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FrozenVent posted:Heh, if it's like keeping the Lexus for another two years so Trip can go to Fancyworth College, doesn't seem like a terrible idea. What that guy's describing is pretty extreme though. The people he described don't sound that wealthy. The middle class' obsession with college is, essentially, a wealth transfer from their demographic to the pockets of the landed elite that run the colleges. Like the Lexus, it is more of a luxury good for parents than it is a capital good for the student in the contemporary job market.
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Jul 4, 2014 13:36
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vssrio23 posted:The people he described don't sound that wealthy. If I would have went to Community College like I wanted to, I would have saved at least $20,000. But my parents wouldn't have that, and I had to go to a 4-year school if I wanted to stay living with them. It's probably because they never went to college and felt a degree would help me. As many people have found out, degrees don't lead to guaranteed jobs. I think the government should step in and only allow loans for programs that have clear paths towards career development (Internships/Apprenticeships guaranteed during your program). That way kids get steered away from pointless poo poo like English degrees unless their wealthy parents want to pay cash for it. And then because no one will enroll in the programs that aren't loan-eligible, those pointless degrees will disappear.
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Jul 4, 2014 13:47
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Or, y'know, get way cheaper.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:02
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If the kids make it through their respective primary and secondary educations AND both learn English well enough to get by in their respective countries of citizenship, they'll be no worse off than any poor person growing up in those places in terms of opportunities, and depending on what they do in the interim they might actually have an easier time getting into a good college in China. There is a possibility that that The problem is getting from here to there, as, unless they seriously compromise this plan or abandon it altogether, they would need as much as 2 times the income they have to do it, and that will leave them with jack squat for savings, so they aren't going to be paying for college, unless there's some major change in circumstances. I expect the status quo in American education will have changed by then, but I'd be surprised if that weren't a major problem for the boy at least. Oh, and they had a 100,000 RMB bank loan they recently paid off. I just found out about this part. They took out a loan to go have the boy in the US. The mother's biggest, or at least most frequent complaint with the father is that she no longer gives her as much money to spend as he used to. GEE, I WONDER WHY. She doesn't wonder. Doesn't know, and doesn't wonder. I'm not sure I even want to know whose idea this whole scheme was.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:04
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silvergoose posted:Or, y'know, get way cheaper. Or, I just thought, kids wanting crap degrees have to take private student loans and the private-loan market skyrockets. That would be very bad.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:08
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EugeneJ posted:If I would have went to Community College like I wanted to, I would have saved at least $20,000. But my parents wouldn't have that, and I had to go to a 4-year school if I wanted to stay living with them. They're not pointless. There aren't many pointless degrees. There just aren't as many full-time jobs in some fields as there are people who want to do them (or at least study for them).
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Jul 4, 2014 14:18
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EugeneJ posted:If I would have went to Community College like I wanted to, I would have saved at least $20,000. But my parents wouldn't have that, and I had to go to a 4-year school if I wanted to stay living with them. Like has been said, there are no "pointless" degrees in the strictest definition of the word. Higher degree education has been around for far longer than most modern industries and employment fields. It is only within the 20th century (in particular since the late 1970's) that the average family has come to generalize the college education process as a ticket to above-average earning power. Your program would have the effect of either making those degrees extremely cheap or, paradoxically, making them extremely expensive by turning them into a purely luxury item for the rich. In either scenario, the supply of degrees worth obtaining would decrease and cause a net increase in demand for other degrees in modern colleges of higher learning. This isn't to say people would be any more successful attaining those degrees, of course, but it would cause the price to be bid up and, subsequently, increase tuition price inflation further. The failure of policies like yours is that it assumes that public perception and demand can be precisely controlled through legislative action. People, as myopic as they are, simply cannot see beyond what worked in the past when they are formulating their response for the unknown future. vssrio23 fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 15:08
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Plus if you think English degrees are useless, you've never read something written by an engineer.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:22
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A lot of "useless" degrees also require you to think outside the box a little in terms of job prospects. Pretty much every company needs graphic designers of some sort, it's just not as romantic as the pure starving artist ideal many people have built up in their heads when they go to get art degrees. Every company uses written communication of some sort - there's your use for an English degree. The career options involved aren't anywhere near as clear cut as "get engineering degree->do something with "engineer" in the job title" or "get nursing degree->become a nurse", but they exist. And there's the whole "should college be about learning or job training?" debate, but that's outside the scope of this thread(beyond making fun of people who take on way too much debt for either purpose).
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Jul 4, 2014 15:42
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FrozenVent posted:Plus if you think English degrees are useless, you've never read something written by an engineer. Yeah but english majors are no better. Every week, without fail, an english major makes an e/n thread crying about being a jobless loser and has awful spelling/grammar. So yeah, useless.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:53
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Haifisch posted:And there's the whole "should college be about learning or job training?" debate, but that's outside the scope of this thread(beyond making fun of people who take on way too much debt for either purpose). The job at end of education part, is a bonus. The problem is that the ideals of today affect (especially) people that are bad with money. That's why there are loads of people with tons of debt and "useless" degrees. The degrees are not useless in the sense that it's useless knowledge, but useless in the way of finding a job without having a solid plan before. If you just go and study subject X that has an insanely over inflated job market, and expect to get a job like a nurse does, you are in big trouble. Even over here where education is free, people go about studying just for the sake of studying. After 6 years and maxed out loans (limit for getting student loans / benefits) there are people that have nothing to show for it that can lead them to a job. What I'm trying to say is, you really should have a plan before studying. If your plan is solid, there are no useless degrees.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:07
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I imagine that this is a pretty common one, but I know a guy who just spent a few hundred dollars on a tattoo of his son's names. I'm not a fan of tattoos personally but I guess it is a pretty sweet thing to do. Problem is that this guy lives at his mom's house still and his son is 5 years old and will probably never have a room of his own if this keeps up. My girlfriend's entire family is bad with money. Her dad once mentioned needing money to to payback a loan on his 401k (at least he has one I suppose, but the balance was around $50K and he is in his 50s) and not six months later he was taking an Alaskan cruise. He got evicted from his condo prior to taking a trip to Europe. He constantly feels the need to show off by spending money he doesn't have. He gives each of the five (adult) children $100 for Christmas, and $100 for their birthdays. The other kids are terrible with money so this is like mana from the Gods. GF just puts hers in a box for the day that her dad is going to ask for money again.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:50
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VideoTapir posted:The problem is getting from here to there, as, unless they seriously compromise this plan or abandon it altogether, they would need as much as 2 times the income they have to do it, and that will leave them with jack squat for savings, so they aren't going to be paying for college, unless there's some major change in circumstances. ...since these kids don't have local hukou/aren't "registered" in China, how is their health care covered? Are mom and dad paying out of pocket? 'Cause that's an expense that would skyrocket in case of emergency...I assume the daughter could go to HK for care, but getting the son to the US and then treated without insurance would be highly difficult. Primary education in China for foreigners is so expensive--I knew a few girls who made 35k+ room and board or so a year by nannying/helping to home school kids whose parents were living in Beijing...when it's cheaper to bring in help than it is to send your kids to school, you know the international schools are way too expensive.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:30
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FearCotton posted:...since these kids don't have local hukou/aren't "registered" in China, how is their health care covered? Are mom and dad paying out of pocket? 'Cause that's an expense that would skyrocket in case of emergency...I assume the daughter could go to HK for care, but getting the son to the US and then treated without insurance would be highly difficult. I don't know, but I suspect that given the dad's attitude toward his son's schooling so far that they're just going out of pocket, and he isn't thinking about it. For those who don't know, routine health care in China is STARTLINGLY cheap (yeah, sometimes it's totally third-world, but even when it's good it's cheap). Even at a private clinic it'll still be cheaper than some people's co-pays on their insurance in the US. But if you need anything complicated, long-term, or state-of-the-art, while it'll be cheaper than the US, it's still going to be expensive enough to ruin you.
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Jul 5, 2014 05:48
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Zo posted:Yeah but english majors are no better. Every week, without fail, an english major makes an e/n thread crying about being a jobless loser and has awful spelling/grammar. Some students are just bad students. They get through a degree program, naively thinking that will be enough to land a job, but they don't actually develop the skills to become successful in their chosen field. I graduated from a professional program that is completely direct in its career path. You get the degree in "x" and your job title is "x". The job market is not particularly saturated, and yet there are still a small number of students each year who barely manage to graduate and don't get jobs because they lack qualities that make a good "x". They bomb out of interviews because employers can smell their lack of skill, motivation, and professionalism. Uranium 235 fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 14:56
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vssrio23 posted:Like has been said, there are no "pointless" degrees in the strictest definition of the word. Higher degree education has been around for far longer than most modern industries and employment fields. It is only within the 20th century (in particular since the late 1970's) that the average family has come to generalize the college education process as a ticket to above-average earning power. I don't know about that. There was that one guy who posted about his degree in like fiber two years ago.
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Jul 5, 2014 17:11
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Yeah that's only what every scrap of clothing is made of. No jobs there. There are few completely dumb degrees, just a lot of dumbasses without plans.
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Jul 5, 2014 17:28
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i like nice words
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Clothes are made of cloth. Fiber is what brings the Web to us.
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Jul 5, 2014 17:40
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I think you're confused. Fiber is what helps us to poo! 
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Jul 5, 2014 19:40
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Pretty sure it's "fibre", guys. 
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Jul 5, 2014 21:45
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I have a couple friends who live with each other, young, going through college, the usual deal. He recently got $9,000 from some extended family and spent every penny of it in less that 2 months. She buys at least $400 of weed each month so she and him can smoke every day. They both buy bongs and pipes but keep breaking at least one a month, so they have to buy new ones, usually about $200 on average. I made the mistake of buying one of them a vaporizer for a birthday, broken within two weeks. They both live in a dilapidated 1 bedroom apartment that they pay about $600 a month for, I would value it at about half that. They both have a dog and two cats, and were considering getting another even though they can't feed all of them some weeks. They often eat out at night because their kitchen is usually covered in dishes or trash. I almost came close to living with these people.
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Jul 6, 2014 05:42
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Can you get a metal or heavy-duty ceramic or thick tempered glass bong for people like that? It seems like such a thing would pay for itself pretty quick.
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Jul 6, 2014 05:51
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Buy a man a bong and he smokes until he breaks it. Teach a man to make an apple bong and he smokes as long as he remembers to fill the fruit bowl.
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Jul 6, 2014 06:18
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Once upon a time I thought it would be a good idea to try and daytrade the market without really understanding what I was doing. I read half a dozen books on pattern trading, tech analyis books, and scoured internet forums for advice by supposed "experts" at this. I even signed up for a private trading forum that required a monthly fee. The results? I got owned. I estimate it was around a 16-18k total loss or so from screwing around in the market back then. I can look back on it and laugh now since I built up a really nice nest egg (through prudent long term indexing combined with real estate) since then but that loss still stung for the longest time. Just an example of the types of trades I was doing.. I bought SPY puts in 2008 during the crash and failed to hold it before getting jostled out of my position with an ill timed stop then hesitating before jumping back in. If I held it for 2 days it would have been something like 30k profit instead of a -1k loss. I backed up the truck and loaded up on apple shares around late 2007/early 2008 only to sell them mid-way through the crash like a total pussy. Messed around with SPX futures and tried to trade patterns only to lose a lot a little at a time.
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Jul 6, 2014 06:46
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Athletes make this almost too easy, but one particular line jumped out at me. Also the answer as to why athletes continue to play past their prime when they seem miserable having to play.quote:Free agent OT Bryant McKinnie had his car repossessed and is having financial problems. I guess that's probably a better use than racking up $400k in student loans without finishing a degree, so he's got that going for him.
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Jul 6, 2014 18:30
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$400k at a strip club? Dude, just order a harem of Russian/Eastern-European wives and put half a mill in an index fund and use the profits to keep them happy enough to warm your bed. No brainer.
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Jul 6, 2014 19:05
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Bob Mundon posted:Athletes make this almost too easy, but one particular line jumped out at me. Also the answer as to why athletes continue to play past their prime when they seem miserable having to play. That's not true. Sometimes athletes simply need to provide for their families. And their boats. quote:On October 31, 2004, the Minnesota Timberwolves offered Sprewell a 3-year, $21 million contract extension, substantially less than what his then-current contract paid him. Claiming to feel insulted by the offer, he publicly expressed outrage, declaring, "I have a family to feed ... If Glen Taylor wants to see my family fed, he better cough up some money. Otherwise, you're going to see these kids in one of those Sally Struthers commercials soon."[1] quote:[in 2007] A federal marshal seized Latrell Sprewell's $1.5 million yacht out of storage in Manitowoc, Wis., after the former NBA swingman defaulted on the mortgage. There's a ton of little factors that make this worse, most notably that at the time that Sprewell was offered that last contract he was 35 and clearly at the end of his high-minutes career. Offering him a contract of that length was actually a very bad idea on the part of the Timberwolves and he was absolutely stupid to refuse it. Isentropy fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 20:19
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How the gently caress is that not enough money to feed your family.
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Jul 6, 2014 22:15
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Sprewell should have choked some of them to avoid having to feed them. Dude was good at choking. Not in a sports euphemism sense, literally he was good at choking other human beings. The fact that he had a career in the NBA after that incident is astonishing. Him and that loving sociopath vick both should have been relegated to working in a Chinese coal mine or something.
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Jul 6, 2014 22:37
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My coworker has crippling pain in her hand and arm due to tennis elbow or carpal tunnel or something, and she refuses to go to the doctor "because it costs too much!" but she and her husband just bought TWO new cars. She also has car payments for two or three other cars for her kids, two of whom are in college. The whole family just got back from a week long resort vacation in Aruba.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:17
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:My coworker has crippling pain in her hand and arm due to tennis elbow or carpal tunnel or something, and she refuses to go to the doctor "because it costs too much!" but she and her husband just bought TWO new cars. She also has car payments for two or three other cars for her kids, two of whom are in college. The whole family just got back from a week long resort vacation in Aruba. My sister just got back from an Aruba resort vacation too. Only instead of debt financing her trip she paid for the entire thing with points/miles earned from work travel over the past few years. The total out-of-pocket cost was $4 for a snack at the airport. Attaway sis!
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Jul 7, 2014 02:32
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Inudeku posted:How the gently caress is that not enough money to feed your family. It's metaphorical. Just that when there are billions of people for whom this literally is a problem it's a tasteless metaphor. Also, consider with whom he's negotiating. There's no one to feel sorry for.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:42
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No way you can talk about broke athletes without talking about Antoine Walker. https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Former-Celtics-star-Antoine-Walker-is-broke-and-?urn=nba,198509 quote:"[Walker] liked to move in an outsized entourage; his mother estimates that, during his playing days, he was supporting 70 friends and family members in one way or another. And speaking of his mother, he built her a mansion in the Chicago suburbs, complete with an indoor pool, 10 bathrooms, and a full-size basketball court. [...]
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Jul 7, 2014 03:34
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Strong Sauce posted:Pretty much when you come up into that much money and you came from a poor neighborhood, everyone wants a piece. Yeah, I know that growing up poor tends to gently caress with your mind and makes most people financially retarded, but he could have set those 70 people up for life and provided their children with giant windfalls by giving them each 1.5mm trusts withdrawing an ultra-safe inflation adjusted $45k a year. Instead of being broke and that guy that did nice things back in the day, he'd have a legend.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:51
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The MC Hammer Effect - build a gold mansion, support 100 friends, go broke
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Jul 7, 2014 12:54
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baquerd posted:Yeah, I know that growing up poor tends to gently caress with your mind and makes most people financially retarded, but he could have set those 70 people up for life and provided their children with giant windfalls by giving them each 1.5mm trusts withdrawing an ultra-safe inflation adjusted $45k a year. Instead of being broke and that guy that did nice things back in the day, he'd have a legend. He couldn't have even come close to doing that.
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Jul 7, 2014 14:35
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I worked in a pharmacy a while back, and a lady walks in slightly hunched over with a cane. She was 58 years old so I thought it was odd that she had a bad back at a relatively young age. I open her file and I realize she hasn't had a refill in a while. "Oh, I haven't filled my bone pill in 2 weeks because I've been shopping around trying to find a better deal!" It cost her maybe 25$ at most for a 3 month supply. If she were to buy the medication with 0 markup, she would have saved around $5. She and her husband drive a Benz, and the neighborhood houses are in the 600-800k range.
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Jul 7, 2014 15:13
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Reddit has a fun thread today. What was the dumbest financial mistake you've ever made? Best part is it's not all people that took out 10 billion dollar loans on minimum wage. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2a2c00/what_was_the_dumbest_financial_mistake_youve_ever/ quote:I have you beat. I bought about $850 worth of Apple stock in 1999 with the intention of sitting on it. Little did I know that eTrade changed some fine print in their user agreement which instituted a fee if you have an open account without any trading activity. They quickly drained the small balance I had, then started selling shares until everything was gone. I didn't discover this until many years later and it was too late to do anything.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:58
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That's not necessarily being bad with money as it is holy poo poo never use E*Trade for any reason
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Jul 8, 2014 05:01
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reddit posted:I've been purchasing silly items on QVC, Amazon, and other online retailers for the past 3 years. I've tallied what I've spent this year alone, and when I add it to my current monthly car payment, I could be riding around in a Porsche. No desire to change...
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