If you’ve had your eyes open around Pinterest lately, you have come across the popular Fiddle Leaf Fig Tree. The tree has been in rooms featured in Lonny, Elle Decor, and Rue Magazine, and in homes of the likes of Jonathan Adler and Emily Henderson. It’s officially hit au courant status and is the first subject of the newest Apartment 34 Feature, This is Very Pinteresting!
The fycus lyrata, or Fiddle Leaf Fig Tree named after its large, leathery leaves resembling the shape of a fiddle is native to West Africa where it can grow up to 40 feet tall. Loved for its height and the sculptural element it brings to a room, it makes for a perfect indoor plant, especially if you have an empty corner to fill! Let’s take a closer look into the tree that’s stealing everyone’s little design hearts.
Some things you should know before buying the tree:
– There are two varieties of the Fiddle Leaf Fig Tree. The column variety is the tree looking plant, with a bare trunk and leaves starting at about half way up the trunk. The bush variety is smaller perfect on side tables and night stands and the leaves start at the base of the trunk.
– You can find a plant measuring about 15” at your local gardening store for around $15. I recently bought a five foot Fiddle Leaf Fig Tree at a flower mart closed to designers, but open to the public during certain hours, for only $35! Anything over 5 feet, expect to pay at least $100.
Some things you should know to keep your tree green and healthy:
– The number one mistake people make is overwatering a plant. Water your Fiddle Fig Tree about every 10 days. A good tip is to measure how many cups of water it takes until the water seeps through the bottom of the pot. That way, you know exactly how much water is enough to soak the bottom of the roots because another mistake people make is not watering the plant enough. My tree, in a 9 inch pot, drinks 7 cups of water every 10 days
– The plant needs an abundant amount of sun. So, keep it in the sunniest spot of your room. It will eventually lean towards the sun, so remember to turn the plant every couple of months
– Since it’s an indoor plant, dust will collect on the leaves, attracting bugs and creating a barrier between the leaves and the sun. “Wash” the leaves with water and a soft towel every two months to ensure the best sun absorption.
What do you guys think? I’ve certainly fallen for the obsession, and I have to say, the Fiddle Fig Tree brings a life and a height to my kitchen that I love.
Will you be testing your green thumb and introducing this beauty into your home?
This is Very Pinteresting was brought to you by the new addition to Team Apartment 34, our intern Bianca of A Fabulous Challenge! I so hope you give her the warmest of welcomes!
images via here, here, elle decor, here, kirra jamison on sfgirlbybay, kim fisher designs on sfgirbybay
Hey everyone! Today, I have a great savings story to share from a reader named Nichole. She will be talking about how she went from -$20,000 to a six-figure savings by 26 years old. The following will be outlining my experience getting scammed and how it catapulted me into learning about how money works. I…
Hey everyone! Today, I have a great savings story to share from a reader named Nichole. She will be talking about how she went from -$20,000 to a six-figure savings by 26 years old.
The following will be outlining my experience getting scammed and how it catapulted me into learning about how money works. I will divulge all the things I’ve done to earn a six-figure savings, pay off over $20,000 in debt and stay consistent with saving for a home to pay cash. I will go over the importance of knowing your “why” and how it has a large part in saving money. I believe we all have the ability to be successful with our finances and sharing my story hopefully encourages you to stay motivated during your own journey.
Since I was a little girl I’ve always yearned for independence and responsibility. My mother tells the story like this:
“It was your first week of kindergarten and I walked you to the bus stop to drop you off. You didn’t even let me drive you that first day! When I met you at the bus stop after school at 2pm you look at me and say “mom, you don’t need to pick me up from the bus stop, I can walk home without you”. I had to explain to you that wasn’t allowed because you were only five years old and the school didn’t allow that.”
The moral of the story is, if I could do it on my own I did.This included making money so I could buy my own stuff.
Throughout elementary and middle school I sold things to make money: lanyards, bracelets, candy, even offered to do peoples homework for $5 in 6th grade!
Earning money gave me more independence to pay for the things I wanted, so I always stayed motivated.
My parents never talked much about money, I just knew we had everything we needed and more. We were very middle class.
I was taught to avoid debt but to always have a credit card just in case an emergency happens. Oh, and you’ll always have a car payment, so get used to it
It wasn’t until sixteen years old that I learned my parents were always one catastrophe away from losing everything.
In 2008 my parents lost the home they custom built because they took out a no interest loan that they couldn’t afford once it ballooned.
This changed something in me, my world was shaken and I never knew it had a weak foundation to begin with.
I started to view money a different way.
I wanted it but didn’t know how to keep it safe from others that could take it away from me, like what my parents experienced. I didn’t want to repeat their money mistakes.
Fast-forward to 21 years old, I got married to my husband and best friend, yes so young, I know!
The following two years were spent finishing up my Bachelors in Communication and attempting to pay off our debt, we had about $20,000 wrapped up in student loans, credit cards and a car accident.We didn’t know much about money and we were still living with parents to try and save for a down payment for our first home.
This is how it’s supposed to work right? College, marriage, buy a home and have a baby. In that order.
In 2018, my husband and I put an offer on a home, 2 bed 1 bath fixer upper with a nice backyard and workshop in the back for $230,000.
We were excited for our new adventure but when it came down to our offer and one other, we lost. When we got the news our agent said, “yeah, they offered all cash, you didn’t have a chance”. We thought to ourselves, who the heck has that much money to pay cash for a home?! We brushed it off and figured it just wasn’t our time to buy. Little did we know the irony of this.
I started to really spend my time researching about money and how to leverage it and get rich! My goal was to find the secret sauce to success and wealth. I embarked on a downward spiral of YouTubes algorithm of financial videos and advice. Then I came across a very well-known financial expert that offered FREE courses about how to get rich, how could I pass that up? I signed up for the next free course.
Once there I was greeted with excited faces and tons of energy, oh yes, this was my moment to find the secret sauce! The lady speaking talked about all the homes she owns, the money she makes and extravagant trips she takes, I was hooked. I wanted that life, not my own, I needed change.
By the end of the presentation I was willing to do anything to continue my knowledge on financial freedom, or so I thought that’s what I was going to learn. I was the first person to stand up and run over to the tables full of iPads and “We accept credit” signs. I whipped out my credit card and signed up for my 3-day seminar. I don’t mind paying for education! I already had $13,000 in student loan debt anyway so who cares?!
The day of the seminar comes an I am elated, I am OVERLY ELATED. I couldn’t wait for my husband to share the same excitement I experienced at the last meet up.I was again, welcomed by excited faces and high energy. We had our notebooks, pens and open minds ready to learn how to get rich.
To no one’s surprise, we were let down.
Within 10 minutes of the presentation my husband looked at me with eyes saying “we got duped”. He didn’t have to say anything. Let me paint the picture for you.
The presenter had on a gold and diamond link bracelet and a fancy suit. He yelled and poured water on the floor for dramatic effect, handed out cash and even had us stand on our seats in unison shouting the same corny lines “we are warriors”. He informed us that he was going to teach us to buy homes with a credit card and leverage our credit for the best. He promised for the small price of $15,000 that we would learn all about the secret sauce to the rich *can you hear my sarcasm? *. He said we would have mentors along the way to help us buy these homes on credit. He told us not to come back the next day if we weren’t willing to pay for more classes. And we didn’t.
You get the point, it was a 3 days sale pitch to get us to buy more courses.
We walked to our car, now an extra $600 in debt and feeling like the most gullible people in the world. Christmas was only four days away and we were more broke than before we showed up. We had to sell personal items to have Christmas that year.
A switch went off in my head, I was angry. I was so angry that I fell into this scam, I was angry we didn’t get our home, I was angry we were broke, but ultimately, I was angry for not knowing how to manage my money. This stung extra because I hated the fact that in that moment I became my parents, I made a huge money mistake.
Anger is a funny thing, it can ignite the most creative sides of our brain. I decided I was going to get my money back.
What email did I send them?
A short summary of what I experienced and that they had 48 hours to get back in contact with me before I went to social media to expose them and my experience. I received a full refund the next day, with no response, even to this day.
Scorned is a nice way to put it.
I was now on a mission to learn all I could about how money REALLY works.
And so, I went back to my faithful teacher…YouTube of course!I searched and watched hours of videos until I came across one that made sense to me. A lot of financial jargon can be thrown around with no explanation, I don’t like that. I believe if someone can’t explain it easily then they don’t know enough about the subject to begin with.
Then I found the video that made sense: common knowledge and nothing you haven’t heard before (funny how that works).
I acknowledge that everyone has a different stance on money management and I take the view of, “to each their own”. I don’t think there is one “right” way but I found that following this new plan I was able to save more and feel good doing it than I ever did before.
These are the principles I followed, and they worked!
To put them simply they are:
1: $1,000 to start an Emergency Fund
2: Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball
3: 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings
4: Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement
5: College funding for children
6: Pay off home early
7: Build wealth and give
And then there is 3b – Save up for a home. This step is after you save your 3-6 months emergency fund and the current step I am on.
I had an epiphany, if I am in $13,000 worth of debt, and then add another $230,000 of debt for a house and a new car, then I’m going to be in some serious trouble with my monthly bills and interest I’m accruing. MOST Americans live like this. Banks don’t pay Trillions of dollars toward advertising if it didn’t work. Yes, I said “T”.
We paid off my student loans in full that day. I wish this was the end of our debt story but it is not.
My husband, who at this point in our journey is a new real estate agent, started to use a secret credit card to pay for real estate fees. We could have budgeted for these expenses but the shame of using the money I earned and him not contributing got the best of his ego. He bought a $200 chair for his new office, accrued office fees, all new clothes, etc…
Meanwhile I thought we were debt free and his parents were being nice by supporting his new venture! It is important for him and I to mention this part in our story because many people can relate to these feeling surrounding money: shame, guilt, and failure. It is a team effort.
Our social stigmas can convolute our ideas about money within a marriage. We are taught that the man makes the money, but sometimes the story doesn’t work like that and that’s ok!
The good news is, we’ve grown from this experience. We now work so closely with our money that we are each other’s cheerleader and in it to win it!
Since our journey has started we have:
Paid off my student loans— $13,000
Paid off all our credit card debt and consumer debt— $7,000
Paid off my car— $4,000
Paid for TWO cars CASH: A 2007 Volkswagen Jetta and then a 2012 Jaguar XF Portfolio to replace it when it died (quite a step up!) This is how we saved and bought our Jaguar cash summing— $14,400
Bought new appliances and toilets for my mother in laws home— $4,000
Given away money with a generous heart every.single.month (it’s part of our budget)
Accrued a six-figure savings and are on track to buy our first home cash in 2022!
How did we do it?
First, I’d like to mention, we are very normal people with normal jobs. I work in education and my husband is a real estate agent.
We didn’t invest in a stock that suddenly went up, win the lottery or get an inheritance.
We worked our butts off to get to this point in our journey and we still are.
Many people can do this and it starts with visualizing it and then believing you’ll get there.
We found out through our process it is exactly that, a process.
How we saved over six figures:
Following steps 1-7 about saving, investing and giving
Staying consistent! I can’t mention this enough, even if we go over our budget one month, we hop right back onto the savings wagon the following month
Side hustles—we have done it all! I was the cleaning lady at my job for 5 months, I baked cakes (and got quite good at decorating them), I made epoxy key chains, sold items we didn’t need, took on EVERY OT opportunity at work including working an extra 4 hours on top of regular work hours with students to help them during COVID, the list goes on. We take advantage of all extra earning opportunities
Cut down on spending—believe it or not anything outside of our bills and expenses we only allocate $200 a month for. This includes: toothpaste, if we need clothes, going out to dinners/lunch/with friends, medications, etc… Once the money is gone, its gone! Yes, I shop at Goodwill a lot and coupon hunt!
Cut out streaming services and use a family members account (one day we will get it back)
Use cash envelopes—We use this for bills that aren’t online to avoid going over our budget
Use a zero-based budget—We practice a zero-based budget approach with our money—all the money left over after our bills and expenses goes straight into the home savings. Read more about how this budget works here https://elizabethandinez.com/what-is-zero-based-budgeting-and-why-it-works/
Switch phone companies—we saved over $50 a month that went toward our home savings! We gave ourselves a raise!
Start a blog. My cousin and I started a blog and sell financial sheets on Etsy
Start giving to others every month. This is a part of our budget and the most fun you will ever have with money. Sometimes it’s to a waitress, a mother in a store buying food for her kids, a super awesome pet groomer, someone in a restaurant we want to get the bill for and most of the time its anonymously! Giving does something to the heart and is a huge part of our bigger picture of “why” we are doing what we are doing.This keeps us motivated to do more and stay the course. Having a bigger reason for why you save is a key factor for staying consistent
Stay diligent—we take every day as our opportunity to put extra into our savings
Meet with an accountability partner— We meet weekly to do a budget overview—this is important because we are each other’s accountability partners.
Practice putting out into the world what you want to receive, for example, a positive attitude! It’s amazing what happens when you attract positive outcomes, they come right back.
Visualize your goals and set intentions for them—this plays a large role in our success. We have charts around our room showing us our progress and how far we have come. Starting with the image in your head while also setting intentions for that goal will turn into real results! I suggest looking into videos or books on the Law of Attraction.
Open a Money Market account to help with depreciation and earn a little interest as you save. This is also good because the money isn’t as easily available as a checking’s would be. We get about $50 every month for FREE from interest
Attend a financial class—We’ve done this FIVE TIMES to be around likeminded people trying to get out of debt and follow the same plan. We know the information like the back of our hand but it is not about the knowledge, its about the behavior
Know your why
When you have a big enough “why” for the goal you are setting it becomes almost like second nature. You find ways to make it happen.
A good example (but a sad one) is if you have a sick child and not enough money for the surgery or appointment. Because your why for saving is so strong you are going to do EVERYTHING in your power to raise that money and make it happen, no matter what.
Without your why, the process is going to be daunting and drag.
You need motivation behind your goal, so find it.
Why are we saving like crazy anyway?
We decided we want to create generational wealth for our families. Money does not make you happy in life but it does clear up a lot of problems and make it possible to help others. We want to be able to take care of our family for generations.
We also want to be able to give to others. We give with open hands, not clinched ones. If you picture an open hand for a moment, palms up and open to receiving and letting go, vulnerable, not clinching, willing. Having an open hand allows money to flow freely in and out. Being open and quick to give to others rather than holding it tight allows you to see the miracles that money can make in another person’s life. We want to fill our cup to the top so that it pours over and we have enough to fill others.
Our plans for the future to become millionaires:
Buy our home cash
Up my work investing to 5% into my 403b for the complete company match
Put the max amount of $6,000 into each of our ROTH IRAS (as of 2021 that is the max amount allowed) We will set up automatic payments every month of $500 into each account to ensure we are hitting those highs and lows of the market every month
Save for a commercial real estate property
Save for rental properties. Because my husband is a real estate agent we are very interested in investing our money into real estate and handling rental properties in our area, specifically rehabbing trustee sales
Open a real estate brokerage account. This is one of our long-term goals and will one day be an investment we pay cash for to open
Earn income from the Elizabeth&Inez blog
Give to others so that their lives can be touched by the good in this world
Our journey is far from over but the successes along the way are proof of our bigger picture becoming a reality. We went from -$20,000 in debt to over a $100,000 savings from the beginning of 2019 to June 2021! Follow my blog for financial insight and more updates on our journey!
Do you have any questions for me? Ask away in the comments below.
Author bio: My name is Nichole Yanez and I am a financial blogger at Elizabeth And Inez. I talk about my experience as a millennial living in Southern California trying to buy my first home cash! I work in the field of education but my passion is money management and inspiring others to start their journey to financial freedom. I hope my story brings hope to others that they are capable of changing their family tree with three things: consistency, hard work and diligence. This is my story about financial deception and how it landed me into learning about money and how it works.
Everyone loves a good celebrity story—the dazzling red carpets, the breathtaking performances, and sometimes… the scandals. From Justin Bieber to Meghan Markle, each star brings their own set of controversies that make us scratch our heads in disbelief. But what’s worse than a scandal is when an influential celebrity gets away with toxic behavior without facing any repercussions.
In today’s blog post, we’re counting down 20 celebrities whose questionable deeds mostly flew under the radar. So if you want to learn more about who wasn’t caught in these webs of drama, keep reading!
1. Nicki Minaj
One user posted, “Nicki Minaj and oh god where to begin…. She paid for the bond of her brother, who was convicted of s-xually assaulting his 12-year-old step-sister, and years later went on Twitter and accused the girl’s mother of extortion, but let’s just say the forensics evidence in court made it VERY clear the child was not lying.
“She dressed as a fairy princess and ‘demanded’ a woman in a wheelchair walk.
“She married a man who had broken into a 17-year-old girl’s home, put a knife to her back and attempted to assault her… She then went on to her radio show and told over 10 million people that the victim was a white woman (she was not) who was lying to an innocent black man due to spite. The victim has been harassed by her fans since, even receiving death threats.
“She gloated in a now-deleted tweet about how she fires her employees who ask for days off. When asked, she would tell them to think about the days she wanted off but never got, and if they still wanted the day off after her spiel, she would fire them.
“She’s consistently a very vile person, and it seems no one cares enough to say anything about it.”
2. Kirk Douglas
“Kirk Douglas. R*ped Natalie Wood and probably more. Still regarded as a legend,” one user shared.
Another user added, “It was a violent [too], from what I read. He was a horrible man. Comparing women to dogs.”
“…And maybe killed a pregnant girlfriend. I don’t think they ever found her body,” one commenter replied.
3. Jack Nicholson
One Redditor said, “In 2000, Jack Nicholson beat a woman so severely that she sustained permanent damage to various regions of her brain.”
Another user asked, “Why haven’t I heard of this? What a [horrible human].”
One user replied, “Nicholson is getting up in years as he’s in his mid-eighties now, and rumour has it that he’s got Alzheimer’s—hasn’t made a film in several years. If some of the more unsavoury and sinister stories about him are true, it’s likely to come out after he passes. Once he’s gone, I don’t know whether his several adult children would have the clout and influence to suppress something like an exposé biography.”
4. Oprah
One Redditor commented, “Oprah. Oprah started the anti-vaxxer movement by bringing on Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield and didn’t bring out an actual scientist to dispute the claims. She gave them the voice that they should never have had, and because of it, she has the blood of every person who has died because of their anti-vaxxer beliefs on her hands.”
Another user added, “Oprah and Meryl Streep enabled and supported Weinstein for decades. I’ve even heard stories about them directing young hopefuls in his direction, knowing full well what he would do. Somehow they haven’t had a word said against them for their behaviour and are treated as modern-day saints.
“No amount of wearing a ‘Times up’ button and espousing girl power nonsense will cover up the fact that they were complicit in his crimes. But because they are so powerful, rich and (most importantly, women), they have gotten away with it without much mention. I get you can’t be held responsible for someone else’s actions. But they knew, and they were fine with it.”
5. Charlie Chaplin
“Charlie Chaplin treated his children and teenage wives with relentless cruelty,” one user shared.
Another user replied, “There was a documentary on Chaplin where they tried to wave all these ‘[abusing] teenage girls’ [claims] away by basically saying: ‘Oh, women in Hollywood are all jaded cynical;… Charlie just appreciated the pure innocence of young girls before they corrupted themselves.’ I remember thinking they should have just ignored the issue entirely if that was the best they could come up with.”
6. Ellen DeGeneres
One Redditor posted, “Ellen got away with it for a long time.”
Another user shared, “Ellen always had a nasty streak, all the way back to her Carson appearance. Her humour was always based on pain, but she crossed a line when she went from exploring it to inflicting it on others. I honestly think she had some incredible insight into modern culture, but it’s all [thrown] away by being a sh-thead. Losing her sitcom really seemed to have broken something in her.”
One user replied, “Remember when she tricked a celebrity (don’t remember who) into revealing she was pregnant on her show, which is a massive breach of privacy in a world where famous people need to fight to keep anything private.
“Then the woman had to announce sometime later that she suffered a miscarriage. Sure, it’s not Ellen’s fault that it happened, but if she had just minded her own business, this person would not have to deal with her trauma publicly. There’s a reason some people wait a few months to announce a pregnancy.”
7. Paul Walker
“The internet still seems to go all lovey when Paul Walker comes up, but he was literally mid-thirties when he started hooking up with his 16-year-old girlfriend. I never understood why he got a pass for that,” one user shared.
Another user replied, “Cause he died young and starred in a successful franchise.”
8. Antony Starr
One user shared, “[Antony] Starr, who plays homelander on The Boys, was harassing women at a restaurant. A 21-year-old chef tried to be diplomatic with him, and Anthony smashed a bottle against his face; when he literally had glass shards implanted in his eyebrows, Anthony said, “You don’t know who you’ve messed with, you don’t know who I am and what you’ve done. You’ve committed the mistake of your life, and I’m going to look for you. I want to kill you.”
“There’s a reason why his co-stars say he’s most like his characters. The way he got so violent after someone being diplomatic with him and the desire to continue wanting to destroy him, as indicated verbally by him, are clear signs of someone on the psychopathy spectrum and someone with the wealth and status to habitually and casually get away with treating people terribly.”
9. Victor Salva
“Victor Salva. Director of the Jeepers Creepers films. Less toxic, more convicted [child abuse] behaviour, but nobody seems to care and keeps giving his films—which are clearly him living out his fantasies of tormenting young boys—the time of day,” one user commented.
Another user replied,” (Not so)Fun fact. He filmed jeepers and creepers right next door to an elementary school and high school. I was at the high school when it was filmed. Total piece of sh-t.”
10. Dr. Phil
One user shared, “Dr. Phil. He literally sent troubled teens to an abuse camp (‘ranch’) to ‘fix them.’ The workers physically, emotionally and s-xually abused those kids.”
Another Redditor responded, “You can just call him “Phil.”
11. Phil Spector
“Phil Spector used to point guns at everyone in the studio and would threaten people on a daily basis. He made a gold coffin for his wife in case ‘she would ever leave him.’ Yet, people were surprised when he murdered someone.”, one user shared.
Another user added, “He held Ronnie Bennett captive and abused her for years. She gave up custody of her children and all future earnings on her recordings during the divorce out of fear he would hire somebody to kill her. His kids all say he s-xually abused them and kept them captive.”
12. Kobe Bryant
One user commented, “Kobe got away with r-pe…
Kobe’s defenders claim Kobe is innocent by citing something the victim allegedly said after the trial, ‘I’m going to make so much money off of this,’ even though every publication that initially reported this eventually had to take their article down. And even then, maybe it’s ok to be happy considering what Kobe’s PR team, the media, and celeb worshippers who say the same stuff you’re saying put her through?”
13. Steven Tyler
One user posted, “Steven Tyler makes me want to vomit. I hate how Aerosmith is still played all over.”
Another user added, “I am almost certain that when their guitarist went solo in the 80s, Tyler’s BS was part of the issue, and only part of the band wanted to sober up. Amazing what a large contract with tons of money can make some people come back to, though.”
14. Joan Crawford
“Joan Crawford, in her lifetime, physically and emotionally abused her children, and it was not a secret to those close to her. Woody Allen is still welcome in some social circles though he is a [predator] and a sociopath who has groomed and… abused his own children. He married his stepdaughter, a child when they began living together… There’s a long list,” one Redditor posted.
15. Jimmy Page
One user shared, “Jimmy Page. He [abused] a lot of children.”
One user asked, “Wait, what? Really?”
One user answered, “Dude was even caught red-handed with hard drives of child [images]…”
16. Heidi Klum
“Heidi Klum. She’s literally abusing minors on camera AND is making money off of that, but nobody is talking about it,” one user posted.
One user replied, “I couldn’t agree more. I’m from Germany, and just about every woman over the age of 10 watches her show ‘Germany’s Next Top Model.’ In school, my classmates would just talk about this show all the time when it was on, and some of my friends still watch it. I’ve never watched it, and I’m not going to.
“It’s really disgusting what happens there. You are allowed to participate from the age of 16. The participants even have to pose [in nothing] or only in their underwear. Anyone who refuses will be kicked out. There are countless things I could list now, but that would be too much for me. I can not understand how something like this can still be produced and shown. Heidi Klum is a terrible person, in my opinion.”
17. Cardi B
One Redditor asked, “Didn’t Cardi B admit to drugging and robbing guys she had met at the strip club? I was pretty surprised at how quickly the media let her off the hook for that one.”
Another user answered, “Didn’t one of the victims say that being drugged was still a better experience than listening to her music.”
One commenter responded, “That’s hilarious if true.”
18. Woody Allen
“Before Allen v. Farrow HBO came out, Woody Allen used to have supporters on Reddit who would go hard at defending him like the Al Franken supporters do these days. They would link to bullshit publicans and weird pdfs claiming to be from the court case. People would usually give up arguing with them because they were so many, and they were extremely knowledgeable about the case, so they could just keep citing shit whenever people would critique Woody Allen.
“I would keep talking shit about Woody, and sometimes there were no defenders, but weeks later, you would have someone come in and start a point-by-point breakdown about how Woody was innocent and was framed by Mia.
“Then Allen v. Farrow HBO came out, and suddenly, I don’t see these types of comments anymore. I suspect a social media astroturfing campaign was a part of Woody’s PR budget, but then it became exhausted after Allen v. Farrow,” one user posted.
19. Sean Penn
A user also commented, “Sean Penn tied [up] his wife, Madonna,… and beat her. No one seemed to care. Most people don’t even know it, I bet.”
However, one user disagreed, “According to her, it never happened. There are many documented instances of him being an asshole, but I’m inclined to believe her on this.”
20. Billy Joel
“Billy Joel. Dated a 19-year-old Elle McPherson in his mid-thirties. Then moved on to Christie Brinkley. He treated his band, who was co-writing and arranging his songs, like absolute garbage. He then unceremoniously fired them at a producer’s insistence.
“They protested fishing limitations imposed on fishermen on Long Island by getting purposely arrested. The thing is, there were dangerous levels of chemicals in the fish. The restriction was so people didn’t get sick and die.
“He was allowed to play Moscow during the height of the Cold War. They proceeded to act like a total asshole because the film crew documenting it wanted to light the audience. Also, years of being a fat, drunken slob and terrorizing Long Island.” one Redditor posted.
Another user added, “My Father owned an appliance repair company on the south shore of Long Island; he sold it in ’95. Billy Joel was a customer, and my Dad said the man was always a huge [jerk]. He hated doing service calls for Joel and always tried to pawn them off on his apprentice, but that didn’t always happen, and he’d have to go there himself. I wondered why the guy didn’t just buy a new washer, but whatever. Apparently, his brother was a nice man.”
Do you agree with the list above? Tell us below!
Source: Reddit.
These are 10 Things That Completely Destroyed The Love in a Relationship
There’s no question that relationships can be confusing, but here are some of the top things to avoid if you want to keep your relationship healthy!
10 Actors and Actresses People Refuse to Watch Ever Again
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Top 10 Worst Human Inventions of All Time
Some inventions are world-changing, and some of them, well, they change the world in the wrong ways. Here are some of the worst inventions Redditors could think of.
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Every fad has its time in the limelight, but some of them come and go faster than others; and some just need to die out right away. Check out this list of fads of which people were happy to see the last.
Creating YouTube content is a great way to generate new clients, especially in real estate. Today’s guest, Sam Caudle, started his channel in 2021. Now, just two years later, he gets 99 percent of his business from YouTube with minimal effort and extremely low expenses. Listen and learn everything you need to know in order to start generating real estate leads from YouTube now. In addition to content ideas, Shelby and Sam discuss titles, thumbnails, video length, editing options, and more!
Listen to today’s show and learn:
About Sam Caudle [1:53]
Sam Caudle’s start in real estate [2:41]
Creating a YouTube channel for real estate leads [5:18]
How to get better with content creation [9:44]
The difference between paid leads and YouTube leads [11:22]
Tips for getting started on YouTube [13:23]
A simple formula for success with YouTube videos [14:49]
What to research before recording a real estate video [16:36]
How long your YouTube videos should be [18:32]
Two things not to do when creating YouTube content [20:07]
Why you should not edit your own videos [23:24]
Ideas for creating video thumbnails and titles [24:27]
Topics and tools for getting more views [25:46]
Time blocking video tasks to save you time and more on thumbnails [28:41]
Tips on where and how to shoot videos [32:10]
Why it’s not too late to get started with YouTube now [34:03]
How to convert viewers into subscribers and clients [36:04]
Easy ways to collaborate with editors [38:45]
Expenses to expect when starting a YouTube channel [40:15]
A mistake new YouTubers make that kills channel growth [42:31]
Sam’s plans for his YouTube channel in the future [44:03]
Doing a video series on areas in your market [47:25]
Sam’s final advice on starting a real estate YouTube channel [49:29]
Why agents should improve their skills as a storyteller [50:54]
Where to find and follow Sam Caudle [53:02]
Sam Caudle
Sam Caudle is a creative business developer, investor, and consultant. His primary focus is attracting real estate clients through a YouTube channel called, Living in Tampa, FL. Same visited 30 countries and had more than 30 jobs before he turned 30. All of these experiences are at work now as he builds his business through YouTube. Sam has many things in the works at all times. Follow Sam on YouTube and IG @thesamcaudle to see what he is up to.
Related Links and Resources:
It might go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: We really value listeners like you. We’re constantly working to improve the show, so why not leave us a review? If you love the content and can’t stand the thought of missing the nuggets our Rockstar guests share every week, please subscribe; it’ll get you instant access to our latest episodes and is the best way to support your favorite real estate podcast. Have questions? Suggestions? Want to say hi? Shoot me a message via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Email.
I am fat, but I am not obese. I do not pause to catch my breath when climbing stairs. I do not avoid hikes or sports for fear of failure. But — no mistake — I am fat. I am far above my normal weight. I carry 205 pounds on a frame built for someone forty pounds lighter. [PDF: Body mass index and health, from the USDA.]
How does this relate to personal finance? Your health is your most important asset. Not your house. Not your car. Not your job. Not your retirement account. These are secondary. Your health is your most important asset. Even someone as young as I am (37) can face serious financial repercussions from being overweight.
According to the USDA, “overweight or obese people are more likely than those at normal weight to have medical problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stroke, diabetes, and heart disease.” Furthermore:
According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, in 2003-2004, an estimated 66 percent of U.S. adults were overweight or obese, along with 17 percent of children and adolescents. The total annual cost of obesity was an estimated $117 billion in 2000.
Another USDA publication [PDF: “Health Insurance, Obesity, and Its Economic Costs”], breaks down the individual cost of being fat:
The lifetime medical costs related to diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, hypertension, and stroke among the obese are $10,000 higher than among the non-obese. Among the overweight, lifetime medical costs can be reduced by $2,200 to $5,300 following a 10-percent reduction in body weight.
Being fat costs money. It costs time. (Overweight people have shorter lifespans.) And it costs mental capital, too. I have experienced these costs in my own life.
Four years ago, I destroyed the ACL in my right knee while playing city-league soccer. I was out of shape and overweight, and my body betrayed me. I spent six months hobbling around, unaware of the injury’s extent. Ultimately, after several doctor’s visits, I had an MRI, surgery, and physical therapy. Even with insurance, this was expensive, especially considering I hadn’t yet wised-up financially. (Cost: roughly $2,000, and a loss of mobility in my right knee.)
Like many who are overweight, I suffer from sleep apnea. Last summer, I spent two nights in a sleep lab. I was given a prescription for a C-PAP machine. (Cost: $734.54, and that damned mask strapped to my face every night for the past year.)
When overweight, I suffer from mild depression. It afflicts my self-esteem and saps my will. (Cost: more mental than financial, thus far.)
Whenever I get heavy, I always join a gym. I pay for a year in advance, go for a couple weeks, and then gradually lose interest. Soon the guilt of having paid hundreds of dollars for a service I am not using becomes overwhelming, which makes matters worse. (Cost: Nothing out-of-pocket — paid by employer. I used to pay $300-$500/year.)
As I get bigger, I’m forced to buy new clothes. My wardrobe increases as I do. I tell myself that I’ll have lots of clothes when I lose the weight, but so far I’m only buying new. (Cost: about $200/year.)
Ultimately I spend more on food to subsidize my fat than I do when I eat healthfully. I’ve never examined the actual costs, but I’m sure all the candy and chips and soda are a steady drain on my funds.
In the past four years, I have paid $4500 because I am fat. And that doesn’t include food.
This post is not a pity party. It is a rallying cry for anyone who is out of shape, who has allowed their physical fitness to lapse. I know many adults who are at a healthy weight but who do not exercise. Just half an hour of exercise every day promotes better fitness. Regular physical activity reduces the risk of cancer and improves self-esteem. Just do it!
If you would like to pursue a course of fitness, here are some helpful tools.
Joe’s Goals, a free online goal tracker.
FitDay, a free web-based diet and weight loss journal. I’ve used this on-and-off for several years. I recommend it.
The book that helped me defeat the fat in 1997 is Realities of Nutrition. It’s fantastic. It doesn’t try to convince you one diet is better than another. It lays out the facts about nutrition. It describes what carbohydrates are, what fat is, what protein is, and explains how they work in concert to give the body energy.
The 29 healthiest foods on the planet
The world’s healthiest foods
When I stood on the scales on the evening of 07 May 1997, I was horrified. I weighed 200 pounds. I was 28 years old. How had I grown so heavy? I steeled my mind. Over the course of the next six months, I dedicated myself to eating healthy and exercising daily. I lost 42 pounds before falling off the wagon on Halloween night. Despite continued battles with food, for two years I remained fit. But then the weight came back.
I am ready to lose it again.
Extra Weight, Higher Costs
I’ve been working with Lauren Muney, a wellness coach (about which more later). This morning, Muney sent me a New York Times article by Damon Darlin which describes how extra weight leads to higher costs.
Being fat costs money — tens of thousands of dollars over a lifetime. Heavy people do not spend more than normal-size people on food, but their life insurance premiums are two to four times as large. They can expect higher medical expenses, and they tend to make less money and accumulate less wealth in their shortened lifetimes. They can have a harder time being hired, and then a harder time winning plum assignments and promotions.
Darlin’s article does a great job of summarizing the financial impact of being overweight. It’s these financial costs (resulting from health problems) that most worry me about being fat. Many find fat people unattractive, but I’m not one of them: I was raised in a family where fat was the norm, and it does not bother me. But the health risks and the associated costs do bother me.
For example, Darlin cites a study from the University of Wisconsin which demonstrated that by supersizing a fast-food order (at an average cost of 67 cents) leads to $6.64 in future medical costs for an obese man, and $3.46 in future medical costs for an obese woman. Super-sizing does not save money.
Many people do find the overweight unattractive, and consciously or not, they treat them differently. There is a social cost to being fat. (More here.) Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that “weight bias”, discrimination against the obese, is at least as strong as race bias. (The article points to Harvard University’s Implicit Association Test, where you can check your own internal biases.)
Studies have also demonstrated that there’s a direct correlation between obesity and net worth. The heavier the person, the less they earn. My initial reaction is that it’s impossible to determine which is the cause and which is the effect — does obesity lead to low net worth, or does low net worth lead to obesity? — but apparently this is a known problem with the research. Regardless, significant weight loss can lead to an increase in wealth.
A baby boomer whose [Body Mass Index (B.M.I.)] drops from 27.5, the middle of the overweight category, to 21.7, the middle of the normal category, sees an increase in wealth of $4,085.
Since first writing about my weight problem in October, I’ve made tremendous progress. This is largely due to Muney, a reader of this site. She wrote that because I had helped her make progress on her wealth, she’d like to help me make progress on my health. After working with her for a month, the results have been outstanding. I’ve lost weight. But more than that I feel great: my physical and mental well-being are the best they’ve been in years.
I look forward to continued progress, and to removing myself from the risks and costs associated with obesity. Right now, I’m going for a walk!
While this might sound a little hard to believe, it has been reported that former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was unable to refinance his mortgage. Yup, he got straight up denied.
You might be thinking, yeah right, why would a lender deny such a high profile individual who you’d think would be good for the money?
After all, he did direct the monetary policy for the entire United States, so the prospects of him paying the mortgage on time are pretty darn high.
But it’s true! He apparently shared the unfortunate news with Moody’s economist Mark Zandi at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care Conference in Chicago.
When speaking of his attempt to refinance the mortgage, Bernanke said he was “unsuccessful in doing so,” at which point the audience burst into laughter.
No Laughing Matter, Seriously
The crowd was probably pretty surprised when Bernanke followed with, “I’m not making that up.”
He then went on to add that lenders may have gotten a little too conservative with their mortgage underwriting as of late, and that the tightening had become “excessive.”
Additionally, he noted that regulators, presumably the CFPB, haven’t seemed to get the housing market right.
Perhaps they’ve made it too difficult for certain borrowers to get mortgages thanks to the new Qualified Mortgage rule, which among other things, doesn’t allow DTI ratios above 43%.
So I got thinking why Bernanke would be denied a refinance, and then a light bulb went off in my head.
He just resigned from his job as chairman of the Federal Reserve after two successive terms spanning eight years.
Perhaps lenders are well aware of this and not interested in extending a loan to someone who is either retired or short on income.
Sure, he might have plenty of money in the bank, but if the bank can’t determine his ability to repay the loan, he might have to go with a non-QM loan instead.
And Bernanke probably thinks that’s preposterous, seeing that he’s the former Fed Reserve chairman.
It Seems a Little Fishy…
While it does sound really silly, he might have a point about the new mortgage rules, and their unintended consequences.
At the same time, I can’t see why a large bank wouldn’t offer Bernanke amazing terms on a mortgage and simply keep it on their books. He’s not much of a credit risk, so there’s no reason to sell the loan on the secondary market.
Maybe it’s just a stunt orchestrated by Ben to get regulators to take another look at the harsh new guidelines now in place. Or somebody at the bank made a huge mistake…
By the way, he’s currently a Distinguished Fellow in Residence at The Brookings Institution, which may or may not be an adequate job title as far as an underwriter is concerned. Hmm.
For the record, Bernanke refinanced his home mortgage at least twice in the past several years, with the most recent mortgage choice a 30-year fixed on his D.C.-area three-bedroom residence.
It’s unclear what he was up to this time around, but I doubt he was attempting to get the interest rate on his 30-year mortgage any lower.
Maybe he decided to roll the dice and go with a short-term ARM in order to save money and invest elsewhere. Or perhaps he needs to tap some equity.
Who knows? Either way, I’m sure someone will offer him a pretty sweet refinance sooner rather than later.
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300 is the lowest credit score that a person can have. It’s impossible for a score to drop below 300 for any reason.
Learning how credit scores work can be mystifying, especially if you’re establishing credit for the first time. 42% of Gen Z don’t fully understand how credit scores work, which can lead them to ask questions like “What is the lowest credit score?” 300 is the lowest credit score anyone can have—but there’s a difference between knowing your score and having a plan to improve it.
We’ll discuss credit scores and credit ranges in this guide, and we’ll share five steps for improving low credit. Building credit can pave the way for tons of great opportunities like low-interest loans and premier credit cards.
What Are the FICO Credit Score Ranges?
Credit scores typically fall into five different ranges—Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, and Excellent. Each range encompasses a set value of credit scores; the “Poor” category covers the widest range of credit scores and while the “Excellent” section covers the smallest range.
Different credit agencies and websites generally classify credit score ranges similarly, with slight variations. More often than not, you’ll encounter the following information:
Poor (300-579): 300 is the lowest credit score a person can have, and it’s impossible to drop below that number.
Fair (580-669): Lenders and banks will look at a Fair score more favorably, but their best offers may still be out of reach.
Good (670-739): Experian® reported 714 as the average credit score in 2022.
Very Good (740-799): Keeping your credit utilization ratio low and consistently making payments on time can contribute to a Very Good score.
Excellent (800-850): Approximately 1.3% of Americans have Excellent credit. Excellent credit isn’t necessary to attain great loans per se, but it’s a worthy goal to strive for.
The Risks of Having a Low Credit Score
Lenders, real estate agents, banks, and loan agencies use our credit scores to gauge our financial trustworthiness. These entities may interpret “Poor” and “Fair “scores as a sign that someone either won’t make their payments on time or at all. Securing a loan can be very difficult with Poor or Fair credit—and even if you do, that loan will have significantly higher interest rates.
A low credit score also makes it difficult to increase your credit limit in several ways; most banks are hesitant to offer new cards or grant a credit limit increase to Poor or Fair credit applicants. Lastly, many landlords will turn down applicants with credit scores below a certain threshold.
How to Get a Loan with a Low Score
Securing a loan with a low credit score can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. Nonprofit organizations like credit unions can accommodate clients with Poor or Fair credit. It may even possible to acquire a mortgage with bad credit if your score is hovering above 580.
Be wary of scams and fraud when searching for low-credit loans; cybercriminals may try to glean sensitive information by imitating legitimate lenders. Prudence is your best bet—research the person or organization that you’re speaking to by looking them up online to verify their identity before providing your SSN.
Actions that Could Improve Your Credit Score
There’s only one direction to go if you’re at the bottom, and that’s up. Someone with a score of 300 can repair their credit by making plans and taking action. The following five steps can help you start on the road to recovery from even the lowest credit scores—and stay the course as things improve.
1. Get Your Free Credit Report
Equifax®, Experian, and TransUnion® are America’s most significant credit bureaus. These agencies provide reports about our credit history, and the law requires them to provide one free credit report each year.
Credit.com also provides free credit scores, plus a credit report card that grades your credit activity and offers practical feedback.
2. Challenge Errors on Your Report
Everyone makes mistakes, including credit lenders and credit bureaus. If you find false or inaccurate information on your credit report, you can challenge the accuracy of these blemishes. Contact the corresponding credit agency and company that made the mistake and respectfully request assistance.
3. Avoid Hard Inquiries
Hard credit inquiries result from lenders and agencies looking at your credit history when you apply for a card or a loan. Inquiries don’t stick around forever, but they can significantly inconvenience you by making your score seem lower than it really is.
Don’t apply for too many new cards while working to improve your credit. A mistimed hard inquiry can make the difference between securing a loan and having to wait months to try again.
4. Pay Down Your Debt from Largest to Smallest
Paying off your debt will always be one of the best ways to improve your credit—it’s more a matter of figuring out how to best go about doing so. As tempting as it may be to pay off your smallest accounts, paying off your largest debts will make the largest difference on your credit report.
Large debts contribute to your credit utilization ratio the most, so paying them off will free up tons of space. A large debt might also belong to one of your oldest accounts, and time is a significant factor that impacts credit. Whittling down a massive loan over time could tangibly boost your score in real time.
5. Utilize Credit Repair Services
Credit repair services excel at helping people create practical plans to work to build their credit. ExtraCredit® offers several features to help you manage your credit, including an exclusive discount to a leader in credit repair.
Low Credit Score FAQ
Is It Possible to Have a Credit Score of 250?
It is impossible for a person’s credit score to drop to 250, as 300 is the lowest number that the major credit bureaus standard modeling will recognize. However, a person’s specialized FICO® score, specifically their Auto Score and Bankcard score, can range from 250-900 as they focus on more specific areas of your credit. Auto and Bankcard scores help lenders decide if they’ll offer you an auto loan or credit card, respectively.
What Happens If I Have a Credit Score of 300?
A credit score of 300 will make it difficult to secure auto loans, home loans, and credit cards from respected lenders. Poor credit scores also can affect insurance premiums and interest rates.
Can I Buy a House with a Low Credit Score?
It’s certainly possible to gain a home loan with a low credit score—but the process may be much more difficult. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans can be monumentally beneficial to individuals with Poor or Fair scores. However, you may need to make a larger down payment.
Stay on Top of Your Credit
The most important step you can take to improve your credit score is to stay on top of your credit report. You can request a free credit report from all three main credit reporting agencies—Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion—once a year.
The details on these reports can help you make sure everything on your credit report is accurate and up to date. Make sure you take the appropriate steps to remove any inaccurate information from your credit report. Additionally, having access to your report and credit score can help you determine what areas you need to focus on to rebuild your credit.
To get your free Experian Vantage 3.0 credit score, you can also sign up for Credit.com’s free Credit Report Card.
If you stop making payments on your debts, creditors usually have a set amount of time to pursue repayment. After that time, they can no longer legally pursue the debt. But that doesn’t mean you can just forget about the debt. Learn more about how debt collection and statutes of limitations work.
In This Piece
How Does Debt Collection Work?
If a creditor doesn’t believe it can recover a debt, it may sell that debt to a collection agency. These agencies specialize in debt recovery and have the resources, staff, and time to pursue old debts more aggressively than some original creditors.
A collection agency can also list an old debt as a new line on your credit report with a continuation of the original debt date.
When you default on debt, the creditor may close your account and report it as a closed account with negative payment information. When the account is sold to a collection agency, the collection agency owns the account and can list it as a collections account on your credit report.
As long as the collection agency can document the debt, it has a legal right to pursue it. That includes attempting to sue you for the debt and following up with methods such as wage garnishment if it receives a judgment for the debt.
What Are the Four Types of Debt?
Debt generally falls into a few main types. Each type works fairly similarly when it comes to debt collection.
If you miss payments on a debt, it can become delinquent and go to collections no matter how the original account was set up. Here are the main four types of debt:
Secured. Secured debt means you put something up as collateral to borrow against. That makes debt collection simple: the collateral can be repossessed.
Unsecured. Unsecured debt doesn’t involve collateral, so collection can get a bit messy. This can include lawsuits and wage garnishment.
Revolving. Revolving credit involves an open line of credit you can continue to draw on as you pay it off. Credit cards are a common form of revolving credit. This type of debt is usually unsecured, but secured options are available for people with poor or no credit.
Installment. Installment debt is a one-time loan paid back via a series of payments. Examples include auto loans, student loans, and mortgages. Installment debt can also be secured or unsecured.
Can a Debt Collector Collect After 10 Years?
In most cases, the statute of limitations for a debt will have passed after 10 years. This means a debt collector may still attempt to pursue it (and you technically do still owe it), but they can’t typically take legal action against you. If you notify them that the debt is past the statute of limitations and request they not contact you again, they likely won’t.
It also depends on when you made the last payment. The statute of limitations for most debts starts when you go into default. If a debt is 10 years old but you were making payments until three years ago, the debt is likely still within the statute of limitations and can be pursued by a debt collector.
However, it’s important to note that every case is unique and the statute of limitations on various forms of debt is different in each state. Understanding what the rules in your state are and how they might apply to your specific debt situation is important. Contact a lawyer for your unique situation if you have questions.
What “Restarts” the Clock on Old Debt?
Many people make the mistake of believing the statute of limitations on debt starts when they open an account. In reality, the countdown starts when you miss a payment or make your last payment.
For example, imagine you have a credit card you opened in 2010. You used the account and paid as agreed for five years. In 2015, something happened that changed your income and ability to make payments, and you stopped paying on the credit card debt. Depending on which state you’re in, the statute of limitations could be from three to 10 years. If the state has a six-year statute of limitations, that debt would have been collectible using the legal system until 2021—six years after the last activity on the account. Note that some debts have an even longer statute of limitations in some states, such as promissory notes, revolving credit, or legal oral contracts.
You can also inadvertently reset the clock on a statute of limitations by making an agreement to pay or paying a partial amount on a debt. In most cases, the clock resets starting at that date. It’s important to factor this point into any negotiations or repayment plans. If the statute of limitations is almost up, it may not be in your best interest to make any payments. However, if there’s still a lot of time left for creditors or collectors to sue, it may be wise to start making payments.
Having said that, an unpaid debt will stay on your credit report for about seven years, even if the time clock has run out.
How Long Can a Debt Collector Pursue an Old Debt?
In some states, a collection agency cannot try to collect at all once a debt is past the statute of limitations. In other states, they cannot sue you, but they may still try to collect the debt, which can include calls and written requests.
Some debt buyers—companies that buy and try to collect very old debts—still go after borrowers and might even take them to court. If they do this knowing that the debt is past the statute of limitations, they may have violated the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act. But they also know that most borrowers who are sued for old debts won’t show up in court, and the judge will issue a default judgment.
If your debt is past the statute of limitations at this point, you can re-open the default judgment and ask the judge to vacate it because it is time-barred. The process is relatively straightforward, but you may want to consult with an attorney to ensure it’s done correctly.
Always respond to legal summons. Judgments may give collectors additional collection powers, such as access to the money a debtor has in their bank account or the ability to garnish wages to collect the judgment. To prevent this, all a borrower has to do is appear in court at the appointed time and explain that they have a time-barred debt. If that is correct, the lawsuit will be dismissed.
It’s important to note that the statute of limitations is not the same as how long the debt appears on your credit report. The timeline for debt to stay on your credit report is often seven years, but again, this depends on your activity with the debt. If the debt was sold by the original lender at six years, and you made a payment with the new debt buyer, it could restart the clock.
What Is a Time-Barred Debt?
Time-barred debt refers to debt that’s beyond the statute of limitations. It simply means that the debt is not legally enforceable. It doesn’t mean you don’t owe the debt if it was legitimate to begin with. It means the creditor or collector can’t use the legal system to force you to make good on the debt.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, whether or not collectors can continue to contact you about a time-barred debt is up to various state laws. Some states do make this illegal. And in any state, a debt collector can’t sue you, threaten to sue you, or harass you over time-barred debt.
If you’re being contacted by a creditor about a time-barred debt, you can ask them to stop. The FTC recommends sending this request in writing by mail.
When Does the Clock Start on the Statute of Limitations for Debt?
Many people make the mistake of believing that the statute of limitations on debt starts when they open an account. In reality, the countdown starts when you miss a payment or make your last payment.
For example, imagine you have a credit card you opened in 2000. You used the account and paid as agreed for five years. In 2005, something happened that changed your income and ability to make payments. You stopped paying on the credit card debt in July 2005.
Depending on which state you’re in, the statute of limitations could be from three to 10 years. Let’s say the state in question had a six-year statute of limitations. The debt would be collectible using the legal system until August 2011.
You can also inadvertently reset the clock on a statute of limitations by making an agreement to pay or paying a partial amount on a debt. In most cases, that resets the clock starting at that date.
What Debt Isn’t Subject to the Statute of Limitations?
Time-barred debt refers to debt that’s beyond the statute of limitations. It doesn’t mean you don’t owe the debt if it was legitimate to begin with, but the creditor or collector can’t use the legal system to force you to make good on the debt.
What Effect Does Bankruptcy Have on Old Debt?
Bankruptcy means creditors can’t legally pursue debt collection of any credit debt in the bankruptcy. The debt also can’t be sent to a collection agency, and almost all collection activity, including legal action or wage garnishment, is prohibited. If you’re contacted about paying a debt after filing for bankruptcy, it’s a good idea to turn the matter over to your attorney to handle. Some debts can’t be discharged, such as student loans, taxes, and child support, even when you declare bankruptcy.
Negative payment history and bankruptcy can cause major damage to your credit score. So even if you’re off the hook for a debt, you still have to consider your credit and how you can start to build it back up.
What to Do If You Are Contacted About an Old Debt
If you’re contacted about an old debt, it doesn’t mean you should automatically pay it. Remember, agreeing to terms and providing a payment can restart the clock on an old debt, and it’s important to be aware of your rights as a consumer. Instead, take the steps below to see if you need to pay the debt and what your options are.
1. Ask the creditor to send you written notice of the debt.
This is required under the federal Fair Debt Collections Practices Act even if you don’t ask, but asking is a good first step. Scammers will say they aren’t allowed to send a notice or will try to email instead, which helps you weed out illegitimate callers. By keeping the initial phone conversation to a minimum, you may avoid saying or doing something that could hurt you later on with legitimate collectors.
2. Validate the debt.
Once you receive written notice of the debt, you have 30 days to request validation of the debt. Mail your request to the creditor or collections agency via a certified letter and ask them to validate the debt. You don’t have to give a reason for your request. You can simply say, “I dispute this debt. Please validate it.”
Tip: If the debt isn’t yours, you may want to reach out to a credit repair organization to help you work to challenge the debt and request it be removed from your credit report.
3. Confirm that the debt is within the statute of limitations.
While you’re waiting for the response from the bill collector, contact a consumer law attorney or your state attorney general’s office to confirm the statute of limitations for the debt. Consumer law attorneys who regularly represent consumers in cases against debt collectors often provide a free consultation.
4. Decide on an action.
Once you receive validation of the debt and confirm whether it’s inside or outside the statute of limitations, you typically have three main options.
Pay it. If you know you owe the debt and you can pay it, you can do so. Make sure you keep written records of the amount due and your payment. Sometimes these old debts get sold to more than one collection agency, and if you get another call about this debt, you want to have proof you’ve paid it.
Settle it. If you know you owe the debt and want to try to make good on it, but you can’t pay the full amount—or if the debt has been inflated by fees— you may want to negotiate to settle it for less than the full amount due. This is tricky, though, because once you start negotiating, you could reset the statute of limitations and end up being sued for the entire debt. That could lead to wage garnishments or other issues. If you want to go this route, your best bet is to talk with an attorney first.
Send the collector a letter telling them to leave you alone. You have the right to ask a debt collector to stop contacting you. Once you do that, they are only allowed to contact you to tell you if they are taking legal action against you. If you know the debt is outside the statute of limitations, state that in your letter and tell them not to contact you again.
Do Time-Barred Debts Show Up on Your Credit Report?
Time-barred debts can show up on a credit report. Negative items such as missed payments and collections accounts stay on your credit report around seven years. Many state statutes of limitations on debt are less than seven years.
Can a Collection Agency Report an Old Debt as New?
A collection agency can list an old debt as a new trade line on your credit report. It works like this:
You have a loan, credit card, or other debt. It’s listed as a tradeline by your creditor on your credit report.
You default on that debt. The creditor closes your account. It’s now listed on your credit report as a closed account with negative payment information.
The original creditor eventually sells the account to a collections agency.
The collections agency now owns the account and can list it as a collections account—a separate tradeline—on your credit report.
Debt Collections and Credit Reports
One of the best ways to protect yourself against old debts cropping up and creating problems is to keep an eye on your credit report. Sign up for ExtraCredit® for a proactive look at your credit reports and scores so you can take care of issues before they become legal problems.
When people ask me what I do and I tell them I run a credit card comparison site, they generally look away, as if I’ve just said I’m a pimp. Or a crack dealer. Or a crack-dealing pimp. When I tell them credit cards aren’t all bad, they’re skeptical. You probably are, too. I might not be able to change your mind, but if one less person in the world thinks I’d give cigarettes to an asthmatic, this post will have been worth it.
Used properly, credit cards can offer you some real benefits. (Yes, used poorly they can ruin your life, but that’s been established elsewhere. I’m here to give you a few positives.)
Before his trip abroad, J.D. mentioned getting his first credit card in a long time. He talked about the dangers of doing so, but he also exhibited what I’d consider the mindset of a responsible credit card user. This mindset can be summed up in a single sentence, which you should make your credit card mantra:
“I pay off my credit cards on time every month.”
Follow that simple rule and credit cards will be your best friends, keeping you cool in the summer, warm in the winter, etc. When you have made paying off your bill completely each month a given, instead of an option, or a wish upon a star, you have the mindset to take advantage of the two main benefits of credit cards: (1) convenience and (2) protection. Let’s look at each.
Convenience Walking around with a lot of cash leaves you vulnerable. Vulnerable to losing it, vulnerable to having it stolen. And it requires repeated stops at ATMs when you run out, which can be a major hassle. Credit cards solve this problem. You can use them almost anywhere today, for even the smallest purchases.
In addition, credit cards are often necessary for travel, especially if you book airline flights online or want to make advance reservations for a rental car or hotel. In many cases, you simply can’t do these things without a credit card. At best, it’s a hassle. Maybe that’s fair, but it’s reality.
Also, when you travel abroad, as J.D. has just done, a credit card allows you to make purchases more easily and often more cheaply, without having to pay international ATM fees or deal with travelers checks.
Protection If you lose your credit card, or someone steals it and hits the bars, your credit card company can not legally make you liable for any more than $50 of those fraudulent charges; in reality, most credit card companies won’t charge you at all, because they want to keep you as a customer.
Credit cards also protect you as a buyer. If you make a purchase and the item breaks, or is lost while being delivered, or a company won’t give you a refund, your credit card company will go to bat for you. Call them up, say you want to dispute a charge on your card, tell them why, and in most cases they’ll erase your debt and go after the merchant that stiffed you. Now it’s between them—as far as you’re concerned, the matter is over.
But Wait! There’s More!: Bonus Benefits There are two more fringe benefits to consider, although I believe they are less important.
Over 75% of the credit cards on the market today offer some sort of rewards program, whether it’s getting a small percentage of cash back, points toward merchandise and gift cards, or airline miles. In most cases, these reward programs are free—you don’t pay an annual fee to get them. So, as long as you are following your mantra (“I pay off my credit cards on time every month.”), you get free stuff for using your credit card. These rewards can be lucrative if you’re a big spender, but I suggest you only think of them as fun extras; otherwise you can become obsessed with racking up points and do something stupid with your credit card.
Credit cards are a free short-term loan. While I don’t suggest you think of them as free money, I do suggest that you think of them as a convenient way to save yourself from forking over big wads of cash for no reason. Example: You want to book a flight today, while rates are lower, for a vacation that won’t occur for two months. If you even have the option to pay cash, it will mean paying an awful lot upfront for something you won’t be using for a while. A credit card lets you make that purchase quickly and easily, with no interest for the month in between when you bought the ticket and when your credit card bill is due.
Credit Cards’ Evil Ways If you think I’m a shill for credit card companies, let me set you straight by telling you this: Credit card companies want you to screw up. They want you to forget your mantra. They want you to pay off only part of your balance, pay it late, maybe even go over your credit limit. When you do, they’ll pounce, gleefully charging you out the wazoo for each mistake and showing no mercy when you say “It’s never happened before” and “Can’t you make an exception this one time?” These days, credit card companies are making less and less money from interest charges and more and more from fees, so they need you to screw up.
The solution: Don’t screw up.
A Word About Debit Cards Debit cards have increased in popularity, especially among younger people. If you can’t internalize the mantra “I pay off my credit cards on time every month,” then by all means go for the convenience of a debit card and the protection from buying what you can not afford.
However, three words of caution on debit cards:
Debit cards do not offer the same protections as credit cards. First, they offer little extra benefit if you have a dispute with a merchant. Debit card purchases are treated the same as if you made a cash purchase. You may get your bank to help you, but who has your money? The merchant, who is under much less pressure to give it back.
If debit cards are lost or stolen and used fraudulently, you could be charged much more than you would be for a lost credit card—only $50 if you report it within two days, but after that up to $500, depending on how much the card was used. (After 60 days, you’d have to totally eat the fraudulent purchases, but who would not know their debit card was stolen for 60 days?) In addition, if you try to use your card while you are unaware that someone is fraudulently emptying your bank account, this could lead you to make purchases without money in the bank to cover them, leading to the equivalent of bounced check fees. And, of course, when your debit card is used fraudulently, your money is gone from your bank account, and it may be weeks before the situation is handled and the money is restored. Contrast that with a credit card, in which the money you’ve used to make purchases is the bank’s money, not your own, so you do not lose cash when fraud occurs.
This may be a personal thing, but debit cards can make it difficult to keep track of how much money you have to spend. Because you make purchases without getting a running total of how much is left in your account, you must keep track in some way, whether it’s using a checkbook-type ledger or just checking your balance online often. In short, a debit card requires discipline. (In that way, debit cards and credit cards are definitely the same.)
Thank you for reading. Now I’ll go back to stealing candy from babies.
The Jefferson Avenue commercial district in Buffalo, New York, is anchored by a supermarket.
There are dozens of other businesses and services along the 12-block corridor — a couple of bank branches, a library, a coffee shop, gas stations, a small plaza with a dollar store and a primary care clinic and a business incubator for entrepreneurs of color.
But Tops Friendly Markets, the only grocery store on Buffalo’s vast East Side, is the center of activity. More than just a place to buy food, pick up medications and use an ATM, the store is a communal gathering space in a predominantly Black neighborhood that, for generations, has been segregated, isolated and disenfranchised from the wealthier — and whiter — parts of the city.
Which explains how it came to be the site of a mass shooting on a spring day in May of last year. On that Saturday, a gunman, who lived 200 miles away in another part of the state, drove to Jefferson Avenue and went into Tops, and in just a few minutes killed 10 people, injured three and inflicted mass trauma across the community.
It is a scenario that has sadly, and repeatedly, played out in other parts of the country that have experienced mass shootings. But this one came with a twist: The gunman’s intention was to kill as many Black people as possible.
To achieve that, he specifically targeted a ZIP code with one of the highest percentages of Black residents in New York state. All 10 who died that day were Black.
“The mere fact that someone can research, ‘Where will the greatest number of Black people be … on a Saturday morning,’ that’s not by chance,” said Franchelle Parker, a community organizer and executive director of Open Buffalo, a nonprofit focused on racial, economic and ecological justice. “That’s not a mistake. It’s a community that’s been deeply segregated for decades.”
The day of the shooting, Parker, who grew up in nearby Niagara Falls, was driving to Tops, where she planned to buy a donut and an unsweetened iced tea before heading into the Open Buffalo office, which is located a block away from Tops. The mother of two had intended to complete the mundane task of cleaning up her desk — “old coffee cups and stuff” — after a busy week.
She saw the news on Twitter and didn’t know if she should keep driving to Jefferson Avenue or turn around and go back home. She eventually picked the latter.
When she showed up the next day, there were thousands of people grieving in the streets. “The only way that I could explain my feeling, it was almost like watching an old war movie when a bomb had gone off and someone’s in, like, shell shock. That’s how it felt,” said Parker, vividly recounting the community’s collective trauma in a meeting room tucked inside of Open Buffalo’s second-story office on Jefferson Avenue.
Almost immediately following the May 14, 2022, massacre, which was the second-deadliest mass shooting in the United States last year, conversations locally and nationally turned to the harsh realities of the East Side and how long-standing factors that affect the daily life of residents — racism, poverty and inequity — made the community an ideal target for a white supremacist.
Now, more than a year after the tragedy, there is growing concern that not enough is being done fast enough to begin to dismantle those factors. And amid those conversations, there are mounting calls for the banking industry — whose historical policies and practices helped cement the racial segregation and disinvestment that ultimately shaped the East Side — to leverage its collective power and influence to band together in an effort to create systemic change.
The ideas about how banks should support the East Side and better embed themselves in the neighborhood vary by people and organizations. But the basic argument is the same: Banks, in their role as financiers and because of the industry’s history of lending discrimination, are obligated to bring forth economic prosperity in disinvested communities like the East Side.
I know banks are often looked upon sort of like a panacea, but I don’t particularly see it that way. I think others have a role to play in all of this.
Chiwuike Owunwanne, corporate responsibility officer at KeyBank
“Banks have been very good at providing charitable contributions to the Black community. They get an ‘A’ for that,” said The Rev. George Nicholas, an East Side pastor who is also CEO of the Buffalo Center for Health Equity, a four-year-old enterprise focused on racial, geographic and economic health disparities. “But doing the things that banks can do in terms of being a catalyst for revitalization and investment in this community, they have not done that.”
To be sure, banks’ ability to reverse the course of the community isn’t guaranteed — and there is no formula to determine how much accountability they should hold to fix deeply entrenched problems like racism. Several Buffalo-area bankers said that while the Tops shooting heightened the urgency to help the East Side, the industry itself cannot be the sole driver of change.
“There are a lot of institutions … that can certainly play a part in reversing the challenges that we see today,” said Chiwuike “Chi-Chi” Owunwanne, a corporate responsibility officer at KeyBank, the second-largest bank by deposits in Buffalo. “I know banks are often looked upon sort of like a panacea, but I don’t particularly see it that way. I think others have a role to play in all of this.”
A long history of segregation
How the East Side — and the Tops store on Jefferson Avenue — became the destination for a racially motivated mass murderer is a story about racism, segregation and disinvestment.
Even as it bears the nickname “the city of good neighbors,” Buffalo has long been one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States. Of the 114,965 residents who live on the East Side, 59% are Black, according to data from the 2021 U.S. Census American Community Survey. The percentage is even higher in the 14208 ZIP code, where the Tops store is located. In that ZIP code, among 11,029 total residents, nearly 76% are Black, the census data shows.
The city’s path toward racial segregation started in the early 20th century when a small number of job-seeking Black Americans migrated north to Buffalo, a former steel and auto manufacturing hub at the far northwestern end of New York state. Initially, they moved into the same neighborhoods as many of the city’s poorer immigrants and lived just east of what is today the city’s downtown district. As the number of Blacks arriving in Buffalo swelled in the 1940s, they were increasingly confronted with various housing challenges, including racist zoning laws and restrictive deed covenants that kept them from buying homes in more affluent white areas.
Black Buffalonians also faced housing discrimination in the form of redlining, the practice of restricting the flow of capital into minority communities. In 1933, as the Great Depression roiled the economy, a temporary federal agency known as the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation used government bonds to buy out and refinance mortgages of properties that were facing or already in foreclosure. The point was to try to stabilize the nation’s real estate market.
As part of its program, HOLC created maps of American cities, including Buffalo, that used a color coding scheme — green, blue, yellow and red — to convey the perceived riskiness of making loans in certain neighborhoods. Green was considered minimally risky; other areas that were largely populated by immigrant, Black or Latino residents were labeled red and thus determined to be “hazardous.”
“The goal was to free up mortgage capital by going to cities and giving banks a way to unload mortgages, so they could turn around and make more mortgage loans,” said Jason Richardson, senior director of research at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an association of more than 750 community-based organizations that advocates for fair lending. “It was kind of a radical concept and it has evolved over the decades into our modern mortgage finance system.”
The Federal Housing Administration, which was established as a permanent agency in 1934, used similar methods to map urban areas and labeled neighborhoods from “A” to “D,” with “A” considered to be the most financially stable and “D” considered the least. Neighborhoods that were largely Black, even relatively stable ones, were put in the “D” category.
The result was that banks, which wanted to be able to sell mortgage loans to the FHA, were largely dissuaded from making loans in “risky” areas. And Buffalo’s East Side, where the majority of Blacks were settling, was deemed risky. Unable to get loans, Blacks couldn’t buy homes, start businesses or build equity. At the same time, large industrial factories on the East Side were closing or moving away, limiting job opportunities and contributing to rising poverty levels.
“Today what we’re left with is the residue of this process where we’ve enshrined … a pattern of economic segregation that favors neighborhoods that had fewer Black people in them and generally ignores neighborhoods that had African Americans living in them,” Richardson said.
Case in point: Research by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition shows that three-quarters of neighborhoods that were once redlined are low- to moderate-income neighborhoods today, and two-thirds of them are majority minority communities.
Adding to the division between Blacks and whites in Buffalo was the construction of a highway called the Kensington Expressway. Built during the 1960s, the below-grade, limited-access highway proved to be a speedy way for suburban workers to get to their downtown jobs. But its construction cut off the already-segregated East Side even more from other parts of the city, displacing residents, devaluing houses and destroying neighborhoods and small businesses.
As a result of those factors and more, many Black residents have become “trapped” on the East Side, according to Dr. Henry Louis Taylor Jr., a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo. In 1987, Taylor founded the UB Center for Urban Studies, a research, neighborhood planning and community development institute that works on eliminating inequality in cities and metropolitan regions. In September 2021, eight months before the Tops shooting, the Center for Urban Studies published a report that compared the state of Black Buffalo in 1990 to present-day conditions. The conclusion: Nothing had changed for Blacks over 31 years.
As of 2019, the Black unemployment rate was 11%, the average household income was $42,000 and about 35% of Blacks had incomes that fell below the poverty line, the report said. It also noted that just 32% of Blacks own their homes and that most Blacks in the area live on the East Side.
“Those figures remain virtually unchanged while the actual, physical conditions that existed inside of the community worsened,” Taylor told American Banker in an interview in his sun-filled office at the center, located on the University at Buffalo’s city campus. “When we looked upstream to see what was causing it, it was clear: It was systemic, structural racism.”
Banks’ moral obligations
As the East Side struggled over the decades with rampant poverty, dilapidated housing, vacant lots and disintegrating infrastructure, banks kept a physical presence in the community, albeit a shrinking one. In mid-2000, there were at least 20 bank branches scattered across the East Side, but by mid-2022, the number had fallen to around 14, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s deposit market share data. The 14 include four new branches that have opened since early 2019 — Northwest Bank, KeyBank, Evans Bank and BankOnBuffalo.
The first two branches, operated by Northwest in Columbus, Ohio, and KeyBank, the banking subsidiary of KeyCorp in Cleveland, were requirements of community benefits agreements negotiated between each bank and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. In both cases, Northwest and KeyBank agreed to open an office in an underserved community.
Evans Bank opened its first East Side branch in the fall of 2021. The office is located in the basement of an $84 million affordable senior housing building that was financed by Evans, a $2.1 billion-asset community bank headquartered south of Buffalo in Angola, New York.
Banks have been very good at providing charitable contributions to the Black community. They get an ‘A’ for that. But doing the things that banks can do in terms of being a catalyst for revitalization and investment in this community, they have not done that.
The Rev. George Nicholas, an East Side pastor who is also CEO of the Buffalo Center for Health Equity
On the community and economic development front, banks have had varying levels of participation. Buffalo-based M&T Bank, which holds a whopping 64% of all deposits in the Buffalo market and is one of the largest private employers in the region, has made consistent investments in the East Side by supporting Westminster Community Charter School, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school, and the Buffalo Promise Neighborhood, a nonprofit organization focused on improving access to education in the city’s 14215 ZIP code.
Currently, Buffalo Promise Neighborhood operates four schools. In addition to Westminster, it runs Highgate Heights Elementary, also K-8, as well as two academies that serve children ages six weeks through pre-kindergarten. Twelve M&T employees are dedicated to the program, according to the Buffalo Promise Neighborhood website. The bank has invested $31.5 million into the program since its 2010 launch, a spokesperson said.
Other banks are making contributions in other ways. In addition to the Jefferson Avenue branch and as part of its community benefits plan, Northwest Bank, a $14.2 billion-asset bank, supports a financial education center through a partnership with Belmont Housing Resources of Western New York. Meanwhile, the $198 billion-asset KeyBank gave $30 million for bridge and construction financing for Northland Workforce Training Center, a $100 million redevelopment project at a former manufacturing complex on the East Side that was partially funded by the state.
BankOnBuffalo’s East Side branch is located inside the center, which offers KeyBank training in advanced manufacturing and clean energy technology careers. A subsidiary of $5.6 billion-asset CNB Financial in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, BankOnBuffalo’s office opened a month after the shooting. The timing was coincidental, but important, said Michael Noah, president of BankOnBuffalo.
“I think it just cemented the point that this is a place we need to be, to be able to be part of these communities and this community specifically, and be able to build this community up,” Noah said.
In terms of public-private collaboration, some banks have been involved in a deeper way. In 2019, New York state, which had already been pouring $1 billion into Buffalo to help revitalize the economy, announced a $65 million economic development fund for the East Side. The initiative is focused on stabilizing neighborhoods, increasing homeownership, redeveloping commercial corridors including Jefferson Avenue, improving historical assets, expanding workforce training and development and supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship.
In conjunction with the funding, a public-private partnership called East Side Avenues was created to provide capital and organizational support to the projects happening along four East Side commercial corridors. Six banks — Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the nation with $2.5 trillion of assets; M&T, which has $203 billion of assets; KeyBank; Warsaw, New York-based Five Star Bank, which has about $6 billion of assets; Northwest and Evans — are among the 14 private and philanthropic organizations that pledged a combined $8.4 million to pay for five years’ worth of operational support, governance and finance, fundraising and technical assistance to support the nonprofits doing the work.
Laura Quebral, director of the University at Buffalo Regional Institute, which is managing East Side Avenues, said the banks were the first corporations to step up to the request for help, and since then have provided loans and other products and education to keep the program moving.
Their participation “is a signal to the community that banks cared and were invested and were willing to collaborate around something,” Quebral said. “Being at the table was so meaningful.”
Richard Hamister is Northwest’s New York regional president and former co-chair of East Side Avenues. Hamister, who is based in Buffalo, said banks are a “community asset” that have a responsibility to lift up all communities, including those where conditions have arisen that allow it to be a target of racism like the East Side.
“We operate under federal charters, so we have an obligation to the community to not only provide products and services they need but also support when you go through a tragedy like that,” Hamister said. “We also have a moral obligation to try to help when things are broken … and to do what we can. We can’t fix everything, but we’ve got to fix our piece and try to help where we can.”
In the wake of a tragedy
After the massacre, there was a flurry of activity within banks and other organizations, local and out-of-town, to respond to the immediate needs of East Side residents. With the community’s only supermarket closed indefinitely, much of the response centered around food collection and distribution. Three of M&T’s five East Side branches, including the Jefferson Avenue branch across the street from Tops, became food distribution sites for weeks after the shooting. On two consecutive Fridays, Northwest provided around 200 free lunches to the community, using a neighborhood caterer who is also the bank’s customer. And BankOnBuffalo collected employee donations that amounted to more than 20 boxes of toiletries and other items that were distributed to a nonprofit.
At the same time, M&T, KeyBank and other banks began financial donations to organizations that could support the immediate needs of the community. KeyBank provided a van that delivered food and took people to nearby grocery stores. Providence, Rhode Island-based Citizens Financial Group, whose ATM inside Tops was inaccessible during the store’s temporary closure, installed a fee-free ATM near a community center located about a half-mile north of Tops, and later put a permanent ATM inside the center that remains there today. And M&T rolled out a short-term loan program to provide capital to East Side small-business owners.
One of the funds that benefited from banks’ support was the Buffalo Together Community Response Fund, which has raised $6.2 million to address the long-term needs of the East Side.
Bank of America and Evans Bank each donated $100,000 to the fund, whose list of major sponsors includes four other banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, M&T and KeyBank. Thomas Beauford Jr., a former banker who is co-chair of the response fund, said banks, by and large, directed their resources into organizations where the dollars would have an immediate impact.
“Banks said, ‘Hey, you know … it doesn’t make sense for us to try to build something right now. … We will fund you in the work you’re doing,'” said Beauford, who has been president and CEO of the Buffalo Urban League since the fall of 2020. “I would say banks showed up in a big way.”
Fourteen months later, banks say they are committed to playing a positive role on the East Side. For the second year, KeyBank is sponsoring a farmers’ market on the East Side, an attempt to help fill the food desert in the community. Last fall, BankOnBuffalo launched a mobile “bank on wheels” truck that’s stationed on the East Side every Wednesday. The 34-foot-long truck, which is staffed by two people and includes an ATM and a printer to make debit cards, was in the works before the shooting, and will eventually make four stops per week around the Buffalo area.
Evans has partnered with the city of Buffalo to construct seven market-rate single family homes on vacant lots on the East Side. The relationship with the city is an example of how banks can pair up with other entities to create something meaningful and lasting, more than they might be able to do on their own, said Evans President and CEO David Nasca.
The bank has “picked areas” where it can use its resources to make a difference, Nasca said.
“I don’t think the root causes can be ameliorated” by banks alone, he said. “We can’t just grant money. It has to be within our construct of a financial institution that invests and supports the public-private partnership. … All the oars [need to be] pulling together or this doesn’t work.”
‘Little or no engagement with minorities’
All of these efforts are, of course, welcomed by the community, but there is still criticism that banks haven’t done enough to make up for their past contributions to segregating the city. And perhaps more importantly, some of that criticism centers on banks failing to do their most basic function in society — provide credit.
In 2021, the New York State Department of Financial Services issued a report about redlining in Buffalo. The regulator looked at banks and nonbank lenders and found that loans made to minorities in the Buffalo metro area made up 9.74% of total loans in Buffalo. Overall, Black residents comprise about 33% of Buffalo’s total population of more than 276,000, census data shows.
The department said its investigation showed the lower percentage was not due to “excessive denials of loan applications based on race or ethnicity,” but rather that “these companies had little or no engagement with minorities and generally made scant effort to do so.”
“The unsurprising result of this has been that few minority customers or individuals seeking homes in majority-minority neighborhoods have made loan applications … in the first instance.”
Furthermore, accusations of redlining persist today, even though the practice of discriminating in housing based on race was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
In 2014, Evans was accused of redlining by the New York State Attorney General, which said the community bank was specifically avoiding making mortgage loans on the East Side. The bank, which at the time had $874 million of assets, agreed to pay $825,000 to settle the case, but Nasca maintains that the charges were unfounded. He points to the fact that the bank never had a fair lending or fair housing violation, no specific incidents were ever claimed and that the bank’s Community Reinvestment Act exam never found evidence of discriminatory or illegal credit practices.
The bank has a greater presence on the East Side today, but that’s because it has grown in size, not because it is trying to make up for previous accusations of redlining, he said.
“Ten years ago, our involvement [on the East Side] certainly wasn’t what you’re seeing today,” Nasca said. “We were looking to participate more, but we were participating within our means and our reach. As we have grown, we have built more resources to be able to do more.”
Shortly after accusations were made against Evans, Five Star Bank, the banking arm of Financial Institutions in Warsaw, New York, was also accused of redlining by the state Attorney General. Five Star, which has been growing its presence in the Buffalo market for several years, wound up settling the charges for $900,000 and agreeing to open two branches in the city of Rochester.
KeyBank is currently being accused of redlining by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. In a 2022 report, the group said that KeyBank is engaging in systemic redlining by making very few home purchase loans in certain neighborhoods where the majority of residents are Black. Buffalo is one of several cities where the bank’s mortgage lending “effectively wall[ed] out Black neighborhoods,” especially parts of the East Side, the report said.
KeyBank denied the allegations. In March, the coalition asked regulators to investigate the bank’s mortgage lending practices.
Beyond providing more credit, some community members believe that banks should be playing a larger role in addressing other needs on the East Side. And the list of needs runs the gamut from more grocery stores to safe, affordable housing to infrastructure improvements such as street and sidewalk repairs.
Alexander Wright is founder of the African Heritage Food Co-op, an initiative launched in 2016 to address the dearth of grocery store options on the East Side, where he grew up. Wright said that while banks’ philanthropic efforts are important, banks in general “need to be in a place of remediation” to fix underlying issues that the industry, as a whole, helped create. (After publication of this story, Wright left his job as CEO of the African Heritage Food Co-Op.)
Aside from charitable donations, banks should be finding more ways to work directly with East Side business owners and entrepreneurs, helping them with capital-building support along the way, Wright said. One place to start would be technical assistance by way of bank volunteers.
“Banks are always looking to volunteer. ‘Hey, want to come out and paint a fence? Want to come out and do a garden?'” Wright said. “No. Come out here and help Keshia with bookkeeping. Come out here and do QuickBooks classes for folks. Bring out tax experts. Because these are things that befuddle a lot of small businesses. Who is your marketing person? Bring that person out here. Because those are the things that are going to build the business to self-sufficiency.
“Anything short of the capacity-building … that will allow folks to rise to the occasion and be self-sufficient I think is almost a waste,” Wright added. “We don’t need them to lead the plan. What we need them to do is be in the community and [be] hearing the plan and supporting it.”
Parker, of Open Buffalo, has similar thoughts about the role that banks should play. One day, soon after the massacre, an ATM appeared down the street from Tops, next to the library that sits across the street from Parker’s office. Soon after the ATM was installed, Parker began fielding questions from area residents who were skeptical of the machine and wanted to know if it was legitimate. But Parker didn’t have any information to share with them. “There was no outreach. There was no community engagement. So I’m like, ‘Let me investigate,'” she said. “I think that’s a symptom of how investment is done in Black communities, even though it may be well-intentioned.”
As it turns out, the temporary ATM belonged to JPMorgan Chase. The megabank has had a commercial banking presence in Buffalo for years, but it didn’t operate a retail branch in the region until last year. Today it has four branches in operation and plans to open another two by the end of the year, a spokesperson said.
After the Tops shooting, the governor’s office reached out to Chase asking if the bank could help in some way, the spokesperson said in response to the skepticism. The spokesperson said that while the Chase retail brand is new to the Buffalo region, the company has been active in the market for decades by way of commercial banking, private banking, credit card lending, home lending and other businesses.
In addition to the ATM, the bank provided funding to local organizations including FeedMore Western New York, which distributes food throughout the region.
“We are committed to continuing our support for Buffalo and helping the community increase access to opportunities that build wealth and economic empowerment,” the spokesperson said in an email.
In the year since the massacre, there has been some progress by banks in terms of their interest in listening to the East Side community and learning about its needs, said Nicholas. But he hasn’t felt an air of urgency from the banking community to tackle the issues right now.
“I do experience banks being a little more open to figuring out what their role is, but it’s slow. It’s slow,” said Nicholas. The senior pastor of the Lincoln Memorial United Methodist Church, located about a mile north from Tops, Nicholas is part of a 13-member local advisory committee for the New York arm of Local Initiatives Support Coalition, or LISC. The group is focused on mobilizing resources, including banks, to address affordable housing in Western New York, specifically in the inner city, as well as training minority developers and connecting them to potential investors, Nicholas said.
Of the 13 members, seven are from banks — one each from M&T, Bank of America, BankOnBuffalo, Evans and KeyBank, and two members from Citizens Financial Group. One of the priorities of LISC NY is health equity, and the fact that banks are becoming more engaged in looking at health disparities is promising, Nicholas said. Still, they have more work to do, he said.
“I need them to think more on how to strengthen and build the economy on the East Side and provide leadership around that, not only to provide charitable things, but using sound business and banking and community development principles to say, ‘OK, if we’re going to invest in this community, these are the types of things that need to happen in this community,’ and then encourage their partners and other people they work with … to come fully in on the East Side.”
Some bankers agree with the community activists.
“Putting a branch in is great. Having a bank on wheels is great,” said Noah of BankOnBuffalo. “But if you’re not embedded in the community, listening to the community and trying to improve it, you’re not creating that wealth and creating a better lifestyle for everyone.”
What could make a substantial difference in terms of banks’ impact on the community is a combination of collaboration and leadership, said Taylor. He supports the idea of banks leading the charge on the creation of a comprehensive redevelopment and reinvestment plan for the East Side, and then investing accordingly and collaboratively through their charitable foundations.
“All of them have these foundations,” Taylor said. “You can either spend that money in a strategic and intentional way designed to develop a community for the existing population, or you can spend that money alone in piecemeal, siloed, sectorial fashion that will look good on an annual report, but won’t generate transformational and generational changes inside a community.”
Banks might be incentivized to work together because it could mean two things for them, according to Taylor: First, they’d have an opportunity to spend money in a way that would have maximum impact on the East Side, and second, if done right, the city and the banks could become a model of the way to create high levels of diversity, equity and inclusion in an urban area.
“If you prove how to do that, all that does is open up other markets of consumption all over the country because people want to figure out how to do that same thing,” Taylor said.
Some of that is already happening, at least on a bank-by-bank case, said KeyBank’s Owunwanne. Through the KeyBank Foundation, the company is able to leverage different relationships that connect nonprofits to other entities and corporations that can provide help.
“I see this as an opportunity for us to make not just incremental changes, but monumental changes … as part of a larger group,” Owunwanne said “Again, I say that not to absolve the bank of any responsibility, but just as a larger group.”
Downstairs from Parker’s office, Golden Cup Coffee, a roastery and cafe run by a husband and wife team, and some other Jefferson Avenue businesses are trying to build up a business association for existing and potential Jefferson-area businesses. Parker imagined what the group could accomplish if one of the banks could provide someone on a part-time basis to facilitate conversations, provide administrative support and coordinate marketing efforts.
“In the grand scheme of things, when we’re talking about a multimillion dollar [bank], a part-time employee specifically dedicated to relationship-building and building out coalitions, it sounds like a small thing,” Parker said. “But that’s transformational.”