Bad With Money 2018: When I die, bury me in the blockchain.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Bad With Money 2018: When I die, bury me in the blockchain.

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Omne: Jul 12, 2003; Orangedude Forever

Bird in a Blender posted:

I was going to make a comment that the government shouldn't be giving out loans to people who attend colleges that have high default rates, but apparently we already do that. If the default rate for a school is 40% for more than one year, or above 30% for three years, then you can't get a federal loan to go to that school. Now here's the funny part from the article I found.

https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/national-student-loan-cohort-default-rate-falls

People are taking out student loans to go to Barber College!

My barber at the shop told me it cost $27k to go to barber school, and his shears are like $2700 each. Seems like a racket

# ? Dec 7, 2018 21:43

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# ? May 30, 2024 20:26

Hoodwinker: Nov 7, 2005

Seems like a way to take advantage of lower-class populations who are more likely to view being a barber as one of only a few honest career choices.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 21:46

AndrewP: Apr 21, 2010

in college barber licensing was an oft-cited issue libertarians groused about and one that I happen to agree with them on.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 21:51

General Probe: Dec 28, 2004; Has this been done before?; Soiled Meat

I don't proper sanitation and maintenance of barber equipment protects your health.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 21:53

bob dobbs is dead: Oct 8, 2017; I love peeps; Nap Ghost

General Probe posted:

I don't proper sanitation and maintenance of barber equipment protects your health.

could learn that for a $250 license in a month

what do you do for the rest of the... years...

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:00

Ashcans: Jan 2, 2006; Let's do the space-time warp again!

There are sanitation concerns and you want to make sure that there aren't health problems, because sloppy cutting/shaving/etc can carry and spread diseases. On the other hand, it's possible that you can manage to hit that mark with less than 1000/1500 hours of training and requiring people to go through 7-12 months of courses at considerable expense.

Health concerns are legitimate, but from that perspective it's a little weird that we require people have tons of training to cut hair, but zero to prepare food.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:02

feller: Jul 5, 2006

H110Hawk posted:

That article says $350k total for 2 people, and homeboy drives a now paid off Toyota Tacoma, and owns a house. Cry me a loving river. $350k is absurd, but they are obviously able to save up that sweet sweet truck equity.

IDGI should he have leased his vehicle instead? Traded it in for the same monthly payment? Is it just that it's a truck and not a civic?

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:05

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

Senor Dog posted:

IDGI should he have leased his vehicle instead? Traded it in for the same monthly payment? Is it just that it's a truck and not a civic?

it's that it's financed

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:07

Sirotan: Oct 17, 2006; Sirotan is a seal.

Very BWM: This company that I hope will go bankrupt after this guy sues the poo poo out of them:

/r/legaladvice: I think my dads company is responsible for his death [California]

quote:

My dad passed away last week while at work. He had a massive heart attack. He was in the bathroom while the attack happened and he tried calling 911 repeatedly. Here's the thing though, 6 months ago, his company installed some kind of signal blocking device in the bathrooms because employees were going to the toilet and browsing the internet.

The doctors say that if he'd received medical attention within 20 minutes he might've made it but they didn't find him until almost 2 hours after he'd passed. Last month, there was a nasty car wreck just outside his office and apparently ambulances were on the scene within 10 minutes so I'm sure that if he'd been able to make the call, he might've lived.

I spoke to the company and they've told me to get lost, saying it's private property and they're well within their rights to use jammers how they please. Is that true? I'm struggling with the funeral costs as it is, I can't afford a lawyer, especially if it's going to go nowhere.

Thread has been locked but here's some additional discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/a41e5o/laops_father_passed_away_at_work_because_he/

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:08

General Probe: Dec 28, 2004; Has this been done before?; Soiled Meat

bob dobbs is dead posted:

could learn that for a $250 license in a month

what do you do for the rest of the... years...

I've conflated licensing barbers with requiring them to go to school. I should have clarified requiring them to be licensed is a good idea that I have seen plenty of libertarians rail against.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:12

Ashcans: Jan 2, 2006; Let's do the space-time warp again!

For reference, here are the courses required for a license barber school in Massachusetts:

quote:

Your first step to attaining a Massachusetts barber license is graduating from a Massachusetts barber school. The Board requires that your barber college provide at least 1000 hours of barber theory and practical instruction, including instruction in the following subjects and services:

Public Sanitation
Sanitation Methods
Product Chemistry
Professional Conduct
Safety Precautions
Hair, Skin, and Scalp Structure and Growth
Shampoo and Rinses
Scalp and Hair Care
Facials
Shaving and Beard Design
Hair coloring
Chemical Waving
Hair Styling

You then have to pass a written and practical exam to become an Apprentice Barber. Once you have your license, you have to practice under the supervision on a Master Barber for 18 months, before you can take a second set of exams in order to become a Master Barber yourself, which lets you work without supervision and do your own thing if you want.

So in order to legally cut hair, you have to spend 1000 hours on schooling and then 18 months of supervised work (this is where many people stumble, because you might not find someone willing to supervise your apprentice time and then you're screwed because you can't cut hair alone, and you can't advance to where you're allowed to cut hair). If you want to serve people food, you just need to get a business license and have your kitchen inspected; no one cares if you have any training in how not to rub your rear end before handling meat. The program for a barber is more comparable to something like a dental hygienist in terms of the time and training. It does seem excessive.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:13

AndrewP: Apr 21, 2010

right because they're lobbied for by the professional trade organizations who have an interest in limiting competition

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:17

Moneyball: Jul 11, 2005; It's a problem you think we need to explain ourselves.

My college went bankrupt and doesn't exist anymore

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:25

George H.W. Cunt: Oct 6, 2010

SpelledBackwards posted:

This thread: advocating guillotines like the French Revolution, but not being able to spell common French loanwords.

Walla is the result after you�ve done a particularly good life hack. Blame the stupid life hacks thread for cursing me with this instead of using voila

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:30

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

H110Hawk posted:

That article says $350k total for 2 people, and homeboy drives a now paid off Toyota Tacoma, and owns a house. Cry me a loving river. $350k is absurd, but they are obviously able to save up that sweet sweet truck equity.

No, that's a different couple. The headliner person is this one:

quote:

There is some math that haunts Dallas Benson, a 48-year-old mother of two.

The monthly rent for her two-bedroom house in Zebulon, North Carolina, is around $1,100. She has lived there for just four years, and has already paid her landlord about $50,000. She recently checked the home�s value: it�s only worth about $100,000. �It�s heart-breaking,� Benson said. �If that could have gone into me owning the house, life would be incredibly different.�

But with $600,000 in student loans, finding a landlord who would rent to her was hard. Benson and her ex-husband�s student debt, which started at around $150,000 in the 1990s, has ballooned from interest and late fees. She studied sociology at the University of Texas at San Antonio and now is a government property manager.

The massive debt has pushed her credit score down to the low 400s. (The lowest possible score is 300). And it has harmed more than just her chances at home-ownership, she said.

�Buying a car is too difficult. I have nothing saved up for retirement at all,� Benson said. �I look to the future, and I feel like I�m going to be that 80-year-old woman saying �Hi, welcome to Walmart.��

It sounds like a combination of fees, interest, and her being saddled with her ex-husband's debt. (At least that seems to be the implication -- I'm kinda also getting vibes that the husband is dead but she inherited the debt.)

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:37

Lead out in cuffs: Sep 18, 2012; "That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."

Also, for a font of current and soon-to-be BWM, try searching for stories about presale condos.

It's been the norm, for the past half-decade or so, that new apartment buildings have completely sold out before even breaking ground. Apart from scams and lovely quality work (there are plenty of stories about that), there are a lot of people who have been buying these solely as an investment.

This may be GWM for some if they time it right, but the market is due for a massive correction as housing gets brought back in line with its actual function as a place for people to live rather than a vehicle for speculation.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 22:43

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

Planet Money had a good episode on the barber license thing.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/06/21/154826233/why-its-illegal-to-braid-hair-without-a-license

quote:

Jestina Clayton learned how to braid hair as a girl growing up in Sierra Leone. When she was 18, she moved to America. Got married, had a couple kids, went to college.

When she graduated from college, she found that the pay from an entry-level office job would barely cover the cost of child care. So she decided to work from her home in Utah and start a hair-braiding business.

She found a little niche, braiding the hair of adopted African children. To find new business, she posted an ad on a local Web site.

Then, one day, she got an email from a stranger. "It is illegal in the state of Utah to do any form of extensions without a valid cosmetology license," the e-mail read. "Please delete your ad, or you will be reported."

It takes nearly two years of school and about $16,000 in tuition to get a cosmetology license in Utah. And schools teach little or nothing about African hair braiding.

Clayton wound up closing her business.

In this week's New York Times Magazine, I write about the spread of licensing laws like the one that forced Clayton to shut down.

In the 1950s, fewer than 5 percent of American workers needed a license to do their job. Today, about a third of workers need licenses.

The increase has been driven partly by the shift away from manufacturing jobs (which don't tend to be licensed) and toward service jobs (which often require licenses).

But it's also been driven by a push from professions themselves. Licensing rules make it harder for new people to enter a field. That's good for people who are already in the profession, because it limits competition and allows them to raise prices. So professions go to lawmakers and say: You need to regulate us.

"Everyone assumes that private interests fight like crazy not to be regulated," Charles Wheelan, who teaches public policy at the University of Chicago, told me. "But often, for businesses, regulation is your friend."

Obviously, it's in the public interest to license some professions. I sleep better at night knowing that the commercial pilots flying over my house and the infectious-disease specialist at the hospital down the street are licensed.

But taken to excess, licensing rules raise prices for consumers and make it harder for people to find work � even as they do little or nothing to protect the public.

A wide range of activists and economists are pushing to loosen licensing rules. Michelle Obama has called for states to loosen the rules for military spouses, who move frequently from state to state. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, has filed a lawsuit on Clayton's behalf as part of a broad campaign against the rules.

But the political calculus makes it nearly impossible to loosen the rules. "When you talk about reductions in licensing, you have every occupation from the plumbers to the C.P.A.'s to the electricians lining up to argue why regulation should not be reduced," Morris Kleiner, a University of Minnesota economist who studies licensing, told me.

$16k and two years to braid hair. The libertarians are right about this at least.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 23:11

GoGoGadgetChris: Mar 18, 2010; i powder a
granite monument
in a soundless flash

showering the grass
with molten drops of
its gold inlay

sending smoking
chips of stone
skipping into the fog

SpelledBackwards posted:

This thread: advocating guillotines like the French Revolution, but not being able to spell common French loanwords.

At least we get "mortgage" right!

# ? Dec 7, 2018 23:23

Fuzzy Mammal: Aug 15, 2001; Lipstick Apathy

Occupational Licensing is a cancer

quote:

In an NBER paper, Blair and Chung find that occupational licensing reduces labor supply significantly. I had expected that occupational licensing would be worse for blacks than for whites because it imposes an additional locus of discrimination but that effect seems to be opposed by a certification effect (the license helps black workers to overcome statistical discrimination) so the net effect is not as bad for blacks as for whites:

We exploit state variation in licensing laws to study the effect of licensing on occupational choice using a boundary discontinuity design. We find that licensing reduces equilibrium labor supply by an average of 17%-27%. The negative labor supply effects of licensing appear to be strongest for white workers and comparatively weaker for black workers.

An Institute for Justice report by Morris M. Kleiner, the dean of occupational licensing studies, and Evgeny S. Vorotnikov attemps to calculate the net loss to the US economy from occupational licensing and concludes that when all costs are considered it is on the order of $200 billion annually.

In preventing people from working in the occupations for which they are best suited, licensing misallocates people�s human capital. In forcing people to fulfill burdensome licensing requirements that do not raise quality, licensing misallocates people�s human capital, money and time. And with its promise of economic returns over and above what can be had absent licensing, licensing encourages occupational practitioners and their occupational associations to invest resources in rent-seeking instead of more productive activity. Taking these misallocated resources into account, we find potential costs to the economy that far exceed those from deadweight losses and that likely provide a more complete picture of the extent to which licensing reduces economic activity.

�we find licensing costs the American economy $197.3 billion in misallocated resources.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 23:37

Guinness: Sep 15, 2004

I find it amusing and kind of hosed up that my wife is required to have a specific master's degree, state licensure, multiple certifications, and regular recurring continuing education and recertification to keep her license (all at her own cost, of course) to work a job that pays ~half of my job that requires zero specific degrees, certs, or licenses and puts people in flying tubes at high speeds in the air.

Libertarians are naive/wrong about a lot of things, but the explosion of required licenses and certifications for many jobs is not one of them.

# ? Dec 7, 2018 23:41

spwrozek: Sep 4, 2006; Sail when it's windy

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

People who are really BWM use loans to pay for everything in college, don't pay the interest during that time, .

Who do you know that paid interest during college on there loans? If you did what you could to scrape by on minimum loans you worked to pay for rent and food and had nothing left for loan interest. If you took out way more to live you really are not paying off the interest.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 02:06

Weatherman: Jul 30, 2003; WARBLEKLONK

SpelledBackwards posted:

This thread: advocating guillotines like the French Revolution, but not being able to spell common French loanwords.

It's a meme from the Worst Lifehacks thread.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 02:20

Asleep Style: Oct 20, 2010

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

At least we get "mortgage" right!

Le petit mortgage.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 03:10

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

ranbo das posted:

My company gives a 3% bonus once a year and they treat it like it's a big deal. Also raises are capped at like 4% with most people getting 2.5% in a tech company.

Why yes we have ~60% yearly turnover for engineers why do you ask?

lol in the bay area?

Methanar fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Dec 8, 2018

# ? Dec 8, 2018 05:28

Hoodwinker: Nov 7, 2005

Holy poo poo that thread title.

kisses fingers

# ? Dec 8, 2018 05:30

RocknRollaAyatollah: Nov 26, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

spwrozek posted:

Who do you know that paid interest during college on there loans? If you did what you could to scrape by on minimum loans you worked to pay for rent and food and had nothing left for loan interest. If you took out way more to live you really are not paying off the interest.

I did on my master's degree but I took out the minimum amount, about $18k, and started making minimum payments immediately. I have a full time job and had one while in school so I'm in the minority I guess. I never had interest on the little I took out in undergrad because they were subsidized.

If you take out a federal loan, they tell you now as part of the process that you need to be aware of the interest and probably try to pay it before you're required to so it doesn't get out of control.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:14

Hotel Kpro: Feb 24, 2011; owls don't go to school; Dinosaur Gum

OctaviusBeaver posted:

Planet Money had a good episode on the barber license thing.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/06/21/154826233/why-its-illegal-to-braid-hair-without-a-license

$16k and two years to braid hair. The libertarians are right about this at least.

My local tech school in Utah offers the program for $8k. A little less outrageous than $16k. And if you're somehow still in high school they waive tuition and fees so it's only $4k. It's a little more reasonable

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:17

Raldikuk: Apr 7, 2006; I'm bad with money and I want that meatball!

spwrozek posted:

Who do you know that paid interest during college on there loans? If you did what you could to scrape by on minimum loans you worked to pay for rent and food and had nothing left for loan interest. If you took out way more to live you really are not paying off the interest.

Not paying the interest for 4 years also pales in comparison to not paying principal or interest for almost 30 years with all of that outstanding interest being capitalized not to mention all of the late fees and such that would be stacked up. Not that $150k in student loans taken out in the early 90s would have ever been affordable unless it was for med school, but anytime you see those astronomical debts it is because compound interest is royally loving them. The real bwm here is them not filing for bankruptcy since they would have been able to prior to 2005. The BWS (bad with society) part is that we made it essentially impossible to discharge student loans in bk after 2005...while allowing a poo poo org like USA Gymnastics file to avoid further lawsuits over their molestation scandal.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

I did on my master's degree but I took out the minimum amount, about $18k, and started making minimum payments immediately. I have a full time job and had one while in school so I'm in the minority I guess. I never had interest on the little I took out in undergrad because they were subsidized.

If you take out a federal loan, they tell you now as part of the process that you need to be aware of the interest and probably try to pay it before you're required to so it doesn't get out of control.

Entrance and exit counseling has been a requirement for federal loans since the 80s. The problem is that no one reads it. Just like they don't read their SAR or check their aggregation on the NSLDS or any number of things. All of the info is there and with handy calculators telling you how screwed you will be. Problem is that your average student isn't going to be equipped to properly digest any of that.

The big benefit post 2008 is that federal loans include income based repayment options to keep loans out of default and create manageable payment plans while allowing for debt forgiveness after a certain time for any remaining balance. But in a lot of these stories people don't even have that option. And in many others they weren't aware of them. It's all an incredibly sad shitshow.

Raldikuk fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Dec 8, 2018

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:21

FrozenVent: May 1, 2009; The Boeing 737-200QC is the undisputed workhorse of the skies.

Proper grammar would be: �Mauvais avec l�argent 2018: une petite hypoth�que.�

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:23

Hoodwinker: Nov 7, 2005

Schlecht mit Geld 2018: die kleine Hypothek.

(I prefer that it's poor grammar)

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:29

Moneyball: Jul 11, 2005; It's a problem you think we need to explain ourselves.

FrozenVent posted:

Proper grammar would be: �Mauvais avec l�argent 2018: une petite hypoth�que.�

trap sprung

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:36

gizmojumpjet: Feb 21, 2006; Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.; Grimey Drawer

How do you say "school's for fools" in Franch?

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:37

Hoodwinker: Nov 7, 2005

gizmojumpjet posted:

How do you say "school's for fools" in Franch?

I don't know, but I do know it'll involve a poo poo ton of unpronounced letters.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:39

Hotel Kpro: Feb 24, 2011; owls don't go to school; Dinosaur Gum

Fitzy Fitz posted:

There's some sort of siren call from the restaurant business that ruins so many people. Whenever a new restaurant opens in town I try to predict how long it will last. Pizza places seem to be the quickest to go under. A couple moved here from out of state to open a Hungry Howie's. It lasted maybe a year. Why would anyone ever go to Hungry Howie's? Another pizza place opened down the street directly next to another pizza place. I think it'll close after the holidays. The original one tried opening another location and only lasted a few months. It was followed by two other failed pizza places in the same building(hey, it's already got an oven!).

I don't get it.

Unless it's Blaze Pizza which somehow opened 300 locations in 7 years

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:42

feller: Jul 5, 2006

FAUXTON posted:

it's that it's financed

what's the german word for least important part of a situation?

# ? Dec 8, 2018 06:43

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

FrozenVent posted:

Proper grammar would be: �Mauvais avec l�argent 2018: une petite hypoth�que.�

Does le academie francaise collect a royalty fee every time someone throws in extra articles and silent letters

# ? Dec 8, 2018 07:07

FrozenVent: May 1, 2009; The Boeing 737-200QC is the undisputed workhorse of the skies.

There�s only two silent letter in that phrase though?

# ? Dec 8, 2018 07:17

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

Methanar posted:

Does le academie francaise collect a royalty fee every time someone throws in extra articles and silent letters

In the form of smug satisfaction that no one will ever be able to phonetically pronounce their language.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 14:31

Alan Smithee: Jan 4, 2005; A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/a3rh6u/lessons_learned_crypto_and_divorce_in_january_i/

quote:

Posted byu/mijalis
Crypto God | BTC: 21 QC
1 day ago
x2
Lessons learned - Crypto and Divorce - In January I was a millionaire thanks to BTC, then my wife divorces me and now I have $30,000 AMA

Big ol wall of text

quote:

Crossreferencing u/nanoissuperior He wrote earlier today: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/a3n6uw/in_january_i_was_a_millionaire_thanks_to_nano_now/

Title: In January I was a millionaire thanks to Nano, now I have $25,000 AMA

I was replying to his post, but my reply ended up being a bit too large as a reply and steered off-topic, albeit an interesting one. So I decided to make it its own post, because there may be a good lessons to be learned and hoping some will come forward with good information to be shared.

I hope it can help anyone on this sub avoid the costly mistakes that I made. Here it goes: FLAIR: LEGAL (not in the list)

----

u/nanoissuperior are you who I think you are? I won't give out any further identifying clues, but I happen to know someone in the exact same position that could have written that exact same headline. If you read the first paragraph, you'll know if you know me.

The person I know bought Nano really early, based on a tip from a friend. I got in much later. By the time he told me it had already spiked to the $5 range, when I ended up buying. I then sold in the $20's so it was a good buy nonetheless. We were former colleagues at a large, large software company somewhere in the PNW, I left the company to venture out on my own and try to launch some projects I had in mind and relocated overseas for a few years. We lost contact with each other during my time away, but we connected again during the market runup and started exchanging coin information on a daily basis during the big bull run of late 2017. That was a crazy time.... the market trend was a few degrees short of vertical for pretty much all coins!

Hey, guess what? Now that I think about it, I could have written that same headline myself! In January 2018 I was a Millionaire too! Not with Nano, but thanks to purchasing a good chunk of Bitcoin in 2011 at $1.20 each. I ended up a single digit millionaire with what I had left in Bitcoin around January of 2018.

And, just like you, today, from all that wealth, I have about $30.000 left, with little to show for. Can we call that even? Although my disaster was not caused entirely by market fluctuation; Mine is a more complex story and I am going to mention it, because hopefully, it could serve as a lesson to be learned for any crypto holder out there, so they don't make the make mistake I made: Don't trust anyone. Always be skeptical and watch out for your own interests. Anyhow, here it goes:

After 5 years overseas, I had enough and wanted to come back to the States. My wife stated her preference to stay abroad, but eventually, she conceded albeit reluctantly. We chose a small town in CO to settle, and landed in November of 2017. We had plans to settle down and considered purchasing a home with my/our new fortune, based on the market price during that period. At the same time, I was also hesitant about the inherent tax payments due caused by such large liquidation. I was trying to have to pay taxes as far away as possible. So, I decided to wait till New Year's Eve and started liquidating my crypto on January 1st, 2018 right after midnight. This way, I would have 16 months (till April, 2019) to pay any capital gains taxes, and I was confident at the time that the market would give me that for free, especially at the pace that it was going. I have been an early adopter and have since then acquired the high levels of verification and trading limits per week, with many exchanges, but for a large sum like this, I needed several separate transactions, over the course of several weeks, especially wanting to do it with a US-based exchange that was linked to a US bank accounts, to avoid overseas wire transfers, meaning more fees. (Yes, I did look at all OTC options, but for reasons not relevant to the story, I couldn't make it happen, so I had to use the traditional Exchange channels for asset liquidation).

My wife and I, initially had some fundamental disagreements on the gross amount to be spent and the type of property we should be purchasing. I wanted a smaller place, with a denser, younger community, where there'd be kids our son's age for him to play. She insisted that we should go big; we had been traveling for so many years, and we had not been able to call any of our past residences our home. It was time to settle and nest; She convinced me that we should own a property of our own that we would be proud of living in for years. One that we could own outright and would not easily outgrow. We ended up splurging and purchased in cash two luxury cars for ourselves and set our sights on a large dream house in the city's Golf & Country Club, free and clear, for us and our two kids. I don't even play golf, nor do I even like it, but, if it makes her happy and it is within the safe margins of making it happen, I figured, why not? My concerns were largely financial and the numbers were adding up. It was a bit tight against my personal safe margins, but, at the same time, I was imagining to never have to make, or even have to think about, a car or home mortgage payment ever again! Bitcoin is on a roll and there is no sign of it stopping. Fine. Let's do it, before I change my mind.

Now, I admit I was extremely lucky with choosing the time of when to sell the assets. I had no clue the market would take a dive in February, and so it seemed to many that I had timed the market perfectly, selling most of my coins in the first two weeks of January of 2018. Many called me a genius for selling at the very top, as if I had some sort of wisdom to know when it would drop; the truth is much less flattering; it was nothing but dumb luck, based on me wanting to pay taxes in 2018 and defer to 2019. Awesome, well done! Yeah? well, slow down, son, not so fast.

So, I gather the 7-digit lumpsum in January 2018 and we write a check for the full amount at closing in February on the property of her dreams. A property that could easily be showcased on a luxury Real Estate magazine cover. Also, remember we had just moved back to the United States with just a few suitcases each from overseas. We had no furniture, kitchenware, curtains, TV's, bed sheets, winter clothing and so many other essential things that one usually purchases over time, but which we now had to purchase all at once. Not a problem, Bitcoin had dropped slightly but still well above $15k, I believe, at the time. And, earlier, in January, I had diligently taken this expense into account and effortlessly set aside a small fortune for equipping such a large house with everything we would ever need, brand new. It seemed we were protagonists of one of the Home Makeover Shows.

Finally, after working day and night, prepping the house non-stop for days and when every piece of furniture had finally arrived, been unpacked and carried to its corresponding room, it seemed most of the essentials were in place and the hard work was done. I longed for pouring myself a Scotch and to finally sit down and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I head downstairs to the dedicated walk-in, cigar-humidor / wine / Scotch cellar in the basement and grab the better bottle of Whisky of the few bottles of Scotch that I had bought earlier in the week. On my way up, I remember feeling a sense of calm, combined with a glow of excitement and this undescribable profound inner peace, all at once. This was such a rare, natural, non-drug induced high that I had never experienced. It felt so good! This sense of accomplishment of achieving that one thing I had been chasing and longing for my entire life. I had expected I would be chasing this goal for the next 15-20 years, and yet, here it was. No, where I was, was even better than expected! A place where not even my parents, who still have to make their monthly mortgage payments. I had done it! With a smile from ear to ear, I take a deep breath of relief and while looking around the property, I think to myself: "It's perfect, everything is in place and I can finally call this our home. We are so lucky and we are going to live a great life. A life that few can only dream of. So many concerns will be lifted and become redundant. Everything will be better. I'll start a fire in one of our two fireplaces and I am going to begin enjoying my semi-retired life with the first sip of my drink. That will be the official start of our new life".

I head over to the kitchen to get a glass and some ice cubes, while I struggle to find which one is the freezer among the many drawers in the kitchen. It was then when I notice a handwritten note placed front and center on the kitchen counter. It is from my wife and read: "There is no easy way to say this, so I am just going to say it..... I want to legally divorce [ ...]". It continued saying that she had taken our son, and had unequivocally decided to leave me. She had already filed the paperwork for divorce and that I should expect to be served in the morning.

My bliss had lasted less than 5 minutes and in less than two seconds, it turned dark, somber and I saw it all crumbling down in front of me. Like a long-awaited rocket launch, years in preparation, which then unexpectedly explodes on the launch pad during the countdown. My stomach, heart and everything in my body just sank and melted into one ball of poison in my core. I felt like throwing up. I was completely blindsided; she had played the game all along, not giving me the slightest hint of what was being concocted in the background. She had already engaged with her lawyers weeks beforehand. Her mother was already in town from another state to help out with I don't know what. I had been gaslighted and was threatened by her that I needed to see a psychiatrist due to a change in my temper that I had supposedly developed - my temper was awesome: with BTC at that price? Everything was perfect! But I obeyed and went anyhow (this would later fit her story that she had to leave with the child because she feared for her safety due to my supposed temper for which I was under treatment, therefore, I must have this temper problem, see?). Also, the purchase of the overpriced home also seemed clearly premeditated: Price was the main driver of the decision making; not location, demographics, taxes, etc. It was the wrong neighborhood for us (people much older than us, retired, golfers and no kids the same age as our son to play with). Our house happened to also be the most expensive in the neighborhood. I can see it all so clearly now.

See, your crypto coins on the blockchain, are not within the US court's jurisdiction (or, at least, it's quite debatable - a gray area - ask me for the seed and I can tell you that I may have the seed, or that I may not have the seed, I may have the wrong seed, I may have forgotten it, I may have lost it - you can't prove I did not forget, or lost it, etc). However, once it is in FIAT in a bank, or invested in a property, the courts can rule on the asset(s), freeze, disburse or order a sale of the property, etc. It's done all the time.

Also, the coins were technically mine, and by definition private property (not to be divided during the divorce) as they were acquired before the marriage. I could not prove its origins (I bought many of them via direct messaging members on Bitcointalk.org and mining rather than exchanges, so no records, receipts or nothing to prove otherwise: the big exchanges like BitStamp and Coinbase didn't start operations till 2013, if I m not mistaken. Instead, I would talk to one of the forum members offering coins we'd agree on a price, I'd send a check to wherever the individual seller instructed me to (Russia, Bulgaria, Japan, UK. etc) and the coins would be deposited to whatever address I provided. Yes, it was quite crude at the time.

However, once I converted my coins to cash and used that cash to buy a property for the benefit of the family, it became common property and thus she then had rights to a portion of it when divided between the two parties should a divorce occur - which ended up being almost 3/4 of all assets.

I was robbed in broad daylight. By the one person, I trusted with my life. The one you should trust with your life. Your life partner. And while I was in complete denial, trying to bargain, I waited too long to obtain good legal representation. When I finally ended up getting a lawyer, I was quite distraught and I clearly did not do the proper research and this resulted in a less than stellar performance and detrimental to me at many key steps in the process. I had to switch legal representation right before mediation and I can't blame my new lawyer either, as (s)he did not have the required time to catch up on all the details, (s)he did his/her best, but I was ultimately strongarmed into conceding my soon-to-be-ex-wife to let her return to the house, in exchange to obtain 50% of my son's custody, with serious and strict clauses I had to abide by. So, I had to move out, find a hole in the wall in a student apartment, pay my rent and pay our kids pre-school, while she lives grandiose, without monthly payments in the country club, till the house sells, which will likely be in the spring of next year. Nice!

Due to my delay, legal mishandling and somehow every other element in her favor, she inexplicably ended up with around 3/4 of the worth of all assets, free and clear, no taxes due. Mind you, she has never financially contributed, nor made a single $ during our entire marriage. She has never worked and had $0 in her pocket when we married. She didn't even have a checking account, well in her thirties. She is no dummy; she is street smart, knows how to manipulate people, get her way with flirting and charm, while I am more intellectual and book smart. and She beat me hands-down. She is walking away with a sum of, not quite 7 figures, but close.

With what I am left with from the sale of the house, I am responsible to pay for all the capital gains taxes from the liquidation to the IRS, which are due in April 2019. I don't expect there to be more left over than the estimated $30k mentioned above.

Hate the market all you want, I made peace with the market and am keeping busy at hating my ex for a while for putting me in the same situation. She tripped me 1 yard before the finish line and pushed me in the prickly bushes, to cross it by herself. Go figure. When I am done hating her, I'll get back to rebuilding my life again from scratch. I am not worried, I have done it before. Just pissed, I was so close and that I was so naive to not see it coming.

Sorry, I am not meaning to hijack the thread, just wanted you to know that others may have lost more than just "free" money; money we didn't really have to work for. We were the lucky ones. It is what I keep telling myself to stop me from jumping off a bridge.

PS - Woah: Sorry for the wall of text; I was just going to write the first paragraph and ended up venting about my current situation. I know, I should take this issue to /r/depressed, /r/exes or /r/whereisthenearestbridgeIcanjumpfrom.

Hopefully, this can be a lesson to those holding crypto and some can learn what NOT to do. I learned the hard way and was left with nothing. Don't be a nice guy. Don't trust anyone with your crypto. Anyhow, I am sure either our vigilant subreddit bot, or one of the mods will remove my post for not adhering to rule, and if not, I am sure that you fine people will downvote me to hell. Go ahead. Take away from me the little Karma I left too! Thanks!

I learned many lessons, but here are some key ones [IANAL - any crypto-educated AL opinion appreciated here, thanks] :

- Understand the concept of private property - property you acquire before getting married. INAL - this depends on the state legislation, but it is hard to prove with crypto, especially if you obtained your crypto through foreign exchanges, outside of legal jurisdictions, the petitioner might not understand or willing to invest in obtaining subpoenas and requests to businesses operating overseas, as this may result costly.

- Get a lawyer who understands, or is willing to understand crypto, its benefits of being somewhat unreachable and how that can work for you. Don't let them shortchange you with: "well, let's just convert the rest to cash, because that I understand" type of reasoning.

- If you do go to mediation, the above applies as well. This arbitrator or mediator needs to be one that understands the intrinsic details of crypto - for example, during the ATH, I bought 6 digits worth in $USD of Stellar. I used the very first version of the software, supporting Stellar on my hardware device, and put it all in a cold storage wallet somewhere around January. I routinely checked on my coins on the blockchain and they are there. A few months later, I try to access my account and the device returns a different public address, which contains 0 funds. I am still trying to debug this issue with the manufacturer, but the fact is that I was accused of hiding these coins or negligence and was demanded that I paid half of what was lost. or not lost, out of my pocket for money that I didn't have access either. I tried to explain it in the simplest terms, there are risks involved with using first come software. There is no 1800 number, mo tech support. no CEO, no, you can't call the BBB and complain, etc and no one seemed to be able to understand, nor willing to either. It became a huge roadblock for which I had to concede, not cash, but a concession, I was not wanting to concede. The petitioner leaned on the fact that I was either wilfully cheating or stupid enough to lose the coins and managed to create enough doubt in my character and integrity and there was nothing rational I could explain that she, or anyone else in the room would understand. Perhaps mutually contracting a seasoned crypto expert that can offer a neutral view and give his/her opinion might be worth considering. Andreas, where were you when I needed you?

- Other examples were some coins I had bought in 2012 and gifted to some of her family's kids. I was holding these, till they would turn 16 for them to pay themselves their college, or so I told them. These coins were demanded back by the petitioner. Ok, I suggested that I would send them, but with a CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY value with a block height of let's say,10 years from now, out of fear that she would spend the coins and the kids would never know (they are toddlers). No one understood what I was talking about, I was made out the crazy one, I gave up, sent her the coins, unlocked and, just as I expected, within 20 minutes of receiving them, she spent $1200 worth of it (for a flight, I think). If you are the only one speaking your language, no one is willing to listen or make an effort to understand you.

- It appears my coins were private property, which means, that I acquired them before the marriage and in case of divorce, if I have not moved them or used them for the common good of the marriage, then they remain mine. However, I liquidated them and cash ended up in my checking account to be used to buy groceries, cars and eventually a house, and it is then that they became common property. Only once they landed in my checking account on which she is named on. It appears that had I taken proper legal precautions with documentation, or a company/trust, where that money would have gone, instead of my checking accounts, elsewhere, I would have still been able to be the legal proprietor of the resulting cash. I can't quite remember the details, but it as something that was explained to me afterward, and I honestly think I just tuned it out, because it made me sick to know I could have held on to my wealth. Perhaps a lawyer can chime in? Again, much of the lack of information and every misstep taken was because of dealing with people that are accustomed to traditional assets and will not deviate from it. Crypto is different and is treated differently. It is so important to know the strengths and weaknesses when going into litigation about something that people don't understand.

- Some more I can think of, but this post is getting way out of hand in size. Feel free to comment/suggest your own and I'll add more to the comments.

Credits to: u/nanoissuperior Thanks for your post, it inspired me to write this one. Anyone, any karma you feels needs to go his way, for providing the source of inspiration, please give to O-OP.

TL;DR: Wife, having contributed $0 during entire marriage, waited until I cashed out all my crypto at the top of the bull market in January 2018, for a nice seven-figure amount, and then immediately divorced me for the money.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 14:46

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# ? May 30, 2024 20:26

Alan Smithee: Jan 4, 2005; A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

quote:

r/CryptoCurrency�Posted byu/PallyCecil
6 hours ago
I feel completely duped by the community.
FOCUSED-DISCUSSION

I invested ~10k$ into crypto last November by a dear friend who considered himself a seasoned investor. My investment quickly grew to 25k$. At that time. Most of the reddit community advised me to hold on and diversify. Against my better judgment I and my friend HODL�d through the drop and lost almost all of our investments. Now were sitting on 1/10th of our principal. Just praying to the nets that it will someday come back. I imagine there are some super fat cat bankers just swimming in our hard earned money laughing about how stupid we all were and how they pumped and dumped an entire wave of young investors. I feel like I just paid 10k$ into the pockets of the worst kind of people. Shame on me for thinking I could cheat the corporate capitalist kings that rule us all. I am still a slave to the greed of humanity. That is all, carry on!

Tl:dr... put your money in a bank account.

quote:

level 1
shockeruh
Crypto God | CC: 54 QC | BTC: 32 QC
19 points �
4 hours ago

Banksters? No no, all your money is in the pockets of those redditors that kept telling you "don't worry your money is fine trust me ".

quote:

level 1
Cthulhooo
Crypto God | BTC: 25 QC | CC: 23 QC
5 points �
2 hours ago

They said HODL so they could SODL.

# ? Dec 8, 2018 15:14

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Bad With Money 2018: When I die, bury me in the blockchain.

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