and last week's comp check said the house is now worth $700k. He's made $250K in less than 2 years.

He hasn't made a dime. He has comp check in hand that will not buy a cup of coffee.

What are the real dollars he has spent on interest?

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He hasn't made a dime. He has comp check in hand that will not buy a cup of coffee.

If he sells the house tomorrow, he's got it in hand. Of course he won't have a house, but he'll have $250K.

If he had invested it, all he has is a piece of paper in hand that doesn't buy him a cup of coffee either.

What are the real dollars he has spent on interest?

Unknown. I only know the basics of his program. I do know that he has an interest-only loan, which allows him to deduct 100% of his mortgage payment off of his taxes.

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access to credit is one of the bedrock mechanisms by which people are able to improve their economic standing

Completely down with this statement.

Credit does not suck. Using it to meet basic needs does.

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Using it to meet basic needs does.

Then for what the hell are you supposed to use credit? Purchasing a house improves your economic standing.

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I'll lay the "if he sells for ..." thing off to one side, for a moment.

Anyone want to guess whether or not the bank made money?

From whom?

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What's a basic need, though? Using credit to buy groceries - generally, yeah, bad idea. Using it to buy a car - not necessarily the wisest way to go, but the amount of the hit you take is something that most people can swallow. Real estate? That's a very different calculation.

Mind, the Economist was running the numbers and finding recently that in certain specific urban areas, house prices have gotten so inflated that you actually may come out ahead by renting*. (I'd copy the tables from the article here, but I've forgotten my economist.com log in.) But that abberation doesn't change the fundamental rationale for 99% of the world. And the affected areas won't be able to keep going that route for much longer anyway.

*Taking into account fees, interest, property taxes, etc., but also tax deductions and resale value. Pretty shocking, really.

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If you can't rent and save, something is wrong with your rent, or your income.

I'm sorry, sa-- sa-- I do not recognize this word you are using.

In a related note, my mother is buying her very first house. She's able to do this because she just got married, and her husband has some money.

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Then for what the hell are you supposed to use credit?

Anything that keeps you ahead of the interest. Real Estate may work, in some markets. Poker might work in others, given the investor's skill.

Manufacturing works for some.

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I'm sorry, sa-- sa-- I do not recognize this word you are using.

Exactly.

Right now, lots of stuff is wrong with both my rent and my income, and it's going to stay that way for awhile. I don't see myself possibly being able to afford a house without credit of some sort any time before age 50, unless I happen to marry someone with money, or suddenly inherit a huge amount.

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Whoo. I just got back a few minutes ago from the best community service EVAH.

San Francisco, as many Buffistas are no doubt painfully aware, has some of the crappiest parking in the universe. It makes you want to cry, to pound your dashboard, to stabbity stab stab all the other drivers in the city until your arm goes limp with exhaustion.

Any car owner moving here would be well advised to make getting a residential parking permit Top Priority #1 within milliseconds of arrival, and equally well advised to budget a good $40-50 a month to cover all the sneak attack tickets that come from busted meters, migrating handicapped spaces (no, really), random DPT staff coming by and putting up restriction signs and painting the curb in the middle of the day so that you leave your car in a legal space and come back to a $35 white-zone fine (again, no, really), and homeowners cranky that your bumper impinges one full centimeter into their driveway.

Thank God for Project 20, an extremely secret program through which you can pay off your tickets before you get booted or towed through community service rather than cash. You agree to work a set number of hours for every $10 you owe (Hec and I presently owe close to $500, hence 84 hours), you interview with a caseworker, and the caseworker checks through the list of organizations signed up with Project 20 to see what your options are. There are community gardening groups, recycling centers, soup kitchens. There's a preschool that needs people to come paint the kids' faces at a student fair. Craft fairs need volunteers to work the booths and help the artists. And the School of Circus Arts needs people to do, well, everything.

So, tonight after work I strolled down to the Circus Center (conveniently located exactly halfway between my office and Chez Zmayhem), presented myself to the program director, and was asked if I would mind going down to the local grocery store and seeing if their balloon lady would inflate some mylar balloons for us.

Off I went, a breezy three-block walk in the afternoon sun. A butterfly balloon suffered a fatal rupture; I replaced it with a dragonfly; I strolled back through the sunshine, balloons bobbing and rustling over my shoulder, causing a passing standard poodle to totally flip its shit out with excitement.

I returned, was hailed with a disproportionate but still flattering degree of delight, and proceeded to slounge about for the next hour or so as volunteers from the Asian Art Museum scrambled around setting up for a benefit Chinese circus arts performance.

Eventually I was called back to duty, assisting a stilt-walker in a 9-foot-long scarlet cheongsam up a flight of concrete stairs without tripping over herself or damaging her magnificent black velvet, chrysanthemum and tassel bestrewn headdress. Then I had a glass of cabernet. Then I had some spinach quiche. Then I ran downstairs to tell the hoop-jumpers the call was two minutes, and ran upstairs to tell the Mystic Pixies the same. Then I watched everyone perform.

The hoop-jumpers were a group of six teenage boys who were typical goofy/snarky teenage boys offstage and a six-part single unit of grace and power and utter focus onstage. They rolled, dove and leapt through great hoops stacked on other hoops stacked on the floor; the top tier hoops were some five feet off the floor, and the boys would launch themselves up and through and land coiled and languid and strong, utterly silent - not a thud, not a thump, as if they had drifted weightless to the floor and might just as easily have arced up to the ceiling.

The Mystic Pixies were four little blonde girls with glittered lips and Sandman's-sister-Deathlike squiggles around their eyes, who did Chinese-style contortionist tumbling to goosebump-raising music that sounded almost but not quite like the theme to HBO's "Carnivale." They did the splits on the floor, standing on one leg, standing on each other's thighs. They lay face-down on the floor, raised their heads, balanced on their sternums, and curled until (continued...)

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