One Angry Man

Maya Angelou once said, I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel and this week, despite the obligations of my hitherto clandestine occupation as debt fighter extraordinaire, I am very much hoping this observation proves to be true.

When my world fell apart as a consequence of our financial demise in 2008, it took me two years before I could communicate coherently with anyone. For this reason I remained largely out of sight from all but my immediate family and a few very close friends. All my hair fell out, I lost several stone in wait and I spent every moment of every day consumed by the horror and shame of being in debt. Each and every hour that I wasn’t required to carry out my duties of mother and housewife, I spent explaining our dire circumstances over and over again to our creditors. At the time I was incapable of being anything but consumed by our predicament.

Time has been a great healer and although we are far from out of the woods, and entirely because of the endless patience and kindness of many, many people, I have gradually emerged from a tunnel of overwhelming stress into a life which is different but far from unpleasant. The dark days of repeated panic attacks at the arrival of the postman are a memory I rarely linger on and I am proud to have pieced together a family life which provides both love and security for my children despite the back drop of a million pounds of unrecoverable debt.

Every creditor has been informed of our position and with the exception of HBOS and Lloyds all debts have been written off or are in the process of being written off. Even our beautiful apartment in Spain is due to be forcibly sold when Bankia get round to completing the sale at which point, according to both my solicitor and the bank who holds the mortgage, our community fee arrears of 12,000 Euros are to be settled in full by the bank.

While on occasion the lack of assets and the knowledge that our income remains very small saddens me, any malaise seldom persists because our children are happy and thriving in a school where I continue to work with grateful diligence as Chairman of the Friends. Whilst the head and his wife have been keen to remind me I have created an atmosphere of warmth and enthusiasm at both school events and amongst the ever increasing number of volunteering committee members, I am rewarded in the knowledge I have made a contribution, albeit not a financial one, towards to my children's education.

Despite the ongoing frustrations of my Financial Ombudsman’s Service complaint with regard to my HBOS case, my role as chairman has enabled me to move my daily focus away from obsessing about debt and instead channelled my energies into making myself useful and in so doing I have re-acquired “a life”. My email contact list bears testament to this with its one hundred and seventy three contacts and anything up to thirty incoming emails a day. Only two short years ago I had no computer and no email account,  whereas today I communicate with everyone from my children’s friend’s parents, Friends committee members, Governors, teachers, service providers for our events, through to my five children and six grand children to name but a few.

However today, in spite of my relentless determintaion to secure a safe and happy family life for my children, the very foundations of my new found stability have been rocked. Following the discovery that my email account had been hacked and was sending a link containing a virus out to all those on my contact list, I emailed everyone to warn them not to open it. Included in my alert was the wealthy volunteer chairman of the community of our apartment. Unwillingly to accept that Spanish law dictates the arrears on our community fees will be paid in full when the bank takes possession, he has chosen to send an abusive and threatening email outling his disgust at our non payment of the community fees not only to me, but also to everyone on my contact list.

It is certainly true the kindest words in all the world are the unkind words not said” but because of the unkind words born out of this malicious man’s impatience for money, I am now faced with the fact that not only has everyone I know been served a large helping of our shamefully dirty washing, but my children, along with many of their friends, their friends parents and their teachers have too.

It is four years since I discovered the extent to which my husband had borrowed in an effort to save his property business and today my head once again hangs in shame while my heart bleeds for what my children may well face on Monday morning. I can only hope the recipients of this vicious hate mail might pause to remember how I have, during my time as chairman endeavoured to make them feel, before passing judgement on our position. Either way I can only assume my family and I will need a strong stomach over the coming months as, now he has access to my contact list, I cannot imagine this will be the only time this angry man will be making use of it.

The thought of this makes me feel physically sick.

Brave Hearts

American journalist and author Mignon McLaughlin once said, “Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense” and yet for those locked in financial hardship as a result of the economic crisis, suspense has remained the regime of each and every day.  

For the individual, the cavalry never came and instead government talk has continued to prove cheap. Austerity measures have been relentless and the current penchant for saving the perpetrators of the financial crisis instead of the victims has left the very people who were responsible for economic pillaging obscenely rewarded and at liberty to defend their infinitely valuable contribution to a financial future they have completely obliterated for the rest of us.

Well versed in the unchecked practices of the banking fraternity at home in the UK, it is has proved unremarkable to discover the tentacles of corporate corruption have also been busy feathering elitist nests in Spain. However, with an estimated one hundred and twenty six billion dollar euro taxpayer funded bailout in the offing, the Catalan parliament has finally seen fit to set up a committee to investigate long standing allegations of banking malpractice. These claims in include multi million euro payoffs to senior banking executives just before their banks collapsed, “hundreds of millions of loans to executives, board members and their families” and 50% executive pay increases when profits were barely 7%. Arsenio Escolar, editor of 20 Minutos believes, “If we really knew the truth about Bankia and the other Cajas, the two big parties-the People’s party and the Socialists- would explode”.

Unsurprised to discover a great many actions under investigation are those of Bankia with whom I have held a now substantially underwater mortgage for the past eight years, I remain unsure if reported levels of financial fraud are pivotal to the  manner in which they have dealt with me or merely a product of it. Either way, I remained unable to fathom why Banca Caja which now trades as Bankia and is reputed to be desperately in need of funding, has made no effort to communicate with me for a very long time.

During the past four years they have:

• Refused to allocate the payments we made into our account to cover our mortgage 
• Ignored all my communications asking why
• Refused to allow me to sell our apartment to a very keen cash purchaser 
• Ignored all my purchasers efforts to progress this sale.  
• Refused to discuss interest only loan restructuring to make us tenanting our property viable in the long term
• Ignored all correspondence from all parties on the subject including solicitors 

In addition, I am reliably informed that not only will I not be pursued for the inevitable shortfall on the sale of our Spanish property when Bankia eventually get round to it, all outstanding bills relating to it (currently 12,000 euros and rising) will also be covered by the bank in accordance with Spanish property law.

While I am naturally delighted to enjoy one less instance of suspense about which I must be brave, I can only assume operating in this manner may well result in a one hundred and twenty six billion euro bailout proving vastly insufficient to secure the rescue of an economic money pit of this magnitude. Furthermore, despite widespread belief that money talks, I suspect the people of Spain are about to find out, as have those of us enduring the purgatory of the economic crisis elsewhere that no matter how large the bailout, all money will ever say to the individual is,

 “Good-bye.”

Off Limits

I have heard it said that limitations live only in our minds and if we use our imaginations, the possibilities become limitless. This point was illustrated to perfection today by my ten year old son when expressing, yet again, his desire to keep chickens.  On this occasion he did not attempt to seek permission to own a chicken but merely stoked a lively discussion as to how many chickens would be required to fulfil his ambition to keep our family in eggs.  Changing tack like this has smoothly shifted the debate from if to when he can have chickens and has made me wonder if taking a leaf out of his book in my dealings with Lloyds and HBOS’s might render me greater success.

Over the last week I have;

·        Received another demand from Lloyds debt collectors

·        Received no reply from Antonio Horta Osorio to my original letter of 4 August

·        Received no reply from Antonio Horta Osorio to my ”chase up” letter of 19 August

This leaves the Irish and the Elite continuing to enjoy preferential treatment for mortgage shortfall forgiveness and me continuing to suffer in purgatory purely because I live in England and do not have a high enough profile to be heard.

I have, however, received another letter this week. The Financial Ombudsman has given me two remarkably good but unexplained piece of news.

The henchwoman at Merrels Ede Solicitors has been called off as a direct result of my compliant and HBOS have, at last, agreed “not to pursue” for the time being, namely eighteen months.  This has come as a complete surprise to me because, in their last letter, my caseworker informed me they could not proceed without seeking agreement from HBOS to investigate my complaint leaving me under the impression the Financial Ombudsman's Service was about to prove completely toothless yet again.

So where does this leave me now?

It leaves me with eighteen months of limitless possibilities.  I don’t know what they are yet but it will be a relief to be able to put my case to whomever I wish without continually having to deal with the bully boy and brow beating tactics of HBOS’s Rottweiler, Merrils Ede solicitor’s. It also leaves me some unencumbered time to consider the merits of a ten year old boy keeping chickens.

Outstanding accounts

As my husband arrived home earlier than unexpected today he found me sitting with a friend in our cosy farmhouse kitchen.  Being a very blustery day, we had chosen warm tea and M&S waste sale chocolate for our refreshment while injured seals were the topic of conversation. This comforting scene was achieved by exercising a well practiced mental manoeuvre which took me swiftly from debt fighting machine to comely housewife and mother in the blink of an eye and, by adopting this facade, I have managed to maintain the divide between our unpalatable past and our family’s future. 

My friend, equally chameleon like in her abilities, played her role of tea drinking companion to perfection as she packed away her computer while chatting about current affairs with my husband.  After a few minutes of pleasantries, she discreetly gathered up the post of the day and made her exit.  She, like my husband, understands the rules only too well.  The financial monster in the cupboard has been strictly out of bounds for him since October 2008.

The letters dispatched today are as consequence of my email being featured on BBC Radio 2.  Host Jeremy Vine was discussing debt related mental health issues with Martin Lewis who gasped when he heard my story.  The task in hand has been to attempt to contact Martin Lewis for help.

One of the many points which were made was even a relatively strong, financially aware person, such as myself, is unable to make suitable and informed decisions while suffering from stress.  The organisations whose livelihoods depend on the collection of debt, trade on this knowledge.  It is little wonder many people, including my husband, are driven to consider suicide because of the debt collecting companies campaigns of unrelenting harassment. In 2008 we were receiving upwards of thirty phone calls a day starting at 8.00am and finishing at 9.00pm. I always answered every one.

For six months my friend watched me attempt to deal with our insurmountable financial problems until April 2009, when, I finally agreed to accept her help.  By this time I had lost 35lbs and every hair on my body.

Today and every day since, my friend has freely given her time to fight my cause. We call it the “Crap Clinic” and we meet regularly to engage in the “Battle of the Banks”.  Because of her determined resolve at a time when I was emotionally on my knees, my £1,000,000 horror story has been reduced to a mere £350,000 nightmare.  Thankfully, she has agreed to see it through with me to the very end.  Without her selfless devotion, I would have undoubtedly collapsed under the pressure.

How can I ever repay her?

Passionate beliefs

I am told to believe in something passionately is the way in which to make it a reality and conceptualising in this way has been the driving force for my continued attempts to piece our lives back together. While frequently advised to throw the bankruptcy towel into the arena by those without the constitution for tumultuous seas, I have refused to allow lending sharks to pick over the bones HBOS have already stripped bare because,

• I believe passionately financial institutions should not lend residential mortgage   money to those with £446,000 outstanding on credit cards.
• I believe passionately banks should not advance £3,500,000 in commercial mortgages without evidence of taxable income and assets.
• I believe passionately it is negligent for lenders to ask wive's to sign away a family home to support a husband's business without illustrating how they have assessed payment affordability.
• I believe passionately it is irresponsible for a bank to instruct the conveyance of a family home without giving a wife independent advice.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for a creditor to lay siege to a woman and her children in her home, until such time as the police arrive, with sub machine guns, wearing riot gear, to remove them.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any family to be hounded by phone and threatened by debt collection agencies who pretend they don't know the financial position of the vulnerable despite hundreds of letters to the contrary.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £17,000 from the parents of his children's school friends.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £65,000 from his and his wife's family.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to secure the equity in his step daughter's and grand children's home against a business debt.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to sign documents which will give  unpaid tradesmen the authoriy to take away gifts made to his wife from her parents.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to tell anyone he can afford to  pay them when he does not know how he will achieve this.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man under any circumstances to keep all of the above from his wife with lies.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to go to any lengths to avoid taking responsibilities for his actions and instead choosing to blame others.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to lead his whole family to the edge of a financial precipice without asking them if they wish to go there.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to pretend he has his difficulties in hand in order to avoid losing face.

But I also believe passionately,

•  No man should be hounded by creditors to the point of suicide.
• No man should lose his brother (age 44) and his mother (age 67) to Motor Neurone Disease three weeks apart. 

 And above all else I believe passionately

• No child should be forced to grow up without a father as consequence of having financial difficulties.

It is for these reasons I am still here and for these reasons I continue to fight back.... passionately.