Cashcall, Gary Coleman and the Tiny Print

Look, the last thing I want to do is give Gary Coleman a hard time. He's been handed enough of that on his own with the kidneys and the hormones, the money with the parents thing and the not so great job placement stint as a security officer on the edge. I was a big fan as a child. I emulated him in every way on Diff'rent Strokes. I even tested out my own catch phrase for a while: "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?" My Mom hated it. Turns out that precociousness is much less precious when you're not pulling in $80,000 per episode. I voted for him for Governor of California. I cried when his blind date went bad at the end of Star Dates. I even pulled for him to win The Surreal Life Fame Game until I realized that it was Emmanuel Lewis and that his heart wasn't really into winning, he was a compromiser, and his attempted manipulations were obvious and weak. Then the SR Fame Game for me became all about Andrea Lowell for diff'rent strokes altogether.

But all kidneys aside, Gary Coleman is best known for being the victim of birth circumstance with the apparent parental squandering of his fortune. He'd earned over $7 million while starring on the show and made over $17 million from all his work during that period (1978-1986). Yet somehow, some way, every penny of that got recirculated into society, and Gary never got to enjoy it for the years beyond when he was enjoying it at least a little bit.

So his story became one of the former child star seeking out his rebound, still loved and adored in his adult years, but not paid back for the joy that he gives. He's taken seemingly every job that has come along: music videos, cameos in TV movies and low rent TV commercials. In walks Cashcall.

Actually, it was the other way around. Gary walked into the Cashcall offices. As the story goes, when he went to their offices to close the loan he had taken out with them, he was introduced to the company's boss who encouraged Gary to pay off his loan by appearing in Cashcall ads.

What he should have said was, "What'chu talkin' 'bout, Cashcall?" But instead he took the deal, and now in the spots he proudly proclaims, "Cashcall helped me. They can help you too... Pay your bills on time and everyone will love you." Alas, it's all about being loved, especially by Cashcall.

One of the best things about DVR technology is that you can pause the TV screen at any time. I started doing this during shows like the FBI Files and Forensic Files. Whenever they show someone's suicide note, hand written or signed confession on screen with just some parts highlighted, I pause it and read the entire thing for myself. It's great for the History channel, too, civil war letters, Stalinist propoganda articles, secret Nazi documents and such. Then I started doing it with commercials, things like car leases that seem too good to be true. You pause it, and you can read how high the initial down payments are supposed to be. (Plymouth has gone one step ahead of me. They have an extremely suspicious lease offer of $99/month on their PT Cruiser. Not that I'd ever lease one because I'm not 20 years old, a woman, and a big fan of Trading Spaces reruns. But I paused it, and it says, "See our website for details." Hmmm. That should be against the law - a sales two-stepper.)

And so to the DVR pause on the Coleman Cashcall ads. I'd never seen a screen so filled with such tiny print. Nothing good ever needs to written on such nanoscale.

Here's what Cashcall and Coleman are offering via tiny text: "The APR for a typical loan of $2,600 is 99.25% with 42 monthly payments of $216.55..." Those payments add up $9,095.10 to pay back a loan of $2,600. Over three and a half years, that's paying back three and a half times the amount you borrowed. 99.25%!!!!! These rates are even brazenly published right on their website. > See for yourself.

I have damned many a bank that offers credit cards at a mere 22.9% APR. Now I recognize their magnanimous generosity and good will.

I know the story. Anyone who ends up at the Cashcall window is not just simply trying to pay off their one, single, small debt. They are people who've been overwhelmed with debt, cannot get assistance from any reputable banking institution anymore, and are just trying to get the worst of the creditors (like the IRS) off of their backs. So they borrow from Bealzebob to pay Paul. Still have that twinge of sympathy for the adorable Gary Coleman? It's sympathy for the devil's pudgy cheeked surrogate.

If you've ever been majorly in debt, as I have, then you know how difficult it is. You start to juggle the creditors with a Worst-First List. You look for the quick fix wherever you can get it. The difficult but appropriate thing to do is to make a long term plan and face the facts that a lot will have to be sacrificed until you can climb all the way out. A lot. I suffered through four years of the worst M-F job (M-F not necessarily meaning Monday thru Friday) of my life to get myself out debt a few years back. Many of you know, I had to resist quitting several times a day, every single day. It was a harrowing, dark period of my life which scarred me with bitterness and lack of pity. But I got out of debt. The hardest thing about it is that to make the large payments on a realistic payoff plan, you have to pre-calculate, plan it out and then pay over almost every penny that you earn all the way until you are through, which means no spending money ever, and certainly no savings or safety.

Then I got back to zero and an all new struggle against the great costs of living began. But it's better than signing any paper that has a 99.25% APR. Those people and their spokespersons are not out there to help you. In fact, the reality is, no one is - especially not people on TV. I just wish you hadn't done it, Gary.

p.s. Don't call me for help, people. I have no money.