Musing on the housing meltdown, or why I'm not currently sinking

[professionalhenchman]

Reading one of the many articles on what happened to bring us to the current Wall Street crisis, I was reminded of what happened when Sarah and I went looking to buy a house back in 2005, when I was left some money from my Grandmother's death to be used towards a down payment on a house.  The first mortgage broker we talked to told us words to the effect of "We'll loan you whatever amount of money you think you can afford to pay back."  This prompted us to politely take our leave, and run far away, to find one who actually insisted on looking at what we were making so they could tell us what we could afford.  As a result, we ended up not buying because they decided that we actually couldn't qualify for anything.  That's how we dodged the bullet that's hit so many people, and I find myself wondering just how many of the people out there didn't know enough about managing their money to run away from lenders like that first one we dealt with and so got into trouble.