Death pledge.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES WRAP-UP - Analyses on mortgage loans - Column

As an inveterate media consumer for years, I have been exposed to a ton of advertising and advertising trends, and usually I react the way the advertisers intended.

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That is, I feel the tug of wanting an all-leather sofa, and momentarily I imagine that life would be better with a pillow-top mattress or a factory-direct patio room or better gutters and a custom pet door. I don't have any of these things, and I don't need them, but I have the pangs nevertheless.

In any case, it isn't rocket science to observe that advertising often reaches to scratch a different itch than the obvious. For instance, for the past several years I have been hearing and reading a ton of advertising for what I thought was large-screen HD TVs and luxurious travel and new, all-stainless kitchens, and high-end German automobiles, and all manner of "good life" things, and it grabbed my interest. How could I have what seemingly everyone else was already enjoying?

Why, with a new mortgage, of course.

And, by the way, I could have all this without qualifying, or with bad credit, or by "being human," and as much as 125 percent of the equity in my home could be mine over the phone, or on the Internet, and without paying a dime.

Free money. A new, more upscale lifestyle. Oh, yeah. I could get a new house, too, one approximately the size of the Tai Mahal so, presumably, I'd have the room to hold all that other stuff I could easily accumulate.

It seemed, as one constant ad kept saying, like the biggest no-brainer in the history of Earth.

Then it struck me: What were they--the lenders and the borrowers--thinking? Of course! With a no-brainer, there is no thinking.

All through the last few years--and yes, I refinanced a few times for a better rate, but I eschewed the granite countertops and the Neptune washer-dyer combination for more real-world concerns like college tuition--my wife and I regularly marveled at the astonishing pile of goodies we kept seeing at other people's houses.

Frankly, we were astonished at other people's houses, too. We're a couple of better-than-average means, yet propriety would suggest we couldn't afford those things. Our house looks dated, our cars are 19 years old and our TVs are smaller than...