What do you think the effect would be of a mortgage holiday? I’m thinking of some sort of program where, if you want, you could select up to 6 months in a single calendar year to not pay your mortgage. You’d incur no penalty or credit hit either.  Possibly the 6 months would be tagged onto the end of your mortage, to satisfy folks who would complain that allowing people to skip mortgage payments is tantamount to give aways.

My thought is, most people are honest and want to pay their bills, but are just buried.  This way they could save up some money so as not to be living paycheck to paycheck, pay off some bills or at least get caught up, and so on.

CuthbertJ - 15 January 2013 11:34 AM

What do you think the effect would be of a mortgage holiday? I’m thinking of some sort of program where, if you want, you could select up to 6 months in a single calendar year to not pay your mortgage. You’d incur no penalty or credit hit either.  Possibly the 6 months would be tagged onto the end of your mortage, to satisfy folks who would complain that allowing people to skip mortgage payments is tantamount to give aways.

My thought is, most people are honest and want to pay their bills, but are just buried.  This way they could save up some money so as not to be living paycheck to paycheck, pay off some bills or at least get caught up, and so on.

At this time, I’d love to have 6 months of my choosing to defer my mortgage payments. However, I don’t think the majority of people would actually save. Sure, some would. Some would just take that ‘extra’ cash and buy a giant new TV. Saving money and deferring gratification are difficult. (I put up myself up as anecdotal ‘evidence’ ) But I guess as long as they followed the law, not saving would be their problem.

Take care,

Derek

Even if they just went out and spent it, that supposedly would stimulate the economy. Except that it would be much more so than the pittily tax rebates the politicians have ok’d in years past. I think Bush handed out $500 tax rebates or something like that. A dime’s a dime, but whoopdee do, 500 doesn’t get you much these days.

Yeah, I remember that. Whatever amount it was we used it to pay property taxes.

Funny, how the austerity crowd doesn’t seem to get that an economy involves money ‘moving’ through ‘the system’ (at least as I understand it).

Take care,

Derek

The thing is that no matter what you call it, if the mortgage holder doesn’t pay a price for the delayed payments its still a give away. Someone has to pay the cost of this.  You could of course allow the interest to accrue on the mortgage in which case the mortgagee would bear the price himself but if you dont let interest accrue the bank will simply pas that cost on to its other customers and the rest of us will be forced to pay for that person’s holiday.

There is no financial magic or free lunch as they say. Someone always has to pay the bill. Except in cases of extreme need or emergencies I’m in favor of making the person who ate the lunch pay the bill rather than the guy at the next table.

macgyver - 18 January 2013 02:56 PM

The thing is that no matter what you call it, if the mortgage holder doesn’t pay a price for the delayed payments its still a give away. Someone has to pay the cost of this.  You could of course allow the interest to accrue on the mortgage in which case the mortgagee would bear the price himself but if you dont let interest accrue the bank will simply pas that cost on to its other customers and the rest of us will be forced to pay for that person’s holiday.

There is no financial magic or free lunch as they say. Someone always has to pay the bill. Except in cases of extreme need or emergencies I’m in favor of making the person who ate the lunch pay the bill rather than the guy at the next table.

Agreed. The person taking advantage of such a plan should be the only bearing any cost.

Take care,

Derek