As you may know, I get an awful lot of unsolicited phone calls from solicitors who want to sell me stuff I would never in a trillion years buy or just have me give them money. They come in waves and the latest wave — because my info has gotten onto another list somewhere it shouldn't be on — is for Student Loan Settlers. These are companies that propose to somehow refinance my Student Loan so that instead of owing tens of thousands of dollars, I can make a few payments of seventy bucks and be done with it all.
At least, that's my limited understanding…limited because the callers never get through the entire sales pitch. I inform them that (a) I was last a student around 1974 and (b) I never had a Student Loan. It says something that they're placing these calls to a 73-year-old man. Are there still people who are 73 who are struggling to pay off their Student Loans? Possibly.
I've also had a recent flurry of calls asking to speak to my mother who, they are unaware, died in 2012. These calls are either about selling of fixing the home she owned but which I sold…or they're asking for donations because she sent their charity money fifteen years ago. The ones calling about the house go instantly away when I tell them the house is no longer owned by her or her heir (me). Most of the charities hang up when I tell them she's deceased and some apologize greatly for calling…
…but some of them suggest I have a duty to donate in her memory to a cause she supported a decade and a half ago. If my mother was still alive, she'd be 103 years old. I'm going to start telling the charities that call how she can't afford to donate to them because she's still paying off her Student Loan.