- Home Loan Modification

When my wife and I bought our current house, we could have paid cash, but instead we got a small mortgage for tax purposes. We also could have used the extra money we had to upgrade the house we were buying but we weren’t interested. There are just the three of us, plus the dog and even the smallish place we live in now is really larger than we need. It’s a very modest house on a smallish plot, but it has lots of mature trees and a very private backyard. It's also been updated inside, and is in an EXCELLENT school district (in relative terms) so it meets our needs.

I didn’t think about it at the time, but I guess we felt better about the idea of being secure in our overall financial condition than having a super nice house. It’s the same reason that my wife drives a Honda and I drive a Jeep. We can afford much nicer cars – I can afford a Ferrari if I really want one and my wife can have her pick of make and model as well. But having other people look at us with envy doesn’t do anything for us. We’d rather not attract that kind of attention. But I guess that’s just us.

I never knew how decidedly ‘off trend’ we were until this big push to modify home loans cropped up. You can see these people on TV lined up by the thousands to get some government giveaway, or some other service the government has strong armed the banks into providing. But if you believe the inevitable cost for this stuff will fall on anyone but the US taxpayers, then you really don’t understand the issue. The people lined up on the news seem to me to be clerks, civil servants and various blue collar types of unremarkable intelligence. And they're all lining up overnight in the rain, to get a better deal on the 5,000 square foot mini mansion they really couldn’t afford.

I’m not totally unsympathetic to their plight. When I was a kid we were tossed out of multiple dwellings against our will for a variety of embarrassing reasons, and they were all MUCH more modest than the ones these people are trying to hold on to. (most we were only renting) I know what it’s like to pick up your family and move under duress like that. It’s no fun, and I don’t envy them. But to put it bluntly, it’s not something the taxpayers should be compelled to subsidize either. They did this to themselves. It was there responsibility to manage their finances, and the fact that someone talked them into something that was plainly too good to be true, should have been a red light for them.

They all need to learn to live within their means. If that means a smaller house and a less expensive car then that’s what they have to do. In the end they were the ones who took the risk and they shouldn’t be trying to foist it off on the taxpayer now that it’s gone bad for them. As a matter of personal tragedy I’m completely sympathetic and I feel for them. But as a matter of public policy I say, throw them all out, and bring in the bulldozers.