're at what would it take to get there again to save up the money for down payment whether the credit is good enough at this point and the fear that the recovery for for us is probably slower because the problem was unnaturally larger [Music] what the city started and called her and we started to see businesses open we see how sales now we see families moving in and so and we see the the labor that would be that we put in the added officers the enhancement to parks the business recruitment the economic development we see that stuff starting to pay off but it's just happening slower here it's happening slower here but I'm happy to say we're moving forward I think that if we all continue to do our part Nestle ending institutions the housing counseling agencies and even people educating themselves about you know their credit and credit worthiness and what its value is as well as home ownership I want to believe that it that we can all do better and that we can all succeed and I look forward to watching the advances I do all my kam to teach and expose my kids to financial literacy they both have an account with the credit union they're able to deposit money they can watch their money they know when they go back things with their debit card do you have enough money for that and if not let's put that card up we can't have it save your money I tell them to save their money focus on you know making a better way out don't take the same role that I have I haven't seen any signs of the real-estate bubble bursting on a national scale I think there are some local markets where there might be some price declines particularly if interest rates rise I don't think there's any national problem at this point but there are an awful lot of economists and awful lot of thoughtful commentators looking at the disparity of income distributions the numbers are on income disparity are strikingly large the disparities are and they seem to be getting worse and to the extent that everybody views home ownership as the fulfillment of the American Dream you have a large chunk of the population that will never be able to afford part of the American dream for the last two years I've been raising awareness about what affordable housing really is and that encompasses both rental and homeownership but primarily for rental housing for far too long when people say affordable housing they think of only blacks and people who were poor but in the 21st century that crosses all income and gender lines what I do is try to change that narrative to say hey they just say oh if you go to school you can make it I've done that I've gone to school matter of fact I went for my bachelor's and my masters now what do I have to get a doctorate to be able to live here affordably that makes no sense so is homeownership a major part of the American dream I think it is to be sure and to some extent if you've got the financial security to buy a house and take on those financial commitments that means in some sense that you have made it so it's not the house that means you've made it but it's your ability to finance the house that means you've made it and you've attained part of the American dream you didn't choose to let it take you over and you can choose to essentially be done or you can see down the road and see that you know in five years you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow you don't know what's gonna happen so to give up hope now isn't gonna put you anywhere I get flashbacks of the boom but I'm hoping that we learned something from both sides I'm hoping that home buyers learned don't buy what you can't afford I'm hoping lenders said look where's your 20% I do worry about my finances yes especially living in South Florida who's not everything is overpriced and we're extremely underpaid and I'm actually really scared to go back to homeownership if it's not a if I can't pay that mortgage in one check I don't want it you couldn't even give it to me given the times we're in that's not even realistic I was always an advocate for homeownership I was always looking for that American Dream so I don't want the American Dream because they didn't create that for me that was my dream I have gone from somebody who saw through rose-colored glasses to kind of have a great tent now I'm just no no no you know just step take a step back and reevaluate it and think about it I hope so yes so does Monroe Monroe wants his own house but we do we do hope we can buy a house have some freedom to have a garden and do it the things that we used to do I think many people that do define themselves by their career or finances or big house or car when forced to can can come up with a new identity and I will say that that one takeaway that I found and I use this as I meet with people is that oftentimes they're happier on the other side as an appraiser I mean I I made a lot of money the nice things about the fact that I was able to make a lot of money and we were able to have all this you know a nice lifestyle and everything you realize that that's not what makes you happy the sad thing is is that as an appraiser I was stuck in my office for 16 hours a day and I never saw my family now I am able to be with my family full-time and with and and be able to you know yeah well it does I mean I'm actually less stressed now than I used to be she can attest yes definitely but then you know if you step back and you look at the big picture yeah I think all of us are happier then then when we were in that other lifestyle to me the American Dream isn't so much about having you know this perfect life you know I can be a background singer I can travel the world I can be with my family all the time while I'm doing that and just the fact that we've got that freedom but that's me is that the real American dream [Music] [Music] hi everyone we are in Wisconsin and my mother-in-law is taking a little break from the road and we've got a little family update we are having baby number 9 yes that's not donuts and cheesecake and cheese curds it might be it might be cheese curds I'm finally have my credit score creeping up slowly so that's been really good and helpful it makes me feel a lot better and I'm leaving the options open with the amount of money I get per month I am not sure what I can afford so I've also been kind of looking around to see if I can find a job when I get back and go back to work at least part-time if not full-time I just it's just the way life is 61 and back to work you know I am surviving the aftermath of the foreclosure I am currently looking for safe and decent affordable place to rent but due to my income and the pay disparities that runs rampant in South Florida I just have not been able to find a place to rent I am what your call priced out [Music] hi everyone that's Heather little here since the video my husband and I have really worked hard on taking a step forward to being healthier we have combined lost 110 pounds so that's really exciting to be able to move forward and take time for us to be better [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The Penny Hoarder

Views: 1,480,312

Keywords: The Penny Hoarder, Penny Hoarder, Financial Advice, Personal Finance, housing crisis 2008, us housing crisis, housing market crash, 2008 housing crisis, housing bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, subprime loans, mortgage crisis, the american nightmare, housing crisis, financial crisis

Id: 9F_sxkSHmCo

Length: 42min 2sec (2522 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 20 2018