Welcome to the new Great Depression, folks! I've been hearing my Granpa talk a lot about how when times are tough, you better learn to like beans, just like he had when he was a boy in the Depression. An inveterate saver, he told his kids when he dies, "Don't just throw things out" because all grandma's old Maeve Binchys and his old workclothes probably have dollar bills stuck in them, Depression-style. He talks a lot about responsibility and saving and knowing the difference between a want and a need anyway, but age and paranoia are making him say this even more (although he did just get an enormous flat screen TV, so he can watch Fox News with 65 percent more visible spittle, I assume). So in the style of that earful, I present to you, "The upcoming Depression and advice." Alternate title: "How Space Cadet lost her damn mind. (Did she mention her bank failed?)"

LW#1:

I'm very sorry for you. Clearly you are a football widow, and so is Prudie, and she just wants the suffering she bears to spread, otherwise she'd say go ahead and put your foot down.

Now, when I read your problem, what comes to mind is that your husband -- of 10 long years -- and you believe that if you put your foot down for a long weekend together that 1) you are being the "bad guy" which will allow him 2) to hold it against you which means you 3) will do the "free butterfly" thing and 4) knowing that he's not coming back to you will be frustrated and sad and feel ignored.

This does not sound happy to me. And neither does P's suggestion that you do the butterfly thing with a happy heart and adjust to his schedule. Eff that noise.

The fact is, every weekend for the next pack of months will be football time. And he apparently will choose the TV and the pigskin over you each and every time. And your anniversary comes in football season, so it's not like this is a one-time thing. If you give him all these weekends, I really don't think it's unfair for him to spend his anniversary with you without regrets, with all the joy he feels for your relationship blossoming in his heart.

You sound like a woman who has a relationship that is bordering on wife/mother to manchild. You need to reconnect as equals and adults, and badly. Your husband may want the football, but he needs his marriage. Maybe it's the impending new Great Depression that's getting me, but his football is a desire and the relationship you have between you is far, far more important, as you will need to cling to each other in the oncoming tough times.

In this sense, he can give up the bloody football for a weekend to make you feel connected and special. And maybe you should get therapy so you don't act like motherwife and manchild while you can still afford it. In the upcoming Depression, he will have to step up, and it might be easier to learn to do that when it's just a matter of giving up a football weekend for you instead of for fruit trampin'.

LW#2:

There are other people in that neighborhood, you know. Become *their* friends. Look, the Depression is coming and you will need to know how to grow and can your own vegetables, and maybe raise some chickens. Neighbors with differently-shaded yards can share different veggies. You need neighbors. My Pa says everyone pulled together in his tiny community to survive, and although it wasn't easy, the farming helped tremendously. Non-family members watching kids is bad? Eff that noise. Letting kids run wild during the school year and making them work each summer (all with non-family members) worked fine for my Pa and every other Depression-era person I've ever met.

If you are working your own land and canning your own food (can you put in some fruit trees? Apples are great) your elderly neighbors can hardly fault you for wasting your time or being methheads. Also, if you are killing chickens with a gun, they probably won't bug you anymore anyway.

LW#3:

How has he not seen your driver's license yet? This is weird. You know, since the Depression is coming, you will have to probably tell each other lots of little lies: "I thought it would be cute to have short hair," you say, while holding back tears and the $17 selling that hair got you. He'll probably pretend he's still employed as a monkey trainer, but really he's turned to copper wire theft. You'll both pose as the owners of that bank-repossessed house, and steal water from the neighbors' garden hoses in the dead of night because you have no utilities. You'll tell him you got that block of government cheese at the grocery store, but you know you went to the food bank.

In the spirit of the oncoming Depression, let him know how old you are and that this is the last lie you'll ever tell him about -- you now know that the hard times to come mean your fantasy of erasing wasted time, of being a hard-partying good-time flapper are at an end, and the new fantasy you will build is that times are not as hard as they are. That your lies will now make you a stronger couple in your fantasy and real life.

LW#4:

You "overdosed" on painkillers? Please, you didn't end up in the ER, you just wanted to go home at 2:30 a.m. Drama will not play in the upcoming Depression.

If you think partying in some place with plenty of booze, music and hot people is a trial, the upcoming Depression will not be for you. My Pa would gladly have passed the time listening to jazz and drinking moonshine with his buddies, particularly after a dental operation (which, in his time, meant pliers and no painkillers at all). I hope you enjoyed what could be your last vacation of booze and pills, considering the skyrocketing price of fuel, air travel and plummeting employment index.

It sounds like you are growing apart from your roommate, which is normal for a young person. I, too, settled down substantially the minute I turned 25. But you need to have plenty of people around you to get through hard times as per my previous letter. Find those people. Perhaps instead of boozing your way through the night, you will connect through stealing apples from LW#2's fruit trees (you would not believe how many Depression Era people I know have stolen fruit as a kid and laugh about it now, even as they want to lock up juveniles for, say, walking across their yard).

Well, this has been the Depression Edition of FMO. I hope you appreciated it, but that's not completely necessary. Because when the Depression hits, I am told you will automatically become inordinately grateful for anything and everything. Even if you are a teenager.

....I knew this was coming 8 years ago, and foretold it here, when GWB & CO was running for office the first time. If he had gotten through the Republican's privatization of social security, then you'd see something more akin to the real Depression. Can you imagine these propellerheads handing over the trillions cash in the social security fund to wall street and investment co CEO's? Maybe that was GWB's bailout plan, way back when. Had that happened, you'd wish for the great Depression, as the country would be in an open civil war. I do believe the seniors would hunt Republicans down the street with hatchets.

I don't suppose you watch South Park intersurfa? They had one where the seniors were hunting down somebody (DMV maybe?). It was great :)

....will do try it again, if he gets in, and he's a more dangerous man then GWB. if the McCain gets a Republican congress, South Park will become reality. The hunchback already said, everything gets frozen, except military and hero benefits, and entitlement (although social security is the only successful insurance plan run by the government) will get hard choices, and 'friends' we already know what those are. After your mother, and your amour's mother moves in with you, and you have to cough up 12k a year to send your kid to high school, and you pay 15k in health insurance after getting a 5k tax voucher, you too will hunt Repulbicans on the mean streets. I kid you not.

My condolences on your bank. Hubby and I have discussed that if we ever had more money than is federally insured (think "lottery"), we'd spread it around several institutions to make sure each deposit was fully insured.

Maybe LW#1 can use LW#4 as a means of shutting up the neighbor. "Yeah, I know Ineglect her by letting her play in her own, fenced in back yard without constant supervision, but I know a woman whose parents let her get to adulthood without seeing if her wisdom teeth neede to be removed, and without teaching her than pills and drugs don't mix." Assuming of course, that there is some sort of fence out back. Maybe the couple had a grandchild kidnapped from his backyard while their kid was on a bender.

Ok, somebody else already got shoved over to the politics forum today.... I'm right with you with being afraid of what McCain will do but it doesn't have to permeate everything else.

in the first paragraph anyway. i dont care too much for the political forums, too many hotheads. Not like me, ahem.

At least when you are a hothead, it's usually about some pretty interesting topics ;)

Not like these... where there isn't much we can do other than our civic duty and then pray for the best.

My favorite part about my bank going under (the only "good" part) was my brokerage guy, who absolutely refuses to let me handle my Roth the way I want (why haven't I gone somewhere else now? I really don't have an excuse) and patronizes me as if I were a naif without a clue, told me he'd been investing heavily in the bank's stock because "it was too big to fail" and it was totally on solid ground. Ha ha. That stock is worthless now. Who is the chump? As for the lady with the crazy neighbors, a fence could provide a nice frame to grow beans and peas on. Also, she needs to learn to give the "are you out of your mind" look, then do the walkaway. The Depression is coming, and the weak will be the first to go. Look at poor Grannie Joad.

Fantastic post!

I can tell my bank is in trouble, they pulled the credit my husband had (no warning, just BOOM, "we no longer think you are credit worthy) and are now suddenly pressuring us to sell our house and repay the mortgage. We haven't missed a payment or even been late, but they keep telling us how much they would just *hate* to foreclose.

Doesn't it cost more to foreclose than to accept late or low payments?

I think they're just trying to scare us so that they can get as much money back as possible before the upcoming collapse. Which is coming. I have no doubts.

Meanwhile, not only have I come to love beans, I am all about the cabbage soup. I'll bet that when the Depression comes, I'll be the first on the block down in the park, clubbing bunnies (no guns in Denmark). Perhaps I'll knock a hole in the ceiling so I can have a garden (no yard).

I don't think they legally CAN foreclose, if you've kept up your end of the contract. Might be worth a consultation fee to a lawyer.

When pressed, the bank admitted that as long as we kept up the payments they couldn't do anything. But every conversation my husband has had with the bank lately has ended with, "well, we sure hope that you'll realize the precariousness of the situation and that you'll see why you should sell, we'd hate to have to take your home!"

It's like insurance salesmen telling you about dark highways and tired truckers. They want us to sell, they can't force us, but they can certainly try to scare us into it. I'm scared! I'd sell if I could just so I didn't have to have a mortgage! But we're a little stuck in terms of property values in the area.

Admittedly, we are on the edge. The next few months might make or break us, but in this housing market we would be VERY screwed if we sold (we'd pay off the bills, not have enough to buy anything else, and I highly doubt the bank is feeling like giving us a loan or a mortgage at the moment).

So it's hold on tight, pray to who/whatever you have faith in, keep treading water, this too shall pass, yadda yadda yadda.

Sounds like the people in the best position right now are landlords of free and clear rental properties. If people lose their homes and can't get a new loan, it'll be a sellers market for leases or even month-to-months.

They may not even be sure they are still holding your mortgage. I've been reading that there are scads of homeowners out there who are (riskily) challenging their banks to prove they own their mortgages. Seems that all the slicing and dicing of mortagages to package them into commodities has made ownership ... somewhat unclear in some cases.

Love me some beets and potatoes -- beans? Well, I'm working on them. Problem is, they work me over a bit. I'm also trying to get my be-yarded SO to give up the grass he so incessantly mows for a Victory Garden.

Clubbing bunnies indeed! Times are too tough for squeamishness.

Huh. All our lender does is send us notices trying to convince us that we want to take a loan that's worse than the one we have. I'd be irritated if they starting ringing us up.