I finished a load of laundry and hung it up, did my Mop & Glo routine in the bathroom and on the plastic chair shield thing under my desk, vacuumed, had the place all spiffy, and right on time, Ken showed up. This is becoming the exception to the rule.
He'd brought a hamburger for me because Real Americans must eat at least one hamburger or... they turn ghey or something. Ken had one too and fries, and his blood sugar alarm kept going off because his blood sugar was high. He told me he's forgotten to bring insulin so he'll just have to deal with it.
We talked a bit and then I raised the subject of a pay check. This started a big search through his car and he was sure he didn't have his check book, and I said, "Let me get my flashlight and be a second set of eyes" and started searching myself when, miraculously, he found it.
So I got my check, but dated for Monday. So I guess if I'm lucky, each week I'll get the pay from the week before.
I asked again if he'd gotten involved with Bitcoin or "crypto" of any type because it's halved in value over the last 6 months and would fit in well with the money problems we've been having. He said that no, it was more a matter of timing. He throws money at problems, on credit. So he's paying a loan on his new furnace and on some other things.
I asked about this reverse mortgage thing he's getting into, and he said it's an HEI, and mentioned the name of the company again but they're so dodgy I don't remember the name now, only that it's an "HEI" and totally, totally, not a reverse mortgage. No, this is better because it can be traded on the open market ... wtf? Anyway he's waiting for an appraiser to come around and put a value on his house and that's why it's been taking so long.
He said the main reason to get into this is to pay off high-interest things like credit cards. and I said that might be one of the very few "use cases" for something like this. Ken, myself, and a friend of ours have all gone through this, where credit cards at say 6%, went up to around 36%.
I talked about how, when I lost everything in the crash of 2008, I was sure I'd have to do a bankruptcy, but I hit the books and learned that a bankruptcy only makes sense when one has an asset they want to protect, like a house. In my case it made more sense to just drop off the grid for a while. Ken can't do this, of course.
However Ken pulls his fat out of the fire, the effects should last a year or so and that's all I need. Of course I made more noises about the eminent sensibility of waiting until I'm at my "full retirement age" of 67 to retire, which means a little over 3 more years.
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