I guess living within your means.....means diddlysquat!

[jumper69]

I don't really feel too sorry for these people.
Foreclosures

While some are undoubtedly victims of horrible karma, most are probably victims of wanting the right zip code and McMansion.

Hey, let's buy a $400,000 dollar home and lease two SUV's, max our credit cards out, and then wonder why we're homeless when I lose my job.

[LanDroid]

Did you hear about that rumor, well perhaps it is more than a rumor that Tom Ridge wants to go back into the private sector? He needs to make more money to pay college costs for his children. He makes $175K, so what's the problem? He bought a house for (numbers are from memory) approx. $820K, put down $120K, and signed a mortgage for 700 THOUSAND DOLLARS! (Can someone calculate what that payment would be?) Obviously for Ridge, the house is more important than the education of his children or his job. [img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img]

[jumper69]

I know real estate is high in the district but $800K....geesh.

I guess the half million dollar homes were just too chintzy. [img]graemlins/whatever.gif[/img]

Are we supposed to feel sorry for him?

[reason]

According to the Bloomberg.com mortgage calculator, a $700,000, 30 year, fixed rate mortgage at 5.125% is $3,811 a month, or $45,732 a year.

<font color="#000002" size="1">[ August 12, 2004 07:53 AM: Message edited by: reason ]</font>

[reason]

Hey, let's buy a $400,000 dollar home and lease two SUV's, max our credit cards out, and then wonder why we're homeless when I lose my job.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You just described my brother and his wife to a t...

Every time I visit - once every 4 months or so - another major purchase. This past weekend, I got to see about $3,000 of new living room furniture, and a new Ford Explorer to replace the one that had 30,000 miles on it.

[LanDroid]

Yep, pretty hard to finance college paying $3800. a month for the mortgage. [img]rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Lew]

Not to sound too much like Tom Brokaw here, but being as close to my grandparents as I am, I envy and respect a lot of things their generation (i.e. the WWII generation) had that my class doesn't. Yes, my peers treat women better, race relations are better, and what have you, but their generation took debt seriously, something we just don't do. I first encountered this when I worked at AAA during school. There was a young girl then (maybe early 20s) who was getting married, and would laugh about all this furniture she and her fiancee had bought on credit, with neither the ability nor intention to pay it off.

Granted, that's not the same as Tom Ridge, but it really opened my eyes. I'm glad that when it comes to debt, I still have a lot of my grandfather in me.