Digital Dave

Megan received a letter today that announced Megan owed money to the university for some amount.  What makes this extremely odd is that they are immediately garnishing wages at her work, and her tax return.

How mind blowing is that?  No warning at all.  Attack.

What confuses me more is that they turned the loan (in my prior entry) over to the creditors, and never attacked Megan.

But for this? They didn’t turn it to the creditors. They attacked.

Why didn’t they go after her when the loan originally defaulted instead of sending it to the creditors to ruin her life?

Hell! Why did the loan office not send a letter to this address that has been on file for years about the loan BEFORE going to the creditors?  They claimed they had the wrong address, but this letter arrived, from the school? Further proof that they HAD the address in their system.  Gah!

You wouldn’t believe the kind of things that Megan has had to go through a few days ago and is still trying to deal with.

See, there is this mysterious school loan that was overlooked by the one who has been dealing with Megan’s finances while she was at college.  Fair enough, it was overlooked.  Shit happens.

(rough time scale since I’m just trying to recall, but close to being accurate)

6 months had passed after Megan graduated… Repayment of loans began.

15 months had passed after Megan graduated… Mysterious loan, defaulted, turned to creditors…

21 months had passed after Megan graduated… Megan receives a phone call from the creditors. A whole 6 months after they got it, and a whole ~14 months after the first payment was missed while it was at Kansas State University.

So now she has an extra +$1,100 of interest/fees tacked onto the loan.  She also has an obliterated credit history, raised car insurance, and a credit card heading in that direction, despite the fact that she has been rock solid on everything until now.

Oh, did I mention that the university changed who handled the loan midterm, and that could have easily jarred things up?  Oh, but they don’t care.

She’s immediately going to pay back the loan.  So that should help a ‘little’.

We need better consumer protection laws.  There is absolutely no reason why this has to be in the condition that it is.  This isn’t a simple, “Somebody running from bills.”  This is ruining someones entire life.  If you owe me money, you can bet I’m not going to wait years before I call you.

This is far from the first individual that this sort of thing has happened to.  A moment after I posted a tweet on Twitter, I had someone immediately tell me that they were in the same kind of situation.

I would not expect full immunity from the situation.  I would just expect that the other side would lend a hand and find a way to balance the issue. But everybody on the other side has a terrible attitude.

It is a sure fire way to kill alumni relationships.  The university needs money today due to hard times, evidently not in the future.  And this was an act by a university where I thought they absolutely cared about their student base… I guess it’s true. “Nobody cares about you. You just take care of yourself.”

And to think. I just referred somebody to this ‘awesome’ university… Guess it’s time to tell him that the military might be a better option after all.

Well, that was a fun trip, to say the least.

We were in Oklahoma, just a few hours after we left, and realized that we were going to get into California too early.  So, the girl and I were thinking that we could detour to Las Vegas to push our arrival back a few hours.  We debated the thought and when we were driving through the first part of Arizona we figured, ‘what the hell’.

I got to see the Hoover Dam for the first time.  That thing was really cool.

I got to lose $40 playing slots. Megan made $10, so I ended up losing $30. Minus all of the smoke in the casino, it was pretty fun.

Coming into California was a nightmare.  We ran into rain, and then heavy snow, and then more rain, and then very thick fog… It was pretty nasty.

But, I’m here. Megan left today, so she got to see a little of the Glendale/LA area.  We went to a comedy club last night that was really funny.  The best skit was when two people got into a knife fight.  They were all talk and no action, which made it really funny.  At the end one guy said, “I’m going to cut you’re fucking internet,” then said, “there! I cut it!”  The other guy was like, “What the hell? I have WIFI bitch!”

So, yeah. Now it’s time to find a Job. With my feet on the ground.

I was just poking around on the athletics website and noticed that we brought in our 13th university president.  Our prior president, John Wefald, spent 23 years in his position, which is the second longest KSU presidency tenure.  The first spent 25 years there as president.

Anyway, it just got me thinking about missing that place.  For being at the top of my game as a Marine, I was released from active duty 3 months early to attend Kansas State University.   When I got to the campus, I immediately had a rush of excitement which I don’t typically get very often.  I was eager to learn and to accomplish a feat that I had my eye on for a long, long time.

The time ended up flying incredibly fast.  I’m still eager to learn, and I’m definitely not done with the university scene.

I think I would attribute the passion for education from having a really bad educational upbringing, surprisingly.  It was not something stressed in my household due to how much my mom had to work just to support myself and my brother/sister.  A lot of what I did back then was all on self-initiative, which wasn’t very high.  Kid’s need guidence in school or it’s only a matter of time before they fall back.  Sure enough, I fell back.  I struggled finding a purpose of everything because I didn’t have anybody to turn to.  Nobody in my family finished high school.

That’s just a glimpse of my struggle coming up in the educational bracket.

My next goal is to get into USC’s Masters program. It’s a very, very high bar, but I feel like I can do it.  Why USC?  It’s one of the best universities and I like their specialization options.

Eventually, I would like to return to Manhattan to teach.  This is far later in life when I have years of experience to bring to the table.  I spent time in the Marines teaching and trying to help/mentor younger Marines.  There is just something about teaching that I enjoy.  And if I could teach anywhere, Manhattan would definitely be the place. The place has an outstanding atmosphere and extremely friendly people.

I wonder how much of that is going to change in ~20 years?

I wonder how I will feel in ~20 years?

I guess that’s why I blog and backup my database. Time will tell.

Called up my card company and dropped my rate from 12.9% to 3.98% until August (10.9% after).  That’ll be helpful considering how much money I don’t have to move to California.  I’ve acquired a pretty nice amount of credit due to my superior payment skills.

Speaking of rates. You should call your company. Go for it. What are they going to say? “Nope, can’t do it for you at this time. Sorry.”  You’ll at least get a sorry!

I don’t use this thing a lot. I mainly used it while I was in the Corps, and during school for minor things.  I hate debt, but in this world, you need to have the ability to borrow to survive.   Unless you happen to be born into a family of wealth, which I am not.

Thursday is the day.

I took my car in this morning to get some work done on it.  Tune-up and some brake work.  Everything else should be good to go considering I fixed up the beast when I left the corps in 2005.  I’ve only done highway driving since then.

I figured my brake pads needed changed due to some consistent squealing when I come to a stop.  But apparently the pads are fine… Which is good, saves me $160.  But what the hell is causing the squealing?  I guess when you change your pads, your rotors could actually be the problem due to old pad material.  So I’ll try turning the rotors to see if that fixes it.   No promises there, though.

I like my car to be quiet.  I should only hear exhaust.  Nothing disturbs me more than listening to a car squeal to a stop, or rattle like it’s going to fall apart when music is playing.

I’ve been rocking this ‘99 Mustang since ‘99 with zero problems.  My luck may have begun to turn south with the beast.  These issues are minor at least.

Update:

Car is acting much, much better.  Sadly, the cost was a downer.  Oh well.