Posted on 01/29/2004 1:32:03 AM PST by sarcasm
Edited on 05/07/2004 6:27:06 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Rock-bottom interest rates and low-down-payment mortgages have allowed more first-time homebuyers to fulfill the American dream in recent years, but some say the dream has turned to nightmare.
A number of inexperienced buyers now face foreclosure, complaining they didn't realize the high cost of homeownership -- everything from adjustable rate mortgages to hidden taxes to construction defects.
(Excerpt) Read more at indystar.com ...
2. If you lend more than a person can repay, you are foolish and deserve all the bad things that come your way as a result of your foolishness.
I say--things are bad enough with the laws as they are now.
It's all very well to talk of self-denial when we grew up with tighter credit and more sensible criteria for borrowing money. We had time to mature in the workplace and marketplace-- Now you have to beat lenders off with a stick...and soon, it'll be worse.
Unless you were a real estate investor at the time you probably didn't notice.
I had a temporary assignment with my company at a site in another state 8 or 9 years ago, when I had a discussion with an older gentleman & expressed this opinion. It turns out he was also an investor, and he told me that I was the only person at this site (about 1500 people), other than himself who understood this. I suspect this might be the right ratio, about 1 in 750 or 1 in 1000 who could look through the media propaganda and see the real cause.
There were only 2 or 3 of us at my primary workplace (~1000 total) who saw this, but that is an anomalous sample. We are in a high-cost region, doing research, and our salaries are higher, so we have more investors. I am not in this category, but out of ~ 50 people I know well enough to have some inkling of their finances, I know at least three who retired with net worth in the $5-10M range, just as a result of saving & investing over the years while working on a salary.
I never said it wasn't an issue- just a seperate one. It makes no difference what the bankruptcy laws are. A person still can't expect to go through life making totally stupid decisions. I agree if the bankruptcy laws are bad- they ought to be fixed but this has nothing to do with people taking responsibility for their own actions.
Now you have to beat lenders off with a stick...and soon, it'll be worse.
Still... It's like I said. I threw the television out a long time ago. I'm not exposed to advertising the same way a lot of other people are. I don't buy stuff I can't pay for. I have a credit card. I use it for internet purchases and plane tickets. The balance gets paid in full automatically every month. It would take me a half hour to find my checkbook. I rarely use it. The last check I wrote was probably two years ago.
It took me a good little while to save enough initially to gain financial independence, but once I did it was worth it. There is literally nothing I want that I cannot pay cash for. The amount of money I save in interest every year as compared to my friends and my wife's friends is amazing. We see some of the stuff our friends buy on credit and we just shake our heads in wonder. Money lenders have absolutely no use for me in my life- it's as if they are speaking a different language. Once you reach a certain point, it starts to work in your favor with every day that goes by.
A good life can be had without having the latest furniture at the best store or a huge diamond engagement ring or a brand new car. What makes life good is one's values and living by those values. Not the amount of stuff. Once you set your mind to live by certain standards, the stuff will come in due time.
My opinion is that when these laws are passed, the music stops and the bubble pops. You'd better be out of debt when it happens.
Don't worry, the outsourcing, financial overextension, and popping real estate bubble that will continue to plague "other people" won't affect you personally any more than will this current record deficit spending by the federal government.
A decade or so of deflation on a national scale never hurt an innocent bystander.
The only difference with us is that we use one credit card for everything. It gives frequent flier miles which gives us free airplane trips to bring the kids home from college.
We pay it off in full every month. We write checks on the computer using Quicken. Don't have the computer & printer with me—well, I just can't write a check. Taking that impulse purchase capability away saves on a lot of medium-high ticket items.
Yes, there are procedures for getting your taxes lowered to reflect the true market value of your real property.
We went through the 90's depression here in California. At that time we lost all of our equity when the housing market went into a tailspin. In addition to losing the equity, I was lost my job as an engineer involved in designing new housing developments. On the surface it looked like a total disaster! We applied to the county tax appraiser to have our taxes lowered, and he complied with our request.
Since then, things have gotten out hand in just the opposite direction. We cannot design and construct enough new home sites to keep up with the demand. That situation has resulted in the price of both new and resale homes to skyrocket. As an example, we just sold the home I mentioned above for a price which amounted to an increase in our initial down payment of 1,033%.
I retired last year. This summer, we plan to use one third of our new found money to construct another home on some acreage we were fortunate enough to acquire several years ago. The rest of the money we are going to put someplace safe where we can enjoy the interest and later pass it on to our children.
Semper Fi
No offense, but you preach to the choir here--except I do watch televison. You are talking about the virtue of thrift--but I'm emphasizing the peril of seduction. And it doesn't just come from the TV--it's also in the mailbox and everywhere else. I even get phone marketing for credit cards.
I'm also willing to guess that, like me, you're no spring chicken. I don't want laws protecting and encouraging those who prey on the immature (of legal age). The laws are sufficiently welcoming to the creditor as it is.
38 soon ;-)
Then came another boom in 1872, the "Tom Scott Boom," which brought the city's population up to four thousand people. It resulted from a visit to the Horton House by Colonel Thomas Scott, the president of the Texas & Pacific Railroad, which was planning to extend to the Pacific as one of the great transcontinental lines. Scott came to look over possible Pacific termini, and to listen to offers from cities of inducements, in the form of gifts. Enough open land and town property were proffered by the city, the county, and private citizens to elicit a promise to put the Pacific terminus of a great southern system on San Diego Bay. Property values soared. Speculation was rife. However, the expansion of the Texas & Pacific system never came about. The untimely failure of the great railroad speculator Jay Cooke, and the Black Friday panic, discouraged the foreign investors upon whom all such developments depended. The boom burst, despondency followed, and half of the town's boomtime population left.Source: http://www.sandiegohistory.org/books/wcb/wcb5.htm
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