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Yep, Really Bad Choice...

....These people squandered the most magnificent gift most folks could ever hope for. A $450K house in an area (Lake City, GA, near where I grew up) where the median income is just over $22K, created with the hard work of a TV network, several corporate sponsors, and a boatload of volunteers. House was free and clear, financial plan to keep it in place, even a college fund for the kids.

And now it's gone, due to overreaching and bad decisions. Poverty is not entirely about lack of money.
 
I agree...

I have heard this saying more then a few times....."If you took the top 10% of wealth in the world and gave it all to the bottom 90%, in 10 years that money would be back in the hands of the top 10% that had it before". This article is a perfect example.

Another reason why Obama scares me..
 
I will try not to judge

If the economy had gone their way, and they made a go of their business; everyone would be applauding them for turning their lives around. Home Make Over would do a follow up show on how their gift kept giving.

Now on the Judgemental side:
Don't take a risk with your home!!! This is the same type of speculation that has caused the Mortgage mess we have now. Don't risk your home.

I still plan to write in Hillary. She just invited me to dinner, of course she wants me to help her pay off her debt and pay for the dinner too, but hey it's the ivite that's important.

BTW--You too can sign up for a chance to have dinner with me. Just contribute to help me pay off my debt(s) and the lucky winner will be announced after the house is paid for. It will be a catered affair (McDonalds) you can even bring the children. They can play in the play area as we visit.
 
Some never learn. What alot of people dont realize that when these homes are given to people alot of them cant afford to stay in them even though they have a "home expense account". The taxes alone are enough to kill ya. A family in Maine was lucky enough to get a new house from the show and sure it was nice but the taxes went from $2,000 a year to a whopping $9,000...they had to sell the house and now they are renting. Who can afford that...I know I couldnt.
Also I am still for Hillary...soon enough people will get Obama's number...can we say President McCain....I hope not but I have a feeling thats what will happen.
 
10 percent vs. 90 percent.

Of course this statement is true, especially in times like these. Those that are able to trive in times right now are those who have a struture built to flourish and grab goods, property, companies that made bad decisions to be in the situation that they are. Is this a bad thing? Not necessary - I think of it as financial recycling.

So - still not sure where the bad decisions of one family has anything to do with politics.

Ben
 
It's crazy but it's made for tv. Those stupid home reno and real estate tv shows are like crack for mindless people. It makes me sick watching some ditzy 28 y.o. couple with two toddlers lamenting the fact that their 3 bedroom 2 bathroom 2200 sq ft house is too small for their family these days because little Kaitlin and Amber are growing . It's no wonder the country is in such a mess.
 
~Another reason why Obama scares me..

While the USA still seems to be in doubt about the choice of the next president we overhere in Europe keep our fingers crossed that not another Republican president is elected. The world economy suffers enough from this administration, we can't afford another Republican one.
 
still not sure where the bad decisions of one family has any

The economy and financial times are directly related to politics and the political environment. Does anyone remember the "price freeze" of 72? Politics/Economics.

How this relates, if the housing bubble hadn't burst; this family may have made their home business a go. At least this is my logic in continuing.
 
Different Gifts

Pursuit of happiness, not right to happiness.

Isn't it always hard to let others make bad decisions, to protect their right to make their own decisions? My grandfather, william, was a great man, but a poor horse trader. different gifts to different people.

Recall the TV commercial showing a phone call with the tele-doctor DIY appendectomy. All of us depend on others experience to plan and pilot our families course in life. I still have to learn to turn around and ask for directions, but that's my unending life lesson.

I admire those who take risks to move forward, I've know too many who just sat and moaned.

Abstract reasoning, wanting to know -why- you do something this way rather than just "show me how to do it the right way" is really only gifted to 15-20% of the well fed well cared for US population. 80-85% have other gifts but really don't want to know and understand the nitty gritty of how things work, WHY. Knowing that, one understands politics and religion a lot better, as well as world events in countries where nutrition and other hazards keep abstract reasoning very very low.

Oh well, I think that was relevant to the topic, sorry if it doesn't seem to be.
 
Another reason why Obama scares me..

Brought to you by Faux News....

yawn....
 
And Congress passed and Bush signed another bailout bill to help overextended people like this. Your tax dollars at work for stupid people.
 
Well then I guess I fail into the catogory of one of the STUPID PEOPLE. Being a realestate appraiser, I bought my house in 2003. The house was built in 1998. In 2006, with the business rolling in the money, I decided to make my home more up-to-date with the rest of the homes on the market for my size of home. When I purchased this house it was a 2600sqft house with 4 bedroom and 2 full bathrooms. Every home that I was apprasing and all the newer ones being built of similar size were 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths. I took equity from my home and converted the laundryroom into a 3rd bathroom, added a new laundry room, and replaced my stove and fridge as they were 8-10 yrs old. This was what I was taught in appraisers school, and by my parents, is that a home needs to be updated every 8-10 yrs, and that is what equity is for, to increase your equity of your home by updates.

Granted, what these people did was rediculous. If a business is failing, particularly one of construction, obviously they were throwing good money after bad. However, most of the country did what I did. Trying to make their homes better for possible re-sale.

It's hard for us to sit here and say why they did, and for what reasons. We only have one side of the story. But with my home now in preforclosure, I don't judge what anyones does with their money. I do hope that some of the things Bush has done will help me save my home, and the appraisal business is very slowly picking back up, and I'm also studying to become a medical transcriptionist. All I know is that each day is a new day and each new day brings hope.

Yes I did have savings, 6mos worth of estimated bills and mortgage set aside. Have gone through that, cashed in my 401k, all gone. I don't know that anyone could have predicted that the bursting of the housing bubble would have been as bad as what it truly is.

Sorry, don't mean to grandstand and preach, all I am saying is we don't know why they did what they did, so lets not pass judgement without knowing the entire story.
 
Oh yes, politics is at work in this story too...

Bad decisions on the part of this family have proved once again, you reap what you sow.

How about another stimulus check so everyone can get the big-screen LCD AND a Wii? Stupidity abounds in politics and it clearly hasn't gotten much better with the latest cork in the dam, you're right Peter. It's a bit of a rock-and-a-hard-place situation though, if they let things collapse and unfold as the natural course of events would take them - we'd all be in soup-lines by year's end.

I'm not sure how people are making the leap from Hillary right back to Bush III but it's their vote to squander. I must have missed the part when Obama put on the Robin Hood costume and vowed to steal from the rich to give to the poor. Faux News is right - swallowing it whole and not bothering to research may just get us, and the world another four years of horror that incidentally will last much, much longer if McMoron is allowed to stack the Supremes with bible-banging zealots. Maybe that's what it will take, once and for all to teach people what these Neo-Cons are all about. A few more Katrinas, billions squandered on useless military action for intellectual problems. Will serve them right - while as Louis says, the rest of the world suffers.
 
You should only know what housing expense is in NYC..

*AHEM* You have a paid-for lien-free house. Go get your @$$ a busllshit government job that will pay you a mondo retirement after 20 years on the job, and don't be greedy.

Those who want it all lose what little they have.

Scenario #2.
Buy a small apt building in a DECENT area (meaning where real estate appreciates over the years) that will pay for itself and build equity. You can do this by borrowing just enough on your house to put down as a down-payment. You get to collect rents for a lving and to do repairs to keep busy. If you borrow just a small amount and can afford the mortgage payments (on the house) you get to KEEP the house even if the investment apartment building goes belly-up. Think ahead be-smart.d o yoru research and it won't.

Methinks we have this mortgage "crisis" because the goverment wants everyone to own a house, qualified or not. If you don't have the necessary down-payement (and I don't mean by charging it on your credit card) you should not have a house.

UNJUST discrimination is based on race, color, creed national-origin etc. Discrimination (in the proper and purest sense of the word) based on the ability to properly handle your financial obligations is perfectly fine legal and acceptable.
No one is ENTITLED to a house. One has to earn it. Not qualified? BUH-BYE. Lowering the bar, as we have all seen doesn't help anyone in the log-run. In the end we all pay for it, literally.

As usual the few spoil it for the many.
 
I hate to state the obvious.....

But no matter who the next president is, taxes are going to go up. They would have gone up under Hillary as well. They have to go up - we have to pay for these two unnecessary wars that drag on and on, making the war profiteers and mercenaries wealthy. Bush just put everything on a credit card, but as we all know, you need to at least make your minimum payments on a credit card, and we've hardly even done that.

As far as the mortgage crisis goes, I do have some sympathy for the homeowners. A lot of people were sold a real bill of goods on some of these shady mortgages. True, a person should know what they are signing, but some of those documents that they come up with at signings are just unreadable. I knew enough to insist on a boring old 30 year conventional when we bought this place, but there was a lot of pressure on us to go with a zero down ARM.
 
One other thing....

"I do hope that some of the things Bush has done will help me save my home"

Bush has done NOTHING to help people stay in their homes. That was Congress, working in a bipartisan manner. Bush signed the bill, only because he knew his veto would be overridden.
 
I miss the huge amount of money that McCain will spend on continuing the war in Iraq. That will cost much more than any other government spending. Already the Americans are kept dumb because not all the figures about the costs of that war, the Bush administration is very creative with figures. I assume McCain will not be different.

Obama at least knows that if there is an enemy in Afghanistan you won't find it in Iraq.
 
Taxes/spending

What happened to the surplus $$$$$$$$ we had after the Clinton years again?

Things were pretty good during the Clinton years....
 
Saw this story several days ago, but didn't want to bring it up here. I mean does this forum need something else to argue about? *LOL*

That being said, if anyone carefully reads between the lines and or several news reports, it comes out that many who know the family, even their own close friends and relations all say the same thing: they were "never good with money".

One would think after being given a brand new home and money to keep things up, these people would learn their lesson and shape up, if nothing but for the sake of their children. But no, always dreaming and chasing rainbows, looking for the next big thing, they threw the dice and lost everything.

And there we have the entire "sub-prime" mortgage mess in a nutshell. You can put all the lipstick you want on pig, clean and dress it up and sit in the front parlour on Sunday afternoon, but it is still a pig and going to do what pigs do. Persons who have not acted financially careful in the past suddenly aren't going to wake up one day and find the way. Past behaviour is a very strong prediction of how one will do in the future. Credit is nothing more than one giving one's word a debt will be repaid. The more one does this, the better one's name and credit will be worth as persons have trust they will get their money back.

We all know persons, some of them all of our lives who simply cannot handle money. Always ready to take, take, take, then cry poor mouth. Their financial problems are always caused by someone else. Instead of doing the heavy lifting of working hard and playing by the rules, they look for the easy pay off, which more often than not is yet another scam artist looking for sucker.
 
What about poor Fanny and Freddie though? We can still bale them out can't we? (talk about the real pigs)
 
This Story Proves My Point....

....you're given a house, free and clear. And you lose it to foreclosure? YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID!! And stupid they were. Plain and simple.
 
Fanny Mac and Freddie Mae

Are creatures of the federal government, and while one HATES the recent laws passed to aid them, Congress simply had no choice.

For ages wise voices had been raised to clip the wings of both agencies, but political parties on both sides of the aisle had reasons for keeping the status quo. With the recent "sub-prime" mortgage mess, the federal government, especially the Democrats in Congress have pinned large hopes on both agencies to rescue the country. Indeed because the priviate mortgage market pretty much as dried up, close to 70% of all home purchases today are because of these two agencies. If they failed it would have dragged the entire ship, both deserving und non-deserving down into the sea.

On a wider picture, the implict, now made explict backing of the Federal government meant bonds from these two are held all over the world. If either Freddie failed, the danger to the United States treasury and indeed world financial market would have been horrible. So in a sense yes, they were both too big to fail, much as one hates to say it.

Sadder still serious refrom will not take place under a Democratic president/ and Congress because now the Democrats are depending upon a portion of Freddie profits to achieve a long held goal, federal funding for low income and "affordable" housing. No profits, no housing money.

L.
 
There are ignorant poor people, some who will never learn the value of money. But there are also greedy rich folks out there, trying to take anything from the poor they can.

It's too bad we have to bail out Fannie and Freddie. I'd say FUCK em.

There were people that bought homes here for as little as $1500.00!! Then took loans out on them for up to $85,000.00! Some of these homes were ok, and in good shape, but others were nothing but teardowns to begin with!! $1500.00 home??? Then the buyers(that usually never even lived in the houses) took the loan and would walk away from the homes, running away with the money! The houses just fell into further disrepair, and many are just open shells now. It hurts the ones that bought homes around here, and restored and paid for them with blood.sweat,and tears. People that did not have much to begin with, but were really trying to have a better life, and most were trying to own a home for the first time.
People that are out of work steal the copper pipes and wiring out of the empty homes, and cash the metal in at the scrap yards. Sometimes they burn the homes, or just break the windows, and steal whatever is left.
The banks own the homes, but do nothing with them. The homes become drug houses and eyesores.
The people that gave out these "loans" need to be punished in some way. And yet, these are greedy rich bastards that will get off free, and won't be hurt one bit.Watch and see.

I wonder how many times the family were approached by these thugs in suits offering them low interest loans on their "Makover Dream House" More than once, I would bet on it.
 
Rickr

My understanding that there was an annual deficit for a few years at the end of the Clinton run, not a complete deficit. The debt was still there, but just for the year, they spent less than they took in...
 
Well, it's sad, but the family used the loan to start a construction business. At least they were trying to make a new start, instead of frittering away the money on cars and bling.

Not everyone is cut out to be a business person. No doubt the housing implosion scuttled their construction company future. These people would have been better off getting moderately paying jobs and keeping their home... obviously...

I do wonder what the property taxes and utility bills were like on a home that size in that area.
 
Hi Peter, I have never heard that about the Clinton surplus. I have always heard that we had a huge surplus during, and at the end of the Clinton years.

At any rate, here is a link to what Wikipedia has to say about the surplus, and about Clinton in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton
 

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