Donald Trump reportedly used a bail bondsman after being arrested at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, paying $20,000 of his bond set at $200,000 and taking out a loan for the rest of it. The fact that the former president resorted to such a measure has sparked questions on social media about the state of his finances.
But this isn’t the same kind of thing. When the court sets bail, you give them that amount as like a deposit. When you show up to court, you get it back. Lots of people don’t have the cash though, so they go to a ball bondsman, give them 10% of the total amount, and the bondsman pays the court the whole amount. When you show up to court, the bondsman gets that amount back, and they keep your 10%.
So yes, it’s a loan, but it’s a really shitty loan. I can’t see how he wouldn’t be better off just paying the full amount himself unless he thinks he can successfully skip town.
Completely agree with you, however if trump thought he would get more than 20k in returns on the 180k in principle he saved, this also is a good financial play.
That said, 200k is petty cash for a billionaire. Or should be, if one was.
I suppose a big factor is how long until trial. If it’s less than a year, it seems unlikely he’d get that, but if he manages to stretch it out to multiple years, he’d get that easily.
It’s .02%, or .0002 of a billion. That’s a whoops it slipped out of my pocket while I was changing my diaper kind of petty cash.
Depending on how long it is until hed get the deposit back, they money may be better off invested.
I don’t know the schedule, but I think it’s supposed to be expedited because of the upcoming election. But if Trump is successful in stalling it, who knows how long that money would be tied up.
IMO he’s probably planning on playing games and no showing, but it may make sense financially too depending on their plan
Funny, I just said basically the same thing to someone else. Yeah, if he pushes it out a couple years, he’d really make more investing it.
Yep. I’d say that no matter what, it’s a bad idea to do business w Trump, but it may be worth 20 or 200k to the bail bondsman for the notoriety
If he knows he’s going to show up for court, why would he tie up $200k in this when he can do it with $20k? Posting bail isn’t an investment.
Even if he just had the money in a savings account right now he would be making over $7k/month instead of $0. I get it, to someone who supposedly has billions, $7k isn’t anything, but it’s still $7k. I think at that point it’s more about the principle of the thing and the habits than the actual dollars and cents. And depending on how long this drags out, $7k/month ads up, and if he would have dipped into a better investment than a basic savings account, it would be more.
$7k a month in a bank? What bank is paying 3.8% monthly? That’s something like 44% annually. Are you maybe applying some annual interest rate monthly? If he was getting 5% annual growth on $180k, bed be getting something like $750 a month, or $9k a year. He’d have to put his court date off for 2.2 years to make that pay off.
Why do you think a savings account would pay $7k a month on a $200k balance?