Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Hi Guys,
Went to a seminar the other day where people where asked about how they would like to change their lives in the future. The presenter went around the room and settled on one bloke who piped up and said that all he wanted to change was to have a bit more fun!! because his life had become such a grind for him and his wife as all they seem to do was 'work and work' to pay the bills and the mortgage, which never seemed to come down. This guy was about the same age as me, but bad health seemed to 'dog' him, his wife sitting next to him, looked even older. To the astonishment of all in the room, she then began to cry as she described the knobly goat track her existence had become. A worn, weary path between her bed, desk at work, the couch and then bed again.

It was a moving and confronting experience to see such desperation and hear someone open up about their frustrations in such a manner. I felt a pang of sorrow for them both, as like many others, they were victims of one of the greatest inventions to pacify man, the dreaded mortgage...

In the new century of 'must haves' and the resultant mountains of debt, most of us have ended up with sizable mortgages as we fund house purchases and refinances into an ever increasing housing market. Banks, have never had it so good in this environment, they now offer a confusing array of loan products like a bag of mix lollies but strip away the sugary outer coatings of most of these products and you'll find something lurking inside...the principle and interest loan. It's the modern day equivalent of the ball and chain around your leg, where you are sentenced to 30 years of hard labour, and to use an analagy, for the first 15 years, the rocks you bust out of the quarry, are replaced by 'cave-ins' of rocks, so that you can never see your way out. So we can easily sympathise with the couple at the seminar, as they struggled with their frustations of spending the rest of their vital years paying off their mortgage so that they can have a pool to decompose by at age 70!

Such is the joy of a mortgage, one good idea that has gone wildly wrong, which so many aussies neither question or fully comprehand until they realise that their best years have been spent chasing a rainbow. The mortgage is a great way of giving people an opportunity to live in a home of their own or invest but the true soul selling capabilities of the Principle and Interest loans are never fully appreciated, when anther sleep walker exits the Bank, his sovereinty signed away to Corporate Australia.

To use another cruel analagy, when you go for that vital interview at the bank and you walk out clutching hundreds of thousands of dollars, you are elated, but there has been a price, a metaphysical change has occurred and one of your testicles remains with the bank manager. He stores it in a jar in his safe with all the others. Now when the owners of the said testicles get the urge to do something risky, exciting, different or adventourous, the chances are the moment will soon pass as an irrational thought as they won't have the balls to do it!! when they remember who actually owns them.

So somehow to be a free man, you have to escape this trap. How do you do it??... You could live in a cheaper country, you could stop competing with your neighbour and drive an older car or you could take a year off to think it over. Yeah right, as any of you with a mortgage will know taking a year off to comtemplate life is about as likely as your bank manager dropping in to iron your shirts. It ain't gonna happen!!

So what can we do? how do we fight back? Well the good news is - there are ways to turn the principle and interest loan back on itself and use those same principles that pin us down, to knock our mortgage for six.

Get control of your spending and apply a mortgage debt reduction strategy. Talk to us about how to apply.

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