We did it! We are moved out of the Money Pit and into our wonderful place in the country!

Lifted straight off Dave Ramsey’s site - EXCELLENT advice on what you can do TODAY!

How We Can Clean Up A Lot of the Economic Problems

Remember Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and other companies had artificially put assets on the books? They’d say something was worth $10M when they bought it, but eventually it decreased in value, and they never updated the value in the books. That was part of the fraud. Under current laws at that time, they were all convicted and put in jail for fraud.
Then we got all mad and made all these new laws that are coming out the wazoo called sarbanes oxley. It’s a huge, massive law but the idea is that we were going to mandate ethics to corporate America because apparently they didn’t have any, according to the Enron failure. It’s now a total pain in the butt to execute it in a publicly traded company.

It didn’t work because you can’t cause ethics to happen. However, it does make each company each day restate what their assets are worth if sold on the market. This accounting procedure is mark to market accounting–you need to remember that. It’s a good concept and keeps companies from having loaded balance sheets.

How This Affects Us Today

However, it’s part of what’s caused this in the news now. Merrill Lynch was sitting with $30 billion tied up in sub-prime loans with houses. Stupid! They get what they deserve for doing that, and I’m with you on that. Those houses didn’t become worthless all of a sudden because those people couldn’t sell their bonds. Since they couldn’t sell them, they basically gave them away for 22 cents on the dollar. Now do you think all those houses lost 80% of their value underneath that deal? No, they didn’t, so they gave them away for 22 cents on the dollar (about $6 billion total) because there was no market for them. Nobody wants to buy sub-prime bonds because they suck. They’re junk bonds. But at 22 cents on the dollar, it’s a bargain because even if you foreclosed on every one of the houses in there, you’d probably get $20 billion back out of $30 billion, and so the company that bought those for $6 billion got a deal! But there’s no market for them. That’s where these companies are stuck. They can’t sell this stuff, but accounting-wise, they’ve had to mark it down to market and it’s frozen the marketplace.

Economist Wesbury is saying that if we change that one rule and don’t force them to mark down to market value and just let them hold on to all the stuff, and say just on sub-primes for this period of time you can change that rule — a temporary change — that’ll free the market up. It’s seized right now; it’s frozen. This will thaw it out and get it going again. He says that’ll solve 60% of the problem … and I think he’s right.

That one accounting rule is what made Merrill Lynch sell out. That one accounting rule is what’s driving other ones into the dirt. Would you rather let them change their accounting rule or loan them $700 billion for us to buyout their bad paper?

I’d rather them work their own crap out than have us bail them out with $700 billion of our tax dollars.

I don’t like giving them any money or any help with my tax dollars. But I’d rather see that than see the whole thing turn completely upside down in a fruit basket turnover than have a whole meltdown or something and freak out here in the middle of the election season. Why don’t we just take the FHA insurance program and extend it across these sub-primes? What that means is that you and I are guaranteeing the lender that they’re not going to lose as much or any money on those mortgages. Now I don’t like guaranteeing them, but I like it better than buying them. In other words, instead of $700 billion in tax-payer debt going out there to bail out these companies, just extend the insurance out. You could probably do that for less than $40 billion. It’s like a 95% savings!

If the government insured those mortgages, they would then be marketable. And could sell them. And the companies would stay afloat. And we, the people, don’t have to get into the mortgage business. Now we’re going to get in there a little bit because of the insurance on those getting foreclosed on. But foreclosures aren’t causing this. This is being caused because these companies are frozen and seized up. We’ve got to let some of the steam come off and put some oil in there to get this thing moving again. We can do that without going into debt $700 billion.

Here’s Your Plan

Call your Congressman. Call your Senator. Tell them to change the mark-to-market accounting law and to extend insurance but extend no loans. If they extend loans - if they borrow the money on the national debt in order for us to all go into the mortgage business a trillion dollars - you’re going to fire their butts and send them home.

I’ve talked with several people today, and it’s on the tables in Washington, but it’s not something you’re going to see on TV. If you’ll let your Congressmen know you know about this and that you’ll vote against them if they don’t vote to change the mark-to-market law and you’ll contribute your money to make sure they never serve in office again. That’s what you need to tell them early and often.

If you’re pissed, this is the time to step up and do something about it, America! You can stop this! It’s being railroaded down your throat, but you can stop them if you call them in mass starting now. READY … SET … GO!

Contact:

• Your representative
• Your senators
• Senate committee

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MCCAIN SUSPENDS CAMPAIGN TO FOCUS ON ECONOMY; WANTS DEBATE DELAY
Wed Sept 24 2008 14:58:02 ET From DrudgeReport

MCCAIN: America this week faces an historic crisis in our financial system. We must pass legislation to address this crisis. If we do not, credit will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. People will no longer be able to buy homes and their life savings will be at stake. Businesses will not have enough money to pay their employees. If we do not act, ever corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen.

Following September 11th, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis. We must show that kind of patriotism now. Americans across our country lament the fact that partisan divisions in Washington have prevented us from addressing our national challenges. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country.

If you have an opinion on the proposed Congressional bail out on Wall Street, you need to contact your Congress folks NOW! I wrote an email and called.

Find your US Congress Representative here. I wrote an email and called.

Find your US Senate here.

I also called Sen. McCain’s campaign to let him know where I stand.

When our business failed - we were left with the bill. We made the decision to start a business, it is our responsibility to pay it off. To the tune of $100k. It takes sacrifice. Downsizing our home. Diligence. Selling things off. Effort. Hard work.

It doesn’t take the American taxpayer.

Well the downsize is officially ON! We are moving into our wonderful new place, and absolutely loving it. We are out in the country in the most peaceful setting, with rolling hills, cornfields in front of us, cows and horses, and super friendly neighbors. We LOVE our new place, and marvel at what the Lord has given us in this season of pay off, get out of debt.

Although a relatively new house (12 years old) and it looked okay when we looked at it, it ended up being incredibly dirty, just not taken care of. We spent two days cleaning and a third doing maintenance duties that were neglected. From scrubbing down the kitchen to yard work - it has been an incredible amount of work just to get it ready to move in.

Our quest for simplicity will really be challenged. We are cutting our space by two-thirds. Yes - you read that right, cutting our space by 2/3. We have sold a lot, will be selling a lot more, continuing on with our successful ebay campaign (with so many requests, we will do an upcoming Prudent Wife series on How to Sell On Ebay!) and giving things away as the Lord lead us. And that will take time.

As we sort and pack, we are struck by how many remnants of our former life we have. So much of what we have was purchased for a former life. Confronting  your “stuff” is difficult. Embracing simplicity when it means getting rid of your stuff is a challenge! But we are so excited for the life we will have in this new place.

Each time we drive up toward the new home, we are flooded with peace. It will be a good place to be, a blessing from the Lord.

That said, we will be so glad October 1, when this whole nightmare is over, for once and for all.

For now, we persevere!

After a trip with both cars full of stuff to the new house, we decided to top off our tanks. In the volatility of the stock market yesterday as Congress ponders the TRILLION dollar bailout, a barrel of oil went up $25.00.

The way our prices seem to increase on gas, that would be a dollar more when the gas stations realized it!  It can go down on the stock market $60 and we save 20 cents, but if it goes up, it is an immediate hike at the pump where we live. It should be an immediate decrease when it goes down, but it does not.

Gas has remained the same price for almost a week, so we decided to fill our tanks at the half way point. Good thing we did, the first station we went to was out of gas and has been for a few days. The station we filled up at, had been out of gas for a week. For some reason, Hurricane Ike has knocked the fuel system out in the Southeast.

I have about 12 trips back and forth to the new house, that we can move with this gas. Dave has 4 trips to work. Waiting….

All the more memorable when you consider I had a full tank of gas when the fuel pump died Thursday, the day before we started moving, leaving me on the side of the road. A big hooray for AAA towing me to the repair shop - and $562 later (plus TN tax = $612) my car was back on the road. Dave can do a lot, but fuel pumps are not in his repertoire!I lost over $50 worth of gas in that repair….ugh! So it was a $662 hit to our budget.

We are leaving our beautiful Money Pit and moving to a smaller house in the country!

We absolutely LOVE our beautiful, peaceful home in the country. We are cutting our total space by 2/3, and housing expenses by half, so this is a DRASTIC move for us!

Please pray for us as we move. Physically - it is exhausting, and with Dave, Emily and I doing most of it, I am concerned for injuries. Watching Dave shoulder most of the burden - in determination he will move stuff that he probably should not. Shoving a home full of memories into a space that is so much smaller is more than a challenge. We have sold so much already - and will be selling more undoubtably, but until then, it has to go with us!

Good news - the library is IN!

Will report more later….for now, each trip we take to the new house, leaves us yearning to be there forever. Trips to the current house are fraught with a desire to be done with this particular phase of our lives. Yes, this is a lovely home. But it is a home that represents loss and sorrow and we cannot wait to close this chapter of our lives!

Let the borrower beware. One good thing about the economy, it is making students pay CASH rather than get loans! MyRichUncle.com just suspended it’s private student loan program. What an old fashioned notion, to work your way through college.

I love reading the European view of what is going on in America! You will find a fresh prospective, and a totally different spin. This article, effectively spearing Alan Greenspan with his own words and views, sums up what Europe is seeing in our “Housing Bubble” that has exploded. Excellent information!

This time, as with the equity bubble, the mistake was not to set interest rates too low; it was to stand back as wildly imprudent policies were pursued by mortgage lenders. Indeed, any lender would have been encouraged by his words in April 2005: “Where once more-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately. These improvements have led to rapid growth in subprime mortgage lending.” Well, he was right about the rapid growth in subprime lending.

Are you feeling a little bit concerned with all the financial headlines, and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the woes at AIG, Morgan Stanley and WaMu (Washington Mutual)? Are you wondering just how safe YOUR bank is right now?

Worry no more, you can check your bank, savings and loan or credit union. BankRate.com allows you to check the “Safe and Sound” rating of your bank, in a simple system that tells you how sound your bank is right now.

I checked both of our banks and they currently look pretty good!