Get out! Practical tips for buying and selling a haunted house

“Get out!”—disembodied demonic voice warning a Roman Catholic priest who was deployed to bless a home recently purchased by the Lutz family, 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, NY, January 1976

In the popular new Netflix series “The Haunting of Hill House,” the Crain family moves in with the hopes of “flipping” the aggressively-Gothic mansion and using the proceeds to build their “forever home.” Instead, they find themselves terrorized by a menagerie of malicious resident spirits.

In the first episode, we see the father fleeing the house with his five children, abandoning the project, and telling his incredulous lawyer: “I want the gates and the doors kept locked at all times, and I want to know every day that it’s empty…. It sits there and rots.” Thus, the flip became a flop.

Mr. Crain is saying, of course, that he cannot in good conscience sell the home to another family. He doesn’t want anyone else to suffer the horrors that drove his ill-fated family from the house.

The real-life Lutz family of “The Amityville Horror” fame had no such reservations. They unloaded their Dutch colonial on Long Island onto Jim and Barbara Cromarty in March 1977 for $55,000.

The Cromartys reported no problems with the home and remained happy with the deal that they had made.

But what if it hadn’t happened that way? When you’re selling a house, are you required to disclose the very bad things that happened there—paranormal or not? Has a buyer who unknowingly purchases a haunted house got any recourse?

The duty to disclose

Sellers of real property are required to disclose to prospective buyers any physical conditions to that may affect the value of the property. Most states require this disclosure to be made in writing. Further, most state laws prohibit the seller from intentionally concealing major defects.

Hauntings are not physical defects, however. Indeed, ghosts, spirits, specters, demons, apparitions, poltergeists, haints, shades, spooks, and wraiths are the opposite of physical, because by definition, they lack a physical form.

You can’t prove a negative, of course, especially not a negative that is inchoate. The overwhelming consensus of science, then, is that ghosts don’t exist. But this hasn’t stopped courts from declaring properties “haunted.”

Haunted as a matter of law

In 1989, Wall Street bond trader Jeffrey Stambovsky contracted to buy a Nyack, New York, Victorian for $650,000 from Helen Ackley. As the parties were preparing to close on the house, remodeling contractors told Stambovsky that the house was haunted, visited by poltergeists and benign apparitions dressed in Revolutionary War-era garb.  

Stambovsky, who did not believe in ghosts, sued Ackley to get out of the contract, alleging that Ackley had failed to disclose that the home had received national press attention for the hauntings. The court held that, because Ackley had placed the home on ghost tours and had been interviewed as a haunted house owner in publications such as “Reader’s Digest,” she was estopped from saying that the house was not haunted. The court ruled that the house was therefore haunted as a matter of law. The court reasoned that this undisclosed condition (namely, the unwelcome attention and stigma) negatively affected the value of the home and let Stambovsky out of the contract. Stambovsky v. Ackley, 572 N.Y.S. 2d 672 (N.Y. App. Div. 1991).

Stigmatized property

While Stambovsky successfully proved that the stigma of the haunting adversely affected the value of the home, the presence of spirits is not required. A property can be stigmatized by horrific events of the type that lead to ghostly activity, at least in popular culture.

The house in the Amityville Horror lore was one such house. While the paranormal events described by George and Kathy Lutz have been debunked, there is no question that the house was the site of another type of horror.

On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., shot and killed six family members at the house that the Lutz family later inhabited. DeFeo was found guilty of murdering his mother, father, two sisters, and two brothers and was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences in New York’s Green Haven prison, where he remains today.

When sellers fail to disclose that a gruesome death such as the one at Amityville occurred in the home, courts in different jurisdictions have come to opposite conclusions.

In Reed v. King (145 Cal. App. 3d 261 (Cal. App. 3d Dist. 1983), the court held that Dorris Reed should be let out of his contract with Robert King, because King failed to disclose that a mother and her four children were murdered in the house ten years prior.

Conversely, in two Pennsylvania cases, courts held that a murder-suicide and a suicide in the master bedroom did not materially affect the buyers’ enjoyment and use of the homes and refused to rescind the contracts. Milliken v. Jacono, 103 A.3d 806 (Pa. 2014) and Bukoskey v. Palumbo, 1 Pa. D & C 456, 463 (Pa. C.P. 2007), respectively.

Built on an ancient burial ground

In the 1982 movie “Poltergeist,” the spectral activity occurs because the house was built on top of a cemetery (a regular cemetery, not a tribal burial ground as most people incorrectly remember).

Today, we could offer at least some small comfort to offer the bedeviled Freeling family. Courts have held that sellers who fail to disclose that the property contains a cemetery, particularly if human remains were disturbed when the house was built, are liable to the buyers because the presence of the cemetery is a material defect. Rhee v. Highland Development Corp., 182 Md. App. 516, 543 (2008).

Indeed, the presence of human remains can be a land use problem. All states have strict laws on what can be built on burial grounds. I recently advised on a Tennessee case in which a family asked a homeowner if they could bury their mother’s cremated remains in an urn on the family property where she had grown up. The homeowner, who was not related to the family of the deceased woman, asked whether this was a good idea. It’s not. The moment you bury human remains, you form a cemetery in the eyes of the law. Now, you may not disturb the land around the grave and you must disclose the location of the cemetery to all prospective buyers, who are then bound by the same restrictions. I advised the homeowner to offer to let the family scatter the ashes instead, and they agreed.

The law sides with the poltergeists on this one. Do not disturb human remains, no matter the capital gains.

Laying the matter to rest

It’s clear from this analysis that the courts haven’t taken a position on whether ghosts are real. Instead, they have ruled on whether there is a stigma that may give future buyers a negative opinion of the property and may therefore decrease the property’s value.

It’s scary enough to buy or sell a house, so it’s important for the buyer to be aware and the seller to disclose all defects as required state law, including case law.

Happy Halloween!

Special thanks to my colleague John Murray, who pointed me in the right direction of stigmatized properties when I could not remember the term and who wrote a much more extensive law review article on similar undisclosed defects in the sale of stigmatized real property. I was able to use his original research and add my own. Read his article here:

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/rpte_ereport/2016%20eReport/5-September%202016/Haunted%20House.pdf

The Great Divide: It is necessary and right to be a divided nation

Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division.—Jesus, instructing his disciples to prepare for a tumult, Luke 12:51 (New Am. Stand.)

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor.—Elie Weisel, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Sweden, 1986

The United States doesn’t seem so united now, and that troubles many people.

It doesn’t trouble me. Conversely, it gives me hope and restores my faith in humanity. Division is a positive phenomenon that is necessary as we continue to search for our nation’s moral center.

We’ve probably always been divided as a nation, but since Donald Trump was elected president, I’ve noticed that we are resisting the idea of being on different “sides.” Politicians and pundits plead with us to remember that we’re all on the same side, and that we’re all in this together. This is true as long as we’re in agreement that the Constitution should hold and as long as we commit to upholding our democratic institutions (such as an independent judiciary) and their necessary safeguards (for example, the separation of powers) and principles (justice, say).

If we’re NOT in agreement on those, then we are indeed on opposites sides—and we should be. In matters of conscience, there are two distinct sides, and we must seek to be on the right side.

We talk a lot about political differences, but some differences aren’t political at all. They are moral differences, and the only moral choice is to separate ourselves from those who hold extreme and deeply immoral views while we continue to fight to make our nation a more perfect union.

As the cliché has it: “Everybody’s got a right to his or her opinion!” That’s true, but it does not follow that all opinions are equally valid. Opinions are not valid when they are not based on empirical fact but instead are formed by bad information, unclear thinking, or by outright bias, bitterness, or even hatred. We cannot allow these invalid opinions to shape public policy.

Let’s remember that our nation was born from division, saved by division, and is always improved by division.

The following examples illustrate why it’s important to pick a side and fight for it.

Our nation was born from division

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.—The Declaration of Independence (1776)

Offended and wounded by grievous abuses of due process, such as taxation without representation and illegitimate search and seizure, the citizens of the thirteen colonies aligned with France and declared their independence from Great Britain, improbably winning the resulting war and forming a new nation.

The revolutionaries had split violently from the king, but the conflict didn’t end there. After years of bitter debate and uneasy compromise, the founders emerged with a Constitution.

After a revolutionary war, they had drafted a revolutionary document. Unlike other victorious revolutionaries, they didn’t grab control of the government for themselves with the military as an enforcer. Instead, they vested this enormous power in the lawmakers, who they charged along with the People to be the law keepers.

To build a lasting union, the founders limited the powers of the federal government and separated the powers among three branches of government. By vesting power in the distinct legislative, judicial, and executive branches, they insured against the corruption and ultimate failure of any one entity.

When we view it through this lens, we can agree that anyone who seeks to upset this balance must be stopped. Whether you label yourself a conservative or a liberal, neither philosophy will be furthered if government ceases to function. Instead, power will not rest with one political party but with one person at the expense of liberty.

It’s clear, then, that we should not seek unity with anyone with this goal, whether the goal is outright or a consequence of other actions.

Our nation was saved by division

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.—President Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863, dedicating Soldiers’ National Cemetery after the Union Army victory at the Battle of Gettysburg

Lately, we’re hearing that "this country hasn't been so divided since the Civil War!"

That’s not true, of course. The country has not yet split into two sovereign nations, with several states seceding from the union to achieve that split, resulting in a bloody, devastating war necessary to reunite them.

As catastrophic as the Civil War was, that particular divide, that jus bellum iustum, was a moral imperative. Each Confederate state issued an Article of Secession, stating its justification for seceding from the United States. This reason, of course, was the preservation of the institution of slavery. Many claim that the Civil War was about slavery, while others argue that the Civil War was a fight for states’ rights. Both are correct. The Civil War was fought for states’ rights—the right to own slaves.

Think about that. It was legal—and was acceptable practice—for human beings in this country to own other human beings that they bought from people who kidnapped them from their homes and families. It was legal for men to buy, sell, and trade other men, women, and children and to separate families, to work the slaves to death or even to beat them to death.

We would like to think that no nation can prosper while its practices are so manifestly wicked. Unfortunately, we know that’s not strictly true—at least not in the long term. Still, we might agree that it doesn’t matter whether the nation prospers if it loses its soul. In other words, it’s easy to make a lot of money if that’s all you care about. Financial gain is worthless if it’s ill-gotten, however. The ideal is to be a shining city on the hill and a bastion of liberty and human rights while also prospering. We are falling catastrophically short of that, but it should still be our only goal.

The division that resulted in the Civil War was a moral one. When one side opposes our nation’s founding principle that all men are created equal and are endowed with human rights, the only moral option is the deepest cleft possible.

Our nation becomes more moral by division

If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.—Sojourner Truth

I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, an open letter he wrote as a response to public criticism by white Southern religious leaders of civil rights demonstrations

The Civil War led to the end of de jure slavery, but it did not end de facto slavery. Racism, solidified in ugly practices and codified in Jim Crow laws, prevented freed slaves and their descendants from voting, owning property, and attending public schools. Public lynchings were celebrated, while police brutality was widespread.

For a graphic reminder of even the most mundane of daily humiliations, go to the square of many Southern towns and note the twin drinking fountains, now unlabeled but a silent reminder of the recent past.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured the right to vote for racial minorities, but white women weren’t too far ahead, as the 19^th Amendment wasn’t passed until 1920. These advancements were won not through unity but by dissent, marked by confrontation, civil disobedience, and imprisonment. Overtures for negotiation and discussion were refused. The time for harmony had elapsed.

Attempts at voter suppression and the presence of institutionalized racism and sexism must be similarly resisted in the present as they were then. Liberty is the birthright of everyone. If anyone is denied it, everyone lacks it, whether they know it or not.

Divided we stand

I say, if I can be more sharply divided against those who support policies that I find dishonorable, show me the way to do it. Be wary of people who ask you to stop being divisive. They are sometimes asking you to abandon your principles and stop making their work difficult.

Think about it: Do you really hope to change the mind of a virulent racist? What about with a person who genuinely believes that people who are illegally crossing the border deserve to have their children taken away from them as punishment? Do you hope to have a productive conversation with a person who believes that most women are liars who frequently make false rape claims to punish “real” men who refuse to be emasculated by “femi-Nazis?” Come to that, do you really want to break bread with those who sympathize with actual Nazis?

It is impossible to try to achieve unity with those who don’t share the same values and vision for our nation. It’s possible to agree on values and vision but to disagree about how we might achieve certain goals. It’s also possible to disagree philosophically about such concepts as how much personal liberty we should expect versus how much personal responsibility we owe to the greater good.

There’s less room for debate, however, on whether it’s morally acceptable to take someone’s life, liberty, and property without due process of law. We’ve already agreed that it is not; that was part of the deal.

It’s one thing to have differing opinions on whether corporations should be taxed or how much foreign aid we should offer. It’s another to believe that we should be governed by a king, or that slavery is acceptable, or that adult citizens should not have the right to vote.

Those values are counter to the nation’s interests and founding and governing documents, and we should not seek unity with those who hold those ideas. Instead, we should actively separate from them so that we can fight them for the soul and survival of our nation.

I can think of no better comfort to have in your old age than the knowledge that you were on the side of justice when you had your turn in the course of human events.

The Other SOL: Clarifying the statute of limitations

Our rabbis taught… the sword comes into the world, because of justice delayed and justice denied…. Pirkei Avot (“the chapters of the fathers,” ethics passed down to the rabbis from prophet-teachers beginning with Moses), transcribed 1^st century BCE-2^nd century CE

Many people requested clarification regarding the statute of limitations, which is of course in the news due to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I hesitated to write more about this, but then I realized that everyone is still talking about it and it’s an excellent way to illustrate the concept of the statute of limitations, so why not use it for some good purpose?

What is it?

The statute of limitations is the time period after a certain incident (such as a crime or a civil wrong) during which a legal proceeding can be started.

Most laws have a statute of limitations written into the law, and it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and varies widely depending on the nature of the wrong.

For example, in Tennessee, a civil lawsuit for slander must be brought within “six months after words are uttered” (Tenn. Code Ann. 28-3-103), while criminal charges for a crime that carries the penalty of death of life imprisonment can be brought “at any time after the offense is committed” (Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-2-101)—in other words, forever.

Sleeping on your rights

The statute of limitations is an ancient concept that can be found in the Magna Carta and the Old Testament as well as in the commentaries of the early rabbinical scholars and classical Greek and Roman law.

Its rationale is evident.

1) “Speak now or forever hold your peace.” If a plaintiff or the state has got a valid claim, they should pursue it. If it’s not important to you, then let the rest of us move on.

2) Physical evidence can be lost or degraded and witnesses forget, move, or die. The sooner the case begins, the better result we can expect.

3) “Justice delayed is justice denied.” It is cruel to make crime victims or other injured parties wait for their day in court. Likewise, it’s cruel to let a defendant languish in a state of limbo with the matter hanging over his or her head.

It is therefore in everyone’s best interests to adjudicate matters within a reasonable time.

Of course, this only applies to the start of the action (the filing of the criminal charges or the filing of a civil lawsuit) and does not require for the action to be concluded by any certain time.

Limits to the limitation

As I said, very serious crimes, such as murder, do not have a statute of limitations, in part because the crime is so serious that we are no longer as concerned about allowing the defendant to move on with his or her life--particularly after taking someone else’s.

Sometimes, we allow the statute to “toll.” In other words, we stop the clock. For example, if a suspect goes on the lam, we don’t reward him by letting him run out the clock while he’s a fugitive from justice. We stop the clock and let the prosecutor file charges once the suspect is apprehended.

Similarly, we don’t reward defendants for concealing their wrongdoing or punish plaintiffs for failing to uncover it. If a surgeon leaves a sponge inside a patient, but the patient has no adverse symptoms for five years, we stop the clock during the time that the patient had no reasonable way of discovering the surgeon’s malpractice. Once the patient has symptoms and should reasonably investigate the cause, the clock starts again—even if the patient fails to investigate.

Likewise, underage victims of sexual assault cannot always be expected to report the crime when it happens, particularly when the victim is very young and lacks the language and understanding of the crime necessary to report it. This time lapse, while often necessary, unfortunately results in lost evidence, unreliable or missing witnesses, and faulty memory.

This brings us to the Ford-Kavanaugh matter.

If she’s telling the truth, why doesn’t she have him arrested?

Ten thousand internet commenters—and a few hundred bloggers and television pundits—have raised this question: If Ford is telling the truth, why doesn’t she seek redress in the criminal courts or by filing a civil lawsuit?

Due to the statute of limitations, however, she cannot.

Ford testified that Kavanaugh and his friend attempted to rape her at a house party that occurred in Montgomery County, Maryland, in 1982, when Kavanaugh was 17 and Ford was 15.

Ford’s allegations most closely describe the crime of attempted rape in the first degree in Maryland’s current criminal code (MD Crim Law Code §3-309). There is no statute of limitations for this crime (Md. Code Ann. Cts. & Jud. Proc. §5-106 et seq.; see also Greco v. State, 48 A.3d 816).

The current law is irrelevant, however, because we must use the law that was in effect at the time that the alleged incident occurred, which was 1982. Alternately, we toll the statute until Ford reasonably was able to report it (perhaps when she reached the age of majority in 1984 or 1985), but either way, the law at the time prescribed a one-year statute of limitations for the crime of attempted rape, which was then a misdemeanor. Ford may report the crime, but it cannot be prosecuted.

On September 28, 2018, the Montgomery County chief of police and the state’s attorney (the prosecutor) issued an official joint letter in which they clarified that they would not be able to bring criminal charges against Kavanaugh. (Read the letter here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-police-and-state-s-attorney-response-to-montgomery-county-house-delegation-s-request-to-open-crimina-20180928-htmlstory.html )

Further, the statute of limitations has run on any civil action that Ford may have filed. It’s hard to say exactly what the statute of limitations might be, because we don’t know what Ford’s theory of the case would be. We therefore can’t determine which cause of action she would pursue, but the statute of limitations for most civil causes of action in Maryland at the time was three years at most, so it’s safe to say that Ford is barred from filing a civil lawsuit as well.

While I discourage this type of speculation, it’s interesting that no one seems to be accusing Kavanaugh of sleeping on his rights here. Unlike Ford, he has got a possible cause of action: He could sue Ford for defamation. Her accusation is less than a year old, so it is well within the statute of limitations. The burden of proof would be on Kavanaugh to show to a preponderance of the evidence (“more likely than not,” a low bar) that Ford knowingly made false statements that harmed him. Both he and she would be allowed to conduct a thorough investigation through the process of discovery, clearing his name once and for all.

Money talks: How I live well on very little

“The moon belongs to everyone. The best things in life are free. The stars belong to everyone. They gleam there for you and me. The flowers in spring, the robins that sing, the sunbeams that shine… they’re yours; they’re mine. And love can come to everyone. The best things in life are free.”—DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson, “The Best Things in Life are Free,” 1927

“The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees. I need money. That’s what I want.”—Gordy and Bradford, “Money (That’s What I Want),” 1959

Money and me

For whatever reason, I’ve always been good at earning, saving, and investing money. I find it interesting and fun, and I’ve spent my life learning how to do it better.

Still, it’s important to note that I grew up in a financially insecure household with a low income in a very rural area in a depressed region.

I’m not saying this to criticize my parents here, because I genuinely believe that they did the best they could with what they had in every way. We always had enough and I learned a lot about self-sufficiency and hard work. My parents were deeply ethical and charitable people who passed those values on to us. Plus, I grew up in a forested mountain paradise, so of course I wouldn’t change any of that. To me, all of this is much more valuable than any financial inheritance, and I am eternally grateful for it.

I’ve found that people with my background go one of two ways: They perpetuate this cycle by making poor choices OR they become quite frugal. I chose the frugal path, but with a twist. Rather than live a life of grim restraint, I live quite joyfully

I’ve started with a word about my upbringing because it’s important to note that I’m self-made. Otherwise, I’ll get a lot of “easy for you to say” comments when instead it’s more of a “if I can do it, you can do it” situation.

This is my philosophy on money, and it has served me well.

Ethics are everything

There’s a difference between being frugal and being cheap.

The frugal person cheerfully finds ways to spend less money, usually through hard work and sacrifice. The cheapskate saves money off the backs of other people.

For example, a frugal person might choose to save money by hosting a potluck for friends rather than going to an expensive restaurant. A cheap person goes to the expensive restaurant but skips out on the bill, sticking her friends with the tab.

This behavior takes the form of dishonesty large and small: accepting charity when you don’t truly need it, falsifying insurance claims, pirating music or movies, and engaging in questionable romantic behavior because your partner gives you something of monetary value.

If we make money but lose our soul, we’ve gained nothing and lost everything.

I testify that I’ve never met a person who amassed a fortune through dishonest means and was then able to enjoy that fortune in the company of loving family and friends. When you look at it this way, the price of honesty is very small.

A shift in perspective: Make it a game

If you feel deprived, you will stubbornly resist your own attempts to make positive changes.

The only way to avoid feeling deprived is to change your definition of luxury and fun.

Clothes and shoes

I play a game with myself: I consider whatever outfit I’m wearing, and I calculate how little it cost. “I bought the shoes from eBay for $5, and I bought the dress at Goodwill on 99-cent day. Not bad!” My appearance is important to me, and I like to look nice. Plus, I’m a professional woman who must dress a certain way for work. If I can economize here, most people can. I get my clothes from a variety of sources: my friends and I get together and share our castoffs. I shop at thrift stores, casually stopping in and browsing perhaps once a month. I haunt eBay, particularly for gently-worn or never-worn designer shoes. Occasionally, I swing by the clearance rack at Target for end-of-the-season 70-percent-off deals, which is where I got my most recent bikini for one dollar.

I daresay that anyone who sees me walking down the street would say that I am well-dressed in flattering clothes in current or classic styles.

Fun

Similarly, my friends and I often see how much fun we can have without spending much money. Some recent examples: I swam under a full moon in the Gulf of Mexico with my friend Blake while we laughed and talked about philosophy. Friday, my friend Tommy and I will walk through the pumpkins at the nearby farmer’s market and visit our state museum next door. My friend Laura and I cooked a meal together and watched a movie that I checked out from the library, and I’m planning a trip to visit my sister soon. All of these are inexpensive or free and they’re fun and memorable times. That’s not to say that more expensive things can’t be great, too, but they’re not absolutely necessary and can be treated as an occasional splurge.

Food

I rarely eat at restaurants (unless it’s a special occasion), and I enjoy cooking at home. I grew up on fresh fruits and vegetables that we grew ourselves, so I’ve continued that simple lifestyle into my adulthood. I thrive on a healthy diet of soups and similar foods, the ingredients for which I buy on sale at the grocery store or grow myself.

You may not think you can grow your own food in the city, but I’ve got planters on my balcony where I grow tomatoes, peppers and herbs. I trade these with nearby friends, who supply me with fruit, vegetables, herbs, etc. My close friend Tommy has a large enough yard for a substantial garden. I supply my years of gardening and food preservation experience, while he supplies the land. We both supply seeds, plants, and labor, and as a result, we get home-grown produce and home-canned soups, sauces, salsa, etc. It’s quite satisfying and fun. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Americans tend to eat much more than they need. If you are overweight, you can train yourself to eat less food. Once you get used to it, it’s not that hard, and the results in your health will be immediate.

My two most important tips to save money on food: 1) Prepare simple meals at home and 2) Eat less.

Vices

I do not smoke, drink, use drugs, gamble, etc. A wholesome life and a frugal life are closely interconnected. All of these things are bad for your health and/or wellbeing, so you can improve your life while you improve your finances. I also do not own a television, although I am required to have wifi for work and I do occasionally watch movies on the internet.

I realize that all of this makes me sound odd and repressed, but I promise that I’m a light-hearted, spirited person, and I spend my time laughing and having satisfying conversations with my friends, pursuing my many interests, volunteering, dancing, exploring, playing with my dog, thinking, traveling, reading, walking in the woods, taking photos of birds and mushrooms, doing yoga, and in general as my good friend Marshall Mahone says, getting my kicks on the straight and narrow!

That’s the difference: If you see the frugal path as one of white-knuckled deprivation, you won’t follow it, but if you view it as a fun choice and an interesting puzzle to be solved, you will.

The locus of control

One of my greatest frustrations is this: Whenever I make a positive statement, someone often tries to shoot it down—and they do so by arguing from the position that things are awful for them, that they’re unlucky and powerless, and that there’s nothing they can do to change things.

This astonishes me. I don’t understand why anyone would choose to believe that positive change is impossible. I suppose it’s a defense mechanism, because it’s safer to fail to try than to try and then fail.

Whatever the reason, I urge you to break this catastrophic self-defeating habit if you’ve got it. Do whatever it takes, because it will change everything for you. To change your perspective, it’s helpful to consider a concept that psychologists call the “locus of control.”

If you’ve got an internal locus of control, you believe that most things are your responsibility, while those with an external local of control believe that most things that happen to them are the result of outside factors. For example, a person who wants to be thinner might say “I can’t lose weight because I’ve got no time to cook, I drive by several fast food restaurants on my way home from work, and I’ve got no money to join a gym.” A person in the same situation who’s got an internal locus of control will say, “I’m not losing weight because I’m eating too many calories. I’m not making time to cook, I’m driving by fast food restaurants and I’m not exercising self-control when I stop at them, and I’m making excuses for failing to exercise.”

Why is this self-blame game the better choice? If you acknowledge that a problem is your responsibility, then you accept that you’ve got the power to change it. And what power that is!

The above dieter with an external locus of control will continue to practice bad habits and become unhealthier, while the dieter with an internal locus is much more likely to make time to cook, take a different route home (or bike or walk!), and find a way to get some exercise. Hopeless is instantly transformed into hopeful.

Even people in difficult, apparently hopeless situations have got SOME control. I’ve been in those situations many times, but I was able to turn things around by wielding whatever power I had, meager though it may have been.

The best way to change your perspective here is to develop a new habit. Whenever you find yourself thinking a negative thought, instantly reframe it into a positive thought. For example, “I can’t save money because my salary is too low” might become “I’m not saving money in part because I’m not making enough money. I’ll talk to my boss about how I might change that, by taking on extra responsibilities or signing up for additional training.”

At first, you’ll need to do this a thousand times a day, but your thinking will change if you stick with it. Before long, it’s a habit, and then it’s who you are!

Less is less

If you spend any amount of time in thrift stores, you’ll be stunned at the sheer volume of stuff that Americans buy but never use. Holiday stuff, decorating stuff, clothes that don’t fit, so much stuff! The industry group Self Storage Association tells us that one in ten Americans rents offsite storage, supporting more than 50,000 storage facilities with yearly revenues of $38 billion.

Nobody needs to tell you that we all own too much stuff, though. If you’re like most Americans, you may not be able to park your car in your garage, and your closets are filled with clothes you don’t wear.

This means that you bought all of that stuff, and perhaps you paid for it with a credit card on which you paid interest.

A better way is to adopt a minimalist approach: No matter how many outfits you’ve got, you likely wear the same few garments day after day. You may pay for hundreds of television channels but watch only three. Your house may have rooms that you see even less frequently than the gym where you’ve got a membership but don’t visit.

Here’s a radical idea that you’ll find surprisingly easy: Cut all of it out. You can live in a smaller space, get rid of the TV entirely, stop paying for memberships and subscriptions you don’t use, and commit to owning a few garments and shoes that are high-quality in classic styles.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on items they do not need and seldom use. Much of this is bought with a credit card, which means that they’re paying interest on it, too.

We’re bombarded with messages that tell us that we’re lacking and that we’ll be happier if we buy more products. This is false, and we all know it. With a little mindfulness, we can stop buying into it.

All debt is bad debt

If you cannot afford to pay cash for it upfront, you cannot afford it.

Now, some bad debt is worse than other bad debt, but debt should generally be viewed as dangerous and should be entered into with great care if at all.

Mortgage debt

If you’re committed to live in a certain place for five years or more and the housing market and mortgage rates are favorable, it makes sense to buy a home. A home can be a good investment (but isn’t always), and you’ve got to live somewhere. Not many people can amass $250,000ish in cash in a few years’ time, so most home buyers must go into debt to buy a house. It can pay for itself and even provide a little retirement income, but even so, this debt is still only “OK” debt and should be considered with skepticism.

Because it’s such a vast topic, I won’t spend a lot of time on home ownership. My philosophy is this: You can live in a smaller home than you think. The smaller the home, the cheaper to buy, heat, cool, maintain, insure, etc. I try to live in the smallest space possible, and I always find that I’ve got plenty of space. There’s no need to have a formal dining room if you serve two meals per year there, and why have spare bedrooms if you seldom have house guests? In short, I try to consider my daily needs rather than my occasional inconveniences. If you de-clutter, you’ll have all the space you need.

If you’re wondering whether it’s better to rent or to buy, start with this article and calculator from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html?abt=0002&abg=1

Student loans

I am often surprised when people describe student loan debt as “an investment in yourself” or even “an investment in your future.” This is a calamitous overgeneralization. In fact, student loan debt can be very bad for some people and acceptable for others.

Take me for instance. I had a generous merit-based scholarship to law school. Plus, I had saved some money prior to attending, lived like a pauper during, finished a semester early, and worked as much as I could through school. Still, I had to take out $50,000 in student loans to cover the exorbitant price of tuition, fees, books, living expenses (again, pauper-level), and time away from a full-time job to attend school and study for the bar for three years. I suffered from incredible anxiety over this debt the entire time I was amassing it, but in my case, it was the right thing to do. My first job out of law school paid exactly twice what my top salary was before I went to law school. Plus, becoming a lawyer changed my life in every way. It is hands-down the best decision I’ve ever made. I cannot imagine my life without it, and it would have been a grave mistake not to do it. After law school, I worked extra document-review jobs and dumped every spare dollar on the principle and paid off my loans in no time. All’s well that ends well, but I am the exception.

On the other end of the spectrum, we’re bombarded with horror stories featuring a hapless student that took out hundreds of thousands in debt, has deferred payments, and now owes a king’s ransom for a relatively “useless” degree. Here’s the latest one I’ve seen, and it’s a doozy: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-meru-has-1-million-in-student-loans-how-did-that-happen-1527252975

Worse still are the for-profit colleges that allow students to rack up thousands of dollars in debt while awarding truly fraudulent degrees that don’t allow the student to get a job in his or her field at all.

One helpful resource comes from the Department of Education. This material discusses the true cost of a college education and rates various colleges and degrees by their “gainful employment” potential. In other words, will the cost of the degree pay for itself? Start here, but browse the other pages for related information, too: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/data-center/school/ge

Because of my experience, I am not one of those people who coldly advises people to avoid college if you can’t pay upfront or to get a degree that you don’t really want in the hopes that you’ll be able to get a well-paying job. If you don’t want to be a chemical engineer or a registered nurse and you lack the aptitude, you won’t be successful no matter what the jobs pay. This is poor advice disguised as sound advice.

So what do you do? I think you may be forced to go into some student loan debt in some cases. I think it’s wise to mitigate this by finding creative ways to pay for college. Seek work-study programs, choose a cheaper but good quality college, go to junior college the first two years, try to get a scholarship, etc. You may choose to join the military or agree to work in an underprivileged area once you earn your degree. Of course, you’ll have a job to help with costs. Perhaps you’ll move to a state that pays for college for its residents who meet certain requirements, such as Georgia or Tennessee. One woman I met sold her eggs to pay for college, and I suppose men sell sperm. (Your more g-rated pal Robin Kathleen sold her blood plasma to help pay for law school. I drew stares and snickers from my fellow donors, because I was the only person reading a massive Evidence text as I lay pumping. As my uncle used to say, when you’re poor, you’ve gotta be tough. This was one of those times.)

For some inspiration, this fellow paid off nearly $100,000 in Harvard MBA debt in seven months. It’s one man’s anecdotal experience, but it’s worth reading for inspiration as he blogs in detail about his various sacrifices and creative yet legal moneymaking ideas. https://nomoreharvarddebt.com/2011/08/

This goes against all conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea: Don’t go to college at all. As my friend Tim says, if you don’t think it’s worth the money, don’t spend money on it. If you don’t want to go to college for a specific reason, why do it? Go to technical school instead, or start your own business. This is an interesting interview with a CEO who embraces this philosophy and can get you thinking about this radical idea: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/07/interview-with-a-ceo-ridiculous-student-loans-vs-the-future-of-education/

While I’m a big believer in education, a formal college education is not for everyone. Some of the most intelligent, intellectually curious people I know did not go to college because they love to read, explore, and talk about ideas, while some of the most closed-minded people I know did go to college.

Credit card debt

This is always bad debt… pretty much the worst debt and can be fairly classified at the bottom of the debt cesspool with payday loans and car title loans and other gosh-awful ideas.

I’ve got a credit card, and I use it for convenience, but I pay off the balance every month and absolutely no one should ever do otherwise for any reason whatsoever. If you have credit card debt, you cannot afford whatever you’re buying with the credit card and should consider getting rid of the card entirely.

The most recent data from the Federal Reserve show that Americans now carry about $1 trillion in credit card debt at any given time, with $687 billion carried over month-to-month. Experian calculates the average credit card debt at $6,348, on which consumers pay an average annual percentage rate (APR) of 15.54, paying $104 billion in interest and fees, an increase of 35 percent over the past five years. This does not include store credit cards.

That sounds untenable—because it is. It may be easier to think of it this way: If you buy a Nintendo Switch at Target for $300.00 on a credit card with an APR of 15.54 and pay only the minimum payment, it will take you 24 months to pay for the Switch, which has cost you not $300.00 but nearly $350 including interest. This means that you’re paying much more than you thought, and you’re still paying for an item long after it’s obsolete. This is madness.

Speaking of minimum payments, if you pay only the minimum payment, you may be falling behind rather than paying off your debt. For example, if you charge $1,500 on a card with 18 percent APR and pay only the minimum payment (about $37 per month) without ever charging another penny, it will take you more than 13 years to pay the balance, which is the original $1,500 plus $1,792.52 in interest—more than the amount you charged. Many personal finance sites suggest paying the minimum balance plus $10 per month. I disagree. You should instead pretend that you are on fire and must do whatever it takes to put out the fire before it consumes you. Sell things. Sell everything! Get a second job. Rent out spare bedrooms. I’m dead serious. Do whatever it takes.

Bankrate.com has a series of helpful calculators that will help you pay down your debt, including this one that gives a sobering look at the true cost of paying the minimum payment: https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/managing-debt/minimum-payment-calculator.aspx

Car loans

For parts of my adult life, I haven’t had a car at all. I walked, biked, and occasionally took public transportation everywhere. This is much easier than you think. The comedian Steven Wright joked that everything is within walking distance if you’ve got the time.

I own a car now, however, because it makes sense for me. Most people probably find a car necessary, but I still think you should consider doing without. Cars are more expensive than you realize when you factor in the cost of the car, repairs and maintenance, insurance, tax, tag, title, inspections, etc., and we’re living in the age of ride-sharing and other innovations. Just think about it. If you’re in serious financial trouble, this may be one extreme idea to consider.

If you find that need a car, you should try to save up the cash to buy one outright. If you cannot afford to do this, it’s a sign that you cannot afford the car you want. The good news is: The car you want is far more expensive than the car you need. The Dodge Ram pickup is one of the top-selling vehicles now, with its base price tag of $32,000, towing capacity of 7,250 pounds and gas mileage of 16 mpg in the city. I regularly see these idling in traffic, not towing or hauling anything at all. Less is more.

Here’s how I buy a car: I research like a madwoman. I find out which cars are the most reliable and get the best gas mileage. I also briefly consider which cars hold their resale value, although I usually drive a car for many years so I don’t give this factor much weight. Once I’ve chosen the model, I start looking for cars. I buy used cars that are two or three years old and are semi-low mileage. This way, I’m getting a fairly new car while someone else has paid the depreciation. Now that I’ve got a very specific type of car in mind, I locate the used cars in my area that meet this description. Perhaps I’ll consult AutoTrader, Craigslist, CarMax, etc., although this changes from year to year and from region to region. Your sources will vary widely, but look around. Now, it’s time to shop and haggle. Because I’m paying cash, I can haggle with private sellers and see where that gets me. To be honest, I’d rather take a beating than do the shopping and haggling part of this process, but I tell myself that a few hours of agony result in years of savings, so I grin and bear it.

I’ll confess that I financed the car I’ve got now. I could have paid cash for it, but I got a really good rate on a car loan that was much lower than the returns I was getting on my investments, so I financed it. That’s the only reason I’d finance a car, other than desperation.

Earning money

I deeply enjoy earning money. It has always given me a feeling of self-worth and satisfaction.

Because everyone’s situation is different, it doesn’t make sense to go into detail with career advice.

Two things I’ve observed over the years: 1) Most people work hard, so if you’re going to be working hard, you should try to be paid as much as you can. That’s one reason I became a lawyer, and I’m not shy about saying it. I wanted a steady job that fit my interests and abilities and paid well with good benefits. When I was visiting my law school to decide whether to accept the scholarship offer, I emerged from my hotel shower and switched on the TV. The want ads scrolled on the local cable channel, and the city was offering an assistant city attorney position with a rather impressive salary and benefits. As I stood there, nude and dripping on the carpet, I mentally put that salary possibility on the “plus” side of the decision tree. I believe you should work hard and earn your money honestly, but you should always know your worth and get it. 2) Unless you’ve got a solid idea for a business, you can’t beat the power of a steady wage. I’ll never forget when I got my first real paycheck. It was $52, but I couldn’t believe how much it could buy! Many people are always chasing entrepreneurial schemes, but for my money, it’s hard to beat a weekly paycheck with benefits.

I always diversify by having an additional stream of income on the side (now, it's writing and running my law practice), but my day job is my focus.

Investments

As with career advice, this is too large and too individual a topic to go into detail here, but I’ve got a few rules that I live by:

1) Only invest in things you understand.

2) It is probably not necessary to get someone else to help you invest unless you’re very wealthy or have some other special circumstances.

3) It’s also not necessary to move money around very much or to constantly check on it. I pick a simple investment strategy, set it and forget it. Day trading, penny stocks and similar schemes are foolish.

4) You can safely disregard much of the advice of popular personal finance gurus. Much of what they say can be helpful, but they are unable to tailor their advice to individual circumstances, which renders their generalizations useless. For example, they give rather tame advice when a more radical approach might be in order for folks who are in financial peril (such as the above-mentioned “pay $10 more than the minimum monthly payment” advice that’s so prevalent).

5) I use vanilla tools such as no-load mutual index fund (I recommend Vanguard). I do not invest in fads such as gold, bitcoin, or other such frauds. When our neighbors bought emus and told us that they would be millionaires because emu oil, meat, and eggs would become very valuable, my dad wryly commented that, in the 1950s, it was chinchillas. Every year, we’re told that the financial markets and government are in danger of becoming unstable and we need to put our money in whatever the person is selling. Whenever someone is trying to get me to invest in something, I remember the chinchilla.

6) Don’t give your money to other people, such as a boyfriend, girlfriend, or adult child. If you are vulnerable to this pressure, that’s all the more reason to put your savings into somewhat inaccessible places (such as that mutual fund), which will give you a cooling-off period to remind yourself to say no.

The “treat yourself” myth

Probably once a week, someone in my life wonders whether I’m depriving myself because I don’t spend money on certain things.

The opposite is true. I feel less deprived and more “pampered” because I know that, if I lost my job tomorrow, I could live from my savings for several years. I don’t lose a wink of sleep due to financial concerns.

Plus, I enjoy learning how to do things for myself and then doing them! I am quite adept at giving myself artful pedicures that rival any I could get at the nail salon, and I’ve performed some fairly advanced repairs by following free internet resources.

Still, I am quite girly and I do enjoy a few luxuries. As with everything else, they’re treats rather than daily occurrences. The best things in life are free.

To me, there is no greater luxury than the certainty that I can take care of myself.