Leroy Diplowski posted:"I wish I hadn't bought all of this crap because now I'm a slave to it." Well that's a pretty powerful thing for someone to say and changes must be pretty close if they're willing to admit that to other people and themselves. Edit: I think our wedding is costing about $3300 in total. Including 1300 in flights from Edmonton to Halifax. We refused to skimp on the photographer so that was 1350 right there as well (I'm a snob). Other than that I think we're doing ok!
|
|
# ¿ Jul 15, 2013 01:34 |
|
|
# ¿ May 3, 2024 02:25 |
Cicero posted:Sup Mr. Money Mustache buddy One of us should totally make a general Frugality/Early Retirement thread. (and by "one of us" I mean you) Yeah a Financial Independence thread would be great. "Early Retirement" is such a loaded term.
|
|
# ¿ Jul 15, 2013 23:11 |
The Banana Pee posted:This right here is the tip of the iceberg. I've been considering making an "Ask Me About Growing Up With Stage Parents" thread in A/T, but didn't know if people would find it funny or it would just make them sad and weep for humanity. If you could write this in the style of like, David Sedaris, you'd probably have a pretty good book.
|
|
# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 16:56 |
Switchback posted:Then I worked offshore, followed by moving across the world. Offshore, you get people from Philippines/Malaysia/wherever that work twice as hard as the white people, they make an order of magnitude less money (literally), and are on a boat away from their families for 11 months out of the year. They have better attitudes than the European assholes on board that bitch about everything, but get equal time off and double salary plus hazard pay. This is hilarious because your example actually proves the opposite point. It doesn't matter how hard those SE Asian workers work, they're still making orders of magnitude less than the Europeans simply because they're SE Asian. There is no American Dream for those folks, there's just endless poverty or a constant limping struggle up to some sort of proto-middle class. The odds are that, regardless of agency, the former is what they'll get. Now, imagine that those SE Asian workers offshore are a visible minority in the US, or women, or homosexuals, or the disabled, or even that their parents were just poor. A very similar phenomenon exists between the "rear end in a top hat Europeans" and Filipinos on your rig right here onshore in North America, the differences are just not as egregious. tuyop fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Sep 28, 2013 |
|
# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 13:52 |
Trilineatus posted:If you guessed enormous loans, credit card debt, and working full time hours, you are correct! I will be graduating from grad school in May with a cumulative 60k of student loans for the last seven years, 7k of credit cards I'm paying down, and a two year obligation to work for the state that I indentured myself to for a stipend so I wouldn't starve to death. Dude, that's kind of exactly what I did, except much smaller student loans and a car loan on top of it. I hope you realize the value of freedom at some point and enjoy the 5 to 10-year journey of paying it all back. I'm serious.
|
|
# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 20:04 |
melon cat posted:Why not just use a free OS like Ubuntu? He probably wants to play video games.
|
|
# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 18:09 |
DrAlexanderTobacco posted:He's just a bit of a silly person. Read this as: Spend all your money because all value in life comes from outside yourself. You are only the things that you buy, letters after your name, countries that you visit, and the statuses and photos that you post on Facebook. Nurture constantly-evolving, nebulous (be unique and essential hahaha), endlessly unattainable expectations. And yeah, I felt that way for almost all of my life so I totally get the perspective. I never thought saving and investing was a recipe for happiness, and it's not. But neither is making GBS threads it all away to try to somehow get to the nirvana that is "interesting", "unique", "essential", "good at" all based on how you might describe your life to others or yourself as an outside observer. It just so happens that saving and investing forces you to internalize value. If you're deciding not to get that new car, you're either going to: A) find yourself unhappy, or B) find happiness in the things that you already do have or the way your life is regardless of a lack of new car. In the case of A, you probably just buy the car or something else (drugs, vacations, whatever to try to advance a little further on that hedonic treadmill) at some point anyway.
|
|
# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 18:37 |
tiananman posted:The problem is exacerbated when some of our worst behaviors are incentivized by government, civil society and even our very unit of exchange. Inflation encourages people to take on debt and to spend money as soon as they get it. We certainly shouldn't be surprised when our policies which are by definition designed to get people to spend spend spend (not save save save) have the obvious consequences of spendthrift consumers who eschew thrift for debt. It's a bit old, but I think this is pretty relate: How to Make Trillions of Dollars.
|
|
# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 02:39 |
You really need a background in Anthropology and Sociology to start talking about monkey brains and "natural" behaviors. There's an endless set of confounding variables in any analysis of what a human would do in some kind of social vacuum that it's a pretty stupid thing to say. And regardless, whether demand is manufactured or innate, people can still break away from it and find happiness in consciousness. The chicken or the egg of it is pretty tertiary to the actual application of the knowledge.
|
|
# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 17:21 |
During my university orientation, our guide was complaining about the cost of parking - which is several hundred dollars per semester - and the cost of her commute in general because she lives like 45 minutes outside of the city. I asked her why she didn't just drive to like a park & ride location in the north and take the rail in or an express bus or something. I mean, she has a bus pass that she can't opt out of included in her tuition. She said that it would add at least 90 minutes to her commute somehow, which is almost totally impossible. Woman was also obese and loudly hurting from like four kilometers of walking over six hours. I just don't get it. Work out the cost per kilometer of driving (my car is about 27 cents), work out the time difference and cost of parking, and calculate an hourly rate. Actually, the same thing happened when I did a couple of college courses a few months ago. I drove in, but saw that parking was $6/day so I found a closed bank parking lot 400m away, timed the walk, and figure out that paying to park closer was like paying someone $60/hour to save me a beautiful walk through a neighbourhood.
|
|
# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 00:23 |
Haha people like that always feel scared of muggings or whatever regardless. There's always something to be scared of and something that you can buy to try to alleviate that fear!
|
|
# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 22:29 |
Another one from around the internet! Lifehacker: How much of my pay should I save? User icbog doesn't like the idea of saving his money: quote:There aren't words for how sick I am of rich people telling poor people how to manage their money. It's like a nuke telling a BB gun to do more damage. Mmm yes, you're poor and deserve this car! Also the car is literally the only way that you can be happy, just like the commercials say! Next, Gonzo Fanatic has a better idea than a hole in your back yard: quote:Yeah, so saving is great - it's really important. But WHERE do you save? Into what do you put your money so the Wall Street cowboys don't get their hands on it and gamble it away in virtual financial products. (You know, that trash that caused the financial meltdown? Well, that's pretty much caused EVERY financial meltdown?)
|
|
# ¿ Oct 11, 2013 13:16 |
Harry posted:Has he made a post recently about healthcare costs? I've been seeing a lot of people talking about their invidiual coverage tripling the past few weeks even with a $10,000 deductible. That's like 10% of his expenses, I guess? Here's the healthcare post. The whole >50% savings rate thing really isn't limited to 80k/year professionals. Most kinds of tradespeople earn well over 50k after their apprenticeship, and have a huge head start on professionals. I think that the group of people who really can't save beyond the 10% minimum is limited to the unemployed or disabled, those with a criminal record, and people with only a secondary education or less. Even then, that is not a homogenous group.
|
|
# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 00:25 |
I am OK posted:MM fiddles his figures and also won't buy his daughter braces because his saving money has become some weird pathological obsession. So should you not save money because this one guy has a weird attitude about not buying a boat and braces for his nonexistent daughter?
|
|
# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 14:12 |
Barfoid 3 posted:If I learned anything from this thread and life in general it's that there's no point being financially responsible. You'll just die anyways. Yeah gently caress freedom or power over your life and values, work forever, buy shiny plastic noisemakers, die!
|
|
# ¿ Oct 18, 2013 17:12 |
Barfoid 3 posted:not a single person has known anyone face any real consequences. Just a clean slate. I am a person who faced real consequences. From 2006 to 2010 I went on fourteen overseas or international vacations. I took out student loans and lived on my own and went on vacations instead of paying for my full university with my three jobs. When I had complications with my pay at my job, I decided to live on a 12.5k limit credit card, which I maxed out. I financed a car (72 months at 1.9%!) that cost the same as my annual take-home pay and then drove it into the ground (it's now got 152 000 kilometers on it and is 29 months old), which put the car severely underwater. Because of all of this, I accumulated nearly $58 000 worth of debt. I then discovered that I hated my job, but actually couldn't leave. If I worked a nine hour day, six of those hours were eaten by the lifestyle I'd made for myself. That is the consequence, and it's much worse than not having positive net worth or not being able to make a hobby of managing your portfolio. The consequence of stupid financial decisions is slavery. And the ridicule of the financially-savvy minority, obviously.
|
|
# ¿ Oct 18, 2013 19:43 |
jkk posted:I had a business meeting at a casino once (a company had rented a room there to do a presentation for a bunch of potential clients) and at the end of the meeting we were all given a 2 EUR chip, so my boss suggested the roulette as the quickest way to get rid of them. I put my chip on 31 (because 31st of July is my birthday). And of course I won. The only other player at the table was a Russian guy who immediately put a huge stack of chips on 31. I guess that counts as strategy in roulette... I like to think that he had just never played roulette before and thought he had seen a pro at work.
|
|
# ¿ Oct 18, 2013 21:48 |
Man I'm going to go live in a debris pile in the forest to get on TV!
|
|
# ¿ Nov 6, 2013 00:14 |
Trilineatus posted:Stop looking for excuses to live your yurt dream and just do it Man, I think the rough whiteboard version of the plan is to to spend a few more years here in the loving frozen Albertan north, then move back home to NS, establish the yurtropolis in our land that we got as a crazy wedding present, buy a sailboat, raise a kid or three, move onto the boat when they're like 5-10 and just tool around the world teaching English or voluntouring. Tell me stories of losing my whole family to a hurricane in the North Atlantic.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 6, 2013 01:50 |
RommelMcDonald posted:-Despite his wife asking specifically to not do it for one night, he asks patrons at the restaurant they dine at for their left overs. God you could just clean up by doing that!
|
|
# ¿ Nov 6, 2013 13:55 |
Dead Inside Darwin posted:When I was around 14 I signed up for those "TEN TAPES FOR $1" mail scams because I didn't know how it worked. I got my tapes but then found I had to buy a bunch more at full price. Of course I said "gently caress THAT" and ignored it. Then collections came and my parents found out. I don't understand, who has been getting the money that you've been sending to your CC?
|
|
# ¿ Nov 6, 2013 20:42 |
I'd love to have a spare bedroom for hosting couch surfers and my transient friends. I've taken advantage of friends' spare bedrooms many times so I feel like it's pretty important to pay it forward. I think our new place even has one, though we'll see how the configuration goes with a roommate and a possible home office kind of thing.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 7, 2013 02:04 |
There's so much going on in that movie. You've got this gilded poo poo everywhere but they fill their lives with the cheapest and most ridiculous items. Like, she goes on trips to Walmart and fills several shopping carts with plastic poo poo that they already have. It's borderline hoarding. Their net worth is millions but they don't really raise their own children or take care of their pets and it all just gets cleaned up by service workers. It's very complex and interesting. At the end I didn't even know what to think because their lifestyles were nothing like something I'd ever be vaguely interested in and it just looked like this terrible prison of stress and endless obligation. Like, if you have fourteen dogs and twenty bicycles that's just so much stuff that you have to keep tabs on or completely forget about until it becomes a dog corpse or pile of poo poo in the middle of your 20 000 square foot hall that you only visit once every four months.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 12, 2013 17:22 |
Tomfoolery posted:My retirement plan is a suitcase full of cash, drugs and handguns I will take to Las Vegas when I'm bored of it all Slow Motion alt found.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 25, 2013 20:28 |
FrozenVent posted:Have you read that thread? No way that guy has any kind of retirement plan. The suitcase full of cash will be a bonus* obviously. *Read: Money from selling a car, divorcing a wife, working at a mysterious job in "finance", or some other kind of hustle.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 25, 2013 21:06 |
An old friend on Facebook recently told me that I should invest in Bitcoins.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 14:39 |
Yeah but I could have also gone to Vegas when I turned 21 and made it big in craps or roulette or even poker. The possibility of return does not a good investment make.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 15:02 |
No Wave posted:But I bet if there were a proposal for a guaranteed minimum income for your home country you'd be in favor of it, right? I'd be in favor of a guaranteed minimum income for the world.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 17:50 |
No Wave posted:Right - and given that, I see no problem with making the establishment of one for the lives you create a priority. How so? The two are pretty much the opposite. One views your relations as somehow superior and more deserving of your wealth than other humans and the other (minimum wealth for all) views everyone as equal and deserving of a good life regardless of your relationship with them. The creation of any priority based on nationality or parents is the opposite of what I said.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 18:21 |
At least it was something that had actual value, it could have been like, bitcoins or something.
|
|
# ¿ Nov 28, 2013 00:41 |
But that's just like any business. I can buy a pizza from dominos for like 13 bucks and sell it to my classmates at an exam for 2.50/slice which is far more than the 1.625 that I paid.
|
|
# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 03:33 |
PurpleLizardWizard posted:Actually, I think it's a case of him buying that hypothetical $50 in weed and getting a discount due to it being a big purchase. Then, his buddy wants to trade him some heroin, as he went and did a big purchase of that and would like some weed as well. Instead of trading at the discounted bulk prices, Thylacine's friend valued the weed at the usual cost while his buddy valued the heroin at the bulk rate. Can you put this in terms of slices of pizza and dollars?
|
|
# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 20:10 |
razz posted:One toke is equal to one slice of pizza. That seems expensive. How many tokes in a dollar of drug? Is there that huge of a positive conversion between drug and pizza?
|
|
# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 20:50 |
TLG James posted:This guy. Quoting his post in full because reddit. quote:A little about me... I'm 26 years old, married, single income in household of 6. Kids ages are 7, 3, 2, 2. 2-year-old twins were a surprise pregnancy/double surprise twins. We knew we were not financially ready for another child, let alone two. I really don't think this guy is bad with money, except for the 80-mile commute for $5/hour more. He's just loving poor and it sounds like he has no skills.
|
|
# ¿ Dec 6, 2013 21:10 |
melon cat posted:Hahaha. Ouch. I've heard of a few grad students making tidy returns doing the same thing with individual stocks. There are worse things to do with your student loan than gambling. (See: buying consumer poo poo and drinking)
|
|
# ¿ Dec 7, 2013 19:42 |
While this family might qualify as "bad with money", their story is incredible and highlights the complexity of the issue of extreme poverty in America and NYC in particular. http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child/#/?chapt=0
|
|
# ¿ Dec 12, 2013 04:16 |
Getting takeout is such an easy habit to get into. You smell the food walking by, or you're a regular, or someone talks about it at work. I wouldn't take it to heart, this woman is a creature of weak habits.
|
|
# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 04:25 |
Man, I just finished exams and it's totally clear to me how I used to spend so much on travel and booze. Anything to get over this feeling of exhaustion and impending doom of doing it all over again in four more months.
|
|
# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 19:39 |
No Wave posted:And you'll have to deal with exams twice a year again, repeatedly, forever, as a teacher... but I guess you're giving? Yeah if I have to give exams. It's hardly the same thing though. But it's never too late to go be an electrician or personal trainer or something!
|
|
# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 20:29 |
|
|
# ¿ May 3, 2024 02:25 |
Actually another good documentary about the poors is "The House I Live In". It's ostensibly about the war on drugs but ends up being about class and control. Excellent movie.
|
|
# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 20:40 |