"More than 50% of all home mortgages made in 2006 were with 5% or with zero down as a down payment," according to "Housing Predictor."

Have we forgotten the purpose of a down payment? It is to ensure the buyer won't walk away. If a home buyer has paid for 20% of that gorgeous nugget of the American Dream, one-fifth is somehow the magic number that keeps buyers from abandoning their little treasures except under the most dire circumstances.

Twenty percent down is also the dividing line used to free one from having to pay for "mortgage insurance" in which an underwriter estimates your likelihood of jettisoning your investment and charges you a monthly premium to make sure you keep paying (or to pay the lender if you don't). To avoid mortgage insurance, some years ago it became customary for borrowers to look for parental gifts or do other sorts of finagling, because "everyone knows insurance premiums are wasted money," right? Not so even if only for the discipline the mortgage insurance premium instilled. You must save up 20% - one-fifth of the cost of a house - before you can be trusted to buy one.

Unfortunately, home loan brokers and even Realtors started dispensing evasive tips without a prescription. This is precisely how 80/20 financing came to be. You need to finance 100% of the property but you have no money. You should have saved up 20% for a downpayment, but you didn't. So we'll write you a "normal" loan for 80% and a second loan for 20% to serve as your down payment so you can gete the 80% loan.

It seems clever enough scheme, except it turns a blind eye to why "those people" don't have 20% saved. I'm sure there are many good reasons. Therefore, we should expect to see blanks on our credit histories in the future on which we can write our good intentions and excuses, right? After all, excuses seem to have become bankable.

To read the exact steps I followed to cut $70,000 off my home loan in only two years, get the manual I wrote recording my and several of my friends' experience with a "revolving equity" technique and others.