Gold Rush

I live just 20 minutes from Coloma where James Marshall discovered gold in the California foothills and where thousands of men and women stampeded towards in 1849 – home of the great California gold rush.

Looking back on the history of that time, the tens of thousands of people that descended upon California arrived 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.

Like prospectors headed East with their heads hanging low, the new seekers are equally disappointed — and broken.

Home builders and mortgage lenders are going 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.

Only one thing is certain as we witness our surrounding economy falter and adjust to its new equilibrium point – that a new gold rush is right around the corner. We just don’t know what form it will take.

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.