Vicki Punskovsky is a stay-at-home mom who is starting over. But, she said, “it’s difficult to find anything.”
October 16, 2008
Michelle Rothfeld of Flanders, a member of Adath Shalom in Parsippany, is taking a direct hit from the subprime mortgage crisis. She and her husband would like to move with their two daughters, ages three and six months, to Randolph, she said, “but the housing market has gone down so much that we’re not able to sell our home.”
After a week that produced one startling headline after another — “Wild Day Caps Worst Week Ever for Stocks” blared last Friday’s Wall Street Journal — Rothfeld is hardly alone in feeling the personal impact of an economy in turmoil.
Even in the relatively affluent suburbs of Morris County, people are worried about climbing costs, job insecurity, and, perhaps most of all, the uncertainty of where it will all end.
Rothfeld and her husband bought the home in 2005 at the height of the market bubble. Although their mortgage is not worth more than their home, she said, “It’s very close.”
They want to move to Randolph for “better schools and more Jewish kids in school” by the time their older daughter, who now attends preschool at the Bohrer-Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County, starts kindergarten. But they are not optimistic. So they have a backup plan.
“If we’re still in Flanders, she’ll go to the Hebrew Academy, [and] we will use our down-payment money for tuition.”
Mikhail Bolislavsky said he sees light at the end of a tunnel — even if it’s a long way off.
Shari Cilenti of Randolph, a member of Temple Shalom in Succasunna is also directly affected.
“My husband is a stockbroker,” she said; he works for H&R Block and, thankfully, still has a job. She works as a pharmaceutical sales representative, and so far, has been insulated. But she takes little comfort.
The financial situation is “extremely volatile,” she said. “Nobody’s ever safe. We’re holding onto every penny. You just never know. You don’t know if you’re going to have a job in a month. We don’t know what’s next. They say ‘Keep waiting for the $700 billion bailout to work.’ Okay…,” she said, her words reflecting her trepidation, because she has no other course of action.
She and her family are cutting “pretty much everything” when it comes to extra spending: “Vacations, trips, that kind of stuff, until there’s some kind of normalcy. Dinner out, the extras. It’s not crazy yet — but we haven’t seen the worst of it.”
The economy is wreaking havoc on Vicki Punskovsky’s finances. The Parsippany resident, who attends Pine Brook Jewish Center in Montville, where her children are enrolled in preschool, is a stay-at-home mom going through a divorce.
She’s been out of the workforce for seven years and is feeling the pinch of “the price of gas and the increasing prices of different things,” she said.
Punskovsky also feels the squeeze in the job market. “I’m starting over, and it’s difficult to find anything. I’m looking for anything I can do around [the children’s] hours — babysitting, child care, anything.”
Michelle Rothfeld said her family is taking a direct hit from the subprime mortgage crisis.
Her worries go beyond luxuries to the basics, like housing and schooling her two children.
“My number one concern is keeping them in their schools, which also means keeping them in their house,” said Punskovsky. “With the economy so bad, I may not be able to find anything. I’m very concerned. I have a mortgage and a home equity loan, and I may have to take on both.”
Mikhail Bolislavsky of Rockaway is among the minority who takes a long view and sees light at the end of a tunnel, even if it’s a long way away. He works in the information technology field and has felt insulated from the financial crisis.
“I’m not currently being impacted but I think everyone will be,” he said. “It’s going to be, in my opinion, a long way to recover from all of this. There will probably be a recession.”
As for belt-tightening, he said he’s not taking any chances. “You start counting how much you spend, and you cut down on expenses like luxuries.” But regarding the savings he has in 401Ks, he said, “I’m not worried. I think in the long run it will go back to prior levels, normal levels.” At 36, he said he has time to wait for the situation to work itself out.
Lorraine Stein of Randolph, a member of Morristown Jewish Center Beit Yisrael, is cutting back on what she called “extraneous expenses: remodeling, landscaping, a new car, any big-ticket items. We’re holding back on those.”
A contractor for United States Customs Service with a husband in the pharmaceutical industry, she said she thinks they’ll be insulated for at least a year. But all the same, she’s hedging her bets.
“Just in case there’s a huge, major recession and everything flatlines, we’ll have at least six months of money put away,” she said.
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