Breakups are painful.
And mine wasn't rosy.
When I stepped foot into my first apartment circa 2012, I knew it was love at first sight.
My big, one bedder; my first property; the happy place where merry dinner parties were hosted is mine no more.
The year was 2022.
Almost 10 years after I first bought my place, I finally sold it.
And I didn't see that coming.
I hadn't bought the property to flip.
I had, naively, thought it was my first and counting property.
While I take pride in being financially prudent, I hadn't expected interest rates to spike to more than 4 per cent.
Suddenly, the thought of owning a second property was a mere fantasy.
I had more cruel things to confront: Reality.
During the crazy COVID years, the rental market soared along with borrowing rates.
And at the rate that it was going, something's got to go.
It was a tough -- but financially sound -- decision to make.
I was feeling overly-stretched with mortgage commitments and it no longer made sense to hold on to my property.Stanley my sex bunny friend who always views being overly stretched as something promising, agrees.
"That's a whole chunk of money going into that place alone," he said to me via a WhatsApp voice recording, when I told him I entertained the idea of letting go of my place.
And so in the final quarter of 2022, my partner J and I met our risk manager to look at my financial options.
The meeting took place at my then beautiful home.
My 2-metre long wooden table was laid out with a two-layer serving tray filled with savoury and sweet bites.
Right beside the snacks was my porcelain tea set, my fine china filled up with roasted brown rice tea.
Ash, who is J's long-time risk manager, is now mine too.
The heavy set financial expert who wheezes every once in a while if she speaks too fast is one of the most reliable advisers around, trusted by high net worth individuals.
I wouldn't have known her if not for J and right now, I'm not feeling the likeability factor.
"You will be very poor soon, Adam," she said to me matter of factly, staring into the excel sheet on her computer.
The spreadsheet was a product of an intensive one-hour chat she had with me, followed by a detailed form I filled to help Ash determine my spending habits and my financial end goal.
"You can afford to keep this apartment for sure but at this rate, you'll simply be bleeding yourself overtime because you're just struggling to stay afloat," Ash said, reaching out for a curry puff."
At this rate, I'm not sure if Ash too will be struggling to stay afloat if she so much as to consume one more curry puff.
I kept those thoughts to myself and focused on more present thoughts.
The thought of me forking out a large chunk of my salary just to keep my property, leaving me with very little savings, much less investment options was something very hard to swallow -- much worse than the curry puff Ash was now easily working on.
I looked at J who gave me a sorry look. I don't know if he was feeling sorry for me or the poor curry puff in Ash's gnarly fingers, which is disappearing by the second.
That afternoon, Ash said what she had to say to me, and both of us were left to digest our respective burdens.
Had I bitten off more than I could chew? I wonder if Ash felt the same way that day, but I ought to worry about myself first.
When interest rates were at a mere one point something per cent, my life was great.
I could enjoy good quality of life back then -- spending without worry on food, the occasional luxury bag, shoes, ties, winter clothes.
But soon, I may find myself scrimping and saving, fretting over why egg prices are so high, or how I should start my morning with kopi-O kosong instead of Nespresso coffee.
At age 43 (in 2022), that's something unimaginable.
Equally unimaginable is selling my place after staying alone for so long, and being homeless.
The formidable Mrs Lee dismissed my fears.
"Come home and stay with me!" she demanded.
It was meant to be reassuring though it sounded like a threat to me.
J said I could stay with him while I waited and ironed out the selling of my place and the buying of my next place.
But I too, didn't want to impose on him.
After all, his place is his. And his parents some times stayed over whenever they visited.
Stanley my sex bunny friend, to his credit, had offered me his spare bedroom.
"Any man in need of bed space can always count on me," said Stanley who had meant to come across as saintly though he sounded more satanly, like an old horny priest about to de-robe and later defrocked.
Finally, two months after speaking to Ash, I decided to be an adult.
On Sep 1, 2022, I listed my "beautifully renovated bachelor pad" up for sale.
It was to be sold exactly one month and 12 days later after we listed it.
And even as I type this today, 16 months later, I still feel like it was so, so surreal.
I miss my old home.
And it doesn't help that the current one that I'm in is a tiny rented one-bedder in Paisr Panjang, half the space I am used to.
Yes, it's comfortable and yes, the profit I made from my sale has help me cut my losses and fund my current rental transition period.
But I still have no home to call my own.
At least for now.
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