Having a morgage in the times of financial crisis

Before I met Moshe, I invested most of my savings into my flat thinking that this was a safe bet - if I ever get married, I thought, my future husband would for sure move in with me because what could be better than a new, freshly furnished 4 bedroom loft flat. Having met Moshe, I realized that you cant move a vine-maker with his vineyard to Prague whatever the number of rooms your flat has; you have to start from scratch in his nice but slightly falling apart village house.

I quickly realised that whatever was left from my savings would soon have to be put into our house in Mukov. Being in love not only with my husband but also with the new home and the beautiful countryside around, I gladly started to plan and open the account for minor repairs. The minor repairs soon grew into a more serious problem and it became obvious we would need to change the whole - currently leaking - roof of the house. We have to change it before the winter to prevent further damage of the rafter.

To cut the long story short - it was obvious from the start we wouldn´t be able to handle this repair without extending our morgage. For a couple of days, this gave me a few sleepless nights. Soon, however, I realised how foolish I have been.

Our house is in the area of the town of Most , which is one of the poorest part of the country. During the communist times, there were many coal mines around the city, which gave work to many locals. While many of the mines have been closed now, the unemployment rate here is one of the highest in the Czech Republic. When I went for grocers to the local Tesco´s for the first time and read the board of customer´s adds, I could not miss the several notes saying " A young man willing to accept any job, please call #" Talking to my neigbours, I realized, that many of the locals live on half what Moshe and I make together - and still they raise kids and take care of their houses. In fact, most of the local farm employees work on very little above the minimum vages. Paying a tough extended morgage from a stable well paid job that I - on the top of that - enjoy, does not seem so bad after all.

Facebook versus blogs

Every now and then I browse back to my old blog mainly because of the bookmarks I have on it to click on my friend´s blogs to see what is new. Most of the time, I find out that...nothing much. Most of my friends stopped writing on their blogs around a year ago, undoubtedly because all of them have moved to Facebook. What a shame! Yes, I now know who woke up late and who left his work early thanks to the status changes, but where are the decently long elaborate articles that I used to enjoy so much?

While I have been a very frequent user of facebook too (let along Moshe´s unhealthy usage of facebook while he was sick at the beginning of July) I wish to say - yes, but enough is enough. I will try to get back to normal blogging and continuous text. Let´s see if there are still any readers left.-)

A few pics

Moshe and I got married. :-)

Amélie Foltýnová

Olga, my sister-in-law, gave birth to her first daughter Amálka on Friday this week. Both are fine and healthy. Bellow are a couple of pics fromour today´s visit to the hospital.

Tomáš (my brother,) Olga (my sister-in-law) and Amálka


Amálka and I

The bride you always wanted not to be

I haven´t posted anything for almost half a year. I am at home with flu now, which means I need a time killer, so why not droppong a couple of lines again?

There is a lot of new. First of - I have a new job; or better to say I have a new possition in the same place. I now coordinate the Jewish program in our school. This is a very challenging experience - I have to learn a lot of new especially in communication with others. Most of the time I enjoy having to come up with new things and being creative. Sometimes I find it hard to get over mistakes I make. In general, however, I very much feel this is a change for the better.

I have a new baby-cat. Her name is Mushka and I brought her to my home a day after Yom Kipur. She is very sociable though incredibly wild. However, she is a great company for most of the time and I enjoy having such a fine flatmate.

Last but not least - I got engaged two weeks ago. G-d willing, Moshe and I should be getting married on Lag ba-omer on his family vineyard. During my „always a bridesmate never a bride" years I learnt that brides can be incredibly annoying in informing everybody about the progress of their wedding preparations and I wish to make a public vow and promise I will not become one of them. In fact, when we decided to get married, we sat down and within 3 days agreed on all the wedding arrangements. What do people make such a fuss about?

And the angels were laughing

Recently, the structure of my spendings have slightly changed - I have more or less finished the major investments into my flat and and it is the time to change the way I think about my money now. Today, I put on my make up and the most self-confident smile I could find and I set off to my bank to meet my financial consultant. I sat down at the counter, leaned rightwards on the chair and started to discuss my plans and prospects for the next couple of years. Lenka S., my financial advisor, who has known me for the last 8 years, very carefully listened to what I had to say. She asked me a couple of additional questions about my life and investment plans and expectations for the nearest future, made some further suggestions and then we closed the deal. As we were signing the contracts that sent my monies in different directions it downed on me what a chutzpah of me it was to plan what is going to happen to you in the future. When you make financial decisions of this kind, you decide to give up your money for some time and let it work, because you think you will not need it. You put the money into different places for different periods of time guessing: When will I have kids? Will I keep my job and vages? Will I get a promotion? What are the chances I will need some extra money to spend on unexpected expenses? These are things you surely try to plan but you can naturally never know what life will bring in the end. My today´s bank appointment reminded me of the old Jewish joke: How can you make G-d laugh? When you tell Him what your plans for the future are.

Well, well. I made my guess, let´s see what happens.

The end of school blue

The other day I overheard an interesting conversation between two ladies in the grocer´s: "You know what?" one of them said: "I am simply tired. I don´t want to deal with the kid anymore. I just wish the year was over already." It wasn´t hard to guess that the two of them were teachers. Most of my teacher friends are extremely tired these days. Most of them walk around like ghosts and speak softly. After the examination period, test and essay marking, final records and all the paperwork connected with it we all need a break. (And so do the kids.) Despite all the love I have for my job, I need the break too. There are two more days to go.