Getting A Good Deal Too Good to Refuse

THERE IS A PLEASANT sounding opportunity, difficult to resist, called a "home equity loan", in which the happy borrower strides joyfully into her mortgage lender's tastefully decorated office and walks out with a fistful of cash, and less home ownership. Then the fun begins; Home equity loans are marketed as golden opportunities to travel, party, or home improve. Until about 1980 they were called "second mortgages", but that term didn't do, home owners, already burdened by first mortgages, were utterly horrified at the thought of obtaining another. Second mortgages were undertaken only by the financially desperate, only as a last resort, and, in terms of corporate profit, simply didn't do. Something had to be done to make second mortgages more appealing, positively alluring. Hence, the repacking under another description, home equity loan. The twentieth century was a crusade by our corporate masters to find effective, creative ways to part us from our hard earned money, to drag us deeper into dependent debt. when the American people refuse to spend in our consumer driven economy, or cannot spend due to poverty, we are enticed into greater debt by offers we cannot refuse. We fule our addiction to the material wealth we are assured we must strive for by spending money we do not have for pretty things we cannot afford and do not need, but think we do. We borrow more and more., to cover the borrowing we already did. Fifteen years ago I bought a beautiful home for no money down and no collateral..I was grateful that was all it took, give or take something over one hundred thousand dollars. I, a deliberately difficult borrower, accepted anyway.. That was during the good old  high rolling days, before the great recession ended the drunken fun and brought us back to reality, and conservative financing. I got lucky, rode the post recession stock market all the way up, and paid off my mortgages, both of them, fifteen years early. Others were not so lucky, and lost their homes. I never should have been given a  home loan. Now, we have something even more wonderful' the reverse mortgage, in which the lender pays you to slowly take your equity and your home away, at great cost to you. Who could resist? I never should hver borrowed money at such high usurial interests rates, but i did, and I got lucky. but, as they say, that's how we roll, here in the United States of Avarice.