The Late Starter · September 2, 2026
A Chapter in My Late Start Retirement Journey
In early 2009, I bought my first house in America.
It was right in the thick of the financial crisis. And oddly enough, that crisis looked to me more like an opportunity than a threat.
The Federal Reserve was buying up mortgage-backed securities in large volumes, and rates were falling fast. The average 30-year fixed rate had dropped into the low 5% range. That same year, the government was offering a First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit, and for married couples, the maximum was $8,000. We took it in full.
Our monthly mortgage payment came out to a little over $2,000. At the time, that was well within what we could handle.
A Crisis That Sounded Like Someone Else’s Problem
All around the country, companies were shaking. Every day, the news carried another story of layoffs, another company on the brink.
Strangely, our company seemed untouched by it. If anything, we were growing.
The reason was simple. Manufacturers in financial trouble desperately needed to cut costs, and we happened to sell exactly the kind of solution that did that. While others were collapsing, our sales climbed — powered, in part, by their crisis.
I remember thinking, back then: “We’re going to be fine.”
We made it through most of the crisis without a scratch. It was an illusion.
The Storm That Arrived Late
By the time the news declared the financial crisis officially over — the bottom hit, the recovery beginning — that’s exactly when trouble finally reached our company.
No one was exempt. It was only ever a question of timing.
I remember the exact day I understood that.
Once a month, our company held a small birthday celebration in the office kitchen. That morning, two coworkers were celebrating birthdays, and we all gathered to cut the cake together. It was an ordinary morning, full of small talk and laughter.
Right after the celebration ended, a leadership meeting was called. Before lunch, several people — including the two coworkers who’d just been celebrated with cake that same morning — were let go and walked out of the building.
I could only stand there and watch it happen. A person sharing cake with us in the morning, gone with a box of their belongings by early afternoon.
It was a scene I had never witnessed in Korea, and never in Germany either.
Soon after, the entire company took a 10% pay cut.
A Tunnel With No End in Sight
The mortgage payment, once manageable, started to weigh on us more with every passing month. As time went on, it felt like walking deeper and deeper into a tunnel with no light at the other end.
Selling the house should have been the obvious way out. It wasn’t.
We had financed nearly 100% of the home’s value when we bought it, and the crisis had driven housing prices down so far that selling now would have left us owing money we no longer had a house to show for.
We couldn’t stay. We couldn’t sell.
That’s when I first learned the words foreclosure and short sale.
A Decision Made at the Edge
Foreclosure meant the bank would seize the house outright. A short sale meant the homeowner could sell the property for less than what was owed, with the bank’s approval, and have the remaining shortfall forgiven.
The process was long, complicated, and the approval standards were strict. But in the middle of the crisis, banks were becoming increasingly willing to work with homeowners on short sales — it cost them less than foreclosing outright — and there were nonprofit organizations that helped guide people through it, free of charge.
With their help, I put together a Hardship Package and submitted it.
The moment it was approved, I listed the house through a real estate agent I trusted. It sold, and the remaining balance was forgiven.
We chose a short sale for one specific reason: it meant we could qualify to buy a home again in three to five years. I believed — with real conviction — that things would recover by then. That belief is what made it possible to make such a difficult decision so decisively.
And So, the First House Was Gone
Not long after arriving in America, I lived through a storm that hit close to home, in every sense of the word.
And that’s how our family’s first house in America disappeared into history.
Looking back now, I understand how little I actually knew back then — about interest rates, about housing markets, about how a company’s revenue responds to a crisis. But one thing I was certain of, even in the middle of it all: what had fallen could rise again.
Whether that belief was right is something our second house has been answering, one year at a time, ever since.