Suze Orman

The expenses of maintenance, insurance going up, property taxes going up, having to replace a refrigerator, a water heater, all kinds of things that make owning a home quite expensive.

Plus, we now have to take into consideration the climate.

Things are happening throughout the United States.

I don't care how you feel about climate warming or climate colding or whatever's happening.

We now have more tornadoes, more hurricanes, more earthquakes.

San Francisco just had one than ever before.

So are you going to be able to be insured against natural disasters?

Look at what happened in California.

many of those homes are not insured.

Okay?

So please think about this.

If you can't afford a 15-year mortgage and you are in your 50s and your goal is to keep a home forever, I would probably say to you, all right, maybe you should continue renting.

If however, you just want to buy a home for the next 10 years and then you know you're going to sell or whatever, okay, you can do that if you want.

But I have not changed my opinion on home ownership.

I don't think at this point in time, it's absolutely as much as it cracks up to be.

Next question, KT.

I want all of you to listen and listen to me very closely.

When you have a debt that now has been charged off, right?

You, anybody, doesn't matter who, meaning you haven't paid for it for a number of years and the original creditor has just written it off as a bad debt.

It still stays on your credit report, however.