Good money after bad

The Houston City Council, thankfully, rejected today a proposal to use leftover money from emergency appropriations to help pay down certain debts of first time homebuyers in the city. The thinking (if you can call it that) was that people whose credit scores were only 10 or 20 points shy of allowing them to qualify for a mortgage could be helped over the threshold if only their balance sheets were given a focused little nudge by city government. The city would give up to $3000 for these individuals to use on car loans, credit card balances and other debts.

This is wrong on so many levels, it's crazy easy to just tick them off, so I will:

• It is not the city's money to give, it is the taxpayer's.
• How would you feel if you were told to pay your neighbor's credit card bill so that s/he could buy a home?
• Isn't the whole reason we're in this housing mess because banks made loans to borrowers that were not creditworthy? Will paying off someone's debts make them creditworthy? Maybe on paper, but not in practice. That's like putting makeup on a pig and calling it a supermodel. Giving loans to people who make the grade artificially will only set the system up for more problems in the future.
  
• Speaking of calling pigs supermodels, there's a reason a high percentage of lottery winners find themselves broke within ten years. Wealth is not something you have, it is a state of mind. So is broke. If a broke person wins the lottery, s/he is still broke, even though s/he happens to have money.

If you happen to be reading this and are one of the people who are missing a credit cutoff yourself, or are finding yourself behind in your finances, all things being equal (i.e. you haven't been laid off or had some other negative life event), take this opportunity to right your mind. Get out of the broke thinking and broke mindset. Because no matter who bails you out or how much, you'll still end up in the same difficulties unless you change the playing field, which is your thought process and practices regarding your personal finances.