Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

George H.W. oval office posted:

Is this area at all gentrifying? I love your dumb friends

quote:

Couple things to note (and feel free to ask any further questions as I will add it here):

I bought the car with for a terrible deal. I was desperate and rushed, and the dealer knew exactly how to take advantage of that. I don't blame him for doing his job, I was acting irrationally due to the circumstance I was in.

The previous car was $18,999 with about $2k taxes, $2k warranty, $1.5k "finance fee" and 12.99% interest for 72 months. Last I checked, my total balance was $26,065.

Insurance paid $16,229 for the vehicle after a $300 deductible. The remaining amount is what I currently owe and must continue paying for with or without a vehicle.

The new deal required a cosigner and a friend of mine agreed to sign on. The figures are not permanent yet and are pending credit approval and negotiating. The deal is for a 2016 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT with about 60,000km (37,000 miles) for $22,999 at 6%.

I require the vehicle to work. Holding down a job for me is hard with a car, and so without one it has been nearly impossible.

Given that this time I will have gap coverage, if I crashed the day after the purchase I can end up with NO DEBT, rather than $10,000 THAT I OWE NOW. This is my biggest incentive. I don't want to pay for a ghost car. The payments will end up being roughly the same and so it makes sense to me that I pay monthly with a car.

quote:

Hello All,

​

My Wife and I are in looking to upgrade to a larger home in the next few months. We live in Chicago, currently own our condo and have been looking for a number of months. The math tells me this is doable, but having grown up relatively poor, i'm having a tough time stomaching the risk. Am I being ridiculously conservative, or appropriately cautious.

​

So for finances we make around $560,000 a year before taxes. We're in very aggressive (60-80 hour per week) jobs that i'm not sure we can hang on to for much longer. I'm in Consulting, she in law. Our income in 2015 was $300,000 - so the growth has been breakneck. We take home about 22,000 per month after all taxes, health insurance, and retirement.
Bonuses are lumpy and typically hit at about $70-80,000 for me and 30,000 for her (after tax).

​

We have $175,000 in student loans, 290,000 in cash.

​

Our expenses look like this:

Future Mortgage: 6850/month

Daycare: 2200/month

Car payment: 450/month

Car insurance : 80/month

Entertainment, dining out, etc: 3500

Student Loan Payments: 1,500 /month

Heat: 100/month (average)

Electric: 150/month

Internet: 60/month

Netflix + Hulu: 22/month

Gym: 500/month

Cell phone: 40/month

Kids college account: 500/month

Emergency Savings: 4500/month

quote:

Last year my spouse told me they wanted to take a credit card out to work on their credit. We've been struggling a bit financially and I was a bit apprehensive,but they have a job so I gave in and relented. So a couple months later I noticed some suspicious mail and confronted them about just how many credit cards they had. Found out it was 3, but only for $300 apiece. I freaked out and wanted to open my own bank account. Unfortunately our current bank account is tied to our mortgage in my name, plus our finances are still tight and I worried about not being able to monitor the situation so I let it be.

I've tried pressing them about it and they finally relented a couple weeks ago and admitted they maxed them out and haven't paid them, resulting in $1500 of debt, but were planning on taking out a payday loan to pay them off. I figured they wouldn't be too horrible (i was guessing 15-30% interest at most) and we would be able to pay them off or wouldnt take a big bite out of out budget. But they ended up being 126%, resulting in now a grand total of 3.7k of debt. And the payments are over an 18 month period.

A bit of background here, my spouse and I own a starter home (20k worth of debt remaining) and have 3 kids. (Ages 7 to 11). I make around 30k/year and they make <20k/year. So finances are quite tight as is and I don't know how to weather this. I'm afraid of divorce because I feel like I wouldn't get custody of the kids, they are everything to me. But I'm also afraid of them learning my spouses bad habits too. Is there anything I can do here? Any reasonable advice would be appreciated greatly. TL;DR spouse ran up 3500 in debt on a low income household and currently considering my options.

crazypeltast52 posted:

No mention of how many kids, but $500 a month for 18 years at 4% real returns gives you almost $160k in today dollars, so not abyssmal if there is just one kid and college prices increase at inflation...

Lockback posted:

My first car was totaled in a not-at-fault accident three weeks ago, only 2 months after purchase. I regretably did not have gap coverage and still owe a little under $10,000 after insurance paid for the loss. I'm about to buy another car and roll over the amount owing. How reckless is this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/9p8dnk/my_first_car_was_totaled_in_a_notatfault_accident/

Hoodwinker posted:

"I didn't think a payday loan would be too horrible."

It's a good chunk of change, I just find it hilarious how much money they're throwing at their lifestyle compared to savings for their kids. I mean, I guess at present they can afford it. I find it embarrassing.

crazypeltast52 posted:

No mention of how many kids, but $500 a month for 18 years at 4% real returns gives you almost $160k in today dollars, so not abyssmal if there is just one kid and college prices increase at inflation...

Lockback posted:

Here's the other side!
Warning: This one is probably more sad with money than BWM, but is a good example of how a few bad decisions spiral with the working poor.

Spouse problems with debt. Considering my options, including divorce.
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/9p412n/spouse_problems_with_debt_considering_my_options/

Thanatosian posted:

If there's only $20k left on their mortgage, it seems like it should be really easy for them to refinance, take out a second mortgage, or just get a HELOC to pay down the high-interest debt. If they do that, then burn the credit cards, they should be good to go.

I will never understand people who have financial problems having more than one or two kids. Like, fine, you want a kid or two when you're young so you won't be geriatric when they get out of high school, but why the gently caress would you need three? The third kid is just punishing the other two at that point.

crazypeltast52 posted:

No mention of how many kids, but $500 a month for 18 years at 4% real returns gives you almost $160k in today dollars, so not abyssmal if there is just one kid and college prices increase at inflation...

Hoodwinker posted:

BUST OUT THE GUILLOTINE
Affording a $1.0M+ home?

Bolded to contrast their clear priorities.

The problem here isn't the half a million in income (which should clearly be able to cover their expenses right now). They can probably shovel their way out of that. The problem here is that they want to upgrade their lifestyle further, have poo poo priorities, and admit they can't keep up on earning this income forever. These people by all accounts should be loving set. They could retire in 3 years if they managed their savings load properly. But something tells me they won't.

I'm going to go ahead and bet that the student loan payment every month is close to the minimum. They looks like a repayment schedule of well over 15 years.

Krispy Wafer posted:

White people thinking they're getting on the ground floor of gentrifying neighborhoods can be entertaining. My brother bought a very cute 80 year old house in a terrible part of town and keeps showing me Zillow listings of its ever-increasing value. You can't walk down the street at night without passing a half dozen shirtless guys just strolling down the middle of the road and there are no restaurants or anything of interest in walking distance. The only store in a 2 mile radius has bars over every opening.

BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:

It is possible they refinanced their student loans at historically low interest rates at some point in the vicinity of 2015 to 2016, in which case they would be stupid to repay them any faster than they absolutely have to. You shouldn't assume too much about their student loan repayment.

Saving $500 a month for college for a child that isn't even born yet will result likely in hundreds of thousands of dollars in college savings by the time said child is 18. That seems like plenty, not that there is a fixed, absolute ethical and moral superiority to choosing or choosing not to fully fund your child's college education.

The reality is that these people are stuffing loads of money away like ballpark $15,000 a month based on their gross income, take home, and emergency savings, and it sounds like they are going to pile more money into home equity. Probably you should stop worrying about them and their priorities, even if you resent their dining and entertainment budget.

Known Lecher posted:

You mean me?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/5vvv48/my_wife_and_i_are_student_loan_defaulters_who/

I skimmed the comments but they weren't that interesting, a lot of handwaving from the OP when people call him out on "but if we were going to pay, the payments are $900 a month!!" as if that's some completely unattainable magical sum of money for two college-educated adults with (apparently) no kids or other major debts to come up with, to the point that living a cash-based lifestyle like an undocumented immigrant and moving frequently for years to come is a better option. (Several people also point out that moving frequently is fairly expensive in itself...)

EDIT: Also he never clarifies what kind of supposedly-useless-without-a-masters STEM degree his wife got.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I don't think so.

It's in a town outside of Jefferson City, Missouri called Fulton.

I don't live anywhere close to there, but I've visited.

Thanatosian posted:

I will never understand people who have financial problems having more than one or two kids. Like, fine, you want a kid or two when you're young so you won't be geriatric when they get out of high school, but why the gently caress would you need three? The third kid is just punishing the other two at that point.

Panfilo posted:

I think this is a bit of victim blaming, because there are a lot of circumstances in which people end up having more than 2 kids. Society has this expectation that poor people be 100% abstinent, people never wring their hands about overpopulation when it comes to too many middle class white people, etc etc.

quote:

[TN] I have homeowners insurance through Homesite purchased through Progressive. I added personal property coverage to my policy when I got it. Recently, I had a lot of camera gear stolen ($15,000+, police report, receipts, etc) and filed a claim. [Foolishly] I have myself listed on social media as a photographer both because it's a social hobby and the prefered layer of privacy. I have a career in software engineering which is where I make my income. Because of this social media post, the insurance company had claimed that the photography gear was used for business and was only eligible for a max payout of a few hundred dollars.

I argued against this as I don't make money from photography or pursue it with business intentions and even sent them tax records to show how I earn income. They dug deeper and found a Groupon post I made for photography services that I forgot about... it was from March 2014, 2 months after graduating college and about two weeks before I started my first job as a software engineer. The post has not been active since and the stats show that it was only viewed 4 times and earned $0. Upon finding this, they are asserting that my personal property theft claim is now fraudulent because I insisted I do not have or use the gear for a business and denying any payout. I don't have (and never had) a business license, tax ID, 1099, client list, or any other business associated concerns. The part of the policy they were citing is "A trade, profession or occupation engaged in on a full-time, part-time or occasional basis" which feels extremely broad to me. Only an insurance company can make you feel like you've been stolen from twice.... Thoughts? Thanks everyone.

Dr. Eldarion posted:

If he was truly not at fault, he could probably see some success suing for the rest of the loss, to make him whole.

George H.W. oval office posted:

Photo dude has some bad luck and insurance companies will absolutely fight tooth and nail to not pay out for any reason.

Panfilo posted:

I think this is a bit of victim blaming, because there are a lot of circumstances in which people end up having more than 2 kids. Society has this expectation that poor people be 100% abstinent, people never wring their hands about overpopulation when it comes to too many middle class white people, etc etc.

ChickenOfTomorrow posted:

with the limits on abortion access in the USA sometimes it's very hard - maybe impossible - to get an abortion if something happens and you need one. we're talking "you need to take 3 or 4 days off work and travel and stay in another state" hard.

vasectomies are gwm if your insurance covers them

BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:

Republicans: *systematically undermine reproductive healthcare and abortion access for decades*
Also Republicans: "all these poors and blacks and immigrants are overrunning our country with their babies"

OctaviusBeaver posted:

If that guy totals two cars in two months he isn't going to be able to insure a third car, right?

Hoodwinker posted:

I have a hard time believing it's not done intentionally.

Ashcans posted:

The problem with kids is that sometimes you seem like you're doing just fine and then two years later something goes horribly wrong, and you can't just return the kid or default on kid payments, you gotta try and eke it out however you can. Having a kid is basically betting that you'll be ok financially for 20 years (if you count pregnancy and assume you don't bounce them the moment they turn 18) which is really a hard call for anyone to make unless they're already wealthy or can rely on a some robust family support. If people made real risk assessments probably 75% of us would be shakers and solve the issue within a generation, but it turns out we're really bad at that so you just have to plan socially for the fact that people are going to have kids and may struggle financially at some point. Or don't and let them suffer.

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

Being able to "afford kids" is the dumbest idea ever. We're designed to have kids.

Money is imaginary made up bullshit and should never be a barrier to what's probably the best experience our species is capable of.