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Unemployed People CAN Get a Break
Today Citigroup said it would give mortgage relief to people who lose their jobs, temporarily reducing payments for qualified borrowers to $500 a month for three months.
It always struck us as somewhat unjust that businesses offered the best deals to the people who least needed them—free designer clothing to celebrities, lavish dinners for high-profile editors, discounts to wealthy patrons. Often, the more money you make, the more perks you get. (Not that we have ever willingly declined said perks…)
Citi’s new policy isn’t exactly a reversal of that trend. But it is another example of companies extending a hand to people who have are finding themselves in, um, “changed circumstances.” While it doesn’t get the people with money to spend more, maybe it will get the broke to cut back less.
Earlier this year, Hyundai made headlines by announcing that customers who financed a car after January 3 and lost their jobs within a year could give it back, with no penalty. The Korean carmaker hoped it would ease some anxiety and get people spending.
“We’re seeing people who are stuck,” Joel Ewanick, vice president marketing for Hyundai Motor America, told the AP. “Really they have a mental fatigue and they’re really nervous about their long-term financial situation, so we started working on that side of it.”
There are many smaller examples around the country, from practical to just plain pointless:
Goddard Schools, which has more than 320 franchised childcare centers around the country, says locations in Austin, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Atlanta have instituted Interview Care. If you lose your job and can’t afford to keep your child enrolled, you can drop him or her off for free if you have an interview. Joseph Schumacher, chief operating officer of Goddard Systems, says “a handful” of parents have taken Goddard up on the offer.
Peoples Income Tax, a chain in Virginia, is giving a 50 percent discount to people who have recently been laid off.
In Laguna Hills, Calif., you can get services half price at StressBusters Lifestyle Day Spa if you’ve gotten axed.
Iyengar Yoga in New York has reduced prices—$10 a class—for the unemployed.
WeRecoverData.com is discounting its services 35 percent for people who recently lost their jobs “and need their resumes for job hunting and/or financial information to prepare their taxes.”
Centenary College in Hackettstown, N.J., gives a second class free to anyone who has lost their job and enrolls in an adult accelerated program.
Bikram Yoga Longwood in Florida is giving $2 off its $14 classes. Yipee.
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I neglected to include the Jet Blue deal. To encourage travel, the airline will refund your airfare if you lose your job before a trip.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10464400/1/jetblue-to-refund-ticket-if-you-lose-job.html
Holiday companies in the UK are doing something similar for people who’ve been made redundant – either giving them discounts or offering free insurance. The banks are meant to be deferring mortgage payments, but that strikes me as nothing different from offering a mortgage holiday – which you end up paying for after the break anyway. It seems to me that all the banks that are receiving huge amounts of taxpayers money to prop them up should offer deferred mortgage payments with no penalty.