1. Although you may not really be able to afford a more expensive home at your current income level, it makes sense to buy it anyway, because in just a few years, at your current rate of progress in your career, you’ll probably be dead.

2. There are major tax benefits to owning a home. The law, written by wise lawyers and bankers, permits you to deduct all the money you give to lawyers or bankers, which will turn out to be virtually all the money you have.

3. Owning a home is a smart investment. As inflation pushes up the cost of living, you will build up equity in your home, so that, when you eventually sell it, you will have made enough profit to be able to afford to pay the point and closing costs’ on your next home!

So as you can see, you really can’t afford not to buy a home that you really can’t afford. It’s time to sit down with your broker and take a serious look at the listings.

The listings are computerized lists, or “listings,” of all the houses that all the brokers in your region have been trying to sell since the Carter administration. Listings are always written in a special real estate code. For example, this listing:

CHARMING RANCH, 2 full, 4BR, 3B, 2TD, land scaped, newly renovated. ...

can be decoded as follows:

1. Rooms the size of nasal spray cartons

2. IN URBAN AREAS: No attic or basement. IN RURAL AREAS: Also cattle have wintered in the foyer.

3. Four bedrooms

4. Three bathrooms

5. Two turtle doves

6. Extensive comical lawn statuary including minority groups holding lanterns; also large, permanent, fully mechanized, spectacularly illuminated display of Santa’s Workshop

7. The walls have been pretty well scraped clean in the room where the demonic beings from another dimension came through the TV set and caused the previous occupants’ heads to explode.