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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SouthFloridaGuy who wrote (5445)	9/19/2002 10:21:24 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

My rule of thumb is no more than 1/3 of gross to ALL debt payments, which includes mortgage, SUV, college loans, credit card,... Now I know why the real estate brokers loved us. I had no debt when I took out my first mortgage. Although the loan officer thought I was downright untrustworthy because I obviously didn't subscribe to the American way of living in debt. Had no consumer debt when we bought the second house either (we were both between auto loans). The investment properties were easy because I remembered that I was the customer and told the bank what they needed to do to get our business. There are three days you never forget about college, the first day, graduation day and the day you make that final student loan payment. I made my last payment a good three years before I even thought about buying a house. I learned a lesson from watching my oldest sister who married a guy with student loans (small ones by today's standard). Somehow after 35 years of marriage the ghost of that debt still resides somewhere on a card or a consolidation loan. It never got paid off, it just got rolled into one loan after another. He got downsized and merged out over and over again until they didn't even have a house to show for it. Now they are on the envelope system living in a rented house. This is a guy who 30 years ago made more money than I make today. They simply always spent just a little more than he made. Had to they said, they lived in California!