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Hufflepuff or bust!
Jan 28, 2005

I should have known better.
I very much like this quote that was apparently paraphrased from John Steinbeck:

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

People love to spend as though they're just a paycheck away from something magical happening that will solve all their money problems without any change in behavior.

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Elephanthead
Sep 11, 2008


Toilet Rascal
I just spent $400 on a blender. I think I have a smoothie problem. I guess my kids can go to state schools. At least the smoothies will make me fatter so I don't have to save for retirement due to an early death.

sanchez
Feb 26, 2003

_areaman posted:

That is so pathetic. What is your field? My friends are always trying to get me to buy this, upgrade that, because "they would if they made my salary".

Don't tell anyone how much you make, you can pretend to be horribly underpaid then.

johnny sack
Jan 30, 2004

One day, this team will play to their expectations...

Just not this year..

I can second the grad students making terrible decisions. When I was in grad school, most other students went to the bars at least 3 or 4 times per week. Most had brand new laptops, always buying $4 coffees, buying sandwiches for lunch every day, etc etc. Granted, the stipend we received wasn't much, but it was enough for rent, books, and buying food to cook at home. I couldn't understand the purchases most students made. They must have been taking loans out to subsidize their coffee and laptops.

canyoneer
Sep 13, 2005


I only have canyoneyes for you

johnny sack posted:

I can second the grad students making terrible decisions. When I was in grad school, most other students went to the bars at least 3 or 4 times per week. Most had brand new laptops, always buying $4 coffees, buying sandwiches for lunch every day, etc etc. Granted, the stipend we received wasn't much, but it was enough for rent, books, and buying food to cook at home. I couldn't understand the purchases most students made. They must have been taking loans out to subsidize their coffee and laptops.

I heard a guy on the radio interviewed during a news piece about the student loan rate going up. He's the student body president at the University of Arizona.
He is an undergraduate Political Science senior at a public, state university with $70k in student loan debt :psyduck: How do you even...?? Why would you go into $70k worth of student loan debt for a polisci degree from a school ranked #48 for that degree? How do you get to $70k in debt at that school without living in a hotel room the entire time?

But then again, making poor decisions with government money is sort of the expectation on aspiring political officials.

This next one isn't exactly 'bad with money', but more of 'a poor educational decision that happened to be very, very expensive'.
I'm acquainted with someone who spent $80k+ on an MBA from University of Phoenix. After graduation, he had a hard time finding a job, even though his undergraduate degree was well-regarded and he had relevant professional experience. He started having success in his job hunt when he excluded the Phoenix degree from his resume :eng99:

Delta-Wye
Sep 29, 2005

canyoneer posted:

I heard a guy on the radio interviewed during a news piece about the student loan rate going up. He's the student body president at the University of Arizona.
He is an undergraduate Political Science senior at a public, state university with $70k in student loan debt :psyduck: How do you even...?? Why would you go into $70k worth of student loan debt for a polisci degree from a school ranked #48 for that degree? How do you get to $70k in debt at that school without living in a hotel room the entire time?

But then again, making poor decisions with government money is sort of the expectation on aspiring political officials.

This next one isn't exactly 'bad with money', but more of 'a poor educational decision that happened to be very, very expensive'.
I'm acquainted with someone who spent $80k+ on an MBA from University of Phoenix. After graduation, he had a hard time finding a job, even though his undergraduate degree was well-regarded and he had relevant professional experience. He started having success in his job hunt when he excluded the Phoenix degree from his resume :eng99:

My experience with people racking up that much in student loan debt is they are usually floating a middle-class lifestyle on an annual salary that is significantly in the red (they are paying for the privilege of working, effectively). Some people are legitimately spending that much on tuition and the like, but it's sad watching someone chain themselves to a ton of debt so they can keep the quality of life they had growing up with their relatively well off parents. FWIW though, the University of Arizona puts their university around $25K a year so he could have racked up that much debt without being super extravagant. Probably should note their budget includes the normal tuition and room'n'board, but also such things like 2.5k worth of 'travel' on it.

razz
Dec 26, 2005

Queen of Maceration

sanchez posted:

Don't tell anyone how much you make, you can pretend to be horribly underpaid then.

Or the opposite, people will find out how bad with money you are if you make a lot.

A friend of mine and her husband make 90K+ combined and she is CONSTANTLY complaining about how much her rent is. It's $800 a month. So like... 10% of their income. Life's so hard for some people!

Acquilae
May 15, 2013

_areaman posted:

I think one thing that's changed in America is that many young people refuse to accept being poor. They get expensive, questionable degrees and take jobs that pay little, then blow everything they earn on expensive clothes, organic groceries from whole foods, restaurants, etc. if they can't have the best, then it's not worth living.
I wouldn't call it a change; keeping up with the Joneses has always been an American tradition.

taremva
Mar 5, 2009

sanchez posted:

Don't tell anyone how much you make, you can pretend to be horribly underpaid then.

Wait stop no gently caress that.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to negotiate for a decent salary if I don't know what my colleagues are making?
The only ones who benefit if you keep your salary quiet is your employer.

Blue_monday
Jan 9, 2004

mind the teeth while you're going down
My favourite is the friends I've had that in our late teens and early 20s always had to have brand new Mac laptops because they couldn't stand Windows desktops or laptops. Now that they don't have parents or student loans to help pay for them, they're more than happy to buy a cheapo laptop from Wal-Mart (nothin' wrong with it).

Some people I know were pretty loose with the student loans during their first couple of years of school and now regretting it. One woman who last I heard was somewhere north of 70k in debt with an incomplete religious studies masters.

Besides that most of my friends are pretty outwardly responsible with money.

HooKars
Feb 22, 2006
Comeon!

canyoneer posted:

I heard a guy on the radio interviewed during a news piece about the student loan rate going up. He's the student body president at the University of Arizona.
He is an undergraduate Political Science senior at a public, state university with $70k in student loan debt :psyduck: How do you even...?? Why would you go into $70k worth of student loan debt for a polisci degree from a school ranked #48 for that degree? How do you get to $70k in debt at that school without living in a hotel room the entire time?

As noted, the estimated cost of attendance at University of Arizona is $25,228 for a resident of Arizona if you live on campus, so graduating with $70k in debt is really not some crazy thing. If you just add up their actual cost of tuition and housing, without all the bullshit categories, it comes to over $80k so $70k over four years seems relatively good. If he were a non-resident, it'd be far worse.
https://financialaid.arizona.edu/undergraduate/estimated-cost-attendance

Not everyone is cut out for a math/science/engineering degree but will still benefit financially from a college degree. Making decisions based on degree rankings is really, really dumb for a generic liberal arts degrees. Far better to go to the best school in your state, even if its ranked #48 for that degree, than to pay a ton of extra tuition to go to an out of state school ranked #30 or something (there's something to be said for Harvard/Yale/etc with national recognition but Im betting that wasnt an option), plus you lose the alumni connections and local prestige if you want to live in Arizona if you go out of state.

Razz posted:

A friend of mine and her husband make 90K+ combined and she is CONSTANTLY complaining about how much her rent is. It's $800 a month. So like... 10% of their income. Life's so hard for some people!

Some people are just natural born complainers and it really doesn't say anything about whether or not they can afford something or not. Or on the flip side, they could also be great savers who are both maxing out their 401k and so living on a much lower net salary than what you imagine they're seeing month to month.

As a girl whose friends don't blow all their money on computers and technology or cars, I think a big shock and adjustment for a lot of my friends came when they started buying clothes for themselves -- not designer labels, but from stores that we perceived to be the "nice" mall brands. So nothing incredibly fancy in our minds but a step above Old Navy and Express to nicer more adult clothing like Banana Republic or J Crew. It's absolutely mind blowing how expensive some of that stuff is and how at the same time, it's really not perceived as "designer" or anything special at all.

Problem!
Jan 1, 2007

I am the queen of France.
Speaking of clothes, one of my coworkers is one of those women in the mindset that you can never wear the same outfit twice and insists on having high-end designer everything and that your makeup palette has to match the colors of your outfit. Imagine how much money she blows a year on clothing and makeup. She puts a lot of effort into appearing to be rich, buying knockoff designer furniture and trying to tell everyone it's the real thing (hint: when you work with professional furniture designers this doesn't work, idiot), talking up her Subaru like it's some super high-end car, stuff like that. She buys all of this on credit cards and I have no idea or desire to know how far in debt she is.

She saw my paycheck once and immediately starting treating me like a poor person. I max out my 401(k) so obviously my actual take-home money is going to be a lot lower than hers. I'm not up to my eyeballs in debt and live pretty comfortably on my "poor person" salary :rolleyes:

DEMAG
Aug 14, 2003

You're it.
Oh god, this thread is tits. I work for a governmental body and have several co-workers who make strange decisions.

Subject A:
A and his Wife had jobs that brought around 160K a year in a different area with a moderatly low cost of living. Wife got tired of the biz and wanted out. So she quit her 80K job and became an employee of a service company that pays around 27K. A part of quiting was leaving the area to their current location. So he ended up working for the government which brought him down 75K, not too terrible.

Their current combined income is more than enough to live comfortably. In fact it's right around what my wife and I make, which has allowed us to buy home in a country club, buy two new cars, contribute to our respective 401K's, and travel leisurely while still being able to drop 1500-2000 into our savings account every month.

Now the difference is A constantly buys wants instead of needs. He is seemingly always depressed with his home situation so he fills the void with flavor of the month activities. Since I started working with him he's bought 2 motorcycles, one for him one for her, to which she stopped riding within a year. He's bought two kayaks, same story. Offroad equipment for his onroad all the time Jeep. Every new apple product that comes out, various cameras, phone cases. And every piece of "SPEC OPS" rated gear for outdoor activities he can find. I swear he has like 5 backpacks that the "SEALs" use.

Things went crazy when the Government furloughs came around. For 2 months he ran around hair on fire. "What am I going to do? I'm so hosed I don't make enough." So he did what you would expect him to do. Buy poo poo to feel better, he bought a decent Diamondback mountain bike from a co-worker for 1000. Which was cool, but not good enough. During the middle of the furlough poo poo he went out on a splurge and bought a 3000 dollar Trek to ride around the suburbs. It was justified though because that was a "low priced" bike and he was selling one of the motorcycles to pay for it. gently caress saving the money just offset the cost.

When he sold the motorcycle it pretty much zeroed out the loss from the bike. So he felt ok with the furlough. Then his jeep was "not riding right. Better get new shocks." it was fine I've rode in it several times and know when it's time to get new shocks and struts. So instead of taking it to a shop, he takes it to the dealer. Who low and behold "MOPAR brand? Well for your Jeep (trail rated cherokee) you better get the best custom ordered KYB's all around for an inflated cost of 1000 over OEM." "Yes sir charge it up. You never know when your going to need jump off the asphalt and book it through the Australian outback."
It rides the same as before. Placebo is a hell of a drug. :psyduck:

Now that the high has worn off he has started :supaburn: about Furloughs again. A is a great guy, and I try to subtly nudge him about his expenditures but I guess it keeps him occupied and somewhat content.


Subject B: Not to be confused with A.

B is a vet and GS employee on the verge of being layed off while currently being furloughed. A's wife is only employeed part-time and they have a teenage son. A is a motorcycle nut and currently has two motorcycles, three dirt bikes, a mini bike, as well as an '88 F-150, '07 F-150, and an '02 Explorer. For two drivers and 1 rider...
When the poo poo started to hit the fan he made the decision to start off loading stuff. Good, that's smart, that should help create a buffer. He even got rid of cable and netflix. 2 months later, he hasn't sold anything and doesn't appear to be interested in doing so anytime soon. Then a couple weeks ago he got a notice that his postition is up for review for termination. The gov is just going to dissolve his position all together. So they said go home get your resume ready to defend your positition. What does he do? Two week vacation to the beach! :downsbravo:

I too live in fear of losing my job almost daily. But instead of doing this poo poo I constantly run contingency plans in my head. I'm fully ready, so ready in fact I've researched the numbers I need to call in order to. Cancel cable, phone, and drop internet to 5mbps. Kill my current phone to a dumb phone, glad I kept those old phones. Carpool with my wife, keep a list of things I have that I can sell, and who to call to try and get an inside track on a new position.


Subject C:
C wanted to buy a new truck. Cool, his finances are pretty straight he's living comfortably and doing alright. So he got himself a purty new truck. :c00lbutt:

When he brought it in I asked him "So how did you finance it? July usually has 0%, it's a great month to buy a new car." He looked at me puzzled and said he financed it through his bank. He then asked me "What do you mean financing at 0%, you can do that?" He financed it for 5%. He thought that financing through the dealer was just a big scam and that is why they have the incentives, to lure you in (I never got an explination as to why exactly it's a scam).
I've never bought a car that wasn't 0%, gently caress the man. :smug:

I just can't believe you would buy a car without any research or even just looking at the dealers ads. I bet the salesmen were high fiving each other after he walked out.


Subject D: Another case of not doing your homework.
D is a great guy and is signifigantly older than me. So when it comes to computers he has a different mindset. What is annoying is that having me as a coworker is like a having a multitool in your back pocket that he just decides to throw away.
D was having computer problems so he asked me what could cause his desktop to be so slow. I asked him for specs and so forth and he said he would get them, I showed him how to get me a copy of his dxdiag and everything. Couple of days pass and he tells me his processor is outdated and he is lacking ram (6 gigs on a 32bit system). I asked him how he figured that out. He told me Best Buy :negative:. So I explained to him about 32bit and RAM cap and that your processor is your processor and it doesn't really go bad unless your overclocking the poo poo out of it. I basically told him of all the problems you're describing the main culprit is probably a failing HDD. Back your poo poo up and bring it in and I'll gently caress around on it. He said don't worry about that I'm going to get a new one either way. I said ok let me know what you want to do with it and I'll price out a couple options and for no fee I'll put it together for you.

A week passes...
He called Dell and bought one direct...
For 3000 dollars...
Then I showed him my quote for 1250. :suicide:

All of these guys rag on me for being so "rich" when I buy poo poo they can't afford. Turns out I make the same as A, B, C, and D I just don't waste my money and I try to plan as much as I can.
It's times like this I'm kinda glad my family and my wifes teetered on the brink of poverty growing up. Our parents did great jobs of raising me, my brother, and my wife to be super concious of expeditures.

That being said, I am retarded when it comes to utilities. I just ran my irrigation system for 3 months to help the grass grew heartier. My $100 dollar water bill is now $600 :downsbravo:

DEMAG fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jul 5, 2013

Uranium 235
Oct 12, 2004

DEMAG posted:

Subject C:
C wanted to buy a new truck. Cool, his finances are pretty straight he's living comfortably and doing alright. So he got himself a purty new truck. :c00lbutt:

When he brought it in I asked him "So how did you finance it? July usually has 0%, it's a great month to buy a new car." He looked at me puzzled and said he financed it through his bank. He then asked me "What do you mean financing at 0%, you can do that?" He financed it for 5%. He thought that financing through the manufacturer was just a big scam and that is why they have the incentives, to lure you in (I never got an explination as to why exactly it's a scam).
I've never bought a car that wasn't 0%, gently caress the man. :smug:

I just can't believe you would buy a car without any research or even just looking at the dealers ads. I bet the salesmen were high fiving each other after he walked out.
I'm confused--why would anyone offer 0% financing if they weren't going to make money off of you some other way? Why would they assume risk (that you will stop making payments) without any possible reward? If the reward isn't from interest, then it's from something else...

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius
The trick is to lure you in... to buy the car. If you're going to buy the car anyway, then the incentives are probably a pretty good deal.

moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web

Uranium 235 posted:

I'm confused--why would anyone offer 0% financing if they weren't going to make money off of you some other way? Why would they assume risk (that you will stop making payments) without any possible reward? If the reward isn't from interest, then it's from something else...
They make money off of you buying their car instead of somebody else's car. I'm assuming some profit on the actual car price. I have a 0% deal from Kia for three years, never thought to question it. It's why I bought there instead of another dealer.

Delta-Wye
Sep 29, 2005

Uranium 235 posted:

I'm confused--why would anyone offer 0% financing if they weren't going to make money off of you some other way? Why would they assume risk (that you will stop making payments) without any possible reward? If the reward isn't from interest, then it's from something else...

The loan is from the dealership, as long as you take the car they're making their money. The bank loan has interest because, as you described, they get nothing if it wasn't for the interest.

E;FB, beaten like a poor person in a Dickens novel

Uranium 235
Oct 12, 2004

Okay, so in these cases the dealership is giving the loan, and not an outside financial service? I once bought a car with a big down payment, but financed the rest through Toyota Financial Services. I was trying to think about it as though TFS were giving someone a 0% rate, which wouldn't make any sense. If it's the dealership, then I guess it does.

Leroy Diplowski
Aug 25, 2005

The Candyman Can :science:

Visit My Candy Shop

And SA Mart Thread
Good friend of mine is a bright well rounded young lady who is a complete idiot when it comes to money. She ran up 30k on her credit card buying clothes, apartment stuff, vacations and other nonsense before she was even out of college.

I took a little roadtrip to help her move once. She took me out for drinks the night before as a thanks. The next morning we went out to lunch and when she went to pay her card was declined. I offered to pay and she called her bank to see what's up.

Turns out she just kinda "forgot how much money was in my account" when she was buying beers the night before. To make matters worse, she was swiping her card for each drink. a dozen or so $3 beers were each getting a $50 overdraft fee attached to each of them. This pretty much ate through the $600 deposit that she was supposed to pay on her new apartment that she had in savings.

When she realized what had happened she freaked out and her first thought was "I'll just call dad for money". Because she was my friend, I talked her out of milking her old man, and dragged her to her bank kicking and screaming. After hours of waiting around and talking to different people we were able to recover most of the $600 in overdraft fees.

The last time I talked to her, she payed off her CC debt and has the student loans down to a manageable level, so I guess people sometimes do grow up.

DEMAG
Aug 14, 2003

You're it.

Uranium 235 posted:

Okay, so in these cases the dealership is giving the loan, and not an outside financial service? I once bought a car with a big down payment, but financed the rest through Toyota Financial Services. I was trying to think about it as though TFS were giving someone a 0% rate, which wouldn't make any sense. If it's the dealership, then I guess it does.
That's right, I wrote manufacturer. I meant dealership. There are times of the year 0% is a common offering, 4th of July or Christmas/New Years for example. So if you're shopping for a car, that is to say you didn't total your current and have to buy one ASAP, waiting for those 0% offers is the way to go.

asciidic
Aug 19, 2005

lord of the valves


When I was 21 I went from making $20k/yr to about $90k, and my only bills were car insurance, gas and $150/mo for living in my grandmother's guest house. I bought a lot of stuff I didn't need and everything I had was disposable. I built a new computer about every 3 months and gave my old computers away to friends. I had a couple Grand Nationals with thousands of dollars in go-fast parts, a lot of which were still uninstalled when I got rid of the cars, and I bought a new Cobalt as a beater. I paid cash for everything. I didn't start building credit history until I was 25.

Now I'm better, though. :) I move all excess money to a savings account that I have no access to other than doing wire transfers or physically going to that bank. It came in handy when I had to pay lawyers and stuff.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

Uranium 235 posted:

I was trying to think about it as though TFS were giving someone a 0% rate, which wouldn't make any sense.

TFS does regularly give 0% rates. You really can't imagine why Toyota Financial Services would have a financial motive to give a loan at a loss to sell a Toyota?

dennyk
Jan 2, 2005

Cheese-Buyer's Remorse

Uranium 235 posted:

Okay, so in these cases the dealership is giving the loan, and not an outside financial service? I once bought a car with a big down payment, but financed the rest through Toyota Financial Services. I was trying to think about it as though TFS were giving someone a 0% rate, which wouldn't make any sense. If it's the dealership, then I guess it does.

0% loans are always going to be through the automaker's finance company (GMAC, TFS, etc.). The lending arm takes a tiny financial hit so the manufacturing arm can sell a car that might not have sold at all otherwise (which is also why you'll see offers like that fairly often on, say, high-volume mid-range models from economy brands, but never on more limited and in-demand brands and models). A third party lender would have no stake in what car you buy, so offering 0% car loans would literally cost them money and there's absolutely no benefit for them.

0% loans can be a good deal, though if they're offered in place of a rebate you'd want to apply for some third party loans as well and crunch the numbers to see whether the rebate or the 0% financing deal saves you more money in the end. I got a 0% loan on my Hyundai Sonata and it only cost me a $500 rebate, so I came out well ahead, especially since the 0% loan was good for six years with $0 down instead of my planned four-year loan with a big down payment; I was able to earn a fair amount of interest on the unused down payment and the extra monthly payments I didn't have to make, at least until the savings rates crashed (and even after that, ~1% of several thousand dollars was still better than nothing).

dennyk fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jul 6, 2013

Rudager
Apr 29, 2008

DEMAG posted:

Subject C:
C wanted to buy a new truck. Cool, his finances are pretty straight he's living comfortably and doing alright. So he got himself a purty new truck. :c00lbutt:

When he brought it in I asked him "So how did you finance it? July usually has 0%, it's a great month to buy a new car." He looked at me puzzled and said he financed it through his bank. He then asked me "What do you mean financing at 0%, you can do that?" He financed it for 5%. He thought that financing through the dealer was just a big scam and that is why they have the incentives, to lure you in (I never got an explination as to why exactly it's a scam).
I've never bought a car that wasn't 0%, gently caress the man. :smug:

I just can't believe you would buy a car without any research or even just looking at the dealers ads. I bet the salesmen were high fiving each other after he walked out.

ALOT of people think like this for some reason.

It's usually true for second hand cars where the financing is through some crappy third party like GE for Capital Finance, but for brand new cars it's pretty hard to beat the dealers these days.

Never you mind
Jun 5, 2010

_areaman posted:

That is so pathetic. What is your field? My friends are always trying to get me to buy this, upgrade that, because "they would if they made my salary". Sorry, but I have retirement fund, mortgage payment, general savings, and the constant flow of expenses that never ends. I have a corolla with only 80k miles but had to drop $950 in it yesterday for a clipped mirror and steering wheel issue. Many people assume that they can get by with an empty bank account, and then get in credit card debt when something expensive happens.

Grad school is often a huge clusterfuck of financial irresponsibility (says the lady with the humanities doctorate and a giant pile of student loans). Some reasons:
1) Often people coming to grad school are from middle-class and above, and are used to a particular level of luxury that they do not want to deny themselves while in school...or they don't even really think about denying themselves. Everyone needs cable, right? A laptop is a necessity, yes?
2) People spend with the justification that they need it for their program (oh, my precious, precious 3,000 lbs of books that I could have used through interlibrary loan but just had to have), or even for their mental image of what a ______ student should be.
3) Stipends are often low, particularly in non-sciences, and many of the best schools are in places where the cost of living is really, really high.
4) It's often close to impossible to make any significant money at an additional, non-school-related job and go to school full-time.
5) For whatever reason, there's definitely a lot of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. Especially in humanities and liberal arts programs that have traditionally attracted people with family money. That's not so much the case any more, but when you get one or two people in your social group who live large, everyone else feels sorry for themselves if they can't make it. I had people in my cohort who played polo (like, with horses).
6) Lots of students still get help from their parents and haven't really learned to budget "on their own" because they know they have a parental safety net.
7) Loans are easy to get, and until recently could be deferred until after school was over - years in the future for a doctoral program and easy to ignore.
8) You add it all up and at some point it starts to seem like you're not even spending real money anymore, and if everything is crazy and too expensive it just becomes the norm and you say "gently caress it" and buy deodorant at Whole Foods.

Then you get out of school, kick yourself for being an idiot, and start figuring out how to pay it back. Thank God I landed a decent job and can save for retirement AND pay loans instead of having to choose. And it's at a nonprofit, so I may qualify for forgiveness in another six or seven years, which would be fab. The sad things is that I'm very very lucky. Programs need to be so much more upfront about employment prospects and salaries, and really should make financial counseling mandatory, because so many students (me included, once) are so willfully "la la I love my field and will make money doing it with my graduate degree!" Students need to do more research about the realities of their prospects before they sign on, and schools need to stop encouraging prospective students to think that money is something you don't need to worry about.

I never did meet anyone dumb enough to buy a house in a city they were knowingly going to leave in under five years, though. At least, not in my grad program. An ex-boyfriend did when he was in school for a two-year program that he left after the first year. One of many questionable decisions that should have sent me running the other way.

majestic12
Sep 2, 2003

Pete likes coffee
My uncle's retirement plan was a basement full of model trains. He was planning on selling them all to collectors, I guess, but he died a couple years ago and now there's hundreds of loving trains gathering dust in a basement that no one has the first clue what to do with. In his defense, sort of, his formative years were in Weimar Germany where banks weren't the most stable things in the world, but really, trains?

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

The sales folks at my company (sales managers, as they manage a channel of resellers) make very little. We're talking 30k to 40k plus commission, and the commission comes only if their territory meets its quota, which is usually set obscenely high and therefore is almost never achieved.

Three of them purchased brand new Mercedes C250s last year. For those of you who don't know, this is a $35k+ car. I have no idea how people can justify spending a year's worth of take-home pay on a new car. I once got a ride in one of them and said to the girl, "nice car... you must have gotten a really good deal" and she was like "yeah... it's just the low-end model but we got lucky because they gave us a good deal on the financing - and each of us got a $500 referral bonus!" :psyduck:

We have a "food club" at work that goes out for lunch to a nearby restaurant every other week. Ever since these three purchased their shiny cars, they haven't shown up to these lunches. One of them told me she really wanted to but was trying to save money. Yeah girl, it has got to be hard to pay for $10 lunches every two weeks when you're making monthly payments on a loving luxury car with that salary of yours. :)

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Another thing that blows my mind is how seemingly unconcerned my generation is with saving for retirement. Most of my friends who are employed do not save a penny. Let me tell you about one of them.

For the past couple of years, my roommate (25 y/o) has been working for a technology firm and making around $60k. In our area that translates to a pretty comfortable salary. Until a couple of months ago, she did not know what a 401k was or if her company offered one. I explained its importance and told her she should ask HR.

I was talking to her yesterday and she said they have a 401k but no matching, and that made her decide against contributing to it.

I was like, OK, no match, I guess that means she must be putting money into a Roth IRA first. So I asked her.

Her response: "What's a Roth IRA?"

:psyduck:

So I once again explained to her what it is. Turns out she has around $10k in her savings account, which I guess is good. I suggested she should open a Roth IRA and start contributing to it.

She goes, "Nah, retirement is so far away. I'm planning on quitting my job in December and traveling the world for a year - that's what I'm saving for."

:psypop:

Basically she's going to come back from her soul-searching journey in 2014 with barely any money left in her account, and will have to move in with her parents until she manages to find another job, which will be extra difficult because she will have to explain the one year gap in her resume. The earliest she will start saving is around the time she turns 27 - that is, if she doesn't blow it off till even later. I just hope she doesn't end up on food stamps when she retires.

Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Jul 7, 2013

DrAlexanderTobacco
Jun 11, 2012

Help me find my true dharma
I live with my parents (I'm 20), earn ~£16000 per annum. I'm able to put away roughly £500 per month, and have maxed out my Cash ISA (Tax free savings account up to ~£5000), as well as some other savings here and there.

A co-worker lives with his parents, is 25, and earns around £19000. He pays £300 in rent, so before tax that's £1283. Phone contract and Sky subscription aside, he has nothing left by the end of the month. Spends it all on drinking, even gets a few payday loans.

I just don't understand how he has nothing left at the end of the month.

COPE 27
Sep 11, 2006

Midtown posted:

A good friend of mine lost his job a while back and has been trying to use his newly acquired free time to his advantage. So he invites me over for a discussion about a business opportunity he is starting and that I "can't miss out" and "Donald Trump". So I arrive and am greeted by a 45-minute presentation for some generic pyramid-scheme knock-off thing for "making huge profit selling telecommunications and earning RESIDUAL INCOME $125,000 PER YEAR FEAT. DONALD TRUMP'S ENDORSEMENT". With no job or job prospects lined up he dropped $499.99 on the starter set and has been begging me, his other friends, family, and anyone who still hasn't filed a restraining order to sign up too.

I sadly decline even despite the unbelievable directorial quality of their training videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ler-4LwiaWk

My brother got involved with these people in the 90's. The pitch was something along the lines of

- Governments are going to start deregulating the telecom industry
- This is an opportunity that will ONLY HAPPEN ONCE
- We will help people SAVE MONEY
- We have no product for sale
- We need more salespeople!

FrozenVent
May 1, 2009

The Boeing 737-200QC is the undisputed workhorse of the skies.
Haven't they moved on to selling video phones?

You know, that option pretty much every computer and smartphone has had for a few years that nobody uses because :effort:

Poison Cake
Feb 15, 2012

enraged_camel posted:

She goes, "Nah, retirement is so far away. I'm planning on quitting my job in December and traveling the world for a year - that's what I'm saving for."

While I agree she should be putting away some retirement money and I think she should have more savings in general, there's no time like your twenties for a big splashy trip. Projecting to her future retirement forty years away and how she's going to be on food stamps seems a little over the top to me. A one year gap on your resume isn't that big a deal and (IMHO) is more than outweighed by the experience. There's a work to live vs. live to work balance and everyone has to figure it out for themselves.

Poison Cake fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Jul 7, 2013

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Poison Cake posted:

While I agree she should be putting away some retirement money and I think she should have more savings in general, there's no time like your twenties for a big splashy trip. Projecting to her future retirement forty years away and how she's going to be on food stamps seems a little over the top to me. A one year gap on your resume isn't that big a deal and (IMHO) is more than outweighed by the experience. There's a work to live vs. live to work balance and everyone has to figure it out for themselves.

I'm not suggesting that a one year gap in her resume will cause her to live on food stamps in retirement. Rather, it's the "retirement is so far away!" mindset.

She's most likely going to come back from her trip and continue her current spending habits, and forget all about 401k and Roth IRA and all that boring stuff.

And honestly, she doesn't understand the power of compound interest. She could have started maxing her Roth IRA contributions when she started working at 22. So by the time she's back, she will have missed out on five years of savings + the interest + 35 years of compounding. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that this five year delay cost her around $300k in retirement.

illcendiary
Dec 4, 2005

Damn, this is good coffee.
What the hell kind of interest level are you assuming there? I don't disagree about saving for retirement, but I always kind of roll my eyes at the whole "start saving at 21 instead of 25 and you'll be $250k richer!!!" meme that assumes some ridiculous magical 8% guaranteed investment.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

illcendiary posted:

What the hell kind of interest level are you assuming there? I don't disagree about saving for retirement, but I always kind of roll my eyes at the whole "start saving at 21 instead of 25 and you'll be $250k richer!!!" meme that assumes some ridiculous magical 8% guaranteed investment.

Nothing is guaranteed. However, stocks have historically gained 7% per year on average after inflation (here). Start with $27,500 (five years of max Roth IRA) and compound that 7% per year over 35 years and you get close to ~300K. Here's a nice calculator that I used.

So yes, those few years early on in someone's career make a tremendous difference in the end result.

root of all eval
Dec 28, 2002

At one point I read something like:
If you invest $5k a year from age 20-30, stopping on you 30th birthday, you will (on historical average) have more in your account than someone who starts adding $5k at 30 and doesn't stop until 65.

Anne Whateley
Feb 11, 2007
:unsmith: i like nice words

enraged_camel posted:

Nothing is guaranteed. However, stocks have historically gained 7% per year on average after inflation (here). Start with $27,500 (five years of max Roth IRA) and compound that 7% per year over 35 years and you get close to ~300K. Here's a nice calculator that I used.

So yes, those few years early on in someone's career make a tremendous difference in the end result.
For a hypothetical person starting now, true. But it's not quite right for your coworker because 2013 is the first year Roth IRA contributions are capped at $5500 rather than $5000.

Cockmaster
Feb 24, 2002

CitizenKain posted:

It is a massively bad idea. Its not 2001 and the PS2 anymore, stores are going to have a shitload of them, and anyone trying to flip them is going to be going up against thousands of other people trying to do the same.

If it were just the PS4, it might not be that bad an idea:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3555627

Silly Hippie
Sep 18, 2007
My boyfriend's parents are the worst money people I know. As far as I can tell, they both make pretty good salaries (I'm guessing their combined income is somewhere around 100-120k and we live in a cheap area) but they also spend an unfathomable amount of money.

1. They pay for his and his sisters' college tuition and housing - except that apparently, they haven't actually paid for any of it out of pocket. Instead, they've had both kids take out a bunch of loans. After two years, my boyfriend's loan debt is around 23k. For reference, I went to the same school and just graduated after 3 years with about $7000 in debt. It's a cheap as hell state school. His sister has dropped out of and re-enrolled three times over the last five years and doesn't have enough credits to qualify as a sophomore.

2. About that housing - he splits a $450/month rent with me, so that's cool, but they also pay for his sister's $700/month rent for one room in an area where you can easily rent one room in a house for $150 a month if you really want to, or a whole apartment for $400. But no, she needs the place with a gym and pool facilities. (Except she also has a gym membership. Which they pay for). (Our university has a free gym and pool also).

3. They have a MASSIVE house in an expensive suburb that they only use less than half of. Seriously, half of the rooms are closed off or used for storage.

4. They pay for all three kids' phones and phone bills, and the oldest daughter's husband's phone and bills as well. These people are 30. I understand family plans but goddamn. Bf's dad also insists on getting everyone the latest iPhones as soon as they come out. Likewise, he has to have new TVs and computers constantly, will not buy a subpar piece of "equipment" if it kills him. He just spent ~230 on a headset for my boyfriend, unasked for, because he mentioned his broke.

5. They pay their grandchildren's various school fees (on top of loaning the oldest daughter and her husband money constantly), and all sports and activity related fees. Now, okay, I grew up pretty poor and understand how much it sucks to not be able to play sports or do dance like the other kids. I understand wanting to give your children something to do. But their son plays basketball, baseball, hockey, and does gymnastics. Their daughter does junior cheerleading AND dance AND gymnastics which, aren't those covering similar areas at that age (she's 5!)? Can't you just pick one or two? They also make sure these kids have the latest video game systems etc.

6. Both have brand new luxury cars. Dad's is never driven because he works from home and does not believe in grocery shopping, running errands, or generally doing anything but sitting in his home office. Oh, and they pay for my boyfriend's car as well as his sister's.

7. Which brings me to the next point. His dad WORKS FROM HOME but they never have time to cook. These people literally never eat homecooked food. I spent last weekend housesitting for them - their fridge contains ice cream, frozen egg rolls, and condiments. His mom gets a drink and breakfast from Starbucks every morning, eats lunch out with coworkers. Dad skips breakfast and orders a sandwich or pizza for lunch (again, having it delivered so he doesn't have to drive). Then they both go out for dinner. Chili's three nights a week (at least, who the hell can eat Chili's like that) and a steakhouse they like the other couple nights. I have NEVER seen them eat anywhere else. They always get appetizers, a few drinks each, separate entrees, and dessert. Last time we ate with them, the bill was $140 for some bland, boring poo poo I could've cooked at home. I estimate they spend anywhere from $200-500 a week on eating out.

8. His dad yells at his mom for ordering a movie on pay-per-view instead of going out and buying a Blu Ray. In case they want to watch it again. They also pay for Hulu Plus and Netflix, and insisted on paying for a better internet plan for my boyfriend and myself (I was totally happy with my cheapo internet but they insisted you couldn't stream movies on it (you can and I did regularly)).

9. They take a vacation every month. Generally in-state, something like visiting a state park for a few days, but still what the gently caress? When they do this they pay a neighbor to come feed their cats (even if boyfriend and I are in town and offer to do it for free).

They're some of the nicest people in the world but their spending habits are nuts and worst of all, they have passed it on to my boyfriend. When I met him he was spending 300 bucks a month eating out, while making minimum wage, had no idea where his money was going and made some comment like "the cost of living is just so high - hardworking people like my parents aren't even going to be able to retire in their lifetime". :psyduck:

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root of all eval
Dec 28, 2002


If they aren't in debt and have retirement funded this lifestyle sounds pretty fuckin' killer. Are they in some sort of trouble you didn't mention?

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