Chapter 137

Okay…Let’s now talk about the bigger number. When the initial sum of $480,000 disappeared into the bitcoin scam, that was the beginning of the entire fiasco down the horrible road of financial devastation. 

I think what really happened was that my mom essentially went into a state of denial. I’m not sure she believed the lie that the Professor of Professors was telling. What are the chances that the site went dead right when her money disappeared? Was this blind optimism? Or just a coping mechanism? Does it matter? Not really…The most important fact there? No one was privy to what was going on and therefore, no one was going to convince her of the severity in this situation. She never told anyone a thing.

This secrecy she kept to herself just stayed consistent after that. She proceeded to not tell anyone about anything involving the police nor the Chinese fake police later on as more money was lost. Towards the very end, only when there were no strings left to pull did she finally tell the truth and even then, the truth was pried out of her. 

I went about my days thinking my mom and I had made it. We were finally without wanting. Anything we could want, we had. But this was an illusion. In my mom’s attempt to not shame herself by withholding information about her finances, she created a growing problem. A problem that gets worse as you ignore it and yet, in her shame, she refused to address it properly.

She probably would have never stopped this series of self-destructive financial stupidity had it not been for T1, my cousin, who very fortunately, was not an idiot. 

My family had 3 of us in my generation. That is to say, I had two cousins, T2 and T1. I don’t mention them much because we all live really far apart and don’t really keep in touch, though if we look back far enough, they do get an occasional mention in the first chapters of the blog.

T1 was the oldest of the three of us and he worked as an engineer. In reference to me, he was 7 years older and was the son of my uncle and his first wife, who passed away from childbirth complications. Even when he was young, T1 was always the most responsible and smartest person around. I always saw him as an adult. He didn’t seem like a kid like me or T2. 

When we immigrated to Canada, T1 struggled but never really asked for help from anyone in the family. He just tanked it through and carved his own path forwards. Eventually, he made it through and graduated with an engineering degree from the University of British Columbia. From there, he got a cozy job in silicon valley and was making bank.

My mom knew this when she ran out of money, and as you may expect, T1 is where she went to ask for more. 

On a random day, my mom reached out to T1 and made an inquiry. What was it about? She wanted to borrow $300,000 USD for a “book deal” on the research she had done. Sound familiar? No? In any case…She promised she would pay him back because after publishing, she would get royalties from her students, who would have to buy the book for her courses. 

T1 immediately saw through this ruse. 

No way in f*ck is a book publishing company going to ask for $300,000 USD to publish her bullsh*t. 

He demanded plainly what was going on and continued relentlessly to pry the information out of her through screaming and aggression. Eventually, the truth came out and she finally admitted to everything. All the scams and all the stupid stories about policemen. 

T1 was livid. 

He yelled at her and questioned everything she had done. My mom had no response. He asked if she had told me anything and she said no. He got more frustrated. I think by T1’s words, my mom wanted to protect me from the truth. A notion that pissed everyone off. Protect me? Why do I need protecting from the truth? Also, she never protected me from any truths when I was younger, this was honestly such a weak lie. Her secrecy wasn’t to protect me. My mom just didn’t want to admit that she messed up and accept the shame. She wanted to protect her ego. After T1 calmed down a bit more, he gave my mom an ultimatum, either she needed to tell me what was going on or else he would tell me. This is how it came to be on the night of Halloween when I finally figured everything out.

When I was able to be looped into what was really going on, I was equally furious and devastated. I yelled and screamed and honestly, I was so hostile and angry that I can’t even find the words to describe how I felt. There was so much betrayal and shame that words don’t really work. 

The best thing you can do when something this horrible happens is to usually give it some time but unfortunately, that’s not how interest rates work. I needed to find a way to stop the bleeding so I called T1 after I made it to my mom’s place and got access to her bank statements. Then I called my uncle to bring him up to speed. Mom needed help from everyone and I really did mean from everyone. 

When we all touched base, everyone was angry with mom. We tried to not yell and just focus on tackling the math side of things but a rogue aggressive slur would still escape every here and there. I needed to focus but with so much anger towards the situation I couldn’t. I was suddenly thrown into and was immediately 6 months behind, what the f*ck? 

It’s not hard to see what we needed to talk about. The initial sum that was lost was $480,000 and it sucks but it was already money that was gone. After looking around some more documents, it was revealed that this amount, the initial sum that brought about everything, had come out of my mom’s mortgage on the house. 

This sucked but it actually wasn’t problematic…well…mathematically at least…if you just focus on the math of this situation, the mortgage is a loan that is priced at a reasonable rate. If you look a bit further however, there’s reason to be angry here. 

I was furious with myself because when I found out my mom had remortgaged the house, I made the connection. If my mom had the house almost completely paid off, why would she ever mention needing help with the mortgage during the post COVID times. During the last few months, my mom mentioned a few times that she was having a bit of trouble with the mortgage because COVID had ruined interest rates. She had always told me that the rates were high but that she was still doing just fine and I just brushed it off as truth. If I just thought about it a little more, I would have come to the conclusion that if the house was almost paid off, even with a ridiculous interest rate, it still wouldn’t be unmanageable. There should have never been an instance where my mom would be suffering from interest payments. I know this is leaping ahead a bit but my brain went straight here. I found a way to blame myself for not noticing this and I hated myself for it. Then, as naturally as breathing, the hatred went directly back to mom. I trusted my mom’s word that even if the rates were abysmal she was doing okay. This was not okay. 

I yelled more and honestly, what else is there even to say…It’s painful and hard to move on but we have to. There was no time to dwell. The interest rate on the mortgage is not zero but we’ve been dealing with this for ages. Yes, it’s painful to think about how many years of mortgage just went straight into the drain but there was an even bigger issue. There were two private loans my mom had taken out with ridiculous clauses and interest rates over 10% each.

Brainstorming for this was the main focus of the night. T1 and my uncle both offered to contribute to the loan so that my mom doesn’t run out of money but a cash infusion was not a sustainable solution. Amidst all the brainstorming, my mom tried to contribute. Her solution? She wanted to rent out every room in the house to match what monthly payment schedule she needed to meet. I lost my temper again when she spoke up. This was just such a stupid solution. 

Firstly, there was no way in hell she could come up with the interest payments of $25,000 CAD a month from rent fees alone (that was the combined monthly fee). Even if she rented every single room we had and lived in the garage, it was still not enough. Secondly, this was also unsustainable because that large amount of money was mostly going towards interest. Nothing was going to the principal. Paying the interest every month just to stay afloat is not an amount of financial pressure we could afford even if we pool everyone’s money. 

Everyone was thinking about options and I honestly wanted to have hope that they could come up with something.

But after a few hours, I spoke up. There was only one solution here. 

I told everyone to shut up.  

The house has to go. 

There was no other option. We need to sell the house.