It's Bellini's take that folks have miscontrued the joneses to be equated with quality of life. Folks that's a fallacy -- so please don't believe the hype. So, I'm here to lend my perspective. See, the joneses are all about appearances. These hollow values manifest a certain illusion. Folks who embody such foolishness falsely believe they have attained a certain quality of life. Not true.
The joneses is to "frontin'" as quality of life is to "just being".
Perhaps, a story will better expound on what i'm trying to say. So a former collegue of mine returned to the states after living in Germany for 2 years and prior to that he was in Atlanta for 4 years. He decided he would settle in the suburbs of (formerly) Choclate City. In this market, he only scoped foreclosed properties (*smart fella -- wanted more bang for his buck). So, he bought the house and it's time for him to retreive all his belongings from storage that have been housed overseas and stateside. As a good friend, i had volunteered to help him get settled.
This past Saturday was beautiful and early afternoon i received a call on my mobile as i'm cruising around the city. It's my colleague and right away i think about the services i offered to him damn Bellini's word is on the line, so i committ to helping my friend. After a couple of hours i find my way to his home. Ironincally, he lives across the street from my best friend's home -- so i knew how to get there. He wasn't joking about the need to get settled, he had boxes everywhere. So i decide to work the kitchen to bring some additional order to the home. Besides your bedroom, a bathroom and kitchen should be tackled first when moving into a home -- these rooms give you the sense of home immediately when complete (imo). So eventually, he gives a mini-tour of the home and I see the office and I questioned why he chose this particular room and he informs me it's the smallest room in the home. And then i look up and i see the pink border with designs and then it hit me -- this was a bedroom for a little girl. I gasp!
Right then and there it became crystal clear, a couple actually gambled in the housing market and bought a home to settle their family in knowing they couldn't afford it. What makes the situation so uncanny is i remember a few years ago when the development was being built and i knew the going rate for the homes. Clearly the person who sold the couple their future forclosed home walked away with 100K at least. In many ways, i don't get why people would jump out there with no parachute. Whom are you trying to impress and why? You f***ed your credit to go to great lenghts about how much of the American pie you could own? See, that's how the joneses will f*** with you. Folks are gettin' caught up in the appearance of shit. Maybe i need to dig deeper and suggest that the joneses has much to do with a lack of self-worth.
Quality of life dictates that you buy what you can afford and not a penny more. Quality of life folks value piece of mind above all else. Quality of life requires that you accept everything ain't for everybody. So, there's no need to front. You can live and let be.
Just being is to keepin' it real = quality of life.
cheers,
Bellini
*P.S. shouts out to the smart fella, i'm sure he's reading this
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7 comments:
Hmmmm. Truth. Beauty.
Some people have this Jonesing condition chronically. We can’t all have the big house, the nice car, the weekend shopping sprees. If we all had McMansions who would clean them? Seriously. Who would?
Somebody has to be envious, and therefore somebody has to be poor…well not poor, but at least content with less. It’s the circle of life.
Bellini – You can’t be serious!?! “…crystal clear, a couple actually gambled in the housing market and bought a home to settle their family in knowing they couldn't afford it”…really? All this from a pink border?!
I am not disputing that yes, the former owners could have been trying to keep up with the Jones but there are so many other reasons why people foreclosure on their homes. That is unfair assumption.
Now if we want to talk about keeping up with Jones…I am with you. I call it the nigga-mentality and I think it is a combination of us lacking financial knowledge, a strong value system and being self-content. Society preys on this and pushes it on you like drug dealers with little kids walking home from school. (Off topic: Remember those commercials…lol)
Anyway don’t believe the hype!
I'd have to agree with the assumption of the original poster about buying a more expensive house than the family could afford.
I feel that the family must have been financially irresponsible in some way because if they had been totally responsible, they would have not had to foreclose.
Responsible homeowners/investors protect their property/investments with insurance and take other measures so that if unforseen circumstances occur, they don't lose everything.
We don't know how much they lost, but whatever it was, it was too much based on the circumstances of how they left the home.
Even in a worse case scenario where someone gets sick and is unable to work, you need to invest in disability insurance which will pay your mortgage if you're too sick to work.
Same with death.
If someone died, there should have been enough money from the policy to pay off the house in full with money left over.
Loss of a job? Banks are actually flexible in circumstances like this. They could have made new payment arrangements to keep the home.
Therefore, the only reason that I can think of is the interest only/buying but really can't afford the house scenario that alot of people seemed to have done in the last couple of years.
Now that the rates have gone up, they're out of luck.
@ Amaretto: if only we could all come to the terms with the division of labor; a dental assistant of my former dentist mentioned that she knew she would never possess a Mercedes-Benz -- she knew that and was content in knowing so and she was very happy in her life
@mjr-banx: i appreciate the counter argument 'cuz i'm queen of playing devils' advocate, but as aroundharlem commented when you brainstorm about all the possible scenarios my hunch is that an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) took them under. could be wrong, but i seriously doubut it
@aroundharlem: straight to the point -- thanx. You laid it out.
Word to the wise -- i hated physics in school and shied away from it but the prinicple of what comes up must come down is alive and well!
Girl...I've seen it for myself..my friend bought a house in this golf community in Upper Marlboro...so far 10 of his neighbors have had their houses foreclosed on! Competing with the Jones'es is not a risk I'm willing to take @ all! People are forever living above their means and I see it more often in this area than any where else I've lived..
i fell ya, we think the same, wrote on same thing a few weeks ago
http://rawdawgb.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-dont-dispose-of-income-folk-dont-get.html
@funky black chick: yes this tale takes place in the "glorious prince georges" and i think you're on to something about chocolate city and it's associated behaviors-a post for another day
@torrance stephens: kindred spirit indeed
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