Do you own your house or does it own you?

By Joel Persinger
YourRealEstateDude.com

When I was a kid my mother used to caution me not to put more food on my plate than I could eat. If I didn’t listen and ended up sitting at the table, stuffed to the gills and unable to finish my supper, she would look at me with a disapproving scowl and remark, “Your eyes are too big for your stomach, young man.” These were words I heard many times growing up and they taught me more than the obvious lesson they were meant to teach. Among other things, I learned that gluttony and bad consequences go hand-in-hand.

In today’s American society, many of us have failed to learn that our eyes are often bigger than our stomachs, or in many cases, our bank accounts. Even if we did learn it as kids, every aspect of our culture rails against that lesson and entices us to have more and bigger regardless of the consequences. As Brian Buffini (a popular business coach) is fond of putting it, we are driven to “…spend money we don’t have buying things we don’t need to impress people we don’t even know.”

Just yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to an old friend at church. He was brimming with excitement as he announced to me that he and his wife had finally purchased a home. I have seldom seen him so excited. He told me all about the house itself, how excited he and his family were and then finally, about the deal. To his credit, he had really done his homework. He had established a family budget, investigated the current real estate market, determined exactly what his family could afford, and then and only then gone shopping for a home. As a result, he made a fabulous purchase. His new home is just what they need as a family, exactly what they can afford and best of all, they own it. It doesn’t own them. Many other folks cannot say the same.
As I write this column, Realtors, attorneys and credit experts all around the country are working to help thousands and thousands of families who are upside-down on their homes. How did so many people end up in such a mess? I submit that it is a result of never having learned the simple lesson my mother used to preach, “Only take what you can eat, Son. Remember, your eyes are often bigger than your stomach.”