I’m sure there are a few responsible people out there that have always done the right thing by making their payments, that are seeing all of the bailouts of the irresponsible, and in their own way they are saying “screw it”.
Im in the mortgage business.
Your statement is very accurate. There are a lot of people who can afford their mortgage payments, but are just giving up paying because they are sick and tired of all the bailouts.
This is the problem the government created by continuosly helping some people who shouldnt be helped.
The small business owners are giving up too in big numbers, because they are tired of working hard to support “low income” people who sit on their duffs and mooch.
That’s us in a nutshell. We have no other debt besides our mortgage and we’re upside down about 170k..ugly. Talked to a lawyer and pretty much the only way to get the bank to talk to you about a loan modification is to stop paying.
To be honest, that thought has crossed my mind. But I’m to old fashioned, I guess, because I still believe you should honor your agreements. My honor doesn’t have a price tag attached to it. Sadly, in todays world I feel like a relic, but when I lay my head down at night my conscience is clean.
One problem is "surprise" change of terms on various cards. I got tricked by Chase into a deal that put a big crimp in my budgeting.
I had about $4,000 on my Chase CC at 2.99% fixed for the life of the loan, a minimum payment of 2% of the balance and no other charges. Great deal, eh? I had this deal for about 3 years.
Okay. So Chase sends me offer after offer year after year and I refuse -- until last October when the offer another fixed rate life-of-the-loan deal at 3.99%. So I bite.
What I didn't know was that use of the fixed rate offer triggered an immediate change of terms the very next month. Nothing in the promotional material mentioned these changes.
The new terms? Well, min payment is now 5% of balance, up from 2%, there's a $10/month service charge, and they refuse to apply any of my payments to paying finance charges. They simply add the finance charges back into the previous balances including the $10/month which accumulates and is at $19.97%. That's right. I'm not allowed to pay the finance charges unless I pay the entire account off. Now I'm stuck paying almost $700/month when I should be paying about $280/month. There are about 700,000 other customers this happened to.
Okay. So it sounds like whining, but I would never had taken the offer if the coming change of terms had been disclosed.
I've never missed a payment or have been late. And the other 700,000 people affected by this have similarly good credit. Ours is about 760. That's not perfect, but it's certainly not sub-prime.
The problem for Chase was that, as a group, we were too reliable -- they couldn't make any money off of us. They were stuck lending at 2.99% and had to find some way to get us off the books. So they created promotional material that in all ways resembled the previous offers. But with no mention of the coming change of terms. It was a trick -- legal, but a trick.
Now I'm grudgingly paying the $700/month instead of the expected $280 or so. I'm sure some people are going to struggle.
It's all legal, of course. Chase is claiming that use of the special offer implied acceptance of new terms -- even though nothing in the offer itself mentioned the new terms.
They can do this because apparently a previous change in terms about 1 year ago basically gave them permission to unilaterally alter some terms in the future on the condition that the card was used in the future.
Use their special offer and, wham, they immediately change the terms.
Damn, I hate them. I've always paid on time. I have good credit. I especially hate being a sucker.
And they just got $25 billion in TARP money, so I'm going to pay them twice!
Dang it! Went through all that trouble and now I realize that this is about mortgages!
Well, maybe the same thing is coming to credit cards.
Here's the other thing - some high FICO's see their homes upside down and know if they default now it won't be seen in the same light as if they had done it a few years ago.
Also those of us left paying our mortgages will be stuck paying all the property taxes as the "base" keeps shrinking due to foreclosures. Might be a good time to rent.