I really don't know about that... you see as all the mortgages were melting and no one was doing a thing... i got a construction loan... knocked down my old 70 year old house, and built a new house on the same property, with natural gas and lots and lots of insulation and energy efficient appliances and windows and rolled it into a 4.75 percent 30 year fixed mortgage... i don't think a house should be used as a financial vehicle... to me its more of a comfortable place to live in... and its not overly big.. a small property so i don't have to work too hard to maintain it when i am old.
all that after the builder filed bankruptcy and used up all the construction money... i had to finish out of pocket ... and with credit cards. But i am now living in the house over a year and its great....
then i bought two off lease hybrids... loaded with so low milage on them the its laughable... cause they were a fraction of the price of new ones....I got them before gas started going up....(wifey said buy one for her and she bought one for me.... our xmas presents to each other... she said gas was going to 4 dollars) So now i don't drop 600 or 700 dollars in gas into my truck each month... and i have been putting cash away...
my credit rating is way ok.... i got no problem at all getting a loan and I still get zero credit card offers though they usually attach a 3 percent fee now.... but i never pay interest if i can help in on my credit...
and all during the job meltdown i changed jobs and got a nice salary increase....
I also worked on my old boat... lol
so during these hard times i have turned lemons into lemonade. I am also a small foot print kind of guy.... it has its pluses I did my part to keep the economy going and i have to get all sorts of things for the house so i am keeping the usa going...
real estate worked out for me.
As far a Cramers picks some work out some don't and some work for a while but you got to remember... time will go on and Cramer does not run those companies... you cannot tag him with company managers that are incompetent or did not adapt to the new economic turns.... and some companies just got wiped out. Some companies continue to grow and some do extremes of hot and cold over a period of a couple of years
oh well.... that was then and this is now....
those that do well during these hard times are the ones that worked hard preparing for the turn around... if you are situated and have cash you can ride nice. its the difference between grasshopper and ant.
I know how much i need to retire and live in the small footprint that i have made... its not the ritz but it could be a lot worse... sooner or later it will turn around and all the Cramers will be able to pick runners blindfolded....
gl
real
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
Edmund Burke (British Statesman and Philosopher, 1729-1797
