[sandinmyshoes]

Are worth more(at least on paper)than they owe? Do you have more in the bank than you owe in standard credit? Do you own more of your home than the bank? I do and i think i'm in a less than 10% bracket.I'm referring not to the 5% that owns 95% of the wealth.I'm referring to the 95% that owns 5% of the wealth.Are you one of the people that don't have a window or a bucket to throw your waste out the window?If so who is responsible for your predicament?Which is mine and some others predicament from a forced adoption.Who did this to you,...how,...and why did you allow this to happen?

[tjay]

hehe.....

[Driller1]

Everything we have is paid for. Homes pole building, well rigs, all the equipment. We just pay uiities and insurance. And advertising.

[talbet]

I have a relitive that is working in Detroit right now, they are buying homes for five thousand and putting another five into them. then renting them for four to five hundered, and they are not bad homes. The bottom has absolutly fallen out of Michiagan property. I have antoher associate that is a real estate agent in Petoskey. Steve said that the bottom has fallen out of the Petoskey area. The median home price two years ago was around 190k now it is 122k and dropping. He called it a blood bath. And things do not look like they will be getting any better anytime soon. So even if what you have is paid for, it is still only worth half what you paid for it, but your taxes sure do not reflect it. I hear many say they will wait it out. Well that will work if you are twenty and do not mind waiting to get your money back for the next thirty years. But if you are 50 you may be pushing up daisies before you see the money you paid.

[preferentialtreatment]

Unemployment will go to unprecedented levels.People will collect unemployment,but the question is for how long?People will be on welfare,but the question is for how long?
Fifty percent unemployment is a mild figure,as things out here look incredible.Disaster area is no misnomer here.I have lost 80k dollars from the housing and there is only real estate agents and banks to be blamed for.I am not making this up.It is based on facts and not opinions to be debated.Aside this,i have learned that michigan based employers are very unfriendly and ruthless and do violate every right you have.This does not end here.Finally,companies from other states and countries have been way too generous and courteous.WHY??

[Huckleberry3911948]

debt is slavery, reaganomics lied. debt is not meaningless.

[MTUCache]

As a late-twenty-something heading into my thirty-somethings, my wife and I bought into the 90s economic-plan hook line and sinker. College loans, credit cards, big wedding, new cars, equity line, adjustable rate mortgage, all of it. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I do feel confident that I can get back on the right side of the ledger. My eyes have certainly been opened, and I don't think it's too late either.

I'm in the process now of taking the savings I had pegged for retirement in order to take care of all the unsecured debt, being unemployed for six months changed my perspectives on things a bit. After that is complete we'll still be upsidedown in our condo by a bit (hoping the market comes back at least 20% over the next few years before I sell), and we'll still have college loans, but none of it will be on high-interest accounts.

Total red ink numbers vs. assets? I'm probably about a year's-salary in the hole. Certainly not good, but not all that bad either considering my wife and I were unemployed for six months and the house we own lost 30+% of it's value. I'm not proud of where I'm at, but I know people who are three or four times as bad, with little of it secured, and have no savings or any way of making their minimum payments, let alone turning it around.

Now if my wife could just find a job.... then we'd have those college loans at least paid off in the next two or three years.

How many people are worth more than they owe? I'd hope a lot, certainly everybody over 40, but I don't see much hope for that. I'd put the number around 20% though, honestly, there's a lot of people out there who have been very conservative and smart with their money despite the downturn recently. Not everybody borrowed against their house and were leveraged to the hilt before the market took a hit... just a large portion of us.

[michigan83]

I'm definitely not worth more than I owe. Like MTUCache, I did my little spending spree (albeit on a smaller scale than most) and now I finally "get it". I owe about a year's salary in student loans, a car payment, and an unsecured loan.

I plan on getting completely out of debt before taking on anything else. I was briefly tempted by the $8,000 rebate on new home purchases and looked at a few houses. But I recently decided against it. Do I really want to own a house in this state right now, regardless of the deals available and the rebate? If I was debt-free, the answer would be yes. But I'm not. And I have no interest in putting any extra stress on myself or giving up the chance to pay debt off quickly while still enjoying life, having fun and traveling some.

So, no, I'm not where I want to be financially, and I owe more than I'm worth. But now that I've officially passed up the temptation of buying a house while still having other debt, I'm feeling pretty good about things! I'm living where I want to live, but can easily move if this state's economy puts me in a tough spot. And I'm going to use every dollar that I can to get "in the black" while I still have the blessing of employment in this great state.

[Coldjensens]

We are not quite upside down if you count my 401K, but it is a close call. We may well be at $0 net worth by now. The loan on our house is the entire issue. It is so much larger than the value of our house, that it woudl eat up all of our assets if we had to pay it off. It is not clear what you are including in this question. We have virtually no cash assets. Doi you count in the value of rugs, clothing, cameras, furniture, televisions, etc?

Who is to blame? I am. What justification can their possibly be for trying to blame others for ur financial or other life decisions? We make our choices and live with them. Nothing is forced on you except dieing, and you can postpone that a bit by choosing to live a healthy lifestyle. Everything directly or indirectly evolves from a choice that we made somewhere. We cannot blame the president, or the government, or one political party or the other, or our mothers, or anything else. You make your path and you walk on it.

While I would have been better off if the economy was better, it isn't. There are many many choices that I could have made along the way that would have resulted in my being far richer, or far poorer, or far happier, or much more unhappy,despite the economic problems. There are times where I could have become wealthy by being dishonest and the economy would ot bother me at all. There are times where I oculd have chosen a path where I woudl be more useful to society, or more hlepful to people who are wanting, and thus probably be happier, but I owuld also be far fuinancially poorer than I am. Everything is caused by my choices. I hope that my choices will trun out well and sometimes they do sometimes they do not. I might choose to eat Pizza for lunch despite the fact that I know it is bad for me. That piece of pizza may be the bad thing that allows cancer to grow in my body. While I did nto choose to get cancer, I chose to risk it by eating pizza (I have no idea if you can get cancer from eating pizza, but you probably can, what does not give you the risk of cancer? I am not aware of anything).

[chiroptera]

True, dat, Coldjensens. We're all responsible for us for the most part (and the corollary of that is: we should also take responsibility for our own successes!)

I've made a ton of my share of dumb decisions for sure (I'm old, I've had time to LOL). I'm glad I made one good decision though: About seven years ago I resolved not to go into debt for a car or any other large purchase like that. I was able to buy a very inexpensive house with savings, my two vehicles are older but paid for, no CC debt. I'd really be hurting this last couple of years if I also had a house note and car payments.

I just cross my fingers I don't get ill and run up a lot of medical debt, or be unable to work...