Financial Expert?

The Chicago “Fibune” is still printing worn out recycled nonsense from self-styled “financial expert” Terry Savage.  This time, Savage (and she has a picture there from 40 years ago) is telling senior citizens who can’t handle their debt to go to an operation called “Debt Counsel for Seniors and the Disabled.” What is that?  It’s good old Jerry Lamet, who gets old people in under the guise of “helping them face the terror of losing their exempt Social Security funds. The game is that he’s talking about their credit report, and how negative items stay on for seven years, and the bankruptcy stays on for 10 years, like it some big deal to us 75-year-old who is being sued by a creditor. He then gets them to pay them $125-$250, and then he claims as low as $25-$30 a month, and what he does for that is tell creditors that they can’t call on the telephone.

Jerry used to be a government lawyer, and then he quit, and became a creditor lawyer, now he sucked up with some lawyer in Florida telling seniors not to file bankruptcy, but to pay him at least five or $600, and then get them hooked up on a monthly thing so that they stay in debt. That’s pretty weird because in Florida, bankruptcies don’t cost much more than that, the lawyers their living on half pay and half sunshine, just like all the old retired people. In addition Florida is the state that provides huge bankruptcy exemptions. Terry Savage and Jerry LaMotte, however are publishing newspaper articles that make it seem like seniors have something to gain by staying in debt. It’s only Terry Savage and Jerry that are gaining by them staying in debt.

On top of it, it sure looks like to me that Jerry’s trying to pick up Social Security disability and fair debt collection act violation cases from these seniors. Most lawyers don’t charge anything if somebody has such a violation, but with the monthly payment plan, you have to wonder what’s really going on. The website claims that have “helped” 14,000 people since 1998. If old Jerry got 750 bucks from each one, he’s collected a cool $10,500,000. Now, 1998 is an eon ago, 18 years. That’s only $583,333.33 a year. From the website it looks like it’s just Jerry and is friend in Florida, and about 10 clerks. But even with 12 people working that’s only about 60,000 a year gross, so there must be a heck of a lot of money coming in from Social Security disability and fair debt collection action practices cases.

Thanks a bunch Terry and Jerry. And thanks a bunch for viewing with your half-baked information. Maybe you should get another of your half-baked reporters like little Kim from Australia to tell only half the story. Kim sure caught his lunch from Tony Preckwinkle when he misquoted or and maligned her in his goofy gossip column. And thank you very much, Fibune, for your bizarre nonfactual reporting today about the 56-year-old from the suburbs who got his brains blown out in front of the face fountain at Monroe in Michigan. You even write in the story that it was outside millennium Park. Sure, by 3 feet. And then you make up a bunch of nonsense about a “person of interest”. When in should just tell us what the gunmen looked like, why he was on a bicycle, why he was without a woman who attacked the dead guys sister when she tried to grab him, why this sister would ask you try to grab a guy who had just blown her brothers brains out at 7:30 PM in the crowd of tourists, or something else interesting. But no, you put a story by Terry Savage on the right-hand column, and waste 20 inches of press on a bunch of nonsense. No wonder your newspaper is busted.

Note to Terry and Jerry: seniors who are in debt benefit greatly by filing a bankruptcy. You try explaining to a sheriff’s deputy and a flak jacket who’s serving you with a summons to appear in court that your Social Security is exempt. You try to get a parking place at the Bridgeview or Maywood courthouse to answer a summons on a debt that you don’t all. You’re way better off filing a bankruptcy case when it gets to this point, especially if the debts are collectible. And what is this nonsense about the credit report. Senior should not be worried about their “credit report”. It’s just another trick by Terry Savage to get them back into debt so that creditors call them with debts they can’t pay, so that Jerry can tell the creditors not to call it even says on his website that he can’t protect them against a court lawsuits. That’s what you get when you tell a creditor to shove off. They sue you.  Seniors are poorly served by this kind of weird “legal advice”.  Terry Savage is not the friend of senior, nor is Jerry. This article is just another example of deliberate misinformation by the Tribune for no good reason. Perhaps there is a reason: not enough car dealers are buying ads in your paper and you have to fill it up with something.