A friend of mine just ended a chapter of his life, as his divorce was finalized and the shared house was signed over to his name, with his ex getting her part paid out, and him taking on more debt to do so. Being a couple can be far cheaper than being a single, but breaking up is very expensive.
One of the challenges they faced is the same that I faced when breaking up with my ex. Even though we weren't married, we had been together for six years and had a couple years earlier, bought an apartment together. When we parted ways, I ended up taking on the apartment and the car we shared, both having debt on them. But, while the car just transferred to my name as she didn't want it anyway, we had to decide upon the value of the apartment.
Easier said than done.
As we had only owned it a couple years, there was plenty to still pay on it, and even though we had bought relatively cheap and renovated, the value hadn't increased significantly. Not only this, it was 2009, so the prices were heavily down due to the financial crises. I had it evaluated and of course, so did she, pushed mostly by her father to do so, who undeniably had his daughter's best interest in mind. In fact, her father had someone quote a price without even seeing the apartment, which was 20% above the two other evaluations of people who had gone through it.
That wasn't going to fly.
Ultimately though, while it is obvious that the value would increase in time, it has to be the current market value of the apartment that gets considered. This is especially true since I myself was going to struggle to cover all the expenses on a single income, meaning I might have had to give up the apartment anyway. My ex understood this, and we ended up settling on the price of "sale today" plus a bit extra so that she could get started with a new rental and furniture.
We were on good terms though.
But, as expensive as it was for me at the time considering my situation, in the end it worked out well as I was able to scrimp and save to hold onto the place, pay off the car, and then a handful of years later when I eventually sold, prices had rebounded and the difference was enough to get into a new apartment with my now wife, and renovate. That then allowed us to make some gains there and move into the house we are in now.
Refleshing bones.
A few times in my life I have felt I have had to start from scratch, and it is never easy. A couple of times it has been financial, but a couple other times it has been where life has changed so significantly, I have felt like I have had everything ripped away and all that is left is bone. It isn't true of course, because having no money doesn't mean having nothing, as there are still skills and experience perhaps. Or, moving across the world into an environment with no network, doesn't mean having nothing either, as there are still those skills, experiences and attitudes that can aid refleshing.
My friend is kind of going through this now in some way, even though he is far from starting from scratch. However for him, now that things are finalized with the divorce, it feels like he has a new start and can start building again financially and socially. While hard, perhaps it is also a healthy process to go through in some way, as it might rejuvenate the view of life and also open up new experiences that might not have been considered otherwise.
I think that it also gives the possibility to review preferences based on gained experience and question whether a new path might be better. We change so much over time that it is natural that we would also change our opinions about a lot of things, but our history can also make changing to a new road very difficult.
From a financial perspective, I think that it is also healthy to review like this, because the decisions we made when we were younger generally aren't of the type that are going to make our lives financially better when we are older. We tend not to invest enough and we tend to spend far too much on short-lived experience, rather than lasting growth.
Regardless of what paths we take in life, we are probably all destined to go through periods of adding and losing flesh and having to rebuild in many areas of our life. However, like when considering an old house, no matter what it looks like, we need to ensure that we have good bones to build upon.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
