“Low earners have more mortgage trouble”
WOW! Just wow. I SO did not see that coming. Could it be some people can’t handle mortgages? Oh wait, the banks were forced to hand them out like candy in the name of diversity. Thanks, Bawney Fwank.
The gal in the story was clearly living beyond her means, spending every cent of every paycheck as soon as it came, and more. How did this mentality come about, that everybody thinks they deserve a middle-class lifestyle (or even upper middle-class) without the income to support it? Not just this chick, but kids right out of college expect to assume the lifestyles of their parents, delayed gratification be damned!
To this woman’s credit, she blames herself. I’m not yet 40, and I’d been hearing for years that we weren’t going to enjoy the standard of living our parents did. They were right; we just didn’t want to hear it, and the moneylenders were happy to oblige. It was no accident that they tightened up bankruptcy eligibility a few years back; they saw the bubble coming...
Another story is that incomes have held, or maybe declined over the last twenty years. So, people are going further out on limbs. Like farmers borrowing more after bad years, thinking that next years bumper crops will pull them out. They double down.
Anyways, like we all know, the governments that tax, fine, fee, permit you, regulate you, cost you morning noon and night do not provide one single hour of finance education.
Heck, they don’t even do math hardly anymore.
Lots of kumbaya self esteem though.
I can answer you.
Kids expected to start out where their parents “ended up.”
Maybe we’re guilty of not explaining about those times when we stayed in the inlaws basement, saving up for a down payment.
These kids wake up one day, with the college degree their parents could never afford for themselves, and want to start THERE. And then move on....
Example: My sister was raised in the same home as I was. Lower middle class. We clipped coupons as a family; it was a matter of survival for us. My sister married someone wealthy, but she has never been able to abandon her upbringing, she still clips coupons and sends away for refunds. We were just raised like that.
Her daughter is one of privilige. She’s never known or heard of hard times in the family. We have (as a family) done a crappy job of educating her.
I was there to visit a couple of weeks ago, remarking that I was thinking of moving to Fort Worth. She said she’d like to live in Austin, because that’s where the liberals live.
No kidding.
(Confirming my theory that the longer the distance between the wealth “earners” and the wealth “receivers” will dictate the political bent.)