Preying on the elderly, payday lenders’ newest victims
How much worse can things get?
According to a new article in the WSJ, those wonderful community financial services people, more commonly know as Payday lenders are increasingly targeting recipients of Social Security and other government benefits, including disability and veteran’s benefits.
But it isn’t just the Payday lenders who are involved in this abuse of our seniors. Because the law bars the government from sending a recipient’s benefits directly to lenders, many of these lenders are forging relationships with banks and arranging for prospective borrowers to have their benefits checks deposited directly into bank accounts. The banks immediately transfer government funds to the lenders. The lender then subtracts debt repayments, plus fees and interest, before giving the recipients a dime.
It is bad enough that a few sociopaths exist that prey on the elderly, but when corporations collude to specifically locate their businesses near the disabled and elderly and specifically recruit (read as target for exploitation) the disabled and elderly, things have gotten pretty bad.
The line from the Community Financial Services Association is a classic. The payday lenders should be able to exploit the elderly and the disabled just like they do everyone else because “It certainly wouldn’t be right for the business to discriminate against them for whatever the source of their income is.”
The article does a good job of pointing out that the disabled and the elderly are even more susceptible to abuse and exploitation because they are on a fixed income and can’t easily get out of the debt cycle that payday loans create and depend on to keep their client base.
The article also has the stories of some of the victims of this wonderful practice.
This is the reality of Payday Lending.
Tags: banking, check advance, elderly abuse, elderly exploitation, lending, loans, payday loans, rip-offs, salary lending., scams, Social security, unbanks
Filed under: Avoid Scams & ID Theft, Coping With Credit & Debt
(so·cio·path) (so´se-o-path”) a previously used term for a person exhibiting antisocial personality disorder.
Someone with an antisocial personality disorder doesn’t sound like someone who would “prey on the elderly”. And targeting the elderly doesn’t sound right either. Are these payday lenders going out into the community, kidnapping seniors, and forcing them to make these choices? I don’t think so! Why don’t you solve the problem instead of playing the blame game? Oh, feel sorry for the old people because they haven’t been around long enough to know right from wrong…um…wait, yes they have! If they haven’t figured it out by now, then maybe it is time for them to learn the hard way. These seniors are choosing to go into these payday lenders and they are choosing to use the service so that they can get their money earlier. Just like a fat guy chooses to go into Burger King and Order a Double Whopper. The fat guy has the choice to get something healthy, but he doesn’t, that is the glory of this country. I am tired of people saying, “pity me,” because they made a bad decision. If they are elderly, then they should know by now that you have to take responsibility for your own actions.
[...] Payday lenders may be targeting evangelical Christians, but they are just as happy to prey on the elderly and the poor [...]
You are just like everyone else! Why don’t you come up with a solution, instead of just bitching about the way things are. You are just like the elderly, sitting around and complaining that things were better back in the day. I know that every time I go into a payday loan store, I find 4 or 5 elderly people wandering around, bumping into things, waiting to get trapped by the tellers. Give me a break! If these people have been on this earth for almost a century and they still have not figured out how to survive without getting taken advantage of, then maybe they deserve to get taken advantage of!