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NancyPants posted:I have something like a $1200 deductible and we have the option of HSA, but it's a goddamned reimbursement account. So I put the money away...then I have to spend cash in order to be reimbursed with my own loving money. Jesus Christ I hate this poo poo, I cannot wait until we go single payer. This is a fair point, although some HSAs issue a debit card that is linked to the account that you can use to cut out the reimbursement step. I know that HealthEquity does.
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Mar 3, 2014 18:43
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Orange_Lazarus posted:I think what bothers me most is that people (probably most) are actually heavily influenced by commercials in the first place. I mean yeah, I'm sure commercials have probably influenced my purchasing decisions in the past but I don't think they affect me as much as most people I know. The ads that work on you don't even register on you. It's a "oh poo poo, Steam sale>>>Credit Card purchase" direct neuropath from your eyes to your brain to your fingers clicking the buy button. If an ad seems crass, stupid or obvious, it's because it's not for you. (Not to stereotype you as a greasy goony nerd who salivates during steam sales or anything) The best ads streamline the resistance between the consumer and the poo poo they already want. They don't "sell" anything.
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Mar 3, 2014 21:18
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Want to know the best way to find out what kind of advertising you fall for? Get married. Your spouse will be able to tell you easily.
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Mar 3, 2014 21:41
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tiananman posted:The ads that work on you don't even register on you. It's a "oh poo poo, Steam sale>>>Credit Card purchase" direct neuropath from your eyes to your brain to your fingers clicking the buy button. I count as a person who thinks that ads don't work on me. But this is because the nature of my desires are just not obvious to me or typical when I think of "advertising". Effective advertising is when I walk by a coffee shop and "realize" that I want a pumpkin spice muffin. It's the actual appearance of a vacation in my mind when I think of taking time off. That image has a very specific, constructed character that was created by an advertiser somewhere. I would probably want time off regardless of ads, but I only hunger for a specific type of product whether it's a beach vacation or a nice muffin. That's advertising.
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Mar 3, 2014 23:24
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Nocheez posted:Want to know the best way to find out what kind of advertising you fall for? I've been doing a lot more telling that being told  Fortunately my wife is nearing my levels of stoicism instead of me nearing her (albeit small but existing) consumerism.
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Mar 4, 2014 01:21
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Commercials are about strengthening associations not compelling. So if you're the type of person that has impulsive craving for something, the commercials function to associate the craving for that thing with their brand. The goal is to not make you want McDonalds now, but to make you crave McDonalds when you're near one through positive associations.
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Mar 4, 2014 03:34
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Boy this thread is a ride. I have a couple short stories to add. Family! A family member finally left her abusive husband of 25 years and immediately got remarried to an alcoholic dipshit. She repaired his credit rating (to a degree) then somehow he managed to con her into remortgaging his house in her name. The money from that was spent (not paying down debts), but on a carport/storage unit which was built so poorly that it almost immediately needed thousands more in repairs after the plumbing burst. The house then went into foreclosure and she has yet to fully recover. Admittedly she's also terrible with money in her own special way. For example, instead of paying off the $600 ETF on a cell contract, she allowed it to go to collections. Her justification? "The people on the phone said it wasn't a contract and I shouldn't have to pay!  " Last time I checked the debt had ballooned to somewhere in the $2K range. On top of another $10K+ debt since nobody actually showed her the math that just paying the minimum plus ten bucks won't ever actually get you out of credit card debt. She's leveraging the "7 year rule". To her credit and much of my own pestering she's finally sorta-kinda-getting her poo poo together, but getting set back twenty years will really gently caress you in terms of life goals and being able to retire. Especially when you're bad with buying poo poo on impulse with credit. Another family member decided to become a FFL in California at the height of 2008 since being a disabled firefighter wasn't supporting his lifestyle of big trucks, tea party tithing, and expensive cigars. Last I heard the licensing had washed out and he finally dropped enough weight to get back into training firefighters. Good for him  Another family member decided working at Sonic for a pittance wasn't good enough, so she maxed out a bunch of credit cards to move to Montana in the dead of winter. That was really stupid. Lastly: It's me. I'm bad with money. I'm in my middle twenties and have no career plan or path. No higher education to speak of, only a few grand in the bank, no investments but zero debt, and a functioning high mileage automobile. Reading this thread has me convinced that I'm either ahead of the game or absolute scum, depending on which rear end in a top hat is being particularly vocal on a given page. I've never given it to much thought since I've been the very definition of poor as gently caress my entire working life. Just did the best I could and bought what I needed, not what I wanted 
MC Hawking fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 06:51
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MC Hawking posted:
The bolded parts of what you said put in you the 99th percentile of most of this thread, FYI. Being or considering yourself poor does not mean you're bad with money. If you really want to join the hall of shame of this thread properly you should really buckle down on that career and get an unsecured student loan to go to Phoenix or ITT Tech, I hear those places are amazing. Additionally, drop that dumpy car and get a $0 down 18% interest loan on a new luxury vehicle, then get some credit cards (magic money) and go treat yourself, you deserve it! Maybe toss in a lavish international vacation while you're at it. If you can't pay it all, no worries! Just wait ~7 years~ for it all to drop off and ignore debt collector calls and home visits for that whole time. (Don't do any of those things, but maybe consider picking up a trade if school isn't your gig?) Higgy fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 14:04
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MC Hawking posted:Boy this thread is a ride. I have a couple short stories to add. If you have no debt I would say you are good with money. And if you are in your mid twenties the fact that you have no investments is still really easy to fix. So basically, take the right step or two on setting up a Roth plan of some sort and you'll be off to the races.
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Mar 4, 2014 14:07
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I've got a cousin who is terrible with money. To give you some background, he has probably the most severe case of ADD you could imagine. He's probably tried every medication on the market, they help but they don't really control the problem. He has poor judgment and impulse control, and practices exactly zero moderation when it comes to food, drinking, and spending. He's been dropping in and out of school (private, then community, and now a state school) for the past 5 years due to his inability to stick to his studies. During that time he has: -Had multiple pregnancy scares with his unmedicated bipolar girlfriend (they broke up, thank god) -Had his shady friends install used brake pads on his (well, actually his parent's) car to replace failing ones. After those parts didn't work, his parents ended up footing the bill for a new set. -Gotten fired from his job at a restaurant for being absent from work 3 times. In a month and a half. -Called me at about 11:30 at night asking me to drive to where he was to lend him some gas money. He had driven to a house party about 60 miles from where he lived on a near-empty tank, with no plan for getting back. -Begged and borrowed money, booze, food and transportation off of literally everyone he knows who will let him. Never pays anyone back. -Gotten involved with Cutco, despite multiple warnings from friends and family that it was a scam. Now that you have an idea of his character, I guess have a couple stories. Right now, he works part-time at a ski shop. Since Spring is coming up, they're due to close at the end of the season. His plan is to pour all the money he made this winter into a new snowboard and longboarding gear. He has no other job lined up for when the shop closes. Well, I guess that's a half-truth. I heard through the grapevine that he's driving around a small-time pot dealer around his old college campus, helping him sell. He's being paid in weed. He still lives with his parents at 24. My poor aunt and uncle have poured tens of thousands of dollars into his wasted education and useless hobbies, with no end in reasonable sight. Not looking forward to the night he gets busted.
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Mar 4, 2014 16:04
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Not a Children posted:-Called me at about 11:30 at night asking me to drive to where he was to lend him some gas money. He had driven to a house party about 60 miles from where he lived on a near-empty tank, with no plan for getting back. Please tell me you told him to gently caress off. This sounds like an episode of "Enablers". Well, most people call the show by it's given name of "Intervention," but I think the show is created by the Enablers in most cases.
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Mar 4, 2014 16:33
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Nocheez posted:Please tell me you told him to gently caress off. I was in bed with my girlfriend when he called; after finding out that no, he did not actually have a real emergency going on, I politely told him in so many words to call someone who has extra fucks to give. I love him, we've been friends literally since birth (10 days apart), but good God is he terrible with impulse control. His parents are definitely enablers. Their two older sons are both successful engineers, so I guess they feel they need to give the weaker link in the family all the support they can. He really does have some screws loose up there, so I kind of feel bad describing him this way, but he's not making any efforts to help himself out of the pit he's dug, despite the fact that he's surrounded by generally good influences. I guess when you have a good network of family to pick up your slack, there's no real motivation for some people to get ahead on their own. Not a Children fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 17:37
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Apparently there's a high-profile story of someone bad with many things, money among them, going on in Silicon Valley right now: http://valleywag.gawker.com/startup-gets-hacked-reveals-child-ceo-posing-with-cash-1513142187 http://valleywag.gawker.com/another-ex-clinkle-employee-trashes-nightmare-boss-1490427957 quote:That's $30,000 in cash he's holding, revealed alongside the names, phone numbers, and profile pictures of other current Clinkle users. Let's put aside the insult to injury for a startup that's been hacked before it even releases its product: Lucas Duplan is the kind of boss who thinks it's OK to pose with giant Benjamin bundles before he or his company have enjoyed an iota of actual success. Maybe it's his own money, taken from a six-figure salary we're told dwarfs the poor compensation of his underlings. Maybe it's investor money, meant to be used in the process of launching Clinkle—which of course, hasn't happened. No matter where the money came from, if you're the CEO of a struggling company with a bad reputation, don't use a shot of yourself holding enough money to buy a car as your profile picture for anything. Another piece of free advice: get to know a 22-year-old very well before you hand him $25 million in venture capital.
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Mar 5, 2014 10:20
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VideoTapir posted:Apparently there's a high-profile story of someone bad with many things, money among them, going on in Silicon Valley right now: Man what the gently caress is with Stanford grads? Our company just recently had to issue a cease and desist to a group of Stanford kids who started up a little project, offered it to our clients for free, then once our clients had signed up they turned around and told the clients they were partnering with us and as a part of the partnership, they would now have to start charging for their product. Of course, no such partnership exists and now never will exist in their wildest dreams. They tried mollifying us by firing their sales staff, but we're going for the throat and driving them to Hell of course because gently caress you that's why. pathetic little tramp fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Mar 5, 2014 15:50
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I just read that article and the arguments in the comments and I still don't know what a clinkle is. Why did they give the "dude you're getting a Dell" guy 25 million? edit: after googling, found out that it's an app to send payments over smartphone, with absolutely no real proof of concept out there. He's not the only one bad with money in this story. Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Mar 5, 2014 15:54
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 BUT WHAT IF HE'S THE NEXT ZUCKERBERG?!?!
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Mar 5, 2014 16:33
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My mother is one of those people that always falls for monthly payment approaches to buying things. She never actually adds up the actual cost of ownership. She owns a store in a really lovely part of town and things are constantly getting stolen. She's had two business related phones stolen and both times she got suckered (I wasn't aware that she was doing this) into opening new lines with contracts to get new "cheap" phones. Now, her third business phone has been stolen and she called me from the store asking if she should get a tablet with it's own line to replace the stolen phone for "only" $200. I did the math for her to point out that this would end up costing well over $2000 over 2 years and that's when I got wind of the fact that she's done this a couple times. After grilling her for the full details she's told me she's paying nearly $300 a month for 4 lines, 3 of which she can't use due to the phones being stolen and now she's trying to open another line for this tablet. I told her this was ridiculous and talked her through getting the other lines mostly deactivated (basically she's paying 5$ a month on each of the unused lines now) and told her to never set foot in a cellular store again.
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Mar 5, 2014 19:32
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http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/28743/if-i-have-1000-to-invest-in-penny-stocks-online-should-i-diversify-risk-and-inZipote posted:I have $1000 to invest. I use Scottrade to invest in penny stocks online, they charge $7 to buy a stock and another $7 to sell it ($14 in total). Given the high volatility of these stocks, what tactic should I use in order to maximize my EXPECTED RETURN? fuckin lol
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Mar 5, 2014 20:12
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pathetic little tramp posted:http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/28743/if-i-have-1000-to-invest-in-penny-stocks-online-should-i-diversify-risk-and-in
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Mar 5, 2014 20:19
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No Wave posted:I still can't really believe that individual otherwise-employed investors still day-trade. They shut down the online poker sites man.
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Mar 5, 2014 21:20
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Guinness posted:This is a fair point, although some HSAs issue a debit card that is linked to the account that you can use to cut out the reimbursement step. I know that HealthEquity does. Mellon Bank/Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois does too. Now if I could just get them to realize that I'm already past my max out of pocket for the year and they should stop sending me bills.
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Mar 6, 2014 00:16
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hahahaha Stanford: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140305192417-17970806-stanford-takes-away-a-grad-s-mba-degree?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0
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Mar 6, 2014 02:03
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Reddit never fails to deliver. http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/1zrx6c/early_30s_law_degree_tons_of_debt_and_despairing/?sort=confidence
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Mar 7, 2014 13:32
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peter banana posted:hahahaha Stanford: The comments are really great, "but... he passed the classes..  " As one commenter said, he took someone the place of someone else and obviously didn't learn anything from the ethics classes.
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Mar 7, 2014 15:08
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Orange_Lazarus posted:The comments are really great, Kinda shows how bullshit and arbatrary degrees actually are.
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Mar 7, 2014 15:43
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Saros posted:Reddit never fails to deliver. To be fair, it sounds like a lot of this is exacerbated by mental health issues of the poster and his immediate family
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Mar 7, 2014 16:18
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Speaking of monthly payments, I just saw that amazon is offering kindle e-readers and tablet's "in 5 easy payments".
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Mar 7, 2014 20:25
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While obviously I don't actually manage my investments in chunks of $15-$30, no reason to pay today what I could put off until tomorrow without interest.
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Mar 7, 2014 20:30
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Jeffrey posted:While obviously I don't actually manage my investments in chunks of $15-$30, no reason to pay today what I could put off until tomorrow without interest. ^^^ Correct. We just got 0% interest for 3 year loan on our new car. We had cash to buy it right then but why not let our money gain interest in savings? Just leave the cash in 1 account and set an auto debit.
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Mar 7, 2014 21:08
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Tigntink posted:^^^ Correct. We just got 0% interest for 3 year loan on our new car. We had cash to buy it right then but why not let our money gain interest in savings? Just leave the cash in 1 account and set an auto debit. Because the 0% is usually paid for with credits that could have been applied to the car's price?
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Mar 7, 2014 21:33
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LorneReams posted:Because the 0% is usually paid for with credits that could have been applied to the car's price? It wasn't, in our case. You've obviously got to be smart about it but just because you can pay something off immediately doesn't always mean you should.
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Mar 7, 2014 22:27
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Tigntink posted:It wasn't, in our case. You've obviously got to be smart about it but just because you can pay something off immediately doesn't always mean you should. If your choices are 0% interest loan or 0.012% savings account and you have enough savings, the few bucks you'd get may be eclipsed by the "having debt" thing.
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Mar 7, 2014 22:31
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silvergoose posted:If your choices are 0% interest loan or 0.012% savings account and you have enough savings, the few bucks you'd get may be eclipsed by the "having debt" thing. Or you'd be kicking yourself because you could have saved that money in an investment account and gotten like ~30% returns before you use it for your next large purchase. Or the money is available to pay for a plane ticket to see your mother if she gets sick, or help a sibling through a hard time. Or if your water heater breaks. If you had shied away from the "having debt" evilness, then you would have paid with the opportunity to do those things.
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Mar 7, 2014 22:48
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I know what you're saying, but I don't think you read both my and Tigntink's posts. Tigntink: "Correct. We just got 0% interest for 3 year loan on our new car. We had cash to buy it right then but why not let our money gain interest in savings? Just leave the cash in 1 account and set an auto debit." Me: "If your choices are 0% interest loan or 0.012% savings account and you have enough savings"
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Mar 7, 2014 23:02
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silvergoose posted:I know what you're saying, but I don't think you read both my and Tigntink's posts. That being said I'm so wildly anti-debt and any car I'd buy would be so cheap that I'd be tempted to just say gently caress that poo poo, but if you're responsible enough to pay it's not a bad decision. No Wave fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Mar 7, 2014 |
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Mar 7, 2014 23:10
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I need to get a laptop at some point soon and I still don't know how I feel about the 0% interest payment plan thing. Like 1200 bucks is a pretty small sum of money either way, though.
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Mar 7, 2014 23:37
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tuyop posted:I need to get a laptop at some point soon and I still don't know how I feel about the 0% interest payment plan thing. Like 1200 bucks is a pretty small sum of money either way, though. Not for something as disposable as a laptop.
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Mar 8, 2014 00:36
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canyoneer posted:Not for something as disposable as a laptop.
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Mar 8, 2014 01:04
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Saros posted:Reddit never fails to deliver. Hey it's SloMo's lawyer twin!
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Mar 8, 2014 02:06
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Cicero posted:He doesn't have much choice in the matter, macs are the de facto industry standard for enterprising basil farmers. Hey man, I have net worth now. It would be totally inappropriate to roll with an Asus or Toshiba tupperwarebook like some kind of poor. 
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Mar 8, 2014 02:20
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