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Its a miracle how our forefathers were able to survive washing their clothes in a stream with a washboard!
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Jan 30, 2015 22:30
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I want to tell you about my brother-in-law as a way to rant a little. He and my sister got married about 6 years ago. Before they got married they were living with my parents (and me). She was working full time in a professional admin job (her dream was babies and no more working) and he was finishing his undergrad. He was then going to do a one year masters, then a PhD and then start working at about £80k a year (not unrealistic for his field, pharmacology). Cut to now. He took 3 years to do his masters, refuses to get a job because he is always applying for the next intake for PhDs, and gets involved in every hair brained scheme. He spent 2 years working with someone trying to sell wet wipe making machines. He is involved with 2 MLM schemes (one selling aloe Vera products which means they have to use them all as he is terrible at selling and Aloe Vera toothpaste is gross). He currently ships off about 200kg of clothes a month to his mother in Algeria to sell in the markets there (I have no idea if he even breaks even from this). He had a job at the university teaching undergrads for about 12 hours a week but half way through his second term went back to Algeria for 5 weeks and told them 3 days before. Needless to say he wasn't rehired. They have 2 kids and are still living with my parents. About 2 years ago they looked into buying a house and realised it was expensive so stopped looking. dur. They pay my parents nothing in rent but share grocery shopping (my parents are probably still paying for 95% of all household costs). They were paying my parents their child tax credits but that stopped until I got involved and then that restarted. It's a token amount but that was the point - a token. This isn't really a story about my irredeemable brother in law (although his rapid descent into the laziest Islamic fundamentalist is actually quite disturbing) - it's about my sister. Throughout this whole time she's been working at her job, letting him manage the finances. I only found out with the child support issue that she doesn't have access to their accounts at all (I guess her giving me her inheritance to look after should have been a clue). How can anyone trust a partner so obviously bad at money with all their money? (I'd write a whole thread about my brother-in-law and his fail life if anyone would be interested)
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Jan 30, 2015 22:32
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Write more! This thread is hungry.
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Jan 30, 2015 22:38
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Nuntius posted:His rapid descent into the laziest Islamic fundamentalist is actually quite disturbing Uhhhh, are you sure its 200kg of "clothes" he's shipping to his "mom"?
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Jan 30, 2015 22:42
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Isn't your sister automatically sentenced to death if she divorces her husband, per Islam faith That's a pretty good reason for her to put up with his poo poo
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Jan 30, 2015 22:52
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DJCobol posted:My last 2 cars have been salvage title cars, and I've had 5 insurance carriers (State Farm, Progressive, Nationwide, Liberty Mutual, & Geico) in 2 different states and none of them have batted an eye at either comprehensive or full coverage insurance. They are either REbuilt Titles, you're in a state with looser guidelines, or more likely, they don't know.
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Jan 30, 2015 22:57
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EugeneJ posted:Isn't your sister automatically sentenced to death if she divorces her husband, per Islam faith Off-topic, but no, that's only like false/unproven allegations of rape or adultery or something. Maybe if she marries a non-Muslim. But divorce was ok'd by Islam right from the start. EDIT: failure for your husband to provide for you is a (I)slam dunk case for divorce under Sharia law too
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Jan 30, 2015 23:05
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Gorman Thomas posted:Uhhhh, are you sure its 200kg of "clothes" he's shipping to his "mom"? That's kind of a thing, I believe secondhand clothes from the US (stuff from thrift stores, etc) get shipped out in bulk to other countries. I actually ran into stuff from charity 5K runs near my hometown in Florida at a Japanese used clothing store (in the Japan equivalent of Kentucky). 
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Jan 30, 2015 23:08
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Ok I'm getting on a 10 hour flight soon so I'll write what I can for now. I'll start with his Masters. He had been denied funding from his home government for the last year of his Honours degree (the idea being that expats would return home to do their last year of Uni and then remain in the country - not a terribad idea actually) and rather than finding another way to pay for it he decided to apply directly for a masters on the basis of his Ordinary degree. He totally failed to get a place so applied for a part time Masters at the open university to take no more than 24 months (for what is essentially a 1 year masters full time). He 'couldn't' work because he was doing his (part time) Masters. He also couldn't look after his only child at the time because he was (part time) busy. In the end he took 36 months to complete it. He got an A average but so would anyone who spent literally triple the intended time on a Degree. Upon completing his masters he applied for a PhD with his supervisor. He actually got a place but with 0 funding and full fees (in the UK this is known as 'not a place, you get to hang around and subsidise our department teaching budget for the real students' and because he had 0 savings from refusing to work during his (part time) masters he couldn't take it. But unfortunately he never got the message which has put him in a Limbo of applying for a PhD twice a year (2 intakes) because he once got 'accepted' and never getting a real job. He's now 30 and hasn't worked a proper job since he was 18. But I have so many posts to go about his bad jobs.
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Jan 30, 2015 23:21
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(FYI my family isn't Muslim, just him - a future post I'm sure but trying to keep this to finance related stuff) I should rattle through some of his get rich quick / I'm finally going to man up and earn my way schemes. The diaper wipes - he somehow got in contact with someone who had bought this prototype diaper wet wipe producing machine and the rights to sell further machines. The plan I believe was to sell the machines to small scale local manufacturers in North Africa / Southern Europe and get a fixed fee per machine. He didn't have to put money down (as far as I know but he probably did) but he had to pay all his expenses flying around to try and sell these things, and spent about 3 months (of what he thinks is full time) designing the website (why a product being sold to manufacturers needs a consumer facing website???????). After putting about a year into it in a fairly serious way (and apparently years later he is still involved) they sold exactly zero and he had ended up paying about £3k in various flights (all my sister's money). -£3000k He then became a painter decorator working for another friend. He spent about £2k on tools (because as a painter decorator he NEEDED jig saws, circular saws, a 200 piece bit set, a hand router, etc etc). After two weeks of very long hours (because he is bad at painting and decorating as evidenced by the shocking job he did of his own bedroom) he quit. He then gave all his tools away to a friend despite me offering to buy some (because I'm a sculptor and workshop technician in a previous life and still use this stuff). Money made in 2 weeks for about 150 hours of work = -£1500 (because of tools) He then spent about a month as a Private hire car driver. He rented someone else's cab and then sat it in his drive for 3 weeks. He seemed to believe possession of the car would give magical income. In the last week he panicked and started working about 80 hours to try and break even. He was so happy when he broke even until we explained he hadn't refilled the gas tanks, and he made a loss. -£100
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Jan 30, 2015 23:45
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Teeter posted:Probably easier than buying 365 pairs of underwear in bulk. wait wait what When you buy underwear in bulk, as in, "more underwear than most people probably purchase in a lifetime", it is STILL $11 a pair??? Not negotiating a better discount than that is bad with money.
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Jan 30, 2015 23:51
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Nuntius posted:Ok I'm getting on a 10 hour flight soon so I'll write what I can for now. What field was he working in? I really dislike universities offering those kind of unfunded PhD's. I'd be really surprised if you told me anyone ever has done one of those in a STEM field. They are probably more common in the Humanities with people getting duped into paying for a Literature PhD or somesuch. Or maybe I'm extremely mistaken about my own field and about to learn some sad truths. E: Oh you mentioned it before, Pharmacology. Well, I could see paying for one there, since you could end up earning big with that kind of degree. Maybe. Markovnikov fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Jan 31, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 23:59
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Markovnikov posted:What field was he working in? Pharmacology. It really was a non-offer. But it gave him misplaced hope.
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Jan 31, 2015 00:02
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I read that as a "This is a passive aggressive way of us telling you we don't really want you in the program, but we'd be happy to take your money" type deal.
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Jan 31, 2015 00:21
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HonorableTB posted:I read that as a "This is a passive aggressive way of us telling you we don't really want you in the program, but we'd be happy to take your money" type deal. That is it 100% but he was too dumb to get the message
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Jan 31, 2015 00:24
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Inverse Icarus posted:I'm in NY for my grandfather's funeral, staying with my family. [...] It's been an amazing week for watching/hearing about my family wasting money. My sister is almost six months pregnant, and some other ladies in the family tried to plan her baby shower. She's basically taken over the planning, but still expects everyone else to pay for it. She was "mortified" that her mother in law bought a Costco cake for her bridal shower a few years ago, and angry that the Knights of Columbus hall my uncle hooked her up with wasn't nice (read: expensive) enough. She's getting a $600 cake for the baby shower. Some fancy Italian bakery in NYC makes a "cannoli cake" or something and she just has to have it. She wants to have it in a room at the Inn At New Hyde Park, a literal mansion, which is where my dad had his second wedding. She's talking about place settings. I asked her why she couldn't just have everyone over to her house, or have one of the other ladies in the family host the thing, and she stared at me like I was from Mars. This is causing a lot of drama that I've done my best to stay the gently caress out of until I fly home on Sunday. My dad's new wife is redoing her kitchen, and since I've been looking to do that in my house sometime in the near future I asked to go see it. I was flabbergasted. I'm pretty sure it has more cabinet/closet space than my entire house. My wife joked that she could sleep in one of the pull-out drawers. It has two sinks across from each other. You can stand between them and touch both. One's a "bar sink" in the island, for if you happen to be sitting at the other end of it and don't want to get up to do to the other sink, I guess. It has three dishwashers. Three. No hyperbole. She was mad at my dad for "running small loads in a big dishwasher" so she had two smaller dishwashers installed in addition to the existing one. She had glass imported from Italy for the new cabinets. I asked what the renovation was running her. It's over $200,000. Ever since my mom died and my dad got remarried, he's been spending money like nothing else. I can't blame him, really, since his wife died at 51 and he's not too healthy himself. He's been talking about living life to the fullest and gets sad about "all the nice things he didn't give" our mother. It's just such a striking change seeing the frugal dad who drove a 1989 Corolla until 2002 buy two new BMWs over three years, to think back on sharing a room with my brother in a house smaller than this new kitchen, to see the note from a maid service on the counter (his wife "cannot live in a house that's not professionally cleaned"), to see a wall of silk ties in the closet that once only had old, paint-covered tshirts/jeans and carhartt work clothes, or to see him give $100 to a stranger to shovel snow instead of smacking my brother and me on the back of the head and making us go out there. I'm not mad or jealous or anything, just in some weird state of shock and confusion. It's his money and he can do whatever he wants with it, but I can't see the same guy who taught me all my good financial habits in him anymore. I think that guy died with mom.
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Jan 31, 2015 17:26
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The same thing is happening to my Dad too; after decades of frugal living his financial discipline apparently shattered with the passing of my mother. After getting remarried he's quite happily allowing his new wife's grown children destroy his life's savings. He and his new wife live in a double-wide trailer while he allows one of his wife's sons to live in his actual house rent-free. He's still paying all the utilities but you can't ship packages to him there because they don't think he has the right to have mail delivered there. His new wife has a well-paying factory job but a trailer is all she can afford what with paying off her kids' credit cards and such each month. My brother and I are well enough off that we never really cared about inheritances and have urged him to live it up in the past, but giving it all to somebody else's freeloading gently caress-up kids isn't what we had in mind. --- In contrast, I've been saving up for a four-star 7 day vacation for five years now and I have all the money to take my family somewhere nice. I've got no debt outside a mortgage with a tiny 2.5% interest rate, an emergency fund, maxxed retirement funds and even some non-retirement investments but I can't seem to loving pull the trigger on buying the vacation because I'm paralyzed about spending $6-8k on something not tangible. It's me, I'm the impulse saver who's bad with money. Merrill Grinch fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Jan 31, 2015 |
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Jan 31, 2015 19:37
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Don't you dare not take that vacation
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Jan 31, 2015 20:22
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slap me silly posted:Don't you dare not take that vacation Think about how happy your wife will be. Happy wife, happy life
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Jan 31, 2015 21:00
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slap me silly posted:Don't you dare not take that vacation This. Also, take the username of the quote and apply it to that unappreciative freeloading rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 31, 2015 23:10
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Merrill Grinch posted:In contrast, I've been saving up for a four-star 7 day vacation for five years now and I have all the money to take my family somewhere nice. I've got no debt outside a mortgage with a tiny 2.5% interest rate, an emergency fund, maxxed retirement funds and even some non-retirement investments but I can't seem to loving pull the trigger on buying the vacation because I'm paralyzed about spending $6-8k on something not tangible. It's me, I'm the impulse saver who's bad with money. If you don't take that vacation, you will regret it for the rest of your life. You earned it, live it.
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Jan 31, 2015 23:35
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I hope to gently caress it's not the first vacation you take in five years 
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Jan 31, 2015 23:46
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Merrill Grinch posted:The same thing is happening to my Dad too; after decades of frugal living his financial discipline apparently shattered with the passing of my mother. I could finance a 6 month international vacation with 8k. Five star vacations are a waste of money, you are right to feel bad.
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Jan 31, 2015 23:49
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IAMKOREA posted:All I know is that I go on a lot of road trips and driving 90 mph in an economy car for more than 10 minutes is just awful. I wish bmws didn't have all the luxury junk in this country. IAMKOREA posted:I could finance a 6 month international vacation with 8k. Five star vacations are a waste of money, you are right to feel bad. lol
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Jan 31, 2015 23:54
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IAMKOREA posted:I could finance a 6 month international vacation with 8k. Five star vacations are a waste of money, you are right to feel bad. remember, kids, if someone carefully saves within their means to afford something expensive that you wouldn't buy, then they are bad with money and should feel bad for buying something totally worthless. (also, I'd be very interested to see your $8k six month international family vacation that doesn't involve a hostel in Thailand)
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Jan 31, 2015 23:59
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Merrill Grinch posted:In contrast, I've been saving up for a four-star 7 day vacation for five years now and I have all the money to take my family somewhere nice. I've got no debt outside a mortgage with a tiny 2.5% interest rate, an emergency fund, maxxed retirement funds and even some non-retirement investments but I can't seem to loving pull the trigger on buying the vacation because I'm paralyzed about spending $6-8k on something not tangible. It's me, I'm the impulse saver who's bad with money. 
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Feb 1, 2015 00:05
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Hey guys, I've been saving really carefully over the last five years so I can finance my own Mary Kay business without taking on any debt. Feel free to congratulate me.
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Feb 1, 2015 00:10
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moana posted:Tell us where you're going so we can judge you about it The wife really wants to go to Xcaret for some reason, so that's airfare + a resort for a week for three. It'll probably be less than $6k, but that's how much I've saved for a vacation that does not involve staying at my in-laws' farm.
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Feb 1, 2015 00:12
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MickeyFinn posted:If you don't take that vacation, you will regret it for the rest of your life. You earned it, live it. Pretty sure the kids would not be very happy to find out they never got to go on a vacation thanks to their parents being extremely paranoid about saving as much as possible. poo poo ain't coming with you when you're dead, and as long as you hit reasonable retirement goals and have an emergency fund, spend it on what you want - you earned it.
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Feb 1, 2015 00:25
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Merrill Grinch posted:The wife really wants to go to Xcaret for some reason, so that's airfare + a resort for a week for three. It'll probably be less than $6k, but that's how much I've saved for a vacation that does not involve staying at my in-laws' farm.
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Feb 1, 2015 00:32
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Merrill Grinch posted:The wife really wants to go to Xcaret for some reason, so that's airfare + a resort for a week for three. It'll probably be less than $6k, but that's how much I've saved for a vacation that does not involve staying at my in-laws' farm. Not that there's anything wrong with staying at a resort, especially with kids. But in my opinion the Yucatan is best done on your own and not at a resort. Playa also has a lot of really reasonable condos you can rent for a week, and many of them have pools. It also has a lot of great restaurants (though some of them are a bit pricey). I would also rent a car as Xcaret will only take a day or 2 at most and if you want to see Tulum, Ek Balam or Valladolid/Chitchen Itza, you probably want a car. It's also a very safe area and the roads are easy to drive.
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Feb 1, 2015 00:35
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Space Gopher posted:(also, I'd be very interested to see your $8k six month international family vacation that doesn't involve a hostel in Thailand) you could WWOOF or something like that 
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Feb 1, 2015 01:33
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pig slut lisa posted:you could WWOOF or something like that Ah yes, let me step away from the spreadsheets to go work on someone's farm for free  Seriously, I do not get WWOOF, even for college kids on a quest for themselves.
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Feb 1, 2015 01:38
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I know a fellow who did that and met a goat named Schtroumpf. It womped him in the rear end and knocked him over. I got the impression it was a pretty cool way to spend a summer after college.
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Feb 1, 2015 01:51
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FrozenVent posted:Ah yes, let me step away from the spreadsheets to go work on someone's farm for free Meet like minded people, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, learn new skills for your own future farm, learn a new language, exposure to a different culture... There's lots of things I don't get, like saving for half a decade to avoid being exposed to the inhabitants of a foreign country I'm visiting, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile to others.
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Feb 1, 2015 02:22
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slap me silly posted:I know a fellow who did that and met a goat named Schtroumpf. It womped him in the rear end and knocked him over. I got the impression it was a pretty cool way to spend a summer after college. IIRC that's the name for Smurfs in the original Belgian books.
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Feb 1, 2015 02:26
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IAMKOREA posted:Meet like minded people, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, learn new skills for your own future farm, learn a new language, exposure to a different culture... There's lots of things I don't get, like saving for half a decade to avoid being exposed to the inhabitants of a foreign country I'm visiting, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile to others. If I had unlimited time off and wasn't responsible for a small child's welfare, I too might work for free on a stranger's farm in a foreign country. Maybe I could bring those skills home to use on my father-in-law's farm. After I teach him how to milk a cow the central american way we can install new firmware on his combine's GPS.
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Feb 1, 2015 02:40
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yeah my parents were super frugal all their livs and we lived in a super nice area way outside of our station because of this but in the last ten years they've gone compltely mental. the last time i went home after a few years away there was another floor on the house that i didnt know about lol. they got a new kitchen too and its completely insane. It's weird seeing them buy new ipads with ever iteration and a garage full of motorbikes and all this but... whatever, I guess. bye bye inheritance?
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Feb 1, 2015 02:49
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IAMKOREA posted:Meet like minded people, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, learn new skills for your own future farm, learn a new language, exposure to a different culture... There's lots of things I don't get, like saving for half a decade to avoid being exposed to the inhabitants of a foreign country I'm visiting, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile to others. ahaha what the gently caress. are you like 21?
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Feb 1, 2015 02:51
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Merrill Grinch posted:responsible for a small child's welfare Speaking of bad with money 
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Feb 1, 2015 02:52
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