Ok, so this article is a bit dated (it was published on May 14) but it is just SUCH a great tale, and so perfect for the times we're living in... It's also, in a sense, somewhat consoling to us who think we have a bad debt problem or have mismanaged our finances! A few student loans too many, a bit of credit card debt, maybe more, maybe worse, but heck, at least we're not in the mess this guy's in! And he's been the main New York Times economics correspondent to boot! In his own words:

"If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us. But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages."

the article's here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/magazine/17foreclosure-t.html?pagewanted=all

Seriously... please read it. It's hair-raising, infuriating, sort of pathetic, and hilarious at the same time. Here we have a guy who basically documents how he managed to get into a $400,000 + house on a less-than $3,000-a-month income, because back then "it quickly became clear that it was almost easier to borrow a half-million dollars and buy something" than rent. Seemed like a good idea at the time? You betcha.

But as we all can guess, his demented hopes that he could make it work out collided with his and his wife's disastrous money habits and pretty soon Mr. Andrews and his wife were basically riding a hole-filled vessel on the Atlantic ocean with no lifesavers on board. In spite of all the voodoo refinancing and debt juggling available to them, their ship sank sometime around November 2008 - right around the time the financial world collapsed.

Readers' reactions have been mixed: some sympathized, but many have been clearly outraged: "Edmund L. Andrews neglected to include a character in his drama . . . me. I am a hardworking, financially responsible taxpayer who must now indirectly subsidize his financial indiscretions with my tax dollars."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/magazine/31letters-t-MYPERSONALCR_LETTERS.html

"The sum that Andrews has left after alimony payments that he “can’t live on” is more than my household’s monthly income."

"Edmund L. Andrews’s odd confessional teaches us little, other than laying bare his propensity to shift blame to others ... just as a junkie implicates the dealer."

As for me, though I admit I agree with these letter writers, I think this one sums it up for me better: "I had frankly struggled over the past many months to appreciate the scale of the subprime mess and the many delinquencies that have occurred. The aggregated defaults — with numbers in the billions of dollars — lost all sense of perspective and understanding for me. But Edmund L. Andrews and his family’s story really humanized the issue better than all the bank failures could."

And that's why it's important. The truth is, most of us have made bad money mistakes, even if on a smaller scale. He really makes it almost too easy for us to judge him, and by so doing, challenges us to analyze what in our own lives, our own decision-making processes, and our own values, have led us to our own personal financial failure stories. Through his story, we can come to understand both the reasons why people do stupid things, and what we can do in our own lives to avoid similar pitfalls.