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100 HOGS AGREE posted:It's because driving through the car wash is hella fun, duh. This is true, if you go to the car wash for any other reason, your are obviously a soulless shell of a person who hopes washing the dirt of your car will somehow clean off the filth that haunts your dreams.
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Sep 5, 2013 14:07
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I would have a car wash membership if I could get it for like the 2-3 months of winter driving.
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Sep 5, 2013 16:25
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Thesoro posted:To be fair, a sock-a-day habit is substantially cheaper than a pack-a-day habit, and we don't look at smoking as a weirdo habit. I think that's because most smokers you see don't actually smoke a pack a day, more like two or three tops. Dangerous Mind fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 16:35
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Overheard today: If you don't have a car loan, you don't have a nice car
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Sep 5, 2013 17:32
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TLG James posted:I would have a car wash membership if I could get it for like the 2-3 months of winter driving.
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Sep 5, 2013 18:59
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Acquilae posted:The dealership we bought our SUV from does free car washes so see if yours offers that. The dealership where my brother bought his car offered 15 free car washes with the extended warranty. The $7000, 7 year warranty. On a Mazda 2. Thankfully managed to convince him not to take the warranty, because the financial director or whatever was sure doing his best to sell those loving washes.
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Sep 5, 2013 19:03
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TLG James posted:I would have a car wash membership if I could get it for like the 2-3 months of winter driving. A few places do that here in Denver. It is a decent deal if you drive up into the mountains often.
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Sep 5, 2013 19:18
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Speaking of cars, my coworker just bought a $40k BMW 328i. We make $60k/year. He also eats out for breakfast and lunch every single work day.
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Sep 5, 2013 21:07
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THE RED MENACE posted:Speaking of cars, my coworker just bought a $40k BMW 328i. We make $60k/year. He also eats out for breakfast and lunch every single work day. Bought, or leased? I don't think anyone actually buys new BMWs (this is hyperbole).
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Sep 5, 2013 21:16
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SpelledBackwards posted:I don't know why else anyone would buy a membership at a car wash... I had to convince my ex that the "$500 unlimited car washes for a year!!!" package he wanted to buy was a really, really dumb idea. A car wash here is $10 for the ultra-premuim-deluxe-whatever wash. His reasoning was "Well if I wash my truck once a week it'll save me money!" Yeah, 20 bucks! He washed his truck about once a month IF THAT. Speaking of stupid "memberships" my school has a big food court in the student union and you can get a fountain drink there for like two bucks. The union sells these bigass cups that are $299 per year (yes two hundred and ninety-nine dollars PER YEAR) and you can get unlimited soda at the union if you have one. I just...who does that? Who thinks that's a good deal? Who buys that much soda? Seeing the school advertise that drives me crazy!
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Sep 6, 2013 02:31
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razz posted:Speaking of stupid "memberships" my school has a big food court in the student union and you can get a fountain drink there for like two bucks. The union sells these bigass cups that are $299 per year (yes two hundred and ninety-nine dollars PER YEAR) and you can get unlimited soda at the union if you have one. I just...who does that? Who thinks that's a good deal? Who buys that much soda? Seeing the school advertise that drives me crazy! There are probably people for whom this would be a good deal. Two sodas a day, 150 sodas to make your money back... 75 days of school is what, three months or so? Of course, I don't want to think about the number of calories that is 
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Sep 6, 2013 02:36
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FrozenVent posted:Of course, I don't want to think about the number of calories that is Assuming it hasn't changed in 10 years and 12 oz. was 170 cal back then, that's 600 sodas.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:46
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I'm sure there is some student out there getting 100% of their calories from the unlimited soda fountain to save money (and also probably diabetes and tooth decay.)
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Sep 6, 2013 14:29
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SpelledBackwards posted:that's 600 sodas. That's not so much... it's like maybe 3 a day. I probably beat that out when I was in college; I'd have 3 or 4 cans of Orange Crush every day. I have no idea how my teeth and pancreas survived unscathed.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:46
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Yeah by the time I realized I needed to stop I was drinking like, 3-4 cans plus a refillable cup full of soda every day. I've been clean for two years, though I've taken sips of soda since and find it pretty sickenly sweet. I don't know how I did it, glad to be rid of it.
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Sep 6, 2013 15:26
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FrozenVent posted:Of course, I don't want to think about the number of calories that is It's zero if it's diet but I can't imagine that drinking that much diet soda is all that great for you either. Drink water, kids! While we're on the whole "unlimited ____ for a year!" thing, there was a guitar shop here that was offering unlimited free setups/string changes for $500 a year. Even assuming that one couldn't just set up their own instrument (easy once you learn it, takes maybe an hour) or change their own strings (assuming you have the most difficult/annoying kind of guitar to change strings on and you're doing it for the first time, only half an hour), an individual setup costs $60, and once you have your instrument set up, you only need to adjust it once every three months/with seasonal changes (so $240) and playing an hour a day you can get away with changing strings once a month (typically $10 or $20, so $120-$240). Now, this might not be a bad deal if you had multiple guitars, but this deal only applied to one guitar. It's also worth mentioning that the turnaround for string changes was about a day, and setting up a guitar was about a week. Really, only a deal for the extraordinarily lazy/unmotivated/obsessive (but not obsessive enough to do it themselves). And, at the end of the day, you're paying $20 extra for the same service.
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Sep 6, 2013 17:44
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It's me. I was the one bad with money.  I was 22, straight out of college, and luckily landed a teaching gig right away. Student loan debt: $12,500 The good news was I had a job, the bad news was I had to work (training and the first month of school) with no pay. Started trainings in July, got first check at the end of September. So I lived in the ghetto. I had enough cash to pay for rent/utilities those months, but nothing else. So, what did I do? Credit card debt: ~$5,000 over four months. Including a new laptop. I am a moron. But I'll be making the big public school teacher bucks soon, right? No sweat! Woo hoo! Start getting paychecks. Buy a $500 TV with the first one. Move across town into a nicer place with a roommate. Look at all this space... I need bedroom furniture! Furniture card debt: ~$2,500 Roommate gets evicted. She had all the living room furniture! Guess I need more! More furniture card debt: ~$1,200 The furniture debt I actually paid off within the 0% interest window, thank GOD. That 5k of credit card debt just sat there and no matter how much I paid off, I spent it right back up. It took me 5 years to pay off that 5k credit card debt. I finished paying it off last November. The furniture debts I paid off within 18 months of purchase each. The student loans were paid off as of a few weeks ago with a loan forgiveness grant. I only actually paid maybe $1,200 of what I took out. So, being debt free was really awesome for two weeks.  But, I now have a car payment.  It's a car that will last me forever, wasn't brand new, and it won't take me 5 years to pay off. My previous car needed a lot of repairs, was only worth $900, and since I drive over the mountains so much, I figured it was time to bite the bullet. Being in all that debt has made me learn a lot about budgeting and how to save for goals the hard way. I saved up for a trip to Europe last year, and for the down payment on my car. Now to learn how to save for retirement and rainy day expenses! And I'm using YNAB - which is much better than mint for a personality like mine.
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Sep 9, 2013 01:40
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spinst posted:I'll be making the big public school teacher bucks soon, right? No sweat! You are the first person I've ever seen use this phrase with no trace of sarcasm or irony. Unless that line was tongue-in-cheek. I'm glad you fixed your debt situation! E: VVV Actually, yes, I am a moron. In my defense, I had to wake up 3 hours earlier than normal this morning. WampaLord fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Sep 11, 2013 |
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Sep 11, 2013 19:54
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WampaLord posted:You are the first person I've ever seen use this phrase with no trace of sarcasm or irony. Unless that line was tongue-in-cheek.  No trace of sarcasm or irony? Serious question, is english your first language?
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Sep 11, 2013 20:00
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Exercise for your students: Choose the answer that best shows use of sarcasm: A: I had an exciting career sucking cocks for beer and pocket change, but then I found a job paying the big public school teacher bucks. B: The big public school teacher bucks wasn't the primary draw for me; being able to guide future generations of students early in their lives was reward enough. C: I has trouble finding kids to diddle, but then I found a job paying the big public school teacher bucks. D: I heard about the big public school teacher bucks, but I think that volunteering as a student teacher is a reward in itself.
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Sep 11, 2013 20:20
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My girlfriend works as a nanny, and the family she's working for now is, as she puts it, the first family where having a nanny is a necessity and not a luxury. They have five children, so it's cheaper for them to pay her to come over than to pay for child care for five kids. The wife's a social worker, and the husband used to work at one of those rent-to-own places, so they didn't make a ton of money. A few years ago, he decided he was going to live his dream and went off to Myrtle Beach to attend some for-profit golf college for two years (while his wife was pregnant with his fourth child), costing him about $35K. He did get a golf job after graduation... working at the pro shop of a local golf course for $9 per hour. Which he didn't need that "degree" for. In addition, while he was gone, the family was down to one income, and ended up having their house, bought at the peak of the housing bubble, foreclosed on. The wife moved in with her parents for a while, and had very few expenses - the parents didn't charge her rent or utilities and pretty much bought all the food for the whole family. But even with that, the wife was broke all the time; my girlfriend ended up getting paid by the parents more often than not. They finally moved into a second house the parents owned, where they still don't pay rent but are now responsible for the utilities (though half the time, they just ignore the bills until something gets cut off). Oh, and this house is 2 bedrooms, with them having 5 children. There's a bunk bed in what would normally be the dining room. But okay, fine, maybe a tiny house with no rent is what they need to get back on their feet financially. Nope, gotta have stuff. At one point, they had 6 cars - all that they paid under $2000 for, and all falling apart. Apparently having fewer, slightly better cars was not an option. In addition, the living room is pretty small in this house, maybe 10 by 14 feet or so. They had a wall-mounted 30" LCD, which made sense given the size of the room. But the husband decided that wasn't big enough, so he went to the rent-to-own place he used to work and traded it in... for an 80", rear-projection, analog TV. This thing's depth is 20% of the width of their living room, and you're only sitting 6 feet from it. The picture quality is atrocious compared to a modern LCD, it's far too big for the room, but hey - with the trade-in, it only cost them $2000! And, of course, they're making monthly payments on it, so it's such a good deal! The most recent debacle is that the wife got pissed at the cable company for having the nerve to put her on hold for five minutes, so she cancelled the service. This family watches at least three or four hours of Netflix per night. So she went to Sprint, where the salesman convinced her that the best course of action would be to have a Mi-Fi cellular hotspot, and she got the 4 GB data plan for it, because the unlimited plan was too expensive (around $100/month, if I remember correctly). The overage charge on this plan is five cents per megabyte. My girlfriend pointed out that a month of Netflix-driven overages would lead to a data bill in the thousands of dollars, but the wife would have none of it. So it's going to be fun to see their bill next month.
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Sep 13, 2013 14:05
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So one of our friends asked for investing advice at the beginning of the month and I gave them my recommendations with the stocks I have in my IRA portfolio, writing only this on a piece of paper: Pick 1: AAPL, INTC, IBM Pick 1: COST, WMT, KRFT, K Pick 1: LLY, JNJ Pick 1: PG, UL Pick 1: GE, BA, GM Pick 1: XOM, CVX Got a semi-angry call on Wednesday with friend's wife telling me I gave him "bad investment advice" and those stocks have been an aggregate +1% over the course of two weeks and with her 3 minutes of security analysis experience said it was a bad time to invest as the market was down. She talked him into selling all the stocks, even CostCo which had a ~6% gain P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:So it's going to be fun to see their bill next month. Acquilae fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 13, 2013 |
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Sep 13, 2013 16:47
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Acquilae posted:Got a semi-angry call on Wednesday with friend's wife telling me I gave him "bad investment advice" Uhm, I'm going to agree with the wife (for different reasons). Telling someone who has no idea what they're doing to buy individual stocks is the very definition of "bad investment advice". Content: I was a retail slave a few years ago with a guy who was in his late 50's. He would always boast about how he is such a savvy investor, and he's making all kinds of money with his side business and his investment portfolio, blah blah blah. I found it hard to believe. Why would someone work a crappy, boring, unfulfilling job folding clothes and working every single weekend/holiday if they didn't need the money? (He got health insurance from his wife's job, so that wasn't it either)
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Sep 13, 2013 17:46
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P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:In addition, the living room is pretty small in this house, maybe 10 by 14 feet or so. They had a wall-mounted 30" LCD, which made sense given the size of the room. But the husband decided that wasn't big enough, so he went to the rent-to-own place he used to work and traded it in... for an 80", rear-projection, analog TV. This thing's depth is 20% of the width of their living room, and you're only sitting 6 feet from it. The picture quality is atrocious compared to a modern LCD, it's far too big for the room, but hey - with the trade-in, it only cost them $2000! And, of course, they're making monthly payments on it, so it's such a good deal! I've done the giant TV thing before in a small apartment it was terrible. It was 2005 or so and I had this genius idea that I didn't like this CRT TV I was using, and a friend of mine needed a TV, so I upgraded. To a 52" Mitsubishi Rear Projection set. At the time, my couch sat about 6-7' from the TV and I could get motion sickness if I leaned forward while on the couch. I had that for close to year, sold it to a coworker who had a basement that it would be perfect in and got a 32" LCD from Costco. Kinda wish I had room for it, because if you sat the right distance from it the picture quality was honestly really good, shame that right distance was in the hallway outside my apartment. Actually TV's are my own albatross for being bad with money. A friend is using the same 24" CRT for about 18 years now, I've gone through 4 in 10 years, but I think the plasma I have now is a keeper. At least until OLED get cheap. CitizenKain fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Sep 13, 2013 |
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Sep 13, 2013 19:01
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CitizenKain posted:At the time, my couch sat about 6-7" from the TV and I could get motion sickness if I leaned forward while on the couch.
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Sep 13, 2013 20:19
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canyoneer posted:Uhm, I'm going to agree with the wife (for different reasons). Telling someone who has no idea what they're doing to buy individual stocks is the very definition of "bad investment advice".
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Sep 13, 2013 21:43
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40% of the people in my zipcode spend 35%+ of their income (I assume gross) on rent. That seems crazy to me. Find out about your zipcode/town here: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml
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Sep 13, 2013 21:47
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MickeyFinn posted:40% of the people in my zipcode spend 35%+ of their income (I assume gross) on rent. That seems crazy to me. Find out about your zipcode/town here: That doesn't seem unreasonable to me, but I live in the Bay Area. 50%+ is where it really seems to get dicey. I spend about 45% of my graduate student income on rent, but I have additional resources through unemployment and savings. For 35% of my income in the city I live in I could maybe rent a shared bedroom with some undergrad students. In the city? Not even a crack motel.
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Sep 13, 2013 22:08
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I'm getting consistant 40+% of people who spend 35+% on rent in my zipcode and a few nearby towns. It's not that the rent is ridiculous here either - $500-$1000 a month places are common. It might be skewed by the fact that lower-income households will be forced to rent more often than higher-income ones, but that's just conjecture on my part.
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Sep 13, 2013 22:32
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Rent can only go so low, and lower income households (students especially) will spend a greater percentage of their income on fixed expenses, such as rent. I suppose places with high real estate costs would also skew the average, but really we're getting away from the subject. A friend went to a Primerica presentation who was shocked to learn that banks loan out money at a higher interest rate than the rate they give saving accounts. She has a management degree. She did at least a semester of Econ. Found out today she also had a third party warranty on her car.
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Sep 13, 2013 22:40
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SpelledBackwards posted:Inches, you say? That wasn't motion sickness, you were hitting your head on the TV. Well, it was a pretty small living room. But yea, ' not ".
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Sep 13, 2013 22:44
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Acquilae posted:Eh, he wanted a recommendation on stocks that gave a dividend instead of an index portfolio. I wasn't going to talk him into Tesla or some lottery stock. MickeyFinn posted:40% of the people in my zipcode spend 35%+ of their income (I assume gross) on rent. That seems crazy to me. Find out about your zipcode/town here:
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Sep 13, 2013 23:24
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I spend 55% of my income on rent. My rent is only $800 per month for a 2br house
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Sep 14, 2013 14:30
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canyoneer posted:Uhm, I'm going to agree with the wife (for different reasons). Telling someone who has no idea what they're doing to buy individual stocks is the very definition of "bad investment advice". quote:Content: I was a retail slave a few years ago with a guy who was in his late 50's. He would always boast about how he is such a savvy investor, and he's making all kinds of money with his side business and his investment portfolio, blah blah blah. The stock market is a wild creature. This is why big-shot investment firms have all sorts of neat tools available to them which those hacks who pretend to be investment geniuses don't, ie. sophisticated forecasting software, market analysts who spend every hour of their working days scrutinizing securities' potential, leveraged trades, positions set to offset other positions that might be in the red, $millions in assets at their disposal, etc. And even then, these large investment firms experience losses in their portfolios (some lasting several quarters) very frequently. So whenever I hear some hack spewing out bad investment advice because "I just made $x dollars on my last trade! Trust me when I say that stock x is a good buy" my bullshit detector starts going off instantly. Sorry to go off on a rant, there. I just hate those Jim Cramer-wannabes who strut around their workplaces pretending to be investment gurus. melon cat fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 16:06
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I agree fully (professional advisor here as well). The other thing that most people don't understand is that many times the market moves irrationally in the short term. Why? People make emotional decisions about money, not rational.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:22
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WampaLord posted:You are the first person I've ever seen use this phrase with no trace of sarcasm or irony. Unless that line was tongue-in-cheek. It may have been tongue-in-cheek, yes.
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Sep 17, 2013 23:56
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This was on the YNAB Blog but I thought it was totally appropriate for this thread: http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/2013/youre-spending-your-entire-student-loan-on-cigarettes-and-beer/?fb_source=pubv1 quote:
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Sep 18, 2013 17:35
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Was this gas station in Mexico?  I suppose it depends on what part of the country you live in, but that's awful cheap for beer from my experience.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:44
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Volmarias posted:Was this gas station in Mexico? Safeway on occasion has sales on Corona for about that much or even cheaper.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:49
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Volmarias posted:Was this gas station in Mexico? You can get much cheaper beer. They sell 30 packs of poo poo like keystone for like $15 or something. Obviously, you can spend a ton more on beer. I know I spend at least $20 a week on beer, but I'm drinking poo poo like sierra nevada.
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Sep 18, 2013 18:18
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