At home with risk
You can tell a lot about people by the way they handle money, and we’ve learned a lot about our politicians lately.
For example, we now know that US Representative Barney Frank invests his money with the caution of a grannie who subsisted on corn flakes and water during the Great Depression (though few of those aged dears might have the 900 grand he has to play with). Frank’s choice of conservative bond investments, as the whole world was going crazy for skyrocketing stocks, makes him look mighty smart right now.
Then there is our governor, who recently put his Milton manse up for sale, opening a window into his mind-boggling personal finances: Three mortgages on two giant homes totaling a whopping $5.6 million. He wouldn’t say how big the monthly payments are on those adjustable rate loans, but a Globe estimate put the total somewhere around 30 grand.
Yikes. That’s about half of what the average Massachusetts worker makes in an entire year. Like several of his deep-pocketed predecessors, the high-flying governor is not exactly one of us.
Clearly, Patrick and his wife, a high-powered lawyer, have a lot of money coming in and an incredibly high tolerance for risk. Still, all of that debt, those volatile adjustable mortgage rates - it makes me queasy just thinking about it.
Call me square, but I’d feel better if the man running my state had a nice, stable, fixed-rate mortgage.
The Commonwealth’s economic miseries have made it impossible to take a similarly adventurous approach to governing.
Still, there was a glimpse of the home-financing daredevil last summer, as Patrick responded to questions about funding his enormous, multiyear education plan.
“We’re building a house,’’ he said at the time. “You design it first and then cost it out. We will pay for it.’’
It’s hard to imagine Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino saying something like that. In the controversy over whether Boston would host a Tall Ships festival this year, he dug in over security costs like a ravenous schoolboy whose own lunch money was at stake. In the end, he didn’t give up a cent.
No surprise, then, that the mayor takes the same plodding, cautious approach to his personal finances. Menino, 66, has just paid off the $38,000 original mortgage on the Hyde Park home he bought in 1979. You read that right: The mayor’s entire home loan wouldn’t even cover two months of mortgage payments for the governor. You can’t play it any safer than that.
Safe would not describe the financial choices of Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty, one of the men who would succeed Menino. Like many of us, the councilor seems to have been seduced by cheap money and the promise that property values would rise forever: He is mortgaged to his eyeballs. He owes $900,000 on a three-decker in Southie and a vacation house in East Dennis. He says he can handle it, even if his salary were to drop as mayor. This makes me nervous (see Patrick, Deval).
He’s no Sam Yoon, that’s for sure. The city councilor and mayoral candidate has a nice sensible $250,000 mortgage on his Dorchester home, in addition to a credit line that seems well within his means.
But if I were judging mayoral challengers on mortgages alone, I’d have to go with Kevin McCrea. The South End crack house he and his family bought for $200,000 in 1995 is now a handsome 12-room home worth $2.2 million, and McCrea, whose business is historic renovation, owes nothing on it. To hear him tell it, McCrea is the stingiest millionaire you will ever meet, though he prefers “fiscally prudent.’’
The mortgage doesn’t make the man. But it certainly gives voters something to think about.
Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com. 
