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Suspicious Lump posted:Yeah me too, I never said it was the sole reason he gave. He may be right that a lot of people blow their money on stupid poo poo, but he's is still giving terrible advice. He's also generalising to the max. The number of people you think are dumb and blowing money away, there's probably an equal amount which are good with money and yet can't afford housing or have trouble. quote:blaming eating out as the sole reason you haven;t bought a home is delusional. were you just having an unrelated conversation there yelling at the clouds? also lol at "telling people to quit wasting money on stupid poo poo is bad advice", and double lol at your idea that there are an equal number of GWM and BWM people
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# ? May 16, 2017 08:21 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:43 |
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How about government BWM/largesse across three separate administrations? The city of Houston couldn't account for $45 million of affordable housing funds quote:Houston has spent about two-thirds of its $161 million local affordable housing fund over the last 10 years, records show. Nearly half of that $96 million was spent on administrative costs, professional services, federal fines or keeping programs running after other grants were pulled. City officials recently discovered that $46 million was available to spend as of March, tens of millions more than they thought. quote:The initiative that received the most local housing dollars is the Land Assemblage Redevelopment Authority, created in 1999. The idea was to have the city acquire tax delinquent properties, clean them up and sell them to developers interested in building affordable housing. E: Houston has a huge pension funding problem that they keep kicking down the road. BloodBag fucked around with this message at 14:12 on May 16, 2017 |
# ? May 16, 2017 14:03 |
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Sometimes BWM can come in degrees. Telling people to buy into highly leveraged "investments" in the middle of a speculative bubble while blaming kids these days for institutional problems counts. Even if the point was slightly exaggerated this guy still comes across as a smarmy douchebag. The first sentence of the article was literally "A YOUNG rich lister who made his fortune off the back of Australia’s capital city property boom says his generation needs to stop buying $4 coffees and travelling if they want to own a home.", followed by some garbage about expectation management and "my biggest flaw is that i'm a perfectionist abloobloo" while completely overlooking that he's mostly been lucky. Not a hill I'd want to die on but you do you. anyways https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/6bacja/100_stocks_without_bear_market_experience/dhl22hi/ posted:Most of the guys I know at work day trade their TSP accounts. You're only allowed to make 2-3 trades per month to move between stocks and bonds. It's funny to watch them gather around at lunch and try to do technical analysis on the S&P 500 to determine what the best trade of the month will be. One of the guys showed me his annual statement and he only made 2-5% every year for the last 5 years. He would have been better off just sitting in bonds. I'm really curious what they're gonna do during the next drop. government workers, indeed
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# ? May 16, 2017 14:05 |
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pig slut lisa posted:Leon how do you constantly come up with the best BWM stories canyoneer posted:The answer is in the question It's not really the government agency aspect of it. I think it is just a much smaller scale version of the NFL Player syndrome. A lot of people in the administrative/clerical side of the agency came in as entry-level positions with high-school educations. They are chronically understaffed and underpaid, so they have huge turnover and it sucks working there. But if you stick it out for 10+ years then you can become a manager and make very good money for someone with just a HS degree (60k, pension, and benefits) without ever having real experience. Once you get that relatively large pay upgrade that you never thought was happening + only having a high school education + general badness with money of most Americans + general badness with money that being poor for a long time teaches you = several dozen people who are primed to make awful mistakes. That's not even getting into the general poor decisions/bad luck that happens to a lot of lower income people. Having your office next to the HR/Benefits office is a terrifying experience. It's 50% BWM stories and 50% people fighting over FMLA requests. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 14:13 on May 16, 2017 |
# ? May 16, 2017 14:08 |
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:It's not really the government agency aspect of it. I think it is just a much smaller scale version of the NFL Player syndrome. I was a GS employee that was also a military member on a post with 500+ others. Even getting that GS job was enough for most people to start doing ridiculously stupid stuff with their money. Probably half of the guys in my shop had project cars that they dumped money in. Over half had boats. They all needed trucks to haul the boats, and generally lived 45 miles from work on country highways so they could dump fuel in them. It wasn't unheard of for guys to end up taking leave because they couldn't afford to drive in to work until after payday. Some of these guys were WG-13s. In Mid-Missouri.
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# ? May 16, 2017 14:26 |
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I worked with a guy who was an ex marine who went from having all his room and board paid for to needing to budget with a mortgage and a wife and kid two years later. He was making about 45k but for some reason had a motorcycle AND a new truck and complained about how hard it was hiding the bike from the repo man. One day I came in and heard a story about how he couldn't afford to call a plumber so he replaced his kitchen sink drain with a hose through a hole in the wall that drained into his back yard. You don't need to make a lot of money to make bad money decisions.
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# ? May 16, 2017 15:58 |
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C.H.O.M.E posted:One day I came in and heard a story about how he couldn't afford to call a plumber so he replaced his kitchen sink drain with a hose through a hole in the wall that drained into his back yard. Why not just cut out the middle man and just use the hose outside to rinse off plates, get some fresh air while you clean.
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# ? May 16, 2017 16:15 |
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quote:Hey all, I just wanted to provide you with an update on FIANCE and I because I feel as if we have been absent from Facebook for some time. FIANCE and I are so fortunate to have met and connected with a successful couple while we were traveling. We were able to earn their mentorship and they are teaching us how to build an asset for ourselves. We have officially launched our own business, [removed]. If you visit our site, https://www.[removed].com, you will see that we have hundreds of products that not only provide you with a better quality life but will also make you a more conscious consumer. Although neither of us will be abandoning our passions within the Army and the fashion industry, we still felt it necessary to take this new step towards a better life. We would really appreciate everyone's support in this new journey and if you would like to learn more about earning the same opportunity we would love to tell you all about it. It's Amway. How does anyone get caught up in this? How do you not just google "Amway" and then tell whoever is recruiting you to gently caress off.
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:40 |
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quote:Although neither of us will be abandoning our passions within the Army and the fashion industry...
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:41 |
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Guy is a company commander too. You're supposed to have basic intelligence at that point. Instead all his soldiers will be buying sugar free shakes to drink in exchange for not having to call him "sir."
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# ? May 16, 2017 18:43 |
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I love that "we were able to earn their mentorship" part, like they were being all coy and playing hard to get with their pyramid scheme
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# ? May 16, 2017 19:10 |
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MLM kind of transcends BWM to its own level of stupidity.
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# ? May 16, 2017 19:55 |
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Ixian posted:MLM kind of transcends BWM to its own level of stupidity. Is there any feasible way to ban MLMs?
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:08 |
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The wannabe investor bro coworker was just here talking about how he "wasted" $300 on tickets for some show for his girlfriend's birthday. "Brah it's such a loss, if I had put that into an index fund..." Technically good with money (though he'd make like, what, $20-30 after a year tops?), very bad with girlfriend
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:17 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Is there any feasible way to ban MLMs? Criminal sanctions for the top level meatbags coupled with bespoke legal instruments for the duped parties to reclaim their losses could theoretically work. The problem is that like other white-collar crimes actually enforcing the criminal sanctions would require a dedicated prosecution effort. And I don't think that effort would be considered worth it by the relevant authorities in the US.
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:23 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Is there any feasible way to ban MLMs? MLMs produce rich, out of touch donors who buy their way into cabinet positions, so probably no.
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:24 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Is there any feasible way to ban MLMs? It might be difficult because MLMs actually involve the sales of real products and pay commissions in a similar way as some (ostensibly) legitimate markets, such as insurance or real estate. Not saying it can't be done but there would be a lot of industries lobbying against changes.
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:27 |
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Cold on a Cob posted:It might be difficult because MLMs actually involve the sales of real products and pay commissions in a similar way as some (ostensibly) legitimate markets, such as insurance or real estate. I think that is a very small obstacle compared to the lack of political will. While MLM schemes sell real products, their defining issue is that the lower levels cannot sustain themselves with product sales on the market and have to dupe others into it. Considering that governments are already pretty familiar with checking whether prices are realistic or not, i.e. transfer pricing for taxation purposes, I'd be confident that MLMs could be defined and detected well enough.
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:30 |
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Nope, no way to ban them. Herbalife is a multi-billion MLM that the FCC could have shut down easily and they still gave them a pass. No one's going to even blink at these smaller ones unless they step over into other illegal activity. So that White Slavery MLM where you give them one daughter and then recruit other people to give up a daughter while you get a portion of their upsells...that one they might shut down.
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:40 |
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Randler posted:I think that is a very small obstacle compared to the lack of political will. While MLM schemes sell real products, their defining issue is that the lower levels cannot sustain themselves with product sales on the market and have to dupe others into it. Considering that governments are already pretty familiar with checking whether prices are realistic or not, i.e. transfer pricing for taxation purposes, I'd be confident that MLMs could be defined and detected well enough. The insurance industry plays out eerily similar to an MLM for the agents at the bottom. Most are not able to support themselves with sales and there is a lot of turnover for this reason. At least with insurance they aren't able to go into debt filling their garage with shampoo and thus wash out pretty quickly if they aren't good at sales and/or recruiting. Edit: In case there is any confusion, I am not arguing that this means MLMs are legitimate. If anything, I'm arguing that if you see an ad in the paper to learn to sell insurance, don't. Cold on a Cob fucked around with this message at 20:54 on May 16, 2017 |
# ? May 16, 2017 20:51 |
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Cold on a Cob posted:The insurance industry plays out eerily similar to an MLM for the agents at the bottom. Most are not able to support themselves with sales and there is a lot of turnover for this reason. At least with insurance they aren't able to go into debt filling their garage with shampoo and thus wash out pretty quickly if they aren't good at sales and/or recruiting. I'm pretty sure a garage full of shampoo wouldn't wash out quickly e: wait I got your statement backwards and now my joke is even dumber ugh
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:52 |
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Is there any feasible way to ban MLMs? Violent revolution.
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# ? May 16, 2017 20:53 |
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Now there's a face you can trust.
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# ? May 16, 2017 21:26 |
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Cold on a Cob posted:The insurance industry plays out eerily similar to an MLM for the agents at the bottom. Most are not able to support themselves with sales and there is a lot of turnover for this reason. At least with insurance they aren't able to go into debt filling their garage with shampoo and thus wash out pretty quickly if they aren't good at sales and/or recruiting. I wonder why MLMs are able to persist with the "you have to buy $5000 worth of inventory to start your business" bullshit in the age of extremely cheap next day fulfillment from Amazon et al
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# ? May 16, 2017 21:39 |
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:I wonder why MLMs are able to persist with the "you have to buy $5000 worth of inventory to start your business" bullshit in the age of extremely cheap next day fulfillment from Amazon et al You gotta spend money to make money MLMs are pretty much metastasized puritan work ethic. You're guaranteed to get rich if you work hard enough. All those people who failed were just quitters.
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# ? May 16, 2017 22:07 |
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I used to get so mad that the Clippers had 1-800-LoanMart as a major sponsor. Balmer paid 2 billion dollars for a basketball team and decided that his team could use the extra cash from a sketchy car title loan joint with post-sex-video-pre-racial-slur Hulk Hogan in the commercials. Cool. GWM, BWL.
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# ? May 16, 2017 22:45 |
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:I wonder why MLMs are able to persist with the "you have to buy $5000 worth of inventory to start your business" bullshit in the age of extremely cheap next day fulfillment from Amazon et al Whatever they ostensibly sell, their real product is hopes and dreams. More money goes into producing slick videos, conventions, and brainwash material for the MLM victims to pour their money into than what they're trying to sell. It's all "think of what you could do if you were rich" and other feel-good stuff rather than something useful like how to actually sell a product to someone besides your pitying relatives. It feeds an addiction not unlike lottery tickets do.
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# ? May 16, 2017 23:22 |
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:I wonder why MLMs are able to persist with the "you have to buy $5000 worth of inventory to start your business" bullshit in the age of extremely cheap next day fulfillment from Amazon et al From what I've seen from friends who got suckered in, there's no huge buy in but you get, I don't know, guilted? into buying product constantly to keep your status / discount and that it's a *big thing* if you can't keep up. That seems to be enough of a motivator to get them into trouble. The fake testimonials of people who are "finally debt free after 20 years" after starting selling these things is what hooks them in initially. They're into the norex and young living oils and "health" products, and of course any mention of it being maybe not 100% legitimate falls on deaf ears.
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# ? May 16, 2017 23:33 |
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It's the combination of selling a possible-sounding dream and that dream being sold by best friends who you already implicitly trust anyway that makes them so insidious imo. "I mean Frank and Jan are doing it and they are certainly looking [like they're trying super hard to be] happy with it, and it sounds reasonable to me you just sell things right! After all, I've known them for years why would they get me into something if it weren't good?"
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# ? May 16, 2017 23:37 |
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Destroying friendships and family is one of many problems with MLMs. With friends you could always argue that well, if that are that dumb, and consider *me* to be even dumber, then they are friends I'm better off without anyway, and in fact that is my usual strategy whenever some Rodan+Fields or Transamerica or whatever comes creeping in to my life through people I know...but as the saying goes you can't pick family. They all sell the bootstrap american dream but really boil down to "gently caress you got mine" for the ones that actually claw their way up. It really sucks dealing with people you know who are hoovered in to this poo poo.
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# ? May 17, 2017 01:34 |
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Also, people just plain guilting friends/relatives into buying it from them to "support" their "business". So much of it literally is that simple.
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# ? May 17, 2017 01:42 |
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amway is a loving juggernaut in japan, way way way bigger than it was in US or Canada as far as I can tell I actually inadvertently ended up going to a barbeque hosted by an old amway guy through a friend of a friend of my wife (then gf) and, since I'm a dirty foreigner, was left alone to eat delicious meat and an entire watermelon while the guy hosting the bbq gave his multi hour long spiels. he was insanely charismatic and was one of the early adopters so was rich as hell from the scam (the bbq was in his top floor condo's indoor open terrace), so yeah everybody was hanging onto his every word. first time I actually met a guy firmly on the scamming side rather than the scammee side and its interesting to see it up close. it was a great barbeque, anyway.
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# ? May 17, 2017 02:29 |
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Cold on a Cob posted:The insurance industry plays out eerily similar to an MLM for the agents at the bottom. Most are not able to support themselves with sales and there is a lot of turnover for this reason. At least with insurance they aren't able to go into debt filling their garage with shampoo and thus wash out pretty quickly if they aren't good at sales and/or recruiting. If you must work in insurance...underwrite. Adjust claims. Hell, do what I did and spend 4.5 years getting yelled at for 8 hours a day by independent agents and people who don't pay their bills. All of them are soul destroying, but the pay is generally decent and as long as you're not perpetually drunk and can talk like a semi-educated human being, you can get a foot in the door. But don't sell! Your soul gets destroyed AND the chances of washing out are far too high, especially if you're not at least a little shady. They created a direct sales department in my call center and sent 12 people, mostly veterans, from the service lines to man it. Half were gone 6 months later...and this was a salary + commission job.
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# ? May 17, 2017 04:12 |
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NancyPants posted:Also, people just plain guilting friends/relatives into buying it from them to "support" their "business". So much of it literally is that simple. My mom's always recommending me hand creams from hers but she insists on paying for them herself if I want them. Mom you're doing it wrong. Also they're like $70 for an absurdly tiny tube of what amounts to just hydrocortisone cream and I wouldn't put it past them to skimp on the hydrocortisone too.
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# ? May 17, 2017 04:17 |
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Ugh all this MLM talk reminds me that my dad bought a starter pack of supplements from I assume Herbalife. Thankfully that's where it ended. I think he sold one box to someone who already buys them and happened to see them in his truck. Pretty sure he wound up taking them instead of his multivitamin and eventually tossing them.
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# ? May 17, 2017 04:50 |
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My wife got pretty sick and her aunt sent her Truvision "vitamins." My wife is better now, but I still would like to throttle her stupid loving aunt.
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# ? May 17, 2017 05:17 |
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Am I the first person to bring up Chanel's $1,325 Boomerang or am I 10 pages late? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/fashion/chanel-boomerang-cultural-appropriation.html
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# ? May 17, 2017 05:41 |
I'd like to contribute the goon who spent over $700 on a computer case. No actual components in it, just a shell. Looks pretty nice, but not for the price of an entire budget gaming pc.
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# ? May 17, 2017 09:55 |
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meh, these are people who spend like 10k on insane water-cooled rigs and it'd be weird if they didn't put down at least $500 for the case now you could make a very good argument that spending 10k on an insanely fast depreciating heat stroke inducing monstrosity of a computer is bad with money (it's like a car hobby except your labor gives negative returns), but getting an appropriate case for their purpose is not in and of itself a bad move really
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# ? May 17, 2017 10:32 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:43 |
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BWM: Having a hobby. The end.
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# ? May 17, 2017 12:37 |