Saturday, March 19, 2011

A real life question and dilemma...

This question was posed to be by a close friend, whom I know personally and find it disturbing.

 

Thing is that she works in a small bank, more of a community bank in the area with just 4 branches and she had her run of endless bad luck. Her son and husband were caught in a bad traffic accident thanks to a drunk and made her husband unable to work due to the spinal injury. That made him lost his job at the local yard. Her son was also badly injured and required much medical assistance. That bumped her finance off track, raking up over $80,000 in bills alone.

 

Now that the credit crunch is still about and with her meager pay as a Front Desk Officer (aka Teller+Customer Service) of $2200 a month before tax, made her unable to keep up with the minimum amount due. The interest thanks to Capital One, American Express , Diners Club and a few others are just as bad as borrowing from ” Richie the Loanshark” at over 39.9% APR (I bet even the mob will have some sort of humanitarian sense and not smack her that high of a rate) . So she intends to file for bankruptcy in the state of Michigan. The charge cards which were initially used to secure the medical services are charging her 12% PER MONTH in interest alone! This is despite her complex healthcare benefits and medical insurance who guaranteed payment. The biggest lenders won’t even consider listening to her.

 

Being a small town, this has been the talk of the town. The big boss (aka the CEO of the Bank) has got wind of it and the HR Manager has been told to let my friend go at all cost. Many were not happy with the decision and the HR Dept are telling him otherwise. So what should she do and the HR Manager do instead? Give her severance and let her go or help her out? Her work has not been that great ever since her family had that terrible accident, and almost literally broke her down in bits and pieces.

 

I know this situation happened to someone back where I worked in London, England and the guy was lucky enough to be working for an Islamic Finance & Amanah company, and that the company bought over the loans, and that the chap had to make a signed agreement to cancel all his other unsecured facilities and credit including his mortgage to the Finance Company where they assist him in the repayments and canceling a huge chunk of the credit card debt as this was part of their Credit Community Service (well, they just yank off any money held under the mosque trust fund's profits as it's part of the agreement to help the needy). But here in Michigan, my friend has no luck with that kind of thing as that don't exist in our society.

 

It's like telling her to get ready to stay on the streets and I am really crying my heart out for her and the family. $80,000 is heck of a lot of money. She is a God fearing Catholic family and even the local church can't help her out.

 

With regards

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