Interesting perspectives in this article. Looking forward to the next part Cheri.

Another interesting article, Cheri. I look forward to part 2. Lawton

Donna, You're right...and not only because the closing costs eat up your savings. The insidious thing about the way we've been taught to think of mortgages is the way the interest rate is expressed. When you take out a 30-year mortgage, the most common kind nowadays, the repayment schedule is arranged in such a way that your first few payments have very little principal credited towards your balance. They are mostly interest. Most people are aware of that. But if you look at your amortization schedule, you'll discover that by 'first few', I mean the first 240! Depending on your interest rate, it takes from 20-24 years before you reach the 50-50 point in principal to interest ratio of each payment. If you calculate how much of each payment goes toward interest and derive an interest rate from that, you'll discover that in the first 10 years of your mortgage, 90% of what you pay is interest. Only if you pay off a 30 year mortgage does the interest rate match what you were told you're getting. So, if you constantly refi or move, you constantly pay up to 90% interest on your housing costs. Someone had to tell me about this, because like most people, I had never stopped to calculate it. When I found out, I vowed to consider the cost before I refinance or move. This alone is what is costing the baby boomer generation a secure retirement. The only thing that is saving some of us is that our parents had a different situation, and most of them didn't move as much or ever refinance. They, members of "the greatest" generation, are leaving their children a massive legacy of equity. Will we be able to do the same? Only if we wake up and educate ourselves regarding today's financial realities. Cheri

Lise, Right you are! That's why it's so important to be aware of your monthly expense profile and prepare yourself to cut expenses if you have to. Now, I know that I'm preaching to the choir when I talk about multiple streams of income in this forum, but that's the first line of defense. Second, if you can't discipline yourself to spend only what you can pay off monthly on those cards, do cut them up. There are tools to help with the discipline...one of which I promote. It's one of my streams of income, and can provide one for anyone who is interested. Third is to have a creative approach to cutting expenses. When my kids were little, ranging from eight to three, my husband's workplace closed down due to an industry-wide catastrophe...the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant incident. Suddenly, there was no demand for uranium, which his company mined and processed. The entire town we lived in was devastated by the shut-down of the plant where he worked, and we ended up moving across-country to accept an offer from an Air Force buddy. At the time, I had no work skills to speak of, couldn't even type more than 30 words a minute. And paying for a babysitter for four small children made my working outside the home impractical. There was no internet, personal computers were not widely accepted and were relatively expensive. The only choices I had were to take on more kids to earn money babysitting, or learn to live on virtually nothing. I chose the latter! I'll be publishing some of my tips for lowering spending in my free newsletter if you're interested. Just go to my newly-redesigned website (thanks Linda Caroll) and sign up. Cheri

Thank you to everyone who has read and/or posted to this thread. For those of you who are waiting for the rest of the story, find it here. To avoid annoying those who are not interested, I did not send out a separate notification on that thread. The only place you'll see it is in this reply to the first thread. Cheri