I don't know that I was swept away by greed or material possessions but I do admit that I had a long term motive. We bought a second home because we were relocating but we also thought it would be a great long-term retirement investment. Then the decline in the economy happened.
Three years ago my Family and I moved to Fort Mill, SC from Erie, PA. We had bought a home in Erie, and lived there for one year. My husband during this time was exploring other avenues of work when he came across a position in Charlotte, NC. We then had to make a snap decision on whether to buy a home or rent. We had this notion that buying a home would be cheaper than renting so we decided on a whim to purchase.
My husband ended up moving before me and he left me behind to sell the house we had in PA. My husband and I have always been good about making decisions together, but this was something he had to take on himself. He found a home within a week of looking and signed the papers. We felt as if this great burden was lifted, our house sold quickly in PA and we had a place to call home in SC. We knew that we didn't want to live in our new home forever but figured after a couple of years we would find our dream home and then rent this one out for extra income as we would hang on to this as a future retirement investment. Well we couldn't have been more wrong.
Our first down fall was the new mortgage with an arm that lenders were offering to homebuyers; they had a way of making it sound so appealing. The major seller was you didn't need any money down. This was a great option for us seeing as we had no money, we had just relocated and we had a baby on the way. The thing that should have raised red flags were the two mortgages with fluctuating interest rates after five years. Nevertheless, our real-estate agent had us convinced that this was the right thing to do and reassured us that five years would be plenty of time to refinance and combine our mortgages; we shouldn't worry about a thing.
Here we are three years into living in our future retirement investment thinking to ourselves; what are we going to do now. The economy has taken a dive and the housing industry has taken a major hit. We now can't refinance like we had planned because now the price of our home has dropped dramatically and unfortunately everywhere you look you can find the same townhome uninhabited and selling for a dime a dozen.
I do feel that we were taken advantage of by the double mortgage deal, but I think we were not so smart on buying the house on a whim. We jump too quickly sometimes and don't weigh out all of our options. Of course, we could never have predicted what has happened with the economy, I just think we should have been smarter. Unfortunately you can't predict the future nor should you try. I have learned that you should always try to live within your means and never buy something with the thought of you will be able to pay that off, because you just never know where life is going to take you.
Add commas before the "but":
I don't know that I was swept away by greed or material possessions, but I do admit that I had a long term motive. We bought a second home because we were relocating, but we also thought...
The mention of greed and material possession confuses me in this first paragraph. Why should buying a home seem greedy?
I think you could add one more sentence to the end of that first paragraph, a sentence that expresses the main idea of the whole essay. Can you sum up your theme in a sentence and add it after "...decline in the economy happened."
Don't capitalize "family."
Nevertheless, our real-estate agent had us convinced that this was the right thing to do and reassured us that five years would be plenty of time to refinance and combine our mortgages; we shouldn't worry about a thing.--- this is a nicely structured sentence!
...but I think we were not so smart on buying to buy the house on a whim.
This essay needs a few sentences added to highlight the cause and effect you are talking about. If you are assigned to write a cause and effect essay, focus on showing the reader how a particular cause leads to the effect. That is, focus on making the reader appreciate how A can cause B. That should be the focus of the essay, its purpose.
Maybe I am wrong about that; it depends on the nature of your assignment.
But you seem to have a purpose like this: show the reader the importance of living within means.
If this is to be a cause and effect essay you should show the reader the cause to watch out for. It is a subtle difference.
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Thank you for all of your advice. All your points make a lot of sense, I really appreciate you taking the time to look my essay over. I haven't had to take an English class in 13 years so I'm pretty rusty.
You are welcome!! Well, you can practice by helping around here sometimes essayforum.com/ef-contributor-page/ we need people with life experience and understanding to help the students with their essays on the "Unanswered" list when things start to get busy at EssayForum.
:-)
