The Marketplace.org story: A personal bailout party, L.A. style reports on the recent bail-out party thrown by Christine Schoenwald – charging friends to attend to raise enough money to hopefully save her home from foreclosure.

Hirsch: What about your cash cushion that you had?

Christine Schoenwald: (Laughs) I don’t really have a cash cushion.

Hirsch: Why no cash cushion?

Schoenwald: I don’t make very much money. And I didn’t save any and the money that I had inherited many years ago is gone.

Hirsch: I want to ask you a couple of questions that might be a little difficult to answer. So first thing I understand is that you may have taken some equity out of your house along the way.

Schoenwald: Yes, we refinanced a number of times.

Hirsch: How many times?

Schoenwald: I’ve lost count many times.

Hirsch: And what do you think now when you look back at that activity?

Schoenwald: I know definitely we shouldn’t have done it the last time.

Hirsch: Just the last time.

Schoenwald: Just the last time, because that really had made it sky rocket up.

Hirsch: Tell me about that process, was it easy to get those refinancings?

Schoenwald: Oh yeah, because I had a lot of equity in my house. This was before, you know, the financial crisis. So they’re always happy to refinance me, even though I didn’t make that much money, I didn’t have very much in savings, but they were always happy to refinance.

Hirsch: A lot of people would call that “using your house as an ATM.”

Schoenwald: Totally. Guilty as charged.

Wow, she has some really generous friends. I would hope that she planned this party only after exploring all other means of raising money (selling off some of those items she purchased with her house ATM money? Looking for additional work to raise some cash, etc) because passing the hat among your friends to bail you out of the financial hole you recklessly dug for yourself… I would find that very hard to do.

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