By Denise Michaels, Author, “Testosterone-Free Marketing”

My husband Ernie and I live in Las Vegas which is absolutely in the depths of the housing slump. Since we had the highest highs – we’ve also had the most precipitous drop. Real estate appears poised to go up now – but it’s been a pretty long, fast, slide downward the last couple years. There’s a local show on radio once a week on the state of the housing and real estate market.

Recently a guest on the show remarked perhaps the idea of owning a home with a 30-year mortgage as “the American Dream” doesn’t set well with our changing, shifting lifestyles and careers anymore. After all, that model came into vogue back in the days when many Americans worked 30-40 years for the same company.

Now, not only don’t many of us work for the same company throughout our career. More and more of us are entrepreneurial, home-based business owners and don’t work for any company – like myself. At times entrepreneurs have gaps in their income that don’t fit with a big mortgage every month. That’s become the new norm when it comes to work. And as we’re digging out of this recession I believe we’re going to have an unprecedented wave of entrepreneurism. But mortgages are still like an albatross around the neck whether a person’s income goes up or down. Doesn’t quite work.

My husband and I own our home. We’ve been here almost eight years. We bought when the market was down right after 9/11. We didn’t do anything fancy or clever – just a basic, 30 year fixed mortgage. We also chose to live in a home that was below our means. Not very sexy. Unlike many of our friends and family who bought as much home as they could possibly qualify for. It’s decorated elegantly – but in size it’s modest. Our mortgage payment is equivalent to what many pay to rent a basic two bedroom apartment.

We have friends who’ve lost their fancy homes the last two years for a myriad of reasons. One couple we know – they’re both entreprenuers. The kids are close to grown and almost launched. He still works his full-time job in addition to his business. They live in a gorgeous home in a very upscale area but the income from their respective home-based businesses doesn’t really cut the mustard when it comes to the cashflow needed to live in that house. They know and accept sagely it’ll be a couple years before it flips around. They moved in four years ago when the market was at the top of it’s lofty peak. She recently whispered to me they’re trying to short sell the house and move into something much smaller. I told her about our smaller by half home and she sighed, “I wish we’d done that.”

We also have family members who are positively cash strapped to a massive mortgage. They too bought at the top of the market. She wasn’t working because she’d just had a baby a few months before they bought the house. She’s back to work now, but because of the high mortgage payments when their adjustable mortgage went up – she doesn’t really have the choice to be home with her kids.

We chose to live carefully and set aside the difference and we’ve invested in ourselves and in our own businesses. As a result, we’ve created a different kind of wealth. Part of it is money – but even more important is the knowledge that our security is all about our ability to create more money as we travel through life.

I don’t believe in relying on a specific theory or idea about money or security. None of them seem to hold water the way they did 20 years ago. The tectonic plates are shifting and the world is changing too fast to stay “married” to one idea or notion anymore. We’re shifting right along with it – and enjoying the journey.

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