The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 13

THE EVENING (Jfjfijyj1 ON PEOPLE ARTS LEISURE PAGE 1 PAGE 1 BALTIMORE, THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1976 Stretching Your Dollars: Consumer Loan Rate Lower It's spring and you want to fix up some things around the house or perhaps take that long-awaited trip or just consolidate some old bills, so you decide to lake out a loan. In his question-and-answer column today, consumer writer David Lightman of The Evening Sun discusses various types of loans, the amount of interest you may have to pay and what to be careful about in choosing your loan. Question I weal to a loan company the other day and got very confused. I only wanted to borrow 0, but the man kept urging me to borrow either more or less than that. Why? Answer-Because the loan company loses money when it has to lend amounts like $800.

Q. How come? A. Because most companies can make either consumer loans or small loans, and the maximum interest and loan ceilings on each are different. Is a small loan? A. It's a loan made by a firm with a state small loan license.

The most it can lend is $500. The company can charge interest of 36 per cent on the first $300, and 24 per cent on the next $200. Q. What's a consumer loan? A. One made by someone with a consumer loan license.

The most he can lend is $3,500. Maximum interest is 18 per cent, regardless of how much is borrowed. Q. So the consumer loan is the tage interest rates before, but I'm also interested in actual dollars. How much will it cost me to borrow money as a small loan? A.

The annual amount you'd pay under current maximum interest rates are on $100 $20 60; on $200 on $300 $63.68, on $400 on Q. How about on consumer loans? A. -We'll start with $600. You generally don't get consumer loans for less than that amount. By the way.

interest on a consumer loan is computed differently from a small loan On a small loan, you pay interest only on the outstanding balance each month. On a consumer loan, you pay interest on the entire principal, regardless of how much it dim-inshes month by month. Q. Okay, so what would I be paying annually as interest on a consumer loan? $600 on on $800 $80.13: on on $1.000 $100.16: on $110.18: on $1.200 $120.19. you'll pay $120 19 on $1,200.

What should I do when this happens? A You may want to consider walking out of the company, but people are usually not inclined to do that because they probably won't get much different treatment at other loan companies, and they usually need money fairly quickly. Q. Let's say I stay. Should I fight for $800, or take $500 or A. Mr.

Erwin suggests taking the $1,200. A. -Because for only a little more in actual interest dollars, you're getting a lot more money. Q. Anything else 1 should look for when I go into one of these companies? A.

-Mr. Erwin advises that if you intend to make a small loan, stick to the amount you want to borrow. "Don't let them take you up to $500. Borrow only what you need and not a penny more," he says. Q.

You talked about percen better loan, right? A. -Sure. But remember, most companies have both types of licenses, and they have strict standards for who gets what type of loan. 4 What are the standards? A. "It's purely a judgmental thing," says Robert W.

Gasaway, vice president of the Maryland Consumer Finance Association, which represents most of the companies. Q. In general, who gets a consumer loan? A. who's a family man, a homeowner, married with has been on the same job five years or more," says Mr. Gasaway.

"Also one who shows the risk of lending him money is minimal." Q. Who gets a small loan? A. "Almost exactly the opposite type of person," says Mr. Gasaway. "We're talking about someone who has no equities in properties and has little in the way of personal or family responsibilities.

His credit is probably slow, and he relies totally on his current income to meet his financial obligations." Q. So the consumer loan is the more attractive loan. Now let's say I'm going to get a loan, what's the first thing I should do when I walk into the company office? A. "Ask for and read the truth-in-lending statements they've got to give to you," says H. Robert Erwin, of Baltimore City Legal Aid's Consumer Law Center.

"Compare the annual percentage rates you're being offered on both a small loan and a consumer loan." Q. Why compare percentage rates? Shouldn't I be worried about the monthly payment? A. Not immediately. Say you want to borrow $800. Mr.

Erwin says the loan company may try to loan you only $500 or $1,200. A. Because at $500, it can charge the effective annual small loan interest rate of 33.61 per cent, and thus collect a total of $95.68 over one year But look what happens if you borrow $800. The lender has got to give you an 18 per cent interest rate-and you wind up paying only $80.13 a year. Q.

So he'd make more money on me if he only loaned $500. But why would he want me to borrow A. Because he'll still make more money on you than he would at $800. At 18 per cent interest. She's A Congenial Asset To The Campaign Expertise Purveyors Are Costly California Informality Helps Mrs.

Tydings Washington (AP)-The Seventeenth-Century philosopher Le Ro-chefoucald observed that nothing is given so freely as advice. At the end of last year, according to a new government report, there were 1.267 federal advisory committees whose only purpose was giving advice. But it was not free. It cost American taxpayers $51.7 million in 1975 for 1,070 reports from 25,630 purveyors of expertise. Watching over all these committees is the Committee Management Secretariat at the Office of Management and Budget, which published the report.

Chief of the secretariat is William Bonstell, who insisted, "The most glaring examples of committees that outlived their usefulness have been abolished." But a committee on International Intellectual Property (spelled In-tellectural in the report) and the National Magnet Laboratory Visiting Committee still exist. Bonstell says the $100-a -day consultant is a thing of the past. Now he is a $145 36-a-day consultant. But some agencies don't pay their advisers at all. he added.

Nearly one-fourth of the advisory committees worked for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The report doesn't delve into the nature of the work done by these mysterious-sounding groups. It merely lists them alphabetically and by departments, and says they "have long been an important means lor securing expert advice, ideas and diverse opinions by the federal government." However, an Eighteenth-Century man. the Earl of Chesterfield, said a mouthful: "Advice is seldom welcome: and those who want it most always like it least." By Sharon Dickman Oakington, past encased in this 150-year-old estate has little meaning for Terry Lynn Tydings. On the grounds is a stately manor house tinged with formality in its paintings and mantels and dim corners.

Still, she asks to be interviewed at this Harford county estate called Oakington where she lives only part-time. Admittedly, the essence of her style is informality, but she smiles and settles into the solarium with its cushioned rattan furniture, glass table tops and pure white lattice trim. Then it comes out. Terry Tydings enjoys the view of the Chesapeake Bay, a greening lawn and blue and yellow flowers of the decor because it all reminds her of California. She has spent most of her 35 years living and returning to California and when she doesn't dream of deep powder skiing, she wants to plan her own commercial photography operation.

"I'm going back Into children's photography." Mrs. Tydings explains, no matter what the outcome of the May primary in which her husband is a candidate. Her older daughter, Paige, has been a favorite model when it comes to interesting potential customers in her work. In the early 1970's, Terry Tydings worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity and photographed migrant laborers and their children in the south and west. The sun parlor seems her refuge in the house she adopted when she married Joseph D.

Tydings a year ago. Neither she nor her husband, who is running in the Democratic primary for a crack at the U.S. Senate seat he once held, spend much time at Oakington. They usually stay in a three-bedroom apartment in Washington where Mr. Tydings has a law practice.

Mr. Tydings was divorced last year from his first wife, Virginia Campbell Tydings. For Terry Huntingdon Tydings, making the rounds with her husband is providing a close-up of the vagabond existence inherent in campaigning. "I'm still very up about campaigning. I hear from people that I'll get tired of it," she says in a tone of disbelief.

Mrs. Tydings has never campaigned before, but she worked for several years in the Capitol Hill office of Senator Alan Cranston Calif.) as a receptionist and personal assistant. "If you can pick a thing to do to prepare you for campaigning, that is it," she's found out. The campaign has been one long tour of Maryland, but Mrs. Tydings usually steers clear of making appearances alone because she's still learning about the state.

Her role is that of a companion. Questions on issues don't come her way often, but she does answer them all. Most people consider her a campaign asset when it comes to being congenial and ready with a friendly handshake. Her husband rushes ahead, but Terry Tydings lingers a little to make small talk. Many people she meets here are unaware of it, but Terry Huntingdon was crowned Miss USA in 1959 and went on to place third in the Miss Universe pageant that year.

During an interview, she almost forgets to mention that fact. A 19-year-old UCLA dance major at the time, she worked in television for two years after the contest. She had leading roles in such series as "The Untouchables" and "Perry Mason." Mrs. Tydings's desire for television exposure began to wane and she decided leave the entertainment business. bout that time, she was involved in unfavorable personal publicity unrelated to her television career.

"I just felt I wasn't in control of my Dwn life. Everybody wants you to be something other than you are," she says of show business. For five generations, her family has lived in California and her hometown of Mt. Shasta rests at the foot of a peak. She first met Joseph Tydings when he was a senator and traveling out west.

In those days, Terry Tydings worked as a production manager for moderately priced women's clothing at what she calls a Los Angeles dress house She was getting an ulcer from the pressure so she started modeling in the late 1960's for a French designer who worked in California. Her shoulders are a perfect size 10, she says, but she's shorter and not as thin as those willowy Vogue models. Her brown hair with its red highlights lays softly around her oval face as she simultaneously talks and tries to amuse her younger daughter, Alexandra. She fancies herself as a country girl and once thought of renovating a silo in rural Virginia. When she was growing up, Mrs.

Tydings often spent summers with her grandmother who built most of her own house after she retired. "She laid a fireplace as high as she could reach and then she brought in two men to finish it," Mrs. Tydings says of her grandmother who is now 90. "She's had tremendous influence on me. She's a very independent woman who believes in work and staying very involved." Terry Tydings expresses those same intentions about campaigning as a project the whole family shares Her two daughters live with the couple and make some appearances.

Unmistakably, she is willing to tackle politics. Just an arm's length in front of her are three glass ashtrays with the words "United States Senate imprinted on the bottom. An appropriate reminder. SunDaoers Photo William Hot: TERRY LYNN TYDINGS "I'm still very up about campaigning. I hear from people that III get tired of it." Only The Brightest Pupils At This School Highly Competitive Russians Learn English schools, and still others gain employment as tourist guides or work in institutions serving foreigners.

"About once a month we invite delegations of visiting Americans or Englishmen to the school so the children can practice," the principal said. "We also exchange letters with classes at schools in the United States and Britain." Contact with the West, however, is limited. The school's main current affairs reading matters is the Moscow News, an English-language weekly published by the Soviets and often written in the formal Engish of official Soviet translators. Now and then a copy of the Morning Star, the British Communist party paper, is also available. One pupil from another English language school complained that she tried to get her own American pen pal through official Soviet bodies.

"I had no answer from them. Nothing at all," she said Her ambition is to be a Soviet interpreter working overseas, she added. School No. 17 has 750 pupils with 15 English-language teachers. Other subjects, such as masthematics and history, are studied in Russian.

Moscow (API-Eleven years old and very timid, the Russian boy faced the class and spoke in halting English. "Our country washes, he began. "The country can't wash anything," barked the teacher. "Passive Voice! Use it!" "Our country is washed," the boy quickly corrected himself, "by 13 seas and 3 oceans. "Our country is the largest country in the world." There were only 13 children in the classroom that day at Primary School No.

17 for the English Language in a wartime brick building in southeastern Moscow. One by one, boys in dark school uniforms and girls wearing the red scarves of the Young Pioneer Communist Youth organization came to the blackboard to write new words or give recitations. Like their teacher, they all had pronounced accents and their wording sounded formal and bookish. But most of them, although only 11 or 12, already spoke easily and with practically no grammatical faults. Primary School No.

17 is no ordinary Soviet school. It is one of 74 specialized institutions in Moscow that take in only the brightest pupils and then saturate them with English from age 7 to 19. There are similar schools in every important Soviet city. While Soviet ideology holds that Russian will eventually become a leading world language, the Soviet Union is thoroughly preparing a corps of young specialists in English, plus others in German, French and Spanish. "All our pupils will use English in some way in their later lives," the school's deputy director, Irina Borontso-va, said after the lesson.

"This school is just 10 years eld but already we have a few of our pupils starting work in the diplomatic corps." Because of the careers they can lead to, the schools are highly competitive. Parents bring their children there for auditions where they must demonstrate ability to read and write Russian well and pass physical, psychological and creativity tests. Those accepted enter a largely English atmosphere for the rest of their primary school days, with English lessons every day and English-language signs and displays everywhere. The school, like all those in the Soviet Union, charges no tuition. The best graduates often go on to the prestigious Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages, while others working from foreign technical articles, get jobs at engineering ENGLISH LESSONS A young Russian pupil in Primary School No.

17 is corrected in her recitation of English lesson by her teacher Tatyana Blyumental. 1.