If you have to ask along the lines of “is there anything wrong if I were to do this?”, you already have an ethical dilemma. Because if you didn’t, you would just do it and not bother to try do justify your actions because you wouldn’t care.

But that aside, there’s been numerous cases that even people with legitimate reasons to ask for a mortgage forbearance, banks are making those folks jump through hoops to prove there is a financial hit. It’s hardly worth the effort of 2-3 months even if you could jump through those hoops.

If your main concern is having emergency cash on hand, this is probably not the best way to go about this since possibly it’s only good for 2-3 months, hardly enough cash to really bridge a family over for a real recession. There’s better ways to setup an emergency loan, and it’s probably better to do it while you still have a job.

Plenty of people were punished during the last great recession, many of them lost their homes, and some of the rest of us were able to buy at really cheap prices, right? That was during a period were there was irresponsible borrowing… I’m not so sure this type around it’s really about irresponsible borrowing… I think it’s just more about bad luck. How often do we consider a pandemic event. Maybe every 70 years or so?

This event is hitting almost everyone across the board in the service sector that has a job/business that requires any human-human contact that isn’t deemed as “essential”… This isn’t just your hourly restaurant workers, but those business owners, dental offices, gyms, real estate professionals, etc,etc, where there is no online/at home option. It hits low income earners, middle income earners, high income earners, and business owners…arguably punishing business owners more so than workers… I don’t see this as a blanket “irresponsible borrowing” this time around for those impacted. Maybe some, not all or even most.

I had a colleague that that recently had to relocate and rather than stay with us a few months longer, he decided to take a job with another company where he’s moving to..and takes 2 weeks off to relocate…Something anyone would have done if they were relocating. Then the virus hit, and the lockdown orders happened. That other company ended up postponing his start date week by week for 4 weeks. Now, 4 weeks later, he gets a call that they rescinded his offer. He’s screwed now. He doesn’t have a job, he can’t apply for unemployment because he voluntarily left my company. Shit happens.