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Sounds a lot like one of my friends. She lives in rural Alabama (insanely low cost of living area) and lives with her mom. She makes $60K a year and pays no rent or bills and she's just this constant whirlwind of drama and debt and getting manicures and massages and "Oh my student loans, I'll never pay them off" and buying a new SUV every couple of years and buying a $4 coffee every day and having (and breaking) the newest phone on the market whenever possible. If I wasn't good friends with her I would think I was making all this poo poo up, she's like the perfect caricature of being bad with money. I let her live with me rent-free for 2 months and she got mad at me when I asked her for $60 to replace multiple things of mine she broke while living on my couch, while making like double my salary. A guy she worked with said she brought in donuts for the crew EVERY DAY. I finally told her to move out and she somehow convinced a "lady from church" to let her rent a room from her for $100 a month and of course this was just an outrage, $100 a month for rent, how dare she charge so much? Did I mention she made more money than me and I got along fine paying $350/month for rent plus utility bills? She's hopeless. Some people just can't figure out money or don't want to. I tried to help her but she wouldn't let me. EDIT: I realized that typing that out felt familiar, I posted about her in this thread before haha  She's really the worst person with money that I've ever met.What's funny is this all happened like 3 years ago. Every time I talk to her she says the SAME stuff about having no money. Exact same story. Still living with mom. razz fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 22:57
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That sounds unbelievably frustrating. I want to see a pie chart of her expenses so badly. I wish someone would give me a place to rent for free, I wouldn't spit it in their face like that...
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Nov 11, 2013 23:04
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Jeffrey posted:That sounds unbelievably frustrating. I want to see a pie chart of her expenses so badly. I wish someone would give me a place to rent for free, I wouldn't spit it in their face like that... No kidding. We almost lost our friendship because of it. I had to buy an extra trash can because she could not walk 15 feet to the kitchen trashcan, she would throw used tissues on the floor or shove them in the couch... I asked her if she would clean the house before she left (mind you I charged her NOTHING to stay there and NEVER asked her for rent, utility bills, or help around the house except this one time). I asked if she would vacuum and dust and make sure the kitchen was clean and she said no problem. I come home and the only thing different was that her stuff was gone. I asked her if she had vacuumed and she said she had. Odd that the canister was empty and I found multiple Q-tips next to the couch.
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Nov 11, 2013 23:07
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I've met people who go to places like University of Phoenix, yet get on MY case for taking classes at my local community college. "WE go to a university!"  Oh, OK. Never mind that my college is really high quality, and that it's inexpensive enough that I can pay for my classes out of my own pocket. THEY go to a UNIVERSITY! (Speaking of 'bad with money', I have an acquaintance who is going to UoP, to get his Business Accounting degree. And then get accepted and go to a Top-14 Law School, because naturally a UoP Bachelor's is in high demand by places like Yale and Harvard. Which then means that he'll get that $400.00 an hour that he so desperately needs, because his main goal in life? Is to retire by 50. He's 33 now. Clearly, this plan is FLAWLESS. I tried to talk him about of Law School, but he wouldn't listen. Oh well - his debt load, not mine.)
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Nov 12, 2013 00:40
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razz posted:No kidding. We almost lost our friendship because of it. I had to buy an extra trash can because she could not walk 15 feet to the kitchen trashcan, she would throw used tissues on the floor or shove them in the couch... What confuses me about this is why this situation went on for more than a week. You aren't paying rent? You're cleaning. Those are the rules. If a grown adult were living on my couch without paying bills, AND left trash on the floor because they were too lazy to get up, the second time that happened, that adult would be out on their rear end. I have kicked out siblings for this bullshit.
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Nov 12, 2013 00:49
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Qu Appelle posted:I've met people who go to places like University of Phoenix, yet get on MY case for taking classes at my local community college. Because obviously, he's going to be hired by a big $$ law firm once his UOP degree leads him to a 4th-tier law school in LA. Great plan there. I believe you go to UOP if you want a dental/pharmacist degree. Nothing else, correct?
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Nov 12, 2013 01:22
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To be fair, the prestige of your undergrad school has little effect on law school admissions. For profit schools are overpriced regardless, and he'd be much better served going to an inexpensive public university, but he can get into a great law school if he gets straight As and crushes the LSAT.
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Nov 12, 2013 01:25
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NancyPants posted:What confuses me about this is why this situation went on for more than a week. You aren't paying rent? You're cleaning. Those are the rules. If a grown adult were living on my couch without paying bills, AND left trash on the floor because they were too lazy to get up, the second time that happened, that adult would be out on their rear end. I have kicked out siblings for this bullshit. Well, she had just moved to my town (I basically got her the job) and I told her she could crash with me until she got her first paycheck in a month so she could put down a deposit on her own place. Of course she was TOTALLY broke when she got here. We had been friends for a while and you know, I didn't know quite how big of a slob she was. We worked together and lived in hotels so it always seemed kind of a mess but I figured that's pretty typical when 2 people are living in one room out of a suitcase. Nope, turns out she was that big of a slob. I really wanted her out after 2 weeks or so but I'm a nice person and she was my friend so I let her stay. Then she got her paycheck and still hadn't found a place after 2 or 3 more weeks and broke a lamp, a hair dryer, and a can opener (how?) without telling me. The lamp thing pissed me off but also made me laugh - it was one of those tall standing floor lamps and she somehow broke the 5 foot tall pole and "fixed" it by wrapping duct tape around it. As if I wouldn't notice. Anyway I learned my lesson about letting friends crash with me for free! Never again, and I mean NEVER. The sense of entitlement some people have is through the roof. And unfortunately you never really "know" your friends until they're in your living room 24/7.
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Nov 12, 2013 01:54
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Jastiger posted:I dunno, my parents own a timeshare through the Marriott system. They purchase a "home base" time share,which is worth a base amount of points, and accrue points whenever they stay at a Marriott. The points are transferable, so if they can't stay at their "home base" in say, Arizona, they can stay at any Marriott for free in the world. All because they purchased a Marriott timeshare. Now, I've seen terrible timeshares where you get to use it for like a week a year, then yeah..those are shady as hell. But I've had to change my opinion on the timeshares my parents picked up, it's super nice. When they visited us, we all just stayed in Seattle for free, next year they'll hit like Hawaii or something, and the following we'll hit "home base" with the whole family. My in-laws have had the same kind of Marriott timeshare for about 20 years, and they will be the first ones to tell you that it was a bad financial decision. They bought it when they'd been married for a little while and my father-in-law had just gotten a good job. The main problem is that you really have no idea where you're going to be financially or what your taste is in 20 years. They've done very well for themselves (retired early, heaps of money) and they want to vacation in places that don't have a Marriott resort. You have to make your plans up to years in advance for many destinations, and while the credits are good for a couple years, they do expire eventually. They've tried to give us vacations three times: once we couldn't afford the plane flights (grad students at the time), once nothing was available except like Branson, MO when we had vacation time, and once the reviews of the resort in Mexico where we wanted to go were pretty horrible. Basically after 20 years they can't give all their time away. They're trying to sell it now.
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Nov 12, 2013 11:43
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If you or your family has been screwed by a timeshare, you need to watch a documentary called The Queen of Versailles about the guy who own the largest timeshare company in the world, decided to build the largest private residence in the US for him and his family (trophy wife, the main "character" of the doc and their 8 kids), paid for the house WITH CASH AND MORTGAGED IT to put the profit in the business. Then house bubble burst and oopsy daisy! Such a good comeuppance for a lovely lovely person. Just FYI if you watch it though; if you start to feel bad for the guy just remember he's been brought up on several sexual harassment cases!
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Nov 12, 2013 16:24
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HipGnosis posted:if you start to feel bad for the guy just remember he's been brought up on several sexual harassment cases! Well drat. I did sort of feel sorry for the guy, since he seemed to care about his employees so much. Also felt a bit sorry for his wife, what with being a programmer in her youth, and obviously caring so much about her family and helping with charity (even though I suspect it was more like 'helping'). Interesting documentary; I second the recommendation.
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Nov 12, 2013 16:35
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There's so much going on in that movie. You've got this gilded poo poo everywhere but they fill their lives with the cheapest and most ridiculous items. Like, she goes on trips to Walmart and fills several shopping carts with plastic poo poo that they already have. It's borderline hoarding. Their net worth is millions but they don't really raise their own children or take care of their pets and it all just gets cleaned up by service workers. It's very complex and interesting. At the end I didn't even know what to think because their lifestyles were nothing like something I'd ever be vaguely interested in and it just looked like this terrible prison of stress and endless obligation. Like, if you have fourteen dogs and twenty bicycles that's just so much stuff that you have to keep tabs on or completely forget about until it becomes a dog corpse or pile of poo poo in the middle of your 20 000 square foot hall that you only visit once every four months.
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Nov 12, 2013 17:22
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razz posted:One time I saw an ad for a Kirby vacuum on Craigslist. The lady stated in the ad that she was selling it because she didn't have carpet in her house and never used it. Must have been one hell of a sales pitch to sell a $2,000 vacuum to someone who doesn't even have carpet in their house! If she's an older woman, like my mother was before she died, she'd get lonely and any door-to-door salesman that was remotely cute and charismatic could chat with her for a couple hours and get the sale. Drove my father nuts.
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Nov 12, 2013 18:07
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My mom fell for that poo poo too. My dad used to sell Rainbows. WE STILL HAD ONE. I worked with a guy until recently, who was whining to one of our Chinese coworkers. Now bear in mind that this person probably makes between 1/3 and 1/2 what he gets. "I need money!" he said, in a pitiful tone. "Why?" "Because I lost a lot of money." "How did you lose money?" "I lost money on the stock market." "How much money did you lose?" "40,000 RMB." (about 6600 USD) This is between 7 and 10 months pay for the Chinese workers, mind. He's implicitly saying "look how much money I can lose." This is my first thought as I'm hearing this across the room, and I begin cringing. "I lost money because the internet is bad. The internet in China is too slow." I didn't hear the rest of the conversation because I had to get up and go somewhere else. I could not tolerate that level of stupid. He lost money because the internet is slow. That could pretty much only mean one thing...he's day-trading, or close to it. Now bear in mind that the internet in China is actually quite fast. It's certain services (principally DNS) that are either partially blocked or degraded, and that can lead slow transfers. But if you've got a connection that doesn't use DNS (like a VPN typically doesn't), your service is usually going to be just fine. A VPN costs WAY less than 40,000 RMB. And he'd been here long enough to know what he needed to do to fix his internet service. Making this even better...this guy was from Omaha. He'd met Warren Buffett several times, and he would name-drop him at every opportunity. What is Warren Buffett famous for? What kind of investment strategy? It isn't loving up on day trading for want of a VPN. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 14:50
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I don't know where else I'd share this since it's extremely wealthy people, but being kind of stupid with money. My friend, let's call him Steve, works for his families stone masonry business. He lives in a pretty rural area and they do high-end work so some times are better than others work-wise. This story isn't about Steve because he's actually very frugal and seemingly smart, money wise. There is a very wealthy business owner in their general area that had given my friend lots of business, I won't give specifics but who knew there were such high profit margins in children's recreation. Fairly crappy shot of the parent's house, this place is utterly enormous, my best guess would be 10,000 sq ft. There are some big mcmansions in the area, but nothing coming close to this thing. It's like professional athlete superstar big.  Ariel view  Previous family home, apparently daughter lives here now.   There is a third house, too, they're all within sight of each other.  Anyway, the story is that my friend had finished up whatever the last project they had dreamed up. A few weeks later my friend's company receives their monthly $75k deposit from this family, though they had already been settled up for all their work. So my friend's dad calls them to tell them they had overpaid and he would transfer the money back but the wealthy people said "Keep it, we'll find more work for you". So they ended up doing fancy stone bridges on their property, and once they had used up that $75k overpayment, as I understand it they they ended up paying for the rest of them to be done as well. So basically let's say a minimum of $100k spent on a whim because of an overpayment.
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Nov 20, 2013 15:40
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See, to me that's not stupid, that's awesome. What do most rich people do with extra money? Throw it in the stock market or some other account where it is effectively removed from the economy. These rich people are stimulating the economy and supporting a your friend's local business as well. I like to see rich people spend their money. In an ideal world, that's what all rich people would do - spend lots of money, and spend it locally. Put more money into the hands of the townspeople, you know? If they're in debt or not paying their bills or whatever, I'd change my tune. But that story seems like a net positive for everyone, and the economy.
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Nov 20, 2013 18:02
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My dad works on old cars with a rich guy like that. Has a huge house for the area, and half of it is always under renovation, usually during times of the year when construction work is slow. The guy spends all of his money locally to support small businesses that do quality work. He got where he was by being smart with money. He knows that "overpaying" the right people leads them to produce their best work.
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Nov 20, 2013 18:20
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I'd qualify the being bad with money pretty much the same way addictions are qualified - unless it's causing issues elsewhere, go hog wild! I mean, buying a Bugatti Veyron for $2m is in no way a good idea financially, but if you have billions, why not?
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Nov 20, 2013 19:24
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That's actually a great point. I completely agree that you can and should support local businesses if you have the means, and in that way it's great. On the other hand, the rumors are these people are pretty much assholes. They don't pay competitively or value employee loyalty, I've heard they have a lot of turnover because of these reasons. A friend's brother used to work for them for a number of years and when his job responsibilities increased he asked for a raise and they refused to even discuss it. He found another job shortly after and doubled his salary for basically the same work. He was doing CAD at the time so it's not like he was and unskilled laborer or something making ridiculous demands.
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Nov 20, 2013 19:31
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razz posted:Throw it in the stock market... where it is effectively removed from the economy. You have some rather unusual conceptions about the stock market and/or economy.
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Nov 20, 2013 19:47
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Well you know, it's money that's not being spent is what I really mean. And I totally admit that I am a financial retard. Like, if I am independently wealthy and I save one million dollars a year, that money really only benefits me. If I am independently wealthy and I save a half million dollars a year and spend a half million dollars a year buying things locally, that's going to benefit a lot more people. Rich people spending money is a good thing. It's the whole basis behind trickle-down economics which doesn't work because most rich people aren't rich because they spend a lot of money, they're rich because they don't spend a lot of money. And when rich people are spending their money on tangible things, things start to get objectively better for more people and the notion that the super-wealthy are a positive factor in the economy and the welfare of less-wealthy people starts to become true. At least that's my take on things as a poor person. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong (totally not being sarcastic).
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Nov 20, 2013 20:44
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razz posted:Well you know, it's money that's not being spent is what I really mean. And I totally admit that I am a financial retard. Some economists believe real growth is driven by investment, and all investment is fueled by savings - either by actively putting it into the stock market, starting a business, or having your savings taxed for government to invest (or consume). Even saving your money in a bank means there is more deposits for the bank to lend out - for, you guessed it - investment and consumption. Saying it's automatically a good thing to support local business isn't necessarily wrong, but if you follow that idea to its logical conclusion, you'd have society giving incentives for rich people to build a bunch of pointless landscaping bridges instead of investing in long-tail, capital intensive technical ventures that have the potential to benefit the world - or more likely, NOT starting up a local landscaping company to employ a dozen unemployed local workers. Why invest in biotech startups with the potential to cure cancer when you can get a huge tax incentive to hire billy bob to install a dozen koi ponds. Spending money on a bunch of rock to be dumped in your yard is fine, but you have to admit it's at the expense of something else. What might that be? It's not my business, but at a glance it seems like a somewhat capricious way to deal with a simple overpayment. Read some Bastiat for more on this type of idea: opportunity cost, the broken window fallacy and the seen vs. the unseen.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:11
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Interesting. That all makes sense. I will admit that I don't think too deeply about the subject of finances although I frequent BFC more than almost any other sub-forum. It's definitely a good source of information for someone like me who knows next to nothing. Definitely gives me things to think about!
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Nov 20, 2013 21:28
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razz posted:What do most rich people do with extra money? Throw it in the stock market or some other account where it is effectively removed from the economy. What do you think where the money he uses to buy those stocks goes? The seller of the shares gets it and is free to spend it, just like a local contractor would be if you hired him. As for those "other accounts": what tiananman said. Plus, if you put the money in a bank account, some of it might be lent to a local small business, without you even knowing it. The only way to really remove money from circulation is to hoard it under your mattress, or to burn it.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:36
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tiananman posted:Some economists believe real growth is driven by investment, and all investment is fueled by savings - either by actively putting it into the stock market, starting a business, or having your savings taxed for government to invest (or consume). These economists have never heard of Japan.
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Nov 21, 2013 03:02
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VideoTapir posted:These economists have never heard of Japan. Japan is an especially unusual example due to the extreme risk aversion. In most countries, you buy stocks, the company has more money, they buy more assets, hire more employees, you get a dividend, etc. Your dividend (or ability to sell the stock for a higher price) is essentially interest on a semi-risky loan with no collateral. In Japan, very few people want that risk. So, people go to the bank, put it there, sit on it, the bank sits on it, nothing much happens. It never really takes the final step to becoming an investment.
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Nov 21, 2013 07:49
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PurpleLizardWizard posted:Japan is an especially unusual example due to the extreme risk aversion. In most countries, you buy stocks, the company has more money, they buy more assets, hire more employees, you get a dividend, etc. Your dividend (or ability to sell the stock for a higher price) is essentially interest on a semi-risky loan with no collateral. Doesn't this make the economy more robust? I heard that in the western world, the economy is based on consumption, so when the economy worsens, consumption and demand drops, and you're in a downward loop. In Japan/the East, a large part of the economy goes into savings, so when the economy worsens, consumption stays constant, while savings drop. Whether this is true or not I don't know, it's something I heard in a discussion.
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Nov 22, 2013 13:12
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It doesn't really matter since when the Fed gave all that free money to the banks back in 2008 and 2009 to increase lending, all they did was just buy US treasuries.
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Nov 22, 2013 17:00
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When I was in the Army, I knew a corporal (fourth pay grade an enlisted person can get, just above a private, makes something like 30k a year) who had to have the newest Ford Mustang every year. Every single year we weren't deployed, he would trade in his year-old Ford Mustang for a brand-new one. I know he wasn't leasing them, and everyone in the unit knew he was dumber than gently caress. My mom isn't terrible with money as much as she seems to keep getting involved with other people who don't make much money. Every couple months, I need to send her some money to cover an emergency or something. I don't make an amazing amount of money myself, but I play video games in my free time so my expenses are tiny; I've decided to plan ahead and I contribute to one retirement account for me and one retirement account for her. I'd like to comment on the whole economics thing going on right now, but I only have an armchair understanding of how it works and no formal education. Is this an adult conversation I should keep my opinion out of, or more of a free discussion?
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Nov 22, 2013 18:10
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Eulogistics posted:I'd like to comment on the whole economics thing going on right now, but I only have an armchair understanding of how it works and no formal education. Is this an adult conversation I should keep my opinion out of, or more of a free discussion? You're in the finance subforum of an internet comedy forum with a weird obsession with disgusting hot dogs and a man stretching his anus to epic proportions. Taking these facts into account, I'd say you don't need a Master of Science in Economics and International Relations to take part in the most serious of discussions we have around here.
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Nov 22, 2013 19:05
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Hey I have a phd in sausageology how dare you rubes tread on my thesis.
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Nov 22, 2013 19:22
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FrozenVent posted:You're in the finance subforum of an internet comedy forum with a weird obsession with disgusting hot dogs and a man stretching his anus to epic proportions. There are some really informative and helpful baords about serious topics on SA, and I hate to intrude on those discussions with "I watched a special on PBS and based on that hour-long block of education that I didn't fact-check or fully understand, here is what is wrong with the economy!" I thought that one of the big problems we're having was that big companies were not re-investing their profits back into the economy (building new stuff, paying a larger workforce, etc), choosing instead to sit on it until some undetermined future date. I'm pretty sure that Cisco and a couple other companies have sizeable reserves of cash outside the US that they refuse to bring into the country because of taxes; those companies have been pressing for a "tax holiday" so they can bring all this money into the US to ostensibly do some sort of reinvestment. Actually, I found an article that talks about the end of that effort.
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Nov 22, 2013 20:43
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Eulogistics posted:I'd like to comment on the whole economics thing going on right now, but I only have an armchair understanding of how it works and no formal education. Is this an adult conversation I should keep my opinion out of, or more of a free discussion? Go for it dude. Just don't be surprised when some kid halfway through his macroeconomics class tries to show how wrong you are. As for staying on topic, my mom ended up in the hospital right when the recession was in full swing and my dad chose to take money out of his 401k to help pay for the hospital bill. I don't know the size of the bill, or if there were other options, but taking money out of the 401k when it had plummeted sounded like a terrible idea to me.
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Nov 22, 2013 20:56
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My dad has 4 bdr house just him and my step-mom live in. Most of it is filled with depression era Westmoreland glass. It's not really worth much to anyone outside of Westmoreland glass collectors. I have no clue what anything is worth though so if unfortunately anything ever happened to him I'd probably get screwed over by rabid collectors. Outside of the glass and traveling places for glass they eat out a lot. Nothing extravagant, but I feel like if they stopped glass collecting and wating out all the time they could go to so many cool places outside the US, but he doesn't want to. I guess whatever makes him happy. Sometimes he tells me to buy a house and that i can roll my student loan debt into my mortgage. I make 35k a year with only 2 years in the job market and 1k in savings. I don't really listen to his financial advice anymore. cheese eats mouse fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Nov 22, 2013 |
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Nov 22, 2013 21:22
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Knightmare posted:Go for it dude. Just don't be surprised when some kid halfway through his macroeconomics class tries to show how wrong you are. 401K's are protected assets and you should never take money out of them to pay off debts. I would rather file bankruptcy and leave my retirement intact. My step dad did the same thing though, got hit hard in the housing bust, wiped out his protected retirement accounts trying to delay the inevitable and ended up filing bankruptcy anyway. He probably blew through 500K or so. Now he's in his mid 50's without a dime to his name for retirement.
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Nov 22, 2013 21:52
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I have a friend, who's in school again. And consequently buying DVDs and CDs and concert tickets left and right, because he has student loans, and those won't have to be paid back for a while One could excuse a younger person for thinking this due to lack of world experience, or naivete - but this dude's pushing 50.
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Nov 22, 2013 22:05
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Qu Appelle posted:I have a friend, who's in school again. And consequently buying DVDs and CDs and concert tickets left and right, because he has student loans, and those won't have to be paid back for a while Maybe he figures he'll die before he needs to pay them off.
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Nov 25, 2013 17:58
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My retirement plan is a suitcase full of cash, drugs and handguns I will take to Las Vegas when I'm bored of it all
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Nov 25, 2013 20:26
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Tomfoolery posted:My retirement plan is a suitcase full of cash, drugs and handguns I will take to Las Vegas when I'm bored of it all Slow Motion alt found.
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Nov 25, 2013 20:28
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tuyop posted:Slow Motion alt found. Have you read that thread? No way that guy has any kind of retirement plan. Or a suitcase full of cash he hasn't spent on ballin'
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Nov 25, 2013 20:29
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