Loan Assumption Addendum: Fill & Download for Free

*sigh*really. where do these ideas come from? Why is this misunderstanding so prevelant?China does not loan the US money. Period.The US Govt sells bonds and other instruments. The bonds are a way the govt borrows money, but the purchaser of the bond is not "making a loan". They are buying a bond; an investment.The Chinese govt chooses to invest heavily (as do many other governments) in the US govt/economy/dollar. The biggest investor in the US govt is the US people themselves, and UK, Belgium, OPEC, Japan, Brazil, etc, etc, etc. Somewhere in there, China has decided that the best place for them to park their spare cash safely...... is, in the US, and specifically-in the guarantees of the US Govt.So, please - get your understanding straight. The US govt does not borrow money from China. They borrow money from the open market. China participates in that market. That's it.***addendum: the internet is such an imperfect medium.The questions use of the word "refused" is to me, the important thing, as a modifier to the word "loan". Perhaps I am reading too literally, but the expression: "if China refused to loan..." suggests that the poster is operating under the assumption that China is pressured/has little choice in being a heavy investor in US debt. That China almost literally manufactures goods for gluttonous US consumers, not for "real" payment, but for simple IOU's, in the form of bonds. The question could have been "... refused to buy US bonds", and I would have still read it the same way. the bond is or isn't a loan thing is trivial, and just a semantic argument.Why weren't questions like this ever asked of Japanese/UK or other investors? why is the fascination with Chinese investment so deep and unshakable?Chinese companies could demand payment from US buyers of goods in Euro's, thus "refusing to loan money". How well would that work?I believe a huge swath of US citizens are subject to the idea that the US govt literally takes loans *directly* from Beijing, somehow meaning that the US is slowing "selling itself" to the PRC. I really think this is the understanding had by the average US citizen.

Student Loans.I can’t say my life’s been entirely ruined, since I’m doing pretty well for myself these days, but there’s one thing that sticks out as having derailed my life from the one I originally was heading towards, and it’s graduating with $136,000 in student loan debt.It’s not that my parents couldn’t afford to pay for my college. They just… didn’t. My dad’s a financial planner, and he saw it coming - he knew that college costs had skyrocketed, that it was no longer reasonable to expect fresh graduates to handle the loan burden I was signing up for - but he’s admitted that he didn’t want to have the fight with my mom. She, for her part, was stuck on the 1980’s fantasy she lived, where you could work off your student loans at McDonald’s in a few years, if you had to take them at all; but somehow, that didn’t stop her from helping pay for several of my cousins to attend private schools and then college. Apparently, since I was the golden child, “the smart one”, I didn’t need the same help others were getting (ironically, all just as smart).And I’ll take my share of the blame for picking an expensive out-of-state school. I didn’t have to do that, and it was abysmally stupid of me. But FOR FUCK’S SAKE, I had NO business being allowed to make that decision alone. I hadn’t the slightest clue what I was getting myself into. All the adults around me told me this was an acceptable decision, and that I was going to be OK. Who’s more at fault here: the ignorant 18-year-old, or two generations of adults who were old and experienced enough to have fucking known better, but telling him this was the right thing to do?For those in the peanut gallery saying, “It was your decision and only yours, you’ve got no one else to blame!”, I’ll remind your smug asses that I NEEDED CO-SIGNERS FOR THE FUCKING LOANS. Banks don’t trust 18-year-olds with barely any income or assets with that sort of money. DUH. So no, it was NOT solely my decision. These adults, with several lifetimes between them of entering into loans, were more than capable of simply telling me “No, I won’t co-sign this bad decision”.When I graduated in 2009, I couldn’t find a job for 4 months. I finally found one where my loan payments literally exceeded my paychecks. I worked 3 side jobs at one point just to have some spending money. The only saving grace was that I had a university job where I got tuition benefits and was able to finish a pre-med certificate and a Master’s degree, with a hefty helping of rules-lawyering with an administration who had designed the tuition benefit mainly as a way to snooker themselves free MBAs and occasionally the good PR of a janitor getting his degree.If I hadn’t had student loans, this all would have looked very different.I wouldn’t have settled for a crappy university job. I would have moved out as soon as I had a decent paycheck. I would have bought a house and a car. I probably still would have gone to grad school, but on my own terms and schedule. Stuff like marriage and kids are impossible to predict, but… I wouldn’t have been locked out of them for an entire decade of my life.At the salary I make today, it’s still a burden. I could go on a luxurious vacation every single month with what it costs me. I’d have a down payment together by now on an extremely nice house or condo, even here on the East Coast.None of this is intended as a “woe is me”. I’m doing fine for myself, and I’ll be doing better soon enough. I’m a climber like that. And it’s not the only mistake I’ve ever made/had made for me. But that auto-draft that comes out of my account every month is a reminder of a life I never had, and the life I now can’t have. The people around me are moving on with their lives, making their own choices. Because of a choice that was for all intents and purposes all but made by me, I don’t get to do those things. My freedom is limited.Anyways, here’s a screenshot of me playing video games, cuz Quora’s algorithm is stupid and privileges posts with pictures.Furthermore, I declare that the two-party system must be destroyed.[Addendum: This was going to be a comment reply, but I wanted to expand on it.]At literally no point in any of my college discussions did this kind of planning come up. Tuitions were compared against each other, but only as a proxy for quality, and really only an ancillary indicator thereof. That “quality” discussion was mainly a comparison of arbitrary or confusing metrics and rankings, and a review of word-of-mouth anecdote and reputation.The whole selection process was essentially a social exercise. Which school did I “belong” at? How well was I going to be able “sell” any one school’s degree to future grad schools and employers? Cost and loan burden was subordinated entirely to the idea that this social placement would somehow just magically make things fall into place*.* And this wasn’t entirely wrong. It just happened a lot slower than assumed, and the doors that were opened by my degree’s “brand” weren’t anything I couldn’t have gotten from another equally-placed brand.It was openly assumed that whatever income I’d make afterwards, would just kind of end up being enough to cover student loans and some modest standard of living. No one challenged this assumption. No one estimated payments on the loans, let alone perhaps taking the bold step of comparing them to even the advertised income numbers from the schools.It was only until months into my freshman year (ie long after all critical decisions had been made) that I was asked to run those numbers, and although I located the income numbers and estimated taxes correctly, I had zero frame of reference to estimate COL - and thus didn’t bother, hand-waving it all as “I guess this is what I’ll be able to afford” - and I calculated the loan payments all wrong. Not to mention, the income estimate itself was high by a factor of fucking 2.And the critical thing to note here is that my experience is not some outlier. This “valuing social placement over financial planning” is the dominant approach in our culture. Some families at my private high school didn’t have to worry about loans in the first place, but most were like mine, and they all either bought one bullet (pay tuition out of pocket) or the other (loans), instead of taking a cost-minimizing approach.The mass delusion has to stop. It’s bad enough that it happened to one generation. But platitudes, condescending moralizing, and naively overearnest “Tips for Planning For College!” seminars are not doing the fucking job of stopping this insane culture of normalized educational debt peonage.

I have sold residential real estate in North Texas full time for 41 years.Back in 1978 our city real estate MLS had a main frame computer and each office had a remote modem that allowed us to search for property. We could not download data but only search and print. We also could not enter listings or edit them. We still had a printed book published each week so we could have data with us.We had keyboxes on a few houses but not many- they used combination locks or what I called “coke box” keys to open them. Otherwise we either had to show with owners or listing agents there while we showed our potential buyers- or we might be able to drive over and borrow a key from the listing agent and then drive back and return the key later.We had one original contract and the others were copies- so there was sometimes an argument over who got the original. Of course we did not have the ability to scan a contract into a computer or fax machine so we had to deliver the contracts by hand or mail.If we dealt with an out of town seller we usually showed them blank contracts early on so they could understand what we talked about over the phone later. Then when they accepted an offer we used something called a “night letter” It was a telegram sent in such a way that it was delivered to the office the very next morning.We used to always drive people around from house to house- maybe showing six or more houses in one day and because there were no websites- the buyers did not know much about the houses before we drove up to the house. (Now I rarely have the buyers in my car at all).We used carbon paper a lot. When I took a listing I got the first page copy in white - the seller got the page that was yellow. Come to think of it- we also used carbon paper on contracts a lot.The standard contract form in Texas was about one and a half pages long with maybe a one page addendum. We had to hand write a lot on the form and know how to spell contingent.Most of us really did not fully understand agency law and did not really understand who we represented all the time.We used to sell a lot of non qualifying loan assumptions. Buyers would even assume the escrow accounts and often the existing insurance policies.Agents had to spend a lot of time getting to know each other very well because we dealt with each other so much in person. Maybe driving over to their home late at night or early in the morning to beat another offer.Almost all agents worked individually- sometimes partnered with agents but never a team. Everyone worked similar agreements on commission splits with their office. The MLS gave out top production and top seller awards and such. Of course it would be impossible to figure out what that would even mean today since many teams of twenty or more people sell under one person’s name.I bet I have forgotten a lot.