10 Billion Pesos……

It’s been an interesting month so far and it’s not over yet. Tax time is always a wonderful time of the year for us all and this one has been a bit challenging for me and my accountants.  I handed all my paperwork in and I thought everything was going along just fine when I got a call that the numbers seemed a bit over the top.  This year I had to include the money I was spending in Mexico. The numbers are over the top, but you are looking at Pesos not American dollars.  When you are looking at $16,500 Pesos it may look like you are in the money, but it’s really $1,500 dollars. So needless to say it looked like I had about 2 to 3 million dollars to write off…..NOT! I couldn’t figure out why they were having such a hard time, but I helped them figure it out.  I think I told you that I bought a home down in Mexico and I had gotten the loan from a Mexican bank with GE as the lender.  Well here we are with the communication breakdown once again.  I really need to learn Spanish and so do we all if we are going to keep up with living in both Countries.  I send an e-mail down to Mexico asking the bank to send me my statements from Sept. to April for my loan payments.  They can’t find them and it takes a few weeks to get me in touch with the right person who might help me.  Well they could help me, but when I phone them I ask for someone who speaks English to help me and they say they don’t have anyone.  What do I do now? I continue to e-mail until I find someone who I can communicate with.  Finally I connect with someone who speaks a little English and I ask him if I can get my statements.  He says yes and he e-mails me some statements and they are twice as much as the money as I was supposed to pay.  My payment is around $950.00 American dollars and they have me paying about 2 times that amount.  So now I’m really freaked out and I start e-mailing every few hours to try to get this taken care of.  I get nowhere fast…no one can help me.  So I go to my bank and get all the statements from my account and guess what…..they have never taken any money from my account.  OK now I am wondering ….who’s account are they taking it from?  I call the guy who speaks just a little English and every time he tells me…Don’t worry Mr. Miller we have everything in complete control….You are up to date on your account and your credit very great.  Now I am really confused and I go back to my bank and to see if we can find anything….I’m thinking maybe someone is trying to make my house default, so they can take it back.  Now I’m really not sleeping very well and starting to get very disturbed.  I call the bank and ask where they are and they tell me in Mexico City and I really don’t want to fly there.  I ask the one person who is helping me…well kind of helping me…and I ask why are they taking out more money than they should and he replies back “I don’t know, but it looks good for your credit” I ask can you show me where is the extra money going and he says he will get back to me. This has been going on now for 3 weeks and yesterday we found where it was coming out of my bank each month just like he said.  The only problem was the amount and the date when it was to be taken out was totally different than what we were told. So I call Mexico and both the bank and I are relieved that the money was coming out… but the amount is way out of line and almost double than I am suppose to be paying.  He said that the extra money is going into an account.  I tell him I don’t want it going into an account and I don’t want them taking any more than my payment. I ask him where can I get a statement of the extra money going into my savings?  He says he is going to try to find it and find out why they are taking out so much. And he assures me one more time……Your credit is looking real good…..I don’t know, but maybe if I knew Spanish things would be different….I don’t think so.