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I've never understood destination weddings or destination bachelor/ette parties (wtf, I've not heard of these - do they go elsewhere to some tropical locale to have a party and then come back for the wedding?). What's wrong with reserving a party room at a cool restaurant in town and then having a nice wedding that's in a place that's accessible/affordable to all your guests? My family is friends with some pretty well-off folks, and at the son's wedding, the biggest extravagance was an absurd abundance of high-end booze (bought wholesale at Costco as to avoid the caterer's markup), complete with a portable bar that followed the wedding guests around. But no extravagant destination bachelorette parties or poo poo like that, because what's the point other than to spend money? For content, my college-age sister was on the fast track to being horrible with money until my parents cut her off. The deal was that they'd supply her with a credit card billed to them so that she could buy books and food. Sister quickly racked up a four-figure balance of eating out and clothes shopping, so my parents took their names and address off the card and told her to have fun paying it off. Sister came to me wondering how on earth she was hemorrhaging so much money. So I demonstrated with a calculator how all those frivolous 'extra' purchases really added up. Going out to lunch all the time is one thing, but do you REALLY need the Nantucket Nectar and the side of guacamole? Because just ordering those extras on top of the food you're already ordering adds up to an extra $70 or so bucks a month. Her eyes kind of went wide with I showed her the math. I don't think she even realized how fast it all added up. Out of all of us siblings, she's always been the worst with money. Back in high school, she did a bunch of summer temp work, and earned herself a $900 paycheck. She gleefully comes up to me and asks what she should do with it. I suggested putting most of it in savings and keeping $100 or so in cash to have fun with, and she was like, 'No, I mean I want to spend all of it! What should I buy??' Hopefully $5k in credit card debt from Abercrombie and Nantucket Nectar will set her straight before it's too late. I have my own credit card debt to pay off, but at least it was from a period of chronic underemployment when I had incredibly limited cash flow (food and other necessities) and not blowing money on junk. Doing better, so not adding to it anymore or using the card, but still not well enough to make meaningful progress on bringing that balance down.  I'm considering doing a balance transfer to a new card where I can get a period of reduced/zero APR, but again, don't have enough money up front to bring it down significantly during that period, and I'm wary of getting hosed by an even higher APR when that grace period goes away.Another story is of a former housemate. He wasn't bad with money in the same way as most of these stories. He didn't have a credit card and believed that credit cards were a super bad thing. He also didn't have a savings account and refused to do online banking. He thought he was super good and conservative with money, but his real problem was that he had a really poor grasp on value and the cost of things. At one point, he was out of work, but refused to seek unemployment compensation because he was still technically employed at his two jobs that were no longer giving him hours. He literally had no money to his name and couldn't make rent. His relatives bailed him out for a few months, but due to him (and apparently everyone else in his family) not doing online banking, he never got the money in time to pay rent, so he ate the $100 late fee several months in a row. He also did all his grocery shopping at the corner CVS. Other roommates and I sat him down and told him that he couldn't afford to shop there (huge markup over supermarket prices) and that he needed to buck up and walk the extra half mile to the grocery store and buy cheap, basic things like potatoes, rice, and beans instead of frozen dinners (he was unemployed, so it wasn't like he didn't have time to cook). 'But.. the CVS is RIGHT THERE!'. Yeah, and you're paying out the rear end for the convenience of it being right there. Later on (when he wasn't in dire straits), he proudly told me about this awesome bargain he'd found for breakfast (at CVS...) - a single-serving packet of pancake mix and a pint of milk. And it was only $4! I told him I could buy two dozen eggs for the same price, and not only have a more fulfilling breakfast, but a more fulfilling breakfast for two weeks. He just... never learned cost/value comparisons. Yeah, four bucks is not a lot of money, but spending that four bucks on supplies for one carb-filled breakfast is a terrible value, especially when you have a low income. Then a couple years down the road when we left the house, I helped him move into his new studio (which was a good deal cheaper than the horribly overpriced closet-sized bedroom in the old house) and asked him what he thought of living on his own. He said he was excited, but bummed because it had significantly delayed his plans to buy himself a new computer to replace his failing laptop. I was like, $50 for the moving van is messing you up that badly? Nope. He'd bought himself about a thousand bucks worth of Ikea furniture and housewares after abandoning his bedroom furniture in the old house. I mean, I totally don't blame him for getting a new bed (his old mattress was disgusting and must have been 40 years old), but he had a perfectly good dresser, bookcase, desk, plus a whole bunch of other poo poo we ended up selling to the new tenants that he totally could have nabbed. For free. Even if he didn't want to take all his old stuff, he could have gotten stuff on Craigslist for way cheaper than a new matching Ikea set. When I mentioned these alternatives, he reacted like he hadn't even considered them. I guess the redeeming factor is that he bought all this stuff outright with cash, and I don't think he'll ever be a victim of debt problems (beyond paying down his student loans for a profoundly useless degree) and excessive spending due to him being terrified of credit cards and his reserved nature, but still, I'm kinda worried for the guy. 
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Jul 12, 2013 23:42
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canyoneer posted:We've talked often in this thread about MLM/Pyramid schemes. Here's a decent blog post about why they are garbage. My favorites are the comments along the lines of "hey it's not so bad.. I make $200/year from selling smelly candles and it didn't cost me that much... oh god please buy my smelly candles here is my contact info/website". There seemed to be a lot of Scentsy people in those comments. Scented electric candle poo poo seems like the dumbest thing you could sell. At least makeup and cookware has some intrinsic usefulness (except some of those gimmicky Pampered Chef things that are a pain in the rear end to clean if you don't have a dishwasher). Scented candles and plugins just give me terrible headaches and I think they all smell pretty gross, so maybe I'm extra biased. But still, how do people think this is better than just setting up a product review blog laced with affiliate links? I make a couple hundred a year from my half-assed Amazon affiliate links on my low-traffic author website - all I do is direct people to Amazon via links to my books, they buy poo poo other than my books and then I get commission for doing virtually no work (I'm more into the affiliate program for the data at this point). What I find so baffling is that these people often put in a lot of effort and work and piss off their friends and have to organize parties and keep their inventory up to date and a whole bunch of poo poo only to lose money, break even, or come out with paltry earnings not nearly worth the time and effort put in. Seems like the absolute worst way to make money, especially with so many legit ways to make "work from home" money much more easily. MLM koolaid must be some powerful poo poo.
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Apr 1, 2014 20:04
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e:^^^ What in the hell. It's still way cheaper for me to have some groceries go bad and have to buy them again than it is to go out all the time. Besides, if you're worried about letting your produce rot, buy frozen/canned veggies. And yeah, making some big pots of chili and stew and curry you can freeze and reheat is really easy to do and saves money AND time.TLG James posted:http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/23h2x3/serious_debt_problems_no_idea_where_to_start_or/ How in the gently caress do people exist like this (if he's indeed for real and not an elaborate troll)?  I make a modest 2-2.8k per month (consistent day job salary plus variable Amazon royalties and freelance income), but I don't get to have a car or a bunch of new clothes or $2500 worth of household poo poo from that Fingerhut place just because I want a thing NOW and qualify for their lovely credit. I just don't understand how people (on a fixed income, no less) plunge themselves into financial slavery/bankruptcy over stupid consumer poo poo. Does it just sneak up on you or is it really THAT important to possess the consumer goods that other people possess even if it comes at 30% APR? Is it really so hard to save up for a vacuum cleaner or whatever and pay for it in cash so you don't have to saddle yourself with monthly payments and interest with some sleazy online store credit deal? Took a look at that thread and the OP (barring him being a troll) seems like a horrible person who deserves no sympathy, but still, how the gently caress do people do this to themselves?I got curious and looked into Fingerhut, and dear loving god what a ripoff. Who the gently caress finances and pays absurd interest on a $25 skillet? Besides, if you're so poor you have to finance said skillet and you actually need (not just want) a skillet, you should probably go buy one at a thrift store or garage sale. The furniture is the loving worst, though. My own furniture is an eclectic mix of Craigslist purchases (people essentially give away fantastic furniture on CL), some Ikea stuff, and curb finds (I'm in a college area so students throw out tons of perfectly good furniture and housewares when they move), and I have a pretty nice setup that cost very little money (which was good because I didn't have very much money to spend on furniture at the time). But seriously, why put yourself in the hole for hundreds of dollars over the stated value of the piece of furniture which is too expensive to begin with when you can just find a decent equivalent piece on CL for a fraction of the price? Also, here's the price chart of what you actually pay depending on the product price and shipping cost. I can't help but assume it's in Flash and hard to read and navigate on purpose. You'll pay about 40-75% over the product list price, which is overpriced anyway, so depending on the product and shipping cost, it could be double what you pay at Target with cash. It's kind of blowing my mind. Authentic You fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 18:46
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Jeffrey posted:I would rather buy used nice furniture than new cheap furniture and I'm not sure if that will ever change. I'm in this boat. My best CL purchase was my dining set - Victorian reproduction table and chairs from the '40s, plus a REALLY nice sideboard that the previous owners said was from the same era as the table and chairs, but upon closer inspection, it's way nicer quality and much older, c. 1900. I got the whole set for $100 plus cost of a Uhaul van. Why would I buy new (and lesser quality) when I can get fantastic antiques and other good quality secondhand furniture for a fraction of the price? I grew up on a house where the only bought-new things my parents owned were the couches and everything else was "used" antiques they bought or family heirlooms, so I find the idea of going out and buying whole sets of entirely new furniture for the sake of having ~*NEW*~ stuff way weirder than picking up nifty antiques from CL/antique shops. I dunno, I guess for me, growing up in a house full of stuff that had been in the family for the better part of the century or more made me think of furniture as things you keep and treasure rather than buy and consume. I know I'll be hanging onto that sideboard forever. laxbro posted:God knows whats been done on or whats living in furniture you get from CL or the curb. Obviously its cool to buy wooden tables or chairs that way but I could never bring myself to put a couch in my living room that might have bedbugs or spunk in it. Oh yeah, all my CL/curb stuff is of hard, easy-to-clean materials sans upholstery for that very reason - I've gotten my dining room stuff, several cool end tables, a couple huge desks, etc, but I will not take upholstered stuff or mattresses (eek). That's when I'll go to Ikea and buy new. CitizenKain posted:When I first moved to where I'm at now, I didn't have any furniture beyond a lovely futon and a bed. I wandered into a nearby rent-a-center knowing that it was more expensive then buying things outright, but not really realizing how much so. It was pretty eye opening to see how much they were nailing people for stuff in there, if you were to fill a living room with basic furniture you'd probably pay something like 80-90 bucks a week for at least a year, and you'd be out double what the stuff cost. That's just crazy. I'm totally fine with the idea of dropping a few hundred bucks on furniture (or less for some CL stuff that is not upholstered), but paying that much weekly just to have some stuff you don't even own in your living room is pretty horrifying to me. I care about having a nice living room, but not THAT much. 80 x 52 weeks is over 4k. You can furnish a living room out of Ikea for like 1200, and that's not even the cheapest way to furnish a living room.
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Apr 21, 2014 23:29
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Nail Rat posted:It was with good beer, wine, and liquor too, all poo poo we had hand-picked! If a place or caterer won't let you bring your own liquor, it's because they're marking it up like a restaurant would. If a potential caterer for my future wedding told me I couldn't supply my own liquor, I'd tell them to get hosed. A couple summers ago at a family friend's wedding, my dad was the bar master and filled our long bed truck up to the cargo rack with pallets of booze, wine, and other party supplies from Costco. He also supplied the actual bar (giant slab of gorgeous wood and supports), so the caterer's only real contribution to the bar was the bartenders during the reception. Also what was nice was that the bar was highly portable, so it just followed the party around throughout the day and was awesome. All this stuff about caterers charging out the rear end for an hour of open bar service and stuff is bullshit. How do you just have the bar open for an hour? As for flowers, these folks told the florist that the flowers were for a reunion or something (to avoid wedding price gouging) and didn't pay for arrangement/assembly, just took delivery of buckets of cut flowers and got relatives to assemble the bouquets the day before. Now the brother is engaged, and his fiancee is a princess and sucks at logistics (and by extension, money). She wants to do all these things that are obscenely expensive and make no sense, and since it's at the same family house/property as the aforementioned wedding, she wants to do do things differently (and worse) just for the sake of being different, like wanting a fancy clear tent (which is twice as expensive as a standard white tent), fancy health food, and other poo poo like that. Originally, she wanted to have some crazy destination wedding, but our friend told her that was a no-go because he knew a lot of his friends wouldn't be able to afford the time off work/airfare/hotel stay for some exotic place just to have some drinks after watching them exchange vows when they could just as easily do it within driving distance of where most guests already live.
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May 6, 2014 19:45
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ranbo das posted:I'm up lifetime on blackjack My sister is way up lifetime on slots. We were in a historical mining town in Nevada, and there was an old-timey saloon with vintage nickel slot machines. My mom herded me and my sister in, gave us each a nickel, and told us to put them in the machine so she should educate us about the evils of gambling. We were about eight and six at the time. I put my nickel in, pulled the lever, and nothing happened. It ate my money, just like that. My sister puts her nickel in, pulls the lever, and then 7...7...7. It lights up, starts ringing, and barfs out mountains of nickels, to my sister's joy and amazement, and to my mom's horror. I still think it's hilarious that my mom's lesson about not being bad with money completely backfired. I think that's the only time my sister or I ever played a slot machine. I don't see the point/enjoyment of gambling against random chance, especially now that slot machines are digital. Who knows what the software is doing. I didn't even like gambling in Pokemon. I eventually just had enough money to buy the coins to get the Porygon that way. I do like Poker though. And pretend-betting on horses (never been to a live race, but I'd probably put aside a few bucks for betting if/when I go to one).
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Oct 21, 2014 16:01
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Guinness posted:Some more tier 1 bad with money (and shopping, negotiating, and life in general) from /r/personalfinance: Holy poo poo. My bf recently bought a brand new car with full warranty and zero miles on it and is paying like half that per month in payments/insurance. And 12k for a 7-year-old car with 100k miles on it? What the gently caress? People are selling similar models on Craigslist with tens of thousands fewer miles and for way less money. Also I Googled for three seconds and PNC will finance your private seller car purchase for like 6% APR (instead of 21%). If the loan amount is reasonably small (mid four figures, say), could someone like the girlfriend in that post go to a real, reputable bank, get the loan to pay the Craigslist seller the Blue Book value, drive the car home, and then pay off the bank at a reasonable interest rate and time frame? Are people with low income and/or bad credit/insufficient credit history left with no options other than saving up and paying cash or going with some rip-off shady auto loan, or do people just get roped into horrible auto loan situations due to slimy sales tactics and lack of financial education and impulse control even if better options exist? For the record, I've never taken out a loan or bought a car, so I'm not particularly familiar with how this stuff works.
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Oct 24, 2014 20:25
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Devian666 posted:In relation to the interior design degree discussion you really need to get the degree from the same school that also teaches architecture. Especially if you want to get a better job and not just be a limited cad technician. Interior designers that I deal with do not have that much difference in education from the architects, and in a number of cases are considered architects even though they cannot legally use the term. I interned at an international interior design firm and this was my experience. Firm would enter a project when the building was pretty much a shell, and take care of everything from laying out and building out portions of the interior to picking out material and buttons for the cushions. Lots of architectural work and blueprints and blueprints. Us interns did the bulk of digging around in the sample library looking for wallpaper, wood finishes, tiles, upholstery, and color schemes that looked nice together and with the architectural scheme, which we would then present to the designers, who would then present to the client. Educational backgrounds of both interns and employees ranged from architecture and industrial design to random liberal arts disciplines. In hiring, there was not an emphasis on hiring kids from specialized interior design programs. Also, calling an interior designer an interior decorator was regarded as a grave insult. melon cat posted:That's what I had initially thought, too. But if you take a look at their program requirements it's filled with courses called 'Textiles for Interiors', 'History of Art', 'Painting', 'Sculpture', 'History of Modern Architecture', and 'Interior Lighting'. There's a few "Studio" courses, but who knows what goes on there. Yeah this program is definitely Bad With Money, especially if it costs 100k. Seems like you could indeed take some art history and CAD classes at your local state university or community college to the same effect. I attended a fairly specialized program (industrial design), but within a top notch university with a huge variety in offerings and an excellent network, so I've had little issue expanding into different areas of design (I'm in UI/UX currently). Design can be an awesome field, and if you get into a quality program, you can adapt to all sorts of design fields and have good career prospects, but these over-specialized programs that really just teach you how to be a Photoshop/CAD monkey absolutely aren't worth it. If you're going to be a CAD monkey, Lynda.com could probably teach you AutoCAD just as well for $25/mo.
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Nov 13, 2014 18:00
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Switchback posted:I don't like k-cup coffee, but I haaate cleaning up coffee grounds. gently caress you French press k-cup wins until I get a live-in maid to clean it for me. Have you tried one of these? https://shoponline.melitta.com/product/640446#.VHyDGDE7uSo My parents have one that lives on a diffuser plate on the stove and they make coffee in it just about every morning and the only added hassle over an automatic drip coffee maker seems to be that you have to boil and pour the water yourself. Way easier to clean than a French press, too - just toss the grounds-filled paper filter and rinse. Cost of filters comes out to like 4 cents a pot, too. I grew up thinking that the automatic coffee machines were some sort of decadent luxury or something, and then was surprised when I had to explain to one of my roommates that it was indeed possible to brew coffee at home without some bulky $100+ piece of equipment. The whole concept of product systems like Keurig and Swiffer pisses me off. I did like how easy and convenient my Swiffer WetJet made mopping, but having to drop ten bucks on a pack of mop pads and seven bucks on the cleaner (which I could usually only find in some godawful Febreeze chemical scent) made me eventually just give the thing away and buy a cheapo mop and bucket that didn't require expensive, wasteful refills all the time. I did actually consider cutting open the cleaner container so I could fill it with my own cleaning solution, but buying a different mop was less effort.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:08
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Man, I hope I'm not too late for horse equuity chat. I had at least a couple rich horse girls in my class in grade school. I rode horses too because my family has land in the country where we keep a herd of reject Standardbreds that you can pick up from the racetrack for a song and a dance, but I was never a "horse person" - I never did shows or competitions or anything. I took some English riding lessons, but my grade-school self couldn't get over the idiotic prissy outfits, so I stopped and stuck with Western where it was okay to wear jeans. Also never obsessed about horses, and wouldn't have been too upset if we stopped having horses. In talking to this other horse-riding girl in my class, I quickly discovered that we were speaking entirely different languages and I couldn't compute because  Her horse and setup? A $100,000 (maybe less, but 100k sticks in my head for some reason) Thoroughbred hunter jumper that was a neurotic shithead and would spook at the drop of a hat (probably literally). Boarding it cost at least $500/mo, not including feed and vet bills and the farrier, and then she had expensive lessons and all the brand new gear and fancy leg wraps or whatever you put on your precious fragile six-figure beast. And special vitamins and hoof polish and whatever other stupid poo poo horse girls waste their parents' money on. Then I heard about how she (or maybe a different rider, don't remember) was on a jumping course, horse spooked or took a bad step or something coming up to a jump, careened over into the jump, threw the rider (she was fine), and landed on and fractured its back. I thought that was the end of the horse (would've been the end to my horse, for sure), so my first reaction was "sorry for your loss." But no, horse's back wasn't completely broken, so it went into some sort of intensive rehabilitation and surgery and took forever to recover and couldn't really compete at the same level and had lingering back issues, so it was definitely not worth its original price tag anymore, especially after all the vet costs, which were no doubt absurd. All that horse equuity down the drain. Just, holy crap. I get having horses - they can be wonderful creatures (when they're not spooking at a rock or tripping over themselves/breaking their legs) and you can get good horses for cheap if you know where to look and are willing to work with them a bit. So if you can afford to board and maintain it/have land, that's great. I've just never understood paying 5+ figures out the rear end for some fancily-bred horse for your 13-year-old just so she can make it jump over things when you can literally teach a cow to do the exact same poo poo: 
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Apr 10, 2015 21:29
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pig slut lisa posted:One time my dad was the only one at the house and the doorbell rang and there was a kid (13-14 years old maybe) standing there and my dad asked "How can I help you" and the kid said that he was selling office supplies for a school fund raiser and my dad likes to help out with these kind of things so he said "Sure, I'll buy something, what do you have" and the kid open his backpack and there was like a couple rolls of tape in there and a stapler and a hole puncher and my dad said "I'll take the hole puncher" and it was like $12 and the kid only took cash and he didn't have a form to fill out or anything so my dad just gave the kid $12 and thanked him for the hole puncher and when my mom got home she saw the hole puncher and asked about the hole puncher and my dad told her how he acquired the hole puncher and my mom said "Michael I love you but you're an idiot sometimes." Well that's my story about how some people get scammed, thanks for reading. Ages ago, my grandma had an even more audacious kid try to scam her. She was way upstairs ironing while watching I Love Lucy, and caught a glimpse of one of the neighborhood kids climbing her apple trees and picking apples. She was like, "wtf is Johnny doing sneaking around and picking my apples??" She didn't want to miss the show, so she didn't confront him (I think her plan was to call his mother later). Then not long after, the doorbell rings. It's Johnny, and he's selling apples for a school fundraiser. My grandma smiles and nods as she listens to his spiel, then rips the bags of apples out of his hands, says "Thanks for picking my apples for me, Johnny!" and then slams the door in his face. Bad with scamming: Trying to sell people their own stuff that you stole from their yard.
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Sep 4, 2015 20:02
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