Preserving the Family Home
I read an interesting article last week about how the current mortgage crisis shows that families simply don’t feel the same way about their homes as they used to. The author wrote that in the past, people would fight tooth and nail to preserve their homes, doing anything to avoid bankruptcy or foreclosure.
But these days, it seems that people don’t form that sort of attachment to their residences anymore, which is one of the main reasons that they’re letting their mortgage payments lapse and don’t care when the banks move in to repossess the property.
I completely agree with what the writer’s viewpoint in that article. A few of my friends are actually like that, and one of them knows foreclosure is imminent. I can’t imagine living that way (especially when kids are involved), but thee you go.
I would love nothing more than to have a home that my family could settle into for a couple of decades. Right now we’re just in a townhouse, but are saving up for a nice single-family home somewhere. Once we get that, we’re going to stay put (at least until we retire) and we’ll do what we can to make sure the home remains in our family. For instance, we’ll purchase mortgage life insurance in the event that one of us dies early and we’ll make sure that we always have at least six months worth of salary saved up for emergency payments.
I’m not saying these things are a guarantee against foreclosure, but they’re certainly better than going down without a fight!