Mortgage Interest is Economically and Morally Wrong.

The hot button topic at the moment might be fifty-year mortgages (which is a terrible idea), but here's the real issue… 

Mortgages should all be at 0% interest. Why? Lenders are taking on no risk when lending for residential real estate. No risk means no interest. There is no scenario where a lender doesn't make money (or at least break even) on residential property, even if a borrower stops paying their note. The property can be reclaimed through eviction, assets taken as collateral, and eventually the property is sold again. Any potential losses due to damage, acts of god, etc., can all be recouped through insurance claims and litigation. 

Think about it for a moment -- the value of land and permanent on-site buildings will never not retain their value, or at bare minimum have their lost value show cause for being recouped via other means. At its core, real estate is a fundamental store of wealth and tracks the natural rate of inflation in an economy. As inflation rises and falls, so too will the value of real estate. Considering that loans front-load their interest, it takes a number of years before a borrower actually begins paying a decent percentage into their borrowed principal. If anything, mortgage interest actually works to promote unnatural inflation within an economy as it expeditiously devalues the buying power of the dollar against a real estate loan. 

But Jared, what about the 2008 stock market crisis linked to mortgage-backed securities? Well, that crisis was not caused on its own by a flood of borrowers defaulting on their home loans. Sure, folks default on loans all the time, but this situation was different. In the case of real estate, the lender simply reclaims the property in question and evicts the borrower. Nothing is lost and the lender keeps any profit from the front-loaded interest on the loan. Nay, the 2008 crisis was caused by gamblers (for lack of a better term) in our stock market using bundled sub-prime loans as collateral to essentially short the whole financial system – they bet on those bundled loans to fail and sold them anyway… knowing that they would do just that. Those mortgages, of which the majority were adjustable-rate loans provided to low-income borrowers without variance in their finances to account for fluctuating interest rates, were bound to be defaulted upon eventually BECAUSE of the mortgage interest. Had those loans been provided at 0% interest, most of the borrowers would have never defaulted, meaning the crisis would have never happened. The gamblers in question played both sides of the system and made a ton of cash in the process, all at the cost of private individuals and the economy at large. 

The 2008 crisis was rigged from the start because of the interest charged on the mortgages, you see. Interest on a mortgage allows lenders, and subsequently investors that have a financial stake in seeing those lenders succeed or fail, to essentially commit legalized theft. Meanwhile, there is no recourse for the common person to participate in the real estate market without submitting themselves to this mechanism of theft.

Ultimately, mortgage interest acts as a deceptive means (one of many, I might add) to keep people economically controlled and prevents all members of society from participating equally in the real estate market. That's a much larger topic for another discussion, though.

Your Moment Will Come.

Hello, everyone. Today is All Hallows' Eve, the most ethereal night of the year when the curtain between worlds is all but parted. While still maintaining a bit of the spooky flair that comes naturally this time of year, I want to share some information that's also rather uplifting.

Upon the release of the Universal classic Frankenstein in 1931, the rather unknown Boris Karloff skyrocketed to stardom. Sure, he'd been acting for a while, but he was normally relegated to playing bit parts, gangsters, or background characters with zero name billing. Portraying the Monster was the moment he'd been waiting for, and he left it all on the silver screen. There's a reason his portrayal is so celebrated -- it's just that damn good.

Boris portrayed the Monster at the age of 43 years old. In Hollywood years, he might as well have been a dinosaur.

Following the release of Frankenstein, Boris portrayed the Monster twice more in two really wonderful films. He also led an extremely successful career following that, including starring roles in The Mummy (my personal favorite), The Black Cat, The Invisible Ray, and The Raven just to name a few. Karloff practically worked up until the day he died at the age of 81 in 1969. So much success, and all because he was willing to do something few other actors would do -- take a chance on a role that forced him to sit in make-up for over four hours a day!

My point is this...

You never know when you will find your purpose. Boris Karloff was middle-aged and struggling just to be noticed when he became Frankenstein's Monster. By all accounts, he should have been forgotten. And yet, because Boris was so good at what he did, he took a throw-away role in a monster movie (at the time, they were considered very low-brow content) and gave it literally all he had to give. Karloff became legendary with one job in one movie; work he probably didn't even give a second thought to after the film was in the can.

Your purpose in life can come at any time. You never know when the torch is going to be passed to you, but it will come. You could be 15. You could be 25. You could be 43 like Karloff. You might even be 70. Your purpose will be revealed to you when the time is right. All you have to do is recognize it when you see it.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Death Rides a Tractor.

I often find myself in discussions about how wonderful it must be to live on a farm. And yet, I routinely bite my tongue, make some half-hearted agreeing response, and put on a fake smile. They have no earthly idea how well acquainted I am with death and the inexplicable black cloud that has followed me for six years now. Having a farm is the hardest thing I've ever done as an adult, and I tolerate my existence most days.

The reaper practically has a seat at my dinner table.

In the past four years, all five of my barn cats have either mysteriously disappeared or died under suspicious circumstances. Four of them were brothers -- Scrapper, Nomad, Smudge, and Splash. They were sweet, hand-raised, and loved attention. They didn't bother anyone. They didn't prowl on other people's property. They were neutered while kittens and couldn't contribute to a wildly out-of-control pet population (of which their mother Karen, a very sweet gal totally abandoned by one of our neighbors WHILE PREGNANT, is another barn cat that CHOSE US to care for her). We invested time, resources, money, and most importantly love into those four brothers. Splash was the last one left... but he's also missing now and I fear the worst. A precedent has been set. My gut tells me he's not coming back.

The other missing cat is Kiki, who was an absolute sweetheart that melted the ice around my heart for cats. For the longest while, I was heavily adverse to cats because I'm allergic to them. Kiki changed me in a way that cannot be explained; she made me a cat person. I get cats and I think they get me... and I owe that to Kiki.

I'd chalk one loss up to an accident. Sure, accidents happen and I accept that. Or, perhaps one could have been killed by a wild animal. That's a possibility, though I doubt it because we have two very large Great Pyrenees that patrol this property and have successfully kept even the coyotes at bay since their arrival. We owe Nibbler and Sherlock a lot for their dutiful protection.

Two cats go missing? Okay, that's atypical but could still be marked up to chance.

Three?
Four?
FIVE CATS?!

No, something is going on. Someone around our farm is either kidnapping or outright murdering our barn cats. Kiki, Smudge, Nomad, and Splash simply vanished without a trace. We found Scrapper dead in the floor of our barn, with no explanation as to how or why he passed away. He had no physical trauma. It just doesn't make any sense. There are holes in my heart and I don't have any answers. Resolution isn't something I can have.

Pile on top of that two very beloved dogs that passed away in their old age in 2020 and 2021 -- Mellow and Echo are still with me in spirit and they're on my mind every day. Along with them are two of our dear goats that passed from absolute one-in-a-million situations; Clover had an inexplicable THIRTEEN knots in her bowels from severe intestinal torsion and Mozzarella got one of the rarest forms of cancer an animal can get (the local university vet hospital had never even seen it before). Add to that the number of stillborn baby goats that I've lost count of. Even the death of some of our ducks has hit us. The loss just never seems to end.

I have (and still do) loved every one of these animals. They mean the world to me. Not being able to protect them has beat me down in ways that I never thought possible. Most days I run through the motions, trying to find ways to distract myself from the crushing nature of my reality. It's been hard (and I mean HARD), and I've not talked about it except with my closest loved ones. If not for the love and care that my family has provided, I don't know if I'd still be here today writing this.

So no, having a farm isn't all sunflowers and watermelons; it's a lot of heartbreak and disappointment, tears and blood. With death, I am undesirably comfortable. His skeletal visage seems to rear his head every few months to remind me of my own mortality.

Hug your furry loved ones tonight. Tell them you love them.

REAL-TIME EDIT: As I was about to publish this blog, one of my outdoor security cameras triggered. There was Splash, meandering behind my house. I can tell he's a bit skittish and somewhat afraid of everything at the moment, which adds credence to my theory that SOMETHING is going on around here to my animals. Maybe Splash hadn't used up all of his nine lives yet, though. Thank goodness he came back.

Even in the darkest of days, the bright eyes of a cat sit glowing in the distance as two small specks of hope.