I’m going to be straight about this: I’m voting for the McCain ticket in November. It’s not because I love everything about it, More like, I’m less afraid of it. There’ve been maybe two elections in my whole life in which I have actually voted FOR somebody. But I guess that’s politics, right? And mortal life and the rest of it.
I was just watching the Penn McCain rally (I ran out of Ugly Betty – which I watch with one eye closed – on the treadmill. I have a theory that watching the news makes you sick, so I don’t make a habit of it) and I learned two things:
1) If you invite an effete little snot of a prep school “supporter” (complete with sweater draped around his shoulders) into your on-camera cheering section, don’t let him stand RIGHT behind you while you’re speechmaking, especially not in the front row and right at your active elbow. Holy Cats. I hope that kid gets WAY grounded when he gets home. Or maybe arrested for treason?
2) I don’t want home (actually “house,” but nobody who wants to sell one or win a race calls what you live in a “house”) values to rise. We built this house of ours thirty years ago. It cost us about sixty thousand dollars, and we had a forty-five thousand dollar mortgage. Then I worked our collective butts off for sixteen years to pay off that stinking mortgage, making the kids’ clothes, saving every penny I could rescue from the growing business, never buying books – just waiting for the library to get them. I still have clothes from that time.
But I did pay it off. My philosophy at the time was: the smaller your monthly nut, the safer you are.
Oh, wait. That’s still my philosophy. Have you seen that Sat. Night Live Steve Martin infomercial about the financial stability program? Yeah. That’s us. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. The thing is hilarious. We go a step further: if you CAN afford it, don’t buy it. Man, I’ve GOT to replace our bedroom carpet.
All that said, we’ve had a great life. I measure it in people, not cars and really, really big TVs. I’m not trying to high horse myself here, although I do think we’ve been smart about this – it’s just I’ve paid a price to learn this stuff. And it was worth it.
Okay. Monthly nut. I don’t owe anybody, but that monthly nut has been steadily rising over thirty years anyway – and why? Not gas. Not food prices. (Picture a big arrow here with flashing light bulbs all over it):
Insurance. And taxes.
Life insurance. Health insurance. Car insurance. Flood insurance. Homeowners. Umbrella. There are more, I know there are. I can’t remember them all. Like it works out to thousands of dollars a month. And then the taxes: car, house, state, fed, sales. I swear, you have to be rich just to keep from being thrown in jail.
House insurance: like I said, we built this thing for sixty thousand. It was overbuilt for the neighborhood back then, it’s WAY overbuilt now. And what does home value mean to me? That the flipping county can waltz in, stroke their chins, grin at each other and say, “That’d sell for about $300,000.” And poof. That’s what I get taxed on. And the pasture – the grass my horses eat for a living? It’s got a little red metal barn on it and a nice little fence. The county just loves it. And because there’s so much potential energy in it, they go right ahead and tax it like there’s a house on the thing. So I’m paying over $3200 a year for the right to own my own stuff.
Do I want house values to RISE??? Right.
The year after I bought my first little house, all by myself (with two grand of my Daddy’s help and my own solid earning record) for thirty grand, the value went up to thirty eight. I thought that was so cool – I thought we were RICH!! We figured (we were married by then) we could get rid of that little house, take the money and get something so much better. So we looked through the classifieds and found all these huge houses – four bedrooms, six bedrooms – more than one bath. Fabulous. And then we went to see them. And what were they?? MY SAME HOUSE. Just, somebody had “finished” the basement – um, we’re talking about plywood and curtains in the doorways, here – and for every square sixteen feet, they had a BEDROOM.
So the thing is, whatever your house value is, if you sell it, pretty much all you’re going to get is your own house over again. Ta-DA!!!!!!!!!!
But if your house value DOES go up, YOU GET TO PAY MORE TAXES!!!!! YAY!!!!! So you get your same house, but it costs you MORE!!!! Is anybody else fainting here with excitement?
The breaking point in the now is the mortgage. If you are unfortunate enough to have bought a house in, like, the last five years – and you have to sell it, you just might find yourself pretty upside down. And if that’s the case, then I’ll cry with you, because that stinks.
But here’s what bothers me about what I heard today: I don’t want people bailed out of their stupid misjudgment. If they let some greedy little jerk of a real estate agent talk them into letting a greedy big freak out Social Aneurism of a bank talk them into a house that is OBVIOUSLY more than they could afford (people have been getting loans based on what they SAY their income is – they don’t have to prove ANYTHING – just declare some number on paper—how SMART the banks were to do business like that), then why should those people be allowed to keep what they’ve got?
Thirty years I’ve tried to be a good girl. Thirty years of choosing to play by the rules every day. And these guys who’ve behave like college frat brothers on break in Moab—THEY GET TO KEEP EVERYTHING THEY BOUGHT??? THEY get their mortgages reworked so they don’t have to pay the consequences?
Okay, then, Mr. McCain – how about this? How about you and the government’s completely and (it looks like) eternally wiped out coffers pay ME. You pay me what I WOULD have gotten if I’d acted like a brainless idiot. Give me a five hundred thousand dollar house ( or seven. Make it seven hundred thousand—because that’s what I can qualify for – No. Really) on four acres with a nice barn and a stream that runs through it.
Or better yet, let me stay here with the people I already love and just pay me the difference. I figure that would be – eh, about 500,000. You can even just pay me a little every month. Hey – I know – I’ll give you a mortgage on the amount. Six percent. You can even tax me on the interest. That’s good – you should jump on it. I’ll amortize it for you. Thirty years. Or we could work a fifteen.
I think that’s fair. Really. I can use the money to pay my flipping property taxes.
And if we can work that out, man, I promise – I’ll be voting FOR you this November.
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