I have previously (here, here and here) talked about my aversion to the concept of mortgage debt (Old French “death pledge”). I was sort of grasping at the reasons behind it, the justifications for co-owning a home with a bank just rang hollow to me.
Now the folks at eFinanceDirectory have addressed most of these myths [...]
Rent Vs. Buy Myths That Ruined the Housing Market
Home “Investment” Comes Home To Roost
A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I wasn’t buying the idea of “good debt”with respect to home mortgages. Now, with foreclosure rates skyrocketing and the housing sector in the early stages of a pretty serious crisis, I am once again reminded of that idea.
Yves Smith, who writes the Naked Capitalism blog, makes [...]
Living On Cash
It has been almost six months since I last used a credit card, and the transition has been surprisingly simple and easy. To be honest, I don’t really think about it much at all these days. The differences in the ways I interact with my money are subtle, they do not jump out and scream [...]
Oh, What A Difference A Year Makes
I have been musing, for the last week or so, on how incredibly different our lives are now, as opposed to a year ago. Hardly any aspect of our lives has been left untouched in that year, and I believe that I can say that the changes, as wide and as drastic as they have [...]
More Thoughts On Mortgages
After my previous entries about mortgage debt and home ownership, I have received a bunch of email on the subject, so I thought I’d reopen the topic sort of, and respond directly to some of the points raised:
Point 1) “Paying rent is just like throwing money down the drain because you don’t build equity.”
This sounds [...]
Rethinking Home Ownership
I wrote earlier about how I find mortgage debt to be a bad thing. Since then, I have been thinking about whether or not the whole concept of home ownership is equally as flawed as the idea of mortgaging a home. Even though I expect to make a decent profit on the sale of your [...]
Debt
I’m sorry, but I just can’t buy the idea of “good debt” versus “bad debt”. As far as I am concerned, all debt is bad, end of story. The idea of “good debt” is based on one of the subtle fallacies that permeates modern life and serves to reinforce a narrowly economic view of life. [...]
These are the ramblings of 