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My boyfriend's parents are the worst money people I know. As far as I can tell, they both make pretty good salaries (I'm guessing their combined income is somewhere around 100-120k and we live in a cheap area) but they also spend an unfathomable amount of money. 1. They pay for his and his sisters' college tuition and housing - except that apparently, they haven't actually paid for any of it out of pocket. Instead, they've had both kids take out a bunch of loans. After two years, my boyfriend's loan debt is around 23k. For reference, I went to the same school and just graduated after 3 years with about $7000 in debt. It's a cheap as hell state school. His sister has dropped out of and re-enrolled three times over the last five years and doesn't have enough credits to qualify as a sophomore. 2. About that housing - he splits a $450/month rent with me, so that's cool, but they also pay for his sister's $700/month rent for one room in an area where you can easily rent one room in a house for $150 a month if you really want to, or a whole apartment for $400. But no, she needs the place with a gym and pool facilities. (Except she also has a gym membership. Which they pay for). (Our university has a free gym and pool also). 3. They have a MASSIVE house in an expensive suburb that they only use less than half of. Seriously, half of the rooms are closed off or used for storage. 4. They pay for all three kids' phones and phone bills, and the oldest daughter's husband's phone and bills as well. These people are 30. I understand family plans but goddamn. Bf's dad also insists on getting everyone the latest iPhones as soon as they come out. Likewise, he has to have new TVs and computers constantly, will not buy a subpar piece of "equipment" if it kills him. He just spent ~230 on a headset for my boyfriend, unasked for, because he mentioned his broke. 5. They pay their grandchildren's various school fees (on top of loaning the oldest daughter and her husband money constantly), and all sports and activity related fees. Now, okay, I grew up pretty poor and understand how much it sucks to not be able to play sports or do dance like the other kids. I understand wanting to give your children something to do. But their son plays basketball, baseball, hockey, and does gymnastics. Their daughter does junior cheerleading AND dance AND gymnastics which, aren't those covering similar areas at that age (she's 5!)? Can't you just pick one or two? They also make sure these kids have the latest video game systems etc. 6. Both have brand new luxury cars. Dad's is never driven because he works from home and does not believe in grocery shopping, running errands, or generally doing anything but sitting in his home office. Oh, and they pay for my boyfriend's car as well as his sister's. 7. Which brings me to the next point. His dad WORKS FROM HOME but they never have time to cook. These people literally never eat homecooked food. I spent last weekend housesitting for them - their fridge contains ice cream, frozen egg rolls, and condiments. His mom gets a drink and breakfast from Starbucks every morning, eats lunch out with coworkers. Dad skips breakfast and orders a sandwich or pizza for lunch (again, having it delivered so he doesn't have to drive). Then they both go out for dinner. Chili's three nights a week (at least, who the hell can eat Chili's like that) and a steakhouse they like the other couple nights. I have NEVER seen them eat anywhere else. They always get appetizers, a few drinks each, separate entrees, and dessert. Last time we ate with them, the bill was $140 for some bland, boring poo poo I could've cooked at home. I estimate they spend anywhere from $200-500 a week on eating out. 8. His dad yells at his mom for ordering a movie on pay-per-view instead of going out and buying a Blu Ray. In case they want to watch it again. They also pay for Hulu Plus and Netflix, and insisted on paying for a better internet plan for my boyfriend and myself (I was totally happy with my cheapo internet but they insisted you couldn't stream movies on it (you can and I did regularly)). 9. They take a vacation every month. Generally in-state, something like visiting a state park for a few days, but still what the gently caress? When they do this they pay a neighbor to come feed their cats (even if boyfriend and I are in town and offer to do it for free). They're some of the nicest people in the world but their spending habits are nuts and worst of all, they have passed it on to my boyfriend. When I met him he was spending 300 bucks a month eating out, while making minimum wage, had no idea where his money was going and made some comment like "the cost of living is just so high - hardworking people like my parents aren't even going to be able to retire in their lifetime". 
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Jul 10, 2013 21:20
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BossRighteous posted:If they aren't in debt and have retirement funded this lifestyle sounds pretty fuckin' killer. Are they in some sort of trouble you didn't mention? I'm going off of what my boyfriend says here but according to him they claim to have next to nothing saved and no, they don't have retirement funds of any kind. They also lament from time to time that they can't just pay for their kids' college tuition and that they're going to be in debt for the rest of their lives because of it. Except that it seems pretty clear to me that they COULD and they just don't. But they've also alluded to the college loan debt being tiny compared to the rest of their debt, so. I also excluded some other expenses (they pay for two older relatives to live in retirement homes, for example, his dad spends a TON of money on clothes, and they have gardeners come out once a week even though they barely have a yard, and his mom spends ~$600 a month on drugs off the top of my head). They're also constantly complaining that they don't make enough/have enough to do xyz and then they go ahead and do it anyway (example: taking a three week trip to Europe last summer, where they proclaimed Paris "dirty and gross"). They must honestly pay 50% of their kids' cost of living. All three kids also have their credit card numbers (and don't have their own cards) and sort of charge whatever they want. I'm pretty sure they only stopped paying their other daughter's total rent this year, now they do like half or something. Also I'm pretty sure I overestimated their income. It's probably more like 80-90k a year now that I think about it. It's hard to pin down how much his dad makes since he sort of does as much work as he wants to. I'm also basing some of my assumptions off of the things they have taught him or encourage him to do. For example, they told him not to bother paying off any more of his college loans than absolutely necessary because "debt is a good thing and everyone should have SOME debt". They're still paying for his mom's graduate degree from 15ish years ago. Oh and they're trying to talk him into buying a bigger TV because now that he has a job that pays a whopping 12 bucks an hour he can totally afford it. Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 22:02
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HooKars posted:The 100-120k/yr is a guess-timate though. It's hard to know how much people make. $80-$90k combined for two educated full grown working adults is not exactly "making good salaries" as she first described it though. They have the mortgage which I'm guessing is insane (very desirable neighborhood, massive house), car payments for four cars, (maybe five? I am not sure if they own one of his older sister's cars), and their insurance (wild guess that the one sister's premium is probably pretty high since she has wrecked three cars this year!), and yeah just an insane amount of stuff. Oh and I was reading off a couple of these things to him to ask if they were right and he pointed out they own a cabin somewhere in Colorado too. Welp. And 60k a year really isn't bad for this area at all (my parents probably make 30ish each at their crap government jobs and still live quite comfortably), but yeah if you want to live in a place like theirs... I don't know. You'd probably want to be making twice as much I'd imagine. edit: Drugs=weed but yeah "um" is right, I don't even know how she smokes that much weed but I have watched her withdraw the money. This might explain the eating out expenses now that I think about it. Actually the more I type all this out the more it becomes hilariously soap opera-y like that thread where the guy's wife turned out to be spending hundreds of dollars a month on vitamins and "gifts". double edit: I almost forgot the 650/month they're spending on rent for an old apartment that my boyfriend left to move in with me. Three months ago. One month left on the lease! Pretty sure they could have just spent the lease breaking fee or whatever and maybe the next month's rent to get out of it - also if this sounds like a dumb choice on his part it was, but his roommates were so filthy that there were actual loving rats in that place and I would've done the same thing in his place. But I would have told management I was leaving and paid the drat fee. Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 22:21
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Delta-Wye posted:I wonder if there is something to be said about just saying 'fuckit' once you are deep enough and not even try and live in a manageable way. Dead people don't have to pay off credit cards Yeah, his mom was a hippie back in the day. She's seriously a very cool woman and I hope they aren't that much in over their heads but I can't imagine how they're not. They're both skinny. I have NO IDEA how this is possible. His mom jogs and hikes but I've never seen his dad do much more than walk to the other side of the house. UCS Hellmaker posted:Nothing is comparable to the zuarg threads. The first one was partly sad but funny and the second one was a magic ride through a magic retards land of stupidity and failure. That and wonderhangers, black mold' and a pool table. Yes! That's the guy. Apparently I missed the second thread though - wonderhangers?? How much money could you conceivably spend on those? I have a set from last Christmas when my grandfather thought it would be hilarious to buy every single family member hangers, and only hangers, and I can't even loving understand how it's practical or sane at all to have to unhook half your shirts from the other half just to get to the one you want 
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Jul 10, 2013 22:52
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CuddleChunks posted:Oh, have you seen these monogrammed chocolates? They're adorable! I'm so glad I bought several pounds worth for a relative's birthday party! True story: someone I know spent hundreds of dollars on personalized M&Ms for her wedding. In an event that was already hilariously over the top (a $2000 groom's cake; not even the drat wedding cake!), that struck me as some particularly poor decision making. I remember at the end of the night they were pushing bags of the things on everyone while they left. Just looked it up and 10 lbs of the little bastards cost $250. Or for the low low price of $405.99 you can get 144 M&M filled business cards  . I think I read that Zaurg thread when I was 18 or so. I remember it horrifying me into learning about budgeting so I guess some good came out of it? Remember how he paid for a hotel room for after a friend's wedding which, it was later revealed, was like an hour away from his house? That was amazing. e: WOW. Whoever recommended The Queen of Versailles, thank you. Holy mother of god, a 90,000 square foot house. I lost it at the stuffed dogs. Everyone watch this. It is beautiful. Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 23:47
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canyoneer posted:Blows my mind, man. You know there's got to be diminishing returns on those over-the-top weddings. Someone in the funding chain has to be thinking "that cake was cool, but it wasn't $2,000 cool." Incredibly poor wedding/money choices could be a thread in and of itself. The cake was a replica of the groom's college football field. It lit up. (They divorced in less than a year). And yeah, by the end of the movie I was surprised at how moving it was. I never thought I would feel sorry for someone saying they just don't know what to do to save their failing business while they sit in front of their personal life-sized lion statue but there you are. It was an excellent look at how things just pile on and on - the dog poo poo everywhere, the pets dying because no one even remembers they're there, "we need to save money" followed immediately by the woman buying cartfuls of toys, half of which are duplicates, at Walmart. To me the most telling scene is when the maids and nannies are unloading all the Christmas gifts from the car, and one of them picks up a small boy's bike and asks who it's for - because she knows, and even the audience knows at this point that none of the boys in the family are that small. And yes, the nanny answers, it's for the youngest son and yes it's way too small for him. And then they carry it through the garage where you see probably twenty bikes of every size piled up in the corner, likely forgotten. (As for the nanny, she has a room of her own - they show it earlier in the film. She just asked to have that playhouse in addition, as a retreat. She wanted an actual, individual "house" that desperately. The scene where she's talking about her father who wanted a house his whole life and never got one, contrasted with the 90,000 foot mansion, is like the perfect encapsulation of the American dream and its failures). Anyway yeah, totally fitting with the spirit of this thread - these are the quintessential "bad with money" people. It's easy to see how half the people mentioned here would probably do similar things if they happened to come into millions/billions of dollars. Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 20:29
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when they had such a huge house. How could you do that to a human being, much less one who essentially raised your children for the last 14 years?
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Weddings always turn into a pissing contest over money, although in the area I'm in I've noticed it's the opposite-- who spent the least on their wedding. I get to see this side, too, because the majority of my friends have been getting married in the last year. They're 18-21 and in college (yes we are from the South and a strict Christian sect why do you ask). Needless to say, they don't have a lot of money. It's like a contest to see who can get it done the cheapest (but no courthouse weddings, that's just tacky, and Jesus doesn't approve). So far my favorite are the three sisters, 19, 20 and 22 who all got hitched in a 14 month time frame and wore the same dress . I mean, that's pretty loving practical but it was hilarious because the exact same guests were at every wedding and I started getting a Groundhog Day vibe. Most of them are a formula of church + some paper streamers + a cake someone's mom made at the awkward alcohol-free reception. Yeah, I think there's a happy medium. I mean, ideally this is something you only do once in your life, spending a little money on it is okay.
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Jul 14, 2013 19:29
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I'm pretty sure finance classes (in the places that have them) don't really work because they're a 1 semester or maybe 1 year thing. Think about the other classes like that - government and health, for example. Did anything stick with you from those? Because personally all I remember is the now-outdated food pyramid. The only reason the average person still remembers how to divide is because they had math classes probably every year. Maybe if financial courses were literally taught from second grade on... Anyway, we did have a class like that at my school. I recall them showing us fake budget so we could get an idea of where an adult paycheck went. Except it was comically out of date, and didn't include any kind of insurance or savings or "other" (i.e. entertainment or whatever, and while I understand not alloting money for this if you're broke because my entertainment "budget" is set at $0 right now, this was meant to be an average adult), and basically entailed that person spending most of their paycheck every month. I don't know what the point of that was besides saying "YOU'RE GOING TO SPEND SO MUCH MONEY". Honestly the best financial advice I ever got in high school came from my biology teacher who said "don't have kids" and told us how much money she spent on childcare and kid-related expenses per month. It was basically exactly as much money as she made and doubled as more effective sex ed than pictures of herpes.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:22
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Huttan posted:They used to have this in schools up to the end of the 1970s. It was called "tracking". Essentially, high schools would have a college-bound track for smarter students and a vocational training track for the rest. Unfortunately, many schools pushed women and minorities into the votech track, and so tracking became to be seen as the modern version of "separate but equal". I'm not exactly sure it's comparable, but tracking still exists. At my high school, for example, there was a general math/science track, an engineering track, a mechanical one, and cosmetology where you graduated with a license. I believe cosmetology was the only one where you actually completed any other level of schooling while in high school though so you'd probably still have to pay for college/training courses for the others. The math/science and engineering and a few others (healthcare I think?) as well as the generalized "advanced studies" one I did heavily stressed dual credit, as in we all went to college classes too. For free. I got a year of college credit and I'm graduating after 3 years of undergrad next weekend. I should stress however that you get to "choose" your track, you're just heavily steered towards one more suited to your abilities. You do have to test to get into some of them which limits your choices also. So a lot of people who would've probably otherwise dropped out ended up in the mechanical and cosmetology thingies. It was actually a really really good opportunity for one of my friends because with her cosmetology license she was able to get a job right out of high school and save money to go to a four year university, which she is now doing. It was literally called tracking/tracks btw. Edit to add: This was in central Texas. Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Aug 1, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 23:24
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Chupe Raho Aurat posted:Do people even buy these anymore? I have not even seen one in the last 5/10 years. My grandparents stick one in my stocking every year for Christmas. Still. I'm in my twenties. They make some pretty neat ones, I got a woolly mammoth last year and a dragon the year before. That is pretty depressing though. I have an uncle who collects basically everything collectible - quarters, stamps, model trains - and is convinced he's providing for his grandchildren somehow. Knowing my family I'm pretty sure when he kicks it they'll be too lazy to sort through all that stuff and it'll end up at Goodwill. Actually he and his wife are a perfect story for this thread. They're absolutely broke but spend money on the worst crap. Their house is full of stuff like Walmart Christmas themed pillows and yarn toilet covers to the extent that their main house is their "stuff" house and they sleep and live mostly in a trailer in their backyard, coming in to bathe and use the bathroom. None of their kids can convince them to stop spending money and save just a tiny bit for retirement. They're in their 60s. They're obviously both mentally ill and it's  to see my aunt go out and spend another twenty bucks she can't afford on Precious Moments figurines she'll never even appreciate.
Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Aug 3, 2013 |
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Aug 3, 2013 19:09
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Switchback posted:I once lived with these junkies that were super-hippies. They came home one day with like $400 worth of crystals that "generate healing" or "increase virility" or whatever the gently caress. Like, they didn't have proper jobs, they lived on our screen porch for cheap, yet found money to buy loving rocks? Don't you have a heroin addiction to support? Oh my god. Wondering what kind of crystals they were because I collect rocks and most of the ~healing crystals~ I've seen are just pretty polished quartz. You get get a good sized quartz crystal for like .25 - $5. Even amethyst is pretty cheap at a rock show. I always got a good laugh out of the crystals for sale at my local hippie junk store. Because they come with a special card describing what part of your aura they heal or whatever, they're about 20x what you'd pay anywhere else. Even better are the "throw a bunch of tiny dyed stones into a pouch for six bucks places".  In line with that, and this thread, I have a kind of spacey friend who is a really sweet dude but atrociously bad with money. He dropped out of college a couple years ago and since then has worked as a waiter at a vegan cafe. Because it's vegan and he likes the owners, he stays there even though they're always cutting back his hours and apparently vegans are terrible tippers. He's the guy that spends $8 on deodorant. Hey, I get it, I think the stuff in deodorant is gross, too. But you can make your own for REALLY CHEAP. And I showed him how! But no, gotta go to Whole Foods for that poo poo. And environmentally friendly soap, laundry detergent, shampoo, etc. which is all stuff you can make if you're going to be a big fat hippie. He will also literally starve or resort to dumpster diving rather than buy cheaper (non-organic) food. I didn't know these people existed outside of Portlandia. All of his friends are begging him to get some kind of practical job training or poo poo, just look for a different job where he has some hope of upward mobility. It's actually not that out of the realm of possibility where we live. I know he has loan debt from his two years in college so I'm not sure what's happening with that. He's been renting a tiny shithole of a house which also seems a bit of a waste if you're that broke (we live in a college town so roommates abound) but it's cool, he finally found someone to live with him. While he was out dumpster diving. Because this guy was literally sleeping by the dumpster, because he is homeless. It's really sweet that you want to help this guy out, friend, but YOU show up begging for food from time to time, come on, you really can't feed another human being.
Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 15:57
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No Wave posted:I don't get it. Why not charge more for the sublet? Seems totally fair if people are willing to pay that for the room. It sounded to me like they already had a subletter and she wanted to raise their rent by $200, which is kind of dickish.
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Aug 9, 2013 20:16
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My dad still pays child support (it goes to my mom, not me). I'm 22 . He backowes so much he's gonna be paying til I'm 30. I could feasibly have kids of my own by the time he's done.
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Aug 18, 2013 03:59
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enraged_camel posted:I have a coworker - we'll call her Karen - who moved in with her boyfriend last year around this time. But instead of moving out of her other place, she kept paying rent on it, because she was never fully confident in the relationship and wanted a place to "fall back to" in case things didn't work out between them. This is basically what my boyfriend did. He renewed his lease in November, with the new year set to start this August. Even though he hated the apartment and his roommates were gross people who managed to attract cockroaches within like a week of living there (this was a brand new building). And apparently he never read the fine print that said if he wanted to break said lease, he'd have to pay the entire year's rent up front, to be refunded when they found a new tenant (well, refunded for the months the new person took over, not any months or partial months it was uninhabited). When the gross roommates got to be too much he came to live with me, but was still paying $640 a month for this room. My rent, by the way, is 475 for a whole 1 bedroom apartment. I didn't charge him anything, but it was still pretty crazy to be paying that much money for a room he couldn't stand and wasn't using AND be locked into paying rent for the next year, too. Oh yeah, and the reason he signed on a new lease so early? They offered him a $300 gift card.  Gothmog1065 posted:For a more related story, my wife works with a couple that kind of resembles Zaurg. He's 25 ish and she's 19 and immature as gently caress. Haha wow, that sounds like ten kinds of shitstorms waiting to happen. I'm not surprised a 19-year-old is behaving childishly, she is a literal child. Honestly it doesn't sound like she's immature at all, just a normal 19-year-old. If I'd been allowed to plan a wedding at that age I'm pretty sure swans and horse-drawn carriages would have been involved. Silly Hippie fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Aug 19, 2013 |
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Aug 19, 2013 16:18
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:27 |
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My boyfriend's parents won about 2 million (after lawyer fees and so on) in a settlement and managed to lose it all in like three years. They "invested" a quarter of it in a business his dad, dad's brother and their friend bought. All of that was lost when the dad decided to leave the company due to some shady dealings on the brother's part - he totally broke whatever contract they had and his dad never tried to get his money back. They also bought a much larger house in a nicer part of town, got new cars, and his mom quit her job to stay at home. She'd previously had a higher paying job than his dad, who of course had quit his job to work for this company that wasn't making profits yet. Oh, and her kids were 16 and 20 something at the time . Between all that and "loaning" money to family and friends they are now solidly lower-middle class and live in a trailer in the desert.
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Sep 27, 2013 15:45
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