My blog is not broken - I just haven't had that much to say of any length that I felt like I wanted to expound about. And it's been a busy summer including fun things like family gatherings.

I did, a few weeks ago on Facebook send a link to this article that I found interesting. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350432677038184.html. I still find it interesting, but I think the most I really want to say about this is that it's a shame that we no longer teach, through schools or parenting, how to run a household. And that means doing things like budgeting. Surely, lots of people were misled by ARMs and shyster mortgage brokers hawking mortgage products that didn't make sense.
That said, it really is sad that people don't realize that even at the absolute lowest payment you could have on your ARM, that they didn't realize they didn't have enough money to make that mortgage payment. That they were in over their heads from month 1 - forget a few years down the line when the mortgages adjusted upwards.

But I don't feel like writing more about that, other than to say that that particular article made me think of the concept of Home Economics (for whatever reason - maybe the idea of "Home" and "Economy"). To that end, I'll leave readers with another link. http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/home_mgt.html. Cornell University was well known for its Home Economics degree - I found this site to be fascinating. And think that maybe teaching budgets and "how to select dishwashers and washing machines" in an educational setting instead of in a commercial setting might be more effective.

Of course, on the cynical flip side, a university today would probably take a grant from a major appliance company to start an endowment to fund this program, inevitably opening up the door to bias towards those who funded the endowment...

But maybe safer than learning about mortgages from someone whose commission check depended on you signing on the dotted line.