Of gold rushes and gold busts: What’s going to last?

My grandfather lived just a couple of miles from Coloma, California where James Marshall discovered gold and led to great rush of 1849. I remember riding my bike along the riverbanks where the nuggets first settled in Marshall’s pan, making a poor man instantly rich.

Thousands of people descended upon the region, arriving with the expectation – not the hope – of striking it rich and becoming wealthy. Ironically, it wasn’t the miners who generally struck it rich – it was the men who served the miners that became wealthy. Men like Leland Stanford and Levi Strauss were the more typical “get rich” stories.

Over the past decade, these Sierra Nevada foothills — and the rest of the nation witnessed another gold rush. With the introduction of low rate adjustable loans, ‘no proof of income’ loans and other creative financial products, people rushed to acquire property with the expectation – not the hope – of making a quick fortune.

Buy a home and keep it just a few brief months and then flip it and pocket the cash yielded by an irrational rise in value.

Home builders and mortgage lenders went bankrupt, opportunistic would-be entrepreneurs who jumped into real estate related businesses are returning to their day jobs and debt laden homeowners are losing their property and their dream homes.

There is a better way to live out these days. In our workplace, personal lives and families, we often “go for the gold” instead of the more enduring qualities — faith, hope and love. We need to spend the necessary time and energy on the things that last.