Whatever Happened to the American Way?

I’ll tell you what happen to the American Way, where families would save their money, and purchase a house. Mom and Dad shops were in every neighborhood, and they knew us all on a first name bases.

Well first off, the banks gave away their money too freely, giving us all a sense of “false” security. Letting us buy homes with no money down and tax abatement for five years. Telling us and showing us on paper that “oh yeah” no problem you’ll be able to make the payments. We start making payments and soon we are living just to make those payments, then if your home was tax abated; now your in real trouble, that mortgage that you were having trouble affording, well it just went up about six hundred dollars a month. You say how, well for the last five years you have not paid taxes on your property and home. These were all incentives to purchase your home, to get you a great deal on a new home, paying almost the same amount as your rent. Thus the saying goes “why pay someone else Mortgage, when you could pay you own”. Yes pay the mortgage, they forget to tell you about taxes, water and sewage bills, house insurance, perhaps even flood insurance, all these little things can add up to several thousand dollars over the course of a year. These little things may be affordable if you did not have a Mortgage, but combined it is nearly impossible.

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So now you find yourself having to rely on credit cards, to buy simple things, such as FOOD, gas to get to work, or carfare. Every month goes by and you find it harder and harder to survive. The stress builds and the bills pile up, soon you start getting foreclosure notices, or your credit card companies are calling. Is this the American Way; yes it is our fault, but it is the cunning banking industry that has put us where we are today. With Adjustable rate mortgages, that when the time comes the mortgage doubles, or credit card companies, who see you cannot make the minimum payment decide to raise your interest rate to twenty three percent, some I’ve seen over thirty one percent; are they for real.

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And so folks, that is where the American Dream has gone, where we use to save and purchase, now we pay credit to have it now; we have forgotten about delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is when you want something, and you really want it, but you know you can not afford it now, so you save, and pocket every nickel and dime; until finally you can afford the purchase. Now that is what we all need to do, to help rebuild the American Dream.

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