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You are correct in that every situation is different - a session with a good tax lawyer and CPA is invaluable for the money spent.

FWIW, while I’d like to be optimistic, I see no relief anywhere in the next 2 years. Option ARM recasts/resets will peak in 3rd qtr 09, unemployment is just starting to ramp, and yields on bonds are starting to ramp too - good for savers but really bad for those in debt. Tightened credit, while a very good thing, will depress prices further as it removes a lot of people from the buying pool for houses and cars. Increasing numbers of people getting to retirement age (Boomers) will mean more people pulling funds out of the markets, as will those who are laid off and can’t find jobs. We can no longer HELOC our way out of repairing household “income”, so there’s no borrowing to make numbers look good.

I don’t see good news really until ‘10 or later, so yes I think we have a long way to fall yet. 5000-6000 DOW and 500-600 S&P is where I think we go based on corporate earnings and that’s a lot of pain for a lot of folks.

We are financial planners. We don't recommend tax people for overall planning. We do the plan and then we have our clients have their tax preparer look it over. We also invite our clients to have their tax preparer sit in on our planning webinars if they chose to do so. Most of them will refer their clients to an IRA. Most of our clients do better paying their tax now and having it tax-free during retirement. This is the direct opposite of what most tax preparers are doing, becuase they don't know better.

In the case of a roth, our program has fewer restrictions.

One of our associates went to a workshop last week and they said about what you said.

We're making our payments and I believe in 7-10 years we'll be where we were 3 years ago. 2 of our houses are in a resort community with a lot of amenities.

In 20 years when I'm gone. my wife should have some equity on all four properties and can use them to enhance her retirement if needbe.

Also, the population keeps increasing, so we expect rents to increase over time and catch up to the payments on the two houses where we're negative. On three properties, we're a total of under $300 short.