The images evoke a theme which we can all understand. Maybe somewhere in everyone’s family history, Visigoths or Mongols or Tartars or Saxons were at the gates, and the fear of them was passed down from mothers to children for a thousand years. The best advertising is entertaining, and the barbarians do catch your eye.
Think about it though. What is really in your wallet?
In mine, I have the usual stuff, a driver’s license and my license to practice law, some old pictures of my boys and my wife. I have a ticket stub from a Grateful Dead show on June 23, 1984 (rain or shine) in Harrisburg. I also kept a pay stub, from around the same time, which I kept because it showed a 63 hour week, with a bunch of the hours at triple time for working over a holiday ($39.50 per hour). I kept it because it seemed like all the money in the world to me at the time. I was about nineteen.
I also have credit cards. I am not a big fan of them, and I try not to use them much, but I do. I need one for work, to pay things that arise every day in business. I never carry cash. My family relieves me immediately and without any mercy of any cash I ever happen to have.
Fortunately as a lawyer I am able to make a good living, but I have four sons in college and it is hard running a business in this poor economy. Things are always tight. Like everyone else, I am an illness, a divorce (knock on wood here) or a hard knock to my business away from trouble. I should have been born a millionaire.
If things are tight for professional people, what about everyone else?
My clients typically make between $20,000.00 and $60,000.00 dollars per year. I cannot count how many times I have met with people who, while explaining their money problems to me, pulled out a dozen or more credit cards and laid them on the table. Each might have a limit of 5 to 10 thousand dollars.
A person earning forty thousand a year might have $70,000.00 in credit card debt. Assuming an interest rate of 30% (which is about right when you add all the fees and charges besides interest) the debt service is $21,000.00 annually, or $1,750.00 per month.
$40,000.00 per year translates into about $3,100.00 gross earnings per month.
If the cards are being serviced on an interest only basis, that leaves $1,350.00 per month, not counting taxes, for the person to live on for four weeks.
I think I’d rather take my chances fighting the barbarians directly. At least you’d have a chance, and if it didn’t work, the end would be quick.
So take a look. What is in your wallet?
Eugene C. Kelley, Esquire is a partner in the Pennsylvania law firm of Kelley & Polishan, LLC with over 20 years experience in debtor/creditor law. He has substantial experience in FDCPA and consumer rights litigation, bankruptcy, commercial and collection law, with an emphasis on representing insolvent businesses and consumers. He has represented both creditors and debtors. He is a member of the Board of Directors of North Penn Legal Services, an entity dedicated to providing legal services to the poor and indigent. He received a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from the University of Scranton and his Juris Doctorate is from the Dickinson School of Law. He has lived in Northeast Pennsylvania for his entire life, and with his wife Janet is raising a family of four sons.
You must log in to post a comment.