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The Perfect Storm

In my job in Enterprise Risk Management, it’s all about avoiding perfect storms.  In my mind, a perfect storm is when two or more things combine to present a risk to a company that’s so big, the company can barely weather it, if they can at all.  My job is to make sure we have all the information we need to avoid those perfect storms.

So, you think I’d be better at that in my personal life than I, apparently, am.  However, as the saying goes, the cobbler’s children have no shoes.

As you all probably know, we just moved into a much nicer, bigger home.  We felt inspired to do this.  We prayed, we fasted and we tried really hard to make sure we were doing God’s will.  It seemed to make sense and a whole bunch of pieces fell into place when we thought about this.

The home we bought was very popular.  We offered the first day it was for sale and they accepted our offer a few days later.  There were already three or four other people willing to make a better offer than we did.  Which is why we didn’t have time to sell our previous home before buying this one.

When we sold our townhouse (9 months ago), we did the same thing, i.e., bought the new house without selling the current one first.  Heidi was working, too, so we had no problem getting the financing for the down payment or the main mortgage.  Additionally, the housing market was really good, so we knew we could sell our home.

This time, the banks weren’t so happy to loan us money, since Heidi wasn’t working, the new house is more expensive and the credit market was tight.  We took out no less than four loans to buy this new home.  We also used about 90% of our savings.  That means that, including our old home, we now have five loans to pay every month.  Needless to say, keeping my job is paramount.

As you additionally are all aware, the health insurers are having a tough time.  Medical costs are high, which means we pay about 87% of our income to doctors, hospitals and the like.  The other 13% goes to administrative costs, salaries, overhead, etc.  Well, with competition heating up, our income was low this year and so was our profit.  Funny, you wouldn’t think that would be a big deal for a non-profit, but it is.

I guess I shouldn’t say “we” and “our”, since I’m no longer employed there.

That’s right, I found out today that I’ve been laid off.  Additionally, the company can’t afford to give any kind of a package.  So, we have five loans to pay and no savings.  Hopefully, unemployment will help with some of it, but it won’t last long.  And to think I was going to start the Executive MBA program at the UW in September.  Guess I won’t bother applying now.

But wait, what about your food storage?  Heidi has worked hard to build that up, right?  Actually, that’s true.  She has.  Except that as I was moving boxes from the old house yesterday, I noticed that the bottoms of most of the boxes were wet and moldy.  I opened up some of the boxes to find that about half of the food in them had spoiled.  So, we have six months worth of food, approximately, instead of twelve.

The good news is, I’ll have plenty of time for blogging.  You should see anywhere from 10-15 posts per day from me.  That’s good, right?  Right?  Hello?  Anybody there?

I know I’ll find a job again.  I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I can do something.  There’s just not much call for risk managers right now.

I’ve actually gotten a little bit desperate in terms of what I’m going to do.  For details, please highlight the text below.

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HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY!!!

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