It isn't in our culture. I do think it's possible and preferable but have a hard time with it somehow being God's will.
The thing that always bothered me about TWI's policy was they never said HOW to do it. So much for being a "how-to" ministry. Although I stopped hearing that line quite a while before I left. It became more of a "Have-to" ministry.
You mean you wern't around for the patent Berryswill "how to own a home without ownin' no one nuttin' nohow"? Oh it was genius, as was he (LOL). You see instead of buying a house and paying a mortgage of $1200.00, you rent a POS apartment for 600 (where? in the hood) and then pay yourself 600. Put that in a 3% savings account and watch the money multiply!!!! Now as your income and living expenses increase, you increase your savings contribution. All the while you eat PB&J and never buy new clothes or a desent car again! YEA! Before you know it you're 80 years old and you got yerself a house, FREE AND CLEAR, YEEE HA!!!!
Of course he never really gave too many details like the projected increase in housing costs or the fact that in 80 years the only house you will be able to afford is an 80 year old shack with a dirt floor. Or, of course, all the money you would have lost by renting instead of buying a house now.
Well, its a spuritual thang, I wouldn't understand.
Oh then there is the homesteading idea which is still in a family member of mine's mind. (mine's mind? what tha?) ANyway. You see you save up and buy a little plot not too far from the city or fellerships but not so close that you can't afford it. Then you take everything fyou can from the land (and you'll need to) to build a little meager home out of logs or hay or dirt or trash from the landfill your plot is on.
Now that would be fun but not very realistic. Plus you wouldn't have time to run a "home based Bible fellowship" or a branch or area or limb for that matter, because you'd be to busy patching your roof with whatever twigs, branches, and limbs that blew on to your now barren property. (lol what a metaphor for what TWI is doing right now) But hey, it's a cool idea for those that don't have anything else to do with their life.
As far as the ACS, I would be pisted if I had to go to another one of those yawns. Of course, seeing friends might make it feel like it was worth it. Then again if I was allowed to have close friends back home in the first place I wouldn't need to pay to see diaspera friends. Ah freedom, what a nice feeling!
My old fellowship coordinator had a plan for buying a house without (supposedly) going into debt:
A) Find someone who is selling a house.
B) Convince that person to make you a partner in the ownership of the house. For example, if the house is worth $100,000, and you can come up with $10,000, the $10 thou makes you a 10% partner in the house. You pay 10% of the taxes, repairs, etc. If you rent it out, you get 10% of the rent
C) As you make more payments, you own a greater percentage of the house. If you stop making payments, your share never increases.
Of course the plan is to eventually own the whole house.
The guy who preached this plan owned his own house free and clear. However, he claimed that he was buying it in this manner from his parents. His parents died before the deal progressed very far and he inherited it outright.
I can see several holes in this plan, other than that I never heard of anyone actually doing it. Anybody else see 'em?
I do not understand this really the no debt thing and owning a house thing, it is supposed that all of the property twi owned the weirwilles own was paid for in cash money with no debt?
It may have been possible in the 80's whe the minstry was booming with givers but what about his college tutition or the farm or some of the first grounds did they really pay for everything they ever bought in cash up front.
I must have made some excuse, oops, I mean been ill that day. ;)--> How credible is it if that person has never actually done it themselves?!
And I never met a single corpse person who had.
Come to think of it, Craig started this but never had a real career before TWI or paid cash for a house. (That I know of) We are the Way Irrational. We're a "Have-To" ministry. ;)-->
I'd like to see just one detailed example of someone in TWI who has paid cash for a house. Not some rich focker, but someone in a middle class working situation with kids and no inheritance or equity from a previously wise decision to buy a home. Someone who basically started from scratch - zip/zilch/nada - regarding savings for a home.
mj - the TWIts never said that they didn't have mortgages or debt on the property, but they say that times are a different and just b/c the TWIts at hq did it that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. They also say that vee pee pee tore up the mortgage when they paid it off and said they would never ever ever go into debt again.
They also went into debt at one time to make the payroll, I think, but they justified it because they had those valuable gold coins in the bank and could have cashed those in to pay their bills if they really had to.
Yeah, and I have a house I can sell to pay off my mortgage if I really have to. ;)-->
Something that might qualify for Belle's "start from scratch" home buying could be borrowing from one's 401K and paying it back. You've earned all the money in there, to begin with; and you pay YOURSELF back, with interest.
I paid cash for my first home. I wasn't "rich," but I had a decent inheritance from my grandmother. And, I live on the Texas coast, where it's possible to buy decent houses for less than the national debt!
When I married, we needed a larger home for when my wife's four kids would come to visit. Unfortunately, my house didn't sell before we had to move, so I rented the house and took a > mortgage. And was I pleased to see that I'd probably knocked about $100 off the principal after a year! My tenant's loan was finally approved, so when he bought my old house, I took the proceeds, added a 401K loan to cover the difference, and paid off the mortgage. I paid myself 8% for five years, which was actually a better return than the funds my 401K was in, anyway. Now I'm all paid up. Company stock purchases have allowed me to buy new cars every few years, too. :)-->
All you folks living in Chicago and New York and San Francisco, MOVE HERE!
I do not understand this really the no debt thing and owning a house thing, it is supposed that all of the property twi owned the weirwilles own was paid for in cash money with no debt?
It may have been possible in the 80's whe the minstry was booming with givers but what about his college tutition or the farm or some of the first grounds did they really pay for everything they ever bought in cash up front.
that is incredible. if it is true .
Weirwille came from a pretty well off family. I doubt if they were rich, but very comfortable. I don't think it would have been a problem back then to put him through college debt free - they probably didn't even have student loans back then. He inherited the farm so that was debt free.
And at the peak of the way they were bringing in probably $50 million a year and didn't have much in the way of expenses because they didn't pay the staff very much. So they had plenty of cash do to what they wanted.
I do remember when they bought Emporia, they took out a mortgage on "the farm." Weirwille made out like this was such a big deal to have this mortgage but worth it because of the opportunity to own the college. I don't think he was used to mortaging things.
And when the mortgage was paid off - very shortly, like a couple years if not sooner - he cut up the document in the lunch room one day and we all got a piece to keep.
I know the idea of debt being ungodly was started when vpw was running the show. I remember having discussions about it in what would have been 1977 or 78.
But this is an example (and you'll find lots) where he said something that had little relation to how he lived his life - he may not have even believed it. It wasn't anything soundly researched (even according to vpw's dubious standards of the term) yet it was taken by him and others and used to enslave people. Much of this happened after he died but there was enough of it going on while he was still running the joint - and then for a while after he stepped down but hadn't died yet.
So he could have very well stepped in and said "Hey, this is getting out of hand, this isn't what I meant, this needs more study" but he never did. Just never cared to do anything about how his words didn't match us with his own life, or how they were used to hurt others.
I remember debt being handled at one time like anything else- use it wisely. Use the credit card, just pay it off and avoid killer interest rates. I wonder where common sense went..
I was going to say he put it up somewhere a little more explicit, but I felt a little nice that day. Rosie on the other hand.. that would explain a lot.
quote: I'd like to see just one detailed example of someone in TWI who has paid cash for a house. Not some rich focker, but someone in a middle class working situation with kids and no inheritance or equity from a previously wise decision to buy a home. Someone who basically started from scratch - zip/zilch/nada - regarding savings for a home.
Belle,
Very reasonable. To my knowledge, the two people I knew personally in TWI who bought houses did so without any real "insight" from TWI. I wanted to do it too but got no help at all from the TWIts in charge. So much for being a can-do ministry. :(-->
One person not in TWI told me more about what he did. Basically, worked hard in school, got good grades, a good job and lived at home after college for a few years to save money. When he and his wife got married, they had a big head start. Not sure how much though.
Your non-TWIt friend wouldn't have held onto that savings very long if he had ended up getting involved, probably. And then he would have been in the same boat with the rest of us.
I asked repeatedly how they could ask us to do something they couldn't tell us HOW to do and got some b.s. drivel.
As of about a year ago, they still weren't telling people HOW to do what they required them to do. HOW they can call themselves a "how to" ministry is beyond me. They must be certifiably insane. (I know WE think they are, but I mean professional opinion on their sanity)
I guess whether or not you could actually pay cash for a house would depend on the home values in your area and what your income was.
I have no idea what houses go for these days. But let's say you want to get a small, two-bedroom for $50,000. Let's further say that you have an income of $30,000 per year. How much of that income could you put away as savings. Let's assume that you can sock away 10% (not bad, considering that you are already giving 10%+ to TWI), so that's $3,000/year.
So in seventeen years you have put aside a little over the $50,000 you need.
Plug in whatever income level or home valuation that you want, but that's a long time to be saving. In the meantime what are you doing for a place to live? Renting!
In those seventeen years hopefully your income will rise, but the cost of buying a home will as well.
While getting a good job, saving your money, living with your parents etc are all good advice, it still takes time to do all of this, and most non-TWI financial advisors would say that you are making better use of your money to take out a mortgage than to try to save it all up front.
TWI and its leaders didn't try to give advice on how to do it because they didn't know how! They assumed that a mortgage was prohibited by God, so therefore owning a home must be possible if God's word is true
I think it's interesting that Wishing For Freedom's report about the Advanced Class Special mentioned that the attendence was reduced by roughly half---and that debt was probably the primary reason. I don't know if that's true, but I do very stongly believe that the zero debt policy with have to be abandoned eventually.
They are obviously trying to figure out how to revive the failing ministry and infuse it with new devoutees (just take a look at that slick info-mercial they filmed and had aired on MSNBC). In order to do this, they are going to have become more appealing to the average joe on the streets, who has not been subject to The Way's brainwashing like many of its current followers. The truth of the matter is that Joe Average is simply NOT
(better slow down, so my fat fingers don't hit the tab key). Joe Average WILL NOT allow TWI to dictate how he spends his money. Most of the demographic that they are targeting are probably homeowners with a mortgage. And NO WAY are these people going to sell their homes to meet a "Church's" class enrollment criteria.
I think Rosy and Co. can see the writing on the wall. They see their stalwart followers rapidly aging, and their children are not necessarily remaining faithful after they escape from beneath the thumbs of Mom and Dad. TWI will need new blood if they have any hope of not drying up and blowing away. The zero debt policy is a vestage of the old regime that they simply cannot afford to hold onto. It's only a matter of time before they'll have to silently drop it.
But then there's always this place. They will have to wait for the demise of the internet (ha!) or for us folks to die off or forget how to use the computer. Not likely to happen for quite a while. Rosie and crew will be long gone by then..
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JustThinking
Belle,
It isn't in our culture. I do think it's possible and preferable but have a hard time with it somehow being God's will.
The thing that always bothered me about TWI's policy was they never said HOW to do it. So much for being a "how-to" ministry. Although I stopped hearing that line quite a while before I left. It became more of a "Have-to" ministry.
JT
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frank123lol
In regaurds to the have to,,,
It became It is our command you will obey
What I was told was.. It was like waving my private parts in Gods face if I bought a house.
Well they are full of it.
It has been a riot fixing this old house
One comment was from a neighbor"You took the worst house on the street and turned it into the
best one"
Well all,God is still on the throne
Love to all and to all a good night.
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lindyhopper
~~~~~shakin' my bacon~~~~~~
Sorry, God, I have a mortgage now.
JT,
You mean you wern't around for the patent Berryswill "how to own a home without ownin' no one nuttin' nohow"? Oh it was genius, as was he (LOL). You see instead of buying a house and paying a mortgage of $1200.00, you rent a POS apartment for 600 (where? in the hood) and then pay yourself 600. Put that in a 3% savings account and watch the money multiply!!!! Now as your income and living expenses increase, you increase your savings contribution. All the while you eat PB&J and never buy new clothes or a desent car again! YEA! Before you know it you're 80 years old and you got yerself a house, FREE AND CLEAR, YEEE HA!!!!
Of course he never really gave too many details like the projected increase in housing costs or the fact that in 80 years the only house you will be able to afford is an 80 year old shack with a dirt floor. Or, of course, all the money you would have lost by renting instead of buying a house now.
Well, its a spuritual thang, I wouldn't understand.
Oh then there is the homesteading idea which is still in a family member of mine's mind. (mine's mind? what tha?) ANyway. You see you save up and buy a little plot not too far from the city or fellerships but not so close that you can't afford it. Then you take everything fyou can from the land (and you'll need to) to build a little meager home out of logs or hay or dirt or trash from the landfill your plot is on.
Now that would be fun but not very realistic. Plus you wouldn't have time to run a "home based Bible fellowship" or a branch or area or limb for that matter, because you'd be to busy patching your roof with whatever twigs, branches, and limbs that blew on to your now barren property. (lol what a metaphor for what TWI is doing right now) But hey, it's a cool idea for those that don't have anything else to do with their life.
As far as the ACS, I would be pisted if I had to go to another one of those yawns. Of course, seeing friends might make it feel like it was worth it. Then again if I was allowed to have close friends back home in the first place I wouldn't need to pay to see diaspera friends. Ah freedom, what a nice feeling!
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Oakspear
My old fellowship coordinator had a plan for buying a house without (supposedly) going into debt:
A) Find someone who is selling a house.
B) Convince that person to make you a partner in the ownership of the house. For example, if the house is worth $100,000, and you can come up with $10,000, the $10 thou makes you a 10% partner in the house. You pay 10% of the taxes, repairs, etc. If you rent it out, you get 10% of the rent
C) As you make more payments, you own a greater percentage of the house. If you stop making payments, your share never increases.
Of course the plan is to eventually own the whole house.
The guy who preached this plan owned his own house free and clear. However, he claimed that he was buying it in this manner from his parents. His parents died before the deal progressed very far and he inherited it outright.
I can see several holes in this plan, other than that I never heard of anyone actually doing it. Anybody else see 'em?
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mj412
I do not understand this really the no debt thing and owning a house thing, it is supposed that all of the property twi owned the weirwilles own was paid for in cash money with no debt?
It may have been possible in the 80's whe the minstry was booming with givers but what about his college tutition or the farm or some of the first grounds did they really pay for everything they ever bought in cash up front.
that is incredible. if it is true .
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JustThinking
Lindy,
I must have made some excuse, oops, I mean been ill that day.
;)--> How credible is it if that person has never actually done it themselves?!
And I never met a single corpse person who had.
Come to think of it, Craig started this but never had a real career before TWI or paid cash for a house. (That I know of) We are the Way Irrational. We're a "Have-To" ministry.
;)-->
JT
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Belle
I'd like to see just one detailed example of someone in TWI who has paid cash for a house. Not some rich focker, but someone in a middle class working situation with kids and no inheritance or equity from a previously wise decision to buy a home. Someone who basically started from scratch - zip/zilch/nada - regarding savings for a home.
mj - the TWIts never said that they didn't have mortgages or debt on the property, but they say that times are a different and just b/c the TWIts at hq did it that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. They also say that vee pee pee tore up the mortgage when they paid it off and said they would never ever ever go into debt again.
They also went into debt at one time to make the payroll, I think, but they justified it because they had those valuable gold coins in the bank and could have cashed those in to pay their bills if they really had to.
Yeah, and I have a house I can sell to pay off my mortgage if I really have to.
;)-->
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GeorgeStGeorge
Something that might qualify for Belle's "start from scratch" home buying could be borrowing from one's 401K and paying it back. You've earned all the money in there, to begin with; and you pay YOURSELF back, with interest.
I paid cash for my first home. I wasn't "rich," but I had a decent inheritance from my grandmother. And, I live on the Texas coast, where it's possible to buy decent houses for less than the national debt!
When I married, we needed a larger home for when my wife's four kids would come to visit. Unfortunately, my house didn't sell before we had to move, so I rented the house and took a > mortgage. And was I pleased to see that I'd probably knocked about $100 off the principal after a year!
My tenant's loan was finally approved, so when he bought my old house, I took the proceeds, added a 401K loan to cover the difference, and paid off the mortgage. I paid myself 8% for five years, which was actually a better return than the funds my 401K was in, anyway. Now I'm all paid up. Company stock purchases have allowed me to buy new cars every few years, too. 
:)-->
All you folks living in Chicago and New York and San Francisco, MOVE HERE!
George
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My3Cents
Weirwille came from a pretty well off family. I doubt if they were rich, but very comfortable. I don't think it would have been a problem back then to put him through college debt free - they probably didn't even have student loans back then. He inherited the farm so that was debt free.
And at the peak of the way they were bringing in probably $50 million a year and didn't have much in the way of expenses because they didn't pay the staff very much. So they had plenty of cash do to what they wanted.
I do remember when they bought Emporia, they took out a mortgage on "the farm." Weirwille made out like this was such a big deal to have this mortgage but worth it because of the opportunity to own the college. I don't think he was used to mortaging things.
And when the mortgage was paid off - very shortly, like a couple years if not sooner - he cut up the document in the lunch room one day and we all got a piece to keep.
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Oakspear
Harry Wierwille's autobio is full of examples of taking out loans to buy things
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My3Cents
I know the idea of debt being ungodly was started when vpw was running the show. I remember having discussions about it in what would have been 1977 or 78.
But this is an example (and you'll find lots) where he said something that had little relation to how he lived his life - he may not have even believed it. It wasn't anything soundly researched (even according to vpw's dubious standards of the term) yet it was taken by him and others and used to enslave people. Much of this happened after he died but there was enough of it going on while he was still running the joint - and then for a while after he stepped down but hadn't died yet.
So he could have very well stepped in and said "Hey, this is getting out of hand, this isn't what I meant, this needs more study" but he never did. Just never cared to do anything about how his words didn't match us with his own life, or how they were used to hurt others.
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Ham
I remember debt being handled at one time like anything else- use it wisely. Use the credit card, just pay it off and avoid killer interest rates. I wonder where common sense went..
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Belle
Mr H, it died with Uncle Harry. His saying, according to his book, was that the Bible was just plain old horse sense.
vee pee pee and craiggers did a fabulous job of proving that saying wrong.
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Belle
Excellent information and insight, My3Cents. Thanks.
:)-->
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Ham
Belle, I have to agree with you. Funny how ole craigers turned from horse sense to listening to the rear end of the horse..
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My3Cents
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Ham
I was going to say he put it up somewhere a little more explicit, but I felt a little nice that day. Rosie on the other hand.. that would explain a lot.
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JustThinking
Belle,
Very reasonable. To my knowledge, the two people I knew personally in TWI who bought houses did so without any real "insight" from TWI. I wanted to do it too but got no help at all from the TWIts in charge. So much for being a can-do ministry.
:(-->
One person not in TWI told me more about what he did. Basically, worked hard in school, got good grades, a good job and lived at home after college for a few years to save money. When he and his wife got married, they had a big head start. Not sure how much though.
JT
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Belle
Your non-TWIt friend wouldn't have held onto that savings very long if he had ended up getting involved, probably. And then he would have been in the same boat with the rest of us.
I asked repeatedly how they could ask us to do something they couldn't tell us HOW to do and got some b.s. drivel.
As of about a year ago, they still weren't telling people HOW to do what they required them to do. HOW they can call themselves a "how to" ministry is beyond me. They must be certifiably insane. (I know WE think they are, but I mean professional opinion on their sanity)
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Oakspear
I guess whether or not you could actually pay cash for a house would depend on the home values in your area and what your income was.
I have no idea what houses go for these days. But let's say you want to get a small, two-bedroom for $50,000. Let's further say that you have an income of $30,000 per year. How much of that income could you put away as savings. Let's assume that you can sock away 10% (not bad, considering that you are already giving 10%+ to TWI), so that's $3,000/year.
So in seventeen years you have put aside a little over the $50,000 you need.
Plug in whatever income level or home valuation that you want, but that's a long time to be saving. In the meantime what are you doing for a place to live? Renting!
In those seventeen years hopefully your income will rise, but the cost of buying a home will as well.
While getting a good job, saving your money, living with your parents etc are all good advice, it still takes time to do all of this, and most non-TWI financial advisors would say that you are making better use of your money to take out a mortgage than to try to save it all up front.
TWI and its leaders didn't try to give advice on how to do it because they didn't know how! They assumed that a mortgage was prohibited by God, so therefore owning a home must be possible if God's word is true
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Cherished Child
I think it's interesting that Wishing For Freedom's report about the Advanced Class Special mentioned that the attendence was reduced by roughly half---and that debt was probably the primary reason. I don't know if that's true, but I do very stongly believe that the zero debt policy with have to be abandoned eventually.
They are obviously trying to figure out how to revive the failing ministry and infuse it with new devoutees (just take a look at that slick info-mercial they filmed and had aired on MSNBC). In order to do this, they are going to have become more appealing to the average joe on the streets, who has not been subject to The Way's brainwashing like many of its current followers. The truth of the matter is that Joe Average is simply NOT
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Cherished Child
(sorry---finger slipped and I accidently posted before I was finished...)
Now, getting back to what I was trying to say---Joe Average is simply NOT
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Cherished Child
(better slow down, so my fat fingers don't hit the tab key). Joe Average WILL NOT allow TWI to dictate how he spends his money. Most of the demographic that they are targeting are probably homeowners with a mortgage. And NO WAY are these people going to sell their homes to meet a "Church's" class enrollment criteria.
I think Rosy and Co. can see the writing on the wall. They see their stalwart followers rapidly aging, and their children are not necessarily remaining faithful after they escape from beneath the thumbs of Mom and Dad. TWI will need new blood if they have any hope of not drying up and blowing away. The zero debt policy is a vestage of the old regime that they simply cannot afford to hold onto. It's only a matter of time before they'll have to silently drop it.
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Ham
But then there's always this place. They will have to wait for the demise of the internet (ha!) or for us folks to die off or forget how to use the computer. Not likely to happen for quite a while. Rosie and crew will be long gone by then..
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