$45,000, Two Benjamins, and a Book

👋 Hey all!

We’re wrapping up week four of the Dead Ledger Society, and I couldn’t be happier with where we’re at. We’re working on several debt forgiveness experiments, creative projects, and building a budding community of wonderful people excited about what we’re trying to do.

Loan Forgiveness Progress

We’re grinding through the legal process of buying and forgiving a $45,000 student loan.

Here’s the tricky bit: The Dead Ledger Society is not licensed to buy debt. Purchasing and servicing consumer debt requires state-by-state licensing, bonding, and insurance. That’s too expensive and time-consuming for our first experiment, so we’re partnering with established debt buyers.

What’s tricky about that?

First, debt buyers and debt servicing companies don’t want the reputation that they forgive debts. We have to keep them strictly anonymous to protect their businesses.

Second, consumer debt information is very sensitive. The industry and regulatory environment is (understandably) choked with legal scar tissue due to predatory lenders and debt collectors. We’re navigating how the Dead Ledger Society legally forgives a loan, contacts the borrower, throws a party on the Internet, and carries the relationship forward.

I hope this first deal is done in the first half of August. I expect it won’t happen until the beginning of September.

The good news? All of this gets much easier once we have the legal framework, agreements, and relationships to repeat this process.

Don’t lose sight of the big picture: we’re on track to forgive $45,000 in student debt for about ten cents on the dollar.

Amazing.

Two Benjamins, Two Results

One of the ways we’re learning about the mechanics of the student loan industry is by making $100 payments on people’s loans. We call this The Benjamin Experiment — it allows me to talk with borrowers, lenders, and loan servicing companies to find opportunities for automating and improving the loan payment process.

To date, we’ve made two payments with two different results.

Both loans were federal student loans. Both were in the same program and had similar payment histories. One ended up paying toward the principal balance. The other went to interest.

Have I mentioned how much I hate paying interest?

That chapped my hide, but reality checks are part and parcel of experimentation, and I learned a couple of interesting things on my calls.

First, the customer support representatives I talked with were confused about third-party loan payments. Apparently, people don’t do that. I guess I’m weird?

Anyway, they had a hard time verifying the loans even though I supplied the borrowers’ names and loan identification numbers.

Second, they could not articulate how payments would be split between interest and principal. Not how the specific payments would be applied (that’s sensitive loan information), but how their loan servicing companies make decisions about interest vs. principal. They said I should go to their website. I had to go digging. The rules are convoluted and written in legalese.

What a mess.

No wonder people are surprised when their loan balances go up even when they stay current on their payments. Is it too much to expect a 1.7 trillion dollar industry to have its shit together when communicating and supporting its customers?

I guess so.

I have $300 more to spend on The Benjamin Experiment, and I’m narrowing my criteria:

If you or someone you know has a private student loan, please contact [email protected].

We’ll get right on it.

The FUCK DEBT Book Experiment

I want to bring beauty and joy into the world, and I’m looking for ways to do that with the Dead Ledger Society.

My artist friend Tom and I were talking and came up with a fun idea: let’s crowdfund an art book with a simple theme: FUCK DEBT.

Spicy, confrontational — and personal if you’ve ever muttered those words while paying your bills. We’re reaching out to artists and publishers to see if that’s a message they want to contribute to.

The goal is a book filled with works from artists who want to share their take on that theme. Painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers — even videographers and musicians: we’ll print a QR code linking to your work.

I’m talking with some wonderful people at Kickstarter next week to learn how this process works and if they can help connect us with people who share this vision of debt relief through art.

It’s an experiment. The worst scenario is that some like-minded people join the Society; the best case is we put out a BANGER of an art book and raise a grip of money to pay off student loans.

If you or someone you know feels inspired by the FUCK DEBT message, get in touch, and we’ll figure out how to make something beautiful together.

(Also … are ya interested in some FUCK DEBT merch? We’re figuring out how to adorn ourselves and our loved ones with spicy sentiments. Check it out, let me know what you think)

Thank You!

Y’all are awesome. Please forward this email to folks interested in what we’re doing. ❤️

Bonus Content

Tracy’s prototyping Dead Ledger Society challenge coins with her 3D printer. I love it. Who wants one?