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Moneyball posted:It's me. I'm BWM. That's, what, 125/year? So somewhere around $10 a month? Sure that's money taken out of your net worth but it's also a completely reasonable entertainment expense.
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Mar 31, 2016 20:59
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Outside of any spending on browser games, I don't buy games very often. Maybe a couple a year on average, severely discounted on Steam, and I don't really spend that much on entertainment as a whole. It's just WHAT I spent it on, not how much.
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Mar 31, 2016 21:02
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That's comparable to what someone would spend on WoW or whatever other mmo, nothing too crazy. I wouldn't sweat it.
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Mar 31, 2016 21:16
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pathetic little tramp posted:He says he's ranked 30th on FW, that's Faction Wars. The funny thing is the way it's set up, being ranked 30th gets you the same rewards as a person ranked 1000th. You don't get anything different unless you're in the top 3 (and even then you only get 15 more Souls [the in-game currency], if he had spent that 2000 dollars just buying the in game currency, he'd have gotten 200,000 Souls). At the weekend I went to the casino. No doubt there's a lot of bad with money at any casino. Thing is the format has changed removing most of the lowest house edge games like craps and replacing them with worse odds. While playing I noticed a large number of the gamblers there weren't even playing the best strategies and were hosing their money away faster than what they needed to. Most had high end casino loyalty cards which means they must spend a huge amount of time and money gambling yet they don't even go on the internet to understand the basic strategies for the games they play. It's easy to see why owning a casino is GWM.
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Mar 31, 2016 21:25
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antiga posted:These stories make me angry on so many levels but how does a PhD from MIT not know that one weird trick to cure cancer isn't worth betting the farm on? He knows it's not a cure for cancer, but he's convinced it may be able to help. My dad is getting well up there in years, and as much as I loving hate to admit it, his mental facilities are slowing down. He's having a harder time tying two thoughts together, or finishing a single thought. Alzheimers runs in the family. The night in question - where he tried to explain how a sugar pill could do gene therapy - made me cry, because it was the realization that my parents are someday going to die. I would cheerfully go to court for beating the poo poo out of the filth who took my parents' money. (sorry for the  but yeah I can't even figure out how to help them.)
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Mar 31, 2016 21:32
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antiga posted:These stories make me angry on so many levels but how does a PhD from MIT not know that one weird trick to cure cancer isn't worth betting the farm on? Highly educated professionals are easy targets for scams because most engineers, doctors, lawyers etc. have large egos that make them think: "I am a professional and really good at X and make lots of money. I don't need some financial planner making less than me to tell me what to do with MY money! I will surely be successful in whatever I do since I have a proven track record of success in X!"
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Mar 31, 2016 21:33
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And expertise in one area doesn't necessarily translate to knowledge in other areas. Like when you see pop science celebrities shoot off about stuff outside their area of expertise & get it hilariously wrong.
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Mar 31, 2016 22:26
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fits my needs posted:Highly educated professionals are easy targets for scams because most engineers, doctors, lawyers etc. have large egos that make them think: Hence the Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft nickname as a "doctor killer"
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Mar 31, 2016 22:41
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Haifisch posted:And expertise in one area doesn't necessarily translate to knowledge in other areas. Like when you see pop science celebrities shoot off about stuff outside their area of expertise & get it hilariously wrong. And this is why we don't speak eye-talian
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Mar 31, 2016 23:04
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antiga posted:These stories make me angry on so many levels but how does a PhD from MIT not know that one weird trick to cure cancer isn't worth betting the farm on? I'm not sure about this specific case, but there's a reason particular scams only target retirees and not younger people who have more potential disposable income. We will all eventually die or get dumb, then die.
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Mar 31, 2016 23:55
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Thursday Next posted:He knows it's not a cure for cancer, but he's convinced it may be able to help. My late grandmother's boyfriend (long story) gave away his life savings (well into six figures) to Jamaican scammers on some phone card thing. What kept the damage contained to his side of the relationship is that my mother had a POA and control over my grandmother's financial affairs.
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Apr 1, 2016 03:29
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Thursday Next posted:He knows it's not a cure for cancer, but he's convinced it may be able to help. Can you get control of their finances? Power of attorney or whatever. It sounds urgent, before all their money is taken by scammers. Can you talk to your mom about it?
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Apr 1, 2016 14:20
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Blinkman987 posted:I'm not sure about this specific case, but there's a reason particular scams only target retirees and not younger people who have more potential disposable income. Yeah, there's some kind of chemical change in our brains that makes it more difficult to discern scams as we age. People in this very thread who know better are going to end up falling for this poo poo in another 3 or 4 decades. It's probably an evolutionary advantage since old cavemen died quickly if they didn't trust others. My mom got scammed by one of those pop-up windows. I don't think it was ransom-ware, but she ended up spending $80 to 'fix' her computer. And this is someone who spent 30 years at IBM and can coded websites by hand and who had a son 15 minutes away who can fix any IT problem. Ugh.
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Apr 1, 2016 14:53
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Or you can just, you know, not eat dogshit and be sedentary just because you turn 50 and things are a little sore. This myth that your brain is supposed to turn to mush as you age and you become this helpless victim incapable of doing anything besides watching matlock just because that's what most people do now is utter nonsense.
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Apr 1, 2016 15:04
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Pryor on Fire posted:Or you can just, you know, not eat dogshit and be sedentary just because you turn 50 and things are a little sore. This myth that your brain is supposed to turn to mush as you age and you become this helpless victim incapable of doing anything besides watching matlock just because that's what most people do now is utter nonsense.
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Apr 1, 2016 15:21
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SiGmA_X posted:Agreed. The elderly people I know who remained active forever and read and study things are in good health physically and mentally. The ones I know who were sedentary and watch TV all the time are in poor physical and mental health. You may have cause and effect reversed there, at least in some cases.
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Apr 1, 2016 15:28
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I Like Jell-O posted:You may have cause and effect reversed there, at least in some cases.
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Apr 1, 2016 15:43
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Losing your mental faculties as you age can be inevitable in some people, but voluntarily letting your body and mind atrophy certainly doesn't help.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:04
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Thursday Next posted:He knows it's not a cure for cancer, but he's convinced it may be able to help. Your energy would be better spent working to get control of their finances, as BarbarianElephant recommended. If you honestly think your father is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, then you need to get him to a doctor and either verify your suspicion, or rule it out and see if there's something else going on there. It sucks, but the alternative is to watch your father continue to throw away everything to scams.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:13
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I Like Jell-O posted:You may have cause and effect reversed there, at least in some cases. Maybe, but pretty good scientific evidence is starting to stack up that keeping your mind and body exercised will significantly slow down decline in old age.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:31
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DuckConference posted:Maybe, but pretty good scientific evidence is starting to stack up that keeping your mind and body exercised will significantly slow down decline in old age. Sure, but I was just pointing out the selection bias built into his observations. It's kind of like saying "people who visit the hospital are more likely to die from a disease. Don't visit the hospital."
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Apr 1, 2016 21:45
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quote:The worst bank I ever had in my life. No one should banking over here. They never care about customer at all. Every time I do have some fees they always said its my fault but I don't think so. They do take advantages of people that not really good with money like me. When I was banking with this bank I had direct deposit and I do use my debit card. It's more than enough to waive my monthly fee but not. At the end they keep charging 10$ a month. So I went in and talk to them. They said because I didn't set up E-statement. But they didn't tell me that when I open it. So I decided to close my account. Also another 10$ to close it. This bank is unbelievable that it's still open. I would give 0 star if I can for this horrible bank. Didn't bother to read any of the "fine" print (right there in the pamphlet it says setup paperless billing to make your account free). "Worst bank ever this all their fault waaah".
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Apr 1, 2016 22:44
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It is mostly his fault for not reading the fine print, but that is a lovely bank if they require you to jump through all those hoops to avoid fees just for a checking account.
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Apr 2, 2016 00:24
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Guinness posted:It is mostly his fault for not reading the fine print, but that is a lovely bank if they require you to jump through all those hoops to avoid fees just for a checking account. Rewards checking is their specialty. 3.00% APR up to $15,000, or $10 back for purchases from Amazon or iTunes per month. That's like free Prime and $21 just for using your checking account like normal regardless of your balance. Their normal checking which he didn't have would have been $4 per month if he didn't meet the requirements. All the above accounts compensate you ATM fees up to $15/mo, so it's more than worth it, and they're a really good credit union from a people perspective also. I made like $200 last year in interest (not including ATM reimbursements), and their rewards checking interest rate just went up. Wells Fargo would have probably made me $5 or something. Like I get it from his side, but any bank will screw you if you let them. In this case it's almost justified since I'd wager they need paperless to keep fees down with all the compensation they hand out. e: couple grammatical typos. Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Apr 2, 2016 |
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Apr 2, 2016 00:41
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All of that and you're not going to name drop the bank? Bad with being a good friend. 
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Apr 2, 2016 13:01
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Phone posted:All of that and you're not going to name drop the bank? Bad with being a good friend. https://www.gncu.org/Accounts/Personal-Accounts/Checking-Accounts It's a CU probably won't help many on here. That why I didn't list it. I guess I was wrong about ATM fees on standard checking. They're compensated on every one but the standard checking. I don't think rewards checking is all that uncommon though? I'm not sure.
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Apr 3, 2016 00:56
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My dad told me today that he thinks Congress is going to take all of our IRAs away and use the money to pay off the national debt, so that's why he's not saving for retirement. 
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Apr 4, 2016 01:20
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nikosoft posted:My dad told me today that he thinks Congress is going to take all of our IRAs away and use the money to pay off the national debt, so that's why he's not saving for retirement. I suspect I know the answer to this, but is he at least saving in like a non-tax-advantaged brokerage account or something?
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Apr 4, 2016 01:53
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pig slut lisa posted:I suspect I know the answer to this, but is he at least saving in like a non-tax-advantaged brokerage account or something? lovely arguments for not saving are never about the purported fear, and are always about wanting to have more money to spend now now now!
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Apr 4, 2016 02:01
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Back when Obama was proposing phasing out future contributions to 529 college savings plans that only rich people use that somehow morphed into the gov is going to take away the current balance of all your IRAs and force you to use only social security for some contrived reason. I don't know man, the internet blows and misconceptions like this stick around for decades.
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Apr 4, 2016 02:26
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I think there's a really good chance that IRAs and 401k/403b accounts eventually end up means tested in such a way that significantly limits the tax advantage for people who accumulate millions in them either by religiously contributing the maximums or doing stuff like cramming them full of startup shares at $0.01/share or whatever
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Apr 4, 2016 02:34
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pig slut lisa posted:I suspect I know the answer to this, but is he at least saving in like a non-tax-advantaged brokerage account or something? Yeah, no. Although that's a great point and I'll ask him about it the next time I see him, curious to see where that thought process will lead. Maybe Congress has a nefarious plot to seize every brokerage account? Pryor on Fire posted:Back when Obama was proposing phasing out future contributions to 529 college savings plans that only rich people use that somehow morphed into the gov is going to take away the current balance of all your IRAs and force you to use only social security for some contrived reason. I don't know man, the internet blows and misconceptions like this stick around for decades. I'm sure it came from something like that because that sounds exactly like what he was saying. God only knows where he's getting this stuff from, definitely somewhere on cable TV. This, by the way, is his second-biggest fear; the first one is that Congress will impose a national sales tax to pay off the debt. He has recently become very concerned about the national debt, when his personal debt should be far more troubling.
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Apr 4, 2016 05:29
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nikosoft posted:My dad told me today that he thinks Congress is going to take all of our IRAs away and use the money to pay off the national debt, so that's why he's not saving for retirement. My Dad said the same thing! He also calls Social Security a ponzi scheme. The Limbaugh is strong with him. He also has been on govt. pension since 2002 and just cashed out his 401k at age 60 to pay off the house. I'm not sure how I feel about this. For all the making GBS threads on the government he does, he sure does benefit from it a lot. $400 a year for health care and $2800 or so post tax pension for life. I pay ~$300 a month for health insurance.
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Apr 4, 2016 11:04
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Government intervention that directly benefits me is good. Government intervention that doesn't directly benefit me is Communism.
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Apr 4, 2016 13:40
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Pryor on Fire posted:Back when Obama was proposing phasing out future contributions to 529 college savings plans that only rich people use that somehow morphed into the gov is going to take away the current balance of all your IRAs and force you to use only social security for some contrived reason. I don't know man, the internet blows and misconceptions like this stick around for decades. While that's insane, I somehow missed that and I'm glad it was torpedoed. I'm going to start saving in a 529 when I have a kid and I'm certainly not rich.
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Apr 4, 2016 14:07
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Of all the tax breaks to eliminate - savings for college? Really? It seems like you can eliminate a huge percentage of tax abuse by just lowering the max lifetime contributions from the current 300k or so. Only doctors, lawyers, and art school students need that much for college.
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Apr 4, 2016 14:31
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Or by radically overhauling estate taxes. I mean, "70% of the benefits go to the wealthy" from 529s - the same is probably true of 401ks.
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Apr 4, 2016 14:37
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This one checks off all the BWM boxes - 401k loan, no budget, expenses ballooned with income, unpaid medical debt, no emergency fund.It came from reddit posted:https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/4dalmt/5_months_behind_on_rent_27m_ok_time_to_pull_from/
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Apr 4, 2016 14:41
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Krispy Kareem posted:Of all the tax breaks to eliminate - savings for college? Really?
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Apr 4, 2016 15:01
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The Mandingo posted:This one checks off all the BWM boxes - 401k loan, no budget, expenses ballooned with income, unpaid medical debt, no emergency fund. That dude is insanely fortunate to have a landlord that hasn't evicted him after 5 months of no payment
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Apr 4, 2016 15:38
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