It was one of the hardest decisions you had to make.
In your mind, okay, I will let go of the house. I cannot pay it anymore. It makes no sense to pay for a steep mortgage when the value of the house has gone down by half. No sense. Everybody is doing it anyway. I should be fine.

You do it, sign the papers, let the bank foreclose and rest on your laurels.

Then while sitting on the living room of your new rented apartment, you get a bill, a huge tax bill because – guess what – you have made money on the foreclosure of your home. Money? But where is it?

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I remember some years ago, in one of her yearly visits to our homeland, my mother dragged me and my husband to the premiere destination for cheap finds.
We call it Divisoria.

Now, Divisoria is a shopping mecca, comparable maybe to the night markets of Thailand or the street-side shops of Hongkong, that is, equal in color, in confusion, in aroma, in the cacophony of sounds that makes it almost the modern Babylon – of people speaking in different tongues and gesturing wildly to alter the balance of power between the seller and the sellee. It is scary and alluring at the same time.

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Beginning October 10, 2009, YouWantToBeRich (YTBR) will be published in Asia, the Journal of Culture and Commerce, Southern California’s award-winning newspaper serving the Asian and Pacific Islander Community. Asia comes out weekly in San Diego and Los Angeles, California. Asia is also publishing digital and print editions of YTBR in Thailand and Malaysia.