This book is probably the first real estate/building/economic philosophy book that I’ve read in my short years that truly aligns with my own thinking. It has nothing to do with the TV nonsense of flipping homes, buying and selling foreclosures or short sales to get rich, or how to be a landlord in the city. Its greatest merit is the argument that we can live this life unchained to the typical work-a-day existence of mortgages, corporate ladder climbing and consumer/energy gluttony. This very merit, although a proven path even ten years ago, is untested in our current lousy and price-bloated economy. Roy’s main thrust is that we should avoid the death pledge of the mortgage at pretty much any cost-and here I agree. What this book really needs though, (indeed lacks) for me, are tangible case studies and numbers that come even close to the typical prices of anywhere else except the Upstate NY area where the author is familiar. I live in California, but I’ve also lived in Chicago and Denver. Prices in the West are often ten times the updated prices you find in Mortgage Free! The advantages that couples in the late 60s and early 70s had with open space, low prices, and inheritances, are unknown to me. For the first five years of my working life I made nearly the same wage as my father twenty five years before at the same age… except that everything costs ten, twenty times the prices of his day and the joke of unlimited growth of property values is coming to a rude end.

Despite these drawbacks, Mortgage Free! is well worth the money for its honest and sensible approach, clarity and style of the writing, and truthful, enlightened position on energy and economy. My determination to make it to those green mountain pastures in the Sierra Nevada has much deeper roots than this book alone…(and so should yours). So, you should buy Mortgage Free!, read it, and put its good message to work. Thanks Rob.
Rating: 5 / 5