A couple of readers suggested this article and topic. "Topic: Article on 50 yr mortgage. Buy a house when your 15, and it may or may not be paid off when you retire."

"You, too, can own a home in California, with 600 easy monthly payments! Just get a 50-year mortgage! With any luck, you'll have paid it off before you die!"

"The 50-year mortgage won't keep monthly payments very low because it's not really a 50-year mortgage at all. It's an adjustable-rate mortgage with a 50-year amortization (meaning it's paid off after 50 years). The interest rate is fixed for the first five years, then moves up or down thereafter, meaning the monthly payment fluctuates as well."

"'The monthly payment on the 50-year mortgage would actually be higher than it would be on the 40-year, because the (higher) interest rate overwhelms the (longer) term,' Kieth Gumbinger explains. Someone who takes out a 50-year, $300,000 mortgage will repay $300,000 in principal and $714,000 in interest over the life of the loan. That compares to $382,000 in interest for a 30-year fixed-rate loan, and $543,000 in interest for a 40-year fixed-rate."

The Sacramento Bee. "Last year there was no place where people stretched their pay harder to buy one than California. A new analysis of housing and financial data portrays the state's homeowners as the nation's most financially stressed."

"Moody's survey shows the growing financial pressures on California households by ranking 10 more Golden State areas in the nation's top 11. All are places where housing prices have skyrocketed ahead of wages since 2000. The findings have implications in a state where nearly three-fourths of recent homebuyers have adjustable-rate mortgages that are scheduled to take even bigger chunks of their monthly pay."

"None of this is new in a state where both gushing happily and fuming over rising home prices have become part of the psyche. 'We had a campaign 25 years ago called, 'Where will our children live?' said Leslie Appleton Young, chief economist of the California Association of Realtors."

"Sandy Sargent, a Sacramento real estate agent, believes many new Sacramento-area homeowners spend 60 percent of their paychecks for housing-related expenses that include a mortgage, utilities and taxes. 'People will do almost anything to get themselves in a home,' she said."

"'We lost 900 kids this year in the Salinas school district,' Salinas Mayor Pro Tem Jyl Lutes said. 'Where I teach, we lost 30. It has that ripple effect. It hurts everything.' Salinas, like much of the Central Valley, is home to thousands of employees with hourly wages that are no match for escalating home prices."

"'Nobody who cleans hotel rooms is going to move into a $3 million house,' Lutes said."

"'We bought six years ago for $200,000,' said Lutes. 'The same house is selling for $900,000. You're either getting three or four families together or several generations together or the houses are just sitting on the market. There's no magic wand you can wave over this and it all goes away.'"