October 22

Back to the Amex Odyssey:

About two months ago, after weeks of silence, I got a voicemail message from Bob Chelnick, an “agent” with American Express. The message scared me. First of all, what exactly is an “agent,” and what does he do? He sounded so threatening when he called, I was worried I was going to be deported. And second, I wondered, what did he want? Whatever it was, I was sure I was in trouble.

I tried repeatedly to call him back, but Bob was virtually impossible to reach. He’d leave me a voicemail, and I’d call him back three times in a given day, and never get him. I was freaked out. I was trying hard to reach the guy, but he was never there when I called. Then, he’d leave more messages on my cell phone, and it would sound as if he didn’t know I’d even called him back. His tone implied that I was avoiding him, which was very frustrating, because nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Mr. White,” he’d say, “Bob Chelnick with American Express. Please call me right away; it is very important that you return my call.” As if I’d never called at all. Of course, he couldn’t say something nice, like, “Mr. White, thank you so much for calling me back so promptly. I’m eager to speak with you.” Of course not. If I could translate his tone and message, if would have sounded something like, “Look, buddy, I know you’re dodging me, so call me before I come hunt you down. I have dogs. Big dogs, and we’re coming for you.” I half-expected him to threaten to send somebody to break my fingers.

Bob Chelnick called me all the time, but as a busy psychotherapist, I was usually in session when he called. Then, when I called him back, he was never in. He even called me at my former place of employment, trying to track me down. That really bothered me. It felt like harassment, despite the fact I was calling him back every day, every time I had a chance! Apparently, we had crossed some sort of threshold. Not only were we no longer playing nice, but we had, in fact, completely tossed manners out the window.

Finally, after weeks of consternation, I got a hold of Bob Chelnick. As fate would have it, I had just inherited $20,000 from a relative, and I was looking to deal. I wanted this monkey off my back. I didn’t want American Express to show up at my workplace, ready to tell my boss that I was a bad person and that he should never have hired me. I didn’t want my car repossessed. I didn’t want my pay docked. I didn’t want things to get worse between my wife and me, because of the stress caused by the situation.

Let’s talk for a minute about the inheritance. $20,000 might have seemed like a reasonably large amount of money to me before this disease got a hold of me, but compared to what I now owe, it’s a relatively small chunk of change. Looking at our situation objectively, my wife and I decided to spend most of it on debt repayment. In my effort to avoid bankruptcy, and maintain the possibility of a homeowner’s loan, I’m eager to do what I can to put a sizeable dent in my debt. At the time of all our phone calls, which began about a month ago, I was particularly eager to bargain with American Express, because the situation with them had gotten so far out of control.

When I got the inheritance a couple of months ago, my goal was to spend about $5,000 on stuff for the house, vet bills, clothes for my family, and a new sofa. The general consensus amongst the therapists and 12-step groups that work with debtors is that, for a debtor, a financial windfall should not all be spend on debt repayment. Doing so can lead to a sense of deprivation, which then leads to more debting. I didn’t want to set myself up for more debting by blowing all of the inheritance on debt repayment, and then feeling deprived. I also felt I owed (no pun intended) my wife some financial breathing room after what she’s gone though the last couple years as a result of my debting. There were a lot of things we needed for the house, we really needed some new clothes, and both our cats needed to see the vet. So, $5,000 would be set aside for the family, for these and other expenses.

Then, I wanted to put about $2,000 aside for a modest reserve, possibly in a CD or some other kind of savings plan. From my year in recovery from credit card addiction, I had learned that not having savings is always a setup for more debting. When an unexpected expense comes up, and you have no savings, what do you use to pay the expense? You have no choice but to use credit. So, I needed to set aside at least $2,000 for savings. That added up to about $7,000 that was earmarked for the home front.

The remaining $13,000 was for debt repayment, and I was allocating $8,000 of that for American Express, because I figured I’d need the other $5,000 to stave off a lawsuit from another creditor (more on that later).

Seems like a good plan, right? Well, it was. The only problem was that I was only prepared to give American Express $8,000, when I owed them over $16,000. I could have paid them all $16,000, but that would have left little money for savings, current needs, or my other creditors. So, after consulting with a small army of advisors, it was clear that $8,000 was all I could afford to give to American Express.

I felt bad about it, because I honestly wanted to pay them back every penny I’d borrowed. However, I knew that if I paid them $16,000, it would wipe out my inheritance, the only extra cushion we had, and that it would eat up the only money I had available with which I could fight this other lawsuit. I knew it wouldn’t work to do it that way. I knew that, in order to have it work out for my family, American Express was going to have to play ball with me.

So what happened next? We’ll have to get to that tomorrow, because it’s 11:00 at night, and if I’m going to be up at 6:00 tomorrow morning to go to work (which I intend to do), I have to hit the hay. As saying goes, “Don’t borrow from tomorrow.” That applies to time, as well as money, and it also applies to sleep.