Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Latest Yahoo Column: Upside of Downturn

My latest Yahoo! column presents some of the reasons that people our age may actually do well as a result of this downturn. First and foremost, I hope that more people will start to get real about consumption.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree wholeheartedly. My wife and I were "negative equity" baby boomers back in 89-95 but eventually clawed our way out and benefited from buying low on the turn (still lost $40,000 on the first apartment though as we had to get out if we wanted to buy a house)but in the long run it paid off. We just kept paying down the original mortgage until we sold for what was left on the mortgage (no one in those days would consider a shrt sale) now have 5 years left on the house bought in 96 and with (even if there is a 30% correction to come) 400 in equity.

8:56 AM
francisfp01 said...

You know, i hear people complain about the internet buble, the real estate buble, but the truth is, many people build wealth on these bubles, and I don't think there's anything to regret about those, except maybe that some people went in there eyes closed. People that realized that the growth partly artificial, and I want to believe that most people did realize it, were able to gain from it, and my hope is that this real estate crisis is like the internet buble, it will hurt but won't negates the gain people made during the real estate run. I think a lot of people bought more than one house, and that the second house they bought they might be loosing money on, however the gains they made on this first house is much greater than their loss. Probably not everyone is in this situation, but when I look at some friends of mine, the situation in Florida where real estate droped quite a bit, and other place, that's exactly what happened. they bough 1 house made money, used part of this money to buy an investment property, and right now are loosing if they bought it too late in the game, or have a hard time to pay because of the subprime loans. Truth be said people that are in trouble today bought their house with subprime loans, and didn't think it through, it does not mean they didn't make money. The ones that are loosing money most likely bought in the last 2 1/2 years, or bought with negative amortization, which I think is a type of loan that shouldn't exist.
As for credit cards I think they can be a great tool to balance your debt, but you always need to be on top of them. the problem is not only the bak running after our money any way they can, it's mostly people unable to handle their finances, missing knowledge aboout it and not be diciplined about it.

8:09 AM

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