"HOMES" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

don't know a single person who ever came close to paying off a mortgage. When
you have a mortgage, at the end of every year the bank sends you a statement
like this:

YOUR OUTSTANDING BALANCE AS OF THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR: $93,423.54
YOUR TOTAL PAYMENTS MADE DURING THE YEAR: $11,647.32
YOUR OUTSTANDING BALANCE AS OF THE END OF THE YEAR: $93,423.54

It may seem as though the banks are taking unfair advantage of consumers
here, but they really have no choice. A few years back, they lent billions
and billions of dollars to the Third World, which had promised to spend the
money on factories and heavy machinery, but which in fact lost it gambling on
rooster fights. And since the banks can't very well march down to the
Southern Hemisphere and repossess, for example, Brazil, you can understand why
they have no choice but to get the money from average everyday unarmed
consumers such as yourself.

All mortgages work basically the same way: You sign a bunch of papers,
then you make large monthly payments until the Second Coming. Nevertheless,
the top Consumer Money Geeks all recommend that you "shop around" for your
mortgage, because there are a number of different kinds available, each with
its own terms, conditions, feeding habits, and so forth. Some of the more
popular ones are:

The Fixed-Rate Mortgage
The Variable-Rate Mortgage
The Mortgage Whose Rate Is Based on What Order the Teams Finish in the
National League East
The Mortgage with a Real Low Rate That Is Advertised in Huge Print in the
Newspaper But Nobody Ever Actually Gets It
The Balloon Mortgage
The Party Hat Mortgage
The Mortgage That Is Really the Expired Warranty for a 1966 Sears Washing
Machine
The Mortgage of the Living Dead

Here's an important piece of advice to bear in mind when you're shopping
around for your mortgage: Don't be intimidated. Sure, the bank is a great
big, rich, powerful financial institution and you are a small, worthless piece
of scum. But that doesn't mean you should walk into the bank with your hat in
your hand, like some kind of beggar! Not at all! You should crawl into the
bank!

Ha ha! Just kidding, of course. You have nothing to worry about. All
the bank will ask you to do is supply the home phone number of everybody you
have ever known, even casually, since the fourth grade. Then you'll have an
interview with a Loan Officer, who'll ask you a few standard screening
questions, such as: "To get this mortgage, are you willing to lick the gum
wads off my shoe bottoms?"