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Posted
Jul 16 2008, 12:44 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Catherine at Frugal Homemaker Plus and Crystal at Money Saving Mom have heard this comment from others: "You and your husband make good money. Why don't you spend more on a nicer home/car/vacation/TV?" Why? Because they have different -- and impressive -- priorities for their money, if you really must know. As Crystal said -- in response to a rude comment apparently questioning her sanity for repairing her old van rather than buying a new one -- "We're living like no one else so that someday we can live and give like no one else." (Yes, she is a fan of Dave Ramsey.)
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Posted
May 19 2008, 04:35 PM
by
Karen Datko
Just how bad is foreclosure? As the "Silicon Valley Blogger" points out, pretty awful. But it might just be the end to a financial nightmare that's keeping you up at night. If faced with the prospect of foreclosure, the important thing is that you understand the consequences -- and there will be some -- of this huge financial step.
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Posted
May 19 2008, 02:19 PM
by
Karen Datko
You don't need to have a crazy interest-only or adjustable-rate mortgage to feel the pain of the housing slump. A reader who posted a question at Free Money Finance wisely put 20% down and got a fixed-rate mortgage in Las Vegas when that housing market was sizzling hot. Now it's not, and he's upside down -- he owes more on the house than it's worth because of dropping values. His problem is that he wants to move.
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Posted
May 07 2008, 10:58 AM
by
Karen Datko
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The husband of reader "Deezy92" graduated in 2000 with an Ivy League law degree and a whopping $140,000 in student loan debt. It's now 2008, folks, and those student loans have been paid off for a couple of years. How did they do it? Deezy92 writes:
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Posted
May 03 2008, 05:47 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Former baseball star Jose Canseco is walking away from his 7,300-square-foot mansion in a Los Angeles suburb. But did you know he's only the latest celebrity who has faced foreclosure? In fact, the Los Angeles Times blog L.A. Land has an occasional feature called "Celebrity Foreclosures," and so far has written about such notables as Canseco and Marion Jones. The most recent installment includes suggested headlines about Canseco like "Jose walks" and "Canseco took a walk, but was called out at home."
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Posted
Apr 09 2008, 12:55 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Seb at Pinching Copper apparently said aloud what other people have been thinking when he wrote "There are no victims in the housing bust." He's tired of all the media stories about "innocent" people who suddenly find out that they can no longer afford their homes. "So who do you blame in all this?" Seb wrote. "The bank that approved the loan? The TV show that pumped homeownership? The Realtor who sold the house? In the end, the only person to blame is the one who signed the mortgage document. "The media can portray these people as victims, but the sad truth is that the vast majority of people who are being foreclosed upon could never afford a home to begin worth," Seb said.
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Posted
Apr 08 2008, 02:12 PM
by
Karen Datko
Congratulations to Randall at Credit Withdrawal for winning the dumbest purchase ever contest held by "Debt Kid." Randall won a Nintendo DS Lite for sharing his story about how he bought vinyl siding for his house for $20,000 from a traveling salesman. Here's why this was such a stupid purchase: Randall did no research on the siding -- "They could have put up wallpaper on the outside of the house for all I knew from siding," he says -- did no reference checks on the contractor, and financed the entire job with a 14% loan without reading the fine print. He didn't find out until he tried to refinance his house years later that the loan amounted to a second mortgage on his home. Ouch.
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Posted
Apr 02 2008, 04:24 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
We'll give you the happy ending first: A funny noise in his pickup was the reality check -- he calls it a "gift from heaven" -- that kept blogger "JB" of Get Rich Or Die Trying from buying a house he couldn't afford. The rationalizations he had used up to that point -- spend the emergency fund, the wedding fund and the tax rebate, and stop contributing to the 401(k) -- to make him think he should buy it may seem sickeningly familiar to many struggling to hang on to their homes or facing foreclosure. It also started when JB and his fiancee found the house of their dreams.
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Posted
Mar 06 2008, 08:32 AM
by
Karen Datko
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Here are some stunning facts: The total value of homes owned in the U.S. has increased from $834 billion to $5.1 trillion, in inflation-adjusted dollars, since 1952. In the same time, home equity -- the portion people have paid off -- has increased from $672 billion to more than $2.5 trillion. That sounds like great news. But it also means the average equity people have in their homes dropped from 80% of the home's value in those Howdy Doody days to a record low of 50.4%. This information comes from Michael Rizzo, senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research. "In short, the value of homes has increased greatly since 1952, but mortgage debt has increased even more," Rizzo writes at the institute's Web site.
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Posted
Feb 28 2008, 12:59 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
If your lifestyle is dependent on a home-equity line of credit, your spending may be in for a sudden adjustment. Lenders are lowering or cutting off access to HELOCs, particularly in areas where property values are declining. Blogger Mighty Bargain Hunter has an opinion about that. "Since trying to borrow your way to prosperity doesn't work," MBH writes, "I'm very glad to see this happening."
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