What a sucker I am, eh? I missed a great opportunity!

[MineralMan]

It seems that I wasted a whole bunch of money. You see, I paid the house off that I bought back in 1974, then used the proceeds from its sale to buy the house I now own. Lots of money changed hands. I paid a mortgage off completely on that previous house, and now I own my current one, free and clear.

Now I find out that, according to the "expert" from some random website, that I shouldn't have bothered. I could have just bought the house I'm living in now, stopped paying the mortgage and it would just be given to me, since the mortgage companies have been screwing up the paperwork and all that. So, I guess I wasted $175,000 that I could still have if I had just stopped paying my mortgage. I'd have my house, too, according to this "expert." I know she's an expert because she wrote a whole book about it. She's also written a bunch of books about alternative medications and how women could go through menopause without any problems if they just take the right herbs and stuff. Experts like that are really, really hard to find. Who is this remarkable expert?

It's Ellen Hodgson Brown, and she has a whole website about all her many "expert" books. She has a blog, too, at http://webofdept.wordpress.com, so you know she's really, really smart and like that. It's not like just anyone can have a blog, you know. www.ellenbrown.com is her website, and you can go there and buy her books and save yourself from being a sucker like me. She's a writer, so you know she knows her stuff. She's written books, so you know she must be right.

So, I'm a sucker, I guess. I believed that old crap about paying back the money I borrowed and owning my home free and clear.

Now I'm old, and don't really have time to buy another house and not pay for it, then get it free. It sucks getting old and missing all those new opportunities, huh? Don't be a sucker like me! Get a free house! Yessiree! Come back and tell us how it all worked out for you.

[Riley18]

1. I bet there are a whole lot of families who would prefer being a "sucker" just

like you instead of wondering when they will be homeless. Some people don't know when they have it good.

[MineralMan]

2. Maybe I should write a book, then.

A book about buying a house you can afford, then paying it off early. A lot of times, it was really, really hard to make that house payment. I was self-employed as a magazine writer, and I never knew when a check would come. The year I bought the first house, I actually only made $6,000. A very big chunk of that went to house payments, so we ate lots of ramen and other cheap food and lived on furniture from Goodwill, where we also bought our clothes.

As my income and my wife's income (she was also a freelance writer) increased slowly, we put every cent we could into paying down that mortgage. We paid for the house in 12 years, then just lived in it. I lived in it for over 30 years...all 600 square feet of it. I put a new roof on it by myself, remodeled the interior, and did lots of other work on it.

When we sold it, we got a good price for it, since it was a very creative and cute little house. It was still the cheapest house in that town, but it was enough to pay for our house in Minneapolis, where we moved to help my wife's parents during her father's last illness.

Yes, we were really lucky. We just barely got by many times, and still are freelancing, so there are times, even now, when we'd have a helluva time making a house payment.

[RandomThoughts]

3. Yep don't believe everything you read.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. My heart bleeds

[MineralMan]

5. I sure hope not. A bleeding heart is almost invariably fatal.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. I appreciate the effort.

[jdlh8894]

6. Blue or red blood? n/t

[lunatica]

7. No a sucker

But certainly a cynic

All the judges halting foreclosures are her fault? BofA stopping all foreclosure proceedings in 50 states because they're scared of little old bag of hot air Ellen all by her lonesome self? You obviously missed some of the other articles written about this subject.

[MineralMan]

8. Yabbut, lots of posts on Ellen's little book in the past couple of

days. It seems that some think that people who can't pay their mortgage payments are going to get their houses for free. That, I am quite certain, is not going to happen. They may get a short reprieve, but the inevitable will still occur. Despite the predatory lending that went on until just recently, mortgages have to be paid, even if they're unfair. Signatures were made and the terms were in the contract. There's no getting out of that. The lenders will correct their bad behavior and the foreclosures will resume. You can count on it.

I'm not a cynic. I'm a realist. Ellen's an idiot. So I made fun of her. She's telling people lies, just like the lenders did. Her reward will be large numbers of her book being sold to unwitting people who believe her nonsense.