|
Not sure if this fits here, but it's kind of a small/dumb question that doesn't really deserve its own thread. We've been getting daily phone calls from a junk debt collector. I'm quite frankly sick of it, so I'm ready to send a certified letter requesting validation of the debt. Thing is, it's genuinely not ours. The debtor shares my husband's name, but the debt cannot possibly belong to him. I've spoken to a rep at the debt collector (the infamous NCO), who told me: 1. The debt is owed to the State of Maryland, for tuition. 2. Someone at our phone number has been making payments on this debt. He has never been to Maryland, nor gone to college, and there's definitely no one here making payments on this bogus debt. Given that this is the case, should I handle this any differently than I would if the debt were legitimately ours? Most of the advice online is geared towards people who actually owe the money, so I'm not sure how to proceed exactly. I want to put something in the letter requesting that they verify the identity of the debtor as well, but I don't know how to word it.
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2010 22:08
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 13:26 |
|
|
All right, I'm not really sure how to handle this. I recently got my auto loan refinanced through my credit union, but I wasn't able to get ahold of the same officer who put the loan application through to finalize it, so I had someone else pull the paperwork so we could get the ball rolling. This person noticed that the original officer had also put through an application for an emergency line of credit, connected to our checking account, in case of overdraft. They offered this feature to us when we opened our checking account, but we declined. I told the new officer we weren't interested, but I'm concerned that this is potentially showing up as a second hard inquiry on our credit reports. Also, I'm obviously concerned that Officer #1 put this application through without asking or telling us anything about it. What should I do in this situation? I'm expecting a call from Officer #1 any minute now, and I plan to ask her about it, but I don't think there is anything she can do about it now. Since we apparently applied for two loans yesterday, will that be two dings our credit scores? Should I complain to someone higher-up about Officer #1, or is it pointless? Is there anything else I can do? I know I could dispute the inquiries with the bureaus, but I read something in one of the house-buying threads that people with disputes on their credit reports had trouble getting mortgages later. I don't want that to come back to haunt me.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2011 17:59
|
|
|
Tortilla Maker posted:I updated my CreditKarma score today and noticed that there was a hard inquiry on my credit report in the past 30 days. I haven't applied for any additional credit. Hey username buddy!  Just call whichever burea(s) the inquiry's at and ask about it, they should be able to give you additional information. Hard inquiries generally only show when you've applied for a new loan or something similar, so I'd definitely check it out if you don't remember applying for anything recently. Places that have all your financial information can (and sometimes will) apply for loans or lines of credit without your knowledge - this happened to me at my credit union recently.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2012 00:28
|
|
|
So I finally have some cash flow going beyond just basic living expenses, which is super exciting. Plus, there's a possibility of a nice little worker's comp settlement coming through in a couple months. (I'm not banking on it, but if it does happen I want to have a plan ready.) I've been doing some research, but I've never had to manage a significant amount of money for myself before so I want to make sure I'm attacking this right. So far, my plan for my extra cash is to get my $1000 emergency savings set up, pay off credit cards, and then...I'm not sure. We have no other debts except $8,063.49 on a car loan with 3.74% interest, so I feel like it might make more sense to keep paying the minimum ($283.24) and focus instead on building up our emergency savings - the lack of which, by the way, is how we ended up with all our credit card debt in the first place. But I don't know if that's wise, or if I should maybe split the difference (and if I split, how much on each?). Also - I've been reading the long-term investment thread, but I feel like this question is too basic for over there. I have self-employment income and I want to set up some kind of retirement savings/tax shelter. Everybody says Vanguard, but is there any reason not to go through ING? I already have a ShareBuilder account with them so it would be easy, and it seems like they work with Vanguard. Plus, any money I shove into ShareBuilder is in a money market account until I decide what I actually want to do with it. So it all seems really easy - unless I'm missing something.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2012 03:15
|
|
|
Thanks guys! I am definitely into the idea of avoiding for-profit financial institutions (our credit union is how we got our car loan refinanced at that awesome rate, incidentally). Is there any compelling reason to keep my ShareBuilder account open, then? I got it originally as a part of some promotional deal where you get $50 if you sign up, but I guess I might as well close it if I'm going to go through Vanguard.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2012 18:23
|
|
|
IllegallySober posted:Similar to the question from the last page: My husband and I just did this and it didn't affect our credit scores at all. I did Google up this which suggests that it might lower your score if you have overdraft protection or a line of credit associated with the account, but I am pretty sure we had overdraft protection with BoA so I don't know if that's necessarily true in all cases.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2012 06:20
|
|
|
Fisticuffs posted:She said that if the funds hadn't been withdrawn in 7-10 business days I would be in the clear. Obviously we're well past that point. Just wanted to chime in on this bit - a BoA ATM once ate a check I tried to deposit, and even though they "resolved" the situation quickly and released the funds to me, they then withdrew the funds (plus a "returned item fee") with no warning weeks later because they suddenly decided they couldn't honor the damaged check. The check...that their machine damaged. So I'd say that "7-10 business days" thing is complete bullshit, and that money might disappear from your account at any time. And my check was 100% legit, just slightly wrinkled. For a check that is most likely fraudulent, I'd expect that money to disappear any day now. Googling up some check-cashing scams indicates that lots of people get in pretty deep before the first check even bounces, so it sounds like banks taking their sweet rear end time to determine the validity of a check is really common. I could be wrong, but I thought I'd let you know that it's a possibility. I don't think there's a limit on how long they have to pull the money back if they realize the check's no good, and it sounds like you're still in a situation where getting $75+ ripped out of your account would hurt you pretty badly. So, be aware.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2012 06:21
|
|
|
Can anyone explain to me in stupid-people terms what it might mean if my estranged parents put their house into a revocable trust? From googling, I understand that there are a lot of reasons to potentially set up a revocable trust, but I don't really get how it would apply to this situation. Are they trying to bypass me completely and leave it to my kids, or are they trying to leave it to me on certain conditions...or is it impossible to know without being aware of the details?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2012 01:52
|
|
|
They do have a mortgage and a home equity loan so avoiding probate costs is a possibility, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were planning to dispose the house in some way other than giving it to me, and set up the trust to make sure I couldn't contest it. That's sort of what I was suspecting but I couldn't figure out from my own research if that was something that a trust could accomplish. I didn't even think of asking in the legal thread, but I think I probably know everything that it's possible to know at this point. Thanks everyone. VVV Thanks, it's probably just because of the mortgages then...I got curious when I saw it pop up on one of those home value sites and wondered if it had anything to do with me. Sounds like not. Jessi Bond fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Sep 26, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2012 04:32
|
|
|
herakles posted:YMMV, but my experience has been that credit unions actually give a poo poo about keeping you as a customer. Chase royally hosed up my account, and while they were very happy to say they were "sorry for the inconvenience" they weren't particularly interested in actually doing anything to fix the problem in a timely fashion. This is the issue, really. You might be one of the many people who stays with a megabank for years and never has any issues, but if they do gently caress you over, you can bet you'll be scrambling to get away from them. You might as well do it sooner rather than later. Credit unions are member-owned and they are not for profit institutions. That makes all the difference. In practical application it might not ever make a difference to you, or it might not make a difference for a long time. But it's worth switching on principle alone, IMHO. I understand not wanting to go through the hassle if you don't feel motivated to do so. But I'll say this: I wish I'd switched a lot earlier, if only because I could have gotten a car loan at 5% lower interest than I ended up with. I re-financed later, but I threw away a lot of money on that loan. CUs often have some of the best rates on everything, so if you're planning to take out any loans or open any savings accounts it's definitely worth the switch ASAP.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 5, 2012 02:39
|
|
|
About how long does it take for major changes in your credit usage to be reported to places liked Credit Karma or Credit Sesame? We paid off all of our credit card debt a few months ago. I have an account for each of us on these sites to monitor our stuff inbetween pulling the free reports from the bureaus. A lot of payoffs seem to have come through, but there's still a few thousand dollars worth of credit card usage showing up on both. Is it worth paying for real reports from the bureaus to see if something's wrong? (We're a ways away from being due another free annual report from any of them.) Or should I just wait for another couple of months?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2012 20:42
|
|
|
Zeta Taskforce posted:You are entitled to a free credit report at https://www.annualcreditreport.com each calendar year, so whatever happened this year doesn’t matter. You can get another free one in 25 days. My understanding is the free sites should still give you accurate information in real time. Your accounts should be reported every month, so if the credit isn’t updating the new balance you might want to call them. You can also ask them for a letter where they state you have a zero balance if their lack of reporting is messing you up trying to do something like refinance. Oh thanks, I didn't realize the free reports went by the calendar year. I'll check them out in a few weeks then. It's not hugely important right at this moment, I figured there was a lag but it was starting to feel like it had been an awfully long time.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2012 18:21
|
|
|
FrictionlessEmu posted:So figure I should do something a bit better - is ING still the go-to high-interest savings account? And at what point is it generally reasonable to start doing something else with savings besides just shoving it in a savings account like that? All of the online "high yield" savings accounts drastically reduced their interest rates a couple years ago, so it's no longer a no-brainer to sign up for one. My experience has been that my local credit union has a better rate than I can get at any of the online places. Just do a little bit of research into what's available in your area vs. what's available online and figure out what makes the most sense for you. (And not that you asked, but you should get as far away as possible from BoA and move all of your banking to a credit union.) You can invest with pretty small amounts of money, so it should be less about how much you actually have, and more about whether you've met your goals for liquid savings. Waiting until you have six months' expenses saved up is a pretty good benchmark, but you might want more or less liquid savings depending on your situation. quote:I don't really have any sense of whether it's hard to get approved for credit cards (or at least for credit cards that I might want), I guess! There's a lot of variables that make this pretty hard to predict, but if you didn't have any trouble with the BoA card I can't imagine you will struggle a whole lot to open one or two more cards. I'll refrain from giving opinions on how many credit cards you really need to open to avoid another shitstorm, but I wouldn't stress about it too much. quote:So I'm sort of wondering if there's anything else I need to be doing. Everything seems straightforward enough when it comes to actually filling out the forms, but I guess I'm a bit worried that I'm missing something. Sounds legit but I would check out the tax megathread for more info.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2013 05:05
|
|
|
This maaaay or may not be the right place for this question, but what the hell. Feel free to smack me across the face and point me in the right direction if it's not. I'm looking at apartments in the greater Boston area. I've never really apartment-hunted in high demand areas before, so I have exactly zero experience dealing with brokers. At first I was like "gently caress that, I'm not paying extra to some middleman!" but now that I'm really looking around, it seems like the only places that don't go through a brokerage are the huge rental companies with super fancy expensive buildings. Money's not a huge issue, but I'd rather not pay $3k/month for some place with a fancy fitness center if I can pay $1500/month for an entire house somewhere else. It seems like all of the smaller, more reasonably-priced places go through brokerages and therefore come with an extra fee. But if I'm getting a better deal on rent, that would obviously pay for itself, in a month or two. Am I being really dumb? Missing something obvious? Right now I'm thinking of going directly through a brokerage because we have some specific needs and I'm sick of hunting on my own. As I understand it, they'll basically do the same thing that a real estate agent would do if I was looking for a house. I'm more than willing to pay someone a chunk of money to find a place that works for us with reasonable rent. But every time I run across someone's personal story about apartment hunting, they're always like "well I went through a broker, which was definitely a mistake..." so it makes me think I'm being a big dummy by even considering it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 02:06
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 13:26 |
|
|
Zeta Taskforce posted:Feel free to join us in the Boston thread. We mostly talk about apartments and restaurants. Thanks! I am passingly familiar with the area and my husband used to live there, so I'm not going in completely blind. It's just that brokers are totally unfamiliar to me so I'm particularly curious if they're a total ripoff or worth it in my situation. $1500 for a house might be a slight exaggeration but I saw a few listings close to that at one broker website I looked at, in areas that didn't seem completely terrible. I need a minimum of two bedrooms with an office or a third bedroom that could be used as one, and laundry in unit, both of which are features it's difficult to search for on most sites. (Looking just for three bedrooms excludes places that might be two-bedroom plus office, and there's seemingly no reliable way to search for offices/bonus rooms specifically - and laundry in unit doesn't seem to be a search option anywhere.) Like I said, money's not a huge concern. We could theoretically afford most places with the features we want. But lower rent means saving more for a down payment on a house, so I obviously don't want to overpay for no reason. I really just want to know if I should avoid brokers like the plague or if it's okay to consider broker-fee places as an option too. I will check out the Boston thread. I didn't seek out something regional originally, because brokers are something that seem to exist in a lot of major cities so it seemed like a more general-purpose question. VVV Thanks - I just wanted to make sure it wasn't one of those "oh god no all brokers will steal your money and kidnap your dog" situations since I'm totally inexperienced in this area. Jessi Bond fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Mar 18, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2013 04:16
|
|