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I think it's one thing to have 40k in private student loans and another to have 20k through the government. There are always options for dealing with govt student debt, but if you opened loans through Wells Fargo May god have mercy on your soul.
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Feb 24, 2014 23:51
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No Wave posted:Even without matching a 401k is worth it if it's with a good company and offers good investments, so I'd at least try to get them to open one without matching. It doesn't cost them anything and it's free tax breaks for employees who contribute. Yeah, I already tried and only one other person but me was interested in it, even though I explained the tax benefits. Seriously I work with terribly stupid/selfish people. So I might as well be selfish too. I'm really not joking about the healthcare thing either, I used to help my co-workers out a lot with financial advice and was pretty selfless (gave rides when they needed them, helped them out at work, etc) until I had that conversation. I'm tired of being the good guy. So if we're ever offered employer sponsored HC I'm not signing up because I know I'll get a better deal through my wife's employer and since I'm the only young guy there any chance of getting good rates for the company would fly out the window if I wasn't on board. I have my wife's 401k so I can always get her to contribute more to it so it doesn't matter for me anyway. Once I don't need this company anymore I'll probably leave unless I have a different set of co-workers than I do now. edit: Also the "problem" with the 401k was that it cost my employer money (some kind of regulatory expense) that she was unwilling to pay because "boohoo I'm a small business owner and I just can't afford it" but when I found out the Simple IRA didn't include that expense they freaked the hell out because it forced them to match like 2% or something. Somehow her kid gets new golf clubs/scuba gear paid for by the company + his salary/travel expenses even though his sales don't outweigh his costs. If the job just wasn't so easy I'd leave. Anyway, I think we need a "People who are really good with money" thread. Sephiroth_IRA fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 01:32
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Orange_Lazarus posted:Anyway, I think we need a "People who are really good with money" thread. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3560269
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Feb 25, 2014 01:57
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razz posted:Yeah, the people that left their money alone were fine during/after the market crash. The people that flipped out and took out their money are the ones who lost out big time. I had shares in GM. The people who had index funds who left their money alone were fine. (And that's one of the two items in my portfolio that were fine.) Individual stocks didn't necessarily fare so well; and if you got out when you saw them going down, rather than as they bottomed out, then bought back in, you'd've done a lot better than if you left them alone. For some things this would have been obvious. I also had shares in Ford, and those could have benefitted from this treatment; they were either going to lose all value, or they were going to drop then rebound, and that was not a tough one to time to get some benefit out of it, even if you missed the peak and trough precisely. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 05:33
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:I think it's one thing to have 40k in private student loans and another to have 20k through the government. There are always options for dealing with govt student debt, but if you opened loans through Wells Fargo May god have mercy on your soul. Are they that bad? I'm going to be taking out a loan with them through USAA for about 30k next year for my Master's, as I don't have the option of government loans because the university I'll be at (overseas) doesn't do them. There are a bunch of other universities in that country that do, but this one offered me a 25% break in international student tuition (which none of the others do) in the form of a scholarship, is in an area with the lowest cost of living in the country, and has a few other plusses going for it. Basically there's no way I'm not going there, but wondering what sort of particular pitfalls WF has. Someone in the student loan thread said they were pretty good, among the private lenders? I actually have enough to pay the tuition saved up, but I have to leave that alone to prove I can afford living expenses for the two years I'm there for my student visa (to be fair, that's what the savings are for, although if I'm not too busy to work and can find a part-time job, I'm hoping to defray a lot of my living expenses).
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Feb 25, 2014 09:31
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For some things, like Income based repayment plans, private student loans are exempt, so you're just saddled with huge interest rates (relatively) and an unending payment. My roommate is going through it right now, probably will be for the next 30 years. He didn't even graduate 
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Feb 25, 2014 09:39
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VideoTapir posted:Individual stocks didn't necessarily fare so well; and if you got out when you saw them going down, rather than as they bottomed out, then bought back in, you'd've done a lot better than if you left them alone. For some things this would have been obvious. If you knew/know how to figure out when stocks are going to go down further, you'd be a billionaire. Everything is obvious in retrospect. For example, earlier this month, there was a ~6-7% US equity market pullback. Now the market is back up higher than ever before. If you pulled out at the bottom thinking it was going to be another 40% crash, you just lost big.
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Feb 25, 2014 10:21
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baquerd posted:If you knew/know how to figure out when stocks are going to go down further, you'd be a billionaire. Everything is obvious in retrospect. That specific stock was obvious beforehand, because their situation was laid bare, everyone knew they were either going to be rescued or they were going to go bankrupt, and the price was going to go up when that uncertainty went away. I knew roughly what was going to happen and was like "gently caress it whatever," anyone who'd ever watched any stock ever should have known the broad strokes. Timing the bottom would be luck or insider trading, avoiding most of the trough wouldn't have been. It went down slow, and the trigger for its recovery was getting 24 hour news coverage. As a general rule you're right. That was an unusual situation.
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Feb 25, 2014 10:29
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But if everyone knew what would happen, shouldn't that have already been built into the price?
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Feb 25, 2014 13:19
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:For some things, like Income based repayment plans, private student loans are exempt, so you're just saddled with huge interest rates (relatively) and an unending payment. My roommate is going through it right now, probably will be for the next 30 years. Well, if I'm lucky, thrifty, and able to work enough to offset the majority of my living expenses (can work full time during school breaks, only ~20hours/week during school), I should still have enough to flat out repay the loan as soon as I graduate, or at least the vast majority of it. Whether or not that's a good idea will depend on my situation at the time; assuming I find work in my field, my starting annual salary will be almost twice the value of the loan, albeit before taxes. There's also buying a home to think about. I'm honestly pretty new to the whole taking on debt thing (a luxury for someone in their late 20's), have some research ahead of me. If I can't find work... well, that's the risk you always take going back to school, unless your employer is sponsoring it or something. Still, the job market for my profession is pretty healthy there from what I can tell (it's how I plan on applying for migration), and I plan to hustle/network my rear end off while I'm still in school so that I hopefully have something lined up when I graduate. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 14:35
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P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:But if everyone knew what would happen, shouldn't that have already been built into the price? People are not rational actors, as evidenced by what I did. Meh, Ford came back. It's GM where I was really dumb.
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Feb 25, 2014 15:05
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VideoTapir posted:People are not rational actors, as evidenced by what I did. I had the same thing happen. Part of why my individual stock purchases turned out terrible had to do with the new way that bankruptcies are handled. So I don't think that you or I were dumb, we were using outdated heuristics for valuing stocks. Back in the 1980s (like when Chrysler and Harley got bailed out), the stock still represented the company, so if the company came back, the stock came back. So purchasing shares of Chrysler when it was begging for a bailout would have given you a 10x return in about a year. Traditionally, when a take-over was announced, the share purchase price would be a bit above market, so opportunists who bought in at the bottom had a chance to make a small profit. Today, when companies file bankruptcy, a new company is set up with pretty much the same name as the old company. "Good" assets and liabilities are transferred to the new company. "Bad" assets and liabilities that the company wants to ditch are left in the old company. When the bankruptcy court approves, the old company gets a new name (in GM's case, the "old gm" became known as "Motors Liquidation Corp") and the shares in the old company get changed to the new name (in GM's case, one weekend all your shares of GM became shares of MOTQQ). Sometimes, private equity is handed all the equity in the new company by the bankruptcy courts, so there isn't a new stock ticker for the "new" company. Opportunists who buy in at the bottom are unlikely to even break even. I only had 100 shares of each of a few stocks, so the gain or loss wouldn't be terribly dramatic. I find that I'm more attentive and learn more when I have some money on the line rather than just tracking numbers on a spreadsheet. The gain in F offset most of the losses in other stocks, and one of my stocks lost so much that the $7.95 sales charge would have been 10x the proceeds of the sale of the stock when I finally sold it (so, yes, one stock had an approximately 99% loss in value).
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Feb 25, 2014 18:19
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This entire thread qualifies http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_story_thread_how_much_did_you_lose/
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Feb 26, 2014 17:42
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quote:goxloser 483 points 1 day ago  Although it's probably not as much of a loss depending on when he got them(and considering that cashing out would torpedo bitcoin's value), goddrat.(Of course, anyone touching bitcoin automatically counts as bad at money anyway.  )
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Feb 26, 2014 19:27
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Haifisch posted:According to the rest of the comment chain, that's over 2 million USD worth of bitcoin Plus you can't actually cash it out, and haven't been able to for over a year. If the dude's closer to the average bitcoiner, he lost in the low five figures, at most. These people weren't rich people to start with.
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Feb 26, 2014 19:29
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Well you could have cashed out the coins(not money) until very recently, no? I'm genuinely not sure here, but I thought you could get your coins, and sell them on another exchange which actually pays out(at a lower price), no? I haven't really followed all the bitcoin stuff, is bitstamp just as hosed as mtgox was ~6 months ago?
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Feb 26, 2014 19:33
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Jeffrey posted:Well you could have cashed out the coins(not money) until very recently, no? I'm genuinely not sure here, but I thought you could get your coins, and sell them on another exchange which actually pays out(at a lower price), no? I haven't really followed all the bitcoin stuff, is bitstamp just as hosed as mtgox was ~6 months ago? It's apparently really loving hard to get any significant amount of money out of any exchange. As in they'll literally ask you why you want to cash out, don't you believe in bitcoin anymore? The best way to cash out is to use bitcoin to buy gift cards and use that to buy poo poo. There was a goon from Canada whose friend was trying to cash out, and none of the exchange would wire to a Canadian account; they went on an hilarious romp where they'd meet people in McDonald's to exchange bitcoins for bags of inactivated Amazon cards and poo poo like that. Check out http://buttcoin.org/ for the full scoop, bitcoin's a neverending font of hilarity.
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Feb 26, 2014 19:36
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FrozenVent posted:It's apparently really loving hard to get any significant amount of money out of any exchange. As in they'll literally ask you why you want to cash out, don't you believe in bitcoin anymore? The best way to cash out is to use bitcoin to buy gift cards and use that to buy poo poo. Yeah sounds like there is nothing in canada but there are US places(coinbase according to that site?) that will really pay out. I know bitcoin is pretty dumb but there's a difference between "this is the currency of the future" and "this is gonna be speculated up by idiots and I bought them for $2 and going to take them for a ride". I don't know why anyone would use mtgox after the first time it was clear they hosed up like 3 years ago or whenever it was I stopped following it.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:00
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I thought mt.gox has shut down like 4-5 times.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:43
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My roommates dad is building a bitcoin miner and I've lost what little respect I had for him when I heard that. Like... I thought this dude was smart??? I'm like did you show him the calculator, he'll literally lose money?? And my friend said his dad can't be convinced. God drat.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:49
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Harry posted:I thought mt.gox has shut down like 4-5 times. Yeah I thought this too, as well as several exchanges already shutting down and running away with people's money before. Of course, the first few times it happened the bitcoiners seemed surprised and shocked that their coins could be taken with no legal recourse. Like it honestly never occurred to them that a currency with no regulation and no recognition from any govt means people can just take your poo poo with no consequences. Now it seems their tactic has become more along the lines of 'a smart man knows how to play the market correctly and not get burned', so that anyone who gets screwed can be blamed for not 'seeing the writing on the wall' and cashing out sooner.
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Feb 26, 2014 21:07
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I think crypto currency as a technology is actually very cool. Bitcoin is filled with some really smart cool people who are unfortunately mixed in with the crazies, and the sociopaths. That being said. No one should have trusted their money with mtgox. Was mtgox behind secure http? Yes. This means any data you transfer between it and yourself is encrypted from prying eyes. HOWEVER mtgox's early site actually sent your password in the URL string when you logged in. So pretty much anyone on a wifi network that was snooping could have sniffed out the passwords. These guys, not very technically astute. Unfortunately neither were a lot of their users. Also building a bitcoin miner is loving insane. There are people who have a shipping container filled with ASICs designed specifically to mine bitcoin. It is a pretty stupid thing to build a miner at this point in time and that would definitely qualify as being bad with money.
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Feb 26, 2014 21:28
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When I went to see my family for Christmas, my dad proudly informed me that he'd bought some Bitcoins for $1000 and they were now worth $1100. I tried convincing him to cash out, but failed 
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Feb 26, 2014 22:53
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Strong Sauce posted:tech stuff Where are the servers? What is the security applied to them? What regulations and auditing do they have to comply with to ensure some level of professionalism? There is a stringent set of compliance regulations with holding payment card information. It doesn't matter what you're seeing through a browser or is presented to you in a service format, if you have no idea that behind the scenes it's not sitting on box in someone's bedroom then that's insecure. If a bank has some fuckup then they reimburse due to long chains of insurance, you have none of that.
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Feb 26, 2014 23:03
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Tony Montana posted:Where are the servers? What is the security applied to them? What regulations and auditing do they have to comply with to ensure some level of professionalism? There is a stringent set of compliance regulations with holding payment card information. It doesn't matter what you're seeing through a browser or is presented to you in a service format, if you have no idea that behind the scenes it's not sitting on box in someone's bedroom then that's insecure. If a bank has some fuckup then they reimburse due to long chains of insurance, you have none of that.
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Feb 26, 2014 23:58
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Sure, I helped a company do a PCI DSS compliance thing and it was a bit iffy when the reality of 'oh if you fail that one we just try again' became apparent. You still understand my point though, and it's not meaningless. As you say, the fear is being prosecuted and if you defraud a bank or major financial institution with near limitless resources to investigate and then make an example of you (in turn restoring some of their credibility) that's different to a comparably backyard operation. Just the very lack of public visibility and therefore accountability raises issues.
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Feb 27, 2014 00:36
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Bitcoin represents a pretty remarkable potential store of value in that it has mind bogglingly lower transaction costs and offers its users more control than any other form of currency, save face to face cash transactions. But it's loving stupid to bank any significant amount of money on it; if it takes off there will only ever be 21M and so owning one will make you a king, but as it was the very first decentralized cryptocurrency, it probably will get superseded by something better that learns from all its mistakes.
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Feb 27, 2014 02:36
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Dwight Eisenhower posted:Bitcoin represents a pretty remarkable potential store of value in that it has mind bogglingly lower transaction costs and offers its users more control than any other form of currency, save face to face cash transactions. You realize that you can own fractions of a bitcoin, right?
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Feb 27, 2014 02:46
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Volmarias posted:You realize that you can own fractions of a bitcoin, right? Exactly, so you can pay for your candy bar with .00000021 bitcoins! (Bitcoin's currently only divisible to 8 decimals, but once they get everybody who mines to agree to a change in the protocol they'll fix that right quick!)
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Feb 27, 2014 04:08
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I don't understand how this imaginary virtual currency works at all. I'm not asking anyone to explain, I'm totally fine with not knowing anything.
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Feb 27, 2014 04:28
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Strong Sauce posted:No one should have trusted their money with mtgox. Was mtgox behind secure http? Yes. This means any data you transfer between it and yourself is encrypted from prying eyes. HOWEVER mtgox's early site actually sent your password in the URL string when you logged in. So pretty much anyone on a wifi network that was snooping could have sniffed out the passwords. Holy poo poo, is that true? How could anybody possibly use a site where their password is sent as part of the URL? Especially when it comes to something financial. Even if you don't know anything about security, you have to know that the password being part of the URL is insanely bad, and if the site developers can't even get that much right, how could they possibly make the rest of the site secure?
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Feb 27, 2014 05:04
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Edit: ^^^ yes. Remember, MTGOX stands for Magic: the Gathering online exchange. Not exactly the gilded pedigree of history.FrozenVent posted:Exactly, so you can pay for your candy bar with .00000021 bitcoins! (Bitcoin's currently only divisible to 8 decimals, but once they get everybody who mines to agree to a change in the protocol they'll fix that right quick!) Given that $21M * 10^8 is $2100T, or $21T if you want to retain pennies for payment, I think that we have a way to go before worrying about that. Regardless, given that there's only a few groups mining given that it's reached a point of being REALLY expensive to do so, a protocol chamber would probably be pretty quickly oh god why am I even talking about this I don't even like bitcoin
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Feb 27, 2014 05:04
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Can't you guys leave bitcoin chat to the obsessed GBS weirdos? It's such a boring subject. I like hearing about people buying Ford trucks and poo poo.
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Feb 27, 2014 05:14
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I am OK posted:Can't you guys leave bitcoin chat to the obsessed GBS weirdos? It's such a boring subject. I like hearing about people buying Ford trucks and poo poo. I know someone who, shortly after having a kid, traded in his fully paid off car for a new 2013 SUV which was recently traded in for a 2014 SUV. Am I getting back on the right track? 
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Feb 27, 2014 06:20
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I had a coworker invite me into a 'business opportunity' a few days ago involving a company that starts with a T and rhymes with MelexFree. She told me that if I paid this company 1500$ ( ) they would give me a side job where I post a link to 5 different websites per day, and upon verification I get 100$ a week (So somehow these jokers can afford pay people 4$ for each link they spam on the internet).I asked her how the company made money and how they could afford these ridiculous wages, and she told me that the money comes from them investing the initial 1.5k deposit that new recruits paid the company. If this were true it means that the company has magic investments that reliably turn 1500 into 5200+ a year just to afford to pay its workers. I simply could not believe this and I immediately assume that my coworker has found herself in some sort of scam. She then told me that if I wanted to join I should register under her name so that she would get benefits, and that if I were to get people under me I would get benefits from them too! MLM and a Ponzi scheme in a single package...  I tried to explain to her what ponzi schemes were and why MLMs weren't so good, I even used a pen an paper to make little drawings of pyramids! My coworker only responded by saying that her friend who is normally skeptical of these things ended up making money from this. This meant that his recommendation to join this company is super trustworthy so she should get into it too!. She makes minimum wage and already sunk the initial $1500 into this 'opportunity'.. after income tax that's basically almost 200 hours of work gone to waste I wish I were better at convincing people. I have a second coworker who also makes minimum wage, and puts in over 60 hours per week to provide for his family of 2 kids and a stay at home wife. This is about 2400/month before tax, if he can manage to keep up a 60 hr work week. He told me one day how after he pays 1.3k in rent and 300 for car maintenance/insurance, he is barely able to afford food and necessities for his family. While this isn't an optimal situation to be in, I figured that since he drives a 2002 Corolla, can provide for his kids and isn't in debt, in my eyes he isn't doing anything horribly irresponsible with his money. My view of him changed however when he told me he wanted to purchase a house within the year. He was looking at listings that were in the 600-800k range. I asked him why he was in such a hurry and he replied "Real estate ONLY GOES UP. I want to stop throwing away my money as rent. I must buy now or the prices will be too much and I wont be able to sell it at a good profit". I'm not too worried though, I'm sure financial institutions will be responsible enough to refuse him a mortgage and crush his dreams before they ruin his life. They will say no right? 
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Feb 27, 2014 08:10
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Guest2553 posted:I know someone who, shortly after having a kid, traded in his fully paid off car for a new 2013 SUV which was recently traded in for a 2014 SUV. Am I getting back on the right track?
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Feb 27, 2014 08:40
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PowFu posted:I'm not too worried though, I'm sure financial institutions will be responsible enough to refuse him a mortgage and crush his dreams before they ruin his life. They will say no right? I have a good friend who along with his girlfriend that don't even live together want to purchase a $6-700K house in a newish booming small city. He makes like $42K, and she makes likely less. He currently owns a home that gained in value from ~$160K to ~$310K and therefore has ~$150K in equity, and feels like he could put all of that into the down payment and could then afford the newer house. In the past five years, he's only managed to pay $20K off of the existing mortgage. Also, everything I've read lately says Canada's housing bubble has to burst sometime in the short term. He doesn't seem to understand that monthly payments should not be what he's looking at, but the overall price which is far outside of what he can reasonably afford. I'm hoping like you the banks will crush his dreams, because he won't listen to reason.
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Feb 27, 2014 14:24
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Guest2553 posted:I know someone who, shortly after having a kid, traded in his fully paid off car for a new 2013 SUV which was recently traded in for a 2014 SUV. Am I getting back on the right track? Back when I was 21, my boss and I had a similar car. Both were financed. One day he told me he was in the stages of trading his car in to the newest model, three years into his loan. His justification was: "My monthly payment isn't changing! You can do it too!" Since I was not as financially savvy then as I am today, it did not immediately click in how this was "being bad with money", but I knew there was no way he was not losing money, as his three year-old car would have depreciated significantly since he bought it. Then the obviousness of the truth became clear to my 21 year-old self - his financing term was being extended by 2-3 years. If a 21 year-old can recognize how one would lose $10k on that transaction, why can't a 30 year old? Rick Rickshaw fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 14:43
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PowFu posted:I have a second coworker who also makes minimum wage, and puts in over 60 hours per week to provide for his family of 2 kids and a stay at home wife. This is about 2400/month before tax, if he can manage to keep up a 60 hr work week. He told me one day how after he pays 1.3k in rent and 300 for car maintenance/insurance, he is barely able to afford food and necessities for his family. While this isn't an optimal situation to be in, I figured that since he drives a 2002 Corolla, can provide for his kids and isn't in debt, in my eyes he isn't doing anything horribly irresponsible with his money. Wait. This dude has no memory of 2008 at all?
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Feb 27, 2014 15:47
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Sudden Infant Def Syndrome posted:He currently owns a home that gained in value from ~$160K to ~$310K and therefore has ~$150K in equity, and feels like he could put all of that into the down payment and could then afford the newer house. In the past five years, he's only managed to pay $20K off of the existing mortgage. If you assume the loan started at $160k and 5% interest with 30 years on the term after 5 years principle would only be down by $13,321. So he would have had to make $6679 in extra payments. Basically a bit over an extra payment a year which is not too bad really. Buying the new house probably not a smooth move though.
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Feb 27, 2014 15:54
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