The average annual savings rate in America is now a paltry £200, not much more than the value of the coins that fall yearly into the cracks of the average sofa.

I don't know where she gets her figures... but, personally, I'd suggest investing in a purse or something.

But that's neither here nor there. The thrust of the piece is a well-reasoned attack on, first, the [il]logic of equity release...

You were a fool, so went the new wisdom, to sit on all the equity that your ever-more-valuable house had accrued, and should, as many banks advertised, "put that money to work". But "put that money to work" really meant "spend it".

... and, secondly, on the idea that debt or bankruptcy are lifestyle choices, devoid of an ethical component. Although the piece is unlikely to win her many friends - for a novelist, her style is peculiarly charmless; and the idea of a media-artist-mid-Atlantic gadfly ("... in Brookly, where I spend summer") lecturing those forced into debt by, perhaps, the loss of a McJob isn't going to her endear her to everyone - it's based on good sense, and says something worth saying. Read it here.

Technorati Tags: property, real estate