It’s Fun To Stay At The YMCA
With a gigantic “flushing” sound that sends my retirement down into the depths of the NeverNever, I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to this Friday. Why? It’s Pay Day! I’ll get to see how much of that $1 Trillion ’stimulus’ I get in my paycheck. My estimation is that it’ll be roughly $12. I’ll have to open an offshore account to wire that to, so that I can retire at, say, ninety-eight. I get twenty-six paychecks a year, at $12 a paycheck in ’stimulus,’ that’s $312 a year. Now that my retirement is worth slightly less than a plug nickel, if I want to retire anytime in the future, I’m going to have to figure out a way to save up that $312 a year and hope that I live long enough to enjoy it.
I’m 39. If I saved that $312 a year until I reach the age of 65 (that’s 26 years for you who don’t want to get the calculator out and figure how many more years until I reach it), that’s a whole whopping $8112. All of which I seriously need to send to an off-shore account, so that it doesn’t get sucked up by the $25,000 in taxes I’ll be paying for the stimulus-that-never-ends. And I’m praying that that $25,000 is all that I’ll owe. With each passing day that Congress gives billions more to the sinkhole-that-is-the-banking-industry and the black-hole-that-is-the-insurance-industry, I figure I’ll owe roughly $80,000,000 by the end of the week. So, it’ll be very important that I get my assets off the mainland as soon as possible.
And while I don’t make anywhere near the $250,000 a year that Oblahblahblahma wants to raise taxes on, I figure that, by the end of 2012, he’ll have been forced to raise taxes on everyone who makes more than $.50 an hour to roughly 50%. If not 75%. Meaning that, if I don’t get that $12 offshore quickly, I’ll be taxed so harshly that I’ll only see about $4 of it.
And what’s the deal with the bank bailouts anyway? All any of them need to do is adopt what Chase did to me in February that I had to call them on the carpet for: take a double-payment of everyone’s mortgage! And then require a minimum of ten days from the time you call them on it to return the money!
True, I was able to get it done in a matter of 72 hours, but still… If they do it at the right time, they’ll have enough money in their coffers at the end of the month that the interest alone could bail them out of any bad mortgage issues! And that’s assuming everyone catches on to what they’ve done! I’m betting that there’s more than a few people who won’t catch it or, if they do, won’t care, because it’ll mean that they’re one month closer to paying off their mortgage.
Side note: How did I get my money back? I started with the first person I talked to, who said that I would need to get a bank statement from my bank that included my bank account number on it (something that my bank only mails out at the end of the month–which was about two weeks away at the time), ensure that both withdrawals were on the same piece of paper (they deducted them three days apart from each other), highlight both withdrawals, include a cover-letter that stated that I was charged twice, FAX it to them, and, after ten business days that are required for them to ensure that they indeed do have the money, they will refund it to me.
I was not happy about this, and demanded to speak to their supervisor. I was then told “fine, but she’ll just tell you the same thing.” And indeed she did. I then told that person that I wanted to speak to her supervisor. When I spoke to her, who basically told me the same thing, I asked to speak to her supervisor. And on up the chain it went. Eventually, I told whoever I was talking to that I would keep asking for their supervisor all the way up to the billions-in-bailout-monies-receiving, multi-million-dollars-a-year-in-salary-making, private-jet-flying, luxury-home-owning, dream-vacation-taking CEO if I had to get my money back that day. Six people up, I was able to talk to someone who got it wired back into my account that day. But then, I also told him that I didn’t understand why they couldn’t see that, yes, they did have my money in their coffers. They are a FREAKING BANK after all! Not to mention the fact that every single person I spoke with all said the same thing–yes, we see that we took your money on this date AND on this date.
Looking back on it, I’m sure they were slighly disappointed that they had to do this for me, as they lost the interest that I’m sure they would have enjoyed gaining had they gotten to keep my money for a minimum of ten days. After I called them on it. I wonder if they would have ever admitted to the oversight had I not called them on it? Probably not. But whatever.
But back to what I was saying.
While I watched GMA this morning, I learned something interesting: they still don’t know how much money they’re losing when it comes to bad mortgage loans. The person that they spoke with gave an interesting example of how bad things are with the stock market (and yes, this is paraphrased):
“If I owned a home several houses down from you, and I fell on hard times and had to sell it at 50% of the current value of that home, your house value would drop by that same 50%. And not only yours, but every house on the block would drop. The same is true for the stock market–if I have to sell my stock in Company X for 50% of the ‘true’ value, then all the stock would have to adjust to that price.”
So what they want to do is break that cycle–allow things to be bought and sold at different prices for the same item.
I honestly don’t see what the big deal about doing this is. I mean, we already do this in today’s market. For example, say you want to buy your son a Cars diecast car for his collection. At Toys R Us, those are running about $3.89 each. At Wal-mart, they’re selling for $3.25 each for the same car. I’m going to buy it at Wal-mart, unless TRU has some great incentive for me to buy it from them. Like the 5-for-1 deal that they’re supposed to start in the very near future. (Currently, the page that that link takes you to is for an older deal that is long-since expired. Can’t wait for the next one to start!!!!) But the point is, unless they have an inticement that I can’t pass up, I’m going to do my Cars shopping at Wal-mart.
‘So what does this have to do with the name of the post’ you ask? Everything.
Right now, they have absolutely no clue what the value of anyone’s home is. The One is throwing our money at banks hand-over-fist hoping to bail out people who cannot pay their mortgages. The money I’m paying to the bank for my mortgage is basically worthless, because while I’m giving them money, they have no clue what my home is worth. This bothers me tremendously. But that’s another issue altogether.
No, what is truly troublesome is the fact that my tax dollars are going towards paying for mortgages that someone who has bought a home that they cannot afford. If *I* am paying for that/those home(s), then why can’t I just move my crap in there and stay? I don’t have a problem with kicking their lazy butts out. Yet, I can’t do that. Heck, with what’s going on with ACORN breaking into the bank’s houses and getting people moved back in there whenever they haven’t paid their mortgages on those houses for years, well, honestly, that’s a bit appalling.
So, while I sympathize with the people who have lost their jobs, and are currently worried about paying their mortgages–I have been there, so believe me, I completely understand where you’re coming from–at the same time, the very idea of paying for everyone’s mortgage is giving me great heartburn. It’s the people who decided to buy homes they couldn’t afford, because of brainless mortgage company activities. It’s the people who bought their homes without thinking about what they were doing, and signed contracts with variable interest payments. It’s the people who have decided that they just don’t want to mess with paying their mortgage payments, so they decided to vote Oblahblahblahma into office because “he’ll take care of me!” It’s the people who have decided that welfare is their hammock instead of the safety net for those people who truly need it. THOSE are the people that are ruining it for everyone. THOSE are the bad apples of the bunch.
THOSE are the people that I just want to walk up to, grab them by the collar, and quote that famous song: It’s fun to stay at the YMCA!
