With Dr Debt again.
Why would any sane person live in penury for the next 2 decades?
It is not like they killed someone?
Indeed. "Chugging along" as described by Dr.Debt is so apt. There are three households I know who are exactly as described, just managing to live, having cut back on everything in order to not fall into arrears. House maintenance, car change, new clothes, children's extra curricular activities, private health insurance, socialising, etc are dreams of the past. Will their bubbles burst when children hit the expensive years ahead? For how many years will they endure this existence before someone can hold their calm no longer.
Negative equity holds for all three households plus no sight of income increase of any appreciable difference, leaves them with no chance of trading up, down or sideways so there are two decades looming in a life of stagnation. Each family has a PPR only.
Are they contributing to the local economy? Mainly to local Lidl/Supervalu. Chemist when children sick(no med.cards) Toys from local huckster shop. Not a red cent to local hotels, restaurants, pubs, cafes, hardware or garden center. That's how life pans out when people are riddled with taxes and charges, income cuts, and mortgages acquired when they were proportionate to income and house value and now being sustained valiantly at great personal expense. None of them killed anyone, as you say, but there is a greater chance of someone or something killing them too soon.
If either of the three could get a write down of some of their negative equity to then pay a lower level sustainable mortgage how better the looming two decades would be.