I might look at it differently if I were staying at home all day. But since I work, it’s quite enough for the time I actually spend there.

When you don’t understand how something works, you don’t just say “eh, uncle bob knows his stuff” or “the lady in the shiny SUV must know what she’s doing”. Even if uncle bob is a CEO of a major bank, you still need to research and educate yourself. Even Greenspan and Bernanke makes mistakes.

And the lady in the shiny SUV is probably in $50k debt or more from that SUV. Don’t trust image.

It’s a sad commentary on how the world works, but you can’t trust anyone. Listen to your gut AND do the math. If you’re not good at math, take a math class or borrow some books from the library. Buying a home is such a major purchase that you can’t leave any decision to chance. Ultimately, though, part of it is a gamble, and I recognize that. You’ll never know if the home is completely structurally sound, or if the market will be on the upswing when it’s time to sell, but you are responsible to both be educated about the financials, emotionals AND the risks of any purchase you make.

I feel that it is very important to be self sufficient, but this is from my own experiences. My mom was a stay at home mom when we were young, and then went to professional school at age 40. After she began her first job after the degree, my dad asked for a divorce. His career was stable, although they had debt. My mom has dealt with a lot of financial insecurity since then.

My mom isn’t perfect, but her struggles aren’t just from “bad choices.” Instead they have made me realize how important it is to build a security net when you are young because as you get older, no one wants you. Medical events can use up a life’s savings, even when you have health insurance. Divorce can destroy your credit rating.

Besides this, I remember when someone I know showed up with a brand new SUV. I heard her saying that she had been told that she could qualify for a home loan of 300K. She works as a preschool teacher, and at that point had been at her job for 6 months. But she had been told by these “experts” that this is the right amount of debt to have. No one in her family had ever given her any financial education, and the people selling you loans work in banks, you tend to trust them.

Mapgirl, you, for example, are hoping that your wealth will increase due to the stock market gains. Recent experience says that is probably true, and that the markets will go up over the long term (or over our life term). If that trend reverses, if there were a crash, you would find yourself without a lot of your net worth.

While I agree with you that a lot of the articles showing people losing their homes focus on people who seem to have made very poor decisions, I also have seen financial misfortunes accrue to people because of events beyond their control. People who made the loans that led to this crisis also made poor decisions.

Buying a house is probably the biggest purchase of most people’s lives, and it usually comes with a mortgage. Why would anyone sign the next 15/20/30/40/50 years of their lives away without understanding what they were getting into?