One thing learned while wallowing in indebtedness, deadbeatness and utter-lack-of-hopeness is there are apparently a lot of people facing similar circumstances right now. People you've just met. People you've known for years. People you would expect to know better than to be in the same piss-poor financial shape.
This was really noticeable at a recent party where an educated guess would suggest 98 percent of the people there did not vote for Obama. These are folks who as long as can be remembered talked about their lavish vacations, country club dinners and brand new automobiles at similar parties.
Now, the discussions centered on layoffs, reduced work days and, for many with their own businesses, possible shop closings.
Maybe it's easier to cope when you know the pain is being felt near-universally and by people whose paychecks were always bigger than your own. Or, maybe these sad sacks need to take a harder look at the solutions right before them, in their email inboxes.
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If their folders are anything like mine, they are filled with get-rich-during-the-recession opportunities, such as my personal invitation to “the largest Hard Money Conference in the country,” April 30 at–where else?–the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. The email explains:
Recently, a mortgage broker earned a whopping $76,000 commission on a hard money loan that he brokered. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to take advantage of the new business climate? With the lack of funding from conventional banks, private money financing has become the go to place for financing. Learn how you may be able to take advantage of current market conditions.
Join us at the largest national conference on commercial and residential hard money.
Take advantage of our 2 for 1 special today!
I'm still not sure what hard money is, but I bet people at that party I attended would know. I'd be a fool not to attend. But “2 for 1” what?
DebtEx of Los Angeles emailed this important package. Damn if I can open it. The accompanying links sent me to pages that won't open. Goddamn you, DebtEx, for teasing me. Surely the package holds the key to future financial security.
Perhaps I would have had better luck if I had gone through with sending away for the Google Money Tree kit. Apparently, there is a sure-fire way to make gobs of cash posting something or other for Google. Although you do not technically work for Google. And whatever you do do (not for Google) will only be revealed if you pay for the kit.
Fortunately, my credit card payment was rejected. While searching for another that might have clearence (HA!), I did some Googling of my own. Up popped something telling me this was all a scam. Send my email address, and the person doing the warning would explain it all to me, which he did–in between his pitches for the real answers about making money on the interwebs.
But there is no need to do that now, as a Mr. Williams wrote to inform that something called OXFAM GB-UK has awarded me a cash grant totaling 850,000 British pounds. For what, I'm not exactly sure, but the VISA and Amex bill collectors will be so pleased.
Previously in Welcome to the Poorhouse:
Problem Makers Become “Solvers”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.