In 1978 my father and I were farming together and my wife just had our first child. We were building a new house for my parents and we were going to move into the old farm house using the new house a partial down payment on my buy-in on the farm. On December 12, my father suffered a massive heart attack and died at 7:00 pm. At 1:00 am on the 13th our neighbor called and said the new house had burned down. Two teenagers had gone on a pyro-rampage and burned about half a dozen properties including our house. The insurance on the house only covered the building materials but none of the labor. I went in the hole about $100k. Friends and neighbors helped with building our dairy herd and dairy facility. With my father gone I had to buy more equipment to handle the crops etc...but things were going o.k. A friend and I started building houses to supplement our incomes. We borrowed money to finance the business.
That gap-toothed kocksucker, jimmy carter, decided to raise the interest rates to slow down the economy. In the spring of '80, I had to borrow $100k to put my crops in. The bank charged me 19% and 6 points loan origination fee on a 1 year chatel loan. Land, cattle and used equipment values dropped like a rock. The farm next to mine sold for $2,500 @ acre in '76 . The spring of '80 it sold for $540 @ acre. The houses we had invested in on speculation had to go to the bank and we realized about $100k loss on both of them. The dairy subsidy kept us afloat but we were going farther in the hole everyday on interest payments. I began selling life insurance to make ends meet.
In the spring of '83 our second daughter was born prematurely. My wife had some severe complications from the birth and had to be in the hospital for a couple weeks. Our health insurance didn't cover "pregnancy and the complications thereof". At the same time our first girl came down with pnemonia and was in ICU for almost a week. My whole family was in the hospital and I came down with pink-eye so they wouldn't let me visit them.
In 1983, I was offered the management position in the largest insurance agency in the area and took it. We liquidated everything but the the home place and a few head of stock cows. We still owed about $1,000,000 to the bank. My banker told me it was time to declare bankruptcy sell out and move to California. The SOB almost had me convinced when he fell down the stairs in his house and broke his neck. I had a friend who worked in another bank who wanted a chance to restructure our loans. He saved us a ton of $ and gave us some good advice on careers. Within seven years we had paid the loan down under $100k. Our daughters both went to good schools and have no student loans.
Today we have a nice house, own some nice rental/investment properties and have a little in the bank.
And, we don't owe anyone anything except frickkin' taxes.
It has been a struggle but God is always good and always faithful.
