This subject covers LOTS of aspects of what has been fed to us Americans over the generations. We’ve all been told:
“Buy a house! It is the American Dream! It’s the key to a secure future!”
Well, I’m here to tell you that this is a LIE. A bald-faced, full of shit LIE.
We did that. We bought a house in 2004. The market was hot, it was great for buyers and sellers. So we did it. We got a zero down loan (unheard of now) and moved in. We quickly started FIXING all the shit that needed fixing and took out an equity loan as well. Realtors and mortgage weasels will NOT tell you all the shit you’ll have to pay for when you buy a house. Like PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance). We had PMI, but refinanced after a few years and got rid of it. You can’t do that any more – more on that later. Anyway, we bought our tiny little 912sqft house in the ‘hood and we were happy as pigs in shit. We paid too much, but it was still affordable for us, our mortgage payment was $700-800/mo. Even then, rent was almost twice that.
SO, we got our little house, fixed it up and we loved it mightily.
Then the 2009 real estate crash happened. Our little house lost more than 60% of its value. We asked Wells Fargo to help us out with it, of course they told us to go fuck ourselves. (They were VERY rude, not saying GFY precisely, but RUDE. Wells Fargo can go fuck themselves!)
We were drowning in debt, the house was 60% under water and we’d had enough. So we opted to bankrupt out of all of it. We did the bankruptcy in 2010-11. We were trying to decide what to do: stay in ATL, move away, ???. So we kept paying the mortgage every month. Wells Fargo did nothing. The bankruptcy was discharged, so we were legally off the hook, but since the mortgage was cheap, we just kept paying.
So 2014 rolls around, and we decide that Maplehurst is not going to work with our side hustle, which is arcade games. I find this place in Tucker and we move. Our landlord didn’t mind the bankruptcy since our credit had recovered. Just TRY renting w/out perfect credit now. There are so few individual rental home owners now, it’s difficult to even rent a place to live due to corporate ownership and credit checks.
I read this article about housing and that is the impetus for this post. We got fucked by the real estate crash and it’s worse now that it was then. There are no zero down loans. PMI is PERMANENT (cannot be refinanced or dropped when equity is reached). Housing prices are up 30% and you better have that fat down payment if you want to buy an overpriced house. FHA loans are terrible to get and worse to pay – their PMI is the highest and permanent, which adds tens of thousands of dollars to your loan over time. So you NEVER get equity and only banks make wealth. The whole point of real estate is WEALTH. Can’t have the hoi polloi amassing wealth, now can we? OH NO.
For years, banks and ultra-elites (bankrolled by years of money-printing, corporate socialism, and bailouts) have been using their wealth to take control of the world and rent it back to us.
Apple did it with music.
Netflix did it with movies.
Nestle did it with water.
Uber did it with cars.
Airbnb hosts and landlords did it with houses.
The lecherous gig economy did it with employment.Instead of buying and owning products, now we’re all just renting “services.” – Jared A. Brock
This right here. THIS IS WHAT I RAIL AGAINST DAILY. I’d also like to add Adobe did it with software and Microsoft and others followed suit. You don’t even buy SOFTWARE anymore!! That is fucked up, people.
It all started with real estate and this rental economy has spread across our whole economy. This is very, very bad. We are being reduced to serfs who exist at the whim of our corporate overlords. We rely on the rich corporations for housing, entertainment, food, software, EVERYTHING.
Young people (Ys, Zs, Zoomers) don’t even realise what’s happened. They are growing up in a rental economy, so they know nothing else. It’s fine with them to rent software and everything they need to live. They will likely never know the difference. In many ways, I am jealous of their ignorance.
America is in trouble. We’ve allowed the rich and corporations to literally buy our government. We allow them to erode our ability to have wealth of any sort, to go to school, to get healthcare, to RETIRE. We will NEVER retire. We will work until we’re dead.
What also chaps my ass is people who fail and have zero consequences. They are usually RICH.
For instance, a restaurant near here has failed and the investment group closed it and went bust. But no worries, the main guy got another investment group together real quick and they’ll be refurbing the space and reopening a new concept in a couple of months. NO CONSEQUENCES.
Wow, where were these motherfuckers when WE were trying with literally everything we had to open our dream? Hmm? WHERE? Oh, we aren’t a part of that elite group of rich fucking restauranteurs, so FUCK US.
This scenario is going on everywhere in America, right now, in myriad ways. The rich are telling us to go fuck ourselves for wanting to rise above our rank.
I fear that it’s gone too far in the US to reverse. We may have to move elsewhere just to get healthcare as we age. As it stands, we are treading water. Our jobs pay the bills, but that’s it. We can’t afford to sock away cash in the investments or IRA, so it’s all stagnant. And with the market crash that is coming, we’ll lose more of that small wealth. We’ve already lost about 30% of our investments over the last year or so (2021). We’ll lose more before it’s done. I’m here to tell you that you cannot “retire” on $100k. You cannot.
I don’t know what we’ll do, but I can tell you that we’ve let go of “The American Dream” and pretty much any dream of being independent – as in, working for ourselves. We just don’t have the cash to do it. Meanwhile, the rich fail, lose a million $ and just keep going. IT IS MADDENING.
This is certainly not how I’d planned to live out my old age. Not at all. So think about this when you vote. Yes, the Democrats are pretty spineless and mealy mouthed, but it’s better than fascism. All we can hope for is stopping fascism and at least being able to stay here and not go through the extreme stress of moving overseas. But I just don’t know. And THAT is what eats at me every day.