Move back to the trailer

Hey there, guy who bought his house at eighteen. We had a little chat about ten years ago, and I just wanted to revisit that discourse, see how it went. You see, when I hadn't even started college yet, a lot of my friends were already buying houses. They couldn't afford them, mind you; they were just buying them. Viva la difference.

You see, out of the two of us, myself and this group of trailer trash hosers (for the sake of readability, we'll refer to the demographic collectively as "Jake"), I was really the more responsible spender. Even at that, though, I still proved incapable of managing a $10,000 debt. See, ten thousand dollars seems like a pretty piddly amount of money to an eighteen-year-old. I used to do official surveys of college students, and whenever I asked how much they expected to make right out of college, most of them said "well, obviously I expect at least $60,000 to start, but I expect to be into six figures soon enough." Oh really, and what's your major? "French Humanities." Good luck, kid.

They also miss another pretty important point. Even if you do have a job paying sixty thousand dollars, you don't get to keep all of it. To be generous, let's say every month you spend $100 on food, $300 on healthcare, $150 on bills, $50 on student loan payback, and 30% on taxes. If you're earning $40K a year (i.e. what I make now after 10 years experience and a college degree) and you have no credit card debt to pay off, that leaves you with about $1700 a month to spend on housing and everything else in existence (toothpaste, couches, porn, etc.). That's still a decent amount of bread. So let's cut to my conversation with "Jake" from ten years ago.

With my money, I spend $775 a month for a downtown apartment in Portland and $500 a month on paying off debt (though no student loans). My overhead is actually significantly higher than what I stated before, but let's say that leaves me with about $400 a month to spend on everything else. That's really not too bad. But here's what Jake dwells on— he considers that $775 a month to be "throwing away my money." That was the catch phrase at the beginning of this century. I heard it everywhere– on TV, from friends, in restaurant discussions. Why are you throwing your money away on rent to some landlord?

Well, here's one: my landlord pays for busted water mains, unlike my mom, who was hit with a $6000 bill the first month she bought her $250,000 house. Second, I can move at any time, and do, because I have no responsibility to find someone else to occupy my house, unlike many of the Jakes' parents, who tried selling their homes in the late nineties when people just weren't buying. They would buy a new house, and put their old one up for sale, only to be unable to sell the old house. One set of parents ended up selling their house at a loss, while another set had to move back into their old house, and lost tens of thousands of dollars for reneging on the new purchase. Third, I don't want to throw my money away on interest payments. Even after a solid down payment, you're dealing with a bill of $2,000 a month on a house in Portland. Even in smaller towns you'll be paying at least a thousand. Taken out of that thousand is interest payments on a $150,000 debt. I don't know the exact math, but that comes out to about 600-700 dollars a month. The only intelligent way to buy a house is by making double payments, which I can't afford.

Ahhhhhhhh, what were those magical words? I can't afford to buy a house. Thaaaaaat's the step we're missing. I have to save up just to buy furniture, so why is it presumed that I can buy an entire fucking house!? Well, I can't. And neither can the Jakes of the world. That doesn't stop them though. Not because they REALLY believe that they're throwing their money away on a house, but because they are deluded into thinking that they can just possess a house and everything else just works out. 

Well it DIDN'T.

Suddenly, to nobody's surprise, we hit the subprime mortgage crisis. Oh really? So you're telling me that lending HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to people who can't even afford an iPod is a bad business move? Tell me more. I'm fascinated. I am SOOOOOO shocked. So while I've been "throwing my money away" on eight years of rent payments, with no debt to speak of, having lived on a college campus, an affluent neighborhood (I lived three blocks away from Paul Revere of The Raiders), a liberal paradise, a church property, a kooky inside-out castle with two balconies, and a downtown historical apartment with a view of the Fremont Bridge, and once October rolls around, I can just get up and move somewhere else, the Jakes have been stuck in one place, fixing up their homes, trying to make ends meet, and FAILING, resulting in foreclosures and auctions, taking losses of tens of thousands of dollars that they don't have, because they were naive to think that I was the one making a stupid business decision.

So, anyway, here's my the question, not just to the Jakes, but to their lenders, the financial giants who provided the money, and the realtors who closed the deal:

WHY THE FUCK ARE WE BAILING YOU OUT?

Government support is for people who were failed by the system. You're just white fucking trash. The only lesson there is for you to learn is that you can continue taking more than you can afford, then giving up and leaving us with the bill. I made all the right decisions, and now I'm stuck paying your bill? Fuck you. I don't have a single drop of sympathy for any of you shitheads. you know who I have sympathy for? The Mexicans in Hillsboro, with eight per apartment living in secret because their lease only allows for four, pitching in on a $600 rent because $75 a month is all they can afford. You fuckers are white, spoiled little shits, and now the Government is cleaning up your mess with my money. Fuck you. The subprime "crisis" is not a tragedy. It's punishment, and now daddy is going soft on you because of all your fucking whining. Well, don't expect me to care. You know how you could have avoided this "crisis?" Rent a fucking apartment.