Bailouts for Buddies

Brother, can you spare a mortgage payment?

By Kathryn Robinson

True, cuts at the top of the ladder are no sadder than cuts at the bottom. They just cause a bigger earthquake. A friend of mine is feeling the tremors as I write this. He’s a biggie in a high-tech firm with a few successful startups on his résumé: prominently affluent and a good guy to boot. A month or so ago an acquaintance of his from the neighborhood, someone he’d seen at his kid’s football games and made small talk with at parties, invited him to lunch. And there over club sandwiches and Amstel Lights the guy told my friend he’d been laid off…and could he spot him some cash? Just enough to get through the next three months of mortgage payments, utility bills, and food for his family?

My friend wasn’t entirely caught unawares. Two of his colleagues had recently fielded similar requests: one from a man who made it plain that if he were turned down, he would have no choice but to end his life.

“God, what do you do?” my friend said, shaking his head. “I mean, I’m someone who hasn’t yet worked out a satisfying personal response to the panhandler on the street. What do you do when a guy you used to talk finance with at cocktail parties asks you for money to live on?”

Unbidden, my imagination spun out visions of myself and my family on either side of that poor guy’s request. Me doing the asking? Unthinkable. Hands over ears, la la la la la.

But if someone were to ask me? What if the remaining success stories around here were to fail—Amazon, say, or every piggy-bank raider’s new best friend, Bellevue-based Coinstar—and suddenly folks of average income like me and Tom were the ones being hit up by friends in need. What then?

Man, I have no idea. But I’m afraid the time has come to get one. I still have that luxury real estate guy’s foreclosure flyer around somewhere—in case a friend needs it.

Something tells me I may need to dig deeper than that.

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Published: April 2009