Welcome to Episode Six of: Chris McGinty – Enemy of Debt
For an explanation of this feature, and disclaimers that talk about how I’m not a professional money anything, go to Episode One. If you are caught up to speed though, we’ll begin discussing my friend who called me in financial desperation on July 10, 2011. Out of some, perhaps slight respect for his privacy, I’m not using his real name. I am instead referring to him as Genghis Confusion (that’s what the world is today, hey, hey).
Last episode, I explained how we had used Genghis’s paycheck to pay off the rest of his rent late fees, to get his fingerprints for the guard job, and then the rest he paid back to me for what I loaned him the day we got the $400 payday loan, and I helped him with the difference, and other things (cigarettes, gas, crickets, and a used tire). If none of this is sounding familiar then maybe you’re not caught up to speed.
The bigger payday loan and the title loan are about thirty minutes away, so I decided that we needed to get the van loan transferred to the new title loan place at the same time. This is where we ran into a minor defeat (or major, depending on whether we can pay the title loan or not). His wife is on the title of the van, and his wife is in Oklahoma, so there was no way to transfer the loan until she gets back. By then, he’ll either have lost the van, or we’ll have paid on it, unless they’ll work with us further. So that was a dead end.
We went out to the payday loan place with the bigger loan, and in spite of his protests, I asked if they could help him out any. He was technically right that they would not give him any more time to make this payment, but learning the situation, they gave him a month rather than two weeks to get the next payment in. It really doesn’t solve anything, but it’s a little more time to try to breakthrough on something. They also adjusted the payment to match what I actually had in cash, which was necessary.
We went back to the place with the smaller loan, and it turns out they won’t take payment with a debit card. I get that they don’t want people paying payday loans with credit cards, but a debit card is as good as cash, so I had to make a small purchase at the grocery store next door, and get cash back.
Genghis now owes me $186.88, which is more than before. I’m getting frustrated, because I can’t see how this is going to breakthrough unless I loan him a large amount of money that I won’t get back for a long time.
The only hope I see at this moment is that my boss told me that next week Genghis will be working around 25 hours. That means that the paycheck he’ll get on August 8, 2011, will actually be helpful. The question is if we can hold it together that long. The funny thing is that this will be posted around August 18, 2011, so by the time you’re reading this, I’ll already know if we did hold it together. And even though I’m technically caught up to modern times at the time of this writing, I’ll pick back up on it Monday night after our guard job payday, but for you it’ll be next paragraph. See you there.
Hi, welcome back. Well, more welcome back to me than you. I’ve been gone longer. Things have improved very little, and in some ways become worse. When I say all of this, I want to say that there is nothing terrible just yet, but I’m rethinking the use of his first big paycheck for the month.
On July 25, 2011, I met him at his apartment a little before 2 pm, and we went to get our security guard paychecks. His check was $150 and some change. We went to my bank and deposited both checks. Technically, this put him down to only owing me about $36, but that was to be short lived since I was about to loan him $475 to pay for his van.
We went to the title loan place, and he called on the way. They were telling him that it would be $625. I told him that we would have to talk to them, because I had $500 because that was what they told us we would need on July 25. When we got there they explained that the extra was because they had to renew the loan twice. Uh huh. Bullshit. That’s what the late fees were, and they told us $475. I explained to them the van wasn’t worth what he owed because of some damage to the axel, and that they would be better off to give him some time.
Finally, we spoke with a supervisor and he said that if we paid the $475 now, he would give us until the end of the week. Genghis was all about it. He didn’t want to lose the van. I technically didn’t want him to lose the van either, but I told him that he’s in such a position that he would almost be better off getting a bicycle to get back and forth to work on. He would have to quit the guard job, but he wouldn’t be burning through tires. He wouldn’t have to pay for insurance. He would save money on gas. And on top of everything, if his van breaks down anytime in the next three months, he probably won’t have the money to fix it.
Nope. He wasn’t hearing any of it. He had to have his van. He told me that his dad was going to loan him about $150 and that it would be there on Wednesday. It would be enough to cover the van. I pointed out that it would be enough to cover the van if they didn’t take his $475 and then take his van anyway (and I told him to make no mistake that it was his $475, because I’d pull it out of his next check if they took his van). He said he trusted the loan supervisor, which was more than I was willing to do, so we paid them. I gave them $480 rather than mess with change.
This brought him up to about $516 that he owed me. And I’ll even ruin the cliffhanger here by saying that he was able to pay the other $145 on time, but I’ll then set up another cliff hanger by saying that you’ll want to read next week when I explain why I had to yell at Genghis for being a liar. See you then.