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Well, President Trump broke the Internet again with the craziest idea I've heard since Hines came out with every sauce. 14 sauces in one. Are you guys serious? You mixed a pickle ketchup with a curry ketchup with a mayo racha. We live in a society. We have rules, we have laws. Anyways, Trump posted this graphic on Truth Social, comparing himself to FDR and teasing a modern version of the 30 year mortgage. The 50 year mortgage. You heard that right? 50 year mortgage saved you an edit, editors. No need for slow mo. Ya boy can do it himself. No George. So what's this all about? Well, I guess it's a Hail Mary attempt to make homes more affordable and help buyers that are struggling with record prices and high interest rates. And what was the result of his post? Almost 3200 retruths, which I assume is the most viral post ever on Truth Social. So it turns out this all started at Mar a Lago when Bill, the new head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, showed up with a 3 by 5 poster board featuring the headline Great American Presidents, featuring a photo of FDR under the 30 year mortgage and a photo of Trump under 50 year mortgage. Ten minutes later, Trump posted it to Truth Social. And the reactions from across the Internet did not disappoint. Let's take a look at some of the best reactions, which one can only assume did not occur on Truth Social because I assume President Trump is the only one on there. Three year letterman said using my $2,000 stimulus check for the down payment on a 50 year mortgage. Stay mad, hater. Not Jerome Powell said boomers with 17 paid off properties watching you take a 50 year mortgage. Listen, hate all you want. I want to be them, whatever they're on. Give me some of that. And finally, the Babylon Bee, Dave Ramsey in critical condition after learning of the 50 year mortgage. Okay, the truth is Dave looks pretty good there. I don't know if it's the hospitalization, but he's lost a few in this photo. Looks a little buff even, but get well soon, Dave. We're pulling for you and the amount of people who sent me this. Guys, you the audacity to think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be the first one to send this to him. Rude. Bottom line, pretty much everyone on the Internet agrees this new development is coco loco. And while this outrageous idea is fun to joke about, the reality is that a lot of people are gonna get screwed if this winds up becoming a real thing. And that's because a 50 year mortgage has five, yes, five major red flags that we need to talk about, which is that 50 year mortgages don't actually make homes cheaper. You would think that spreading a home loan across an extra 20 years would drastically reduce your monthly payment. But when you crunch the numbers, that's not actually what happens. Let's say you took out a $400,000 loan on a 15 year fixed rate mortgage with a 5% interest rate. Well, your monthly payment would be $3,167. If you jump up to a 30 year mortgage with a 6% interest rate, your monthly payment would go to $2,398. Now here comes the crazy part. That same $400,000 loan on a 50 year mortgage with a 7% interest rate would give you a monthly payment of $2,406, about the same as the 30 year. So Riddle me this. How does that make homeownership more affordable? Donald, it's $8 more expensive to go with a 50 year. Now you might be wondering, how is this mathematically possible? Well, the answer to that question brings us to red flag number two. With a 50 year mortgage, it's a giant interest trap. When you add extra years to a mor, two things happen. First, the lender will charge a higher rate since they're taking on more risk. Something that all people touting 50 year mortgages as a way to save on monthly payments are simply ignoring. All the math has been, well, 6% on a 30 year, 6% on 50 year. That's not how it works. In reality, they're going to charge you more for that longer mortgage. And second, the interest has way more time to accumulate 20 years more, which grows the total you wind up paying over the life of the loan. Let's go back to our example of a $400,000 mortgage to see how that plays out over the life of that 15 year mortgage. At 5, you'll pay about 170,000 bucks total in interest. Now let's bump it up to 30 years of 6% and the total interest you pay is over $460,000. Now that sounds bad, but wait, there's more. With a 50 year loan at 7%, you'd pay over a million dollars in interest, over six times the interest you'd pay on a 15 year mortgage. Let me say that again for the people in the back. You will wind up paying over $1.4 million for a $400,000 loan, all for the privilege of being trapped in debt for half a century. And that brings us to red flag number three. 50 year mortgages turn home ownership into generational debt. The typical first time home buyer is now 40 years old. And a 40 year old taking on a 50 year mortgage would have to live until 90 just to pay off that loan. But chances are you'll be pushing daisies well before 90, since the average person only lives between 74 and 80. Which means that neither your spouse or your kids will even inherit a paid for house. They'll just inherit your poor financial decisions and probably your male pattern baldness. Sorry Brad. Now I don't know about you, but that's not the kind of legacy I want to leave. I want people to remember me for things that really matter. A well groomed coif that never went away stayed thick till the end. Thanks, Pop Pop. Red flag number four, you barely build equity. There are two primary reasons that home ownership is a good move financially. First, you stabilize the biggest line item in your budget. And second, you build equity with each monthly payment, which ultimately helps you build wealth because it adds to your net worth. 50 year mortgages basically wipe out that second perk. You see, because 50 year loans rack up so much interest, that's what most of your payments will cover for the first four decades of the loan. Get this, in the first year of a 50 year mortgage, at 7%, a mere 3% of your payment actually reduces what you owe on the home, the principal. The rest all goes to the bank. And you wouldn't pay more toward principal than interest until around year 41, almost at the very end of the loan's life. That is insane. And by the way, by year 40 or 41 you would think, wow, we must be almost done with this thing. Nope, you're not even halfway done paying off that loan by year 40. That is insane. And since the average homeowner sells after about 10 years, you'd likely move before ever crossing that line. That means you would spend over a decade making payments and walk away with little to no equity to show for it. Especially after closing costs and realtor fees. In practical terms, with a 50 year loan, you're just renting from the bank instead of a landlord. Except this time you're on the hook for replacing that roof, the H vac, and that smoke detector that you fixed with a hammer at 3:00am I get it. That thing is of the devil. Finally, our fifth red flag. The 50 year mortgage only benefits builders, banks and investors, not the American people. Here's why. If everyone suddenly qualifies for a bigger mortgage, sellers and builders will raise prices accordingly. Plus, banks earn interest for twice as long at a higher rate while having a majority stake in the value of your home. Good deal for them. And then you've got Wall street investors who will profit from decades of payments repackaged into mortgage backed securities. So you think you're buying a home, but what you're really buying is 50 years of cash flow for someone else to fund their dreams. And this isn't just me thinking this. Across the board, politicians are speaking out on this. Even Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said this on X. It will ultimately reward the banks, mortgage lenders and home builders while people pay far more in interest and die before they ever pay off their home. In debt, Forever in debt for life. And I think she's right. And I gotta say, when the person who blamed California wildfires on space lasers has become the voice of reason, you know, this country is officially off its rocker. What is happening? We are screwed. Now, I could go on all day about why the 50 year mortgage is completely insane, but I think I've sufficiently pooh poohed it at this point. At the same time though, I want to be sensitive to the reason this is even a conversation in the first place. Because the housing market is completely out of whack and millions of young people who would have been able to afford a home just a few years ago are now on the outside looking in. So what should we do about this housing crisis? What can we do? Well, I've got some ideas and I'll share them with you in just a second. But first, let's talk about solving another crisis. Having your personal data floating around the Internet. Because once it's out there, it can basically hang around forever getting bought and sold by spammers and scammers. And that's why I use Delete me, one of the sponsors of today's video, they're privacy experts. Find your info on data broker sites, delete it and keep it gone. And while you could try to do that yourself, it would take forever, maybe not 50 years. But Delete Me has already saved me over 108 hours compared to going on a bunch of websites and deleting all of it myself. And right now you can go to joindeleteme.com george and use code GEORGE for 20% off their annual plans. Or you can just use the link in the description below. And if you think 50 year mortgages sound crazy, that's probably because you believe having less debt is better than having more debt. Well, that means you have critical thinking skills. And it means you need to bank somewhere that agrees with you. And that's exactly why I love Fairwinds Credit Union, another sponsor of today's video. They're not trying to trap you in payments and fees. They're trying to help you make real progress with tools built for fans of this channel. The Fairwinds Smart Bundle gives you a no fee checking account and a high yield savings account. So if you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and actually make financial progress, bank with someone who cares. Go to Fairwinds.org Ramsey to get started or use the link in the description below. So what can we do to make home ownership more affordable without trapping people in debt until they're 90? Well, I've actually seen some solid ideas thrown around. The first one involves capital gains tax. Right now a lot of people are staying put in their home instead of selling because they might be on the hook for a massive tax bill if their home has appreciated. Well, back In July of 2025, Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill that would eliminate the federal capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences. And Graham Stephan has argued for raising the capital gains exclusion on home sales to a million bucks for married couples instead of the current cap of 500,000. So if you raised or eliminated that exemption, more longtime owners would finally sell, which could open up inventory and cool prices for everyone. Another idea that I like from Graham, let homeowners transfer their existing low rate mortgage when they trade up to a new property. The idea here is that could free up tons of frozen supply in the starter home market and I think he's right on that one. Here's another simple solution that's bipartisan. Limit how many single family homes can be sold to hedge funds and institutional investors. When trillion dollar firms like BlackRock or Invitation Homes are buying entire neighborhoods, regular families simply can't compete. You stop that and you would fix a huge part of the affordability crisis overnight. And what's crazy is that despite all the math, logic and common sense we've walked through today, there are still people defending this thing, including the President himself. He had this to say about it to Laura Ingraham who asked him on Fox News.