Seaweed: Soothsayer, Seer, Insufferable

Seer:  Someone who foretells the future.
Soothsayer: One who predicts the future, using magic, intuition, or intelligence.

Over the years I have offered to talk with people in The Fellowship about their finances.  I understand that this is a very personal thing.  In my family you were not permitted to talk about money, sex, or religion with the predicted result being that I was ignorant and naive about these very important topics and I made some fundamentally bad decisions, not out of .  Today I say: Talk away!  No secrets.  Nothing is off the table.  There is nothing to be embarrassed about.  The expert at anything was once a beginner.

I know that people are ashamed when they make "bad" decisions.  They'd rather keep compounding their mistakes instead of digging their way out of the landslide.

My disclaimer is that I'm not a financial expert, just an interested party who is trying to be helpful.  And I don't give a shit about how much or how little money someone else has - it doesn't concern me.  I hope everyone I know has a red Ferrari parked in their garage.  Good on you, I say.

I'm also touched and surprised at how often people take me up on this, show me these most intimate of intimate details of their financial life.  It brings to mind sitting in meetings where we read out of the literature and people who can't read very well grab the book and struggle through their paragraph or two, asking for help pronouncing words they don't recognize.  It's beautiful.  If you don't read very well the only way to get better is to read.  They don't get judged - they get helped.

Anyway, I looked over her expenses and her income.  There were a few really glaring stats that jumped out at me.  I asked a lot of questions.  I didn't criticize or second-guess.  She already knew what some of the problem areas were - she's not stupid.  Very few people are.  And in a couple of instances she simply made some really bad financial decisions - not greedy mistakes but rather uninformed decisions where family members took advantage of her good heart and financial institutions looked after their own interests.

I didn't offer to give her any money.  I didn't tell her what to do.  I always encourage people to get feedback from many sources.  I'm not seer.  I'm a soothsayer, but not a seer.  I'll tell you what's going to happen in the future but I'm not going to guarantee that I'll be right.  My soothsaying has quite the Catch-22.

I try to stay out of social commentary on my recovery blog but the following is an actual chart from the web site of this particular "loan" company.  These numbers are publicly available and apparently totally legal, and this company should burn in a very hot fire.

Try messing around with the math.  Let's use the 84 month term as an example: payments of $565/month times 84 months equal $47,460.  Let's put that in the King's English: if you borrow $7600 from this company and make the minimum payment each month for the full term of the loan you will pay them roughly $40,000.  Forty.  Thousand.  Dollars.

I understand this is legal and overboard, and that some people who aren't attractive risks to normal banks might benefit from this kind of set-up . . . but are you fucking kidding me?  My friend would get better terms borrowing cash from Tony Soprano.  At least the threat of getting your kneecaps shattered would be clearly spelled out before you took the money.  This loan company is fooling around with people who cannot afford to borrow the money.  If my friend gets sick and misses a couple of weeks of work and then misses a couple of payments she's buried.  She would never recover.

Selfish:  Having regard for one's self above other's well-being; holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making.  

(Ed. Note: I just put that definition in because it is one of the most devastatingly beautiful definitions I've ever read - both of 'em are.  Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making).

$7,600

	33.00%	89.00%	133.13%	84 months	$565.05
	33.00%	89.00%	133.51%	72 months	$566.95
	33.00%	89.00%	134.39%	60 months	$571.48
	33.00%	89.00%	136.42%	48 months	$582.45
	Loan Fee	Rate	MAX APR	Term	Payment Amount