Every now and then I read something that makes me think, "Yep. Here’s the problem." Check out this question from a Q&A from yesterday’s Realty Times:
Question: I have a mortgage on my home. I recently put a pool in my home with a pool mortgage. I cannot pay for the pool. What can they do to my home?
Never mind the answer to this question. [Although, yes, you can lose a home over this one.] The big question is, "Why do people continue to spend money on things they can’t afford?"
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I hear organ donation is gaining popularity.
Trashouts in Surprise?
why?
bc they keep getting away with it.
Maybe a turnstile? Sell access to the pool on Craiglist…
50 cent to swim!
$1 if you #1 in the hot tub!
$2 if you #2 in the deep end!
The columnists really need make their answers more interesting…
I thought the only thing to do at this point is to say, “Oops- that was a mistake. Better sell this place and get something we can afford.”
But that’s just me.
I really like that $2 #2 in the deep end.
My landlord better not show up tomorrow. Going to Leslie’s now to buy some shock.
Also, I keep cracking up at Twist’s headline. It reads like: “I recently got married. I cannot afford the wife.”
Igor/Dr. Phil: She was “Unneeded”.
Interesting. How long until people blame “big swimming” for forcing poolowners into mortgages?
It’s funny how ridiculous that sounds, but the exact same “other argument” enjoys widespread support.
my cat barfed on my new carpet. do i have to pay for it?
Sandman-
Undoubtedly some unscrupulous pool salesman talked him into buying the pool- using some unscrupulous lender. He probably can’t afford it after some unscrupulous car salesman talked him into an expensive car that broke the budget as well.
We have apparently become a nation of two-year olds who go “Gimme! Gimme!” every time we see something shiny we want- and if crooked salesmen talk us into it and crooked lenders finance it, who could possibly blame us?
Right Igor- “tragic” about sums it up.
Just want everybody to know that I have abandoned my dreams of widespread pool installations in favor of what history will hopefully call The New Agnostic Deal: “A chicken coop in every backyard.”
freemonster -
The cat, the barf, or the carpet?
Oh, and please buy my new book, “The Rooster Revolution – How The GSE Collapse Started The USA On The Road To The Poultryhouse.”
Twist,
I agree 100%. I had a similiar comment concerning being held accountable and another blogger disagreed with me.
Surak-
Like most people, I’ve felt ripped off a time or two in a business transactions over the years. I might have been dealing with crooks, but I don’t think there wasn’t a time I wasn’t kicking myself because I should have been more careful.
By all means we should prosecute the crooks, but I’m all for teaching our youth, “Look kids, pay attention in school now. Learn about business, learn about math. There are bad people out there who would take advantage of you, and it’s your responsibility to be the first line of defense between you and the people that would rip you off. Yes we have laws to protect consumers and a court system. Those remedies can be slow and expensive though. Learn to protect yourself.”
We teach kids defensive driving. We should probably teach them “defensive finance” while we are at it.
I like this one:
Question: I am thinking of entering the real estate field. In addition to the initial class work and tests, do agents have to take re-certification classes?
Answer: Why not enter the rock star field instead? There are far fewer people trying to be rock stars than there are trying to be realtors, and rock stars are more useful.
sorry I choked the italics
obviously, we need a new program, a Federal Pool Loan Bailout if you will. It won’t really cost anything, we can simply make an “affordable pools fund” out of a small insurance tax on future pool funding…
Agnostic-
Don’t you worry that the housing bubble will be replaced by the “coop bubble”? Bush will be out there saying how he supports a “Chicken Ownership Society” We’ll start seeing shows like “Pimp My Coop”.
You’d better be careful what you start.
Everyone on Easter Island had chicken coops.
In his book, ‘Collapse’, Jared Diamond notes this. He said ‘if the stone heads were not so obvious, people would call the island ‘place of the stone chicken coops’, as there were so very many of them.
This is true; after the last tree was cut down on Easter Island, society collapsed. Chickens, eggs, some plants, and sometimes each other … were the only things people had to eat.
Couldn’t make boats, and there were virtually no game fish available to be fished from the shoreline.
Not saying Phoenix would ever return to that but…. it IS headed for a full-fledged Depression (10 percent contraction minimum, of local gdp… unemployment in the teens).
Mark my words. Cluck cluck.
Twist-
Ask not what your chickens can do for you, but what you can do for your chickens.