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Anything that involves putting money into a car as an investment is usually worthy of this thread, really.
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Jan 21, 2014 21:06
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I'm starting to realize this is like a therapy thread. A friend of yours does something loving stupid, you either can't tell them because you're not that tight or you try and they don't listen to you, then you can come in here and we can all agree with you and you don't feel like an idiot.
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Jan 21, 2014 21:39
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Cranbe posted:Not really a story, but this guy is full of bullshit analogies that read like hacky sales pitches in #5: Don't save money, just get a higher paying job! Or a second one! Ahahahahaha gently caress you. This list really feels like it's written from the perspective of someone who's ALREADY rich.
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Jan 21, 2014 21:47
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Tony Montana posted:I'm starting to realize this is like a therapy thread. A friend of yours does something loving stupid, you either can't tell them because you're not that tight or you try and they don't listen to you, then you can come in here and we can all agree with you and you don't feel like an idiot. Advice about money is often pretty unwelcome. We've certainly created quite the culture here in America where money is super important to everyone but we're also taught to avoid talking(or thinking) about it and to project things as better than they are. It's pretty frustrating and having a place to talk about it sanely is nice.
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Jan 21, 2014 21:56
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Jeffrey posted:Advice about money is often pretty unwelcome. We've certainly created quite the culture here in America where money is super important to everyone but we're also taught to avoid talking(or thinking) about it and to project things as better than they are. It's pretty frustrating and having a place to talk about it sanely is nice. I've started just straight asking people, including co-workers, how much money they make. I think that the whole idea of salaries being secret conspires to keep workers from knowing where they stand, what they could make elsewhere, etc. I have used that knowledge to negotiate higher pay, and figure out where I stand at an employer - keeping salary info taboo helps only employers.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:09
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kaishek posted:I've started just straight asking people, including co-workers, how much money they make. I think that the whole idea of salaries being secret conspires to keep workers from knowing where they stand, what they could make elsewhere, etc. I have used that knowledge to negotiate higher pay, and figure out where I stand at an employer - keeping salary info taboo helps only employers. I've started to float this as well at my office. When we got our annual cost of living raises this year, my boss told me "remember that's private information". Yeah, right. Me and a few coworkers went out to happy hour that Friday and the immediate topic was how much our raises are, and how much we all make. Turns out that two of our entry level employees with the same title/job description, but from seperate offices (both in areas with comparable cost-of-living) get paid wildly different. On guy was started at about $47k, while the other was started at $38k. The lower paid guy wasn't there, but he had mentioned it in a previous conversation. We also had another situation where I was given an 8% raise mid-year "because of my hard work and good performance". However the next month my other coworker asked me if I had gotten an unexpected raise, and additionally asked "was it pretty substantial?". Turns out she, and everyone else in our group had received the raise. The reason being that they knew everyone wanted to quit because the compensation was relatively crap, and we had lost 4-5 people to other companies in the last few months. But they sold it to everyone as an individual recognition. So yeah, talk away, spread information around. The only people you're helping by staying quiet is upper management.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:21
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LogisticEarth posted:
This is true, which is why you should be careful. Depending where you work, this kind of thing could get you canned. Is it ethical or even legal? Maybe not, but it's the truth.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:28
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tiananman posted:This is true, which is why you should be careful. Depending where you work, this kind of thing could get you canned. Is it ethical or even legal? Maybe not, but it's the truth. If someone gets canned for this the lawsuit would be so good.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:39
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LogisticEarth posted:So yeah, talk away, spread information around. The only people you're helping by staying quiet is upper management. Depends what your co-workers are like, it could also turn into a lot of resentment between co-workers that could create a bit of friction in the workplace.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:39
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White Chocolate posted:If someone gets canned for this the lawsuit would be so good. A lot of US states are "Right to work", the employer can fire someone at any time for no reason. If they were to send you a letter saying "You're fired because you discussed wages with a co-worker" then yeah, poo poo would go down, but otherwise you'd have a fun time trying to prove that's why you were fired. Unionized workplaces or places with decent labor laws, that's a completely different animal of course.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:45
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FrozenVent posted:A lot of US states are "Right to work", the employer can fire someone at any time for no reason. If they were to send you a letter saying "You're fired because you discussed wages with a co-worker" then yeah, poo poo would go down, but otherwise you'd have a fun time trying to prove that's why you were fired. "Right to work" means that union membership cannot be required to work. The ability to quit/fire at will is, however, "At Will" employment.  And, as mentioned, you'd have the potential to be fired for "performance" reasons.
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Jan 21, 2014 22:52
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^^^To be fair, Right to work and At will usually go hand in hand. Also, right to work is a great euphemism. It's like opening a chicken ranch and calling it Right to be Fried.FrozenVent posted:A lot of US states are "Right to work", the employer can fire someone at any time for no reason. If they were to send you a letter saying "You're fired because you discussed wages with a co-worker" then yeah, poo poo would go down, but otherwise you'd have a fun time trying to prove that's why you were fired. Well, technically you don't even need Right to Work for that to happen. I live in a non-RTW state (thank Jesus, I've turned down job offers to work in Alabama for this exact reason - I need an extra 50k on top of what I make right now to consider working in a non-RTW state) and honestly if they wanted to fire me, they could just say "performance issues" and I'd be poo poo out of luck fighting them on that.
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Jan 21, 2014 23:11
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tiananman posted:This is true, which is why you should be careful. Depending where you work, this kind of thing could get you canned. Is it ethical or even legal? Maybe not, but it's the truth. Absolutely. I was under the impression that my non-profit was so strapped for cash that everyone was together in the low salary basket. Then I found out that a colleague had gotten not one, but two raises in the past year. I did not specifically reference my knowledge of that information, but it allowed me to know that they actually did have the money to adjust your compensation if they thought it was called for and press just a little harder for my own raise (i.e., not taking "we don't have the money" as an answer).
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Jan 21, 2014 23:49
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LogisticEarth posted:I've started to float this as well at my office. When we got our annual cost of living raises this year, my boss told me "remember that's private information". Yeah, right. Me and a few coworkers went out to happy hour that Friday and the immediate topic was how much our raises are, and how much we all make. Turns out that two of our entry level employees with the same title/job description, but from seperate offices (both in areas with comparable cost-of-living) get paid wildly different. On guy was started at about $47k, while the other was started at $38k. The lower paid guy wasn't there, but he had mentioned it in a previous conversation. Why should the two entry workers be paid the same? Perhaps the guy with the 9k higher salery negociated it as part of his contract. If this is the case, then the guy with the lower salery is at fault for his situation.
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Jan 22, 2014 00:48
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^ most people do not have contracts. But yes he did a much better job of getting a better starting salary.pathetic little tramp posted:^^^To be fair, Right to work and At will usually go hand in hand. Also, right to work is a great euphemism. It's like opening a chicken ranch and calling it Right to be Fried. Your post doesn't make much sense. Most everyone is at will in the professional setting, right to work doesn't matter. All it means is you don't work under a contract. So you can leave and they can fire you. spwrozek fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 00:49
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FrozenVent posted:Anything that involves putting money into a car as an investment is usually worthy of this thread, really. Also, putting pricy additions onto houses while using contracting shortcuts.
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Jan 22, 2014 01:39
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quote:"The solution is not to cut back on the lattes you drink, but to get a higher-paying job,"
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Jan 22, 2014 02:20
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Say Nothing posted:What a fool I have been (leaves to get higher paying job).  quote:Put your money in a bank. That's the safest place, right? Sure, it is safer than stuffing it under your mattress. Or is it?
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Jan 22, 2014 02:24
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To be fair there is a large class of people who are complacent and could probably better themselves by actively looking for new jobs, with an expected value of much higher than 1 latte per day or whatever. That doesn't make it sound, universal advice and you still shouldn't buy a latte every day but finding a new job isn't a bad idea if one is at all underpaid for their field.
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Jan 22, 2014 02:37
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Jeffrey posted:To be fair there is a large class of people who are complacent and could probably better themselves by actively looking for new jobs, with an expected value of much higher than 1 latte per day or whatever. That doesn't make it sound, universal advice and you still shouldn't buy a latte every day but finding a new job isn't a bad idea if one is at all underpaid for their field. This is true. I didn't realize what I was worth until I left. By doing that (and my wife) we have both double our salaries out of school 5 years ago. We do work our assess off too though.
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Jan 22, 2014 02:51
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Jeffrey posted:To be fair there is a large class of people who are complacent and could probably better themselves by actively looking for new jobs, with an expected value of much higher than 1 latte per day or whatever. That doesn't make it sound, universal advice and you still shouldn't buy a latte every day but finding a new job isn't a bad idea if one is at all underpaid for their field. The article seemed to have that point, but the phrasing in the article comes across as tone deaf " let them eat cake" nonsense. What's even worse is that it baits the hook by appealing to those who are paranoid about large institutions in general (banks).
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Jan 22, 2014 03:00
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balancedbias posted:The article seemed to have that point, but the phrasing in the article comes across as tone deaf " let them eat cake" nonsense. What's even worse is that it baits the hook by appealing to those who are paranoid about large institutions in general (banks). I don't know where you're getting that impression, or baiting paranoid people or whatever. I thought all those points were pretty decent advice for a good chunk of the population.
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Jan 22, 2014 03:13
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Tony Montana posted:I'm starting to realize this is like a therapy thread. A friend of yours does something loving stupid, you either can't tell them because you're not that tight or you try and they don't listen to you, then you can come in here and we can all agree with you and you don't feel like an idiot. Pretty much this. I doubt anyone really wants to see their friends and family in trouble, which is why it's so frustrating - you don't want them to suffer or go through unnecessary stress and you know what the outcome is likely to be, but they do it anyway. Similarly, there's a reason "what did they expect to happen?" is the title of the schadenfreude thread. I'm finding it hard to just passively sit by and listen to some of my friends talk about their problems because a lot of them are to do with them buying more house/car/whatever than they can afford and are finding the adjustment really hard because they didn't really think that the payment would be that arduous. On the flip side, I think the happiest person I've known was a guy who worked a few evenings a week and spent the rest of his time working on his personal projects and playing music.
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Jan 22, 2014 05:11
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dreesemonkey posted:About 2.5 years ago we had a "500 year flood" in our area. Some friend's parents live by a creek and had their 10' basement completely full of water despite being 20' higher in elevation and 400' back from the creek. Anyway, a neighbor of theirs was not so lucky, and his whole house had about 6' of water in the entire thing.  White Chocolate posted:If someone gets canned for this the lawsuit would be so good.
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Jan 22, 2014 05:17
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On the other side of 'bad with money', there's this guy: Ottawa’s cheapest dad: Abusive man convicted of criminal harassment after depriving family of heat, water and food OTTAWA CITIZEN posted:OTTAWA — An abusive Ottawa father who ruled his home’s finances with a frugality so extreme that he deprived his family of heat, lights, water and sometimes food, has been convicted in a rare criminal harassment and assault case. TL;DR, guy is so frugal he gets arrested for assault in 2011 for depriving his family. Doesn't want to spend money on a lawyer so has been been in gaol since then.
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Jan 22, 2014 07:32
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Jeffrey posted:To be fair there is a large class of people who are complacent and could probably better themselves by actively looking for new jobs, with an expected value of much higher than 1 latte per day or whatever. That doesn't make it sound, universal advice and you still shouldn't buy a latte every day but finding a new job isn't a bad idea if one is at all underpaid for their field. Sure, but I can have a latte everyday if I want, mate  We're all at different ages and different stages in our careers, although SA is a lot of young-20s college kids scrimping to get through there are plenty of us older than that. I can spend 50 bucks a day on lunch if I want, my last super high stress job it was a method of getting through the days. I'd pull down so much that the budgeting could easily absorb it and after yet another morning of stress and getting angry going to somewhere really nice and eating something really nice for an hour made it all doable again.Which is actually a lot of the point that part of the article is trying to make. Hey, in Adelaide (Australia) a latte can be usually 4.50 as well! Here in Italy it's about 1.20 Euro.. less than 2 bucks. Talk about inflation and the Aussie economy going rampant.. froglet posted:On the other side of 'bad with money', there's this guy: He's still bad with money, though, right? My father certainly wasn't as bad as this guy, but he was down that spectrum somewhere. I think being good with money is knowing when to spend it too.
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Jan 22, 2014 10:03
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Tony Montana posted:He's still bad with money, though, right? My father certainly wasn't as bad as this guy, but he was down that spectrum somewhere. I think being good with money is knowing when to spend it too. Oh yeah, just in a more unique way that most of the heroes in this thread: BBC posted:Bernie Ecclestone's daughter Tamara has lost a custody battle with an ex-boyfriend over a £380,000 "super car". 
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Jan 22, 2014 10:30
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Lelorox posted:Why should the two entry workers be paid the same? Perhaps the guy with the 9k higher salery negociated it as part of his contract. If this is the case, then the guy with the lower salery is at fault for his situation. He didn't, it's just different office management. The higher paid guy works in an office where that's around the standard starting for entry level. The lower paid guy has a different manager, in a different office, but is in the same group. Same experience, same degree from comparable schools, does similar jobs, just gets paid a significant amount less. Could he have negotiated a higher salary? Maybe, but negotiation is not the reason the one guy is getting paid more. tiananman posted:This is true, which is why you should be careful. Depending where you work, this kind of thing could get you canned. Is it ethical or even legal? Maybe not, but it's the truth. That's a possibility, but at least in my office that would be a really unlikely unless we were actively agitating. People openly talk about how they're sending their resumes out too, nothing happens because middle management is nearly just as miserable, and upper management is hundreds of miles away and pretty much only interacts with the office via numbers on a spreadsheet.
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Jan 22, 2014 13:36
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Tony Montana posted:He's still bad with money, though, right? My father certainly wasn't as bad as this guy, but he was down that spectrum somewhere. I think being good with money is knowing when to spend it too. Dante put skinflints and spendthrifts in the same layer of Hell.
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Jan 22, 2014 14:46
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Tony Montana posted:I'm starting to realize this is like a therapy thread. A friend of yours does something loving stupid, you either can't tell them because you're not that tight or you try and they don't listen to you, then you can come in here and we can all agree with you and you don't feel like an idiot. A good friend of mine and I are very open discussing our finances with one another. For the most part he's usually smart about these things but the other day told me his plan is to get a new car every 5 years. He has a 5 year payment plan for his existing car and when it's paid off he will trade it in for a new car and repeat the cycle every 5 years. He's already traded in one fully paid off car and will do so again in 3 years. I brought up leasing as a possibility and he dismissed it out of hand saying that his system is much better. Am I crazy here or is he completely wrong?
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Jan 22, 2014 15:34
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That's a very bad move financially when he could probably make the car last ten years provided he did preventative maintenance on it. He's basically ensuring he'll always be paying interest on a big car loan, forever.
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Jan 22, 2014 16:03
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Nail Rat posted:That's a very bad move financially when he could probably make the car last ten years provided he did preventative maintenance on it. He's basically ensuring he'll always be paying interest on a big car loan, forever. Unless he is always getting zero percent which is not that uncommon. He is basically leasing except he is taking all the residual risk. Bad move unlss he dosen't understand leasing enough to not get hosed over by the obscure math.
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Jan 22, 2014 16:07
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He's eating that juicy new-car depreciation every five years though.
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Jan 22, 2014 16:09
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FrozenVent posted:He's eating that juicy new-car depreciation every five years though. Five years is ABOUT the break-even point. At this point, the car is worth the most for resale, and it's usually right about when the warranty expires. If I wanted to have a new car every so often and I needed to pick an interval, fve years would probably be the best on average.
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Jan 22, 2014 16:13
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He would probably still be better off if he bought a year old car every 4 years.Tony Montana posted:Sure, but I can have a latte everyday if I want, mate Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 16:15
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Jeffrey posted:He would probably still be better off if he bought a year old car every 4 years. Depends on the type of car. For a luxury car. Probably. For a sports car...maybe. For anything else, probably not. I know this because I used to do this. Every five years or so, I would buy a two year old car. I've done this since my second car, three or four times now. On my recent trip for a new car, all the cars I looked at were at most discounted 10 - 15% from new. This was not a large enough discount for a two year old car. One year old cars were selling for practically new (low end new prices of course). Also some cars have non-transferable warranties. It seems to be the trend to not transfer the BtB warranty but allow the drive-train warranty. All of this needs to go into the decision.
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Jan 22, 2014 16:29
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Nail Rat posted:That's a very bad move financially when he could probably make the car last ten years provided he did preventative maintenance on it. He's basically ensuring he'll always be paying interest on a big car loan, forever. It may not be something that you or I would choose to do, but if they can afford it, why not? Depending on the persons income, and potentially the job requirement to have a dependable car, it may make sense. At least its not every 2 years like some people I know.
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Jan 22, 2014 16:47
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Jeffrey posted:To be fair there is a large class of people who are complacent and could probably better themselves by actively looking for new jobs, with an expected value of much higher than 1 latte per day or whatever. That doesn't make it sound, universal advice and you still shouldn't buy a latte every day but finding a new job isn't a bad idea if one is at all underpaid for their field. Seriously, there are so many people out there that are underpaid, they know they're underpaid, and they just deal with it or don't care or are just comfortable in their job and fear change. Take my mom for example. She works full time and makes about $15,000 per year. She's worked for the same district for pretty much her entire working life. 2 years ago she got a job offer from her old boss to do exactly what she does now at a different district for (literally) three times the salary. Doing the exact same job. And she turned it down because she "didn't want to have to commute to work". The new job was 10 miles from her house. Her current job is about 3 miles away.
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Jan 22, 2014 17:30
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Jeffrey posted:Sorry I forget this isn't the financial independence thread. I can certainly budget and 'afford' a fancy lunch and drink every day, but I'm not willing to suffer expenses like that now that I think about it in terms of how may additional weeks/months/years I'll have to work in order to retire with that expense. The advice in the article that one should earn more in lieu of saving more falls flat to me because a dollar saved per year is a dollar saved every year of my life, while a dollar earned per year is only earned during years in which I'm working. Your missing both my point and the point the article made. I still think its a lovely article on the whole, but I can see the point here. The point is, sometimes you incur additional expenses in the earning of a higher wage. A top barrister needs good suits. A top IT consultant needs proper kit, laptop and whatever else he uses to do his thing (this might mean a rack at home filled with his test lab). An IT consultant that has a zillion little munchkins reporting to him from all over the world who consistently do the stupidest poo poo, might have to have expensive lunches to be able to make it through the day. Making it through the day means I still pull down over 6 figures, which means even if I spend something like 20k a year on 'therapy' such as this (50 bucks a day is a bit extravagant, but 20 is ok) then I'm still pulling down more total than the dude on 50k. My earning potential increases over time this way too, I'm clocking up experience at a high level which will lead to even more pay and perhaps some more clout in my industry so I might be able to find a role less stressful as well. It's about you need to spend money to make it, this is actually right in line with the crazy dude above that was such a poo poo to his family. I like life this way too, I prefer to be totally absorbed and committed to my career and living life to the full by experiencing all of it (eat what I want, holiday where I want, do what I want). I'm still running the financial independence game ahead of the pack too because I'm aware of it and active and six figures is a lot of money to play with!
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Jan 22, 2014 17:42
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Tony Montana posted:Your missing both my point and the point the article made. I still think its a lovely article on the whole, but I can see the point here. If you're spending 20,000 on self-medicating with ridiculously expensive lunches, it might be time to look into some new therapy. How do you even spend 50 dollars on lunch a day?
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Jan 22, 2014 18:22
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