You're Going To Get Old, But Your Mortgage Doesn't Have To

Is it acceptable to end a title in a preposition? Sometimes I get an unwelcome reminder that I am getting old. Strictly speaking, I suppose almost any reminder of my advancing years is unwelcome. Unless, of course, I get ticked at some young guy and think I should set him straight. Then I welcome it. Anyway, I needed to buy gas on my way home today and I noticed a station that had regular for $2.72 per gallon. I thought to myself that I better jump on that. This is where the reminder comes in. When I first started working in 1969 I had a 1960 Volkswagen Beetle. It had a 10.8 gallon fuel tank, but no gas gauge. When you had exhausted 10 gallons the car would stop running and then you had to throw a lever with your foot that released the last of the gas and it would resume running. That was your clue to get more. I usually stopped at a Texaco station near our house and filled up for less than $2.00. I remember one Friday stopping and filling up for $1.76. I believe that the price was 17 cents per gallon. Man, I'm old. Here's something else. I was reading in the paper today that a lot of people are in trouble because of falling home sales and rising interest rates. You can look back in my archives and find more than one post I wrote about the foolishness of interest only loans and adjustable rate mortgages. I hate to be an I-told-you-so but....no I don't, I told you so. It is never smart to mortgage yourself to the hilt. One bad turn and you are screwed. What's a bad turn? How about an ARM that keeps adjusting your payment upward? Or how about you need to sell the house you bought with no money down, just as the market slows way down? Maybe you get laid off and have a big old payment to worry about? We have a fine large university in our fair city. The university has many fine athletic teams and many fine student-athletes. They go on to play professional sports, work in business, some are doctors or lawyers, scientists or teachers, you name it. Some party their way through school, learning little and they become mortgage salesman. As a matter of fact, our fair city has a mortgage firm owned by a former university athlete and staffed with former athletes, who evidently have no real skills. He basically trades on their names for as long as they have currency. In my never-to-be-humble opinion, mortgage people are lower on the scale than shifty used cars guys. These people routinely convince young couples that they can buy the house of their dreams through the use of creative mortgages. 80/20 loans, ARMs, Interest only, 40 or 50 year loans, you name it. They do a huge disservice to these people, purely to line their pockets. Anyway I invite you to read my long rant on mortgage loans and the dangers of listening to idiots. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it. Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humora