This article is remarkably oversimplified.<p>First, the obvious: once you ruin your credit rating by defaulting on your mortgage, it might not be so easy to just waltz right into a lower price rental.  Not to mention that you'll be paying more on any other loans you take out for the next &#60;strike&#62;10&#60;/strike&#62; 7 years, and probably your car insurance.  You might also consider the increasingly common phenomenon of employers running credit checks on applicants.<p>There are a variety of legitimate factors in a decision like this which aren't purely financial: the time, emotional, and social costs of moving.  Do you move your children to another school? Do you take your children away from their neighborhood friends? Perhaps you like your neighbors as well, or the neighborhood businesses you frequent.  If you move into a rental, you can no longer make certain changes to your home to suit your needs and desires.<p>It's naive and insulting to call people "idiots" because they aren't simple money-maximizing machines, particularly if you're going to pretend that monthly housing cost is something that exists in a vacuum.