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Devian666 posted:I've ignored whatever derail is going on. It's kind of bad that two decades of being GWM and education is needed to escape poverty. The American Dream shouldn't be so difficult. Something that's rather disturbing is the split of 20:80 for the working population between rich and poor. I'm used to economists (like Piketty) breaking the population into the rich 10%, middle class 40% and lower class 50%. It sounds like the US has turned into an economic and social train wreck. So what's it like elsewhere? How much advancement could a non-English speaking immigrant coming to New Zealand expect? Because the 20-year thing doesn't seem that far-fetched historically in the United States. Generally, you came over to give your kids a better life. Unless you were lucky or came over at a time of war or economic disruption, 1st generation non-native speaking immigrants probably saw only modest success at best. The sad part is even that slow movement was somehow better than the rest of the world. I'm not sure what it's like now. I guess economists will get lots of new data following the Syrian refugees in Europe.
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May 1, 2017 03:52
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| # ? May 3, 2024 13:04 |
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Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No, says the man on r/personalfinance. It belongs to my student loans: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/68il3h/i_screwed_up_and_now_i_have_120k_in_student_loan/ posted:I'm about to turn 23 years old and I'm sitting on about 120k in student loan debt split between 30k federal unsubsidized and 90k in a parent plus loan in my mothers name. I currently pay about $175 on the federal and $635 on the parent plus per month on a 20 year extended graduated plan (the unsubsidized is not extended and is 10 years). Average interest rate is about 6% between all the loans.
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May 1, 2017 04:41
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Krispy Kareem posted:So what's it like elsewhere? How much advancement could a non-English speaking immigrant coming to New Zealand expect? Because the 20-year thing doesn't seem that far-fetched historically in the United States. Generally, you came over to give your kids a better life. Unless you were lucky or came over at a time of war or economic disruption, 1st generation non-native speaking immigrants probably saw only modest success at best. 20 years seems about what it would take to dig yourself out of poverty regardless of the era, yeah, but I get the feeling that it wasn't always the case that you were one fuckup away from complete ruin undoing that forever
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May 1, 2017 05:34
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Nail Rat posted:Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? I know a LOT of people in this position and they are almost exclusively teachers. What drives a person to go to an expensive out of state school for a teaching degree is beyond me. And how in the world is he paying for rent with $175? Where I'm from you can't even be homeless for that much Virtue fucked around with this message at 06:04 on May 1, 2017 |
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May 1, 2017 06:00
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Ugghh how do people end up with loan balances that high? I started to freak out about mine when I broke about $20k. And most of his are parent plus, so his parents are totally complicit.
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May 1, 2017 13:21
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theHUNGERian posted:That's why we also have a vice Horse, a Horse of defense, a Horse of state, ... . You skipped the Speaker of the Horse 
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May 1, 2017 13:30
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ate all the Oreos posted:20 years seems about what it would take to dig yourself out of poverty regardless of the era, yeah, but I get the feeling that it wasn't always the case that you were one fuckup away from complete ruin undoing that forever Big families I guess. If Jimmy got some bad gin and was laid up, he had lots of brothers and sisters to chip in. But without a support system poor people often did get ruined with one fuckup. 1920's Bad w/Money: My Horse Thought About Jitterbugs and Died DarkHorse posted:You skipped the Speaker of the Horse Minority and Majority Whips. Neigh.
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May 1, 2017 13:35
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Ugghh how do people end up with loan balances that high? I started to freak out about mine when I broke about $20k. And most of his are parent plus, so his parents are totally complicit. If I had finished college mine would be ~$80k and that's with my parents paying for roughly half and some scholarships. Out of state private school is a bad decision and I was an idiot, "luckily" I dropped out with only $11k total debt 
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May 1, 2017 13:45
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I'm surprised that no one thought of Secretariat of State, Secretariat of Defence, etc.
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May 1, 2017 13:45
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Secretary of Hay and Grooming Services? I'm bad at this 
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May 1, 2017 13:49
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ate all the Oreos posted:20 years seems about what it would take to dig yourself out of poverty regardless of the era, yeah, but I get the feeling that it wasn't always the case that you were one fuckup away from complete ruin undoing that forever A fuckup like "get really sick", perhaps.
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May 1, 2017 14:03
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Subjunctive posted:A fuckup like "get really sick", perhaps. Well yeah but obviously that's your fault. Happy international workers day comrades!
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May 1, 2017 14:16
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Virtue posted:I know a LOT of people in this position and they are almost exclusively teachers. What drives a person to go to an expensive out of state school for a teaching degree is beyond me. And how in the world is he paying for rent with $175? Where I'm from you can't even be homeless for that much Probably living at home or renting a sofa.
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May 1, 2017 14:29
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Krispy Kareem posted:So what's it like elsewhere? How much advancement could a non-English speaking immigrant coming to New Zealand expect? Because the 20-year thing doesn't seem that far-fetched historically in the United States. Generally, you came over to give your kids a better life. Unless you were lucky or came over at a time of war or economic disruption, 1st generation non-native speaking immigrants probably saw only modest success at best. The US is generally on the lower end of economic mobility for developed countries. Don't know if that holds up historically. http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_economic_mobility_sawhill_ch3.pdf
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May 1, 2017 14:35
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Horse government is slow moving because nobody ever votes "aye"
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May 1, 2017 14:35
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Nail Rat posted:Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? He owes $30k, he makes $35k. I don't see a problem for him. His mother owes another $90k. So, the elephant in the room: How much does his mother make?
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May 1, 2017 15:15
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I'm not sure what's worse here: assuming you'll be making a certain profit from your currently nonexistent business, or thinking it's OK to lie about your salary because they didn't specifically tell you not to lie. https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/68m4vm/is_it_okay_to_be_optimistic_exaggerate_your/ quote:I'm starting a business
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May 1, 2017 15:35
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:He owes $30k, he makes $35k. I don't see a problem for him. He owes the 90k, as he's paying on it. I mean yeah he could decide to not pay it and put it on her but that would be BWL probably.
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May 1, 2017 15:55
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What's everyone do for work lunches? Most days I order a bowl of soup which is very often hearty and costs $3.75 and comes with a free cup of coffee but they raised the price to $3.80 this morning so I'm debating the long term sustainability of this idea. Any insight, frugal eater hive mind?
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May 1, 2017 17:12
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:What's everyone do for work lunches? Most days I order a bowl of soup which is very often hearty and costs $3.75 and comes with a free cup of coffee but they raised the price to $3.80 this morning so I'm debating the long term sustainability of this idea. The standard frugal eater answer is "Make your own sandwiches, bring coffee from home in a flask."
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May 1, 2017 17:13
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BarbarianElephant posted:The standard frugal eater answer is "Make your own sandwiches, bring coffee from home in a flask." I don't usually make coffee because I drink coffiest ($3.09) for breakfast in the morning. Ugh, I'm doing it all wrong.
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May 1, 2017 17:15
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Bring leftovers from dinner Make a sandwich I always have hummus/guac/bean dip, carrots and celery, and some of those Uncle Ben's microwaveable rice bags in my desk.
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May 1, 2017 17:16
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I keep a french press at work with bag of ground beans for coffee. For lunch I usually prepare the morning of/night before, usually consists of microwaved frozen veggies and foreman grilled ground beef/ground turkey.
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May 1, 2017 17:22
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:What's everyone do for work lunches? Most days I order a bowl of soup which is very often hearty and costs $3.75 and comes with a free cup of coffee but they raised the price to $3.80 this morning so I'm debating the long term sustainability of this idea. Make a giant pot of stew on Sunday, portion it out into lunch-sized glass containers, eat 1 per lunch during the week. I'm very boring, but this is the best financial approach to lunches.
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May 1, 2017 17:22
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Twerk from Home posted:Make a giant pot of stew on Sunday, portion it out into lunch-sized glass containers, eat 1 per lunch during the week. I like this idea. The costliest thing would be time on Sunday, which is already at a premium, but stew doesn't take a ton of thinking.
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May 1, 2017 17:26
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My go-to is marinating some chicken in a simple marinade, grilling that up while making a bunch of rice, and then portioning that out with veggies for the week. It takes some time but it's worth the $40-$50 it saves me.
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May 1, 2017 17:28
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I eat a turkey sandwich every day. It gets boring as poo poo, but I started getting different spices to put on them for variety.
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May 1, 2017 17:29
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Ghostnuke posted:I eat a turkey sandwich every day. It gets boring as poo poo, but I started getting different spices to put on them for variety. I've been eating boring sandwiches for years, and somehow I still love them. I could probably just eat ham sandwiches for the rest of my life.
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May 1, 2017 17:38
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The real pro move is to steal other people's home-made lunches from the fridge, that way you spend even less money and you have a selection so you don't have to eat the same thing every day!
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May 1, 2017 17:41
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Any insight, frugal eater hive mind?
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May 1, 2017 17:47
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Yeah as JS points out the chief problem is 1) I hate preparing food and 2) I hate cleaning up the kitchen so even if it took me 10 minutes a day (or an hour every Sunday) to prepare breakfast and lunch, saving the $6.89 a day might not be worth it. I guess I'll just acknowledge the good fortune I have that the soups are tasty and that I can drink breakfast with coffee in the car on my way to work. If I value my leisure at more than $50 an hour (and I think at this point I honestly do), then the trade-off is probably to continue to keep consuming soup and coffiest.
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May 1, 2017 17:52
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Yeah as JS points out the chief problem is 1) I hate preparing food and 2) I hate cleaning up the kitchen so even if it took me 10 minutes a day (or an hour every Sunday) to prepare breakfast and lunch, saving the $6.89 a day might not be worth it. I guess I'll just acknowledge the good fortune I have that the soups are tasty and that I can drink breakfast with coffee in the car on my way to work. This fully depends on your attitude toward cooking and cleaning, which can be adjusted. I think it's good for my mental health to do some regular chores, notably cooking, cleaning, and yard work. I could hire someone to maintain my yard easily, and the market even makes that service very cheap but I feel like it's good for me to push around a lawnmower, experience a little bit of discomfort and frustration using a string trimmer around tricky parts of the yard.
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May 1, 2017 17:55
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:What's everyone do for work lunches? Most days I order a bowl of soup which is very often hearty and costs $3.75 and comes with a free cup of coffee but they raised the price to $3.80 this morning so I'm debating the long term sustainability of this idea. left overs every day e: we make dinner every night except for maybe going/ordering out once or twice a month, so we just make slightly larger portions so I've got a lunch for the next day.
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May 1, 2017 18:11
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/\/\/\/\ we save our leftovers for dinners instead, and just cook less often /\/\/\/\Twerk from Home posted:This fully depends on your attitude toward cooking and cleaning, which can be adjusted. I think it's good for my mental health to do some regular chores, notably cooking, cleaning, and yard work. I could hire someone to maintain my yard easily, and the market even makes that service very cheap but I feel like it's good for me to push around a lawnmower, experience a little bit of discomfort and frustration using a string trimmer around tricky parts of the yard. It seems I am developing a very different philosophy than you on this matter, reflected by the fact that we DO hire someone to maintain our yard with a few key exceptions. I like to pull dandelions, so I pull the dandelions. The satisfaction of getting out tap roots with my claw tool is high enough that I consider this yard work to be leisure. I like to play in the garden, so I play in the garden. I like to trim the tree so I trim the tree. Anything I don't like to do I hire done, because it's not leisure. Anything that gives me sufficient satisfaction that I consider it to be leisure, I do, no matter how other people would rate it as a use of my time. Anything I would consider to be work (mowing, seeding, putting down mulch), I compare the marginal cost of my doing at my hourly wage versus the bid for someone else to do the job. I made the mistake at this job early on of painting a room in my house on one of weeks of vacation. I don't really enjoy painting, so it was a bad use of time/money. Playing with power tools, however, I really enjoy, so I was happy to wall mount our TV and put up a baby gate. I just don't get sufficient personal satisfaction from doing some things around the house for me to consider them to be "leisure," and thus it doesn't make sense to do them unless I can do them more cheaply than can a professional. I think the idea that doing such activities "builds character" is a charming relic of really outdated thinking.
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May 1, 2017 18:14
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:/\/\/\/\ we save our leftovers for dinners instead, and just cook less often /\/\/\/\ If you're putting up baby gates, is there another adult in the house? Does that person get to outsource every single chore they don't personally enjoy too?
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May 1, 2017 18:18
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The great problem with this kind of thinking, of course, is how to properly value your marginal value of time. The first and simplest would be to figure a nominal hourly wage - like, I make $X a year and work Y hours per week on average for 48 weeks per year so my hourly should be h = X / (48 * Y). But should I discount the wage for taxes? Do I really only make 40% of that figure, because the government would tax my last marginal dollar at 39%? so my marginal hourly should be h = 0.61 * (X / (48 * Y)) - this would seem to make sense because any job I pay for will be in post-tax dollars? Should I dilute the wage for the zero nominal earnings of my leisure AND tax penalties? That is, do I actually make $X per year and my hourly wage should be h = 0.60 * (X / 52 * 168) It's worth some consideration, because I tend to value both my time AND my leisure at my post-tax hourly rate. I see NOT doing more work at home to allow me to do my current job at an acceptable level of productivity to continue earning my wage, so I think somewhere between the first and second model is correct.
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May 1, 2017 18:21
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I'm completely onboard with your philosophy as well, as long as the costs don't get out of hand. I think a lot of people severely undervalue their time. My free time for leisure and enjoyment is a precious resource. It's the reward for work, so I don't want to use it all up with crap I don't want to do. Within reason, of course, I don't hire out every menial task, and some chores and housework I do enjoy. That's why it's personal finance. As long as you've got your financial ducks in a row, then using money to exchange for goods and services to make your life better/easier is the whole point of it.
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May 1, 2017 18:22
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:If you're putting up baby gates, is there another adult in the house? Does that person get to outsource every single chore they don't personally enjoy too? Yes, she does. As my partner and equal it would set a pretty negative example for our daughter if it only went one way.
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May 1, 2017 18:23
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:The great problem with this kind of thinking, of course, is how to properly value your marginal value of time. Yeah but does the other adult in your house get to do this too or is it just you? Who wipes crumbs off the counter and puts doctor appointments on the calendar? Are there things you're assuming your partner does because they like it or are "better at it," that you don't bother with because you feel you only have to do chores when they're fun? EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Yes, she does. As my partner and equal it would set a pretty negative example for our daughter if it only went one way. Every single one? Do you have a butler sorting through your junk mail and wiping crumbs off the counter? Somebody off Fiverr enters the baby's doctor appointments in the calendar? You've got a PA tracking family birthdays? A live-in maid loading the dishwasher?
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May 1, 2017 18:25
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Fitzy Fitz posted:I've been eating boring sandwiches for years, and somehow I still love them. I could probably just eat ham sandwiches for the rest of my life. Scott Walker, is that you?
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May 1, 2017 18:28
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