The rich foreclose in spectacular fashion – Pasadena million dollar home has owners unable to pay the mortgage yet keep getting mortgages. The biggest Southern California foreclosure loss in Bel-Air.

Today we are going to search for some of the biggest Southern California foreclosures.  Even though some of these places are relatively cheaper than their peak price they are out of reach for most ordinary mortals.  In fact, it would appear that many that once were assumed to be wealthy are unable to hold onto their properties either.  It is a question of budgeting.  A person taking in $1,000 a month will end up in financial problems if they spend $2,000 a month.  This applies to a person making $50,000 a month and spending $75,000.  How many Hollywood stories have we heard of where large sums of money went up in a puff of blue smoke due to conspicuous spending?  These mega foreclosures highlight big losses for banks.  This is the meat of the shadow inventory.  A foreclosure with a $1 million loss on one SoCal giant is the same as a bank losing $20,000 per home on 50 Arizona homes.

Pasadena million dollar foreclosure

pasadena bank owned

The above home provides a juicy story from the housing bubble if numbers could actually speak.  This home is in the elite 91106 zip code of Pasadena.  Let us examine some of the details first:

Beds:                                     6

Baths:                                   5

Square feet:                       4,650

Originally built:                  1917

We should also look at the previous sales history:

May 2002:                           $1,325,000

November 2005:                $2,300,000

What I found interesting on this place is that two buyers lost this home through foreclosure.  The person that bought this place in 2002 had a NOD filed in July of 2005.  By October 2005 the place was scheduled for foreclosure.  This is how quickly things move in a bubble market since the bank knew the seller could sell and make a profit.  Keep in mind that the people had already had issues making payments but were able to unload the home for $2,300,000.  So think about how many people got saved like this during the bubble years.  The initial owner was unable to make the payment at $1,300,000 yet they turned close to a $1 million profit even though they were in default!

The person that bought this home in 2005 started mortgaging the place up practically every year.   Let us look at the history here:
pasadena note details

So here we have another owner that was unable to afford the home from day one and this is a $2.3 million dollar home.  But leave it to WaMu to give the owners a $250,000 home loan in April of 2006.  This of course wasn’t enough so in November of 2006 this owner went to Countrywide and took out a first of $2,640,000 plus a second of $330,000.  Now we’re up to nearly $3 million in loans on a home that sold for $1.3 million back in 2002.  Keep in mind both of these buyers had no ability to carry the home and this is apparent through the loan history.  So in 2007 they go back to WaMu and take out a first of $2.72 million and a 2nd for $250,000.  Two months after that, a third mortgage of $89,000 was placed on the home!  Now the home has $3,059,000 in mortgages all with Washington Mutual.  Of course, only a short while after that Washington Mutual imploded and went down as one of the biggest bank crashes in U.S. history.

Here is the thing.  This home isn’t on the MLS.  It looks like it was taken back by the bank in August of this year.  This year it made a few appearances for sale but was removed:
price history details

Apparently no one bit even with a $500,000 cut from the top amount of mortgages.  This will likely cost the end note holder WaMu (now owned by Chase) one million dollars.  Will they be foolish to let another third person buy this place who is unable to make the payment?  Just run the numbers assuming this home sells for $2.3 million:

Down payment (20%):                   $460,000

PITI (6% jumbo loan):                    $13,426 (monthly net payment)

To be safe, a potential buyer would need an income of $500,000 a year.  Of course the pool of buyers is limited since they would also need nearly a half million dollars for a down payment.

This home went through nearly a decade of owners who had no ability to pay the mortgage.  And we’re talking about a home that at one point took on over $3 million in mortgages!  The public has no way of knowing this because it was a non-event.  It isn’t on the MLS and the media hasn’t covered the “rich” that are clearly living way beyond their means.  Of course some would like to think this entire housing debacle was caused by Wal-Mart employees buying Real Homes of Genius in unpopular areas.

However the biggest Southern California foreclosure is likely to be Nicolas Cage’s home:

nic cage home

“(L.A. Times) The closing scene played out this week when a new owner picked up the sprawling mansion for $10.5 million, a relative bargain for a trophy home that had been listed several years ago at more than three times that amount. The buyer was identified only as a limited liability company, a common cloaking device in high-profile real estate transactions.

The 1940 Tudor had failed to generate any bids in April when it was offered at the county courthouse steps in Pomona. Six loans totaling $18 million encumbered the house, which the actor had decorated in a style one local real estate agent dubbed “frat-house bordello.” Among personalized touches were garish room colors, three dozen bronze wall sconce holders made from a cast of the Oscar winner’s arm and hundreds of elaborately framed comic-book covers lining the walls.”

Run the numbers on this one:

$18 million in mortgages – $10.5 million winning bid = $7.5 million loss

It is amazing that the wealthy have enormous leverage to gamble on real estate.  During the boom say you bought a $2 million home you were able to then sell it at the peak for $5 or $6 million.  There is no way most ordinary folks can accumulate that much wealth that quickly for simply flipping a mortgage.  Yet we are now seeing how it cuts both ways.  Keep in mind that these loans permeate through the system since we’ve bailed out the entire banking industry.  Where is the outrage about these wealthy people who speculated and lost big?  The taxpayer is paying for it.  We’ve had plenty of media coverage on low income people “causing” the entire housing crash.  What about these homes?  The market definitely isn’t what it used to be here in Southern California even for paper millionaires.

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87 Responses to “The rich foreclose in spectacular fashion – Pasadena million dollar home has owners unable to pay the mortgage yet keep getting mortgages. The biggest Southern California foreclosure loss in Bel-Air.”

  • Simply insane. Thanks for posting this Doc, it’s good to know that some “bubble-proof” areas are getting hit just as hard though it is downplayed.

    And as for the Nicholas Cage house, no wonder he’s seemingly taking on any kind of movie role these days.

    • What’s truly disgusting is, the thought/possibility it might just be Nicolas Cage hiding behind that LLC that bought the mansion up for $10.5 million, in effect cutting roughly 42% off on his outstanding loans/debt against the property. This is another trick the rich employ, as noted with the “LLC” comment. Just my honest opinion and certainly a speculation at best, but it’s happened before and happens quite often in the world of the mega-rich.

  • When I was a paper boy in Sterling Heights, Michigan, there was a person down the street near Clinton River road, who bought a new Cadillac every year, and parked it in the DRIVEWAY
    (this is Michigan winter, remember) so that every one could see how successful they were.
    When I came by on Saturday to collect my money ($1.25 a week), they often asked me, “Can you come back on Monday?”
    Leased cars, credit cards, and objects of status may appear to give everyone today the idea that they are well off. Most of these are a house of cards,currently collapsing.

    • Great story, still laughing, $1.25.

    • A microcosom of America, I’m afraid. Largest hopelessly indebted nation that still thinks it has a valid claim to the richest nation in the universe. Our lavish lifestyle that we cannot afford and the repo man has just made a turn on main street. He’s coming for the Cadillac, I’m afraid. Too bad Cage found the treasure room with just a pile of IOU’s from WaMu and Countrywide.

    • Was that the Times, the News, or the Free Press? or the Macomb County paper?

      • It was the Detroit Free Press. Papers came to our house at 6AM, and my route took about an hour before school. Made about $5. a week. Summers were great, but winters, in the dark, with temp. at 10 degrees, and snow on the ground, was a bear. NO kid now days would do that- too soft, and too lazy.

    • I grew up in Newport Beach, CA and I was a paper boy as well in the early 1970’s. I think the paper was $2.25 a month. Most of the wives were housewives whose husbands had them on a monthly budget so they’d NEVER pay me – had to catch their husbands.

      • PDQ,
        Brings back memories! I delivered the Daily Pilot in CdM during ’71 or ’72. The closer to Albertsons, the higher the concentration of strapped renters and the tougher to collect. One month I didn’t clear enough to buy a bag of rubber bands!

    • The $1.25 brought back some memories of when I too — as a Detroit Newspaper boy — had to cut off the “big spenders” who couldn’t cover their bills but indeed left those Cadillacs and Lincolns out in the driveway to rust.

  • Its the rich who screw the poor to stay rich as usual, but its the super rich who screw everybody just to keep busy on their chess board of life:

    Rothschild Bankers funded WW II Germans and Allied Bankers via B.I.S. in Basel Switzerland transferring funds the entire war between Nazi Deutch Bank and UK Bank of England extending it.

    War could have ended 1-2 years but Germans Printed Debt Free Currency and Tossed Rothschild Bankers out of Germany so they firebombed all Germans and never bombed factories to extend war 5 years to kill all Germans so no more “Banking Problem Children” left living.

    Read Old book With The New Financial Way to rid parasite Interest Banking here:

    http://www.filefactory.com/file/b422gc9/n/ndcic.pdf

    Oh and they invented Interest banking 800 years ago in Italy and Arab Sharia Law forbids Interest Banking so we been shooting Arabs last 800 years too.

    Oh and don’t count on the Police or Homeland Security to help with this Mafia, as they are paid to protect the government from you after you see this next video showing CIA and Police bring Coke into the USA Cities:

    http://www.filefactory.com/file/b42304b/n/crackthecia.wmv

    • I shouldn’t even reply but, what a bizarre set of claims.

      WWII could have ended after 1-2 years if not for the Rothschilds?!? That’s insane. 1 year out the nazis had conquered France. Two years out they had nearly conquered the equally repugnant Soviet Union. They were led by an insane psychopath. But you want us to believe that a few items changed in the old ledger and things would have simmered down. Really?

      And you want us to believe that the allies bombed german cities at the order of the Rothschild family. Really? Maybe you watched too many clips of the use of “smart” bombs during military action in Iraq. Bombing was an incredibly blunt instrument back then and german air defenses were fearsome. Try reading Bomber by Len Deighton’s books. The RAF tried to bomb during the day time but simply couldn’t. And it was the head of british bombing operations, Arthur Harris’s, belief that the will of the german people could be broken or so beaten down through massive bombing that they would, if not quite capitulate, not fight effectively. There are serious moral questions about the type of carpet bombing the RAF engaged in but yours is the first voice I’ve ever heard claiming anything even remotely close to what you posit as the “real” motivation for the allied bombing campaign.

      And, really, “so we been shooting Arabs last 800 years too.” You paint with a brush broad enough to have bristles extending beyond both sides of a barn at once. If this was really true, why did Eisenhower just let the Saudis nationalize american engineered oil fields and operations? How can you possibly square that incredibly sparse thesis with the militarily unassailable 1950’s U.S. just letting those supremely valuable installations be taken without lifting a finger to stop it?

      Please question your certainty and allow yourself to consider other information.

      • You should reply James, and you should do more research and it may blow your brain to look at think OBJECTIVELY. Some people cannot handle it, they refuse to believe they are puupets, but deep down, we all know it.

        Zeitgeist (2007) is readily available to watch on the Internet, they approach many of the subjects that have resulted in a few families manipulating and controlling society for thousands of years. From religion to banksters to government. To me it’s not even a conspiracy anymore, it’s readily apparant fact, but there’s not much I can do to change it other than refusing to support the unjust USURY system.

      • Obviously everything we are told is not the truth but whenever some just ingores the facts by calling someone a ‘madman’ or ‘conspiracy theorist’, I figure they are incapable of seeing anything that doesn’t align with understanding of the facts. There is a huge capital interest in war and people are very motivated to pursue it.
        As for this topic, there are a particular set of folks who make every effort to control everything from Banking, Finance, Higher Education, Government, Military, Media, Advertising, etc. Hitler was not a madman-but he tried to purge Europe of those that betrayed Germany at Versailles and controlled all aspects of German life. If he were merely a blood-thirsty madman, he would have never let the English escape from Dunkirk. He could have killed or captured the entire expeditionary force and everyone knows it. The rest, who knows? It’s just one side of the story.
        Just like the terrorists fight the only way they can rather than be oppressed, the Nazi’s fought those that they assumed had destroyed their country in WWI. In the context of this blog, the point is that Wall Street didn’t make a mistake. They are methodically draining the resources of this country through housing, insurance, legal, school loans, and gasoline costs. Doc is trying to tell people that this whole system is rigged and to not get trapped into a home you cannot afford. Don’t follow the herd to the slaughterhouse.

  • Most people are frogs sitting comfortably in what they think is a jacuzzi. When all of the sudden the heat starts to cook them and they wonder why they were not warned.

  • Here’s another article to support the arguments made here, “Million-dollar homes: Massive discounts” http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/real_estate/1011/gallery.million_dollar_bargains/index.html

    • Yes Nick, I certainly saw that article and had a good chuckle. Compared to the Vegas home, that Scottsdale AZ one is still quite a ripoff (although it could be argued that the majority of them are still vastly overpriced). Loved the one in Maryland though…

  • Just another story from “Deadbeat America,” where your debt is my debt.

  • LOVE THE ARTICLE, Dr. HB!

    And check this nonsense out:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Home-sales-plunged-after-tax-cnnm-3344836805.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

    Surprise, surprise…yet another report that home sales plunged after the tax credit expired! There’s a shocker we’ve known for months! Guess it’s better late than never for the MSM/Yahoo. There are some nonsensical NAR President/spokes-hole quotes there, too:

    “The fall-off in sales volume remains a troubling feature of the current housing market scene because there’s rarely been a more attractive time to buy.

    “Given the relationship between mortgage interest rates, home prices and median family income, the buying power in today’s market is matching the highest levels we’ve seen dating all the way back to 1970,” said NAR President Ron Phipps.”

    FLOL what a crock! Absolute nonsense! If it were really such an attractive time to buy, PEOPLE WOULD BE BUYING! Asking prices (and the actual selling prices of the few properties that have actually sold these past few months) are still FAR too high in any reasonably desirable or better areas. Considering the enormous amounts of inventory held off the markets by banks, in an economic environment that has the worst jobless rates since the Great Depression (never mind the bogus government unemployment numbers – the truth of the matter is unemployment is closer to 15% and U6, unemployment + underemployed is at 25%).

    Just think of it this way – with ALL of the government and federal reserve intervention (homebuyer tax credits, bank/TARP/HAMP/homeowner bailouts, credit liquidity moves and the lowest rates in 50+ years via trillions in quantitative easing QE1 and QE2, all that and more and the real estate market is still THIS bad.

    The powers that be should have let it ALL collapse quickly and brutally…it would have allowed us to rebuild that much faster, move properties out of weak hands into the strong hands of quality buyers and investors, had stronger banks rise up to take the place of fallen mega zombie banks and other corporations that made bad bets. Now we are ALL screwed (except the fatcat bankers, Wall Street and their government cronies)!!!

    • noobz, problem here is, Mr. NAR Dood isn’t wrong.

      The problem is, we have to live in the future, not the past. How good things are now compared to the past is irrelevant. The big unknown is what comes next, and most of us with more than two brain cells to rub together aren’t seeing anything that looks encouraging.

      I found my way to Doctor Housing Bubble in 2006, while frustrated with the cult of John Bogle at the Vanguard forums. (Hence my name here of compass rose.) I used to go there for conservative thinking about building sustainable wealth (in the middle of all the bubble insanity), but as reality started sniffing and scratching at the door around then, people were just refusing to look out and see the zombie radioactive Godzilla bear.

      And so they kept honking things like how “the stock market has returned X percent overall since 1430-twelve!” Yeah, so what? Just because John Bogle had once-in-a-millennium generational luck and privilege, doesn’t mean the model is going to work for any of the rest of us, maybe not even ever again. I can’t live in the past 80 years, I have to live in now, and the next X years.

      So we can look back and see that, yes indeed, housing debt is cheaper than it’s ever been in my lifetime, or whatever, in various markets. (While still, many markets are way inflated.) But looking ahead, the employment picture, the globalized race to the bottom, the degree and magnitude of robotic-computer-quant-automated casino, global climate change, peak oil, peak soil, peak water…and apparently peak intelligence.

      • @Rose: Peak Intelligence–Love it!

      • Sadly, you’re right. I am constantly amazed by the complete denial of so many people.
        Folks in real estate keep desperately cranking out jolly “Now is the time to BUY!” commercials, more desperate for the sales than to help people make sober, well-considered investments- and my friends who saved their money through the crash are STILL willing to follow them like the doomed rats followed the Pied Piper.
        Well, until I urge them to check out this website! LOL!

  • Yes, the bank (and taxpayers) lost 7.5 mil because of Nicholas Cage but you shouldn’t blame the rich for problems with our economy. The top 1% of income earners pay more than 40% of the taxes in this country!

    • Yes, but they’re also the ones who manage incredible evasions that are utterly impossible for average people and for small businesses. The tax rate for corporations in the U.S. is 35%, among the highest of industrialized nations. And it’s a serious problem for the typical small and medium sized business.

      But not for Google! Google, like many huge corporations, but not your dry cleaner or your favorite family restaurant, shifts profits overseas. Then, through a byzantine series of arrangements including tax strategies known as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” (double entendre away!) Google manages to pay a tax rate of 2.4% on its “overseas” profits.

      One of the little recognized aspects of proposals for flat taxes with almost zero exceptions to them is that they would lessen the tax on your dry cleaner and your favorite family restaurant, who are stuck paying the actual 35% rate but would functionally raise taxes on business like Google that have the wherewithal to game the system created by bribed congressmen.

    • And have over 23% of all income – having had thier in comes go up 255% since 1970 while the rest of the US has flat or falling incomes.

      And have over 80% of all assets in the US – financial, business etc.

      Aw poor babies – control 80% of all wealth in the US and ‘only’ pay 40% of all revenues to keep the US running,

      • Somebody call a WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAbulence!

        Seriously, with the heroin-addicted El Rushbo spouting off (just yesterday 11/11/10) that Federal Taxes are at “all time highs”, no wonder the Intentionally Ignorant Teabaggers think that “taxes are too high”.

        Wrong, GOP/Rush/Teabaggers.

        Taxes are historically low and actually lower now than they’ve been since 1955:
        http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151

    • Matt, I hope you are kidding right?

      The super rich pay a very low percentage of their income compared to everyone else.

    • Since when do the rich pay their full tax obligation???? They must have a lousy CPA, PLEASE!

    • Wikipedia reports that the top 1% own 38% of the national wealth. The top 10% own 71%.

      So not only are taxes fair… they need to pay more. Because ownership is just a sliver of their wealth – they also have high incomes and live nice lives. They spend their money to retain control of their system (and since they own 70% of it, it is *their* system). They spend lavishly on education particularly for their less educable offspring who need remedial education. They join important exclusive clubs. They establish large charities.

      The other 90% of the country has to “share” the remaining 29% of the wealth.

  • Meredith Whitney says decades of mortgage mess.
    Great interview:
    http://www.youtube.com/user/TheNewWaveSlave#p/a/u/0/IdUPErXvtoI

  • That the top 1% pay more than 40% of the INCOME taxes (not 40% of all taxes) is an indication of the immense, and increasing, income disparity in this country, the largest we’ve ever had.

    And, contrary to popular myth, it is the rich who get the lion’s share of government services. Now, don’t howl at this until you consider just what services they get.

    While some of the the poor are thrown bones such as welfare, medicaid, and housing assistance, the rich have always been given services that have helped insulate them against their own mistakes and have been a big factor in widening the gap between them and the rest of us.

    Here’s a short list of services rendered the rich, because there is no space here for a comprehensive list:

    1. Subsidies for major, connected business ranging from massive land grants to the large railroads in the late 19th century, to bailouts for major industries for the past 50 years, to crop subsidies that primarily help big agribusiness, to countless local subsidies for “economic development”, to highways built specifically to feed business to this shopping mall or that. I could go on for 100 pages here.

    2. Our diplomacy and foreign wars have been largely conducted to make life possible for our businesses in slave labor havens so that we can export the jobs that the guys drafted to fight these wars (provided they came home alive and in one piece) had hoped to get. Let’s try REAL free enterprise, and tell our businesses that they’re ON THEIR OWN negotiating with repressive communist regimes and refractory third-world populations.

    3. Our fiscal and economic policy since the formation of the private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve has been dedicated to asset-stripping the population of this country by inflation, and government guarantees against losses incurred by high risk behaviors on the part of the financial concerns in the cartel

    All in all, I’d say that the richest 1% get way more than they pay for, especially when you net in the subsidies and bailouts. The rest of us are getting far less, especially when you consider the burden of taxation over and above the progressive income tax, in regressive taxes on everything we own, buy, and do.

    I’d like to see a truly free economy, if such a thing is possible. That would mean NO government interference in the workings of business and the economy. It would mean no Commerce Dept, no Trade Agreements with other countries,- if you want to build a factory in a 4th world low wage slum, go negotiate with its government on your own, don’t ask the State Dept to be your go-between. And no more TIF districts, tax abatements, and other special tax treatment or subsidies so you can build another Big Box store 2 miles down the road from the one you just left empty and blighted, at the expense of local property tax payers. No more multi-million dollar payments to let your 20,000 acre spread lay fallow, and never, ever again any young men drafted and dead before the age of 22 to fight wars to make it easy for you to export their jobs.

    For all of the above, I’ll be happy to accept a 10% flat income tax on all individuals, no deductions, no exemptions, no incentives, and I’ll also be happy to accept a massive rollback of all the various “welfare” for the poor and middle class, that only skews the housing market northward and creates perverse incentives- and locks the poor into place. They’d be better off without it, in a truly free market society.

    But that won’t happen in Corporate Fascist America.

    • Good post. I too, would like to see a FREE economy, not a Fascist dictatorship!

    • Laura-
      That is a bunch of BS. The people you are talking about are the top 0.1% of earners, mainly large corporations. I am a physician earning roughly 400k per year. That puts be in the top 1% of earners and I dont benefit from any of the services you mentioned. All of the services that my tax dollars pay for go the poor/lower class. I dont get ANYTHING that I pay for. Please dont lump me in with the super rich in the top 1%. Yes, I do make great money. But, I also pay nearly 60% in taxes, have $250k in student loans, and I cant afford to buy a house near the hospital that I work at (westside).

      • Brian,

        A picture is worth a thousand words

        http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/incomedistribution.png

        You are correct in one thing.Actual tax data, from actual returns. [Not theory and musings about tax rates]

        Here are the minimum AGI from IRS data to fall into different buckets for 2007

        Top 0.1% $2,155,365 minimum
        Top 1% $410,096 minimum
        Top 5% $160,041 minimum
        Top 10% $113,018 minimum

        And here are the tax rates ..

        Bucket avg rate AGI floor
        Top 0.1% 21.46 (2.155 mil +)
        Top 1% 22.45 (0.419 mil +
        Top 5% 20.53 (0.160 mil +)
        Top 10% 18.79 (0.133 mil+)

        There is an actual propaganda behind this “250K is rich” and “top 1% should be taxed”. It is that tax rates max out at incomes of ~400K and then fall, if you earn into the millions.

        Paying 60% taxes. I would like to see that breakup. Is that including your property taxes? You are subsidizing old, rich property owners and landlords there (because of Prop 13), not lower classes. Go check out the tax roll for where you live and see how much those living in affluent places pay. Rich people don’t have to move. Only working professionals like you have to move in search of jobs.

        “All of the services that my tax dollars pay for go the poor/lower class. I dont get ANYTHING that I pay for.”

        That is definitely nonsense. You may not get all of what you pay for. Getting nothing is Somalia.

        For some real proposals read this
        http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki

        And then wonder why that does not happen.

    • Huh?

      So you want to give the rich a 10% income tax rate? That would be a tax cut. The Tax Foundation reports that their average income tax rate was 23% – far short of the 30+ they should pay, but well above your 10% rate. If enacted, your tax cut on the wealthy would result in their paying only 17% in all taxes.

      They would use your huge tax cut to pay for their mercenary armies, their own diplomats, and other necessary services. When their mercenaries were not busy invading foreign countries, they would be turned against the citizens in this country.

  • I have no concern or pity for anyone that buys overpriced BS in southern cal. Traveled through the area over a period of 3 years, and it’s all just hype. But on the other hand, it’s a wake up call to those that are conned by perception.

  • But it’s different here on the Westisde! Yeah it is different, people are more leveraged and taking it to the banks, who then take it to the taxpayers. It makes you wonder how many wealthy individuals are mortgaged to the hilt, after a decade of greed.

    http://www.westsideremeltdown.blogspot.com

  • God's Right Hand Man

    My forcast is this – housing is going to absoulutely CRATER, CRASH, DIVE, DISINTEGRATE. Housing is going to be a GIGANTIC MESS FOR A LONG TIME. The reasons a many:

    1) Loss of jobs in the U.S., plus the lack of quality jobs in the U.S.
    2) Lack of real wealth in the U.S.
    3) Housing prices are WAY OVERPRICED compared to incomes, a result of the housing/credit bubble.
    4) Aging of the baby boomers, who will need money for retirement and health care costs. Approx 10,000 baby boomers retire every single day. When millions of baby boomer start dying, millions of homes will become available.
    5) Increase cost of living Americans will be experience (for food, transportation, taxes, etc…)
    6) Cuts in social programs that are happening and will happen in the future will decrease the amount of money Americans can pay for housing.
    7) Deterioration of the U.S. dollar, which has the potential to impoverish us all.
    8) Emergence of wealth in other nations which will enrich their citizens. At the same time Americans will witness a decrease in their standard of living.
    9) Millions and millions of illegal immigrants have poured into the U.S., many who came without two cents to rub together. They all need somewhere to live, but remember they don’t have two cents to rub together, or if they do, they certainly can’t afford to buy $300,000+ homes (gone are the days when banks would hand out “loans” to anybody including your pet donkey).
    10) Millions of homes in the U.S. are old and require tens of thousands of dollars of maintenance. Who wants to buy a $400,000 dollar home that needs $100,000 dollars of repairs?
    11) The days of easy credit are over. Many banks are in trouble. We may be seeing the end of easy credit in the U.S.

    There are many other reasons, but frankly, I see an massive iceberg ahead (think Titanic). Housing is on a absolute collision course in this country. Now is a very risky time to be buying a house in many areas.

    • The biggest drag of all, far and away will be besmirched property titles that have been improperly documented by the banks and now will not stand up to scrutiny. Title companies are not going to step up and insure titles that are the least bit questionable. By skipping the proper recording of all loan assignments in the county recorder’s office the banks saved a little time and cash. They were criminally sloppy in their handling of documentation. The question becomes “who owns what?” Banks foreclose without a verifiable right to do so and the homeowner is too broke or too ignorant to fight back. Now the banks are talking about indemnifying the title companies against the risk of having to defend clouded titles . Then the taxpayer would be on the hook as the back-up for the banks which are already on life support. I don’t understand why there isn’t more public recognition of the problem. Without clear title, a property is a zombie. You can’t get title insurance and therefore, you can’t sell the property or get a loan on it.
      As time goes by millions of faulty titles are going to come to light. What a mess! I would be very leery of any title changing hands right now.

  • It is the government who is to blame for this fraud costing all of the nations tax payers. We as a country are on the hook for these gambles because Obama, Bush, and every other slimy-filthy rich-politician in Washington decided to make the tax payers responsible for the banks losses on all homes nationwide, just to save their banking buddies. Don’t believe anything else they tell you. It is not complicated, without the gov’t– banks and gambling lenders loaning money with no sense of responsibility would have lost everything and dissappeared. Now they have all the money. Brilliant idea Dems and Repubs. The sham is over. Get our money back with full interest (All 13 trillion we have loaned through the Fed and Congress) and if you can’t afford it. So be it! Bankruptcy is there for a reason.

  • Laura,

    You’ve been watching too many Michael Moore “documentaries”.

    If life is so terribly unfair here in Corporate Fascist America, why are you still here? Perhaps for the same reason that hundreds of thousands of immigrants and would-be immigrants risk life, limb and treasure to come here. Because this is still the best place on planet earth in which to thrive and prosper by the sweat of our brow and the courage of our convictions. But it takes work, sacrifice and commitment. Sadly we are becoming a nation of whiners and “victims”.

    I agree that the system is rigged in favor of SOME wealthy individuals, but the fact remains that most “rich” people in America earned their place in life through hard work and sacrifice and I’m sick and tired of the stereotypical and trite generalizations and attacks made against the rich by those lacking the courage and character to succeed in life.

    Stop whining and get to work!

    • Thomas (from EU)

      “…but the fact remains that most “rich” people in America earned their place in life through hard work and sacrifice ”

      Oh yeah, none of them inherited their wealth. What BS.

      I’m sure I’d do well in life with 100 millions from my parents: That kind of fortune take essentially care of itself, you don’t have to do anything. ”

      Hard work and sacrifice”? More like lazy idlenessness of the rich.

  • João P. Bragança

    That may be true, but most of that income is investment income, i.e. UNEARNED. The long term rate on capital gains is 15%, yet we sit here whining about some marginal tax increase on EARNED income. Meanwhile this class of people only invests in companies that slash payroll, slash research and development budgets, that make US work overtime without paying us, or they will send our jobs overseas, anything to juice their stock price. And then they get the rest of us conservatives to shill for them on tax rates. It is bizarre.

    • (I am not a conservative, so easy with the “us,” man.)

      The long term cap gains rate used to be 20%, and the short term used to be 40%. In 2011, these high rates will return. Lowering them was a big, big Bush political push, and he got the cuts.

      Resistance to the cuts was weak – I think it was because it’s hard to explain cap gains taxes to people who rent, and people who don’t actively trade in the stock market. So the masses could not be mobilized around the issue.

      And the few who could were bought out by a 0% long term tax rate on cap gains if your income tax rates were 15% – meaning seniors, poor offspring living in daddy’s old house, and so forth.

      • João P. Bragança

        That is still backwards. If we are going to tax income, I don’t think we should tax unearned income at a lower rate than earned income, just because the person in question waits a year before selling.

        Frankly replacing income taxation with property taxation is the right answer here. Instead of taxing productivity we should be taxing opulence.

  • Excuse me, but I don’t watch Michael Moore.

    I am a Libertarian.

    If you bothered to actually READ my post, you would know I am not some Welfare Bleeding-Hear Lib.

    Personally, I’d like to see the welfare state rolled back to the bare minimum necessities for only the neediest folk- those with severe disabilities and the destitute elderly.

    But speak not to me of “Michael Moore documentaries” when I see in my own city the benefits stripped from taxpayers and handed to corporate cronies. The City of Chicago paid United Airlines $37 Million to occupy several floors in the Sears Tower. We are a quilt of TIF districts, which are really only a way to convey our property taxes to well-connected developers, who are thus insulated from normal risk.

    I am not opposed to wealth, or wealth-building. I believe you have a right to earn as much as you are able, and to keep it, and I also believe that people who became wealthy by their own initiative and brains, and by using their own labor and money and that volunteered to them either by investors or those who willingly exchanged their labor and ideas for pay or a piece of the business, have given us everything we have in the way of prosperity, comforts, and advancement. I wouldn’t want to tar a real producer like Andrew Carnegie, Mellon, Bill Gates, Steven Job, Elon Musk, or some other great innovator or producer, or even some entertainer or sports figure whose rewards were given him or her by people willing to pay to watch, with the same brush as such parasitical and heavily subsidized businesses as our banking cartel, or other businesses who are heavily subsidized and shielded from competition by their bought politicians.

    • There’s nothing quite as oogy as someone who mistakes their psychosexual fetishes for economics models. I.e., people who kiss the chains that bind them.

      “the fact remains that most “rich” people in America earned their place in life through hard work and sacrifice”

      Uh. Yeah. Yeah, that must be true. Because people who worship money and the rich say it all the time.

      I mean, money is such a measure of a person’s VALUE, right? And when someone has a bunch of it, they are instantly superior to others.

      Who cares that every last bit of that wealth is a vast pyramidal shell game built on “natural resources” and other people’s efforts, with the cream skimmed upwards and the toxic waste spread everywhere but NIMBY Estates-by-the-golf-course?

      Who cares that they played games that were designed (often by them) to work just for them, and all of society agreed not to count the COSTS of their wealth, just the benefits?

      Who cares if Andrew Carnegie despoiled the Appalachians, destroyed millions of lives, polluted the air and water, was a war profiteer, pushed for the genocide of indigenous people across the US, and the richer he got, the more he tried to slash the wages of those who did the labor, and then had them slaughtered if they resisted?

      What matters is he was rich and makes me feel all tingly below the belt when I behold his mighty lugal power to crush me like a bug!

      And never mind how most rich people I’ve ever met as a business owner, professional, and educator were the biggest nutsacks on the planet, convinced they knew better than everyone else, and that their pillaging was some gift from a big beardy comic book hero in the sky, underscoring their superior value. (Just ask Joel Osteen!)

      Poor people? Hell, we all know that none of them work! They’re poor because they’re lazy, stupid, and useless.

      What, you say there are many hardworking poor people? That can’t be, because we all know that money is a measure of people’s intrinsic value and effort! Poor people are poor, and poor is bad, and bad is poor. It’s an airtight mental seizure state!

      Yeah, just keep preaching that good old Mesopotamian/Vatican/Calvinist gospel of the golden calf.

      Coz as the shit hits the fan in all directions, what matters more than feeling lordly, and retaining petty power to hold yourself over others. Or licking and kissing the boot on your neck?

      Me, I always think of Dorothy Parker, who observed, “If you want to know what god thinks of money, look at the people he gave it to.”

    • I don’t believe you can ever separate politics and business. But even if we did have a ‘true’ capitalism, we still would have issues of the rich taking advantage of those that are not. Those at the top of the food chain have competitive advantages over those near the bottom, regardless of government. People preach the ideals of capitalism as if everyone has ‘equal’ ground, but infrastructure and intelligence favor the wealthy in a capitalist society.

      On that note, I thought most libertarians want welfare abolished. Most won’t admit to the reality that this will have dangerous consequences to the poor. Instead, they point to a vision of a poverty-less society where everyone has earned their place in society and all thrive together, and the few that do need help can rely on the charity of their fellow American. Ironically, I cannot imagine such a society without government interference/regulation.

  • Thanks for replying, James T., even if against your better judgment.

    Sometimes idiots like the appropriately named Mr. Squirrel need to be put in their place.

    • Thanks. It’s not worth it to argue with people who’ve constructed simplistic, closed belief systems but sometimes you give in to the temptation. The key is to see what they do with information that contradicts their thesis. Rational people try an discern if that new information is true and see how their thesis has to be modified to accomodate it.

      People with closed belief systems never allow contradictory information to enter. They deny it or, if it can’t be denied, invent reasons why the closed belief system doesn’t have to be modified despite this information. Closed belief systems, like most conspiracy beliefs, are typically very simple because the whole thing would fall apart if they were admitting new information on any kind of regular basis.

      The Rothschilds were an influential family but to say that they determined the course of allied bombing offensives against Germany because they were upset at the Nazis is ridiculous, completely unsupported crap.

  • “4) Aging of the baby boomers, who will need money for retirement and health care costs. Approx 10,000 baby boomers retire every single day. When millions of baby boomer start dying, millions of homes will become available.”

    Those houses will never become available. The boomers’ kids have already moved in with mommy and daddy and will gladly see their parents die.

    • lololol! Too funny…Too true!

    • I moved back in with my parents, but I’m not waiting for them to die. What I am waiting on is for this idea that each individual person should want their own household or there is something wrong with them. I contribute to the household financially and through helping out with chores etc. I don’t ask for money from my parents. I also have no desire to pay for rent, more furniture, household appliances and decorations, Internet, utilities and cable when I don’t know how long my job will be around or what I will be doing two years from now. There are many countries where the measure of adulthood has more to do with meeting your responsibilities and treating others with respect than it does with acquiring goods for oneself and avoiding sharing any of those goods. And before you make any other ignorant assumptions on situations at face value, I believe in individual property rights and believe that if I wanted to spend my money on a separate household that would be ok too. I’m just tired of people portraying the younger generation as stuck in adolescence without really examining ALL of the reasons why we are making the decisions we make. I’m not the only one of my friends with this story either.

    • Kids never leaving home doesn’t keep houses off the market, it results in lower household formation and thus lower demand for housing.

      Oh yeah, another reason why housing is done for.

      12) The Mexican and South American birthrate fell dramatically in the last twenty years. And the emptying of rural Latin America is mostly complete. This will result in much lower immigration.

      • “result in”? It’s already much lower than in the past. There are 10 million undocumented immigrants in America… and many of them have been here a decade or longer!

  • Wakeup A$$ Warpspeed. I’ve 50+ years in this country with last 12 yrs with Hi-Tech. Last year spent moving projects to development in Russia, then fire the engineers, then fire me. I saved and managed a reasonable home/mortgage. RE taxes are now more than mortgage. Savings now earn <1% after seeing savings earn ~5% for 40 years. With reasonable taxes and interest I could have retired without SocSec. I think you are reminiscing about America of 40 years ago, not now. BTW, some of my Indian engineer friends (US citizens) are repatriating because of the degradation of this country over the past 10 years. These are good engineers that could/should be starting new companies here creating new jobs.

  • Good post Dr. HB. It reminds me of back in the summer of ’08 when the news on TV would run the segments showing people protesting holding signs stating “Your mortgage is not my problem”. I don’t see many of those signs any more.

  • Laura,

    I did read your post and I did notice that you would like to see a truly free economy and the fact that you favor a flat 10% tax. You’re obviously a Libertarian. So was I at one point. Trouble is Libertarians are too idealistic, naive and incapable of winning elections of any significance or magnitude.

    Look, I don’t want to insult Libertarians in general, or you in particular. My “stop whining and get to work” statement above was more of a general rebuke of the many bash the rich statements in the thread, starting with squirrel jumper who wrote “Its the rich who screw the poor to stay rich as usual, but its the super rich who screw everybody just to keep busy on their chess board of life”. It’s this kind of mentality that keeps people from achieving financial success – but, to each his own. I’m just tired of the class warfare crap. Most rich people are extremely kind and generous. And those who disagree need to do their research.

    As far as the heavily subsidized business cartels – Yup. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, the problem is pervasive – and global – AND it will NEVER change. Human nature won’t allow it. That’s perhaps the difference between you and me. Even though you recognize that it will never happen in America, you still have a glimmer of hope that things will change, while I on the other hand, have learned to accept the fact that it won’t and work around it instead. That’s what happens when you get old I guess.

    BTW, It’s comforting to know that you don’t watch any Michael Moore tripe 🙂

    Peace!

    • Sorry to hear you’ve given up on America, Warpspeed, but things used to be far better in this country. It’s not that “things never change” – quite the opposite. Things continue to change for the worse, to benefit top 0.1%. Read up on the income gap, historic tax rates, etc. Huge tax hikes after the Great Depression helped stabilize the country, and promote long-term investment.

      I’m not making a value judgment on rich people. But without disincentives for hoarding cash, people will do so. High personal tax rates, combined with low business tax rates, cause business owners to reinvest in their businesses rather than lose their income to Uncle Sam.

      The reason this needs to be done as a policy – rather than relying on the kindness of benefactors – is because of simple “getting ahead” math. All it takes is a couple rich people to hoard their cash, and then you as a rich person have to hoard yours, and you end up in this race to hoard as much as possible, just to maintain your current lifestyle. The rich are just as interested in getting ahead of the curve as anyone else.

      • The lower middle class hoard cash too.

        Aside from higher taxes, we need fiscal policy. What kind of uses for that tax would help reduce unemployment and improve our economy?

    • Warpspeed, the reason so many people on this thread seem to scapegoat the “rich” is because it is becoming ever more difficult to “work around” a privileged order insulated from competition and the results of its own errors, who the rest of us (rich or poor, and increasingly poor) are plundered to support.

      I understand and sympathize with your viewpoint, but when basic principals are considered “naive” and “unrealistic” , we may know that we’re on a steep downhill slope. The actions of a person or a society are motivated and guided by belief, and when we discard basic moral principals and become blindly pragmatic and short-sighted, we’re doomed.

      That’s what has happened in this country, and the rot set in a long time ago, possible at birth, when our forefathers did what they clearly knew was wrong in principal, which was to continue slavery. They temporized because they couldn’t let go of something that was bringing them so many personal advantages, and we were to pay very dearly down the road.

      Well, and we continued to compromise the founding principal in this unique country that is the only place in the world ever founded on the philosophical principals of individual freedom and the right of a human being to own his own life and work. We continued to temporize, compromise, and otherwise violate those principals, with every law restricting our freedom, with systemic, legal discrimination against this group or that on the basis of race or sex, and, in the 20th century, sweeping economic policies and controls promulgated by our leaders, sometimes for the benefit of the “commonwealth”, but mostly for the benefit of entrenched elites.

      Just as the roll downhill starts with the first step – the discriminatory legal code, the refusal to end an oppressive practice- the road back to morality starts with one small step. We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and we won’t unwind it overnight. But we need to take the first small steps, such as agitating within our local communities against the latest rounds of subsidies for redundant retail or yet another stadium on the public dime.

      And it begins, really, in our own lives. For example, if you belong to a group lobbying for civic improvements, you notice the the first thing people do when they want to, say, improve a park or get some other community initiative started, is ask the local government for funding. Instead of reflexively calling upon your local city council member for assistance, why not see what you and your group can accomplish with your own money and own effort- and consider that if you don’t want to ante up yourself, then maybe you have no right to expect everyone else to pay for it, either.

      • Im my city, nobody agitates for parks anymore. The main “park” agitators are enviros who want to preserve natural habitats, or take brownfields and turn them into quasi-parks. It’s hard to create parks because you’re looking at either converting a polluted brownfield – meaning you have to remediate the site and can’t just add sandboxes, or it’s already considered a natural area and conversion would de-naturalize it.

        Everyone talks about a park shortage, but it’s difficult to impossible to address. The best you can do is install a pocket park or community garden in an undeveloped lot.

        It’s risky to impossible to take over an undeveloped lot. First off, it’s owned by someone, so they can come by and tear out the park. Second, the city is not going to protect you, nor is the city in a position to purchase the land.

        It requires that the property owner lease the land to the community group. As far as I can tell, they aren’t doing that too much. Suppose a buyer comes along – you’d have to kick the people off, and that could become a political fight, and the potential buyer might back off because they don’t want to be considered the “enemy” when they move in.

        What I do see are temporary art installations. These are not park-like. They exist for a few months, and are removed. There’s no neighborhood involvement. It improves the vacant lot, but does not cede control to the neighborhood.

        Maybe the problem is property rights itself. If people could simply use undeveloped land to establish self-funded community parks, and have it automatically establish a 10 year right to borrow the property, there might be a lot of new parks created.

  • Hey Folks, there are so many intelligent people here but often the stories turn to personal rants, each person Venting thier frustration with “The System”. With so many smart people offering so much of thier valuable time could we try to be of some help to each other? Ask a question about your individual problem and I’m sure you will receive many good suggestions. There are many here who would feel better if they just got someone to listen and offer some friendly advise. If you must vent, then get to the point and move on, many here just want help getting to the next step. So many smart people – so many different points of view… We can help each other! Don’t feed into the anger!
    Thanks for you attention.

    • I think half (or more) of the people here are here just for the sake of emotional validation. cannot be helped =)

      • That’s me! 🙂

        I’m under a lot of stress, and arguing online is a little relief. There is nothing like online research and argument, especially to attack starry-eyed Libertarians, to distract me from reality.

    • People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?

  • Hey Compass,

    You have real issues my friend – you should probably see somebody about it.

    Psychosexual fetishes!?! Hmmmmm, interesting.

    And your anger……..Wow, your disdain for the rich and their filthy lucre is obviously bringing joy into your life.

    And your hatred of God – How’s that working out for you?

    I want to be just like you when I grow up. NOT!!!!

    • Warp, Instead of a personal attack, how about some facts or intelligent thoughts to dispute salient arguments. Got any of those?

  • Where did all the psycho’s come from today? This blog is supposed to be about real estate and the economics of real estate. You all can go visit the pyscho / freak blog to discuss your issues.

    • Actually it’s a much deeper blog than just real estate. It’s a forum to consider what happened that is much larger than just whether this or that house has Italian marble in the foyer. It’s about how the largest housing bubble in history brought the entire world economy to it’s knees and the players completely bankrupted a nation, and how millions of people lost their homes and life savings. It’s about how the government of many states are hopelessly endebted just like the federal government and a million college graduates. We’re here because Doc gives is something tangible to help understand what in the hell is going on so we can make so reasonable choices about what to do to salvage our fiscal future. Psycho’s? Far from it. Lot’s of smart folks, and regular folks like me, just looking for the truth for a change…glad you’re here.

    • Agree – while a number of good points are being debated…an unusually large percentage of the content is sub-par semi-irrational ranting. No idea why this particular thread evoked it, maybe the ‘rich’ thing but regardless of opinion or side I found myself wondering the same thing. This is unusual for this site.

    • I guess now that the market is tanking again and Ben is playing QE2 old maid while the rest of the world is playing cutthroat poker, the fear and desperation is ramping up. We’re finally past denial, this is anger, next is bartering: the last stage before acceptance?

  • Speaking of bubbles, all this is dwarfed by the Tera-bubble in China. 60% of China’s growth is in contruction, which is where all the world’s commodity price pressure is coming from (Picture Dubai x 10). China and Japan are pillaging the global rainforests, robbing Chile of their copper, Africa, Indonesia, Mongolia and the rest of the third world–and I think we all have a pretty good idea how real estate bubbles end…and you thought all they did was stuff Walmarts with crap…

  • The rich do not need middle class people to protect them — EVER. They are in no way trying to protect the middle class, so I’m not sure why some middle class people go through such great lengths to protect them. I repeat, THE RICH DO NOT NEED MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE TO PROTECT THEM — EVER. Middle class people, please wake up!!!

    • apolitical scientist

      Stockholm syndrome writ large… The greatest snow job in modern history has been perpetrated on Americans over the last 30 years, in which many have grown to believe that if only we do what’s good for the rich then, someday, somehow, we’ll all be rich too. I believe the pre-bubble overconsumption mania of the first years of the 2000s was just a wishful thinking reflection of this widespread fantasy. Sadly, even though the bubble has popped for most of the conspicuous overconsumers, the identification with the political agenda of the wealthy remains. (Gee, if only we cut taxes for millionaires everything will get better for the rest of us!)

      • Ah yes, the ‘Tinkle-Down Effect’, as Archie Bunker once said…like everyone bringing alms and sacrifices so the Pharisees could have a barbeque every Saturday…

  • WOW. Well, color me impressed. I didn’t know people with money and their bankers did stupid shit like this. If I had a million bucks… I’d buy a half-million dollar house in cash, and put the rest into low-risk investments. LOLz.

    I can’t tell who is the bigger idiot. The Nick Cages of the world, or the banks that put together the loans to people like him. Individual foolishness versus collective foolishness.

    The main problem I have with this article is that we now get to examine the fools…. but were there any people buying prudently who just lost their cash?

    Or, was the entire market encouraged to borrow? Were banks pushing people to borrow even when they could afford to pay cash?

  • When you endeavor to steal from Peter to pay Paul, you will have the full cooperation of Paul and the utter contempt of Peter.

    Taxes based upon usage are the only fair answer. Society breaks down when I can vote to take something from someone and give it to someone else. Taxes not directly related to services received are a form of indenture. Sometimes general taxes are unavoidable, but it should be rare and well-spent.

    Voting is self-interest is is immoral, as citizens we need to vote in the best interests of society.

    We all need to pull our own weight, and ask for very little from our governments, and respect each other without a video camera present.

    Too many people think they can stay in the wagon and get pulled along for free. If we all pulled our own weight, things would be harder for some of us, but fairer.

    Its called being moral folks.

    • Which wagon are you talking about? The food-stamp program or the multi-trillion dollar corporate welfare state? The mega-military state? The agriculture behemoth? The prison system? The education system? Pension insurance? Fanie and Freddie? The nod and wink udoc alien system? The energy syndicate? Getting a couple welfare cases out to work in circle-K is not gonna fix this….

      • All of what you mention and more.

      • Take their money away, and you take their power away so they wont opress you any more. Reduce the size, number of rules, and budgets of govt so the people can live freeer, more productive lives. This is moral, and instinctually pure and certainly possible. Stop looking to the govt to save us!!

  • Thomas (from EU)

    “Society breaks down when I can vote to take something from someone and give it to someone else. ”

    You don’t have to vote at all when you buy the congress(men) directly. Then you can make them to take from public (taxpayers) and give it to you (and them). What do you think all of these bailouts are? Gifts for the ultrarich, nothing else.

    And that’s what happens in most, or if you are pessimistic, in all so called Western countries, not only US. Funny thing is than in China this kind of bribery gets people prosecuted and shot, in “west” it’s not even a crime: Big money is very good at protecting itself: When you have money, you can make laws whatever you want.

    And that shows, even if worst cases are declader state secrets.

    Not much better, if all, in EU too: Here we have a central committee (very much like Soviet Union) which does what it likes and bribery is the norm, not an exception: All the members of central committee are millionaires. At least after 5 years in committee. Happily (for them) no-one is allowed to investigate where does this money come from.

  • Remember Folks, don’t gamble with your paycheck. Find a safe place to save your money until FDIC insured institutions start paying us (reasonable %) to use our money. after you earned some money on the interest, you may invest the intrest income in Risk to earn more money but never gamble your “seed” money, only the “”Houses”… Make your savings work for you but don’t risk those hard earned paycheck dollars. So many kids are not taught this corner stone on Money Management. Purchase if you must from the interest income money your savings has earned for you, but never spend your saving until you have met the main objective you had been saving for from the “Get Go”.
    And all of this advise free Via My Old Papy… What was the best advise you’ve been given? What did your Grand Papy tell you… (Please keep it Clean)
    thanks all, enjoy the Weekend!

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