Always Check The Paperwork From Your Bank Or Credit Card

We all assume that large organizations know what they are doing but you should always check the paperwork from your bank or credit card. Big companies have expensive systems in place to keep track of everything. They have trained employees who know how to deal with the specific parts of the process they deal with. It makes sense to assume that if they say something about your account with then they have got it right…

Well, that turns out not to be the case.

When her bank began foreclosure procedures on Lynn Szymoniak she thought there was something odd about the paperwork. She went throught the paperwork when bank began the foreclosure process on her Palm Beach Gardens home in 2008. What she discovered from studying that paperwork and the paperwork of hundreds of other people was that the big company she was dealing with was producing replacement documents rather than the originals they should have done.

It turns out to have been a common practice for banks and financial companies to produce thousands of replacement documents claiming them to be the originals. This practice has gained its own name.  “Robo-signing” is the slang term to describe document-handling practices that have varied from the carelessly sloppy right down to actually illegal.

The employees of banks and mortgage companies have forged signatures, used phony titles and signed and notarized legal documents without verifying any of the facts they contained.

This practice is now supposed to have been stopped and the banks are paying out $25 Billion in compensation. This is unlikely to help many of the people for whom it comes too late and it is probably a relatively small payment for the companies who have cheated the system in this way over a period of time and caused many people to lose their homes.

Check The Paperwork And Keep Copies In A Safe Place

The one lesson we should all take from this is that you cannot trust big companies and corporations to get everything right. You need to check anything and everything you sign up to. Take copies of important documents and keep them in a safe place until you are sure you will never need them.

Books On Amazon.com

Mortgage Ripoffs and Money Savers: An Industry Insider Explains How to Save Thousands on Your Mortgage or Re-FinanceMortgage Ripoffs and Money Savers: An Industry Insider Explains How to Save Thousands on Your Mortgage or Re-FinanceMortgage Rip-offs and Money Savers reveals how the mortgage industry cheats borrowers out of billions in extra costs every year. Mortgage industry ins… Read More >
Foreclosure Defense Guidebook: An EASY to Understand Guide to Saving Your Home From Foreclosure.Foreclosure Defense Guidebook: An EASY to Understand Guide to Saving Your Home From Foreclosure.In this EASY to read, EASY to follow guide, we show you how to defend your home from foreclosure written in plain English without the legalese.
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Goldman Sachs Director Resigns But Not So Quietly

If you are still under any illusions that big business cares about you and wants you to be happy and successful then read the following…

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

These words come from a Goldman Sachs executive director who resigned today and published and article about why he resigned in the New York Times today.

He mentions many specific problems he felt uncomfortable with but overall it is about a company culture where money is more important than anything else. Perhaps we should not be surprised as we have seen the results of this sort of attitude in the events surrounding the financial crash but you might think some lessons would have been learned from those events. Apparently not.

He tells us that promotion is all about how much money you make for the company. Presumably that is short term money rather than long term growth and benefit to the company as we see here..

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

This is shocking but it is the modern way of doing business, it seems. Nothing matters so long as you make money and screw anyone who gets in your way. It seems to be a culture that exists throughout the business community and beyond into general society as well. What caused it and what can be done about it remains to be seen. It isn’t going to be easy to change thirty years of putting monetary gain first over all else but if we don’t we are heading for a sad and miserable future that will be reminiscent of the dark ages with wealthy Lords enjoying a good life and the lowly peasants who have no value to society.

Money is not the most important thing in life but if you work at Goldman Sachs it looks like you are expected to think so.

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Judge Stops Debt Collection For Non-Existant Debts

A debt collection company that the FTC says employed a tele call company in India to harass people into paying debts they didn’t owe has been stopped from trading by a Judge in Chicago.

The report comes from Business Week which goes on to report that the company had been calling people and demanding repayment on non-existent debts.

The FTC alleged in court documents that the companies hired callers in Ahmedabad, India to pose as debt collectors and law enforcement officials, who harassed the applicants into paying more than $5 million.

“This is a brazen operation based on pure fraud, and the FTC is committed to shutting it down,” David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said in an e-mailed statement today. “Consumers should not be pressured into paying debt they don’t remember owing.”

With the huge numbers of people struggling to pay the genuine debts they have and the problems debt has caused for millions of citizens it seems incredible that anybody could prey on the vulnerable and people who are confused by the financial situation they find themselves in.

It may seem crazy that anybody would pay a debt they don’t owe but these days so many debts are sold on to other companies who have nothing to do with the original debt that it is not so unusual to have a company you have never heard of before contact you about a debt from the past.

We need to have some way of establishing a paper trail that explains the history of any debt so all parties to it can understand who owns the debt and who is entitled to receive payments towards that original debt.

The judge shut down the company involved after the FTC stated that over $5million had been collected from over eight million debt collection calls had been made from a call center in India.

Books On Amazon.com

Become the Squeaky wheel, a credit & collections guide (The Collecting Money Series)Become the Squeaky wheel, a credit & collections guide (The Collecting Money Series)This Credit and Collections Guide for Everyone is loaded full of tools that will help you:

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Credit Card Debt Problems

Dealing With The Problem Of Credit Card Debt

You only need to be in your twenties to remember a time when anyone could get a credit card almost regardless of their financial position. The credit card companies were falling over themselves to encourage everyone to take on their credit card even if you already had financial problems.

Whether it was the sales people trying to earn their bonuses or management having the idea that credit card debt would never be a problem remains to be seen. No doubt the history of credit cards will reveal a heap of stipid errors made throughout the credit card industry but for now the result is that a large proportion of the population is struggling with more credit card debt than they can easily afford and many will be wondering what to do about them.

There is an article that is well worth a read on Foxbusiness.com. It offers 6 suggestions for how to deal with credit card debt. and maybe the following will be the most useful for many people who are struggling to pay their debts.

Credit problems are everywhere. You are not alone if you are experiencing a financial hardship. Contacting your creditors should be your first line of defense. If you are still unable to work out an arrangement with them to make payments, other options are available. Consider contacting a consumer credit counseling agency

Finding Help With Credit Card Debt

A lot of people do feel lost and confused when it comes to dealing with their debts but reducing the cost of debt is one place to start. There are lots of free and voluntary credit councelling services available and you should be very cautious and maybe look elsewhere to examine other options available to you if you are asked for a fee for your credit councelling advice.

Books On Amazon.com

Reducing The Cost Of Debt

Reducing The Cost Of Debt Is An Important Lesson To Learn

We live in a world full of debt and reducing the cost of debt is an important lesson to learn. Our experience in recent years, both as individuals and for companies and governments has shown that debt is best avoided if possible but if it is required then we must all endeavour to keep it under proper control.

Why Understanding Loans And Debt Is Important

Understanding the nature of loans, debt and interest is essential in keeping control of our finances and of getting the best value for money from loans. Knowing how interest charges are applied to any potential loan we are considering is crucial to understanding the true cost of debt for any credit we obtain.

Learn About The Cost Of Debt

You need to learn about the cost of debt so you know how to reduce it if possible and to be aware of it before taking on more debts. Interest may be applied daily, monthly or annually and there may be additional charges or penalty fees for late payments, early payments or irregular payments. The length of loan or period of credit may be fixed for so many months or years but it can also be a flexible form of credit and the credit card is perhaps the most common type of flexible credit we make use of.

There are good things about credit cards. They do tend to be an expensive debt and interest charges can be quite high but the flexibility they offer for credit and repayment makes them a useful financial tool for budgeting and managing your money through times when your financial resources are stretched.

The important thing to remember about credit cards is that their flexiblity should not be used as a reason for forgetting about the debt. Making minimum payments is all very well when you are short of available cash to repay the debt but the cost of debt is high so when you do have some spare cash you should try to make higher repayments to reduce the outstanding debt.

The high rates of interest charged on credit cards make them an expensive option if used as long term credit. If you use them as short term credit to help you out at times when you have exceptional spending requirements such as car repairs of home repairs you should remember to try to pay down the debt as soon as you have spare cash available again.

Expensive loans are sometimes the only option we have available to us but we should try to stay in control of our money, make the repayments on time, or sooner if that is beneficial and clear the debts as fast as we can. When a debt is paid off and cleared we should not automatically think about taking out a new debt because we can now affords it. We should instead think about saving and building up an emergency fund which we can use as our own credit resource.

Use Your Own Money As A Credit Resource

If you treat your own money as a credit resource and make repayments equivelent to those you would have made if you had borrowed from a regular bank or financial institution you will be delighted with the money you pay yourself in interest and you will understand how banks and credit card suppliers get so rich and make so much money.

Lending yourself money can be a very financially satisfying experience and you will save yourself a fortune on interest charges and fees. Rather than simply reducing the cost of debt you will effectively be profiting from it.

 

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