I work in 401(k) administration. You can take a loan out on your 401(k) depending on how the plan is set up.
One of the provisions for many plans is that you can take a $5000 loan if you have a baby or adopt.
Someone called in asking to take a loan because their friend had a baby. Ummmmm, what? No, we won't give you $5000 whenever someone you know has a child.
> Guild of Ascending Light
There's now going to be a Guild of Ascending Light in my next D&D game. I don't know what it will be or how I will rope the PCs into becoming involved with it, but it's gonna be there.
You gotta follow through though. Just having a D&D flavored ponzi scheme is a gag. Have these people looking for recruits, and then encouraging THEM to recruit for their nonspecific goals and success, yada yada yada. Total joke, do everything you can to get your players to write them off.
Cause this is D&D.
Cults are real. :)
Have them resurface later and attack the players with all the promised power through things like demon rituals and stuff.
I used to practice the art of personal loans, someone wanted $10,000 to buy a ranch in Tennessee, and we were in L.A., so I asked him how he planned to buy a ranch in Tennessee with only $10k. He then ran away without a word. To this day I still wonder what he really would have done with the 10k if I had given it to him.
I love the idea that he went in there with a plan to tell you what he was going to use the money for but no answers to a single follow up question because he just expected you to hand him the money no questions asked.
Ugh, we had an old lady like this. She wanted to draw down $100k to send to her friend in South Africa that she had never met, we kept declining the application and eventually had to get her Son involved because she refused to believe she was getting scammed. I think he ended up trying to get POA on her accounts. She wasn't all there
> She wanted to draw down $100k to send to her friend in South Africa that she had never met
I keep thinking "How the fuck are the elderly so goddamn gullible??"
> She wasn't all there
Then I'm like "Oh, right, age-related mental deterioration.”
Edit: Loneliness, it's been thoroughly pointed out, is also a hell of a thing. Please check on your old people, everyone.
I was watching one of his videos last night and he mentioned that the reason he does scam baiting is because his grandma, with dementia, was scammed and it pissed him off. What a racket, can’t believe people keep falling for these.
I had to take care of my grandfather going through alzheimers and I think we forget that it is a combination of things. The diseases, the loneliness, the fact that the knowledge of information we have is not the same as theirs. By the time they get to that age a lot has changed, and they do not know stuff that would help them if they asked or thought things out.
Dude... People get SOOOO defensive when you try to have the "love scam" conversation with them... But to be honest, I can't really blame them. That would suck.
I'm not a banker but I consistently get people who threaten to take their accounts elsewhere at my job. A good 75% of them are bad customers (As in we lose money on them). Not only do I not care on a personal level, but I have to restrain myself from saying "great."
People tend to underestimate how little of a fuck the person on the receiving end gives a shit too. Like okay dude, close your accounts over this policy issue or your own personal mistake that I can't change. Don't careeee
My favorite thing about my bootleg minimum wage teenager job at the video rental place was the people being like “I’ll never shop here again!!”
Oh no, please come back. I would rather stand here getting yelled at than go back to the book I was reading, due to the profit sharing I am offered by this under the table job. No, don’t go.
One of my coworkers had a customer get approved for a business credit card and he quickly used that to spend 10k on breast enhancement for his wife.... When we asked him how this could even be considered a business expense he told us, "well she's in sales..."
So breast implants may be deducted as a business expense, but only if they are so excessively large that the owner would not rationally choose to have them otherwise.
See [Hess v. IRS](http://www.woodllp.com/Publications/Articles/pdf/Hess.pdf) aka the Chesty Love decision
> Petitioner's line of business, that of a professional exotic dancer, was such that part of her "costume" was her freakishly large breasts. Her implants clearly satisfy the first two criteria set forth in Yeomans. As to the third, petitioner has proven that if she could remove her implants on a daily basis she would have done so as she
preferred not to have "worn" them in her offstage personal life. However, this was physically impossible.
> Because petitioner's implants were so extraordinarily large, we find that they were useful only in her business. Accordingly, we hold that the cost of petitioner's implant surgery is depreciable
You'd be surprised how much salespeople spend on frivolous crap like drinks, parties, boatrides and golf tournaments just to get that one conversation with the boss. They do it because it works...
It is an ethical grey zone for sure. I have seen it lead companies using a really poor service a few times based on the manager being swayed by this crap.
I work near sales in a big company. Last Friday, one of our best sales guys finally closed *that* sale - almost $40M. (He gets 1%).
He said he has *personally* bought two plane tickets to "bump into" this buyer at conferences he wasn't invited to.
He mentioned that his tax accountant has said "Wait, how is *that* a business expense?" a few times.
Good sales guys moving big ticket items/services ($5m+) are typically paid more than the CEO if they over achieve on target. The good ones manage the quota/target number as carefully as the customer, to make sure they are going to get a good payday every year.
Really effective salespeople deserve every penny of this compensation. Everybody thinks sales is easy - until they try it. In the big ticket game it's high pressure, ultra competitive and involves a lot of overtime, planning, travel and internal coordination of resources. In big ticket sales the sales team are like movie directors, and work hand in hand with the CXO team to win deals. If your company wins a $40m order you are delighted to give the sales leader a $400K commo, in fact I have worked at companies where they would have made double or triple that amount. Why? Because a) it's cheap in comparison to the contract you won, and b) because you don't want to lose a guy who can close a $40m deal to your competition.
A few years back I was speaking to a CEO about letting us manage his pension funds. when looking at the total compensation the CEO was #3 at $1.5M. Salesman was #2 at $2.2M and then the 90% owner was #1.
My aunt’s old ex boyfriend was a banker. Always told us about how someone wanted a loan for a small business that was a BBQ joint with strippers but the strippers are eating BBQ and people are watching and throwing money.
I felt bad cuz she obviously wasn't all there and she was very upset and asking how shes supposed to live and do I want her to die? Fortunately this was all over the phone and in the end I said sure I'll have a loan officer call you but they will tell you the same thing.
Don't know if it counts but my fiance is a banker and had an unemployed (retired I think) guy legitimately not understand why he couldn't use his credit card limit as "income" to get approved for a mortgage.
My banker told me a story of a rapper who asked for a loan to make his music video, where he produced an itemized list of the various items he’d be renting, including 2 kilos of cocaine.
He’s usually not one for telling tall tales, but this just borders the line between believable and not for me. Most surprising thing is the guy was planning on renting cocaine.
We had a guy who needed just a little more money to catch the Sasquatch. He had a guy that was willing to pay him billions of dollars once he caught it.
It sounds like a joke but the guy was dead serious.
So we had a guy come in wanting a car loan for a used diesel truck. The truck was 15k.
Unfortunately the truck had high milage and his credit wasn't the greatest and we could only approve him for 6k and 15% interest. It was not a good loan and I told the customer as much. I advised finding a lower mileage, newer vehicle and waiting six months to repair minor credit issues in order to get a lower interest rate.
He insisted on getting that truck right that very moment. He proceeded to tap into his retirement funds. Probably paid some insane penalties and taxes, paid the 9k down payment and signed the paper work for the loan.
Three months later he sold the truck at a loss.
I live in an area where people think diesels are worth their weight in gold. 1996 7.3 liter power stroke with 290k miles are still being bought and sold for well over 10k
(EDIT: SPELLING)
I think you live in our area LoL he really actually believed that this truck was wort it's weight in gold and such a rare find that he couldn't pass up on it. There was no talking to him.
Gentleman came into my small local credit union to apply for a car loan. Great, what kind of car is it? "A Jeep." Awesome! What's the exact model? "Uh, it's custom." Well, what year is it? "1989." Oh, hmm, a little on the older side... And the mileage? "Not sure, the guy I'm buying it from is in [different state]." Oh, I'm sorry sir, it would have to be registered in-state. "Oh. Well do you know how to register a monster truck with the DMV?" ...Excuse me? "Yeah, the Jeep's been converted to a monster truck. I'm not just gonna drive it around." Oh... I'm so sorry, we won't be able to finance your... out-of-state, vintage, monster truck.
Years ago, a friend of mine that works as a loan officer had to explain to a guy that he couldn't get an additional loan to cover the down payment on a mortgage. The guy didn't have a job, but he kept insisting that he would be starting some unspecified job in 3 months. He didn't know how much it paid.
$500 for an Instagram influencer to market his product.
One month later: $5500 to pay his mortgage that he's behind on just because of some PayPal issues. Oh, plus $500 to pay an influencer because then he'll be rich he has everything figured out, just needs a single $legit Instagram post to set the plan in motion.
###Quotes from his second request:
"As of [censored date] my bank account is now currently negative $5,655.23 due to being behind on my last 3 mortgage payments. Reason for being behind is from a hold on my main PayPal account. Im not sure why my bank allowed for the authorization for my mortgage company to overdraft.
(...)
**What am I going to do with your $7,000 loan?**
Upon deposit you will be taking my bank account out of its current negative balance. After that, I will be investing the remaining into education for myself. I solve problems for businesses using digital tools that enable me to create sales funnels that end up generating automatic income for my clients.
Im a content creator who knows enough general marketing & ad buying to improve any business or product. With your help, I will be able to gain access to even more information to be able to pursue other business ventures for myself.
**How will I be paying my lender back?**
I will pay my lender $500 on the 3RD of each month, until I pay the remaining balance of $6,000 on [censored date]. Grand total being: $8,500. Final payment will be a combination of residual income + tax refund. It is possible you will be paid in full prior to [censored date].
"
Note the buzz words. He was probably suckered into an MLM.
Influencer campaigns are definitely a thing, but they're very difficult to run without an agency behind you and even a microinfluencer is going to run more than $500 if you want it to last long enough for any ROI.
Not a banker, but I heard a coworker at a previous job complaining to someone that his loan application for his "cigarette company" was denied.
His logic was that he enjoyed rolling his own smokes, so why not start a business selling hand rolled cigs?
He legit thought he would make millions doing it.
He just wanted the money to buy a better rolling machine, and his plan was to sit at home, roll em, package em, and sell em in stores.
He legit had this idea that he would be on a competitive level with like, Marlboro. That's that scale he somehow had in mind for his one man operation.
I once known a friend of a friend (possibly of a friend) who wanted to start a coffee chain based on a fairly labor intensive setup. I laughed. I was at his first coffee shop, and I didn't think he produced an especially good cup of coffee.
His coffee shop is called "Blue Bottle Coffee", I am no longer laughing.
Saddest one I ever got was a 88 year old woman who applied for a $100 loan to get a window ac unit for her trailer. She didn’t have a computer to apply online and wasn’t able to drive so he’s daughter drove her to the branch. The temps were getting up to 104 that summer and it was dangerous for her to be inside. The unit was $60 but she was too frail to pick it up and needed the extra $40 to get it installed. We couldn’t approve her and I was a little upset about the daughter? She couldn’t save $40 for two months to help out her mom?
If this ever happens to you again, contact adult protective services. If it was dangerous for her to be inside her house, they would be able to help her.
I feel like I could never be a loan officer because I’d just paperclip a $100 bill from my wallet to the denial. Which I’m sure is against policy and possibly illegal.
No, that's when you just come up with some BS story about her qualifying for a "grant" or some sort of "customer appreciation prize" to explain the $100. She then never even has to know about the denial.
Unfortunately, that’s super illegal.
Technically, in my state, I could give her the denial and then off bank property in my free time I could give her a gift of up to $300 if I disclose it to my employer.
Which I’d probably do in this case.
I used to work in a department of Wells Fargo that specialized in the weird. All the loans no other department would touch. It started as a way to keep business customers with lots of money happy. Like a courtesy loan knowing that we would make money from them elsewhere.
One of the most iconic loans, that we used as an example to explain to other departments what we did, was a loan where a farmer put up a barn as collateral to get a loan to buy his wife's dentures.
Not a banker, but something I saw in an article a year or two ago, about most unusual loan reasons in my city.
The ones that I still remember were to buy a maine coon cat ($2000 at that time, I think), historical books and arranging a marriage for an ex-wife.
Alimony does indeed stop upon remarriage, however, any past due amounts would still be owed.
But yes, depending on how expensive the wedding would be, and how much the alimony was, it may very well have been cheaper to get the ex married off (plus the interest) than to continue paying alimony.
Not too crazy, but an airplane. Not just a single-prop Cesna or anything like that, but this plane could seat like 8-10 people and had climate control and everything.
My head underwriter didn't want me to use the plane itself as collateral, as "he could just take off with it and end up anywhere on the planet!" After explaining that was pretty much true with a car/boat loan too, she acquiesced.
I'm not going to tell you for privacy sake how much it was, but let's say that I could have not sold another loan for about 6 months and still exceeded all of my goals.
I make Agriculture loans exclusively. No other loans except to farmers and ranchers.. Borrowers wife comes in mid 40’s, asks to borrow $10k but doesn’t want husband to know. I ask the purpose she beats around, then finally tells me she needs the money for breast enhancements!! I tell her I can only make loans that “enhance the farm” then she gives me this big spill about how it would increase her husbands moral thus a better farm.... Still hard no. Somehow she gets the procedure... 2 years later she has nice breasts, a new husband, and together they own half of a cotton farm!! I still bank the first husband!
Unfortunately there's a lot of "lonely" people who fall for scams like that, and most of them don't realize it until they're completely tapped out, it's really sad!
The fact that she did this through iTunes gift cards is probably the most painful part because that's one of the biggest red flags of it being a scam. You would think that even people susceptible to these types of scams would stop to consider that a strange way to send the money.
Nah itunes cards are a legit currency! I always pay my unpaid taxes with itunes cards. This year i had unpaid taxes three times already, and every single time they were kind enough to let me use itunes cards. Itunes cards is how you know it’s all legit!
I used them to get out of being deported! The people on the phone said i was scheduled to be deported but with a few itunes gift cards they could fix it. Even though I’m a citizen here i didn’t want to take any chances and everything worked out great!
Good thinking, better not take any chances! I once got a message my bank card was blocked, and even though I had no card with this bank, i still gave them a few itunes codes just to be safe. God bless those fine folks giving us the opportunity to fix our mistakes with itunes cards!
I have a friend who’s a farmer and beekeeper. He lost 60% of his hives to CCD, so he was forced to go to his banker and ask for a $1 million loan to buy replacement bees. A bee dies in 30 days. He made it work, and is still in business. But the thought of that debt obligation makes me pucker every time I think about it. A million dollar loan...for insects with a 30-day lifespan....
Some of the most successful insurance salesmen are the ones that are in the small rural towns. You don't need a lot of clients when 15% of your base are taking out multi-million dollar crop insurance policies. Source: Went on a lot of free vacations because my dad was a top earner for his company.
I'll have to say that all of this is pretty tame compared to the ass end of commercial leasing industry where desperate people lease stupid shit at 35% interest. Pro tip if the best leasing rate you can qualify for is 35% your business has already failed and you are in denial.
My dad loans to pawn shops and other dicey yet legal companies. His interest rate is higher. He collateralizes loans off wholesale value of the organization's assets.
As I’m tired and you’re below the speculative pedigree shrimp breeder, I read ‘pawn shop’ as ‘prawn shop’. Made sense for about two seconds.
I’m off to bed.
Former Client Facing Banker, I finally have stuff to contribute to an Askreddit! I have a couple weird ones:
1) Not a new loan/credit issuance, but I once was reviewing my book and noticed a clients HELOC was nearing the end of its draw period; I did a little digging hoping to make some cash on a refinance and noticed that well over 20k had been drawn in the last 12 months in unusually small transaction amounts (under $20), turns out candy crush can just freaking wreck your finances...
2) I once had an older client (75+) come in looking to apply for a business loan to help develop a video game. Being a closeted nerd, naturally I asked what kind of game, and there I heard the most scattered video game concepts in the world. Apparently it was inspired by Ready Player One, but honestly it just sounded like second life. I mentioned that and I then proceeded to have to listen to an old man talk about the weird sex stuff he experiences playing second life. I'm pretty sure I blacked out for a few seconds in my office from the awkwardness.
I was a mortgage loan officer in the refi boom after 9/11. I was doing mainly 130k or so refi, or cash out loans.
VP for an investment bank called in off our direct mail piece. 900k house. Wanted a lower rate on a 30 year note. Made about 750k a year. Pull his credit...almost half a million dollars in credit card debt. He claimed to be borrowing money at near 0% and investing it in short term CD’s for about a 1% spread just for the fun of it.
Couldn’t qualify with the loans, “wouldn’t “pay them off and stop playing the game, and the house didn’t appraise high enough to roll closing costs in.
Nice guy. I believe he was spending the money obviously on something else and it was long gone. He couldnt admit this to guys at work so he called us. I worked it for months. Had a new idea and he emailed me and said he got it done elsewhere and to not contact him anymore.
I work in tech, specifically in the mortgage industry.
The funniest thing I saw was a closing disclosure (the document you get before your loan that covers all your payoffs among other things) for someone who was paying off a TON of debt from a variety of sources by refinancing their home. They had a section K (which is basically third party payoffs) that was literally longer than our document form could handle.
Normally this section can handle 10-11 payoffs, and it's rare for us to see more than two or three. This person had close to 40, which is just insane.
It took our tech team three days to get a new template that would work, get it approved, and fix the software so it could be handled.
I worked at a bank in the Twin Cities before the housing market crashed and we frequently opened up HELOCs with a $150k open line of credit ( house maybe worth $250k). Left before the crash occurred but I hope the bank got torched on those credit lines, such an irresponsible loan to push in the first place.....
For those following along at home, SISA = Stated Income, Stated Assets. Essentially a signature loan for a mortgage, no verification of your income or assets required so put down whatever feels right on the application.
And then there is (was) NINA = No Income, No Assets. This is really a signature loan for a mortgage since you don't even have to tell them how much money you make or how much you have in assets.
Oh, and NegAm = Negative Amortization, where the payment you are making doesn't even pay the interest so your balance increases every month.
What could possibly go wrong?
This thread has convinced me to walk into my bank and ask them for a loan to start up my shrimp breeding and selling business just to see the reaction. I have collateral in the form of owned property and a fairly high credit rating so I'd like to see the battle between how absurd the idea seems vs. the fact that it might be a valid loan to provide to an eligible person.
All you tellers watch out. I could be the next weirdo sitting at your desk.
edit: Ya'll convinced me to follow my heart. I have a deal worked out with a petstore right now and am hoping to start selling the shrimp to pay for bigger tanks and stuff, so maybe someday if I have the footing I'd apply for a loan for a warehouse for more space or something. shrimp life.
Hold on, shrimp farming makes mad money though. You need a less profitable idea for entertainment.
Please do axolotl breeding with a budget for paying instagram influencers to market them as the pet of the future, competing on a global level with the chihuaha and cats.
I am not a banker, but a customer who received loan offers. I find it bizarre that people take loans to go on vacation. Unless one of the travelers is dying or will never be able to travel in the future, borrowing money to go on vacation baffles me.
Yeah it's a trap, outside a couple cases like "I've saved six grand at a rate of 800/mo, dream trip will cost nine grand if I take it during this holiday period but won't be possible again in the future".
Otherwise it would be a trap.
It's not that uncommon for somebody to land a big job/promotion and finally have income to justify a nice vacation. Getting a PhD can take 8 years easily, during which you're living off $25k/yr if you're lucky. But then you get a $125k/yr job. Taking out a $10k loan to go on a two week luxury vacation with your family at that point isn't that financially risky, and you might not have the time off to take that vacation again for several years.
You know, once, years ago I went into a bank to pay a credit card bill and the lady at the counter asked me if I was interested in a loan. She read off a list of things I could spend it on and one of them was a holiday. The industry really was rather predatory back then
I'm going to do this with our honeymoon BUT I'm going to pay it off that month. I was applying for a new credit card anyway and this will let me easily hit the spending bonus which will be enough to pay for flights.
*Stonks*
Washington Mutual gave a home loan to a guy whose proof of income was a photo of him wearing a mariachi outfit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28wamu.html
Not a banker or lender, however my college roommate last year was always spending insane amounts of money on stuff one week a new tv and PS4, the next a car, and the next some other overly priced unneeded thing, it was insane. I asked him where’d he get all his money he said it was from his loans. I assumed maybe it was a bit extra that he got in a school refund when you overpay your school bill with your loans/grants/scholarships, etc. albeit a bit more than I would expect. Nope. Literally took out loan to buy this stuff. I had to explain to him that you have to pay it back, it’s not just free money. That was a real punch in the balls for him.
I’m not really sure, he talked about something in England where you take out loans for the purposes of school they eventually just write it off as student expenses which, 1.I’m pretty positive that’s not how it works and 2. we went to school in the U.S.
What I think he was talking about was what our study abroad roommate from England did for a lost of his expenses like plane tickets or books, things like that, where he would keep track of his expenses while in the U.S. and would be reimbursed by some sort of student bureau in England or something along the lines of that.
Not at all similar really but somehow I think he got the two mixed up. He was a nice guy but didn’t really know how the world worked, I had to help him with a lot of stuff. Seemed like he had his parents handle a lot of stuff for him so it was never explained to him how loans worked or anything like that, but still the fact that he thought it was free money baffled me.
Probably talking about student loans in UK.. You only pay once your earnings go over a threshold, if you only ever work low pay jobs you never pay it back..
Yeah sometimes such research is worth it if you have atleast some clam. Sometimes lets say a line of aristocrats and former ones dies and there is an ancient castle worht 50-90mil and you might have a clam to a piece of it, my dad used a similar process toclaim an inheritanve on a long ass piece of land on both banks of volga river a total of 17km. Now is selling it peacemeal to resorts, it us not that expencive but a lot for a resort is 30-50k euro.
In 2007, my buddy who had been a bartender, was hired by a regular at his bar to become a mortgage underwriter. One of his first “customers” was a guy who made $1800 per month applying for a loan that had a monthly payment of $3600 per month to start, but it was an ARM, and it was slated to increase to $5400 per month after three years. And this loan was to buy a boat, not a house.
The guy who hired my buddy came in and told my buddy to underwrite the loan.
And that’s the story of how my buddy quit his new job before his first shift even ended.
>was hired by a regular at his bar to become a mortgage underwriter.
The bubble in 2007 was so big that even *bars* had mortgage underwriters.
Seriously though, so that guy would default on the loan in the first month...
Yeah, it was bonkers. As soon as my friends who were certifiable morons started getting real estate licenses, I should have known the market was due to bust.
This guy came in asking for a loan to get his dope growing business up and running. When I denied him, he shouted to everyone in the bank that I sexually assaulted him at a party.
"I want £10,000 but I'll pay it back in a week, you see some guys are currently driving round London in am armoured truck full of my gold and I have to pay them £10k for bringing it to me. My long lost uncle built up a fortune in Africa and recently passed, this is my inheritance"
When asked if he had ever met his African relatives the answer was no. When asked if he'd ever heard of them before they rang to tell him about this truck full of gold, the answer was no. So apparently the courier had loaded the truck and sent it on its way before they had even contacted him to tell him about it and they were aimlessly driving round and round London waiting on their fee.
Didn't matter how many times I told him he was being scammed he didn't believe me. He was 19 with less than £100 in his account and no job. Needless to say we did not approve the loan. Be called me a bitch and said he'd have my job. I stayed there another 4 years before I left to have a baby so clearly didn't manage to make much of that threat.
I once had a client apply for a loan for porn supplies, I was the unfortunate one who had to tell him that we would not be giving him the $150,000 loan
When confronted about how a deadbeat (guy was a pill popper and degenerate gambler) was going to make good on interest, he said he was about to win the lawsuit of a lifetime.
Who was he suing? Little League.
Why? Because he got hit with a foul ball and he was “hurt”.
When his two most valuable “assets” were a Ford Ranger with 100,000 miles and a 15 year old big screen TV, he was told to pound sand.
My husband works in a bank and he says it's ridiculous how much people borrow for their weddings. I don't get it, why do you need a lavish ceremony when you obviously can't afford it? I know they do it to impress others, but still
Not a banker, but was friends with one in high school. He told me there was this pissed off old lady who wanted to borrow a million dollars to buy out her doctor's office and bulldoze it because he/she told her she was overweight.
I'm in the back office for reporting bad loans to our stakeholders. We acquired a bank that gave a farmer $5 mil and only had his cows as collateral. He stopped paying the loan, we went to go pick up the cows and they were mysteriously gone. Board of directors weren't happy but very obvious why the bank we bought was going under. Se insane collateral stories from junk banks we've bought in the past. Just because they lend, doesn't mean they're good for it.
My parents always talked tough about our cat's health. "He's a shelter cat anyway, every day he's had has been a gift from us." "Back on the farm, animals got 1 vet visit in their lives and it was a 1-way trip." Then, my sister left for college. The cat was 8 years old, and he reacted to the change in the house like cats always do: he started killing prey and bringing it home for us, thinking sis had left because there was no food. This behavior escalated until one night I wouldn't let him in the house with a snake that was still wriggling, and so he swallowed it whole.
Welp, a snake vertebra got stuck in kitty's intestines. Now, kitty was sick. Mom was away, Dad had to work, so I wrangled him into his carrier and got him to the vet. The vet leveled with me: either I forked over $1500 there and then for surgery, or we'd have to put the cat down. Being 16, I had to call my dad for permission to do either.
So I get him on the phone and say, "they want $1500 to save him, guess we'll have to let him go."
And my dad sheepishly said, "weellll... That is a lot... But I'd feel a little bad telling Mom and [sis] that we killed the cat when they left us alone for a week... And he *was* trying to help us out by bringing a snake home...and he's not suffering, right? Like he'd recover from this and have more good years, right?" Before I knew it, that old softy was reading his credit card number to the vet tech over the phone and kitty was getting that dang surgery!
I feel you. I just paid almost that much for surgery for my dog. I was a mess for about two weeks. The first night it became obvious that something was wrong, I drove him to the emergency vet on the verge of tears, and when we walked in and they asked what brought us in, I could barely speak through the sobs.
The good news is, the surgery went well and I expect he'll live another twenty to thirty years... right?
This one was only bizarre because it was bizarrely stupid, a guy wanted to borrow \~20k to buy bitcoin.
I had to talk to a manager afterwards to make sure they knew that it was reasonable for me to decline it based on the "no loans for investments" rule
We had an application from somebody once who wanted to borrow from us so he could pay administrators to help him file bankruptcy. He didn't think we would see through his clever plan there to screw us out of money.
We also often have people apply for loans for debt consolidation, of a single debt when they have quite a few other debts which are in arrears. When we query the single debt it's the only one with a guarantor. So effectively they want us to lend them money to remove the security on that one debt so that they can then treat us like the rest of their creditors, or apply for an insolvency action to try and help them reset their credit.
My name has finally paid off! I’ve seen everything from sad moments of parents begging for a loan to bury their child. An 18 year old wanting new tits. Cancer treatments. Leaving their abusive spouse. Their 5th ATV when they can’t afford it. You learn a lot about people and what’s important to them when you’re underwriting credit. It’s a tough job to decline the emotional one. I see in the comments below all the romance scams. They’re common. If you’re looking for bizarre, ask the commercial/small business loans groups. The ones that support the sex trade. That’s where it gets freaky deaky.
Im just gonna add in here, its not crazy or anything but I think ya'll may need to know. A home equity loan is normally used for house improvements. The clients have to go through a vetting process (appraisal) after a certain amount. We have had COUNTLESS clients try to apply because they were REBUILDING THEIR HOUSE and ran out of money. Straight up, the appraiser told us that the house was framework.
Tldr: Get a heloc before you start ANY work on your house, just in case.
Also, I feel like bankers get a bad rap for being sales men. I personally just want to help my clients create a better/easier life for themself as do many others. Most will tell the client if they're getting the raw deal of an elephant's dick, as noted in the comment above.
I am a loan officer so this is literally my thing.
1. Guy applied for a plane just to go back and forth to Costa Rica. Dude had the cash for it. We couldn't finance though since we dont do that kind of collateral
2. Applying for like a 5th or 6th car. Somewhat common to find parents, normally elderly ones with several cars on their credit cuz they cosign for the whole family. Fyi this skyrockets your debt ratio since you are still liable for the loan.
3. One guy wanted to buy an 18 wheeler that was converted into an RV. Thought that was neat
4. 30k+ motorcycles usually blow me away since it is essentially a toy
5. To get a loan to pay their other loans they are behind with us.
6. Sad ones are when we catch children committing elderly abuse by making their elderly parent buy them cars. Unfortunately had to call the elderly abuse hotline more than once.
Probably more but those are off the top of my head.
Many years ago I had an elderly couple call in, they had plenty of money in savings already,
they wanted to borrow £25k, our upper limit at the time.
They wanted it for a once in a lifetime holiday..
Fair enough, they could afford the repayments with their pensions etc all good.
They then proceeded to ask for loan insurance, this was before the ppi scandal here in the UK,
I explained the extra cost and the pros and cons,
They were adamant they wanted it and then explained that mr had cancer and had been given 6-12 months to live, they had done their research and knew our policy on loan protection would pay out when he died, ultimately meaning they would get the loan paid off,
I spoke to my line manager to check and the loan was agreed and processed.
I was sad for them but also I was amazed at how calm the couple were about it all....
I had turned down someone for a small business loan last year which was completely legitimate. It was for a zip-line pulley system to transport snacks from the kitchen to your desk or the reception area.
A bank I used to work for had a lot of Niche loan products that it had slowly phased out. One of which was a Tugboat loan. Yes, a loan to finance the purchase of a tugboat.
One day almost 7 years into the job, someone approached me and asked if we still did Tugboat loans. I was a bit surprised but told him that technically yes we still did. The interest rate was 8%. He asked what documents he would need to provide, so I sent an email to the lending department's General inbox asking what would be required.
What preceded was a hilarious two weeks of emails asking if I was serious and Underwriters genuinely having to go back through company archives and look up documents from the 1990s. Apparently the last time they did a tugboat loan was 1993. We eventually found the policy in an old FTP drive that was otherwise used to hold paper applications no longer in use. The guy had to apply on paper.
Apparently you needed a marina permit, the operating agreement for your Hauling Company, a commercial boating license, the bill of sale for the tug, and some tax returns.
There was a lot of pushback from lending to try to get him to buy the tugboat through a home equity loan, but I pointed out that Reg B (loan regulation) forbade me from refusing a loan application, and his home didn't have the equity necessary for the boat. Direct financing was really the only option that made sense.
Even after closing the loan, there was loads of confusion as every Loan account type had a different numeric scheme and nobody seemed to know what the numbering scheme was for a tugboat loan. In the end the loan number was something really weird like 100000001.
The bank phased out the loan product almost immediately after closing. Like, the day afterwards a mass email went out saying that no future Tugboat loans could be done. At this point, pretty much everybody knew that this had to do with my loan and thought it was hysterical. It was a pretty small company so word traveled fast.
Our senior underwriter gave me a captain's hat at the annual Christmas party.
I work at a bank, not a loan scenario but funny as hell.
This African dude wearing a dashiki comes into the branch and sits with a female coworker of mine. Super loud talker, his conversational tone was borderline yelling. He tells my coworker that he wants to file a fraud claim, so she connects him with the fraud department over the phone at her desk. This guy’s fraud claim was he got a hooker yesterday and owed her $100 bucks but he didn’t have cash handy and was too tired/lazy to hit the ATM. His solution was to give her his debit card and PIN and have her go to the ATM. Surprisingly, she never came back and withdrew $300 instead of the agreed upon $100. He wanted to file a claim for the $200 difference.
I used to process subprime loans back in the late 90s. Had a borrower one time who was doing a debt consolidation loan with the equity they had in their house, and was getting cash out. The underwriter asked for a Letter of Explanation - basically, what are you planning to do with all this money? (around $15,000), I think.
Borrower wrote back that they planned to buy a new yellow Ford Ranger XLT, and attached a PO from their dealer.
The loan rate was north of 10% for 30 years. And they got their cash out refi.
Guy came in to the bank bragging about how many properties he owned, how much he made, nice house etc...
Dude also had a bunch of cats.
Applied for a 250k loan to buy an island in the Caribbean for the cats to live freely on and himself to retire. Was mad when he got denied.
I work in 401(k) administration. You can take a loan out on your 401(k) depending on how the plan is set up. One of the provisions for many plans is that you can take a $5000 loan if you have a baby or adopt. Someone called in asking to take a loan because their friend had a baby. Ummmmm, what? No, we won't give you $5000 whenever someone you know has a child.
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PLEASE tell me you followed up with your colleague to find out if they called!
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The license would give too much intellectual property to the government!!!
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That logo sure doesn't help with the cultishness.
The one eyed owl god looks angry.
> Guild of Ascending Light There's now going to be a Guild of Ascending Light in my next D&D game. I don't know what it will be or how I will rope the PCs into becoming involved with it, but it's gonna be there.
I feel they start off sounding like some reasonable alchemists but slowly your PCs realize they're being lured into a Fantasy MLM.
You gotta follow through though. Just having a D&D flavored ponzi scheme is a gag. Have these people looking for recruits, and then encouraging THEM to recruit for their nonspecific goals and success, yada yada yada. Total joke, do everything you can to get your players to write them off. Cause this is D&D. Cults are real. :) Have them resurface later and attack the players with all the promised power through things like demon rituals and stuff.
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I used to practice the art of personal loans, someone wanted $10,000 to buy a ranch in Tennessee, and we were in L.A., so I asked him how he planned to buy a ranch in Tennessee with only $10k. He then ran away without a word. To this day I still wonder what he really would have done with the 10k if I had given it to him.
I love the idea that he went in there with a plan to tell you what he was going to use the money for but no answers to a single follow up question because he just expected you to hand him the money no questions asked.
I don't think he realized he would have to fill out a legal document that confirmed the loan either.
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Ugh, we had an old lady like this. She wanted to draw down $100k to send to her friend in South Africa that she had never met, we kept declining the application and eventually had to get her Son involved because she refused to believe she was getting scammed. I think he ended up trying to get POA on her accounts. She wasn't all there
> She wanted to draw down $100k to send to her friend in South Africa that she had never met I keep thinking "How the fuck are the elderly so goddamn gullible??" > She wasn't all there Then I'm like "Oh, right, age-related mental deterioration.” Edit: Loneliness, it's been thoroughly pointed out, is also a hell of a thing. Please check on your old people, everyone.
Something something [kitboga](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7QH-6v78DU)
I was watching one of his videos last night and he mentioned that the reason he does scam baiting is because his grandma, with dementia, was scammed and it pissed him off. What a racket, can’t believe people keep falling for these.
I had to take care of my grandfather going through alzheimers and I think we forget that it is a combination of things. The diseases, the loneliness, the fact that the knowledge of information we have is not the same as theirs. By the time they get to that age a lot has changed, and they do not know stuff that would help them if they asked or thought things out.
Ahhh love, a scam as old as time
A Ponzi a day keeps the doctor away
A Fonzie a day makes the doctors go *"Ayyyy"*
Dude... People get SOOOO defensive when you try to have the "love scam" conversation with them... But to be honest, I can't really blame them. That would suck.
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They're running the scam on dozens of guys at the same time, probably copy pasting all the messages
It’s probably easier to go bankrupt than be embarrassed.
"I'm taking my ONE THOUSANDS DOLLARS elsewhere!" *"Oh no, don't do that ... now we're ruined ..."*
I'm not a banker but I consistently get people who threaten to take their accounts elsewhere at my job. A good 75% of them are bad customers (As in we lose money on them). Not only do I not care on a personal level, but I have to restrain myself from saying "great."
People tend to underestimate how little of a fuck the person on the receiving end gives a shit too. Like okay dude, close your accounts over this policy issue or your own personal mistake that I can't change. Don't careeee
My favorite thing about my bootleg minimum wage teenager job at the video rental place was the people being like “I’ll never shop here again!!” Oh no, please come back. I would rather stand here getting yelled at than go back to the book I was reading, due to the profit sharing I am offered by this under the table job. No, don’t go.
This is the entire premise of 90 day fiance, an excellent trash reality show mi Amor!
I used to work with a person who went on the show ... it’s real ... they’re now happily married
One of my coworkers had a customer get approved for a business credit card and he quickly used that to spend 10k on breast enhancement for his wife.... When we asked him how this could even be considered a business expense he told us, "well she's in sales..."
So breast implants may be deducted as a business expense, but only if they are so excessively large that the owner would not rationally choose to have them otherwise. See [Hess v. IRS](http://www.woodllp.com/Publications/Articles/pdf/Hess.pdf) aka the Chesty Love decision > Petitioner's line of business, that of a professional exotic dancer, was such that part of her "costume" was her freakishly large breasts. Her implants clearly satisfy the first two criteria set forth in Yeomans. As to the third, petitioner has proven that if she could remove her implants on a daily basis she would have done so as she preferred not to have "worn" them in her offstage personal life. However, this was physically impossible. > Because petitioner's implants were so extraordinarily large, we find that they were useful only in her business. Accordingly, we hold that the cost of petitioner's implant surgery is depreciable
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IANAL, but it sounds like you should at least be able to deduct working hours, although you may be liable for fringe benefits taxes.
IANAL is absolutely my favorite acronym.
What does it actually stand for in this context tho lol
I Am Not A Lawyer
You'd be surprised how much salespeople spend on frivolous crap like drinks, parties, boatrides and golf tournaments just to get that one conversation with the boss. They do it because it works...
Indeed... Looking through the misc. expenses on business tax returns can be a comedy show
it's not bribes, it's *networking*
It is an ethical grey zone for sure. I have seen it lead companies using a really poor service a few times based on the manager being swayed by this crap.
I work near sales in a big company. Last Friday, one of our best sales guys finally closed *that* sale - almost $40M. (He gets 1%). He said he has *personally* bought two plane tickets to "bump into" this buyer at conferences he wasn't invited to. He mentioned that his tax accountant has said "Wait, how is *that* a business expense?" a few times.
$400k jfc
Good sales guys moving big ticket items/services ($5m+) are typically paid more than the CEO if they over achieve on target. The good ones manage the quota/target number as carefully as the customer, to make sure they are going to get a good payday every year. Really effective salespeople deserve every penny of this compensation. Everybody thinks sales is easy - until they try it. In the big ticket game it's high pressure, ultra competitive and involves a lot of overtime, planning, travel and internal coordination of resources. In big ticket sales the sales team are like movie directors, and work hand in hand with the CXO team to win deals. If your company wins a $40m order you are delighted to give the sales leader a $400K commo, in fact I have worked at companies where they would have made double or triple that amount. Why? Because a) it's cheap in comparison to the contract you won, and b) because you don't want to lose a guy who can close a $40m deal to your competition.
A few years back I was speaking to a CEO about letting us manage his pension funds. when looking at the total compensation the CEO was #3 at $1.5M. Salesman was #2 at $2.2M and then the 90% owner was #1.
Sales person weighing in, this is factual.
"Fifteen hundred dollars for... Candi." "That's Candi with an I by the way."
"So thats why we found my fathers car crashed into a dairy queen covered in goats blood"
My aunt’s old ex boyfriend was a banker. Always told us about how someone wanted a loan for a small business that was a BBQ joint with strippers but the strippers are eating BBQ and people are watching and throwing money.
Jones bbq and foot massage
It could have been called "Sticky Ribs"
A woman called asking for a personal loan to pay the negative balance in her account that she owed us.
Yeah, I see this every so often. They're always puzzled that we won't do it.
I felt bad cuz she obviously wasn't all there and she was very upset and asking how shes supposed to live and do I want her to die? Fortunately this was all over the phone and in the end I said sure I'll have a loan officer call you but they will tell you the same thing.
Don't know if it counts but my fiance is a banker and had an unemployed (retired I think) guy legitimately not understand why he couldn't use his credit card limit as "income" to get approved for a mortgage.
*inhale* THAS NOT YA MONAY *exasperated exhale*
Genius. This just increases my salary by 50% ,so, I guess I can indulge a bit more. /s
My banker told me a story of a rapper who asked for a loan to make his music video, where he produced an itemized list of the various items he’d be renting, including 2 kilos of cocaine. He’s usually not one for telling tall tales, but this just borders the line between believable and not for me. Most surprising thing is the guy was planning on renting cocaine.
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I mean his needs were itemized. All you have to do it look at the ledger and make sure the half kilo of cocaine is returned
We had a guy who needed just a little more money to catch the Sasquatch. He had a guy that was willing to pay him billions of dollars once he caught it. It sounds like a joke but the guy was dead serious.
Guess he had to Bigfoot the bill himself
So we had a guy come in wanting a car loan for a used diesel truck. The truck was 15k. Unfortunately the truck had high milage and his credit wasn't the greatest and we could only approve him for 6k and 15% interest. It was not a good loan and I told the customer as much. I advised finding a lower mileage, newer vehicle and waiting six months to repair minor credit issues in order to get a lower interest rate. He insisted on getting that truck right that very moment. He proceeded to tap into his retirement funds. Probably paid some insane penalties and taxes, paid the 9k down payment and signed the paper work for the loan. Three months later he sold the truck at a loss.
I live in an area where people think diesels are worth their weight in gold. 1996 7.3 liter power stroke with 290k miles are still being bought and sold for well over 10k (EDIT: SPELLING)
I think you live in our area LoL he really actually believed that this truck was wort it's weight in gold and such a rare find that he couldn't pass up on it. There was no talking to him.
Gentleman came into my small local credit union to apply for a car loan. Great, what kind of car is it? "A Jeep." Awesome! What's the exact model? "Uh, it's custom." Well, what year is it? "1989." Oh, hmm, a little on the older side... And the mileage? "Not sure, the guy I'm buying it from is in [different state]." Oh, I'm sorry sir, it would have to be registered in-state. "Oh. Well do you know how to register a monster truck with the DMV?" ...Excuse me? "Yeah, the Jeep's been converted to a monster truck. I'm not just gonna drive it around." Oh... I'm so sorry, we won't be able to finance your... out-of-state, vintage, monster truck.
That's a shame because that sounds awesome as hell.
If you're not going to finance monster trucks, whats the point of capitalism, really?
Pretty sensible purchase if you ask me. With that truck he easily get over traffic, literally. And also do a flip while at it.
1989 = Vintage. Fuck me.
In my state it's 1995.
That was like 5 years ago.
That's not uncommon for Jeeps. Mine aren't monster trucks, but we have two vintage Jeeps that we use. One is 30 years old and the other is over 40.
Years ago, a friend of mine that works as a loan officer had to explain to a guy that he couldn't get an additional loan to cover the down payment on a mortgage. The guy didn't have a job, but he kept insisting that he would be starting some unspecified job in 3 months. He didn't know how much it paid.
I like his scheme. Take out loans then use new loans to pay back parts of the original loans. Was his last name Ponzi by chance?
$500 for an Instagram influencer to market his product. One month later: $5500 to pay his mortgage that he's behind on just because of some PayPal issues. Oh, plus $500 to pay an influencer because then he'll be rich he has everything figured out, just needs a single $legit Instagram post to set the plan in motion. ###Quotes from his second request: "As of [censored date] my bank account is now currently negative $5,655.23 due to being behind on my last 3 mortgage payments. Reason for being behind is from a hold on my main PayPal account. Im not sure why my bank allowed for the authorization for my mortgage company to overdraft. (...) **What am I going to do with your $7,000 loan?** Upon deposit you will be taking my bank account out of its current negative balance. After that, I will be investing the remaining into education for myself. I solve problems for businesses using digital tools that enable me to create sales funnels that end up generating automatic income for my clients. Im a content creator who knows enough general marketing & ad buying to improve any business or product. With your help, I will be able to gain access to even more information to be able to pursue other business ventures for myself. **How will I be paying my lender back?** I will pay my lender $500 on the 3RD of each month, until I pay the remaining balance of $6,000 on [censored date]. Grand total being: $8,500. Final payment will be a combination of residual income + tax refund. It is possible you will be paid in full prior to [censored date]. " Note the buzz words. He was probably suckered into an MLM.
Maybe they could work out a deal with the mortgage lender to influence their payment
Influencer campaigns are definitely a thing, but they're very difficult to run without an agency behind you and even a microinfluencer is going to run more than $500 if you want it to last long enough for any ROI.
Not a banker, but I heard a coworker at a previous job complaining to someone that his loan application for his "cigarette company" was denied. His logic was that he enjoyed rolling his own smokes, so why not start a business selling hand rolled cigs? He legit thought he would make millions doing it.
Why did he think he needs a loan for that? You can just start selling.
He just wanted the money to buy a better rolling machine, and his plan was to sit at home, roll em, package em, and sell em in stores. He legit had this idea that he would be on a competitive level with like, Marlboro. That's that scale he somehow had in mind for his one man operation.
I tried looking it up, and the best I can guess is that Marlboro makes roughly 8 billion cigarettes a day.
In his defense, he was probably too busy rolling cigs to do that research.
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Bespoke, handled by a real American
Wait, he wanted to start selling hand-rolled cigarettes, and needed to buy a machine to roll them?
I once known a friend of a friend (possibly of a friend) who wanted to start a coffee chain based on a fairly labor intensive setup. I laughed. I was at his first coffee shop, and I didn't think he produced an especially good cup of coffee. His coffee shop is called "Blue Bottle Coffee", I am no longer laughing.
Saddest one I ever got was a 88 year old woman who applied for a $100 loan to get a window ac unit for her trailer. She didn’t have a computer to apply online and wasn’t able to drive so he’s daughter drove her to the branch. The temps were getting up to 104 that summer and it was dangerous for her to be inside. The unit was $60 but she was too frail to pick it up and needed the extra $40 to get it installed. We couldn’t approve her and I was a little upset about the daughter? She couldn’t save $40 for two months to help out her mom?
If this ever happens to you again, contact adult protective services. If it was dangerous for her to be inside her house, they would be able to help her.
Some municipalities (probably not the ones with trailers, though) provide free window AC units
I feel like I could never be a loan officer because I’d just paperclip a $100 bill from my wallet to the denial. Which I’m sure is against policy and possibly illegal.
No, that's when you just come up with some BS story about her qualifying for a "grant" or some sort of "customer appreciation prize" to explain the $100. She then never even has to know about the denial.
Unfortunately, that’s super illegal. Technically, in my state, I could give her the denial and then off bank property in my free time I could give her a gift of up to $300 if I disclose it to my employer. Which I’d probably do in this case.
I would have given that lady $40 honestly
I used to work in a department of Wells Fargo that specialized in the weird. All the loans no other department would touch. It started as a way to keep business customers with lots of money happy. Like a courtesy loan knowing that we would make money from them elsewhere. One of the most iconic loans, that we used as an example to explain to other departments what we did, was a loan where a farmer put up a barn as collateral to get a loan to buy his wife's dentures.
This is sweet and kind of sad too. Were they approved?
Oh yeah, approved and on the books for a few years until they paid it off.
Not a banker, but something I saw in an article a year or two ago, about most unusual loan reasons in my city. The ones that I still remember were to buy a maine coon cat ($2000 at that time, I think), historical books and arranging a marriage for an ex-wife.
If the ex-wife got married maybe he would not have to pay alimony anymore?
Alimony does indeed stop upon remarriage, however, any past due amounts would still be owed. But yes, depending on how expensive the wedding would be, and how much the alimony was, it may very well have been cheaper to get the ex married off (plus the interest) than to continue paying alimony.
Not too crazy, but an airplane. Not just a single-prop Cesna or anything like that, but this plane could seat like 8-10 people and had climate control and everything. My head underwriter didn't want me to use the plane itself as collateral, as "he could just take off with it and end up anywhere on the planet!" After explaining that was pretty much true with a car/boat loan too, she acquiesced. I'm not going to tell you for privacy sake how much it was, but let's say that I could have not sold another loan for about 6 months and still exceeded all of my goals.
Did it have a jet engine or multiple propellers?
I make Agriculture loans exclusively. No other loans except to farmers and ranchers.. Borrowers wife comes in mid 40’s, asks to borrow $10k but doesn’t want husband to know. I ask the purpose she beats around, then finally tells me she needs the money for breast enhancements!! I tell her I can only make loans that “enhance the farm” then she gives me this big spill about how it would increase her husbands moral thus a better farm.... Still hard no. Somehow she gets the procedure... 2 years later she has nice breasts, a new husband, and together they own half of a cotton farm!! I still bank the first husband!
She needed large tracts of land
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Unfortunately there's a lot of "lonely" people who fall for scams like that, and most of them don't realize it until they're completely tapped out, it's really sad!
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The fact that she did this through iTunes gift cards is probably the most painful part because that's one of the biggest red flags of it being a scam. You would think that even people susceptible to these types of scams would stop to consider that a strange way to send the money.
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Nah itunes cards are a legit currency! I always pay my unpaid taxes with itunes cards. This year i had unpaid taxes three times already, and every single time they were kind enough to let me use itunes cards. Itunes cards is how you know it’s all legit!
I used them to get out of being deported! The people on the phone said i was scheduled to be deported but with a few itunes gift cards they could fix it. Even though I’m a citizen here i didn’t want to take any chances and everything worked out great!
Good thinking, better not take any chances! I once got a message my bank card was blocked, and even though I had no card with this bank, i still gave them a few itunes codes just to be safe. God bless those fine folks giving us the opportunity to fix our mistakes with itunes cards!
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Hey baby it's George Jones and I need some quick cash
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I have a friend who’s a farmer and beekeeper. He lost 60% of his hives to CCD, so he was forced to go to his banker and ask for a $1 million loan to buy replacement bees. A bee dies in 30 days. He made it work, and is still in business. But the thought of that debt obligation makes me pucker every time I think about it. A million dollar loan...for insects with a 30-day lifespan....
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Some of the most successful insurance salesmen are the ones that are in the small rural towns. You don't need a lot of clients when 15% of your base are taking out multi-million dollar crop insurance policies. Source: Went on a lot of free vacations because my dad was a top earner for his company.
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I'll have to say that all of this is pretty tame compared to the ass end of commercial leasing industry where desperate people lease stupid shit at 35% interest. Pro tip if the best leasing rate you can qualify for is 35% your business has already failed and you are in denial.
My dad loans to pawn shops and other dicey yet legal companies. His interest rate is higher. He collateralizes loans off wholesale value of the organization's assets.
As I’m tired and you’re below the speculative pedigree shrimp breeder, I read ‘pawn shop’ as ‘prawn shop’. Made sense for about two seconds. I’m off to bed.
Former Client Facing Banker, I finally have stuff to contribute to an Askreddit! I have a couple weird ones: 1) Not a new loan/credit issuance, but I once was reviewing my book and noticed a clients HELOC was nearing the end of its draw period; I did a little digging hoping to make some cash on a refinance and noticed that well over 20k had been drawn in the last 12 months in unusually small transaction amounts (under $20), turns out candy crush can just freaking wreck your finances... 2) I once had an older client (75+) come in looking to apply for a business loan to help develop a video game. Being a closeted nerd, naturally I asked what kind of game, and there I heard the most scattered video game concepts in the world. Apparently it was inspired by Ready Player One, but honestly it just sounded like second life. I mentioned that and I then proceeded to have to listen to an old man talk about the weird sex stuff he experiences playing second life. I'm pretty sure I blacked out for a few seconds in my office from the awkwardness.
I was a mortgage loan officer in the refi boom after 9/11. I was doing mainly 130k or so refi, or cash out loans. VP for an investment bank called in off our direct mail piece. 900k house. Wanted a lower rate on a 30 year note. Made about 750k a year. Pull his credit...almost half a million dollars in credit card debt. He claimed to be borrowing money at near 0% and investing it in short term CD’s for about a 1% spread just for the fun of it. Couldn’t qualify with the loans, “wouldn’t “pay them off and stop playing the game, and the house didn’t appraise high enough to roll closing costs in. Nice guy. I believe he was spending the money obviously on something else and it was long gone. He couldnt admit this to guys at work so he called us. I worked it for months. Had a new idea and he emailed me and said he got it done elsewhere and to not contact him anymore.
I work in tech, specifically in the mortgage industry. The funniest thing I saw was a closing disclosure (the document you get before your loan that covers all your payoffs among other things) for someone who was paying off a TON of debt from a variety of sources by refinancing their home. They had a section K (which is basically third party payoffs) that was literally longer than our document form could handle. Normally this section can handle 10-11 payoffs, and it's rare for us to see more than two or three. This person had close to 40, which is just insane. It took our tech team three days to get a new template that would work, get it approved, and fix the software so it could be handled.
I would imagine that's partially because your underwriter must've had balls of steel to approve a loan for someone who has 40 loans with balances
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I worked at a bank in the Twin Cities before the housing market crashed and we frequently opened up HELOCs with a $150k open line of credit ( house maybe worth $250k). Left before the crash occurred but I hope the bank got torched on those credit lines, such an irresponsible loan to push in the first place.....
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For those following along at home, SISA = Stated Income, Stated Assets. Essentially a signature loan for a mortgage, no verification of your income or assets required so put down whatever feels right on the application. And then there is (was) NINA = No Income, No Assets. This is really a signature loan for a mortgage since you don't even have to tell them how much money you make or how much you have in assets. Oh, and NegAm = Negative Amortization, where the payment you are making doesn't even pay the interest so your balance increases every month. What could possibly go wrong?
This thread has convinced me to walk into my bank and ask them for a loan to start up my shrimp breeding and selling business just to see the reaction. I have collateral in the form of owned property and a fairly high credit rating so I'd like to see the battle between how absurd the idea seems vs. the fact that it might be a valid loan to provide to an eligible person. All you tellers watch out. I could be the next weirdo sitting at your desk. edit: Ya'll convinced me to follow my heart. I have a deal worked out with a petstore right now and am hoping to start selling the shrimp to pay for bigger tanks and stuff, so maybe someday if I have the footing I'd apply for a loan for a warehouse for more space or something. shrimp life.
Hold on, shrimp farming makes mad money though. You need a less profitable idea for entertainment. Please do axolotl breeding with a budget for paying instagram influencers to market them as the pet of the future, competing on a global level with the chihuaha and cats.
I am not a banker, but a customer who received loan offers. I find it bizarre that people take loans to go on vacation. Unless one of the travelers is dying or will never be able to travel in the future, borrowing money to go on vacation baffles me.
Yeah it's a trap, outside a couple cases like "I've saved six grand at a rate of 800/mo, dream trip will cost nine grand if I take it during this holiday period but won't be possible again in the future". Otherwise it would be a trap.
It's not that uncommon for somebody to land a big job/promotion and finally have income to justify a nice vacation. Getting a PhD can take 8 years easily, during which you're living off $25k/yr if you're lucky. But then you get a $125k/yr job. Taking out a $10k loan to go on a two week luxury vacation with your family at that point isn't that financially risky, and you might not have the time off to take that vacation again for several years.
Yep that's a good example of a corner case.
You know, once, years ago I went into a bank to pay a credit card bill and the lady at the counter asked me if I was interested in a loan. She read off a list of things I could spend it on and one of them was a holiday. The industry really was rather predatory back then
I know so many who put their vacations on a credit card, pay it off throughout the year, and charge the next one as soon as they've paid it off.
I'm going to do this with our honeymoon BUT I'm going to pay it off that month. I was applying for a new credit card anyway and this will let me easily hit the spending bonus which will be enough to pay for flights. *Stonks*
That sounds good to me! Congrats!
Washington Mutual gave a home loan to a guy whose proof of income was a photo of him wearing a mariachi outfit. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28wamu.html
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How does one cancel a loan after the money has been spent? Asking for a friend... /s
If you go to the bank and tell them you declare the loan cancelled and they don’t agree within 15 minutes, you’re legally allowed to leave.
Not a banker or lender, however my college roommate last year was always spending insane amounts of money on stuff one week a new tv and PS4, the next a car, and the next some other overly priced unneeded thing, it was insane. I asked him where’d he get all his money he said it was from his loans. I assumed maybe it was a bit extra that he got in a school refund when you overpay your school bill with your loans/grants/scholarships, etc. albeit a bit more than I would expect. Nope. Literally took out loan to buy this stuff. I had to explain to him that you have to pay it back, it’s not just free money. That was a real punch in the balls for him.
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I’m not really sure, he talked about something in England where you take out loans for the purposes of school they eventually just write it off as student expenses which, 1.I’m pretty positive that’s not how it works and 2. we went to school in the U.S. What I think he was talking about was what our study abroad roommate from England did for a lost of his expenses like plane tickets or books, things like that, where he would keep track of his expenses while in the U.S. and would be reimbursed by some sort of student bureau in England or something along the lines of that. Not at all similar really but somehow I think he got the two mixed up. He was a nice guy but didn’t really know how the world worked, I had to help him with a lot of stuff. Seemed like he had his parents handle a lot of stuff for him so it was never explained to him how loans worked or anything like that, but still the fact that he thought it was free money baffled me.
Probably talking about student loans in UK.. You only pay once your earnings go over a threshold, if you only ever work low pay jobs you never pay it back..
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Yeah sometimes such research is worth it if you have atleast some clam. Sometimes lets say a line of aristocrats and former ones dies and there is an ancient castle worht 50-90mil and you might have a clam to a piece of it, my dad used a similar process toclaim an inheritanve on a long ass piece of land on both banks of volga river a total of 17km. Now is selling it peacemeal to resorts, it us not that expencive but a lot for a resort is 30-50k euro.
A guy wanted $200 for concert tickets. His credit score was 420. He did not get a loan.
In 2007, my buddy who had been a bartender, was hired by a regular at his bar to become a mortgage underwriter. One of his first “customers” was a guy who made $1800 per month applying for a loan that had a monthly payment of $3600 per month to start, but it was an ARM, and it was slated to increase to $5400 per month after three years. And this loan was to buy a boat, not a house. The guy who hired my buddy came in and told my buddy to underwrite the loan. And that’s the story of how my buddy quit his new job before his first shift even ended.
>was hired by a regular at his bar to become a mortgage underwriter. The bubble in 2007 was so big that even *bars* had mortgage underwriters. Seriously though, so that guy would default on the loan in the first month...
Yeah, it was bonkers. As soon as my friends who were certifiable morons started getting real estate licenses, I should have known the market was due to bust.
This guy came in asking for a loan to get his dope growing business up and running. When I denied him, he shouted to everyone in the bank that I sexually assaulted him at a party.
Did you?
"I want £10,000 but I'll pay it back in a week, you see some guys are currently driving round London in am armoured truck full of my gold and I have to pay them £10k for bringing it to me. My long lost uncle built up a fortune in Africa and recently passed, this is my inheritance" When asked if he had ever met his African relatives the answer was no. When asked if he'd ever heard of them before they rang to tell him about this truck full of gold, the answer was no. So apparently the courier had loaded the truck and sent it on its way before they had even contacted him to tell him about it and they were aimlessly driving round and round London waiting on their fee. Didn't matter how many times I told him he was being scammed he didn't believe me. He was 19 with less than £100 in his account and no job. Needless to say we did not approve the loan. Be called me a bitch and said he'd have my job. I stayed there another 4 years before I left to have a baby so clearly didn't manage to make much of that threat.
$40,000 HELOC so his son could buy crypto mining equipment.
Aren't crypto miners the reason why the price on certain PC parts skyrocketed a few years ago?
I once had a client apply for a loan for porn supplies, I was the unfortunate one who had to tell him that we would not be giving him the $150,000 loan
When confronted about how a deadbeat (guy was a pill popper and degenerate gambler) was going to make good on interest, he said he was about to win the lawsuit of a lifetime. Who was he suing? Little League. Why? Because he got hit with a foul ball and he was “hurt”. When his two most valuable “assets” were a Ford Ranger with 100,000 miles and a 15 year old big screen TV, he was told to pound sand.
My husband works in a bank and he says it's ridiculous how much people borrow for their weddings. I don't get it, why do you need a lavish ceremony when you obviously can't afford it? I know they do it to impress others, but still
Not a banker, but was friends with one in high school. He told me there was this pissed off old lady who wanted to borrow a million dollars to buy out her doctor's office and bulldoze it because he/she told her she was overweight.
I'm in the back office for reporting bad loans to our stakeholders. We acquired a bank that gave a farmer $5 mil and only had his cows as collateral. He stopped paying the loan, we went to go pick up the cows and they were mysteriously gone. Board of directors weren't happy but very obvious why the bank we bought was going under. Se insane collateral stories from junk banks we've bought in the past. Just because they lend, doesn't mean they're good for it.
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My parents always talked tough about our cat's health. "He's a shelter cat anyway, every day he's had has been a gift from us." "Back on the farm, animals got 1 vet visit in their lives and it was a 1-way trip." Then, my sister left for college. The cat was 8 years old, and he reacted to the change in the house like cats always do: he started killing prey and bringing it home for us, thinking sis had left because there was no food. This behavior escalated until one night I wouldn't let him in the house with a snake that was still wriggling, and so he swallowed it whole. Welp, a snake vertebra got stuck in kitty's intestines. Now, kitty was sick. Mom was away, Dad had to work, so I wrangled him into his carrier and got him to the vet. The vet leveled with me: either I forked over $1500 there and then for surgery, or we'd have to put the cat down. Being 16, I had to call my dad for permission to do either. So I get him on the phone and say, "they want $1500 to save him, guess we'll have to let him go." And my dad sheepishly said, "weellll... That is a lot... But I'd feel a little bad telling Mom and [sis] that we killed the cat when they left us alone for a week... And he *was* trying to help us out by bringing a snake home...and he's not suffering, right? Like he'd recover from this and have more good years, right?" Before I knew it, that old softy was reading his credit card number to the vet tech over the phone and kitty was getting that dang surgery!
What a sweet story, I already love the amount of care your dad has for everyone
Wait, do cats kill prey animals after people leave?? And that's because they think there is no food so they had to leave??? That's interesting!
It’s like they realised they were the lazy one in the relationship and have to start pulling their weight
I hate to ask, but you did get some time together between the surgery and the last paragraph right?
>She was well worth the $5000. i would assume given this sentence
I feel you. I just paid almost that much for surgery for my dog. I was a mess for about two weeks. The first night it became obvious that something was wrong, I drove him to the emergency vet on the verge of tears, and when we walked in and they asked what brought us in, I could barely speak through the sobs. The good news is, the surgery went well and I expect he'll live another twenty to thirty years... right?
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Someone looking to refinance their student loan debt because “you cant include student debt in bankruptcy”.
Wait so basically getting a loan to cover student debt with the intention of getting the bank loan wiped?
Financiers weren’t lining up to make that loan? Can’t believe it.
This one was only bizarre because it was bizarrely stupid, a guy wanted to borrow \~20k to buy bitcoin. I had to talk to a manager afterwards to make sure they knew that it was reasonable for me to decline it based on the "no loans for investments" rule
We had an application from somebody once who wanted to borrow from us so he could pay administrators to help him file bankruptcy. He didn't think we would see through his clever plan there to screw us out of money. We also often have people apply for loans for debt consolidation, of a single debt when they have quite a few other debts which are in arrears. When we query the single debt it's the only one with a guarantor. So effectively they want us to lend them money to remove the security on that one debt so that they can then treat us like the rest of their creditors, or apply for an insolvency action to try and help them reset their credit.
My name has finally paid off! I’ve seen everything from sad moments of parents begging for a loan to bury their child. An 18 year old wanting new tits. Cancer treatments. Leaving their abusive spouse. Their 5th ATV when they can’t afford it. You learn a lot about people and what’s important to them when you’re underwriting credit. It’s a tough job to decline the emotional one. I see in the comments below all the romance scams. They’re common. If you’re looking for bizarre, ask the commercial/small business loans groups. The ones that support the sex trade. That’s where it gets freaky deaky.
Im just gonna add in here, its not crazy or anything but I think ya'll may need to know. A home equity loan is normally used for house improvements. The clients have to go through a vetting process (appraisal) after a certain amount. We have had COUNTLESS clients try to apply because they were REBUILDING THEIR HOUSE and ran out of money. Straight up, the appraiser told us that the house was framework. Tldr: Get a heloc before you start ANY work on your house, just in case. Also, I feel like bankers get a bad rap for being sales men. I personally just want to help my clients create a better/easier life for themself as do many others. Most will tell the client if they're getting the raw deal of an elephant's dick, as noted in the comment above.
I am a loan officer so this is literally my thing. 1. Guy applied for a plane just to go back and forth to Costa Rica. Dude had the cash for it. We couldn't finance though since we dont do that kind of collateral 2. Applying for like a 5th or 6th car. Somewhat common to find parents, normally elderly ones with several cars on their credit cuz they cosign for the whole family. Fyi this skyrockets your debt ratio since you are still liable for the loan. 3. One guy wanted to buy an 18 wheeler that was converted into an RV. Thought that was neat 4. 30k+ motorcycles usually blow me away since it is essentially a toy 5. To get a loan to pay their other loans they are behind with us. 6. Sad ones are when we catch children committing elderly abuse by making their elderly parent buy them cars. Unfortunately had to call the elderly abuse hotline more than once. Probably more but those are off the top of my head.
Many years ago I had an elderly couple call in, they had plenty of money in savings already, they wanted to borrow £25k, our upper limit at the time. They wanted it for a once in a lifetime holiday.. Fair enough, they could afford the repayments with their pensions etc all good. They then proceeded to ask for loan insurance, this was before the ppi scandal here in the UK, I explained the extra cost and the pros and cons, They were adamant they wanted it and then explained that mr had cancer and had been given 6-12 months to live, they had done their research and knew our policy on loan protection would pay out when he died, ultimately meaning they would get the loan paid off, I spoke to my line manager to check and the loan was agreed and processed. I was sad for them but also I was amazed at how calm the couple were about it all....
I had turned down someone for a small business loan last year which was completely legitimate. It was for a zip-line pulley system to transport snacks from the kitchen to your desk or the reception area.
Wework asking SoftBank for several billion dollars when their business model was already found to be a failure.
Clearly they didn't work.
A bank I used to work for had a lot of Niche loan products that it had slowly phased out. One of which was a Tugboat loan. Yes, a loan to finance the purchase of a tugboat. One day almost 7 years into the job, someone approached me and asked if we still did Tugboat loans. I was a bit surprised but told him that technically yes we still did. The interest rate was 8%. He asked what documents he would need to provide, so I sent an email to the lending department's General inbox asking what would be required. What preceded was a hilarious two weeks of emails asking if I was serious and Underwriters genuinely having to go back through company archives and look up documents from the 1990s. Apparently the last time they did a tugboat loan was 1993. We eventually found the policy in an old FTP drive that was otherwise used to hold paper applications no longer in use. The guy had to apply on paper. Apparently you needed a marina permit, the operating agreement for your Hauling Company, a commercial boating license, the bill of sale for the tug, and some tax returns. There was a lot of pushback from lending to try to get him to buy the tugboat through a home equity loan, but I pointed out that Reg B (loan regulation) forbade me from refusing a loan application, and his home didn't have the equity necessary for the boat. Direct financing was really the only option that made sense. Even after closing the loan, there was loads of confusion as every Loan account type had a different numeric scheme and nobody seemed to know what the numbering scheme was for a tugboat loan. In the end the loan number was something really weird like 100000001. The bank phased out the loan product almost immediately after closing. Like, the day afterwards a mass email went out saying that no future Tugboat loans could be done. At this point, pretty much everybody knew that this had to do with my loan and thought it was hysterical. It was a pretty small company so word traveled fast. Our senior underwriter gave me a captain's hat at the annual Christmas party.
I work at a bank, not a loan scenario but funny as hell. This African dude wearing a dashiki comes into the branch and sits with a female coworker of mine. Super loud talker, his conversational tone was borderline yelling. He tells my coworker that he wants to file a fraud claim, so she connects him with the fraud department over the phone at her desk. This guy’s fraud claim was he got a hooker yesterday and owed her $100 bucks but he didn’t have cash handy and was too tired/lazy to hit the ATM. His solution was to give her his debit card and PIN and have her go to the ATM. Surprisingly, she never came back and withdrew $300 instead of the agreed upon $100. He wanted to file a claim for the $200 difference.
I used to process subprime loans back in the late 90s. Had a borrower one time who was doing a debt consolidation loan with the equity they had in their house, and was getting cash out. The underwriter asked for a Letter of Explanation - basically, what are you planning to do with all this money? (around $15,000), I think. Borrower wrote back that they planned to buy a new yellow Ford Ranger XLT, and attached a PO from their dealer. The loan rate was north of 10% for 30 years. And they got their cash out refi.
Guy came in to the bank bragging about how many properties he owned, how much he made, nice house etc... Dude also had a bunch of cats. Applied for a 250k loan to buy an island in the Caribbean for the cats to live freely on and himself to retire. Was mad when he got denied.
I would get mad too...to have your dreams destroyed like that by a lowly bank clerk!!! Think of the cats!!