Worn out by phone calls from my sib's creditors.

I think the more annoyed-sounding and abrupt you are with them, "You have a wrong number" and hanging up without listening to them, the less likely that agency is to call back. The second I know it is a call about something I'm not interested in, I cut in and say that and hang up (nowadays I take the nickel/cheap "gifts" that charities put in their envelopes to get me to open them and instantly trash the rest, how dare they try to manipulate my emotions that way, make me feel obligated/guilty?). Thinking of ways to get others to stop being themselves or how to get around their size/tricks, etc. keeps one tied to and thinking about them and that's what I don't want.

Perna, I don't doubt that would work for other types of calls. If I get a sales call, I ask who they are trying to get a hold of, they will usually say my name and start going into their pitch. I stop them and say that the person who they are looking for is deceased. Usually works. Collections might not work too well as if you have any activity on your credit report or such, they know it's a lie.

Reesecup - that is really true about our info being a commodity that gets sold. I am getting more leery about giving out info in exchange for free gift coupons. They're not really free at all.

One creditor told me about something called the Federal Data Base. He said creditors use that. I don't know what that is.

Reesecup, it is not Rose's creditors but her brothers; they don't have anything on her/aren't talking to her about herself and what she does/does not owe but are trying to find her brother so they can get to him. Rose has no obligation to help them with that. I do not care who someone is trying to call; if you call my phone, I am in charge of who I want to talk to. You have less than a sentence usually to get me to care If you do not give me your name and "agency" and purpose of your call (quickly/no nonsense and in that order), I'll interrupt you in a heartbeat with "Not interested" and hang up on you.

My kitchen is right inside my front door and there's the kitchen garbage/trash can right inside the kitchen door, right inside my front door. I get the mail and stand over that transhcan and weed out the "mail" from what I do not want. If I don't want it, it does not get more than 2 feet into my house :-) I do the same with my phones; my phone is for my convenience and use, not that of the people calling me.

Maybe if it were some type of government money you owe? Other than that, I'm not sure there is a clearing house federally for debtor information. The only thing I can think of that resembles a federal database is the credit reporting agencies?

Any time you sign up for a drawing for a possible prize, respond to anything basically that gives out your information, buy something with credit, when registering a product. Anything that asks you for personal type of information in a sales transaction, the information is bought by companies who sort data and sell to other companies.

If a collection agency buys this information, they know a lot about you. Neighbors, people you know that info you might have added to something such as a relative or friend. Sometimes even the type and amount of animals you have. They, of course will normally know your income and at least some of your assets. This is from all the various sources they have.

The only thing I can think of that a basic collector would not know is maybe bank account balances?

Enough to make you paranoid, isn't it'

"Public information" has always been known and accessible if one wanted to look for it. I think we are just more aware now that it is all out there. I use to use the Criss Cross directory, every public library had them, in the 1970s: Criss Cross Directory | Haines Directory - Criss-Cross.com and you could look up names and find addresses or look up addresses and find the names. We all have been getting junk mail since ever there was mail. Now it apparently is more "targeted" (pardon for the pun :-) but, actually, that makes it less so? I am not my purchases or what I own. So you know I have two cats and send me coupons for cat food. I still am going to look at what food my cats normally eat (changing food or litter on a cat can cause them to become really sick/throw up, etc.), where I shop for it, how much it costs, how much your coupon is worth (when I use to use coupons, I did not use to do that but my husband did; I'd give him part of our grocery list and the coupons that went with it but he'd return with products but also with coupons; he paid attention to what was available and what the coupon was for and which was the "better" deal; coupons are not always the best way to go) and lots of other factors.

I love the people who drive 5 miles out of their way to save $.02 on gas, getting 20 gallons and thus saving $0.40. If one gets 20 miles to a gallon, going 5 miles and coming back 5 is 1/2 a gallon of gas which sells for $3.70 a gallon, so $1.85 cost to drive to get that $0.40 bargain? If one travelled only a mile (not a very great distance) to another gas station, that would still cost $.37, hardly worth the effort and "wear and tear" on the car for $0.03?

My favorite story though is my husband's ex-wife who was all excited when she came home with a huge box of dried banana chips because they were on sale; did not matter that no one would eat them, they were on sale and she got such a good deal!

Advertisers "think" they know me but the more details they think they know about me, the less they really do know because of the variety and my ability to decide something else tomorrow; what I own, buy, answer on your poll or say today is not "me"; "I" cannot be quantified and the more you try, the bigger the me you think you know gets so that things become less known rather than more so. I may choose your product today but some other, similar product tomorrow for some wholly unknown reasons; what I buy is not what I think about what I buy either :-)

Also, keep in mind that the debt has to be large enough to justify the expense
of doing all these steps. Collections agencies set limits on how much effort goes into the actual money made on the debt. But I think it was mentioned somewhere. If a collection agency writes off a debt, they return it to the client, who may sell it to another agency who will make a higher percentage off the collection.

Perna, thanks for the information. I think the point I was trying to make is if they know your assets, they can figure if a debtor if a debtor is also worth taking to court.

However, courts cannot collect, they have no police department (it's civil rather than criminal). My husband's company was so relieved it won the case to get the $1,000,000 that some other company/person owed them but the other person never paid. It is kind of like education debts these days; they can make your life uncomfortable but can't really "do" anything; we don't throw debtors into prison anymore, just have to send our own "Rocko and Smitty" over to rough them up and that's against the law.

Might be able to repossess big ticket items if they are theirs/bought on the credit card or whatever (even that requires stealth and danger) but who is going to come try to take the shirt off your back anymore? Not like they can take back food you charged on your credit card and ate. Worse case scenario is the credit card people cancel that credit card and ruin your credit. Hospital bills go unpaid all the time because people don't have insurance, that's part of why the new requirement to have insurance.

Agreed for the most part. But the extent of what they can do is dependent also on the state you live in. If I recall, TX and, I believe Florida were states we didn't sue in because there were laws preventing them putting leins on homes and such. But again, it depends on state law for that.

Perna, a court decision can allow a creditor to demand that your bank turn funds over to them from your checking account. And the bank will do it. I suspect you do know that. I also suspect that police can enforce other "civil" decisions.

Of course, there is no getting blood out of a stone. My brother's creditors are never going to see their funds again. Income from Social Security is "judgement proof." They may, however, know that, themselves, and be more looking to prosecute him for fraud. This is kind of like how a store will sometimes seek prosecution of a shoplifting teen who steals a tube of lipstick. It's not worth their time, in terms of the value of the lipstick. They do it to disincentivize others from stealing.

Here's another thing that ticks me off. Banks have extended massive quantities of loans to people who were not really credit worthy. Banks used to care about whether the borrower was making a decision that made sense. Banks used to avoid helping people get in over their heads. Now they don't care, and I think there is a moral problem with that. They are acting like loan sharks. That's why the law in some states is not letting them have easy access to people's property. Banks want to make loans to people that have no business borrowing, so that they can impose usurious interest rates. Then they want the government to back them up on squeezing these people.

Most likely my brother reported an income a lot bigger than he had. This is fraud. Then, again, that can be hard to pin down. Maybe he had been lucky at cards and thought that he was going to keep winning a bunch of money. Now and then, he works on cars for people. He could argue that he had really thought he was going to make of go of his "self-employment" as a mechanic, and it just didn't work out. He does entertain such fantasies all the time.

If banks really want to know about your income, they can verify your place of employment. There are on-line sites, that, with the input of your SS#, can let them even see a print-out of your hours worked. (More and more employers are feeding that data into these data bases.) They don't seriously check. They're basically rolling the dice with a lot of these loans. The high interest rates make it worth their while to do it. I have no respect for them.

Creditors have to find your assets first to do any (separate) demanding of them so it has to be worth the legal fees/aggravation and we small-fry are not. But, we were originally talking about you, Rose, getting dunned for your brother's

Banks are not lending now, one cannot get a bank loan to save one's life and most have done their business okay, they have Government oversight and know the consequences of screwing with the "money" (since they're part of the Federal Reserve System). To a large extent, "banks" are being vilified when it was mortgage and loan companies that were the culprits; the banks were forced by the Government to swallow the mortgage and loan companies since the mortgage and loan companies were not protected by any Federal backing. Bank of America was forced to accept Countrywide (the biggest crooks in 2008's mess and we had our mortgage with them at the time) and Merrill Lynch and banks are being so hard-nosed now because they are up a tree with other "sick" companies (who have gone out of business) defaults/debts and the bit the Government paid to help was not enough. Yes, banks were in league with the mortgage lenders and turned a blind eye at the time but they are being punished now with cleaning up the mess primarily made by others.

I mostly hold the people buying as culpable; everyone was greedy, not just the lenders, and didn't bother doing their individual homework and if one bought a house they could not afford and did not have a backup plan for hanging on to it, I feel sorry for their children and what they may have thought they learned about money. We get all the media stories of people making minimum wage living in mansions or buying multiple houses, sorry, don't feel sorry for those people or the "educated" with good jobs that should have known better any more than I feel sorry for the baby boomers who are crying now that they cannot retire because they did not live within their means and save for retirement. Classic ant and grasshopper story. More needed to read The Millionaire Next Door when it came out in the mid-90s and quit trying to keep up with the Jones/their friends.

I think we seriously need to teach basic money management and finance in public schools as part of math.

It may be that the banks weren't totally responsible for the housing bubble, but they did plenty to seduce people into consumer debt. Those credit cards come from the banks. Yes, people who've gotten into debt they never should have taken did it to themselves. I still think there is something wrong with banks enabling people to so badly screw themselves up. I happen to believe that businesses have social responsibilities. Not everyone sees it that way, I know.

Oh I think financial institutions are responsible for the mortgage crisis. The money held worldwide grew by trillions in a 10 year period so they needed riskier investments. When I say trillions i am not kidding. Thus they came up with derivatives. They they needed borrowers so they could fill to derivatives and fulfill demand. So the pressure was on mortgage brokers to make deals. In Florida in particular it was the brokers that committed the most fraud by inflating incomes on applications. Many of those people didn't know better. For the others... The American dream is still a pretty big attractor. The foreclosure rate since the depression used to be about 3% give or take. Makes mortgages a very safe investment. It was now inevitable that rate would skyrocket. Since they were often the bulk of derivatives the entire portfolio could fail. Then aig came up with the brilliant idea to insure investments. Now all those portfolios that are insured are failing. Note that your average individual saving for retirement wouldn't buy insurance so they are screwed. The banks that manage the funds buy insurance. The failing portfolios didn't stop BOA from lying to their investors about their performance.

And it gets better because these same banks are buying rental properties like crazy. They started with converted houses and duplexes. They couldn't care less about quality of living because it is just an investment. So people living there are not able to get management to fix anything. This is the next housing crisis. I am not underwater but I wish I hadn't bought but now that I have there is no way I would willingly rent in the next few years.

Mortgage lenders, fund managers, banks are all linked. There are some exceptions. You can tell which ones because they didn't get hit. Oh and where were the regulators? Well the banks appointed them! Don't be fooled by these people. Top board members (chairman) of the institutions involved are all in the top 1%. Their wealth has increased astronomically since 2006/7 when this really started.

Btw, I worked for a sub prime car loan company that had the equivalent of a mortgage derivative...a portfolio of loans. Almost the exact same story on a much smaller scale. There was insurance and bank investors and exploding default rates that were hidden. The company was forced into bankruptcy but the execs have started other financial endeavors.

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Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on what's going on in the world of finance. Thanks for helping me to understand a little better. From what you're saying, it sounds like lack of responsibility underlies the whole recession that hit in 2008. And those with the most responsibility are suffering the least consequences. What a rotten system. I guess you have to be in it to really see what's wrong.

I have always rented and used to always rent from a hands-on property owner. I loved it. I was a much valued tenant, and my landlords/ladies would do so much to keep me happy. Where I rent now is a small complex that got sold to a consortium of investors. I have no idea of who they are. Now I know what the term "absentee landlord" means. I deal with a manager who only cares about managing the property as cheaply as possible. I can't tell you how much I wish I was renting directly from a real owner who would like the way I treat the property and value me. I live in a one of two triplexes.

"Consortium of investors" is exactly what it is. It is most likely one company in particular but I can't remember the name. Start documenting because it will only get worse and you might have to get legal.

I recommend the podcast planet money and some of the old this American life episodes on mortgage. Planet money was started as an off shoot from this American life after they did a few shows in 2007. When things started really falling apart in august-September 2008 they were doing 3-5 podcasts a day. And I was listening every night. Not a good way to fall asleep! I went to Vietnam in October, 2008 and I was jonesing because you can't get iTunes there. But every day the dollar was sinking. Anyway, planet money was designed to educate anybody who wants to learn. I do not work in finance at all.

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I checked out Planet Money. Looks like its an NPR blog. Thanks.