ON THE HOUSE!
When too many business firms start to show concern about my financial well-being, I get a bit wary. When I feel besieged by offers to more or less assure me that my future well remain solvent and above bankrupt levels – at least, I begin to hide or stay out of the way while the “snow” falls. Beautiful! Maybe, but snow can turn to treacherous ice, ice to water and water, mixed with solid particles becomes gooey mud.
Some of the offers “make sense”....not exactly the best of good sense, but it is true, for instance, that many people today are in serious debt situations as a direct result of excessive buying using a selection of credit cards. It's the economic epidemic of our time, with scores of people becoming obligated to make repayments far in excess of their earning powers.
It can certainly not be accidental that, at this critical junction of plastic cards with with pay-up documentation, business firms pop up in print and on TV and radio offering - so often in a humorous, light-hearted camaraderie's - to bail out all those who have slipped into this shopping swamp. They stand read to lend such put-upon persons sufficient funds to pay off the mountain of credit card debt but to enable them to burn, mutilate, bury, flush or cut and deep-six the fragments thereof in whatever way suits their concept of finality.
Fine. You may say that, and feel tremendously relieved and even grateful. That which you don't know, can't hurt you – or, can it do so in time? You have borrowed money from a new firm with which to pay off the total of you credit card debts. The critical is this: the obligations which were yours where agreed upon in relation to your earning power to repay them,but the new debt you are now under is a totally different type of loan covered by other regulations and you now may find your home is in hock. If you fail, now, to meet your payments from your income your house can be the way the obligation is paid.
If you are contemplating such a escape from being a plastics prisoner, think it all over with special care. Determine the exact nature of he transaction and what collateral usually assigned. Get rid of the cards anyway. Avoid a common pitfall in which calls for plans to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. Be especially careful in seeking a quick rescue from those who seem to be too eager to help you solve your personal pecuniary problem.
A.L.M. January 24, 2005 [c446wds]
