"Never throw anybody away." So said Audrey Hepburn, embodiment of swan like social grace with a classic Funny Face. I wonder if she meant literally, like in a dumpster. ...Nah. Much as I (like everyone else) on occasion wonder where I could hide the bodies, I have to admit the gal's got a point. Forgiveness is a heck of a lot easier to come up with than an alibi is.

"But Jack," I hear you say, "surely you jest." ...Yeah, surely.

Forgiveness is a hot topic on a lot o' people's lips these days, everyone from Colin Tipping, author of Radical Forgiveness, to Archbishop Desmond Tutu has something to say about it. There's even a movement called the World Forgiveness Initiative - not a bad idea if you ask me, and maybe the brightest idea yet for peace in the world and around the corner. Then there's that old text that implores the Almighty "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," and I gotta tell ya, there are a lot of folks thinkin' about that one these days. After all, the American Way seems to promote debt like there's no tomorrow. Get into debt, get out of debt, buy now and save, cut those credit card bills in half, refinance your home, take out a home equity loan, drive home today in... A NEW CAR!

Some folks spend their lives workin' to get paid tomorrow for all they bought yesterday. If this sounds like somebody you know, take a look at any of the 55+ articles on SectorMatic Money Site about the topic of Debt Relief at http://www.sectormatic.com/debt-relief/index.html. That'll give you somethin' to chew on.

Dirty Books and Clean Money

So I was reading a book the other day about buying real estate foreclosures. This is a topic I personally have been intrigued with for sometime, but like the forbidden fruit, I just couldn't bring myself to bite. Then I found a well-written volume by Theodore J. Dallow, one with some heart called How to Buy Foreclosed Real Estate. (Go ahead and click the link - you can buy your own copy for a penny on Amazon.) Even turning these pages, I felt somehow as if I should be reading it under my covers with a flashlight. The idea of buying a piece of property somebody lost in a sucker bet with Life just seemed so opportunistic. I was going to wrap the cover with a brown paper bag, but then I figured everybody would think I was readin' some trashy novel. Well I'm not. In fact, I'm here to tell you that if you do it right, you can work a whole lot of forgiveness into the foreclosed property buying game.

The idea here is that sometimes good folks make bad decisions. Have you ever done that? I myself am impervious, but I hear it's a pretty common phenomenon. The part I was talking about with the foreclosures involves dealing with an otherwise trustworthy homeowner who got painted into a corner with the bank. What I myself find tempting as a notion is something illustrated in this book, How to Buy Foreclosed Real Estate, and by the way something an old friend of mine used to do. She'd dress down and go "door knocking."

This friend of mine used to pay a visit to a homeowner in distress and offer to buy the note from the owner before the bank had a chance to foreclose. Then she'd rent it back to him cheap on a lease-purchase agreement with a one-year term. By that time, the former-owner-now-tenant should have a chance to get right side up in his finances, having had a little breathing room with  a lower monthly payment while the new owner gets her due. "And if he's not set right again by then?" I asked her. Well... in the end, business is business. We're not talkin' about takin' on charity cases or losing your shirt. And if you take this kind of investment tack, at least you've given the guy a break and a year to find another housing option while advancing your own real estate portfolio. That sounds to me like going the distance - going the whole nine yards to give somebody a second chance.  It's more than a bank would do.

I wonder what kind of world we'd be livin' in if there were a little more forgiveness around the corner, down the block and closer to home. I say there'd probably be fewer sucker bets with Life. Ya think? ...Yeah, like that.

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Until next time,
Jack Schmidt
Spokesman

SectorMatic Money Site
Everything for the Big Spender on a Budget

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