My mom recently told me about HGTV's Dream Home giveaway. It's a beautiful house in Sonoma and you can enter once a day until the contest is over. I immediately went to the website and started entering myself and Kaveh each day for the last week. My mind spun out of control planning how we would move, when I would quit my job, how it would be so great to be near my CA friends and family again and how we would throw big parties in our huge, beautiful house and we would grow our own grapes and fresh veggies and I wonder how the schools are there and on and on my mind raced. This is typically how I think - I'm always 10 steps ahead of the present. So anyway, then I started to wonder about the hidden costs of this so-called "giveaway". I went to look at the fine print of the contest and it says you receive a 1099 for the over $2 million dollar value of the prizes. That's right, you have to pay income taxes on it. Then I did some more digging and found out that only one out of 10 families who have won the dream home have actually lived in it, and the one family who did move in went bankrupt from trying to pay the $500k mortgage and just the general cost of maintaining the giant house. You can read the sad tale here.
So now my bubble has been burst and it's back to life in my little, but cute, house. I think I'll still keep entering, though. I'll just start a new fantasy of how we'll move in, start our own wine label, write a hit song that the royalties will pay the taxes... .
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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3 comments:
waaaahhhh.
come on, buy the house behind us. we can start a winery and farm right here in the banana belt.
love you
you burst my bubble. I'm going to stop entering now.
Wow--this is depressing! I'm sure HGTV is laughing all the way to the bank--they probably make a fortune off this with advertising, etc--not to mention all the free great press. This sucks!
I will say--and this is aside from the fact that HGTV sucks for this, which they do--that the people in the story seem to be kind of, um, dumb. I mean, come on--cry me a river--you both quit your jobs, take out a million dollar loan then proceed to buy a boat for $11k, spend $5k on presents and I forget how much on a go-kart--then complain you don't have any money? The "dream" house aside, they need to get some financial counseling! I mean, I do feel sorry for them in that HGTV gets to look like god "giving" these people this house, when in fact what they're really doing is saddling them with a lifeime of debt, but come on. Just because you look like billionaires in your huge mansion doesn't mean you are actual billionaires who can afford to not work and live like the Riches.
Sigh--nothing's free in this life, is it?
But I still hope you win the house in Sonoma and we'll come live with you. We can quit our jobs and get paid to blog about life in the HGTV dream house!
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