​I have a confession to make.  Halloween is not one of my favorite holidays.
Spending years playing Halloween parties and hosting Halloween costume contests, I have seen the creativity of many folks when it comes to costumes.  Even giving out candy at Trick or Treat, I see little ones with great costumes. But instead of feeling connected to it all, I always feel like a spectator.  And there is a reason for that.
Second confession.  I have no creativity when it comes to coming up with Halloween costumes.  I have friends who entertain me year after year with what they come up with, but truth be told, I have not a lick of that talent.
This year, I bought four humorous matching Halloween shirts for the band and called us the Halloween Squad.  Not the height of my creative thought process, but done and done.
I would feel bad, but I have come to realize it may a hereditary thing.  A non-creative Halloween gene, passed down from my mother
Now I don’t want anyone to think that my mother had no creativity or fashion sense.  If you look at pictures of her from her late twenties and early thirties, she looks like a movie star.  When I was growing up, I always had a real fashion style. I was the kid who over heard her kindergarten teacher talking with a group of other teacher about my amazing ensemble one rainy day.  Matching yellow and orange raincoat, boots and umbrella.  I could have given North West a run for her money in my day!
But Halloween was a different story.
My mother did not sew. Another gene I got from her, but that is a different blog post! She did not do arts and crafts, or make handmade any things.
I guess you could say we had a tradition.  Every year, about three weeks before Halloween, my mother and I would go to Ben Franklin in the downtown of the small Wisconsin town I grew up in.  This was what we called a five and dime store.  No Target or Walmart around in that time.
We would go to the rack of Halloween costumes.  They had what were probably highly flammable polyester capes that tied in the back and plastic masks. 
“What do you want to be this year?” she would ask.
There was usually a Princess costume, a Barbie and various other girlie type costumes.  Maybe a couple of animal things.  I would look through the rack and pick one.  She would pay and home we would go.
Costume done.
On Trick or Treat day, I would gather with my friends and off we would go, door to door, collecting our loot in plastic pumpkins.
My friends would have homemade costumes. Sheets for ghosts, Hobo, maybe a pumpkin or two.  Oh how I longed for those creative, homemade costumes.
One year I commented to one of my friends about how cool their homemade costume was and how I wished my mom could sew.
My friend looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“Are you kidding?” she said.  “Just once I wish we could go to the store and get one of those cool costumes they have.  You are so lucky your mom can just buy you what you want to be!”
I was taken aback.  Huh?  Polyester capes and plastic masks?
I may have been young, but my logical 8 year old mind figured it out pretty fast.  A human trait that is just there.  The same as the non-creative-Halloween gene.
We always want what we don’t have.  Sad isn’t it?  Maybe humans are the only creatures on earth who continue to struggle with this one.
So this Halloween night, for those of us who had store bought costumes, I am going to try to remember the things I need to be thankful for.  A job, that can be stressful, never boring, let’s me work from home and pays the bills.  A chance to be a part of other people’s class reunions, weddings, Halloween celebrations, birthdays, even if it isn’t playing in a stadium.  A dog who wants to eat other dogs, but loves me more than life itself.  A boyfriend who can be unsympathetic, but makes me the best me I can be. A house, tiny, with old house issues, but full of memories and a warm, dry place to sleep.
I know Thanksgiving is for giving thanks.  But really? Just one holiday for gratitude?
Happy Thanks O Ween.  Especially to all of you who only had store bought costumes.

After my HELOC horror story, you would think I would never want to hear the words Home Equity Line   of Credit again.  I never say never on anything. Not when I think about the turns my life has taken. HELOCs aren’t all evil, but at the time I got the last one, I really didn’t think it all through. Here are the top three things I advise thinking about before you make the plunge:
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Tattoo the end of the draw period on the back of your hand.  I obviously didn’t.  The ten years of the draw period flew by.  I had always planned to consolidate my first loan and the HELOC into one reasonable payment.  Someday.  Someday showed up with a sickle and a mask in the middle of a rough patch with a payment that was triple. Pretending it isn’t coming doesn’t make it go away.

Size matters.  Ten years ago when I did my last HELOC, I ended up financing up to 95% of the value of my home.  That was pre-real estate crash time and fund anything without an appraisal. It was a lot of money and although I did use some of it to put down payments on three other properties and do some renovations on my own home, I still wonder where a good portion of the money I borrowed went.  Scary right?  If I ever take the HELOC plunge again, it will be for a renovation of my home and it will be a much more conservative amount. Putting the money back into the investment makes sense and staying within a reasonable range of what the house is worth is also a no-brainer. 

Property values are like the boyfriends I had in my early twenties.  They come and go.  My grandfather always told me property is the best thing to investment in because people always need a place to live.  Even with all my financial drama, I still believe in that whole heartedly.  What my grandfather never said to do was treat the investment like an endless ATM machine.  Because real estate goes up and down.  If you don’t borrow against your investment, you almost always come out ahead.   But when you keep sucking the equity out of your property, at some point, you are going to hit a speed bump.  There was a time I was almost $75,000 underwater on my house.  Luckily when the payment tripled, I was back on top of the equity side.  If I had not been, there would have been no options to refinance and pure and simple, I WOULD HAVE LOST MY HOME.  Which of course is the most important lesson.  When you borrow against your home, you can lose your home.  As hard as the experience was, I hope I have the memory of the stress with me forever.  Sometimes that is the only way you learn!