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Show Thursday, December 25, 2008 20 SPRINGVILLE HERALD The importance Of honesty on loan applications Arkadi Kuhlmanh The American economy is unimaginably complicated, compli-cated, so it's not surprising that equally informed and honest experts have drastically drasti-cally different opinions on what caused the current crisis. Behind this ear lies an engineering masterpiece 7" f. X Open Ear Technology is the most revolutionary development in hearing care since the introduction of digital hearing aids. Come in for a FREE hearing evaluation and give them a try with our NO OBLIGATION ROAD TEST XT 710 W. 700 N, JEL,EC7m , Springvills twwMit.mi 489-8988 i-ws&sr- .... xm&M lUa?g&ii&s L4-f ! ; j t M&r I, A ( ;j-T K . i y iy- - ,aL i ft v 'Brightly Lit Aisles ? Computerized Access Control Discount for First 3 Months Moving Trailer Available Door Alarms & Shelving Available www.select-storage.com BEST BODYSHOP PRACTICES FOR LESS! OREM 574 N State St . Orem, 84057 (801) 224-9911 HOURS Monday thru Friday 8 AM -6:00 PM Saturday Caff for an appomttmnt. PROVO 3S5E.9G0S. Provo, 84606 (801) 377-2827 HOURS Monday thru f riday 7.30 AM 5:30 PM Saturday 9:0O-12.O0 Sunday - Closed Credit Cards Accepted r Hard White Wheat uJf , 35 Lb. Bucket - $25.95 "-- 50 Lb. Bag - $23.95 't Ideal for food storage & grinding into flour! Organic Food Storage Sprouting Kit 16 Lbs of Assorted Sprouting Seeds Sprouters & Instructions Add living healthy food to your food storage! Hfe aso cany a M ne of bulk grains, seeds and other sprouting supplies: Mason Jars, Grain Grinders, Garden Seeds, Hard Red Wheat, Barley, Rice, Beans, Lentils, Spelt, Kamut, Amaranth, Triticale, Buckwheat & More. Pundits, policy makers, and the public do seem to agree, though, on at least one contributing factor -dishonesty on mortgage applications. Many people bought homes they couldn't afford using loans they weren't qualified for. The ensuing foreclosures didn't just wreck the lives of mortgage mort-gage holders - it brought suffering to millions of other oth-er Americans in the form of collapsing financial firms and a hamstrung economy. The take home message for individual Americans is one that I'm confident most folks already know: Always Al-ways be completely honest on credit applications. There are countless ways to stretch the truth. The most widespread are pad-' ding one's income, overstating overstat-ing assets, hiding outstanding outstand-ing debts and misrepresenting misrepresent-ing the source of the down payment or personal employment em-ployment history. These aren't heinous crimes. Everyone is tempted tempt-ed to fudge the numbers - a little white lie might mean a home with a pool, or an upgrade to a V 12 engine, or an extra thousand dollars of purchasing power on a ; 24 HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE mmwm : ...... ...... -pr- f.W"-"ll m i ! ini n i in i -i i ...J. M Tl fT SALE $109.95 credit card And brokers often have a financial incentive to encourage en-courage customers to take out loans beyond their means. The broker gets a higher commission, but " doesn't bare the cost in the event of a default. Lenders themselves have cooked up types of loan applications ap-plications that all but beg the applicant to lie. Take the "stated income" loan, where the applicant doesn't have to provide official verification verifica-tion of their reported annual an-nual income. Stated income loans were originally created for the self-employed and other workers that might have a hard time getting income documentation. Until the subprime mortgage crisis cri-sis made front page news, though, these loans were routinely being offered to people they weren't intended intend-ed for - often simply so they could falsify their income. There are, of course, substantial civil and criminal crimi-nal penalties for lying on a credit application. In some states it's a felony, carrying lengthy jail terms and hefty fines. And if a loan holder defaults, de-faults, he doesn't just lose the collateral - he takes a huge hit to his credit score, which means reduced access ac-cess to cheap loans in the future. Honesty on a loan application ap-plication pays off in the long run. It forces us to be frank about our finances. What can we really afford? Where should we be look ing to cut expenses? Are we saving enough? Can we buy that new car or bigger home and still live comfortably? comfort-ably? Or pay for what's absolutely ab-solutely essential, like medical medi-cal bills? These aren't easy questions. ques-tions. The answers aren't always al-ways pleasant. But actually dealing with them is much healthier than lying to ourselves, our-selves, our families, or our loan officer. Honesty forces us to operate within our means - and shows exactly where we need to improve our finances if we really do want to make a big-time purchase on credit. New Year's up in smoke Taylor Card SHS STAFF WRITER On New Year's Eve, 2007, my family was hanging hang-ing out at my sister's house. When my Mom and Dad and I came home, it was about midnight, I opened up the door only to see the whole house was filled with smoke to the point where you couldn't see two feet in front of you. My Mom opened up all the doors then my Dad discovered the fireplace was accidentally turned on with a plastic table placed in front of it. The table was about half way burnt and had not yet, luckily, reached the carpet. Only smoke damage had occurred, oc-curred, so we went to sleep with all the windows open , y j & I I j ' ' " ; I ' A L John Powers787-6086 Jean Powers-787-3555 Lynette Houser592-4573 We've been helping our neighbors buy and sell properties for over 20 years: Residential, Land & Commercial Been There, Done That . Is that Brandy? Liz Elder One of my two pet peeves on the radio is when they don t tell you who s singing. (The other one is when they tell you they're not going to have any com: mercials, and then, right away, they do.) If not knowing the names of singers is your peeve, this time of year is like having all the nails in all the world scratching on all the blackboards. They do those darn blocks of music like they were some champion saints, and then they don't give you a Jist of who you just heard. Or they give you a list, but you're . swerving to miss an ice bound cement truck, and you don't hear the one you need. Then they give you another block of music, mu-sic, and you're left sitting in the car wondering who it was who just sang, and you slowly go crazy. It's not enough trying to remember what you're shopping for and what you're going to cook for dinner. Now you're supposed sup-posed to have a memory like a jukebox. Or it seems that way when you don't know who's singing. It drives me crazy. I listen to FM 100, Your Holiday Station, because they start Christmas music the afternoon of Thanksgiving Thanks-giving Day and they don't quit until you turn off the tree lights Christmas night and yell at the kids to go to bed. This makes everyday for me a long string of "Is that Brandy?" moments. Somewhere in the 90's, I got it into my head that every woman singing on the radio was the teen singer Brandy. Every time a woman started singing sing-ing I seriously thought she sounded like Brandy. I'd ask, 'Is that Brandy?" about ten times a day. At1 least I did until certain peo-: pie started making fun of me and saying, 'No, Mom, its not Brandy," before a song even started. Still, I felt somewhat vindicated vin-dicated when she got into and hoped the smell would be gone by morning. The next morning Dad called the insurance company com-pany and had a professional profes-sional come check the whole house, he said we would need all new carpet car-pet and blinds and also to leave the house for a few nights while a cleaning crew came and took our whole house apart then put it back together. We went to go live in a hotel for two nights and the continental breakfast was something I could definitely get used to. The whole experience was something that made me and my family thankful thank-ful for the fact that we still had a house left and were fortunate to have a good new year. Great Deal in Santaquin! $151,900 3 bedVlba.1284 Sq. Ft. .36 acre. Redone inside & out. Call Lynette at 592-4573 that car crash a few years ago. At least I knew who she was. I'm an absolute loser at guessing who's singing. It's like I'm from another planet. I don't have any sense of who it might be in a weird, kind of tone-deaf way. For some reason, I think all the men sound like Bon Jovi, or what I think he sounds like, having never consciously heard him sing, that I know of, because' be-cause' they never tell you on the radio who's singing. So I've seen his picture and I just have to try and imagine what he sounds like. Like a boy version of Brandy. This year I've heard the song "The Little Drummer Drum-mer Boy" like 18 million times. "Come, they told me, pa rum pa pum pum." Is that Bon Jovi or another guy with a hoarse voice? Maybe that guy with the croaky voice that sang that love song in the 80's? You know the one. The thing about listening to Christmas music on the radio is that Christmas recordings re-cordings span your entire life. I mean, songs I listened to when I stayed home from school, pretending to be sick: Bing Crosby singing sing-ing "White Christmas," Johnny Mathis singing 656 H. i. All toppings (Greater Sweaters -; ' if " ' 'A ; f j, III - x . I RIDES! jifpz j v 40-45 Minute Rides pi 49 per person (rift Certificates Available 80H68-9920 MeyViewPallooniiig.com I ft A Silver Jeans 20 OFF ' Dresses & Skirts 20 OFF Jewelry & Accessories 20 OFF Long Layering Tops 2$35! Roxy20OFF COUPON 10 0 1 ANY SINGLE ITEM! ' I One Coupon pa Family! Musi i present coupon at time ot purchose Exduoes leather, lay-o-waysS, gym clothes. 1 Expires December 31, 2008' j Open late thru December 22! 10-7 "It's the Most Wonderful Wonder-ful Time of the Year,"Mel Torme singing "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire." I used to think I was so cool because J knew who Mel Torme was. Young people now are riding on geezer coattails. Last week,; I was in a store listening to Bing Crosby and I looked around and realized if I went up to any young person per-son in that store, I would be lucky to find one who knew who Bing Crosby was. They go around singing sing-ing these songs all their lives, and they think they belong to them! When was the last time you heard a Christmas song that you didn't know most of the words to? You might not know the singer if they gave them to you in a basket with a nametag, but there are almost no new Christmas songs. I bet you could do versions ver-sions of "Oh, Holy Night" from Thanksgiving to Christmas and never have a repeat. You could call it the Holy Night Station. You could tell everyone who the singer was after af-ter every version. No distractions. dis-tractions. Just names of singers. Probably no one would listen but me. 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