58% of the people who were defaulting on their mortgages and were able to negotiate with their lenders and restructure their mortgages re-defaulted within eight months, says this CNBC report.
I realize that a small to moderate portion of those folks probably lost their jobs and were not able to make their contractual payments, but what about the rest of them?
Was the first thought through their heads after getting the payments lowered “Cool, and extra $300 a month! Let’s get a new car!”?
When The Wife and I were crunching the numbers to see how much we could afford to pay, one of the factors we put onto the paper was the possibility that one of us would become unemployed. We made a very conservative guestimate of the incoming severance and unemployment cash and used that as our internal “high dollar amount”.
When we got our approval for our loan, and got the realty and mortgage birds talking, the lady getting us approved made mention that it was nice to see people being realistic about their housing costs.
The Wife and I are still getting things set up around the house, we mostly just need those things women call “window treatments”, as we’ve been together for over a decade and have pretty much everything else we need. However, once the finishing touches are done and a figure of exactly how much it costs us to live at this level per month, a separated savings account will be built up to contain six-months of those expenses will be created.
Why can’t everyone do this?
On a side note, this is how the fiscally conservative AoSHQ treated this story.
However, this same story as seen by John Avarosis’ hyper-liberal AmericaBlog is called “Really bad news in every imaginable way.”
It is especially bad news to the liberal train of thought that restructuring loans via the government is a good idea.
It’s because they’re morons.
Lenders begged me and my wife to buy more house. We had a realistic budget based on our down payment as well as projected single-source income. My wife will be going back to work when our child is a little older – that will help a lot – but we wanted to be able to do it even with only one income.
I feel nothing towards idiots who buy more than they can afford, have no savings or game plan, and feel entitled to keep it. Pathetic.
I second the vote that they’re morons.
Absolute fucking morons. Idiots. Clowns. Brainless assholes.
When the Ragin’ Mrs. and I were looking for a house, we looked at the amount of money that was available to pay for it. Using nice round numbers as an example, my BAH is $1000 a month.
We then set out to find a house that would cost us $700 a month OR LESS. Because when you buy a house, you don’t just have the house payments. You’ve got property taxes (if you don’t have them included in your mortgage). You have electricity, water, natural gas (if you’re in an area that has it), etc., etc. And then there’s repairs. You can’t just call up your landlord anymore and have him pay to fix any problems you have. The $1000 per month has to cover all that.
Stupidity isn’t painful anymore. We need to return to the days where people actually dealt with the consequences of their actions. Were you stupid when you bought your house? Then you deal with your stupidity. Maybe you’ll actually LEARN something instead of continuing to be stupid.
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