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Tigntink posted:Oh goodness. I drive a new RX450H and wear a leather coat and shop at the thrift store. I love finding vintage dresses and high end jeans in still good shape. Shopping at the thrift store is fun, fool. Finding sweet threads is fun. Yeah, I aside from the obvious savings, I really like the element of surprise that comes with shopping at secondhand stores. I'm lucky that my girlfriend is the same way; I took her out to a nearby secondhand shop for the first time this weekend and we had a blast  I own a 20 year old dirtbike as my only vehicle though, so I don't really have much of a dichotomy going on, unless you know a bit about camera gear. Everyone's got their priorities. I picked the thrifting habit up from my dad; he bought all of his non-work clothes (and I suspect, even some of the stuff he wore to meetings and stuff) at thrift stores and would take me along when I was a kid. He worked a white collar sales job that was enough to support my whole family comfortably (and save a shitload for retirement, apparently). My sister takes after him even more: she's been driving the same '96 Accord she bought in high school with several years of saved-up babysitting money (seriously, I think she started when she was like 12) and is now 27. Even my dad asked her if she was going to buy something newer when she got a real job out of college, and she said she was just going to drive it until it blew up/wasn't economical to fix. Trilineatus posted:They clearly liked my standard of living enough to want to move right in to it, and my monthly income is less than a quarter of theirs on average. I don't think that's an unreasonable quibble about dating someone to have.
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Jan 31, 2014 05:49
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tuyop posted:I'd just like to go to another country for a year or so and earn a small income to supplement passive income and work to actually connect with people who are not backpackers. After awhile maybe I'd return and resume my career. I won't work in some 40-something-hating STEM field so I don't think there's really any cost beyond years lost adding to my net worth. If you've got a BA, you can teach English in Asia (probably involves significantly less poop). I'm finishing up on the JET Programme in Japan now, which pays 3.6 million yen/year tax free* (~US$47k when I started, ~36k now). Most people have a pretty good amount of free time to pursue whatever, a friend of mine finished his Master's in TESOL while working here. *US taxes, I believe the people on the newer contracts have to pay local inhabitant's tax, which works out to something like half a monthly paycheck.
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Feb 17, 2014 09:55
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spwrozek posted:Everyone I know in the military that buys a place plans to move soon and hires a management company to rent it out for them. Most only want other army families. My old boss has two places paid off in Killeen TX that he just rents out all the time. Seems to work well. Being a landlord had risks, not sure getting a crazy tenant is exactly bad with money. Parents buying the place maybe not a good idea. Most military people I know we're in for 4 years and got free college and never left America. My sister's married to a guy in the Navy (officer) and they bought a house for their 18 months in a place, which really surprised me. They sold it when they left, I think they made a good bit of money (I remember they got a really good deal on the house when they bought it, and my sister is very financially savvy), having a feeling they'll be doing something similar for the rest of my brother-in-law's career where it makes sense to. Her old job was mostly telecommuting with some international business travel thrown in, she got sick of it and quit and is I think trying to get in to SEO or something else that lets her be similarly mobile. Between that and my BiL's pension when he gets out (and intention to start another career afterwards), I imagine they'll be sitting pretty into retirement. There are tons of financial horror stories about people in the military, but if you play your hand right (e.g. exercise basic financial literacy) you're pretty much set in most cases, especially if you do something that translates well into a civilian/contractor career. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 01:42
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:I think it's one thing to have 40k in private student loans and another to have 20k through the government. There are always options for dealing with govt student debt, but if you opened loans through Wells Fargo May god have mercy on your soul. Are they that bad? I'm going to be taking out a loan with them through USAA for about 30k next year for my Master's, as I don't have the option of government loans because the university I'll be at (overseas) doesn't do them. There are a bunch of other universities in that country that do, but this one offered me a 25% break in international student tuition (which none of the others do) in the form of a scholarship, is in an area with the lowest cost of living in the country, and has a few other plusses going for it. Basically there's no way I'm not going there, but wondering what sort of particular pitfalls WF has. Someone in the student loan thread said they were pretty good, among the private lenders? I actually have enough to pay the tuition saved up, but I have to leave that alone to prove I can afford living expenses for the two years I'm there for my student visa (to be fair, that's what the savings are for, although if I'm not too busy to work and can find a part-time job, I'm hoping to defray a lot of my living expenses).
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Feb 25, 2014 09:31
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Your Dead Gay Son posted:For some things, like Income based repayment plans, private student loans are exempt, so you're just saddled with huge interest rates (relatively) and an unending payment. My roommate is going through it right now, probably will be for the next 30 years. Well, if I'm lucky, thrifty, and able to work enough to offset the majority of my living expenses (can work full time during school breaks, only ~20hours/week during school), I should still have enough to flat out repay the loan as soon as I graduate, or at least the vast majority of it. Whether or not that's a good idea will depend on my situation at the time; assuming I find work in my field, my starting annual salary will be almost twice the value of the loan, albeit before taxes. There's also buying a home to think about. I'm honestly pretty new to the whole taking on debt thing (a luxury for someone in their late 20's), have some research ahead of me. If I can't find work... well, that's the risk you always take going back to school, unless your employer is sponsoring it or something. Still, the job market for my profession is pretty healthy there from what I can tell (it's how I plan on applying for migration), and I plan to hustle/network my rear end off while I'm still in school so that I hopefully have something lined up when I graduate. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 14:35
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drat Bananas posted:poo poo, and I remember being mad at my husband for wanting to sign us up for LA Fitness - $30/mo per person (I think $90 sign up fee + $60/mo in total). I preferred the city rec center because it's $110 per year for the pair of us, but LAF is right behind our house so we actually get off our asses and go to it. I guess that makes it worth it but I just generally hate adding a monthly expense to the budget. I didn't realize how much some people spend, though. $500 is wow. My options for a gym in town are either $100/mo (and not open before work, which is my preferred time to work out), or $1/visit (also same lovely hours), but with barely adequate facilities and no climate control. 
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Apr 16, 2014 07:15
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tuyop posted:You jerks in the US with your Kindle library support and poo poo. I live abroad but still have an active library account through my public library back home, which I can use to get Kindle books. It's fuckin' fantastic, especially because the DRM doesn't seem to work (books I check out from the library stay readable on my Kindle in perpetuity).
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Apr 17, 2014 00:02
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As an aside, I had written up a pretty E/N post in response to that 40k in debt thing because it hit close to home (I don't have any debt, but soon I'm gonna be in grad school with loans/probably not working, for the first time), which means a substantial drop to my standard of living, which I'm really not looking forward to. I actually have more than enough saved for the tuition, but have to use that money to live off of and take out a loan for the tuition. It's tempting to take out an even bigger loan so I can continue to do stuff like have my own place instead of roommates, have a motorbike, etc... but realistically I know I need to just suck it up and tighten my belt. It seems the solution to this was to just spend all afternoon reading MMM, because now I'm pretty psyched to getting back to bicycle commuting (like I did my senior year of college), and having roommates will probably help with making new friends, since I know literally nobody there.  Qu Appelle posted:That's because the ebook Kindles don't have an internal calendar, just a clock. So, as long as you don't have the wifi or 3G on, the kindle won't sync and remove the books. I've had library books on mine from December. Thanks for the heads up, I'll leave 3G off when I'm back in the US after August! Oral Slither posted:Many of those stay at home moms DON'T have a choice. That and daycare costs. tuyop posted:I wonder if there's any way to set up a US library account for this purpose. That's probably pretty :files: though. Probably not, without showing you live there. You could always ask to share someone elses', but I imagine that's a legal grey area at best. My sister's offered to let me use hers; her husband is in the military so with their moves in the last few years she's already accumulated access to three different public libraries' electronic collections. One thing I miss about being in the US is the ease of affordable access to media: local library with inter-library loan for popular fiction, audiobooks, and some DVD's, university library ($40/year for alumni membership) for non-fic, art/photography books, and whatever weird academic books struck my fancy. Netflix for movies/shows, and my Zune Pass (still got it, grandfathered in on the old $15/mo for unlimited DRM'd stuff plus 10 free song credits) for music. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 04:47
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Leroy Diplowski posted:We have only CL used furniture in our house. The dude we got the couch from has a pretty good bad with money story. That's pretty cool about him going to travel the world at his age though. When I was backpacking through Malaysia one summer when I was in university, I met an Irish guy in his mid-40's who had been working at an eyeglasses factory in his small country town since he finished high school. Had never left Ireland before. When the factory closed and he was made redundant, he took the big ol' severance package he got and was using it to travel the world. Probably one of the coolest people I've met on the road
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Apr 22, 2014 07:20
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Bobert51 posted:My uncle once told me if I wanted to experience what it's like to own a sail boat I should just stand in an ice cold shower and tear up hundred dollar bills. My dad is a thrifty guy, and managed to parlay his love of sailing/sailboats into a decent side hustle. He'd buy a fixer-upper, do all of the work himself* on the weekends over 9-12 months or so, then list it at a high-ish asking price, while continuing to sail and enjoy the boat. Eventually, someone would bite, and he'd buy a slightly bigger fixer-upper, and repeat the cycle. I'm not sure if he came out in the black (I suspect not after slip fees, although his is about as cheap as you can get, it's essentially a co-op), but it certainly didn't cost him too much other than his time, which he enjoyed spending. Now that he's retired, he makes some income on the side teaching rich people who've just bought a sailboat how to sail/cruise, or delivering boats. Last year he got a free trip across the South Pacific on an Aussie guy's yacht doing the latter. I have a feeling my life priorities might keep me too busy to do something similar, but when I'm back home this fall he's going to take me out on some longer trips so I can at least get some blue water experience, which might hopefully get me some free crewing opportunities, at least. He's a pretty skilled sailor/all-around-handy-boat-person, and I think he probably could have made a (much more modest) living doing it professionally, but I'm really grateful he stuck with his regular job, and was around a lot more when I was growing up. *being into boats requires a lot of different skills: sewing, electrical, woodworking, plumbing, painting, etc. pathetic little tramp posted:I've been three times, and yeah the second time is way too loving much. I grew up about a 2 hour drive away from Disney World. At one point in my childhood, they were running some sort of deal for Florida residents where you got a one month pass for a pretty good rate. I remember laying awake the night before, being so excited it was hard to get to sleep. And I had a great time! I think Tom Sawyer's Island was my favorite. My parents proceeded to take my sister and I every weekend of that month while the passes were still good. The second time was pretty OK, by the third time it was wearing thin... I can remember by the end of the month pretty much begging them not to take me again  My parents are more clever than I gave them credit for, until I became an adult myself. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 00:58
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Folly posted:Almost this. After all, my position wasn't "life is risk, do whatever." It was "life is risk, so you mitigate it where appropriate, insure where you can't" and I should have finished it with: accept the risk that's left. So really, my argument is that you should manage your risk in the most cost effective way, but safety should not be your top priority. It should be weighed against cost. I find that a newer car is usually exponentially more expensive than the safety it adds. I also find that to be true when I'm choosing my insurance deductible. This, basically. I have you beat in that I only have a motorbike! I don't ride it for the cost savings (although they're really significant, basically everything is halved or more vs the cheapest possible car I could buy), more for the enjoyment, and retroactively justify it with how much money it saves I also have more money in protective gear than I paid for the bike.Protip for cars: Good tires can make a huge difference in getting in an accident vs not. Another of Pompous Rhombus' Dad's lifehacks: You can get some great deals on tires by searching eBay in your area for stuff marked "local pickup only" (will have very little competition), often someone buys a new car with great tires out of the factory, upgrades the rims to a different size, and posts the barely used tires for sale.
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May 5, 2014 03:45
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froglet posted:That said here in Australia not saving for retirement isn't quite as much of a problem as we have mandatory retirement savings in the form of superannuation. Currently 9.25% of your income has to be sent by your work into a special account you can't touch which is then invested. It's why our economy has don so well - because everyone of working ages in the past 20 years has been invested in Australia. Could have explained this a little more clearly: the employer's superannuation contribution is normally on top of your take-home salary (with the option for you to voluntarily contribute more), unless it's otherwise stated.
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May 20, 2014 09:37
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Guest2553 posted:I remember reading a couple reports about Canada some years back concluding that having a non-zero cost, however negligible, is ultimately better for the health system because a system that advertises itself as free leads to bloat and waste. It apparently causes individuals to do some self-triage and realize that they really don't need to visit an ER for every sniffle if there's an up-front cost, even if its refunded. Makes sense to me. The $7 co-pay thing is to help fund medical research, and caps at $70 for the year. Australia's not without its problems, but I feel pretty good about moving there. Of course, if it doesn't work out, I'll post myself in this thread for having spent $30k on a Master's (+ probably another 30k in living expenses) with nothing to show for it 
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May 21, 2014 01:30
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fiery_valkyrie posted:It only caps if you are a senior or a kid, that I am aware of. Tasmania for school (only place where I can get the "regional Australia" points bonus, that also offers a scholarship for international students), not sure about afterwards. I've never even beeen to the East Coast before (studied in Perth for a year when I was in uni), but Australians trip all over themselves to talk about how lovely Tassie is, before they add that they couldn't deal with the cold. Granted I'm from a warmer climate myself, but it's about the same, maybe even a little warmer than the part of Japan I've been living in the last three years. Maybe on par with southern Georgia in the US or something. Ya'll are weird On the "bad with money" front, I am kind of concerned about being able to find (or even have, given study/unpaid internship commitments) a part-time job to help defray the cost of living. Tasmania's supposed to have the highest unemployment in the country, right? Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 02:12
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FrozenVent posted:BFC is E/N with a quantitative approach. Hahaha, this is amazing.
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May 24, 2014 00:14
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Mr.Radar posted:Another gem from r/personalfinance:  Financing a new motorcycle is especially bad compared to a car. In addition to depreciation, new riders are very likely to drop (or worse) their bike early on*, causing them to be even further underwater on the thing's value. On the one hand, at least it's the guy's second bike and it sounds like he's been riding a while. On the other of course is 100k of student loan debt. *this is one reason why the two motorcycles I've owned have been ~20 year old dual-sport (on and off road) bikes; they've long ago hit the bottom their depreciation curve, and have already suffered enough drops/spills that one more probably isn't going to seriously impact their resale value. Mine's been knocked over by the wind a few times, plus a lowside on some black ice back in January. Condition/resale value isn't really noticeably different than when I bought it, have only had to replace a $15 turn signal.
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May 25, 2014 14:42
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Devor posted:He asked about opening a personal line of credit to pay for his daughter's wedding. How much of that (bride's father paying for the wedding) is still a thing? I know it sorta is, but seems like as a society we're moving away from it.
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Jun 6, 2014 01:41
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Not a Children posted:For the love of God, set up your own thread and stop making GBS threads up this one. This makes me think of the movie Zero Charisma, which is basically the neckbeard version of Taxi Driver.
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Jun 6, 2014 05:52
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I paid inhabitant taxes I wasn't supposed to for my first year in Japan (exempt from them by treaty as an American, either my employer or the city hosed up, I just assumed I was supposed to pay it and got reimbursed). Decided to look into it as I'm leaving soon, and the city refunded all of it (just a few hundred bucks, though it would have gone up to like $1800 my second year had I continued paying it), plus chucked in another 3% as interest.
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Jun 7, 2014 09:09
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Trilineatus posted:Don't worry, I hang my clothes to dry too. The main focus is that if I remember properly (and god knows I watched that episode at least two years ago) is that she showers with her clothes at the bottom of the shower and used the soap that drips off of her to wash them, and then the lack of dryer means no barely hygienic hot tumble to make me feel better about how gross that is One of my grandfather's old Air Force buddies actually swears by this (as a travel tip, not a lifestyle thing).
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Jun 12, 2014 02:16
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Folly posted:All that said, his previous house sounded even worse from what told me. It was behind the local post office, which sounds reasonable at first. I mean, you go look at houses during the day. I doubt I would have expected semi-trucks to start arriving at about 3am Mon-Sat and start noisily unloading the day's mail. My current apartment is right behind a train station! Convenient to public train transportation! A small (I dunno, like 30' x 60'... houses in Japan can be pretty small/2 story) lot is for sale for like 80-90k that's an extra 10 minute walk away. It's also the terminal station of the line, so there's a big ol' train yard next to it, and they are moving trains around at all hours of the night, tooting horns, etc. I can't leave my screen door open during the nice months at night and have to run my AC/heater/a fan instead, because the noise is too much for me to sleep. Movin' out in a month and a half 
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Jun 12, 2014 23:16
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LorneReams posted:Nah, even to this day, I cycle between suit shirts, and have them cleaned after about three times...if you don't spill anything on them and wear an undershirt, no one can tell. Just make sure to hang it up immediately when you get home after work. Yeah, this. Undershirts and a little care and you can easily and unnoticeably stretch a dress shirt for a few wears between cleanings. Helps that I'm at 3 different work sites each week so nobody's the wiser 
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Jun 20, 2014 02:19
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FrozenVent posted:And yeah, a good work environment is worth ten grands a year. Good lord is it ever. Was having a conversation with a colleague about that last night. We're teachers in Japan, and with their educational system you get moved around schools at the Board of Education's whim. Typically for us (foreign teachers) we stay at set schools, although at our meeting last month our supervisor surprised us by switching his schedule (quite cozy) with mine (about as difficult as you can get in my city), to accommodate the new guy coming to replace me. We're on year to year contracts, and the decision to re-contract is made at least 2 months before we find out about any transfers. I asked him if he would have stayed on for another year knowing he was going to get my schools, and he said yeah (it's still a pretty cushy gig), but definitely wouldn't have been as sure about it. I can't imagine how it is for the Japanese teachers. One month you're teaching at a cozy academic hugbox of a school a ten minute bicycle ride from your house, the next you're commuting an hour each way to run herd over a gang of hellions at a technical school. And my prefecture is about as same-y (small) as you can get, places like Nagasaki and Okinawa can stick you out on remote islands. Tokyo is possibly the worst, odds are very slim, but if you're unlucky enough to get posted to the Ogasawara Islands, you're a 25 hour ferry ride away from civilisation (no airports). I visited another island in the Izu chain with a population of 170, one of the teachers there was also from Tokyo, and for visits home she had to take a helicopter ride to another island and fly back from there. Basically, I have a ton of respect for people who can take on such total ambiguity about their work environment/living situation.
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Jul 17, 2014 02:29
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Wasabi the J posted:On the other side of the coin, even as a vet, I know there are military dudes who would cry their eyes out if they couldn't get a degree from some online bullshit college. To be fair, I know an ex-Marine here in Japan who was doing UoP just to get a degree of any kind, so he could qualify for normal English teaching jobs. Then he said gently caress it, moved back down to Okinawa, and got a contractor job that didn't require a degree and probably pays better than English teaching. The thing is though, plenty of regular public universities/CC's allow you to take classes online.
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Jul 17, 2014 14:51
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Re: bicycles: I bought an old Schwinn 10 speed road bike from a dude on CL my senior year of college for $100. I am still riding it at 29 with only minor repairs (did have to rebuild a wheel a few months ago because I took it on a pretty rough, 150km ride back in March, only cost like $25 tho). froglet posted:The difference is, here in Australia we have the Australian Qualifications Framework. It's basically quality assurance for tertiary education, so qualifications can be easily transferred between states, employers have a good idea of what each qualification means in terms of skillset, etc. America has no central accrediting body for universities 
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Jul 18, 2014 00:55
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From a couple pages back, but for those of you curious about the peculiarities of the Japanese housing market, here's a link to a paper about it: http://www.nri.com/global/opinion/papers/2008/pdf/np2008137.pdf. It's quite interesting, been a while since I read it, but IIRC the authors are arguing that having the single biggest purchase a household makes almost always be hemorrhaging value over time creates a significant net drain/drag on the Japanese economy.
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Aug 1, 2014 00:55
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Zhentar posted:Bad with money story: Me. Today. I had to pay a $360 fine because I forgot to pay my property tax on time. Then I paid a $90 "convenience fee" to pay it online because I can't be assed to write a check and stick it in an envelope (well, I might have if they had mentioned the fee before the last step, but by then I'd already typed in my whole credit card number! At least I'll get half the fee back in points). Oh, convenience fees. When I had finally finished up my undergrad thesis, I had to get two copies bound at $9 each. My old university wanted a "convenience fee" of something like $10 for the privilege of paying by credit card (I worked on campus and could have easily dropped by the cashier's office with the cash, if only they would have accepted it). But you can get around this by paying electronically with an e-check! Unless you mis-enter one digit like I did and get billed a $25 penalty for your hubris. On the plus side it steels my resolve to keep my wallet closed whenever the Alumni Association comes calling, hat in hand.
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Aug 29, 2014 22:52
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Anne Whateley posted:My bad-with-money: I have a freelance side gig, and for some reason they aren't able to do direct deposit, they just send checks. I'm way too lazy about depositing them. For no reason! I can do it through my phone! But I'm looking at a few k in undeposited checks right now. It's p. bad for those folks when you finally do deposit them down the line and suddenly there's a withdrawal they weren't counting on for the month. Works Cited: "The Pledge." Seinfeld. NBC. WXIA, Atlanta. 6 Oct. 1994. Television.
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Sep 5, 2014 02:58
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I just got back to the US and will only be here through Feb, was really hoping I could avoid getting a phone (not so much for the expense, but I just hate having one). I was also starting to apply for jobs and nope, it's just not really an option to do without. For those of you who are interested, I did a fair bit of shopping around for cheap, no-contract plans: Option #1 was to join my parents, sister, and brother-in-law on a family plan (note: my parents aren't in dire straights financially, just frugal and willing to deal with the hassle of sending my brother-in-law a payment for their part of the bill every month). I could do $10/mo for unlimited voice (maybe text too? can't remember), or $30 to add 2gb of data onto that. They've been doing this for years, and if you have family you trust enough with money to sign up for a plan with, it's worth looking into to save money. Option #2, from MMM (which my sister parroted) was Republic, which uses VoIP when it can and goes to a cellular network when that's not available. I decided not to go with it because they required you to buy their phone, the cheaper one was $150 and seemed substantially worse in features than the 3 year old unlocked Galaxy S2 I brought back with me from Japan. I could have sold it at the end and recouped most of the money I spent on the phone (going by completed eBay auctions), but for $25/mo plus the hassle of a shittier phone and having to sell it when I left, it didn't seem worth it in my case. Option #3, which I went with, was a $30/mo pre-paid plan with T-Moble, which gives me 100 minutes of voice (includes both incoming and outgoing, womp womp), unlimited text, and unlimited data*. If I know I'm gonna make a longer call I can either wait until I get home to use the landline, or use a VoIP program like Viber or whatever. This is actually pretty close to the plan I had in Japan, albeit like half the cost and with unlimited texts thrown in the bargain. *first 5GB at LTE, then throttling ======= Next up: health insurance: Looked like I was stuck with $140/mo catastrophic care ($6300 deductible), since under the new ACA guidelines, your Modified Adjusted Gross Income also takes foreign earned income into account. Despite the fact I no longer had this job (or the bitchin' healthcare that came with it), I was ineligible for any subsidies (thanks, Florida) or Medicaid. I was about to cough up for it when I happened to see a link on my old college's Alumni Association page as I went on there to renew that (so I could get that sweet, sweet university library access), they partner with a company that specialises in coverage for recent grads, people between jobs, etc. I was able to get only slightly worse coverage ($7500 deductible) for a lot less ($45/mo or so after tax). I am in really good health and decided to just not ride motorcycles while I'm here. ======= I've also got get a car (no real choice in my area, plus planning to do some substitute teaching), which I'm not looking forward to, but thems the breaks.
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Sep 16, 2014 00:06
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:I didn't get courthouse married because it was cheap. I got courthouse married because I didn't want all the hassle. The cheap part was just a bonus. Rick Rickshaw posted:The deeper I get into maximizing my financial efficiency, the more I begin to understand the courthouse wedding. I don't really give a tin poo poo about having an ostentatious wedding, but as my GF says (whose dream wedding would otherwise be a quickie in Vegas), the wedding's not so much for the bride and groom, it's for family and friends to come together and celebrate. My family is quite small (I have my parents, one surviving grandparent as of last month, a sister, a handful of aunts and uncles, and literally one cousin), but they'd still be really hurt if I did a courthouse wedding, and I think a lot of my good friends would be really disappointed too. None of them are the kind who'd demand a big spectacle and all that, but not having some kind of ceremony and reception is just unthinkable, much as both of us would kinda rather not*. Yes, it's our wedding, but we're also both people who have lots of other people who care about us, and that comes with some obligations. * Not that either of us is super opposed to it, but I assume that she and I are going to have to pay for our whole thing out of pocket, and both of us would much rather spend that money to travel somewhere together (we'll probably both be grad students, so that money could really be used elsewhere).
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Sep 18, 2014 03:52
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melon cat posted:And sometimes you don't get that 70% back. Sometimes your guests get you that cheap-o toaster that was on sale at Walmart. or that really tacky, single-use kitchen tool from Williams Sonoma. And I'm not shaming them for doing that, because it's not like they told you to splurge on a wedding. In a lot of cultures, money is basically the thing you give at a wedding.
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Sep 18, 2014 14:09
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olylifter posted:My Ex's brother got married a few years ago. He'd just finished teachers' college and had started working as a teacher, she was on her way into an MBA program. Both of them were astoundingly in student debt: he had 150k, her, 100k. Solution: $50,000 wedding, preceded by their honeymoon, which involved travelling around South East Asia for 6 weeks, which I think ran them $10,000 in flights, etc. Now that is some apex-level bad life decisions. 
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Sep 18, 2014 17:17
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AbsenceVsThinAir posted:My friend is doing a destination wedding in Italy in a month: AbsenceVsThinAir posted:She spends all her income, and has basically said that he has to be the saver. He was on his way to retiring at 40, but I am getting the impression that his burn rate is starting to push things into the negative. His plan is to show her YNAB and that will help her stop overspending. I don't understand exactly how that would work since he doesn't actually track any transactions with it, he just spent some time setting up a budget with it a few months ago and was satisfied with that. He is probably hosed in the long term -- can't have an income *that* high and pay no taxes while living abroad: foreign earned income exception for someone filing singly is only like $91k/year. If you already pay higher foreign taxes on your income than you would in the US you can also apply for an exemption based on that, but if you're living in a Caribbean tax shelter, welp.
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Sep 19, 2014 11:28
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AbsenceVsThinAir posted:He's in the Virgin Islands, his whole company moved there for tax purposes. Would that really qualify as foreign? He claims as long as he stays there for four years it's legit. Assuming it's the British Virgin Islands (US Virgin Islands still have to pay federal income tax, a quick Google search tells me), I don't see why he would think he's exempt from filing tax returns. All Americans abroad have to file, even if you don't owe anything. Like I said, if he's under 91k he fills out a 2555EZ and he's exempt, if he makes over 91k and pays more in local taxes he can apply what he paid to the BVI government against what he'd owe the IRS, and be exempt that way. Companies move to places in the Caribbean for tax purposes all the time… my grasp of this is rudimentary, but from what I understand they disincorporate in the US so they are not liable for corporate income taxes here, and reincorporate somewhere with marginal tax rates, while continuing to employ American workers (who are very much still liable for their federal income taxes). The individual equivalent of this would renouncing your citizenship, although Uncle Sam takes a very dim view of doing this for tax evasion purposes, and you have to be careful about how you do it (not to mention need another citizenship to fall back on, although I know at least one of the Caribbean countries outright sells citizenship).
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Sep 19, 2014 13:19
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TLG James posted:Did he pay for the photographer to fly there? It's not that uncommon. While I'm sure Hawaii probably has a healthy market of local pros, a lot of people will fall in love with a particular photographer's style, and pay to fly them out for a destination wedding (or in to their local one). Some cheaper photogs (typically less experienced/well-off or who have a personal connection to the bride or groom) will shoot it at a discount because hey, free trip, but a seasoned pro would charge their normal rate, possibly even extra for the hassle of travel. Not your post but I think a lot of people think wedding photographers are overpriced without realising all the hidden costs: gear (typically thousands of dollars, also should have backups of everything), insurance on the gear, costs of running the business (website, promotion, maintaining a vehicle, hiring assistants as needed, etc), time spent in post-production (can exceed time spent shooting), paying for your own medical insurance/payroll taxes/etc because you're self employed, workshops and other ongoing professional development, student loans, not to mention having enough left over to make a living off of. Hobbyists who do it for beer/gear money and not as a main hustle can and do often undercut pros, and I think a lot of mediocre professional wedding photographers went under as the falling price of DSLR's made it a lot easier to get in to the market. Also, asking a good Friend With A Camera to do a proper job shooting your wedding is basically un-inviting them; they will be running around all day, exhausted, and not really able to enjoy it much. I would hire an acquaintance if I liked their work and thought they were up to it, but would never ask a friend who'd otherwise be coming to the wedding to do it. This has been a Dorkroom Derail, please return to your regularly scheduled schadenfreude. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 22:43
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"Flee the country" option proponents: do show me all of those developed countries that welcome penniless foreigners with no employable skills with open arms 
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Oct 2, 2014 14:05
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There's also the cutting back of public funding for public universities.Weatherman posted:Pompous, you of all people should know what her first option would be.
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Oct 2, 2014 23:59
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Giant Isopod posted:A lot of the posters in that thread are saying that there will be lawsuits and that this was definitely fraud because the company (especially 'TG' - I assume that's Thomas Gutierrez, the CEO?) didn't warn the investors of known problems. Is there any truth to that, or are these just despair fueled ravings? I was just about to link that article you just did (about ol' Geets dumping a bunch of stock before the iPhone 6 announcement.)
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Oct 8, 2014 19:38
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.Z. posted:Do you need to worry about a ding to your credit score doing this? It's pretty minor and temporary, the people who do the credit card churning typically wait 3 months between applications. I did it earlier this year for an American Airlines/Citi card (netted 30k miles for spending a grand or so the first 3 months) and my credit score is doing just fine. Probably gonna do something similar for paying my international student tuition next year -- the better cards don't have foreign transaction fees, and my university-to-be rather gamely doesn't charge anything for payments made by credit card Personally I'd recommend checking out the credit card thread here or even some of the specific forums/sites out there for it.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:37
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Saros posted:I am quite surprised his effective rate is so high. The perception is that the US has 'lower taxes' but converting to USD from my jobs in the last few years I earned maybe 50+% more than he is and paid lower effective taxes in both NZ and the UK. I dunno how much VAT/GST (sales taxes) add to the total but I suspect things like free healthcare would more than balance it out! I was calculating it out for various middle-class income brackets in Australia and it's about even when you add Social Security to the American income tax. Whether that's "fair" or not depends on if you're looking at it from the employer or employee's perspective (employers in Australia contributing to superannuation fund on top of salary), but for my purposes it's good enough. I was making around what he does but tax-free (in Japan, my employer covered my Japanese taxes and I was exempt from US ones) up until August as my first "real job", which was nice. I could see it being a rude awakening to finally start paying taxes if I weren't, you know, cognizant of all the government services that helped me get to where I am now, and that continue to contribute to my quality of life in a myriad of ways. Kind of a shame that Civics courses don't really exist anymore in modern American high schools.
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Oct 20, 2014 14:12
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