Stress

Friday May 15, 2026

Proof of ear abuse when this inevitably goes to family court.

I’m not stressed out very often, so when it happens, it happens hard. It also means I haven’t ever really developed any healthy responses or tools to combat sudden cortisol spikes. As such, stress tends to make me incredibly irritable and maliciously introspective. I turn in, casting shame upon myself for experiencing stress in the first place and doubt that I’ll ever feel normal again. I tell myself I am unworthy of love and my mere existence is a burden to all those who know me.

The nice thing is that I’m very aware of this tendency. I know that I’m telling myself bullshit, and eventually, that awareness will win out and I’ll realize things aren’t so bad. Antidepressants helped me get here once upon a time.

I sometimes wonder if this ability to watch my manic-depressive mind rage from the stooped perspective of my logical mind makes me a little schizophrenic. But maybe everybody can do this, I’m no psychologist.

Anywho, building a house that you can’t afford is stressful! Let me caveat that: Building a house that you can afford only with the help of insurance is stressful. The math maths. The problem is, I don’t know the precise numbers to do the maths, and the payment schedule is such that it’s extremely complicated to know who pays what when.

I flew off the handle at public adjuster Dan Davison on Tuesday when he chided me for the 10,000th time, “This takes time. You can’t just expect answers at the drop of a hat.”

This response to the question, “How is code and recoverable depreciation paid?”

Lindsay and I got on the phone with him Tuesday night to clear the air, acknowledge that he and I have very different communication styles, and get a little more clarity on how this works. But holy fuck is it complex.

The payment schedule has 12 events, ranging in cost from $12,500 to $262,000. Builder Scott Jones thought this would be helpful. Instead, it has been making my head spin trying to coordinate where all this money is going to come from at given times.

These are the money sources I’ve been juggling:

• Dwelling coverage: Currently in the bank with our lender, requires authorization for release. We have an approved supplement of another ~$30,000 that should be paid by USAA soon. This is the biggest wild card, though. If we get the base dwelling up from $378,000 to, say, $430,000 by July, it eases the balancing act.

• Code: Code upgrades, paid by USAA based on Scott’s proposed contract. Dan says we need to get this first, which could be up to $60,000 — also eases some things if we get that full amount.

• Recoverable depreciation: Paid by USAA as we rebuild. This is where Dan needs to shine. Since we’re rebuilding a materially different house, he needs to structure the claim to ensure we’re getting the full ~$80,000 available. Basically, he needs to show that this money is being paid to replace the basement and the first floor. This, he says, we need to get paid after the code. Dan is working to get this number up closer to $100,000.

• Out-of-pocket: We’ve budgeted $105,000 of our own money (plus a $50,000 contingency budget), which we will almost completely exhaust right out of the gate to cover the design and contract deposits.

• Grandpa gift: My grandfather has graciously helped us with a big gift. This is the reason I’m okay with depleting our own budget immediately, because his money allows us to cover some of the building costs as they incur.

• Family loans: My parents will help us get over the final hump with loans until we can get an appraisal and take out a home equity loan to repay them.

I spent most of this week trying to unravel and make sense of this puzzle before, finally, on Wednesday night, our mortgage lender gave me an answer to a question I asked a couple of weeks ago: “If we get a construction loan with another lender, what happens with this $350,000 that’s already deposited with you.”

The answer: It gets credited to our mortgage.

Between that new information, and the sudden riskiness of our adjustable-rate mortgage thanks to the tiny-handed economic terrorist dictator we’re going to be stuck with for the next decade, made a construction loan worth another look.

When I was exploring construction loans earlier in this process, the big question was this $350,000 sitting with our current lender. Would it be released after the project? Would they insist on holding it and making payments to the contractor until they ran out? In either of those cases, a construction loan would require us to borrow enough to cover the project cost + buying out our mortgage. We’d be looking at like a $1.5 million loan and have to lock into a higher interest rate. The best loan officer I talked to, Rick Garber at Cambridge Savings Bank, straight up told me that if it was possible to juggle the outlays of money and borrow from family, it would likely save us thousands upon thousands of dollars.

When I learned this new information on Wednesday, me did math again, and found that while a construction loan would likely leave us with a larger principal balance on our mortgage, the payment increase would be less of a hit than if we kept our current mortgage and added a $200,000-$250,000 home equity loan to pay back family. (HELs have higher rates, shorter terms than mortgages = high monthly payments.) Not to mention, if our current mortgage rate were to increase in 2028, any savings we could have gotten by going the family loan/HEL route might be erased.

Rick—caveating that he was truly not trying to make a sale—confirmed yesterday that the math was sound and agreed that we can’t really put a price on the security of knowing when and from where the money is coming. And, this way, I don’t have to ask my parents to do their own financial gymnastics and put their own goals on hold to help us build this house.

We’ve signed the building contract, but haven’t sent it because we want to get in writing that we can still make changes if, for some reason, our financing falls through, and because I want Rick to tell me our approval chances are excellent before we apply.

So, yeah. Pretty stressy week!

One Hollywood: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Man, this movie sucks. For some reason, I decided to watch it over my lunch breaks this week, and it is just so incredibly bad. It’s basically slapstick in space. The number of stupid gags and pointless special effects flexes felt like it was made for 11-year-olds. I thought it sucked when I saw it as an 11-year-old, so they didn’t even do that well!

One Book: The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho

I was grouchy for much of this week, so here’s another thing I hate. Granted, I should probably read this again since the last time I did I was in high school, but lord did I hate this book. It’s philosophy for idiots, spirituality for the vacuous, literature for the barely literate. If I recall correctly, the great moral of the story is something like “The power is within you!” or something incredibly fucking stupid like that. Again, maybe I’ll give it another try as an adult and a parent, but I felt like I was taking crazy pills when everybody was losing their minds over it in high school.

One Song: Renee & Jeremy - Sweet Child O’ Mine

Lindsay says this came on Spotify shuffle in the car and Desi was super into it. Very different from his typical vibe, but I’m proud we’re raising a child with eclectic taste.