I have paid nearly sixty thousand dollars towards that mortgage. Nearly five years in, I have yet to touch the principal.
"I have been paying a thousand dollars a month in credit card debt," I said, "for more years than I can count, and I haven't even made a dent in what I owe, never mind that I've paid the debt some four times over.
" A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it is written on " Samuel Goldwyn
"The light at the end of the tunnel may be a freight train coming your way" Metallica - No Leaf Clover
I feel genuine empathy to people who dig themselves into a hole and find their only out in bankruptcy. We as a society have failed them insofar as we don't provide financial literacy education.
I was fortunate to find great resources like this and other fora (Mr.Money Mustache comes to mind) filled with selfless contributors and mentors but so many people are surrounded by awful role models.
Really, how many people use anything beyond grade nine high school mathematics and how many would have been better served with a year of "personal finance for dummies life?"
CJOttawa wrote:how many would have been better served with a year of "personal finance for dummies life?"
Not to be too argumentative, but I wouldn't have. A variety of people tried to teach me a bunch of stuff when I was younger. I was mostly too young and dumb to appreciate the opportunity. I would have been just as content to daydream my way through a personal finance course as I was with most of my other classes. I didn't learn how to be a student until the post-secondary level. Prior to that I got by on some modicum of intelligence and the bare minimum of effort. I learned a lot in high school, but most of that wasn't in a classroom.
Now I'm borderline obsessed with investing, but I had to come to that on my own schedule, and on my own circumstances. Some people have to learn the hard way.