My Finances Give Me Anxiety Attacks

   Payday: a day that everyone should look forward to. Money in the bank and all that jazz. But here I am, looking at payment schedules for my student loans, looking at the cable bill, electric, and rent, looking at credit card payments (yeah, yeah, I know), looking at the grocery bill; basically, I am looking at all the money that I do not have anymore. Oh, money, you slip through my fingers so damn fast. I hate you money, but at the same time, I have to have you: I need you. I feel like I'm talking to my drugs or something, but it is what it is. If I were richer, perhaps I wouldn't have this love/hate relationship with money, or perhaps I would just have more bills.
   Every payday I go through that wonderful anxiety attack induced by paying my bills. I'm not entirely sure why I have these anxiety attacks; I always manage to pay all the bills. I've never been short. Sometimes we have to get a little skimpy on the grocery bill and have some mac n cheese nights, but really, who doesn't ever have to do that? Most people have experienced the wonder of a mac n cheese payday. So I'm not really sure why I feel the anxiety that I feel. Maybe because all of my adult life, I've been poor. I'm doing a lot better now. I guess I still fall even with that good-old poverty line, but for all of the years but the last one, I was under that line, so breaking even with that line is a step up.
   But the point is this: I've always paid my bills and I don't pay them late. I don't get cable termination warnings. I don't get the power company stalking me and threatening to turn my power off. No nasty notes from the landlords on my front door when I get home from work; even my credit card company never has to call me all like, "Marie, pay your bills, please." The only calls that I used to get were from those people who stole my information and then would attempt to try to get me to pay for fake loans that I never took out, and since I changed my number, the only time the bastards can call me now is at work. Which is annoying, to be sure, but most of the times, I don't even get those calls because as a lowly cashier (joking here, folks) personal calls are not allowed, thank God. They do attempt to e-mail me, but e-mail has that lovely little spam button... it's awesome. I wish we could spam phone calls.
   Back to the anxiety though, I really am not sure what causes this feeling. Maybe it's because I'm still getting phone calls for Tara, even though I've had this number for a year and a half now, and Tara's bill collectors have all been notified that this is Marie's number now, but they don't believe me. Bill collectors are like blood hounds when it comes to money, so around every payday, I start getting calls about Tara. Her rent check didn't clear. She owes someone money in Las Vegas. She's being taken to court by so-and-so. Tara, my friends, is in big financial trouble, and because her effing bill collectors won't stop leaving messages on my machine, I am privy to all of Tara's financial woes. Because bill collectors are stupid assholes, I also know Tara's address, the last four digits of her social, and her last name, but I won't put that here. In fact, if you know a Tara, and if you are thinking, "Shit, is she talking about Tara, so-and-so!" then the answer is no, because I changed Tara's first name. Tara is not actually her name, but I believe in protecting my fellow debtor's information. But that's off track, and to get back on that track, maybe what I am feeling is sympathy anxiety??? Maybe I am worried about Tara??? I don't know.
   I really don't know. Maybe my anxiety is leftover stress from my days of extreme poverty, maybe I am feeling this anxiety because I'm worried about Tara, or maybe I just don't like giving other people the effing money that I worked my ass off for, even if I do legitimately owe those people that money. Or maybe it's just the fact that the kiddo is growing like a weed, she's fixing to be out of school for the summer, which means no more school meals, and my grocery bill is gonna triple. Who knows? Not me. All I know is that payday is the day where I add up all the money that I no longer have and consequently have anxiety attacks. A lot of you, I believe, are probably familiar with this feeling, so let us ban together now and have moment of silence for money that is forever gone from our lives. Solidarity and all that good crap. Or misery loves company. Something.

Goodbye, sweet money. I'll miss you. 

Ronald McDonald, Deportation, and Identity Theft

   The other day, I got a phone call while I was at work. I wasn't there to take that call, and we aren't allowed personal calls at any rate, emergencies only, but my coworker who took the call told me all about it between bouts of laughter. Apparently, someone was trying to collect a debt, and apparently, this fool of a crook was calling himself Ronald McDonald.
   Hello, crooks! We didn't all fall off of the stupid train yesterday. There is no way (please let there be no way!) that any person is ever going to agree to pay off a supposed debt to someone named Ronald McDonald. That has scam written all over it.
   About two years back, I had information stolen. Everything; my entire identity, but while I have stopped one attempt at booking a hotel in London with my debit card, what these people mainly did was try to get me to pay off false debt. The biggest trick they used was to say that I had taken out a payday loan and never paid the loan back.
   I knew that this was false from the first time that the first person contacted me, but I couldn't figure out what was going on, because this woman was insisting that I owed her company $500. When I argued that I had never taken out  a payday loan, she responded with, "Well, you can fight this in court, but you will need two senior lawyers from a prestigious firm to fight this, and it will be very expensive. You will save money if you just Western Union us the amount." No joke, this is what she said, I remember this clearly, because I was just dumbfounded. I started demanding that she send me paperwork, showing what I owed with all the company information listed, and she refused. "We do not have to send you paperwork. The time for that is past, now you must pay."
   That was my first run-in with false debt collectors. When I had taken this call, I was not at home, I was out with my sister. When I got home, the first thing I did was to Google the phone number that she had called from. That's what Google is for, right? Linked to the phone number was a long list of people complaining that this was a bogus number, run by people trying to get you to pay for fake payday loans.
   That was the start of a year full of threatening phone calls. They called a million times a day, at home, at work, my family, all the while claiming that I owed different amounts of money to different payday loan companies. Every time I would Google the number and the company, and I would see page after page of testimonials claiming that these numbers and companies were fake, and pleas not to send them money through Western Union like they always requested.
   These calls were not pleasant however. I had stopped answering the phone, but they would leave messages saying different things; sometimes they were lawyers, sometimes they were policemen, sometimes they were FBI, and they would say things like they were going to drag me kicking and screaming to the courthouse if I did not comply, that they had my house under surveillance, and even more alarming, they would spew off my entire social security number and they would tell me my bank account numbers, all in an attempt into bullying me into sending them some money.
   All this time, I had been looking into what my rights were as a consumer, and trying to find out what actions that I could take against them, and I decided that I needed to gather more information about these people who were constantly calling me. Which meant that the next time they called, I decided I would answer the phone and try to pump them for more names, personal, company, ect.
  Waiting for them to call wasn't long at all, as by this time they were literally calling me about twenty times a day, and before long I had one of them on the phone, a guy this time, using some generic sounding name. Of all things, he claimed he was with the United Nations (of all things!) and that - wait for it - I was going to be deported if I didn't pay the debts that I owed. I was gobsmacked. Deported? Really? To where? I am, and always have been, a citizen of the United States. Where exactly where they going to deport me to? After that wonderful conversation, in which I lost my temper, causing our 'conversation' to devolve into a shouting match, I filled out reports to both the FTC (Fair Trade Commission) and the Attorney General, both of which have online forms specifically for false debt and identity theft.
   The amount of information I got from talking to the scammers didn't really justify the headache, and only gave me a few more false names to add to my report, as well as the new threat of deportation. If you know that the person trying to collect money from you is scamming you, honestly I recommend not talking to them at all. The conversations only get stupid and go around and around in circles.
   I've been battling false debt claims for quite a while now, and have changed most of my personal information, including bank account numbers, phone numbers, and even a change of address (although that was not prompted specifically by these issues). I've even been looking into changing my social security number, because I have been told that this is an option. Fighting this has made me really leery of anything done over the phone - I will not give nor even verify any personal information over the phone or through e-mail, not even my home address. If I happen to take a call from someone pulling this, I demand that they send paperwork through the mail - legally, they have to if you request this. Also, a real debt collector will always say, "This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used in this attempt." Or some variation thereof. If I don't hear those words, I hang up. Most of them call me at work now, because my work number is the only thing that I haven't changed over the years. Not a lot I can do about that, I've had the same job for going on seven years, and I have no plans to quit.
   Throughout all of these years, no Ronald McDonalds have ever gotten any money from me; not a cent, not even the time when they actually attempted to use my debit card information. I keep an eagle eye on all of my finances, including my credit report. You would think they would give up, but they just seem to keep pegging away. I think they are hoping that they can aggravate me so much that I will just give them some money in the hopes that they will go away and leave me alone. That's optimism at it's finest, there. 

Scum From The Bottom Of The Pond

   And here's my rant about identity theft, and the scum who practice this particular brand of theft. About 2 years ago, my information was stolen, off of the computer, I think, but I have never been able to exactly pinpoint how, who, when, where, or why. I never worried too much about identity theft, because what do I have to steal? Nothing. I manage to pay my daughter's and my bills, and keep a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and clothes on our back, but we don't have a whole lot extra. So while I wasn't overly careless, I wasn't overly cautious either.
   Much to my dismay, I found out what one person does to someone who has nothing. These insidious thieves get the info they need and take out online payday loans and try to trick you into making payments on loans that don't really exist. They called me and used heavy scare tactics, like I was going to end up in jail, or that if I didn't pay right now then court costs would cause my debt to soar to ten times the amount. I never took the bait, but they sure kept trying, and the scare tactic that actually caused me some real amusement was when they told me if I didn't pay I would be deported. See, I was born in Japan, but what they didn't know was that I was born in Japan because my dad was in the Air Force. I was born on a military base, no Japanese blood at all, with two American parents, so of course, I am fully an American citizen. So where exactly were they going to deport me to??? I don't really think Japan wants me.
   Anyway, while all this was going on, I reported to the FTC, the Attorney General, did my research, got some information from a super nice lawyer, and did not pay the identity thieves. And eventually, I got things straightened out, and I thought the nightmare was over. Until today, when I got a phone call at work. From a completely different person, who claims to be representing a payday loan company that I owed money too. So not the truth, and when I tried to explain that to her, she jumped my shit, which makes me think that she was not legit either.
   I know this sounds bad, but I have been sued twice, over unpaid hospital bills. I was served and they did not give a courtesy call first, they just showed up. When I asked them what the papers they were handing me were about all they said was that they didn't know and would I please sign for them. This woman argued with me. When I told her that I had never taken out a payday loan with her client, she started screaming at me, "Do you think someone just deposited money into your bank account for free?" Um, no, I am telling you that no one deposited money into my account. She demanded things like the last four digits of my social (which she didn't get) and when I asked for papers to be sent to me, she told me that they had sent papers. But I never got any papers, and yes, I have moved, but only last week, and my mom still lives at my old address, so I get every piece of mail that goes there. In short, that address is still a valid mailing address. I hung up on her, but I have to admit, I was pretty shook up, and had to go upstairs to the offices and break rooms to calm down. I also told her not to call me at work anymore, so of course, she called right back and talked to someone else, because I was upstairs trying to calm down.
   If you are going through something like this, the best advice that I can give is pay absolutely nothing, especially not based on a few phone calls. Demand paperwork, because by law, they have to send you information about the debt that they are claiming that you owe. Do not give them anymore information about yourself. Get as much as their info a possible (something I failed to do today because I was so upset I was not thinking) because you are going to need that info to make reports to the FTC and the Attorney General.
   I thought this shit was over. It looks like I only got a break. Because either this woman is lying to get money out of me, or she is really representing a company that had a payday loan taken out in my name, although I am going to repeat again that I have no payday loans out and this is not me. Either way, I am going to have to go through all this BS again, and they are likely never to catch who is doing this, which really sucks. I am a single mom doing my best to raise my child while working full time and going to college full time, albeit online. I have enough effing stress; I didn't need more. People who do this are scum, a drain upon society, worthless, useless, and I hope they all choke on the guilt that they don't feel.