Notes from the meltdown

I got a letter the other day from the good people at Capital One, whose usual (weekly) correspondence consists of offers to transfer a balance to my Capital One credit card (now canceled after the letter, which was a change in terms for the worse) or to "upgrade" a loan I took out with them in 2007.

That loan came at a fortuitous time: We had an assortment of debts, from the now-paid off CRV to the costs and fees associated with being homeowners. OK, there might have been some frivolous stuff in there, too.

The loan terms were pretty good. They handed over a stack of loot eerily similar to what I needed with three years to pay, for about $1,900 in interest (7 percent, so you math whizzes can figure out how much I borrowed). I figure $50-odd a month is an OK price for peace of mind. I pay about that for Internet service, after all.

After about a year of payments, last June or so, I started getting the dear-valued-customer letters offering me the "increased flexibility" of a much larger loan. The most recent offer I got was to lend me $30,000, a portion of which would be used to pay off my current loan and the rest handed over with a minimum payoff plan of four years at 8 percent. To keep payments similar to what they are now, I'd have to opt for the 7-year payoff plan at 9 percent.

Seven years? Ouch. We're very fortunate to be out of woods with debt (unless, you know, you count the next 15 months of loan payments and the 2012 end point for the butterfly lady's student loans and the house), but I would like to remind anyone who thinks me overly smug that I work at a newspaper, which means that being out of debt is pretty god damn urgent.

Cash money dollar (coins) y'all

I'm a coin guy, always have been. Worst shit perpetrated on me by my dear sister and mother was their absurd and bullying insistence I trade a dollar in coins to her for a dollar bill. Why they insisted is beyond me, but it is one of the four grudges I still hold.

• State quarters? Got all but Hawaii.
• New nickels: Check (even if my dear neighbor's brother, the mayor of Seattle and namesake of this coin, disagrees with me on an important issue).
• Silver dollar with Ike? Yup.
• Bicentennial silver dollar with Ike? Yup again.
• SBA? Sacagawea? Yep, yep.
• Snazzy 1940s quarter made of actual silver? You betcha.
• Freakin' awesome Ben Franklin half dollar of same metal? Mm-hmm.
• Unsquelchable desire to see dollar bill go up in smoke and dollar coins (and twos, and fives, for that matter) take over? Yeppers.

But come on: If you leave the pissant $1 bill in circulation, you'll never be able to get out from under it. It is time for los federales to grow a pair, so to speak, and make the dollar the coin of the realm.