news

i am on board for the overall thesis of the article, because US consumer spending floats on easy credit and when there's a credit crunch it compounds the effects of the inflation it was supposed to combat. people here buy money to buy everything and when buying money gets more expensive, everything goes haywire. some people cut back hard and some people borrow like it's 2019 and then default. but this bit...

For Denise and Paul Nierzwicki, credit cards are the only way to make ends meet. The couple, ages 69 and 72, respectively, have about $20,000 in debt spread across multiple cards, all with interest rates above 20%.

The trouble started during the pandemic, when Denise lost her job and a business deal for a bar that they owned in their hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, went bad.

They applied for Social Security, which helped, and Denise now works 50 hours a week at a restaurant. Still, they’re barely scraping together the minimum payments for their credit card debt.

it goes on to say that they blame biden for this and are voting for trump because their credit card debt was only $10,000 when trump was in office. also, they think immigration is causing their problems. so basically, we're dealing with a real brain trust.

there has got to be more to this story under the part about the "business deal went bad". looking the guy up, he seems to be a realtor who bought a piano bar right after the global financial crisis (vulture!) and prior to had 10+ holding LLCs (a liability and tax dodging landlord move) which were dissolved in bad standing in 2008-2012. seems like a pattern with this guy. reads like they were trying to cash out of a big toxic asset (the bar) for a massive payday and, in standard realtor fashion, counted their chickens before they hatched and indeed borrowed in anticipation.

but anyway, working 50 hours a week to make minimums on $20k @ >20% is bankruptcy territory imo, but at least some kind of consolidation program if not a secured local bank loan against an asset or a balance transfer switcheroo. otherwise, that's like $333/mo disappearing into a void, just to prevent the debt from growing and letting interest recapitalize. just thinking about that makes my stomach hurt.

my thinking, the story behind the story is that they are avoiding bankruptcy because they don't want to sell their bar at whatever the current [lower] offer is and are trying to float their unstructured, high interest debts by forcing the elderly wife to wait tables 50 hours a week in the hopes that Daddy Deals can find a bigger idiot to buy his failed piano bar so they can ride off into their sunset years on a pile of money. that would explain not being able to consolidate or get a secured loan, because Mr. Real Estate Wizard leveraged the shit out of everything during the free money days. major small business tyrant sits on own balls vibes.