She hoped selling her home in Myrtle Beach would cover the cost of her Cary home. But two years later it's still on the market, she's stuck in a mortgage and had to come out of retirement and go back to work.
"I never expected that when I bought this house that it would take so long for the other house to sell," O'Brien said. "I do every month have to go into my savings to pay for things … actually have shopped around to lower my mortgage rate and I haven't been able to do that because my income has not been high enough to qualify now."
The credit crisis and Wall Street is making it difficult for her to get a better loan and someone else to get a loan to buy her other house.
"The stock market has really hit a lot of people very hard," O'Brien said. "The depreciation of their values in the stock market, a number of people in the neighborhood I've spoken with and within the family have lost quite a bit of money."
Now she's hoping to make money in real estate. She says the market is better here than in Myrtle Beach and she'd rather be working on a present than working for her future.
O'Brien is not alone; www.retirementjobs.com is reporting a huge increase in retirees asking for help in updating and tweaking their resumes and finding jobs in today's tough market.
