I’m a trendsetter. My home was foreclosed upon in November 2001, before it became my real estate agent’s fault, my broker’s fault, my lender’s fault or the fault of just about anyone other than me.

Truth be told, there was blame to go around. My last refi was done by an unscrupulous mortgage broker and his appraisal partner/lover. They eventually served time in jail, although not specifically for my mortgage. The deal in fact was so out of whack that when I called to negotiate with the lender, the customer service agent accused me in a screaming voice of several different kinds of fraud; after that, I stopped making phone calls, answering the phone or going to the mailbox. Of course, one might think that a well known national bank would have detected a little something odd when my home was appraised for $40,000 more than larger houses in the same neighborhood (I told myself I had really good landscaping.) It is unlikely they ever even looked at the appraisal; they were too busy gobbling up second hand high interest mortgages wherever they could find them. Added to my mortgage problems was the fact that once again I was ahead of the curve: I got blindsided by the alternative minimum tax almost a decade before the rest of the middle class.

In the last analysis though, the stone rolls back down the hill to exactly where it belongs: at my feet. I was stupid. I was greedy. I was self-indulgent. I bought a house outside my price range and when presented with opportunities to pay down on it, I chose instead to take money out of it and live above my means. Eventually I had to pay the piper, not being able to pay him in cash, I have paid him in pain, embarrassment, loss of all of my possessions, my job, my good name and my credit and my son, who was blameless, paid the price as well. I will carry my guilt over the pain I caused him to my grave and probably beyond. Still, at the end of a very long day, I am better off for having lost things I could not afford than I would have been had anyone gone along with my year long attempt to save them. For the last eight years, I have lived below the radar, on a pittance, unable to even take bankruptcy but now I feel obliged, no, forced to speak.

Like most reformed sinners I find that I must now preach the gospel; having been washed in the blood I strongly believe that the only salvation for today’s over leveraged, spendthrift consumer is a blood bath. Trust me, the politicians, the banks, the mortgage lenders, they are not out to help you. They want to be re-elected, they want to save their tanking share prices, they want to stave off their own bankruptcies and jump out of their companies' airplanes with golden parachutes. The multi-millionaires want to send you a few hundred dollars and have you pump it back into an economy that needs schools and infrastructure and healthcare but that will have to settle for visits to the mall instead. As one talking head put it recently on CNBC, "The money needs to go into the hands of low income people who, frankly, have a propensity to consume." Our leaders don’t want us to put away money for college, they don’t want us to pay off debt, they don’t want us to save for a rainy day. They want us to put off the inevitable day of financial reckoning by purchasing another designer bag, another cell phone, another flat screen TV.

These wise ones who couldn’t fathom that having homes appreciate 80% in six years probably wasn’t realistic, who repackaged debt six ways from Sunday and then sold it off to be repackaged again, who are in the pockets of the bank lobbies, don’t have the guts to tell us that we are in the deep end, going down for the third time and they are throwing us an anvil. Just as when faced with the problems of Social Security, Medicare and health insurance, no one will stand up and say, "The truth begins here." Well, here’s the truth: if your credit cards are maxed out and you are in a home that is one interest reset away from foreclosure, you don’t need a $600 shopping spree, you need a copy of Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover.