pocketmint

Tag: houses

1. Mortgages: knowing when to walk away

   12 March 2012

   In January 2011 Jak and I made a bold and controversial financial decision that would send our lives down a sharply different path. We decided to default on our mortgages. For background, you should read my earlier post about buying our current house in 2006, around a year before the Seattle housing market peaked and [...]

2. To buy or to rent: failing to predict the future of housing

   26 June 2009

   In the last month I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that purchasing this house when we did was a huge financial error. It’s been hard, and I’ve engaged in a lot of self-flagellation over the subject. We closed on this house December 1, 2006. Two and a half years later, we’ve paid [...]

3. The giant sucking sound at the bottom of the global pool

   22 August 2008

   If you’re not a regular listener of This American Life, you may have missed the May episode entitled “The Giant Pool of Money”. It explains why what we have now isn’t just a ‘sub-prime mortgage lending crisis’ but a ‘worldwide credit crisis.’ It’s masterfully written, taking all the jargon and translating it into plain, often [...]