What happened next was a miracle: Bob Chelnick accepted my proposal!
Sure, he hemmed and hawed at first. He thought there was no point in even proposing my offer to his boss. He said he could settle for 75 percent of what I owed, but that was it. I prayed over it, and I talked with him very openly. I told him I felt responsible for 100 percent of the debt, but there was no way I could pay it. I told him that 75 percent was not possible, either.
That was hard for me, because there’s a part of me that hates to negotiate, and feels like I should just take what I can get. This is called pauperism, and it’s a big part of being a debtor. Paupers don’t feel they deserve anything good. When you feel you don’t deserve anything good, you’re always holding out your hat. You’re convinced that good things should be given to you, while at the same time, you’re convinced you don’t deserve anything good. So you simultaneously demand good things are given to you, at the same time that you’re pushing them away. In a nutshell, pauperism is a form of self-sabotage. The paradox is that as a pauper, you are at once too entitled, and at the same time too disempowered, to allow yourself to succeed.
Pauperism almost always gives way to debting. When you’re too disempowered to negotiate and advocate for what you want, you almost always wind up in financial, and energetic, debt. The emotional state of pauperism is closely tied to the behaviors of debting.
So, as I was setting firm boundaries with Bob around what I could pay, I was fighting my pauperism. Bob and I talked back and forth for some time, over several phone calls. Somehow, we were now able to reach one another on a regular basis. I suspect this is due, in part, to the fact that Bob finally knew I was a living, breathing person, not just another name and number on his ledger of people who owed his company money. I thought that, over the course of our conversations, he was even beginning to like me a little bit.
After we had gone back and forth in this fashion for several days, Bob called me one Saturday with great news: we were “all set” (a direct quote). American Express would settle for half of what I owed them. I remember it very well. My dad was in town visiting from Boston. We were in the parking lot of Toys R Us, waiting for it to open so Dad could buy a tricycle for my son. It somehow seemed appropriate that the call came when I was with my dad. He and I had been discussing my efforts to get out of debt, and the American Express problems in particular, both before and during his trip.
My dad has had money problems of his own in the past, and although there is no question that his own debting had to some extent taught me the behavior, he was also a sympathetic ear when it came to reforming. He had been there, done that, and had, with my stepmother’s assistance, changed his behavior after years of dealing with creditors, and feeling hopeless and helpless about his own situation. However, he was also quite honest about the fact that not debting remained a daily struggle for him, and that was very comforting for me.
It felt like an absolute miracle to get that phone call. I called my wife right away to tell her the news, and she was elated. She cried tears of joy when I told her. A previous boyfriend of hers had gotten himself into trouble with American Express, and apparently they were totally ruthless with him. They had made his life a living hell, docking his pay and harassing him. It was just brutal. He eventually settled with them, but it took a huge toll on him, and on their relationship. So my wife was, understandably, incredibly relieved to get the call.
I, however, was skeptical. For some reason, I didn’t trust what was happening. Bob reported that his supervisor had approved the settlement, and that further approval needed to occur higher up the food chain. But, he assured me, it was really just a formality. In his mind, this was already a done deal. But I couldn’t get it in writing until his boss’s boss approved it.
So, for two weeks, I checked my mailbox dutifully, waiting for the official offer to settle. But it never came. I called Bob repeatedly, but I never heard back. We were back to the silent treatment. I called and called, and he was never there. But this time, he wasn’t calling me back. He had completely vanished.
I was beginning to feel duped, and I was beginning to get scared. I was sure something had gone wrong. After two weeks of sweating it out, I finally heard from Bob (this was about 12 days ago). He told me the deal had fallen through. His boss’s boss had killed it, and I was going to have to talk to the boss’s boss if I wanted to appeal his decision. I was crushed. Despite the fact that I had suspected the deal was too good to be true, I was still hoping it was true. Hoping I could reason with him, I went ahead and left a message for the boss’s boss (who was on vacation), and waited to hear from him.
What happened next is what finally pushed me over the edge, and forced me to begin writing this account of what’s happening to me. It made me feel angry, hopeless, and full of despair. It put me under more stress than I could handle on my own, and I knew I needed an outlet.
Imagine with me, if you will. It’s five days after my last conversation with Bob (about a week ago). I still haven’t heard back from the boss’s boss. I’ve repeatedly tried to call him, and gotten no response. I’ve also tried repeatedly to contact Bob, and haven’t heard back from him, either.
One day, I’m in my car, on my way to meet my wife and son on the other side of town. I’ll never forget it. I’m driving down a busy street, when my phone beeps to indicate I have a message. It’s a voicemail from someone who does not identify himself, sounds very pushy and rushed, and says only that his message regards a “personal matter” and that I need to call him back right away. I know something is up. Although I don’t normally make phone calls in the car, I can’t wait to return the call. I call back, heart pounding, and find out that…
I’M BEING SUED!!!
That’s right. The same people I had a verbal agreement with to settle are now suing me for breach of contract. Can you believe it? How dare they?
If you’re a debtor, you might be familiar with the indignation I feel. We debtors are very good at being indignant, even if we are at fault. If someone wants to collect on a debt, and we don’t like the way they’re going about it, we go into victim mode. We take no responsibility for what we’ve done to get into the mess we’re in. In a nutshell, the inner dialogue goes something like, “How can they DO this to me???”
Of course, anyone reading this who is not a debtor might be thinking, “Well, what do you expect? You borrowed sixteen thousand dollars from these people, and you blew it off. You reneged. You breached your contract. Regardless of how nice you’ve been, you owe them this money! And you only want to pay half, anyway. How dare you, sir? They should sue you!”
Well, I can understand that logic. However, for our purposes, there is a problem with it: Debtors don’t live by the rules of logic.
The reason debtors don’t live by the rules of logic is that we deny reality. In most cases, the way one gets into debt is by being out of touch with reality. A debtor either doesn’t earn enough, or spends too much, or both. She is either an “under-earner,” who doesn’t live extravagantly, but doesn’t earn enough to meet basic needs; an over-spender, buying everything in sight; a big-shot, buying everyone at the table dinner; or some combination of the three (as in someone who both under-earns, and over-spends, or someone who spends too much on themselves, and too much on others).
Regardless of the particulars, the thing we all have in common is the fact that we spend more than we earn, and we can’t seem to stop. When you consider that “the typical family’s credit card balance is now almost 5 percent of their annual income,”[i] it’s hard to argue the fact that a huge number of Americans have this problem. There are 984 million Visa and MasterCard accounts active in the United States,[ii] and that’s not even counting American Express and Discover, who between them own 17% of the credit card market.[iii] When you factor those two in, you’re looking at over a billion credit and debit cards floating around this country. A billion little pieces of plastic, which exist for one sole purpose: to make money for the credit card companies.
It’s hard to deny this is a national issue. Of the billion cards in existence, you have to figure a large percentage of them are not being used responsibly. Chronic debtors will abuse any card we can get our hands on; that’s why, according to MSN Money, “about 10% of cardholders ha(ve) total credit card balances in excess of $10,000.”[iv] That’s why we, as a nation, are drowning in debt. And that’s why I’m at the end of my rope right now. After years of debting, the chickens have finally come home to roost. American Express has me right where they want me, and I just don’t know what to do.
[i] Figures from the Federal Reserve, cited on creditcards.com in “Credit Card Industry and Personal Debt Statistics (-2007).” http://www.creditcards.com/statistics/credit-card-industry-facts-and-personal-debt-statistics. A very fruitful web site full of great facts and figures.
[ii] Figures from Visa USA and MasterCard International, cited on creditcards.com in “Credit Card Industry and Personal Debt Statistics (-2007).” http://www.creditcards.com/statistics/credit-card-industry-facts-and-personal-debt-statistics. Some pretty eye-popping figures, straight from the horse’s mouth.
[iii] www.CardWeb.com
[iv] http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/credicardsmarts/P74808.asp.
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