If you weren’t aware, since I have been living in Germany, I have been working at a credit union. I started with my mandatory 3 months of service on the teller line, but I was made for bigger things… the LOAN department! Well, seeing as, at the time, I was one of the only people with a bachelor’s degree working there, I wasn’t super surprised that I went to the head of the class. I also had some great teachers in my coworkers Myke & Candice…plus a boss who expected perfection.
So, here I am a year later working as a loan officer in Germany. I always joke that J & I are both officers. I was really upset when I didn’t get a badge or anything. Where is the fun in the world?
When I started working up loans I was very unpleasantly surprised by the state of our military personnel’s finances. You probably don’t know the ranking system, but it basically goes like this: Enlisted is E1-E9 & Officers are O1-O10. J is currently an O2 (2nd Lieutenant), but he just got picked up to be a Captain (O3), and will be promoted the beginning of next year. There is also something called a warrant officer, which is W1-W5 – I don’t really know much about them other than they are higher than Enlisted and lower than Officer in the army hierarchy.
I thought one could assume that an E1-E4 is young & doesn’t know much about money, and that anyone who is E5 and above should be pretty put together. BOY WAS I WRONG.
Here are a few tales of my woes in financing:
I have an E8 (big time, I assume) requesting $50,000 for a new car (no problem, right. Should be auto approval). So, I pull their credit & this person’s scores are rough. I mean BAD. He has over 10 accounts that have gone to collection agencies. So I am looking at what this person hasn’t paid, and I start to get really confused. He has all of these different Pizza Huts & Papa John’s accounts that have gone to collections. Since when are pizza places handing out credit? I ask. And they are for small amounts too, between $40-$50. So, I go to my manager and ask him to explain it to me what all of that means. He gets this knowing grin on his face. “I see what they are doing.” He says. “They are cutting bad checks to pizza places.” And he was right- you could tell that this person had never hit the smae pizza place twice and ruined his credit to save $50 bucks on PIZZA!!?! What is wrong with the world.
I have another story with an E8. You will need some background though: we have this terrible thing at the credit union called “Courtesy Pay.” Basically, you can take your account negative up to $1000 if you have your direct deposit going into SCU (for a $19 fee every time you go negative) and up to negative $500 if you don’t have direct deposit (that’s for a $24 fee). So, we have people that come in before EVERY payday and take their account negative, only to pay $19 and pay back all of the funds once their pay hits. It is extremely stupid and people depend on it. You can deduce a lot of things from this: 1) that people don’t save money…EVER 2) That people don’t plan ahead EVER & 3)People can’t do basic math & figure out that they are screwing themselves. People LOVE this service though, so it won’t be going away anytime soon.
Okay, back to my story. We have an E8 who would abuse courtesy pay, as in he would take it out every month & one time his account stayed negative so long that his courtesy pay was revoked. That was a while ago. Then just a few months ago, I get a call & the woman on the line asks to speak with the manager. We are never supposed to transfer the person unless we try to help them first, so I ask if there is anything I can do. She responds with; “Well, we are in Croatia and we are in a little pickle, and I just need to speak with the manager.” So I transfer the call and go back to my work. A few minutes later my manager comes rushing out of his office, all in a panic and comes over to me to explain the situation. Apparently, this couple was in Croatia when they got a 250 Euro speeding ticket and they had to pay it right then. Now, they don’t have enough money to get home. They did the math and they need $700 to get the rest of the way...
Are you doing the math, because that definitely doesn’t add up. We look at their account & see that they only have $100 available. So, my manager and I decide to review their history a bit and see this: 5 days ago this joker got paid $4000. When he got paid he had $1500 in his account. So that makes $5500 he had when they set out for Croatia. In the process of this little 5 day getaway, they managed to spend ALL of it, shopping, $2000 hotel bills, more shopping, eating out, and who knows what else. So, now they are “in a pickle” because they have spent all of their money and they don’t have enough to get home. Well, I have NO sympathy. And I tell my boss as such, he gets annoyed with me and tells me I need to be more helpful. He thinks we could reinstate this couple’s courtesy pay until they get home, or we could give him a special loan that he qualifies for because he just got back from deployment. Oh, did I mention that? This guy JUST GOT BACK FROM DEPLOYMENT?!!?! You are supposed to have tons of mullah when you have been sitting in the desert for almost a year. Not this guy. And who doesn’t have an emergency credit card, or savings, or ANYTHING?
He told me later that his wife “married down” & never got used to living on a budget. They “finally feel like they are at a place where their income suits their lifestyle.” Umm, seriously?! You have been in the army for 15+ years and you FINALLY feel like you make enough money for your lifestyle?! Um, didn’t the thought ever enter your mind that you should CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE ACCORDING TO YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES?! I have some friends that came from pretty nice circumstances, and we were all taught that you have to work hard to earn what your parents have. You can’t expect a $300,000 house when you are first married and you don’t deserve a brand new $40,000 car with no money down. You have to be humble. You aren’t entitled to what your parents have.
The end of this couple’s story is that we gave them back courtesy pay one last time, and they were able to get home. Whew, you were worried about this crack team, weren’t you? And then, since they knew they qualified for that special loan, they came in & got that as well. More debt! YAYAY! This is the kind of stud I sincerely enjoy turning down for a loan when he applies for a brand new BMW with no money down (oh yeah, that happened). And if that makes me a bad person, then I am a bad person.
Nothing really tops that story, but I will just give a few more little gems. I had this one guy (an E4 I believe), who I turned down for a small unsecured loan. Whenever I tell someone that they are turned down, I let them know that they can come in and look at their credit report to get some pointers on how to improve their scores. When this guy came in to look at everything, it was pretty easy to show him the right direction. Basically, he didn’t have any good trade lines and his credit report just looked like a rap sheet of institutions he had stolen from (in essence). So, I advised him to start paying everyone back. His response: “Won’t all of this stuff just fall off my credit after 7 years anyways?” I told him: “Technically, but it doesn’t always work that way. And, don’t forget the fact that YOU OWE THIS MONEY.” That fact didn’t seem to faze him and he just thanked me and continued in his “take money from anyone who will give it to me” ways.
One time I had an E9 (that’s the big time for enlisted) request $500 for car repairs. When I got that application I knew I wouldn’t be approving it. If a guy who has been in the army for that long needs a LOAN for $500, you know something’s wrong. Surprise, surprise, I turned him down and didn’t feel bad about it at all.
I used to get really depressed when I saw the state of the world through people’s credit reports. It made me so frustrated how terrible people were with money, how irresponsible and entitled everyone was. What 20 year old NEEDS a brand new $30,000 car when he only has job assurance for the next 3 years? What kind of people decide that they are going to quit their job and so they just decide to stop making their loan payments, or, even better, ask if we can just buy the car back. Umm, it doesn’t really work like that. Who KNOWS they want to get out of the army and gets a car loan anyway that they KNOW they won’t be able to pay.
Some days I felt like the teacher in “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie is dreaming about how she will love his “theme” about the red rider bb gun: “F, F,F,F, 20 years of teaching down the drain!” and then when someone comes around who has “b” paper FICO score, I just want to write A++++++++ all over the chalkboard and dance around the office I am so excited.
