Monday, April 14, 2008

At the start of my second two week moratorium on reorders. I plan to do this for four months total. First month was painful. But I expect it to get harder and harder as the spring wears on. I will be making 'special orders' for customers, so no request will go unfilled. But anything speculative or experimental is going to have to wait until summer.

The two weeks of reorders each month I do make, is calculated to make sure that inventory holds up, and evergreens are replaced.

I would have been doing something like this no matter what. The outside economy has given me more motivation, to be sure, but I was needing to do this anyway. After five years of expansion, and spending, it is time to consolidate. I pretty much ran out of room late last year, and ever since I've been trying to refine the mix, rather than just buy more, more, more.

Sometime over the next year, I'll need to start renegotiating my lease. I have no reason to believe that my landlord won't treat me fairly -- we have a 27 year history, after all. But, just in case, it would probably be prudent to have less debt and more cash. Which is something I should do anyway. I intend to stay, unless it's impossible. But cash gives me options.

An irony, as always, is that I tend to make actual cash profits when sales are flat or declining. I seem to just be more disciplined and focused.

Meanwhile, also a strange little thing that seems to happen -- I tend to diet during the same months I'm doing tight budgeting. Never consciously, just seems to go together. Getting my own habits under control.

And finally, the following article has made me feel a little better about my disappearing HELOC.

YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD AN EQUITY LINE

Gretchen Morgenson
New York Times, April 13, 2008

"The latest example of this is in the mass freezing of home equity lines of credit going on across the country. Reeling from losses on their wretched loan decisions of recent years, lenders are preventing borrowers with pristine credit and significant equity in their homes from tapping into credit lines that they paid dearly to secure." (Italics are mine.)

13 comments:

Duncan McGeary said...

The blog Calculated Risk is pretty hard on "poor Gretchen" as they call her; similar to the way RDC argued with me over what was happening.

I didn't argue.

I agree with Gretchen.

Duncan McGeary said...

An unexpected -- or forgotten -- side effect of this, is that I'm much less stressed and overworked.

I spend an inordinate amount of time reading up on the available product.
Even when I'm actively ordering, it's too much to take in, even in the small world of graphics.

But making sure the most important stuff gets my attention requires constant surveying.

Diamond actually highlights product with stars and italics and dark print; and I've wondered if a guy couldn't order just as efficiently by just automatically ordering that.

But what fun would that be? And how much would I look like every other comic shop? In fact, I've made the case the Independent bookstores need to give up their reliance on best-seller lists and 'Book Sense' type promotions.

But it is way more work to explore everything yourself.

I also eliminate most of the work on Mondays (mostly ordering) and a most of the work day on Thursdays (processing and stocking.)

Leaving Wednesday as the only intensive day of the week.

I'd already decided to take a lot of time off this spring, and this just makes it easier.

RDC said...

I expect that HELOC's are going to pretty much go away altogether or atleast be structured as if they were signature loans and not secured against the property. Pretty much the same with second mortgages as well. The reason why is that the lenders that are offering Heloc's or even more conventional seconds are basically getting nothing. As a result they have changed from a risk of percentage loss to a risk of entire loss. I suspect that the states where they are being frozen are non-recourse states where the obligation goes away after the forclosure.

If you have been using the Heloc then you have received value for it. Maybe not as much as expected, but then again the conditions have changed and the terms allow such a freeze. If you paid fees and not used the Heloc at all, then the only thing I can say is not the brightest thing to do.

Doing away with Heloc's is actually, in my opinion, a good thing.

Duncan McGeary said...

Let's say I had taken 20k out of savings, or even cash flow in the store, to park it in the Heloc until I needed it?

Or, say, I needed twenty thousand to finish a home improvement project, and I've already agreed to a contract and already bought the materials, but I was tapping the loan as I needed it?

I think almost any business advisor would tell you not to use the money until you need it, to save on interest.

Good faith, my friend. The money was borrowed on good faith, and if YOU haven't broken that good faith, it stands to reason THEY have.

Duncan McGeary said...

As I said. I don't fucking care. I wasn't borrowing, but paying back.

But still, I think the principle of the thing rankles.

This wasn't an unreasonable loan made for unreasonable reasons.

I have plenty of equity in the house. I've been making payments.

Duncan McGeary said...

And yes, other than the house, I could buy most everything for cash from now on. I can buy off my credit cards.

And the credit system can go such eggs.

Which is what they're afraid of -- which for this consumer, they are creating.

Duncan McGeary said...

rdc,

I enter every transaction with every wholesaler, landlord, or any other service with the reasonable expectation that they will treat me fairly.

I'm not talking about the fine print.

The whole system would break down if I had to get it all in writing, run it by a lawyer.

Anyone I deal with that acted in such an arbitrary manner would be run out of business. I've seen it happen. The guy who is overly aggressive on collecting payments, for instance, is usually the guy in trouble.

And I don't need some insecure idiot as a supplier.

A reasonable expectation of being paid in a reasonable manner.

This Heloc thing seems arbitrary and abrupt and uncalled for; yes, legally they can do it. Yes, legally I'm better off without it.

But, any of the dozens of business people I deal with on a regular basis who acted this way would be immediately dropped.

Countrywide is permanantly off the list; I realize they don't care about little old me, but if they piss off enough people.

I think a credit company who acts this way is doomed.

Let's see -- do I want to borrow money from Countrywide and WaMu -- or U.S. Bank or Bank of America, both who haven't acted this way.

It isn't a coincidence that Countrywide and WaMu are too of the worst offenders; and I think this is going to kill their long term business.

I repeat. I was doing everything right.

Anonymous said...

I repeat. I was doing everything right.

*

Duncan, Everything now in small print say's "We reserve the right to change ALL the rules anytime we wish".

They simply changed the rules and notified you.

Virtually anything now from auto loans to credit cards, any kind of loan says, "We can charge any fee we wish, we can pull any number out of our ass at anytime, and we can demand you return any money owed at anytime".

Everybody has been writing their contracts like this for years now.

Best of all if your late in payments, or your credit score changes, ... then all the rules change.

It's a good time to have NO DEBT.

At this point in time they're just fucking as many people who don't have a choice that they can, that said these company's have no choice, their survival is at risk.

The thing is if YOU go along with their BULLSHIT then your feeding them, thus all that can should 'PULL THE PLUG', and pay off the debt, and leave them with fewer to screw.

Don't like getting fucked? Then quit voting for Democrats & Republicans. I'm not saying there is an alternative, but the two ruling powers are out of sync with the electorate.

RDC said...

Really take a look at the comment about parking it in a Heloc. What you are really saying by parking it in a Heloc is to pay down an existing debt, knowing that you intend to reborrow at a future point, so the parking is a temporary reduction in interest payments.

As such you are basically taking an approach to the debt that it will always be there as a part of your economic structure, instead of it being a temporary debt that has the goal of being retired. That is really one of the insidious things about helocs and credit cards is that in the cases of many people the debt is eternal.

I would say that even if it costs you a couple of dollars more in the short term you are better off in the long term parking the money in a money market or similar shrt term account account and continuing to retire the Heloc. Or put the amount into the Heloc that you will not need to pull back out again.

RDC said...

Bendbust,

Actually they don't. Variable rates are pretty much defined and the formula structured. It is a fairly narrow set that can redefine terms such as interest rates. Even in the case of credit cards, when they change the business terms, they cannot retroactively apply them. They can only apply them to new transactions. Of course most people do not bother the read the terms for the credit cards they use and that the terms in many cases define them as variable rates where the rates on existing balances can be reset within legal limits based upon credit history, etc. Even then they must give you the chance to pay off the full amount before those terms kick in. Usually the way that they get sround the terms is to use the "continued use of the card signifies acceptance of these terms".

As far as lines of credit go the ability to stop lines of credit is not a fine print issue. They have been a standard feature of just about any line of credit I have ever seen.

The answer is if you don't like the terms then don't sign the contract. If you don't like credit card terms then don't use them. If you want to use them then live with it.

LavaBear said...

I look at it as you are essentially collateral damage from the larger bombs in the credit world exploding. No matter how responsible you have managed it, no matter if you've paid everything on time, no matter what your equity ratio is I think at this moment banks are fighting for their lives. Pissing some consumers off by yanking in loans that are down the pecking order when foreclosure time comes is a no brainer for banks. I'm more suprised that banks would offer HELOC's right now than I am they are pulling them in as fast as possible.

For a bank it seems smarter to just pull them all at once. It takes time and resources to review each case...and giving people time they will drain the line as fast as they can. So they essentially just say screw looking at them, cut and try to save our loses NOW. For lending institutions today is not a day to worry about pissing off consumers, it's a time to worry about solvency. You unfortunately got caught in the crossfire.

Duncan McGeary said...

"For a bank it seems smarter to just pull them all at once. It takes time and resources to review each case..."

Tanta seemed to be saying that wasn't happening. I just don't think he/she completely understands what's happening. I think Gretchen's article was much closer to what I experienced in several ways.

Which frankly cast doubt in my mind about Calculated Risks utility to me.

I had been reading it everyday, but I think they got this completely wrong. And it's the one thing I have personal experience about....

What else have they got wrong?

RDC said...

lavabear,

Yep, Helocs have a very high risk level for the return for the bank.

The decision is basically an area risk one, not an individual risk one. The banks are overwhelmed with the credit mess and it is pretty much of a no brainer to freeze the Helocs. It keeps their risk from getting worse and it reduces their flow of cash out.

If a foreclosure happens the bank pretty much can write off the entire Heloc because values have fallen below the primary loan levels. Also if someone is in bad straights what are they going to be doing, maxing out their Helocs.
Considering that the risk profiles are out of wack when a lot of the loans were made and that the documentation submitted was not the best the banks have neither the resources (personnel and time) nor the information (orignal docs, recent credit information, individual home information) to be able to make individual decisions. Thus they are making broad sweep decisions that limit their risk.