Tick, tock, tick, tock. "T" minus one week until the first of many payments goes late.
I am so very much looking forward to receiving their calls because I don't think they're quite going to know what to do with me. I have considered, for example, telling them that I have committed suicide and that they are talking to my next of kin, the executor of my estate, my attorney, or some other such nonsense. I have considered pulling credit reports on someone I know is dead, just to see what it says. Will there be a public records entry for "Certificate of Death"? I don't know and I imagine few know the answer to that question, because who has occasion to pull a dead man's credit report? Yes, yes, I realize that pulling credit on anyone without authorization is against the law. But what harm? A dead man doesn't need credit, even though they're the only one who could lawfully use it.
Sure, I will engage them at first, but I aim to spend little time beating around the bush: You are not getting paid because I do not care for your lending practices, and I no longer have any regard for the sanctity of written agreements with those who do not wish to act under them in good faith. In fact, now that I think about it, there is an implied duty of good faith and fair dealing in every contract. I think I'll send them a "preservation of evidence" letter instructing them to retain every document in their possession having to do with any of my accounts over their entire life span and ask them to point out exactly when and where that implied term was excluded with regard to each of my three accounts with them. That might be particularly difficult for them given that not one of those three accounts originated with Chase -- they were all picked up by Chase when they absorbed another bank.
What else is there for me to tell them? "God appeared to me in a dream and told me not to pay you any more"? What does any of that banter matter? I don't care about what they do to my credit report, and I'm not scared of being sued, because then they'll be on my turf. Without fear, what leverage will they have? I'll be all to happy to tell them that I'm going to set the phone on my desk and they can talk until they're blue but they shouldn't expect to receive any further reply from me except in the form of an answer to a lawsuit. And then what more will there be for them to say?
Showing posts with label Setup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Setup. Show all posts
Friday, August 6, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Mad World
Graduate from law school shortly after September 11th, just in time for my backup employment option to institute a one-year hiring freeze. D'oh.
In debt...Loads of it; somewhere north of $100k in law school loans alone. A few thousand in credit cards, maybe. Take the bar exam, then spend a few months traveling -- probably the best thing I ever did for myself. Rack up a little more credit card debt, but not that much. At that point, in for maybe $7k. Manageable.
Begin looking for a job, with no success whatsoever. Take another bar exam. And then a third. A top-20% law school GPA and carrying three different law licenses does not seem to be helping my job-hunting fortunes. In the mean time, do contract work for other attorneys for $20 / hour, knowing that they were charging their clients at least five times that rate for my work. Realize that all of the attorneys for whom I was doing work were their own boss, but not one of them was smarter than me. Bite the bullet, hang my shingle, start my own practice.
No capital available to me other than credit cards. Become an expert at reading the fine print attached to balance transfer checks, and manage to borrow more than $30k at permanent interest rates of 3 to 7%. Become an expert at robbing Peter to pay Paul; across 10+ credit cards over 5+ years, no more than 5 total late payments -- most the result of a failure to press the right button on a web page somewhere -- none more than 30 days. Other than my carried debt as a percentage of my available credit, my credit report always has been -- and remains to this day -- spotless.
In 2006, settle my first big case and having grown well tired of moving every 12 months or so, purchase the condo I was renting from the owner. Pay more than I prefer, but didn't care so long as I didn't have to move again. And besides, I'd already lived there for 6 months, liked my neighbors, and liked my neighborhood. How often does one get to test drive real estate?
Being self-employed and having an insufficient income history meant that in order to be able to acquire financing to purchase the condo, I needed to utilize a sub-prime lender, Aurora Loan Services ("ALS", whose trademark once proudly boasted that it was a division of Lehmen Brothers Financial, recently bankrupt and now defunct). My loan calls for me to make payments of interest only for the first 5 years in the amount of about $1,100. After that, payment of interest and principal varies with the prevailing interest rate published in the Onion on the last Thursday before each full moon...Or something like that. Of course, like everyone else, I paid no attention to any of that, as my mortgage broker assured me that by the time it started adjusting, my solid income history would mean no problem re-financing. Unfortunately, that advice was wildly incorrect.
Four years later, no lender will re-finance a property to more than 80% of its appraised value, and my condo is worth $30k less than the price at which I purchased it. In other words, in order to re-finance of my property, I would need to bring at least $30k to the closing table. Uhhhh...Yeah...Right.
Contact ALS regarding my loan, inquire as to whether a modification might be available to convert my variable-rate mortgage to a fixed-rate mortgage, which would lower my payments and secure their investment. They decline on the basis that I "make too much money". Not missing the message, I cut my own salary.
This, of course, means that someone will not get paid this month. I have already decided it will be Chase. That is step 1. I intend to use my failure to pay Chase to get ALS's attention that they might be next. They, at least, will be given a choice by the end of the year: Modify my mortgage or you're the next parasite that I'll starve. Chase deserves no such dignity.
In debt...Loads of it; somewhere north of $100k in law school loans alone. A few thousand in credit cards, maybe. Take the bar exam, then spend a few months traveling -- probably the best thing I ever did for myself. Rack up a little more credit card debt, but not that much. At that point, in for maybe $7k. Manageable.
Begin looking for a job, with no success whatsoever. Take another bar exam. And then a third. A top-20% law school GPA and carrying three different law licenses does not seem to be helping my job-hunting fortunes. In the mean time, do contract work for other attorneys for $20 / hour, knowing that they were charging their clients at least five times that rate for my work. Realize that all of the attorneys for whom I was doing work were their own boss, but not one of them was smarter than me. Bite the bullet, hang my shingle, start my own practice.
No capital available to me other than credit cards. Become an expert at reading the fine print attached to balance transfer checks, and manage to borrow more than $30k at permanent interest rates of 3 to 7%. Become an expert at robbing Peter to pay Paul; across 10+ credit cards over 5+ years, no more than 5 total late payments -- most the result of a failure to press the right button on a web page somewhere -- none more than 30 days. Other than my carried debt as a percentage of my available credit, my credit report always has been -- and remains to this day -- spotless.
In 2006, settle my first big case and having grown well tired of moving every 12 months or so, purchase the condo I was renting from the owner. Pay more than I prefer, but didn't care so long as I didn't have to move again. And besides, I'd already lived there for 6 months, liked my neighbors, and liked my neighborhood. How often does one get to test drive real estate?
Being self-employed and having an insufficient income history meant that in order to be able to acquire financing to purchase the condo, I needed to utilize a sub-prime lender, Aurora Loan Services ("ALS", whose trademark once proudly boasted that it was a division of Lehmen Brothers Financial, recently bankrupt and now defunct). My loan calls for me to make payments of interest only for the first 5 years in the amount of about $1,100. After that, payment of interest and principal varies with the prevailing interest rate published in the Onion on the last Thursday before each full moon...Or something like that. Of course, like everyone else, I paid no attention to any of that, as my mortgage broker assured me that by the time it started adjusting, my solid income history would mean no problem re-financing. Unfortunately, that advice was wildly incorrect.
Four years later, no lender will re-finance a property to more than 80% of its appraised value, and my condo is worth $30k less than the price at which I purchased it. In other words, in order to re-finance of my property, I would need to bring at least $30k to the closing table. Uhhhh...Yeah...Right.
Contact ALS regarding my loan, inquire as to whether a modification might be available to convert my variable-rate mortgage to a fixed-rate mortgage, which would lower my payments and secure their investment. They decline on the basis that I "make too much money". Not missing the message, I cut my own salary.
This, of course, means that someone will not get paid this month. I have already decided it will be Chase. That is step 1. I intend to use my failure to pay Chase to get ALS's attention that they might be next. They, at least, will be given a choice by the end of the year: Modify my mortgage or you're the next parasite that I'll starve. Chase deserves no such dignity.
Truth and Dare
Truth:
- Attorney.
- When people ask me "what kind of attorney are you?", my reply is always the same: "A god-damned good one."
- Been practicing law for almost six years, primarily representing Plaintiffs in consumer protection matters and debtors in bankruptcy.
- Didn't choose this line of work, it chose me, long ago. Acquiring my juris doctorate was the culmination of a successfully executed 20-year-plan. On some level, it is now all I know. Unfortunately, it was all a big mistake.
Dare:
- Pay my creditors only at my own leisure, only in such amounts and at such times as I direct, while forestalling their inevitable efforts to force involuntary repayment of my debt via judgment acquisition and execution. No bankruptcy allowed.
Doing this not because I believe I don't owe my debts (like those kooks who think that money has no value now that the US has gone off the gold standard, such that the lending of that money is illegal, and triggers no responsibility to repay it, blah blah blah), nor due to an inability to pay. Doing this for three primary reasons:
1. Entertainment.
2. Experimentation.
3. Blogification.
The first set of accounts that I am electing to refrain from paying are those that I owe to "Chase" (i.e. JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.). My reason for doing so is that over the course of my debt repayment history -- during which I have not ONCE, not EVER been more than 30 days late to pay any one of my creditors, with regard to any account -- Chase has played more games with my accounts than would a three-year-old with a pile of peas and a slab of mashers: to wit, raising minimum monthly payments, and lowering credit lines, all at their own whim.
So this grand %$&# you begins with Chase. I have payments due to them on three separate credit cards on the 12th, 16th, and 17th of this month. Cannot wait to hear from them. But first, a little more background...
- Attorney.
- When people ask me "what kind of attorney are you?", my reply is always the same: "A god-damned good one."
- Been practicing law for almost six years, primarily representing Plaintiffs in consumer protection matters and debtors in bankruptcy.
- Didn't choose this line of work, it chose me, long ago. Acquiring my juris doctorate was the culmination of a successfully executed 20-year-plan. On some level, it is now all I know. Unfortunately, it was all a big mistake.
Dare:
- Pay my creditors only at my own leisure, only in such amounts and at such times as I direct, while forestalling their inevitable efforts to force involuntary repayment of my debt via judgment acquisition and execution. No bankruptcy allowed.
Doing this not because I believe I don't owe my debts (like those kooks who think that money has no value now that the US has gone off the gold standard, such that the lending of that money is illegal, and triggers no responsibility to repay it, blah blah blah), nor due to an inability to pay. Doing this for three primary reasons:
1. Entertainment.
2. Experimentation.
3. Blogification.
The first set of accounts that I am electing to refrain from paying are those that I owe to "Chase" (i.e. JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.). My reason for doing so is that over the course of my debt repayment history -- during which I have not ONCE, not EVER been more than 30 days late to pay any one of my creditors, with regard to any account -- Chase has played more games with my accounts than would a three-year-old with a pile of peas and a slab of mashers: to wit, raising minimum monthly payments, and lowering credit lines, all at their own whim.
So this grand %$&# you begins with Chase. I have payments due to them on three separate credit cards on the 12th, 16th, and 17th of this month. Cannot wait to hear from them. But first, a little more background...
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