7. Other (phone deposit, cost of actual house, etc.): $126,436.06

So we can see from this financial analysis that you are definitely going to need the bank to give you a lot of money in the form of a mortgage. The bank is willing to do this because, the way mortgages are set up, no matter how many payments you make, you still owe the bank all the money you ever borrowed. Really. This explains why, in all your wide circle of friends, you don’t know a single person who ever came close to paying off a mortgage. When you have a mortgage, at the end of every year the bank sends you a statement like this:

YOUR OUTSTANDING BALANCE AS OF THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR: $93,423.54

YOUR TOTAL PAYMENTS MADE DURING THE YEAR: $11,647.32

YOUR OUTSTANDING BALANCE AS OF THE END OF THE YEAR: $93,423.54

It may seem as though the banks are taking unfair advantage of consumers here, but they really have no choice. A few years back, they lent billions and billions of dollars to the Third World, which had promised to spend the money on factories and heavy machinery, but which in fact lost it gambling on rooster fights. And since the banks can’t very well march down to the Southern Hemisphere and repossess, for example, Brazil, you can understand why they have no choice but to get the money from average everyday unarmed consumers such as yourself.

All mortgages work basically the same way: You sign a bunch of papers, then you make large monthly payments until the Second Coming. Nevertheless, the top Consumer Money Geeks all recommend that you “shop around” for your mortgage, because there are a number of different kinds available, each with its own terms, conditions, feeding habits, and so forth. Some of the more popular ones are: