Chapter 14 Personal Finances

Choosing a Career

Until you’re eighteen or so, you probably won’t generate much income; for the most part, you’ll be living off your parents’ wealth. In our hypothetical life cycle, however, financial planning begins in the individual’s early twenties. If that seems like rushing things, consider a basic fact of life: this is the age at which you’ll be choosing your career—not only the sort of work you want to do during your prime income-generating years, but also the kind of lifestyle you want to live in the process.See Arthur J. Keown, Personal Finance: Turning Money into Wealth, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007), 11.

What about college? Most readers of this book, of course, have decided to go to college. If you haven’t yet decided, you need to know that college is an extremely good investment of both money and time.

Table 14.1 "Education and Average Income", for example, summarizes the findings of a recent study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.U.S. Census Bureau, “One-Third of Young Women Have Bachelor’s Degrees” (U.S. Department of Commerce, January 10, 2008), http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/011196.html (accessed September 18, 2008). A quick review shows that people who graduate from high school can expect to increase their average annual earnings by about 49 percent over those of people who don’t, and those who go on to finish college can expect to generate 82 percent more annual income than that. Over the course of the financial life cycle, families headed by those college graduates will earn about $1.6 million more than families headed by high school graduates who didn’t attend college. (With better access to health care—and, studies show, with better dietary and health practices—college graduates will also live longer. And so will their children.)

And what about the debt that so many people accumulate to finish college? For every $1 that you spend on your college education, you can expect to earn about $35 during the course of your financial life cycle.See Katharine Hansen, “What Good Is a College Education Anyway?” Quintessential Careers (2008), http://www.quintcareers.com/college_education_value.html (accessed September 18, 2008). At that rate of return, you should be able to pay off your student loans (unless, of course, you fail to practice reasonable financial planning).

Naturally, there are exceptions to these average outcomes. You’ll find English-lit majors stocking shelves at 7-Eleven, and you’ll find college dropouts running multibillion-dollar enterprises. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates dropped out of college after two years, as did his founding partner, Paul Allen. Current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finished his undergraduate degree but quit his MBA program to join Microsoft (where he apparently fit in among the other dropouts in top management). It’s always good to remember, however, that though exceptions to rules (and average outcomes) occasionally modify the rules, they invariably fall far short of disproving them: in entrepreneurship as in most other walks of adult life, the better your education, the more promising your financial future. One expert in the field puts the case for the average person bluntly: educational credentials “are about being employable, becoming a legitimate candidate for a job with a future. They are about climbing out of the dead-end job market.”John G. Ramsay, Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching, quoted by Katharine Hansen, “What Good Is a College Education Anyway?” Quintessential Careers (2008), http://www.quintcareers.com/college_education_value.html (accessed September 18, 2008).

Finally, does it make any difference what you study in college? To a perhaps surprising extent, not necessarily. Some career areas, such as engineering, architecture, teaching, and law, require targeted degrees, but the area of study designated on your degree often doesn’t matter much when you’re applying for a job. If, for instance, a job ad says, “Business, communications, or other degree required,” most applicants and hires will have those “other” degrees. When poring over résumés for a lot of jobs, potential employers look for the degree and simply note that a candidate has one; they often don’t need to focus on the particulars.See J. D. Roth, “The Value of a College Education,” MSN Money, February 4, 2008, http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/2008/02/04/the-value-of-a-college-education.aspx (accessed September 18, 2008).

This is not to say, however, that all degrees promise equal job prospects. Figure 14.5 "Top 25 Fastest-Growing Jobs, 2006–2016", for example, summarizes a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projection of the thirty fast-growing occupations for the years 2006–2016. Veterinary technicians and makeup artists will be in demand as never before, but as you can see, occupational prospects are fairly diverse.

Nor, of course, do all degrees pay off equally. In Table 14.2 "College Majors and Average Annual Earnings", we’ve extracted the findings of a study conducted by the National Science Foundation on the earnings of individuals with degrees in various undergraduate fields. Clearly, some degrees—notably in the engineering fields—promise much higher average earnings than others. Chemical engineers, for instance, can earn nearly twice as much as elementary school teachers, but there’s a catch: if you graduate with a degree in chemical engineering, your average annual salary will be about $67,000 if you can find a job related to that degree; if you can’t, you may have to settle for as much as 40 percent less.Daniel Penrice, “Major Moolah: Adding Up the Earnings Gaps in College Majors,” N.U. Magazine, January 1999, http://www.northeastern.edu/magazine/9901/labor.html (accessed September 18, 2008). (Supermodel Cindy Crawford cut short her studies in chemical engineering because there was more money to be made on the runway.)

In short, when you’re planning what to do with the rest of your life, it’s a good idea to check into the fine points and realities, as well as the statistical data. If you talk to career counselors and people in the workforce, you might be surprised by what you learn about the relationship between certain college majors and various occupations. Onetime Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina majored in medieval history and philosophy.

Getting a Job Offer

Most likely your college has a career center. The people working there can be a tremendous help to you as you begin your job search. But most of the work has to be done by you. Like other worthwhile projects, your job search project will be very time-consuming. As you get close to graduation, you’ll need to block out time to work on this particularly important task.

The first step is to prepare a résuméA document that provides a summary of educational achievements and relevant job experience., a document that provides a summary of educational achievements and relevant job experience. Its purpose is to get you an interview. A potential employer will likely spend less than a minute reviewing your résumé, so its content should be concise, clear, and applicable to the job for which you’re applying. For some positions, the person in charge of hiring might read more than a hundred résumés. If you don’t want your résumé kicked out right away, be sure it contains no typographical or grammatical errors. Once you’ve completed your résumé, you can use it to create different versions tailored to specific companies you’d like to work for. Your next step is to write a cover letterA document accompanying your résumé that explains why you’re sending your résumé and highlights your qualifications., a document accompanying your résumé that explains why you’re sending your résumé and highlights your qualifications. You can find numerous tips on writing résumés and cover letters (as well as samples of both) online. Be sure your résumé is accurate: never lie or exaggerate in a résumé. You could get caught and not get the job (or—even worse—you could get the job, get caught, and then get fired). It’s fairly common practice for companies to conduct background checks of possible employees, and these checks will point out any errors. In effect, says one expert, “you jeopardize your future when you lie about your past.”Kim Isaacs, “Lying on Your Resume: What Are the Career Consequences?,” Monster.com, http://career-advice.monster.com/resume-writing-basics/Lying-on-Your-Resume/home.aspx (accessed August 30, 2008).

After writing your résumé and cover letter, your next task is to create a list of companies you’d like to work for. Use a variety of sources, including your career services office and company Web sites, to decide which companies to put on your list. Visit the “career or employment” section of the company Web sites and search for specific openings.

You could also conduct a general search for positions that might be of interest to you, by doing the following:

• Visiting career Web sites, such as Monster.com, Wetfeet.com, or Careerbuilder.com (which maintain large databases of openings for all geographical areas)
• Searching classified ads in online and print newspapers
• Attending career fairs at your college and in your community
• Signing up with career services to talk with recruiters when they visit your campus
• Contacting your friends, family, and college alumni and letting them know you’re looking for a job and asking for their help

Once you spot a position you want, send your résumé and cover letter (tailored to the specific company and job). Follow up in a few days to be sure your materials got to the right place, and offer to provide any additional information. Keep notes on all contacts.

When you’re invited for an interview, visit to the company’s Web site and learn as much as you can about the company. Practice answering questions you might be asked during the interview, and think up a few pertinent questions to ask your interviewer. Dress conservatively—males should wear a suit and tie and females should wear professional-looking clothes. Try to relax during the interview (though everyone knows this isn’t always easy). Your goal is to get an offer, so let the interviewer learn who you are and how you can be an asset to the company. Send a thank-you note (or thank-you e-mail) to the interviewer after the interview.

Evaluating Job Offers

Let’s be optimistic and say that you did quite well in your interviews, and you have two job offers. It’s a great problem to have, but now you have to decide which one to accept. Salary is important, but it’s clearly not the only factor. You should consider the opportunities the position offers: will you learn new things on the job, how much training will you get, could you move up in the organization (and if so, how quickly)? Also consider quality of life issues: how many hours a week will you have to work, is your schedule predictable (or will you be asked to work on a Friday night or Saturday at the last minute), how flexible is your schedule, how much time do you get off, how stressful will the job be, do you like the person who will be your manager, do you like your coworkers, how secure is the job, how much travel is involved, where’s the company located, and what’s the cost of living in that area? Finally, consider the financial benefits you’ll receive. These could include health insurance, disability insurance, flexible spending accounts, and retirement plans. Let’s talk more about the financial benefits, beginning with health insurance.

• Employer-sponsored health insuranceInsurance plan paid for by the employer that covers medical care for the employee only, or for the employee, spouse, and children. plans vary greatly. Some cover the employee only, while others cover the employee, spouse, and children. Some include dental and eye coverage while others don’t. Most plans require employees to share some of the cost of the medical plan (by paying a portion of the insurance premiums and a portion of the cost of medical care). But the amount that employees are responsible for varies greatly. Given the rising cost of health insurance, it’s important to understand the specific costs associated with a health care plan and to take these costs into account when comparing job offers. More important, it’s vital that you have medical insurance. Young people are often tempted to go without medical insurance, but this is a major mistake. An uncovered, costly medical emergency (say you’re rushed to the hospital with appendicitis) can be a financial disaster. You could end up paying for your hospital and doctor care for years.
• Disability insurancePays an income to an insured person when he or she is unable to work for an extended period. isn’t as well known as medical insurance, but it can be as important (if not more so). Disability insurance pays an income to an insured person when he or she is unable to work for an extended period. You would hope that you’d never need disability insurance, but if you did it would be of tremendous value.
• A flexible spending accountAllows a specified amount of pretax dollars to be used to pay for qualified expenses, including health care and child care. allows a specified amount of pretax dollars to be used to pay for qualified expenses, including health care and child care. By paying for these costs with pretax dollars, employees are able to reduce their tax bill.
• There are two main types of retirement plans. One, called a defined benefit planProvides a set amount of money each month to retirees based on the number of years they worked and the income they earned., provides a set amount of money each month to retirees based on the number of years they worked and the income they earned. This form of retirement plan was once very popular, but it’s less common today. The other, called a defined contribution planA form of retirement savings plan in which both the employee and the employer may contribute., is a form of savings plan. The employee contributes money each pay period to his or her retirement account, and the employer matches a portion of the contribution. Even when retirement is exceedingly far into the future, it’s financially wise to set aside funds for retirement.

Preparing Your Net-Worth Statement

Your net worthThe difference between an individual’s assets and liabilities. (accounting term for your wealth) is the difference between your assets and your liabilities. Thus the formula for determining net worth is:

Assets − Liabilities = Net worth

If you own more than you owe, your net worth will be positive; if you owe more than you own, it will be negative. To find out whether your net worth is on the plus or minus side, you can prepare a personal net worth statementA personal balance sheet that lists the value of the things you own, the amounts owed to others, and the difference, called “net worth.” like the one in Figure 14.7 "Net Worth Statement", which we’ve drawn up for a fictional student named Joe College. (Note that we’ve included lines for items that may be relevant to some people’s net worth statements but left them blank when they don’t apply to Joe.)

Preparing Your Cash-Flow Statement

Now that you know something about your financial status on a given date, you need to know more about it over a period of time. This is the function of a cash-flow or income statementShows where your money has come from and where it’s slated to go., which shows where your money has come from and where it’s slated to go.

Figure 14.8 "Cash-Flow Statement" is Joe College’s cash-flow statement. As you can see, Joe’s income (his cash inflows—money coming in) is derived from two sources: student loans and income from a part-time job. His expenditures (cash outflows—money going out) fall into several categories: housing, food, transportation, personal and health care, recreation/entertainment, education, insurance, savings, and other expenses. To find out Joe’s net cash flow, we subtract his expenditures from his income:

$$\text{\$25,700 }-\text{ \$25,300 }=\text{ \$400}$$

Joe has been able to maintain a positive cash flow for the year ending August 31, 2008, but he’s cutting it close. Moreover, he’s in the black only because of the inflow from student loans—income that, as you’ll recall from his net worth statement, is also a noncurrent liability. We are, however, willing to give Joe the benefit of the doubt: Though he’s incurring the high costs of an education, he’s willing to commit himself to the debt (and, we’ll assume, to careful spending) because he regards education as an investment that will pay off in the future.

Remember that when constructing a cash-flow statement, you must record only income and expenditures that pertain to a given period, whether it be a month, a semester, or (as in Joe’s case) a year. Remember, too, that you must figure both inflows and outflows on a cash basis: you record income only when you receive money, and you record expenditures only when you pay out money. When, for example, Joe used his credit card to purchase his computer, he didn’t actually pay out any money. Each monthly payment on his credit card balance, however, is an outflow that must be recorded on his cash-flow statement (according to the type of expense – say, recreation/entertainment, food, transportation, and so on).

Your cash-flow statement, then, provides another perspective on your solvency: if you’re insolvent, it’s because you’re spending more than you’re earning. Ultimately, your net worth and cash-flow statements are most valuable when you use them together. While your net worth statement lets you know what you’re worth—how much wealth you have—your cash-flow statement lets you know precisely what effect your spending and saving habits are having on your wealth.

Figuring the Variance

Now we can examine the two remaining columns in Joe’s budget. Throughout the year, Joe will keep track of his actual income and actual expenditures and will enter the totals in the column labeled “Actual.” Like most reasonable people, however, Joe doesn’t really expect his actual figures to match with his budgeted figures. So whenever there’s a difference between an amount in his “Budget” column and the corresponding amount in his “Actual” column, Joe records the difference, whether plus or minus, as a varianceDifference between the actual amount and the budgeted amount.. Two types of variances appear in Joe’s budget:

• Income variance. When actual income turns out to be higher than expected or budgeted income, Joe records the variance as “favorable.” (This makes sense, as you’d find it favorable if you earned more income than expected.) When it’s just the opposite, he records the variance as “unfavorable.”
• Expense variance. When the actual amount of an expenditure is more than he had budgeted for, he records it as an “unfavorable” variance. (This also makes sense, as you’d find it unfavorable if you spent more than the budgeted amount.) When the actual amount is less than budgeted, he records it as a “favorable” variance.

Levels of Mature Goals

Let’s fast-forward a decade or so, when Joe’s picture of stages 2 and 3 of his financial life cycle have come into clearer focus. If he hasn’t done so already, Joe is now ready to identify a primary goal to guide him in identifying and meeting all his other goals.See Bernard J. Winger and Ralph R. Frasca, Personal Finance: An Integrated Planning Approach, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 57–58. Suppose that because Joe’s investment in a college education has paid off the way he’d planned ten years ago, he’s in a position to target a primary goal of financial independence—by which he means a certain financially secure life not only for himself but for his children, as well. Now that he’s set this primary goal, he can identify a more specific set of goals—say, the following:

• A standard of living that reflects a certain level of comfort—a level associated with the possession of certain assets, both tangible and intangible.
• The ability to provide his children with college educations.
• A retirement lifestyle comparable to that of his peak earning years.

Having set this secondary level of goals, Joe’s now ready to make specific plans for reaching them. As we’ve already seen, Joe understands that plans are far more likely to work out when they’re focused on specific goals. His next step, therefore, is to determine the goals on which he should focus this next level of plans.

As it turns out, Joe already knows what these goals are, because he’s been setting the appropriate goals every year since he drew up the cash-flow statement in Figure 14.8 "Cash-Flow Statement". In drawing up that statement, Joe was careful to create several line items to identify his various expenditures: housing, food, transportation, personal and health care, recreation/entertainment, education, insurance, savings, and other expenses. When we introduced these items, we pointed out that each one represents a cash outflow—something for which Joe expected to pay. They are, in other words, things that Joe intends to buy or, in the language of economics, consume. As such, we can characterize them as consumption goals. These “purchases”—what Joe wants in such areas as housing, insurance coverage, recreation/entertainment, and so forth—make specific his secondary goals and are therefore his third-level goals.

Figure 14.11 "Three-Level Goals/Plans" gives us a full picture of Joe’s three-level hierarchy of goals.

Present and Future Consumption Goals. A closer look at the list of Joe’s consumption goals reveals that they fall into two categories:

1. We can call the first category present goals because each item is intended to meet Joe’s present needs and those (we’ll now assume) of his family—housing, health care coverage, and so forth. They must be paid for as Joe and his family take possession of them—that is, when they use or consume them. All these things are also necessary to meet the first of Joe’s secondary goals—a certain standard of living.
2. The items in the second category of Joe’s consumption goals are aimed at meeting his other two secondary goals: sending his children to college and retiring with a comfortable lifestyle. He won’t take possession of these purchases until some time in the future, but (as is so often the case) there’s a catch: they must be paid for out of current income.

Paying Yourself First

It’s tempting to glance at Joe’s budget and cash-flow statement and assume that he shares with most of us a common attitude toward saving money: when you’re done allotting money for various spending needs, you can decide what to do with what’s left over—save it or spend it. In reality, however, Joe’s budgeting reflects an entirely different approach. When he made up the budget in Figure 14.10 "Joe’s Budget", Joe started out with the decision to save $1,600—or at least to avoid spending it. Why? Because he had a goal: to be free of credit card debt. To meet this goal, he planned to use $1,200 of his current income to pay off what would continue to hang over his head as a future expense (his credit card debt). In addition, he planned to have $400 left over after he’d paid his credit card balance. Why? Because he had still longer-term goals, and he intended to get started on them early—as soon as he finished college. Thus his intention from the outset was to put $400 into savings.

In other words, here’s how Joe went about budgeting his money for the year ending August 31, 2008:

1. He calculated his income—total cash inflows from his student loan and his part-time job ($27,500).
2. He subtracted from his total income two targeted consumption goals—credit card payments ($1,200) and savings ($400).
3. He allocated what was left ($24,100) to his remaining consumption goals: housing ($7,000), food ($3,500), education ($6,600), and so forth.

If you’re concerned that Joe’s sense of delayed gratification is considerably more mature than your own, think of it this way: Joe has chosen to pay himself first. It’s one of the key principles of personal-finances planning and an important strategy in doing something that we recommended earlier in this chapter—starting early.See Arthur J. Keown, Personal Finance: Turning Money into Wealth, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007, 22 et passim.

Subprime Rates and Adjustable Rate Mortgages

Let’s assume that you weren’t ready to take advantage of the boom in mortgage loans in 2000 but did set your sights on 2005. You may not have been ready to buy a house in 2005 either, but there’s a good chance that you got a loan anyway. In particular, some lender might have offered you a so-called subprime mortgage loanMortgage loans made to borrowers who don’t qualify for market-set interest rates because of one or more risk factors.. Subprime loans are made to borrowers who don’t qualify for market-set interest rates because of one or more risk factors—income level, employment status, credit history, ability to make only a very low down payment. As of March 2007, U.S. lenders had written $1.3 trillion in mortgages like yours.Associated Press, “How Severe Is Subprime Mess?” MSNBC.com, March 13, 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17584725 (accessed September 25, 2008).

Granted, your terms might not have been very good. For one thing, interest rates on subprime loans may run from 8 percent to 10 percent and higher.“Subprime Mortgage Pricing Varies Greatly among U.S. Cities, consumeraffairs.com, September 13, 2005, http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/subprime_study.html (accessed September 26, 2008). In addition, you probably had to settle for an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM)Mortgage that’s pegged to the increase or decrease of certain interest rates that your lender has to pay.—one that’s pegged to the increase or decrease of certain interest rates that your lender has to pay. When you signed your mortgage papers, you knew that if those rates went up, your mortgage rate—and your monthly payments—would go up, too. Fortunately, however, you had a plan B: with the value of your new asset appreciating even as you enjoyed living in it, it wouldn’t be long before you could refinance it at a more manageable and more predictable rate.

Subprime Directives: A Few Lessons from the Subprime Crisis

If you were one of the millions of Americans who took out subprime mortgages in the years between 2001 and 2005, you probably have some pressing financial problems. If you defaulted on your subprime ARM, you may have suffered foreclosure on your newly acquired asset, lost any equity that you’d built up in it, and taken a hit in your credit rating. (We’ll assume that you’re not one of the people whose eagerness to get on the subprime bandwagon caused fraudulent mortgage applications to go up by 300 percent between 2002 and 2006.)Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Mortgage Loan Fraud: An Industry Assessment Based upon Suspicious Activity Report Analysis, November 2006, http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/reports/pdf/MortgageLoanFraud.pdf (accessed September 26, 2008).

On the other hand, you’ve probably learned a few lessons about financial planning and strategy. Let’s conclude with a survey of three lessons that you should have learned from your hypothetical adventure in the world of subprime mortgages.

Lesson 1: All mortgages are not created equal. Despite (or perhaps because of) the understandable enticement of home ownership, your judgment may have been faulty in this episode of your financial life cycle. Generally speaking, you’re better off with a fixed-rate mortgageA mortgage on which the interest rate remains the same regardless of changes in market interest rates.—one on which the interest rate remains the same regardless of changes in market interest rates—than with an ARM.See Arthur J. Keown, Personal Finance: Turning Money into Wealth, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007, 253–54. As we’ve explained at length in this chapter, planning is one of the cornerstones of personal-finances management, and ARMs don’t lend themselves to planning. How well can you plan for your future mortgage payments if you can’t be sure what they’re going to be?

In addition, though interest rates may go up or down, planning for them to go down and to take your mortgage payments with them doesn’t make much sense. You can wait around to get lucky, and you can even try to get lucky (say, by buying a lottery ticket), but you certainly can’t plan to get lucky. Unfortunately, the only thing you can really plan for is higher rates and higher payments. An ARM isn’t a good idea if you don’t know whether you can meet payments higher than your initial payment. In fact, if you have reason to believe that you can’t meet the maximum payment entailed by an ARM, you probably shouldn’t take it on.

Lesson 2: It’s risky out there. You now know—if you hadn’t suspected it already—that planning your personal finances would be a lot easier if you could do it in a predictable economic environment. But you can’t, of course, and virtually constant instability in financial markets is simply one economic fact of life that you’ll have to deal with as you make your way through the stages of your financial life cycle.

In other words, any foray into financial markets is risky. Basically, risk is the possibility that cash flows will be variable.See esp. Arthur J. Keown et al., Foundations of Finance: The Logic and Practice of Financial Management, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2008), 174. Unfortunately, volatility in the overall economy is directly related to just one category of risks. There’s a second category—risks related to the activities of various organizations involved in your financial transactions. You’ve already been introduced to the effects of these forms of financial risk, some of which have affected you directly, some of which have affected you indirectly, and some of which may affect you in the future:This section is based on Bernard J. Winger and Ralph R. Frasca, Personal Finance: An Integrated Planning Approach, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), 250–51.

• Management risk is the risk that poor management of an organization with which you’re dealing may adversely affect the outcome of your personal-finances planning. If you couldn’t pay the higher rate on your ARM, managers at your lender probably failed to look deeply enough into your employment status and income.
• Business risk is the risk associated with a product that you’ve chosen to buy. The fate of your mortgagor, who issued the original product—your subprime ARM—and that of everyone down the line who purchased it in some form (perhaps Freddy Mac and Merrill Lynch) bear witness to the pitfalls of business risk.
• Financial risk refers to the risk that comes from ill-considered indebtedness. Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and several investment banks have felt the repercussions of investing too much money in financial instruments that were backed with shaky assets (namely, subprime mortgages).

In your own small way, of course, you, too, underestimated the pitfalls of all three of these forms of risk.

Lesson 3: Not all income is equally disposable. Figure 14.14 "Debt-Income Ratio" shows the increase in the ratio of debt to disposable income among American households between 1985 and 2007. As you can see, the increase was dramatic—from 80 percent in the early 1990s to about 130 percent in 2007.“Getting Worried Downtown,” Economist.com, November 15, 2007, http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10134077 (accessed September 27, 2008). This rise was made possible by greater access to credit—people borrow money in order to spend it, whether on consumption or on investments, and the more they can borrow, the more they can spend.

In the United States, greater access to credit in the late 1990s and early 2000s was made possible by rising housing prices: the more valuable your biggest asset, the more lenders are willing to lend you, even if what you’re buying with your loan—your house—is your biggest asset. As the borrower, your strategy is twofold: (1) Pay your mortgage out of your wage income, and (2) reap the financial benefits of an asset that appreciates in value. On top of everything else, you can count the increased value of your asset as savings: when you sell the house at retirement, the difference between your mortgage and the current value of your house is yours to support you in your golden years.

As we know, however, housing prices had started to fall by the end of 2006. From a peak in mid-2006, they had fallen 8 percent by November 2007, and by April 2008 they were down from the 2006 peak by more than 19 percent—the worst rate of decline since the Great Depression. And most experts expect it to get worse before it gets better, with prices declining by 30 percent from the mid-2006 peak by the end of 2010.Nadeem Walayat, “U.S. House Prices Forecast 2008-2010,” Market Oracle, June 29, 2008, http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article5257.html (accessed September 27, 2008).

So where do you stand? As you know, your house is worth no more than what you can get for it on the open market; thus the asset that you were counting on to help provide for your retirement has depreciated substantially in little more than a decade. If you’re one of the many Americans who tried to substitute equity in property for traditional forms of income savings, one financial specialist explains the unfortunate results pretty bluntly: your house “is a place to live, not a brokerage account.”Sherman L. Doll, of Capital Performance Advisors, quoted by Amy Hoak, “Why a House Is Not a Piggy Bank to Tap Into for Your Retirement,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2006, http://homes.wsj.com/buysell/markettrends/20060719-hoak.html (accessed September 27, 2008). If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone: a recent study by the Security Industries Association reports that, for many Americans, nearly half their net worth is based on the value of their home. Analysts fear that many of these people—a significant proportion of the baby-boom generation—won’t be able to retire with the same standard of living that they’ve been enjoying during their wage-earning years.Amy Hoak, “Why a House Is Not a Piggy Bank to Tap Into for Your Retirement,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2006, http://homes.wsj.com/buysell/markettrends/20060719-hoak.html (accessed September 27, 2008).