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If he can't save any money on pets, then he should at least put them to good use. Place them at the front of a wheeled chariot and have them pull you to work.
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Jul 23, 2015 07:46
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KG, free life tip for you: You get a lot more mileage simply owning up to mistakes and failures, rather than making excuses and empty promises. Rather than talk about all the reasons you haven't stuck to biking to work, just say that you dropped the ball, and then ask for help picking it back up again. Maybe that's what you think you're doing, but it doesn't come across that way. Also, if your boss expects you to manage another employee, I hope it comes with a pay raise. I think your time would be well spent crafting a way to get more work at home days. Maybe this means really showing your productivity while out of the office, or comparing your duties to standard salaries in your area, or whatever else. Don't forget that he's not covering health insurance, whereas most other jobs in your field do. When I worked for a small engineering shop a decade ago, they also didn't pay health, but they paid a higher wage to compensate. You keep saying he's expressed interest in your personal development, and that he wants you to stick around for some nebulous big project in the future. Time for him to step up. Have you said why you can't just work remotely for this Texas company directly? I think this forum could help you with all of that. Stop looking around at some huge life change that will just fix everything, and start making the small changes that better the life you have now. By the way, how is the kid doing? How's the arrangement with sister going?
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Jul 23, 2015 08:04
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Yeah it's spider season. You just gotta deal. Off topic, but he did say black widow spiders. Aren't they deadly poisonous? I would freak out myself on that one. I love on the east coast, which hopefully means I won't have that problem.
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Jul 23, 2015 11:29
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Duckman2008 posted:Off topic, but he did say black widow spiders. Aren't they deadly poisonous? I would freak out myself on that one. Black widows are pretty chill. They will live in their Web and never leave. I've got some widow family in my garage and I just let them live and kill other crap. No roaches or ants in my house. They are really only deadly to sick old people. Their bite hurts like a bitch but they don't attack. You've got to pester them.
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Jul 23, 2015 15:24
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Duckman2008 posted:Off topic, but he did say black widow spiders. Aren't they deadly poisonous? I would freak out myself on that one.
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Jul 23, 2015 15:43
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Whatever happened to asking for that raise?
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Jul 23, 2015 16:00
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Duckman2008 posted:Off topic, but he did say black widow spiders. Aren't they deadly poisonous? I would freak out myself on that one. I live on the east coast and had black widow problems at my old place. But I guess it's better than being in Texas and dealing with brown recluse and countless wolf spiders. gently caress spiders, man.
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Jul 23, 2015 16:51
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All I have to say about riding the bike or not is that if you do, wear a helmet.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:05
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Alright sounds good on the bug bombs, then. Yeah it's just a few that tried to take over when I wasn't using the garage as much. Hopefully they'll work. I wear a helmet when I'm riding my bike yeah (DAD/MOM). Traumatic brain injury won't help my career much unfortunately. Raise: I have a plan in place for this, which I'll be implementing the week of August 10th for [arbitrary reason] (I'm hoping my review will come first, and I can negotiate the raise from there).
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Jul 23, 2015 18:10
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Old Fart posted:Have you said why you can't just work remotely for this Texas company directly? Moving - we all kind of came to the conclusion that that would be the incorrect move, both here in the thread and at home. Frankly doing Dynamics AX work all day would be soul-sucking, so it's for the better raise or not. The kid is doing great. He already has two teeth (both before he was 5 months). So that came with a lot of teething pain of course. But now it's now even more ridiculously cute when he smiles (which is super often). He's very active and curious, and loves making sounds. I feel like he'll be ready to crawl within the next couple of months. The neck strength is there, so he just needs to learn to use his legs to propel him. He's also super sensitive to how he's being held. Sometimes the only way he'll let himself go to sleep is by holding him a very specific way, so that's kind of funny. The things with my sister are also great. It was bumpy for a little while, but we've reached a happy middle ground. She really only watches him 1.5-2 times a week as my grandma watches him Mondays (and she has started to help me out when I have him the whole weekend, by taking him for 4 hours), and my mom on Fridays.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:04
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Knyteguy posted:(DAD/MOM) Knyteguy posted:Raise: I have a plan in place for this, which I'll be implementing the week of August 10th for [arbitrary reason] (I'm hoping my review will come first, and I can negotiate the raise from there). Old Fart fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 23, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 19:12
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Glad to hear kiddo and sister are working out. I encourage you to post positive updates like that more often. It might help everybody's mentality, yours and ours.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:14
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Old Fart posted:I know you mean this jokingly, but this is the kind of joke a difficult person says. It's defensive and dismissive, and discourages people from helping you. It's the language of "No." You probably think I should chill, that it's just a joke, but that mentality is that of a 19-year-old. I encourage you to stop it. It wasn't my intention to be dismissive, or defensive. Yep I'll come up with a plan of action for the raise convo. I'm thinking of compiling stuff on why I deserve a raise that I can have ready in a moment. Old Fart posted:Glad to hear kiddo and sister are working out. I encourage you to post positive updates like that more often. It might help everybody's mentality, yours and ours. So far so good. Alright, I will. Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Jul 27, 2015 |
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Jul 23, 2015 19:27
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Knyteguy posted:The things with my sister are also great. It was bumpy for a little while, but we've reached a happy middle ground. She really only watches him 1.5-2 times a week as my grandma watches him Mondays (and she has started to help me out when I have him the whole weekend, by taking him for 4 hours), and my mom on Fridays. So if your sister is only watching your kid 1.5-2 times per week, why do you think you'll be able to get her to watch him 5 days a week for $500/mo? What are you paying her per month right now?
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Jul 23, 2015 21:07
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Bugamol posted:So if your sister is only watching your kid 1.5-2 times per week, why do you think you'll be able to get her to watch him 5 days a week for $500/mo? What are you paying her per month right now? $350. It would be 3 days not 5 though (grandma and mom watch him one day each).
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Jul 23, 2015 21:51
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This is literally the worst BFC thread I have ever read. You have managed to go for over an entire year without making any meaningful progress and you look to be continuing on that same path indefinitely. You never own up to your mistakes, in the hopes that if you just provide enough excuses, no one will hold you accountable. You certainly don't hold yourself accountable beyond the requisite self-flagellations that you perform for the thread on a monthly basis. You keep refusing to own up to your poor decisions and this is compounded by the fact that there are a few posters who mean well, yet nonetheless provide you with just enough slack in the rope to keep hanging yourself. When you blew your budget in June, what was necessary was to roll over the negative balance in categories such as restaurants and discretionary into the next month. This isn't meant to be punitive: you merely pay now for decisions you made in the past. Doing so provides you with the ability to stay on track and hit your budgetary targets eventually. The issue is that you don't do this and you never will. Instead you always find a reason that the next month will be better and will magically right the ship. You constantly defend your shell games with the empty platitude that you have "made great progress in the last year" but this is clearly false to anyone who has followed your thread. You may work hard and you may suffer but always remember that it was your choices that brought you to where you are now. If you continue to make the same choices (and you certainly are as of now), you will remain in much the same situation you are in. I'm sure you'll deflect this with edgy humour and attempts at pity but that's okay because this is just one reader's opinion on how you've been dishonest with us and dishonest with yourself in trying to achieve these goals.
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Jul 24, 2015 02:15
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exocet posted:This is literally the worst BFC thread I have ever read. You have managed to go for over an entire year without making any meaningful progress and you look to be continuing on that same path indefinitely. You never own up to your mistakes, in the hopes that if you just provide enough excuses, no one will hold you accountable. You certainly don't hold yourself accountable beyond the requisite self-flagellations that you perform for the thread on a monthly basis. You keep refusing to own up to your poor decisions and this is compounded by the fact that there are a few posters who mean well, yet nonetheless provide you with just enough slack in the rope to keep hanging yourself. See I write off posts like these (with "edgy" humor) simply because we started with payday loans, and now we have $10,000 in the bank, and we paid off our kid's birth in cash money by saving up for it. Please explain to me how that's not progress and I'll be happy to indulge the rest. It's all white noise to me until that can be done. And I say that without aggression or anything. It's just the truth of how I feel about the situation. And I'm not saying we've made it or anything like that, so don't put words into my mouth.
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Jul 24, 2015 02:22
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exocet posted:This is literally the worst BFC thread I have ever read. You have managed to go for over an entire year without making any meaningful progress and you look to be continuing on that same path indefinitely. You never own up to your mistakes, in the hopes that if you just provide enough excuses, no one will hold you accountable. You certainly don't hold yourself accountable beyond the requisite self-flagellations that you perform for the thread on a monthly basis. You keep refusing to own up to your poor decisions and this is compounded by the fact that there are a few posters who mean well, yet nonetheless provide you with just enough slack in the rope to keep hanging yourself. c'mon he's not SloMo.
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Jul 24, 2015 02:58
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BUG JUG posted:c'mon he's not SloMo. He's actually worse. Approximately the same amount of progress (basically nilll) but he pretends he's doing well. At least SloMo admitted he wasn't trying.
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Jul 24, 2015 03:20
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How come a lot of people keep dodging my point?
Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 04:01
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To be fair, you dodge a lot of other points.
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Jul 24, 2015 04:30
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Maybe people get upset because you've shown you can be financially responsible (when you actually listen to the advice given), but then you do irresponsible things following that and it just shows that you haven't actually learned anything. It's great that you stopped with the payday loans, but how long ago was that? How long will you continue to use that in your arguments? Past victories are great. How about some present victories that don't involve the thread having to approve of every transaction? I could be wrong, though.
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Jul 24, 2015 04:32
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Tigntink posted:Black widows are pretty chill. They will live in their Web and never leave. I've got some widow family in my garage and I just let them live and kill other crap. No roaches or ants in my house. My fear of black widow spiders is significant, and has even been shown on a TV show. There were a lot of spiders and we were tearing down the structure that housed them. I screamed like a girl. On TV. It was not left on the cutting room floor. Knyteguy, let your landlord deal with things. When you get to a position to own a house you will get plenty of chances to do poo poo yourself.
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Jul 24, 2015 04:51
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I think it's worth keeping in mind that KG & his wife come from a family history of terrible financial decision making. I would also contend that there are some mental health / therapy related issues that influences KG's impulsiveness. Not saying he's mentally ill, but there are issues there influencing what is going on. KG - do you think some of your more recent issues are related to the fact that you have '10k' in the bank? I know some people need to hide money from themselves to keep themselves on track. Most of my money is in accounts that are kinda hard to access for this reason. When I got rid of my local bank, it stopped me buying motorcycles. Of course I would end up making a little money on most of the bikes I bought but that's a separate issue. I think that you have made progress, and I think it's great you've got some money in the bank, but you also need to keep in mind you've got some significant debts. You've still got a pretty big negative net worth right?
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Jul 24, 2015 05:43
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Knyteguy posted:How come a lot of people keep dodging my point? As I see it, your thread is largely about two things: debt reduction and monthly budgeting. Concerning your debt reduction, you are making progress. Nobody who looks at the figures can deny that. However, it is not a brisk pace you are on to repay that accumulated debt. From figures in the (edited) first post, you have made about $7000 progress towards paying down your debts as of the middle of April. Again, that is progress, but on a total of about $60,000 at the rate you are repaying that debt (about $412 monthly) you are looking at almost 11 years before you are free and clear. That math is overly simplistic though as the amount you have to spend servicing the interest on the debt will decrease over time and you may just have that large medical bill disappear in the coming decade, but you may also find it necessary to take on more debt for something. In short: progress, yes, but there could be more. I'll grade you on improvement not overall progress, so you get a B- here, even though some people will find that a bit too generous. However, the moderate success there is tempered by repeated problems in hitting monthly budgets in non-fixed expenses. Line by line, most of your budget items come in where they should be, but you get no accolades for not spending more than $8 on Netflix in a given month when that is exactly what they charge you. It is the flexible categories where you almost always seem to fail and for a weird litany of reasons. We can look back to a PS4, some sort of eReader, the need of emergency pants, a sudden relapse into drinking and smoking and now a big vet bill. And there are other things that have come up and all that comes of it is more red ink And I guess progress has happened here as well, the necessity of pants and compassion to heal a dog rather than take it behind the woodshed are probably good things, or at least they are compared to wanting a PS4. But ultimately it is this bit of budgeting where you are failing to make any meaningful progress or improvement and you deserve every bit of the F that you get for repeatedly missing those monthly goals. What is especially frustrating is that you keep ignoring those failures, not in your posting as you (eventually) tend to own up to them, but on your budget sheet. Look at the restaurants line below: From your April actual, you already spent $94.07 of the restaurants budget for May. That's fine if you don't plan on going out to eat in May. Best case scenario for your budget is you didn't and I will give you the benefit of the doubt of that for the purposes of this example, but even so when you rolled into June you would have had at $105.93 to spend eating out yet you spent $208.94. That means heading into July, you already spent all of July plus $3.01 of August. This is why people are telling you to do the stupid envelope thing because once it is empty, that's it, you can't overspend. (Obviously you have to hold up your end of the deal if you went out to dinner and overspend, the real idea is that the physical presence of the cash should let you gauge the wisdom of the decision to eat out at that particular moment more than pixels on a screen showing some line in a spreadsheet.) Some people are also frustrated that you have previously dealt with this problem by just increasing, seemingly at random, the budgeted amount in flexible category without ever cutting back somewhere else. This is what people mean by you playing a shell game. Yes, it can make your balances look better, but you must see how that is really just a pointless exercise in accounting since it doesn't do anything towards controlling spending. That said, you likely have enough financial data available now (about 20 months) that you should be able to get a decent view of what a real median month of spending looks like for you. If you really like spending $250 a month on dining out, then that's just who you are. This isn't a #YOLO moment, it is just reality. It is your money and you can choose how to spend it and nobody really should tell you otherwise if you are comfortable at the rate of savings and debt repayments you are currently on. I suspect most would say that your rate of repayment could be improved, and I would tend to agree, but if you are good with it, then so be it. Don't live your life to make strangers on the internet happy. So take a look at those figures and if you are happy with your debt repayment schedule, plan your budget to those averages. Since it is calculated to what your life is really like, there should be no reason to ever go over and you shouldn't ever need to increase the figure (aside from adjusting for inflation in a year or so). You can still try to do better if you want by targeting 90% of current spending, but set that extra 10% aside in a slush fund that exists just to cover cost overruns. Think of it is a not-really-an-emergency emergency fund. That will probably give you a budget you can live to, because these monthly figures you arrive at by pulling numbers from thin air/getting advice from the thread isn't helping you hit targets.
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Jul 24, 2015 05:49
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There is a chance - albeit fairly remote - that going to a cash based system for his flex categories may help his overspending.
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Jul 24, 2015 06:18
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n8r posted:There is a chance - albeit fairly remote - that going to a cash based system for his flex categories may help his overspending. Until he forgets the envelope at home and puts something on a credit or debit card or whatever cool kids like Knyteguy use these days to pay for things.
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Jul 24, 2015 08:20
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Ultimate Mango posted:My fear of black widow spiders is significant, and has even been shown on a TV show. There were a lot of spiders and we were tearing down the structure that housed them. I screamed like a girl. On TV. It was not left on the cutting room floor. Link?
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Jul 24, 2015 12:48
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Grumpwagon posted:Link? Pretty sure Grump is talking about arachnophobia which isn't about black widows - its about a brazilian spider that catches a ride in a casket and mates with local house spiders to make the ultimate killer spider that hunts Jeff Daniel, who burns his own house down in the gooniest fashion because SPIDERSSSSSSS.
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Jul 24, 2015 15:10
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^ Some good and funny posts; thanks. I'll address them later today. So no raise for the moment. I asked if we were still doing a review this year, and the company that pays my salary has a payroll freeze. There's no time frame on resolution ie the situation was basically explained to me as the payroll freeze could be over tomorrow, or months from now. I mean I'm still up on inflation with my 3% raise last year, but yeah I really need to begin to start hunting locally. I'm finishing up a .net universal app I've been working on for 3-4 months, so it would be a good time, as it's likely only small projects to finish up over the next few months. Ants are infesting the kitchen from behind the dishwasher. I'm letting the landlord take care of it (already called). I made some sugar water borax traps in the meantime to keep their attention from our cupboards.
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Jul 24, 2015 18:11
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Well, then that's an excellent opportunity to practically demand alternative forms of compensation. They're asking a lot of you. Time to make it a two-way street. Again I remind you that your boss is gone half the month and the place doesn't burn down. You can work from home. His issues with the slacker employee are his problems. Do it in a nice cooperative yay team way of course. And please please please discuss it here and let us help you formulate your plan of attack. Edit: honestly, that might be worth its own thread, as I'm sure many people with good ideas bailed on this one long ago. Old Fart fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 18:21
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Knyteguy posted:So no raise for the moment. I asked if we were still doing a review this year, and the company that pays my salary has a payroll freeze. I'm a cynical rear end in a top hat, but this is exactly what I'd expect a manager to say if they just wanted to not give someone a raise. "It's not in my hands! They're frozen!" Do you believe your boss is affected by the freeze?
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Jul 24, 2015 18:29
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Old Fart posted:Well, then that's an excellent opportunity to practically demand alternative forms of compensation. They're asking a lot of you. Time to make it a two-way street. Again I remind you that your boss is gone half the month and the place doesn't burn down. You can work from home. His issues with the slacker employee are his problems. Working from home while nice would cost money. A desk and a second monitor at least. I could probably swing a second remote day a week pretty easily; that would be nice. I'm open to other ideas too. I don't want to make another thread though, as this one is enough. Inverse Icarus posted:I'm a cynical rear end in a top hat, but this is exactly what I'd expect a manager to say if they just wanted to not give someone a raise. "It's not in my hands! They're frozen!" He said he is. He specifically mentioned that he's not getting anything either (his one year is this week I think). He also said that he's been waiting on the employee review to try to get me some money with it. Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 18:35
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Knyteguy posted:He said he is. He specifically mentioned that he's not getting anything either (his one year is this week I think). Didn't you say at some point that he makes like 300k compared to your 60?
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Jul 24, 2015 18:38
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Droo posted:Didn't you say at some point that he makes like 300k compared to your 60? As a consultant he was making that much. I'm not sure what he makes now, but nowhere near $300,000 no. I'd guess around $100,000-$120,000.
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Jul 24, 2015 18:44
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Knyteguy posted:Working from home while nice would cost money. A desk and a second monitor at least. I could probably swing a second remote day a week pretty easily; that would be nice. Knyteguy posted:As a consultant he was making that much. I'm not sure what he makes now, but nowhere near $300,000 no. I'd guess around $100,000-$120,000.
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Jul 24, 2015 18:57
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SiGmA_X posted:Wow you're a nerd and gamer iirc and don't have at least 2 monitors? Holy cow! Yeah it'll be good I think, too. Screw AX this time though, I'm going for .NET work. I can do web dev (design, frontend, backend), and universal app development; I should be able to swing something. On the monitor - I'd love to, but I never have the budget leftover so I haven't pulled the trigger. I have a 27" IPS currently, so I want to get the same one if I can. It's $300 though. My dual monitor arm mount mocks me daily  .
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Jul 24, 2015 19:09
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Does this Texas based company deal in oil, per chance? If so, that's the reason for the payroll freeze. We are all getting hosed down here by the cheap oil everyone else is enjoying.
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Jul 24, 2015 20:49
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e: nm
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Jul 24, 2015 21:01
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| # ? May 11, 2024 17:29 |
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PCjr sidecar posted:e: nm My first computer was a PC Junior and it had two sidecars. One was a RAM upgrade and the other was a parallel port for my okidata thermal transfer tractor feed printer.
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Jul 24, 2015 21:06
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