Funny Money

I live in a house that is valued at more than a half a million dollars. I almost fell of my chair laughing when I typed that. Why? Because so much about money is just plain made up. Here's why I believe this to be true. Eight years ago, we bought our house for the princely (to us) sum of $135,000 - one HUNDRED and thirty five THOUSAND dollars (best if you do your "Doctor Evil" impression there). It was suggested to us at the time that we were getting a pretty good deal. Our realtor said as much.
Okay - let's be honest - of course the realtor is going to tell us that we got a good deal or else he's not doing his job, right? Then there's the simple matter of the rest of the houses on our street are not as well maintained, nor do they support a front an a back yard. At the time of our purchase, we pushed all of our nickels and dimes into one big stack and made the best possible deal with the mortgage broker to make it possible for us to own our own home.
Did I mention that this house is on the East side of San Francisco Bay (Oakland)? Did I mention that most evenings we're pretty happy that all the street lights work? Did I mention that most of the rest of the homes on our block are rentals? Did I mention that this was Oakland?
Anyway, eight years have passed and it became important for us to do the thing that all homeowners do when they can't get on a TV game show: they refinance. In order to do this, we had to get an estimate as to the worth of our property in the current market. Apparently, if we had a yen to sell our house today, we could make approximately four times the amount that we had originally paid for it. Or that the bank paid for it - or the amount of our original loan. This is where it gets silly to me, because none of this money has actually existed anywhere for at least eight years. When we refinanced, they didn't want us to pay for this new half a million dollar house, they just wanted us to get a better deal on that house that was considerably less than that - that's why they could make that swell deal on the refinancing. Get it? I still don't. But I suppose if someone kidnapped my dog and asked for a half a million in small bills I could sell my house to get my dog back.