The Sad Case Of A Missing Neighbor

While my wife was walking The Golden last night, she ran into "Mrs Mozart", a younger-ish mother of one. While we are not close to the Mozart's, we do speak with them most every time we see them in the yard. They are a young couple from Corpus Christi who have been in the 'hood for about 10 years.

The house beside the Mozart's recently went up for sale and a new family ( rather large one at that) moved in. My wife asked Mrs. Mozart if she had met the new family and she said that she had, but they were not very friendly. Nothing more was said about them. My wife then asked where the old family (a couple with a large dog) moved to and that is when she heard a sad story.

The husband and wife took a two week vacation together. Everything seemed normal. When they returned she was scheduled to go on a week long business trip. When she got back, she found that her husband had moved out...taking a large percentage of their belongings with him. She had no idea anything was wrong and since she could not afford to keep the house one her (pretty good) salary (which seems to be a big problem today...too much debt per household), she was forced to sell. The Realtor was the sister of the woman who was left so the house was able to be sold very quickly. Houses in our neighbor hood tend to sit a little while...that house has been for sale a few times and at one point was on the market for two years before it sold.

I was kinda surprised that the man left his wife and especially since she said she had no idea it was coming. They just invested a ton of money on a new cedar fence and landscaping shortly before he left, which was a couple of months ago.

As my wife was talking to Mrs. Mozart, she found out Mr Mozart and "Dan" who lives across the street both got laid off recently. Both are in the Telecoms industry. Mr. Mozart has stated he wants to go back to Corpus Christi but Dan wants to stay in the area. Jobs are not hard to find, but ones that pay as well as the ones that many of of us are entrenched are rare. Most people I talk to take a 10-25% hit in pay when they lose their jobs. With that in mind, I need to get us out of debt as soon as I can.