My Financial Implosion: Bad House
@ 1:13 pm
“A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul.” – Phillip Moffitt
For most people, the idea of home ownership is irresistible. Owning your own piece of dirt, with a house and a white picket fence is the American Dream. Unfortunately, in many parts of the country, it’s a dream that can be nearly impossible to attain. It is difficult to come up with the standard 20% down payment, and even with the down payment, the monthly expense can remain unaffordable. This combination has lead to our current housing crisis because people have been lured into crazy schemes to put them in houses they can’t afford.
High-priced housing has been a problem in California for as long as I can remember. When I graduated from college and returned to my hometown, I quickly realized that a house was well out of my reach. My first job paid about $25,000 per year, while a very modest home cost five or six times that amount. It seemed unthinkable.
When my (now ex-) husband and I started dating, I told him that home ownership was very important to me. He’d been married before and his first wife had ended up with their home. He doubted we could afford another, so we moved into a very nice rental. It was a new house, and we were the first to live in it.














