Is Your House Haunted?

With Halloween around the corner I think that it’s appropriate to provide a little checklist.  The last thing you want is to find out is that your house is haunted.  So let’s take a little tour and check.

The Garage:  open the garage door and look around.  You probably have a car or two or three in the garage.  Do you make payments on them?  Car payments can be scary.  The average car payment is $474.  Many people lease their cars which can be even more frightening.  Make sure you check thoroughly.

The Living Room:  we love our entertainment.  Nothing is more impressive than a nice big HDTV with surround sound, a Blue Ray disc player and a plush leather sofa.  So when you enter your living room, look around.  Where did you purchase the items in your living room?  Did you pay cash or did you charge them?  Are you still making payments?  Did you get 90 days same as cash?

The Kitchen:  the most social room in the house is the kitchen.  We gather there at parties.  We hang out and talk as a family there.  Over the past few years many of us have spent lots of money upgrading to granite counter tops, top of the line stainless steel appliances and expensive water filtration systems.  You may have even spent thousands of dollars on new cabinets.  Did you save up to pay for these upgrades or did you use an equity line?

The Yard:  we love to entertain.  Noting makes us feel better than having friends and family come over and hang out in the yard.  We spend lots of money making sure that our guests have a good time.  We have intricate landscapes with built in barbeques and fire pits.  It gets really hot in the summer time here in Chino Hills.  Nothing helps to beat the heat like a nice big pool with a waterfall.  How much did you spend on your back yard?  Did you pay cash or did you finance that too?

Especially in today’s economy nothing is scarier than having debt.  Our generation has mastered the concept of over borrowing and living well outside of our means.  Our country has a negative savings rate which basically means that as a nation we spend more than we make.  We don’t really have many good examples out there since our government is doing the same thing and has been for years.

There is one man that has been screaming from the mountain tops for over a decade.  Dave Ramsey is a personal finance expert who appears daily on Fox Business Network and also on 980 AM in the morning.  He helps people who live in these “Haunted Houses” to get out of debt and get their lives back.  I suggest that if you think you might live in a Haunted House, or if you know someone who does, that you check out Dave Ramsey.  He is kind of a modern day Ghost Buster. 

www.ChinoHillsMortgageMan.com