Coining It In: The Road to Ruin
Dateline: February 2019
Disclaimer: I know. Anything you can think of calling me, I’ve already called myself. The fact that this should happen to me, who knows about these scams, and had in fact warned someone else about something similar, is perhaps just the universe laughing at me again. Or maybe it’s just that bad things happen to good people, I don’t know. It’s a cautionary tale, a salutary lesson, a warning. It’s all of those things. It’s also the biggest pain in the hole I’ve had this year. Almost.
You should all understand that this is very, very hard for me to write about. I feel like a fool, and the emotions are still very raw. But I have, to an extent, put it behind me now, and it does characterise a large part of why this year was indeed the Year of Hell for me, though there were other, perhaps more significant factors to bear in mind too. So anyone who wants to say “dude wut” or variants of that - surprise, shock, dismay, disparaging remarks, anything along the lines of “are you retarded?” please keep them to yourself. As I say, you can’t call me anything I haven’t called myself, and you can’t and won’t make me feel any worse than I did then, or indeed often still do.
So, that out of the way, here’s how it went down.
Actually, before that, yet another sort of prologue, just so you understand where I was coming from.
While working, I was never one to save. I just didn’t do it. I know. But I would spend my money - either on myself or on others who needed it - and there usually seemed to be a surplus. It’s not that I was working in such a well-paid job or anything, but up until the passing of my mother I had little real financial responsibility beyond giving her a certain amount (I’m obviously not going to disclose figures here; it’s private and it’s nobody’s business but mine) each week for my keep. I did of course offer more when I could, and when I got overtime I would pass some of that on to her. But when we were suddenly left to fend for ourselves one cold February (coincidence, I do assure you) afternoon in 1991, the world tilted sharply at an angle.
We were spoiled Irish mammy’s boys (and one girl), which is not to say we were indulged, as my parents were never rich, and I remember watching my mother sitting in the kitchen, totalling up the expenses for the week and trying to make the little my father gave her from his piss-poor-paying job last. So we weren't spoiled in that sense, just I suppose in that we were never really adequately prepared for the real world. My mother died at the rather young age of 62, so it was a shock, not something we had been expecting. It wasn't a quick death, so we had time to consider, get ready. But we didn't. I never realised, until she was gone, how hard that was, and how she would often go without the necessaries for herself (including food) to ensure we did not go short.
I won’t bore you with the details, but it illustrates how unprepared we all were - me especially - for the realities of financial burden. I had been getting bank loan after bank loan - no reason, nothing to buy, just “why not”? In the end I had amassed somewhere in the region of 25,000 in debt, over a period of perhaps twenty years. The day I finally paid that off was, at the time, the happiest of my life. But it just shows how naive I was about money. As long as the bank lent it to me, I took it, and never worried about paying it back. It came out of my bank account every month, and I got used to it, with the result that once it was paid off I suddenly had a LOT more money to spend every month.
And of course, I made a point of saving it.
No. No I didn’t. I just found either things to spend it on or found a way to help those of my family and/or friends who needed it. I was, in fairness, a nice guy. I hope I still am. If I saw someone in trouble and could help, I didn’t hesitate. One afternoon Karen called me from her job (probably mid-nineties I’d say; I know my ma was gone at this point) literaly crying that she was being taken to court over a credit card bill unless she paid the outstanding amount. How much was it, I asked her, and she told me. No problem, I said. I’ll get it out on the way home. That might have got me arrested.
I didn’t ask for it back. I didn’t tell he she had to pay it back. I didn’t get it back. I didn’t want it back. The most important thing was that I was able to help her, and where a situation to her had seemed grim in the extreme, I was able to reach out and sort everything as a big brother should. This was who I was. If I still had money, this would still be who I am. She feels surprised that, should we ever come into big money, like winning the lottery, I would still look after my two brothers, neither of whom we speak to any more as they cut themselves out of our lives when Karen got sick. She says she wouldn’t give them a cent. I just couldn’t do that. I hate and despise them for leaving me on my own with Karen, but were I in a position to, I would feel wrong not sharing the wealth. I have, by the way, no doubt that were it either of them to come into money, they would not consider helping us. But that doesn’t matter. As I say, that’s who I am, who I’ll always be, and I wouldn’t want to be anyone else.
When I left work in 2009 I got a decent severance package. That lasted for a few years, and things were rosy. I was careful. I didn’t buy anything extravagant, I didn’t go on any holidays (not that I could have done) and yet it went, as money always does. I then had a chance, on reaching age fifty, of taking a lump sum from my retirement pension, which I did, and this got us through another few years. But nothing lasts forever, and the sum dwindled under we were down to scraping a living. Then my aunt died, which was a horribly traumatic experience for us all, but did result in our receiving a small inheritance, which boosted the bank account back up to a reasonable figure.
Nevertheless, I knew it would not last, and I wondered and worried how I would manage when the money ran out. What the government pays me to look after Karen is by no means sufficient to live on, and Karen sadly has little conception of the value of money, so it’s hard to explain to her how tight that money is. She’s quite childish that way. But I couldn’t see any way any more money was coming in to the house, to me or to her, until one fateful day, which brings us back to this February.
I’m sure many lives have been wrecked by the simple words “do you know anything about bitcoin?” An innocuous phrase, and if either a) no interest is expressed or b) the followup talks about a reputable, knowledgeable and professional broker, no harm done, and possibly some cash made. Unfortunately, as in my case, the “s” word applies, but of course I didn’t know that. I did, to give me some small credit (which is removed since I went ahead anyway) consider it, but not for too long.
See, when someone shows you the “profit” they’re making, and they at least are trustworthy, you want to get in on the deal. To be fair to the person talking to me, she didn’t try to hook me in, just showed me what she was making. It was me who went back to her and asked her to put me in contact with this guy. And she did. And from that moment, to paraphrase the end of
The War of the Worlds, I was doomed.
People who run these things are of course clever; they convince you they’re not scammers by playing to your insecurities, providing false information about themselves, ingratiating themselves with you by pretending to sympathise over your situation, explaining how “your money isn’t working in the bank” and making false personal connections with you via made-up stories about their past.
Bastards.
Anyway, it’s fair to say they can’t force you to “invest” your money, so while I can blame them for being cu
nts I can’t shirk the final responsibility. It was me who made the decision to start giving him money to supposedly buy bitcoin and thereby make money for me, so that’s on me.
The story, insofar as it goes for February at least, ends here. Having been inveigled into investing in bitcoin, I did, and I hoped that this might finally be the answer to our problems.Of course, it wasn’t, but I wasn’t to know that at the time.
Meanwhile we had our usual problems with Karen and her kidney infections. I lived - and continue to live - in fear of those words “I feel crap” or “It hurts when I pee” which usually means a call to the D-Doc. Honestly, we ought to have a revolving door installed in our house for the doctors to use! It’s getting ridiculous. But throughout February she had I think three infections (or suspected ones: since she usually can’t give a sample it’s hard for a visiting doctor to be sure, so they usually just go with a best guess) as things got steadily worse.
Had I known what was on the horizon at that time, I would have considered those days in more glowing terms.