Why Are We Surprised?

It seems as though the headlines are just inundated these days with news stories about our struggling economy. Personally, I wonder why we, as a country are surprised.

The first time Cliff & I looked to buy a house, around 20 years ago, we were told we could get financed for up to 100,000. Today, this amount of money would hardly buy a small starter home but 20 years ago, you could buy a HUGE house with that kind of money. We were NOT making that much money. At the time, I thought it was crazy that we could get financed for that much more than we made. It didn't even seem to matter to the financing company whether or not we could make the payments or not. So, if we bought a house, already that much over our heads, we wouldn't have even considered the costs of maintaining a house. Repairs, insurance, and costs of heating and cooling a larger home. We would have NEVER made it. I'm just dumbfounded that we, as a country are just so surprised to find ourselved in debt. Didn't we realized that years of living on credit and beyond our means would eventually catch up with us??

In our home, we are working on changing our ways. With fuel costs going up, and food prices on the rise, we are having to make some lifestyle changes in an effort to keep our expenses down. We're cutting down fuel consumption, electricity, water, and thanks to some very educational blogs, I've been able to cut our grocery bill in half!

We're chipping away at it every day but here in our house, the economic news is not bad news. It's good. And every day here in bloggyland, I'm reading of families, just like us who are determined NOT to be another statistic but an exception to the doom and gloom economic forcast!!