Harry Tran’s Daily 101

I was on Your Mortgage or Your Life and was reading a post regarding a family on the brink of disaster, and the letter just touched my heart so deeply. The reason why it touched me is because it is something that so many families such as my own could relate to.

All of our jobs no matter who you work for or what industry you are in, are tied together in a knot in the greater realm of our economy, and as the economy is slowing down these days, any one of us can lose our job. For many our jobs are our sole source of income. My family came to America over two and a half decades ago and have been working at jobs to support our family ever since, and like many they just didn’t have the proper education or time for that matter to learn and educate themselves and invest their income. So for them having a job is their only source of income.

Now in the letter Kelly appears to be a very educated person, she appears to be able to work in multiple industries, yet for reasons uncontrollable to herself she was laid off. What is to stop us from being the next ones to lose our jobs.

But just like Kelly so many of us, including my parents will never forgive themselves if they were to just walk away from our debt. All many of us ask for is a fair chance to repay our debt, so maybe some people were deceived into refinancing their loans to some absurd broker so that he could get more commission or we simply lost our jobs to the poor struggling economy let this letter be a reminder that it can happen to any of us.

If you have the ability to help Kelly you can definitely do so by contacting her, to do so go to Your Mortgage or Your Life.

“Kitty’s” Hardship Letter to Countrywide:

To Whom it may concern:

I would like to humbly submit my letter of explanation to you for my current credit situation and financial hardship.

My husband and I have both enjoyed the same careers for the last 20 years, during that time we have seen our share of ups and downs. We planned carefully. As you can see by my credit report, we did not incur huge amounts of credit card debt, and we only recently acquired auto loans, always paying cash for our vehicles in the past. In fact my credit history over the last 7 years has been good; my prior mortgage history was perfect.

In the spring of 2007 I was a victim of credit fraud. Someone applied for and obtained a credit card with Premier credit in my name, shortly there after I saw several charges on my Providian card that were not mine, while I was in dispute with them they sold my card off to another company, I am still disputing several of the charges.

I was cleared of the Premier credit card account the fraud department determined it was not my account. I can provide a letter from them to that effect if needed. It should have been noted and cleared off of my credit report.

About the same time the employer of both myself and my husband laid off 5,500 people on August 16th 2007. Over night we became a no income family. We were assured that we would receive our final paychecks, the coveted bonus checks we had all worked so hard for on the 20th.

On the 21st of August the company filed for Bankruptcy. Over night we lost our paychecks, our long awaited bonus checks, our health insurance, vacation pay…..and our 401k plan was frozen. Our health insurance and 401k plan were funded and managed by our employer. In short we were left with nothing.

We were devastated financially and emotionally.

We had just paid for our sons first year of college, we did not want to finance it, since we knew that our bonus checks were on the way, depleting our cash reserves and, if you will, wrongly betting on my bonus which I qualified for.

We also felt confident with our earnings even without my bonus. It took us months to get our funds out of the 401k plan by then we had lost a substantial amount of money due to the upheaval of the markets in the wake of the mortgage crisis that was just then coming to a boil. And our “vested” matching funds were not honored, or employer had withdrew those funds prior to filing Bankruptcy.

They also absconded with all of our Cafeteria funds, and stopped paying our “self funded” insurance premiums in May, which left us with unpaid medical bills that we thought were covered because we were gainfully employed and our employer was deducting the premiums from our pay check….wrong. We are responsible for all of those bills because they did not pay any premiums from May until they filed for bankruptcy in August.

In short, losing our jobs was just the beginning of the nightmare.

Our employer owed my husband several thousand in expense funds and as a manager, none of his funds were protected or considered earnings because they had not yet paid them to him. All of the branch managers lost their funds and have little to no recourse.

My husband and I tried to find any kind of employment possible. In November I got a job offer as an Operations Manager. I worked there for about 10 days when the owner’s son came to me and said that because of their own financial problems they could not afford to pay me…..he then gave me a check for 1/2 of what they owed me and that check bounced.

It took me weeks to collect the pay they owed me.

Then I took a temp job for a local business…..the owner went to Mexico for Christmas and failed to tell us that he was not coming back…. I was never paid for my work.

I also took another job as a pet sitter, I did get paid for that job. Not enough to have any effect on my unemployment but enough to keep current on my car notes and put some food on the table.

On February 18, 2008 I was hired by an insurance company as an Underwriter. 5 weeks later March 28th all 16 of us who were hired for the same position with the same start date around the country were let go.

Unemployment ran out for both my husband and I in mid February. We were left penniless, were forced to sell what we could to survive., and borrowing from family.

My son got a part time job at college and sent money home to us.

April 15th I started with a company in a position with a bank in Westchester Illinois. Since my sister lives in the area I was able to stay with her while on assignment, leaving my family behind in Houston.

May 20th my husband was admitted into the hospital after being ill for several months. The diagnosis was pulmonary edema and congestive heart failure. We have no medical insurance.

This diagnosis is life threatening and another devastating blow to our family. His heart was functioning at just 20% of it’s capacity.

His prognosis is uncertain at this point as it is still early and we don’t know how well the medications will work. We have incurred yet another $20,000 in hospital bills, not to mention the cost of his follow up care and medications. We are uncertain if he will be able to go back to work on a full time basis.

June 9th I started a position with a large national insurance company that will allow me to work from home in Houston and to care for my husband. After being stuck in Chicago for the last 2 months it was good to finally return home

I fully understood the precarious financial position we were in.

I paid who I could, borrowed what I could from family, and called my creditors to try and work out payment plans. I also knew that I would have been able to file for protection under chapter 7 bankruptcy laws. However, I did not want to do that, nor do I want to file bankruptcy, although my attorney advises I do so.

To this end we respectfully request that you allow us to be considered for a loan modification. The only way I can stay employed in my current line of work is to avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy.

Thank you for your consideration; I am attaching documentation to support some of these hardships. I am sorry this is such a long letter. If I have failed to address anything please give me opportunity to do so

Sincerely,

“Kitty”

Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

We walk by faith not by sight….. Faith is knowledge of that which can not be seen.