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tiananman posted:I can understand gambling and drug addiction - and how you're not really in control. But when an otherwise normal person has such a bizarrely unhealthy attitude towards their finances... I just don't get it. Suggest that they do something smarter with their windfalls, and they'll complain that this is the only way they can afford to do anything fun and they deserve it for working so hard and blah blah blah, all while ignoring the dumb poo poo they do that prevents them from doing fun stuff without relying on windfalls. Saving up for things & living within your means is a foreign concept to an alarming number of people, as this thread has shown.
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Jul 25, 2013 17:37
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systran posted:Obviously it would be cool if there were another path where you could opt out of the "get a degree, get a job" fallacy and instead just start learning a practical skill late in high school. There is more or less no push for this; most students think they need to go get a degree no matter what it takes unless they want to work minimum wage forever. And you'd like to think that this would have changed, but I doubt it - I still hear stories of people whose parents are baffled that they're not as successful as the parents were at their age("Why don't you have a house/children/nice car/etc yet?"). It hasn't really sunk in that college is more expensive now(so people have more money tied up for repaying loans), real wages have stagnated(so starting salaries aren't worth as much as they used to be), and job stability is nonexistant(unlike before, where people could expect to have a single job long-term, possibly even for their entire life). Doubly so if they're unemployed or underemployed("you're just not looking hard enough!" when there are hundreds of people applying for any job opening you could find). On top of all the other woes plaguing my generation, there are plenty of people who want to have the lifestyle they had growing up right away, without understanding that their parents took decades to reach that point & with the parents likely never telling them how they had to live when they were in their 20s. The result being lots of consumer debt, since you're fine if you can make the minimum payment, right? 
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Jul 26, 2013 19:13
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I'm getting consistant 40+% of people who spend 35+% on rent in my zipcode and a few nearby towns. It's not that the rent is ridiculous here either - $500-$1000 a month places are common. It might be skewed by the fact that lower-income households will be forced to rent more often than higher-income ones, but that's just conjecture on my part.
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Sep 13, 2013 22:32
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otter space posted:The author of this blog post throws over $700 of his family's money to the Mormon church every month (http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/2013/check-out-my-shiny-new-budget-is-it-too-tight/) so I can't exactly consider him a paragon of financial intelligence either. That $700 a month may seem incredibly wasteful to non-religious people like me(and I would be happier to see it go to a proper charity), but he's clearly able to afford it.
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Sep 21, 2013 21:58
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SpelledBackwards posted:Edit: This is a subject I'm somewhat ignorant about, so please enlighten me: That said, you're expected to negotiate costs instead of just paying the sticker price(insurance already does that, with each plan making an agreement with the hospital for what they can charge for each procedure, but you can still haggle over the remainder & set up payment plans). Some hospitals even have entire departments dedicated to helping patients manage their costs.
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Oct 14, 2013 15:52
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Captain Trips posted:Hot Topic and Journeys.  But drat, at least you had the sense to break up before you got too latched onto her sinking ship. Although the "couldn't get a debit card because she owed money to every bank" thing should have been a huge red flag before moving in with her, you probably don't need us to tell you that now.
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Nov 28, 2013 02:40
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Folly posted:Please tell me that there's something I don't know about financing a car that translates this from bald-faced bullshit into English? quote:As someone who sells cars, this is only true for people with decent credit. If someone has really terrible credit, the approval will be based on the specific vehicle and miles. I just sold one today that was the only car on the whole lot that would work. The bank limited us to 2010 and newer with under 50k miles for 48 months @24% with payments no more than 400/mo. Also, they were only going to lend 85% of NADA trade including taxes, fees, money down. Many dealers are shady but most dealers just want to sell whatever the bank will let them buy. I hate those deals because the bank usually charges is to do the loan instead of paying us for them to take it.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:20
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Cicero posted:The thing is, the OP said they are paying $500/month for the car, so obviously they actually did have some money. The moral of this story is to have an emergency fund. Haifisch fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Dec 9, 2013 |
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Dec 9, 2013 01:10
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http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/1syosc/should_i_invest_in_a_condo_in_ann_arbor_while_i/ They haven't gone through with this yet, but I can't understand the thought process that would even make this a possibility worth asking about. OP is wondering if they should buy a condo. While they're in dental school. Living off of student loans. They already have pre-existing student loan debt, a small amount of credit card debt, and no savings.  (The good news is that there's no way in hell they'd be approved since they have no real income. ...there is no way they'd be approved, right?  )
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Dec 16, 2013 17:41
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Knyteguy posted:And going out takes time, too. And it might just be the things I cook, but most of the time you don't have to be constantly hovering over whatever you're cooking, meaning you can do other things while waiting for your meal. Certain meals are also really easy to scale upward, so you get a lot more servings(aka leftovers) out of your time investment. Cleanup isn't that bad if you clean things off ASAP, before food has time to dry onto your dishes. It also doesn't cost anywhere near $10 a serving to do this - if you really think it costs $8-10 to cook a meal, then you're not probably splitting the cost per serving correctly(it might cost me $8 to make a batch of chili, but then I'll have 5+ servings of chili to eat!). Check out Budget Bytes if you're not convinced how inexpensive cooking can be - they have many cheap, relatively simple recipes, and they actually break down the cost per serving. They also have tips on how to stock a kitchen & how to keep food costs under control.
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Dec 16, 2013 23:10
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quote:They don't have a 40 percent off sale every day. Those are their regular prices.
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Dec 18, 2013 04:23
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tuyop posted:Man I must be the only person on earth who doesn't mind spending a hundred dollars on jeans or full price on other clothes. I buy a genuinely new piece of clothing like once every three or four years and it costs like three hours worth of net income. I still see this as an improvement over what I grew up with - my mom routinely complains about not being able to find nice leather belts/shoes she likes/etc, but also refuses to pay for the quality she actualy wants(no poo poo that every belt in your price range is made of plastic, you're only looking at the $15 ones! And you're pricing yourself out of half the shoes in the store by only looking at the ones that go for $30 or less! I'd almost say this is a form of being bad with money, but she finds things eventually. After several months of looking & bitching that she can't find what she wants.).
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Dec 18, 2013 05:29
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 http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/1t6b8q/is_this_the_right_move/ posted:Hey everyone. I'm looking for some feedback on if I'm making the right decision here. Friends that I've mentioned this to have scoffed at the idea, but they're not the most financially sound folks I know. So here's the current situation. tl;dr: They bought a new motorcycle at an insane rate, their wife is pregnant, and their idea for saving some money is selling their only paid-off vehicle. Then they'll use the money to pay down their bike and buy a $2000 beater. They're also still paying PMI. It's a mystery why their credit score is so terrible!
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Dec 18, 2013 18:06
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But they got a raise at work! They needed to fulfill their dream of having a motorcycle that costs as much as a new car!
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Dec 18, 2013 18:47
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Reddit keeps on delivering.quote:So I think I may be in a pickle here Reddit. The worst part is that I can't see much for them to cut. Yeah, they could easily snip out the gym membership and "bank fees", but freeing up $50 won't correct what's fundamentally an income problem. I suppose there's the car, if being carless is feasible wherever they live.
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Dec 24, 2013 08:20
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Say Nothing posted:What a fool I have been (leaves to get higher paying job).  quote:Put your money in a bank. That's the safest place, right? Sure, it is safer than stuffing it under your mattress. Or is it?
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Jan 22, 2014 02:24
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And I thought one of the guys who works night shift here was nuts! He lives in Chicago, but we're located over an hour north(so probably a 1.5 hour commute on the way in, since it's at night, and god knows how long when he's going with rush hour traffic to get back each morning). He's currently living with his parents, so he might not have to pay rent, but the time savings alone seem like it'd merit moving up here. (Not to mention reduced gas spending and wear & tear on his car) And the rent up here for a 1br apartment is fairly reasonable for what this line of work pays. At least the guys taking public transit can read a book or something on their way to work.
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Jan 25, 2014 01:17
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Imagine the SloMo thread, only repeated dozens of times and with no goon chorus to go "NO YOU IDIOT" every time they ignore advice.
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Jan 27, 2014 17:11
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It sounds like the situation is "FrozenVent gives his brother money, or else brother gets the money from retired parents." Neither of which is ideal, but it's understandable that Vent doesn't want his parents taking the burden. (The best idea would be a unified front against giving the brother money, but it's hard to say how his parents would react. FrozenVent should definitely talk about it with them if he hasn't before & this is a recurring problem, though.)
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Feb 1, 2014 04:08
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blugu64 posted:How do people get on the junkmail bandwagon? I'm 30, rent, and don't ever get any junkmail specifically addressed to me. Literally never even gotten a credit card offer in the mail.
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Feb 8, 2014 18:39
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BossRighteous posted:I'm going step in here to call you a selfish bastard because you finally sound committed to not needing the last word. We'll see if you can accept it quietly because deep down we all know you are proud of the fact.  Also the world is just and 100% of jobs are chosen by merit, not connections, luck, or other factors that don't affect how well someone does the job. Limited economic mobility exists because people are lazy, and this isn't just a convenient lie he tells himself to feel better about the rift between rich and poor.
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Feb 20, 2014 06:14
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quote:goxloser 483 points 1 day ago  Although it's probably not as much of a loss depending on when he got them(and considering that cashing out would torpedo bitcoin's value), goddrat.(Of course, anyone touching bitcoin automatically counts as bad at money anyway. )
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Feb 26, 2014 19:27
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tiananman posted:I honestly don't understand the need by so many people to drive really nice, brand new cars. I don't buy a whole new wardrobe every 3 years. I don't redecorate my house that often. I don't replace a perfectly operational TV just because it's 5 years old... Why do people put themselves in these financial nooses when they don't have to? Tonton Macoute posted:I think that even without the rent difference, the number of places where this is feasible on the long term is not very high. Very large cities or very small islands, perhaps? Chicago would be much more doable because it has frequent buses, commuter rail, and short-distance rail, but you're still screwed if you have to go somewhere outside the city. And if you don't live in the city proper, taking a train in takes almost as long as driving. (It is a much less stressful trip, but you have to wait an hour if you miss your train & it's not commuter hours)
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Feb 27, 2014 19:13
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StrangersInTheNight posted:I like video games and dislike sports and even I am pissed at this comparison. C'mon now. The sole purpose of video games is as an interactive media. The whole thing is designed from the ground up for the person interacting to experience and have reactions based on those interactions. It's called 'playing' video games, not 'passively absorbing' video games. If you can't do the interacting or find it tedious, then....what are you doing? Being so lazy as to basically pay someone else to do the playing means you...probably don't like games anymore. All the adults who pay people to play games for them are basically unwilling to admit they've aged out of games. Let go of that spirit of your youth - let it die nobly. Shh, shhh, it's ok. You can't be a 'gamer' forever. I still know better than to go around and smugly tell people that watching sports is stupid, because how other people choose to enjoy themselves is none of my business. (And a lot of people like watching sports, so they must get something out of it. I have no idea what, but they have fun, so whatever!) E: I guess sometimes people are watching grown women toss a ball around, or people hitting a small puck with a stick, but the basic concept is still the same. Haifisch fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Mar 19, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 03:34
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Last weekend, my mom came down for a visit. She is not a rich woman. She is supporting herself off a ~$10/hour phone jockey job. She has zero savings. Her retirement plan was her house, but 2008 happened, she went bankrupt, and lost it. The $10/hr is all she has for income, because my dad hosed off long ago & even if we had any idea where he was, chances are he drank all his money away anyway. Her old car died this month(it blew a head gasket). It happens. What I didn't expect was her coming up here a week or two later in a brand new car. She got herself a $14k-ish new Kia because she basically doesn't want to deal with repairing a used car. Instead of saving several thousand dollars in the long run, she paid more because she seems to think that used cars are all ticking timebombs waiting to blow. (Which seems to be a thing with her; she was against me buying used when I moved out of the city & actually needed a car, because she was worried about it breaking down on me. )I'm torn between it being bad with money because she bought new when she keeps complaining about being broke, or being okay-ish with money because she literally drove her last car for 10+ years until repairing it was more than it was worth(which actually makes her aversion to buying used a bit more baffling to me, now that I think about it). I think the tipping factor is that she's 63 and looking at 'retiring', taking Social Security(remember, no savings, retirement or otherwise), and getting a part-time job. I'm pretty sure she literally cannot afford this new car and her (reasonably priced for her current income, but not a prospective retirement income) apartment. Mom, I love you, but please stop doing this stuff before you're eating cat food in 2 years.
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Mar 20, 2014 23:18
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The ultimate way to save money is to steal everything instead of buying it. (And if you end up in jail, you still get room and board paid for, so you're coming out ahead! It's the secret BFC doesn't want you to know about!)Rick Rickshaw posted:
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May 7, 2014 16:15
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Not a Children posted:edit: Read the second thread, half of the responses are lambasting her for going to her mom and having him kicked out. Reddit is a weird fuckin' place
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May 9, 2014 17:38
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Well this isn't going to turn out poorly in a few months:quote:So I've been living on a really tight budget the last couple of years. My wife is a stay at home mom (not because she's lazy, no stay at home mom is lazy! But because we want to be there for our kids) and I work full time, but with three kids, a car and an apartment to pay, there is not much room for excess in our family's economy. I just felt that I never got to indulge in anything. I have a bad conscious everytime I look at something really cool, but unnecessary. I'm thinking I can't spend this money on myself. And in the end, I don't end up buying anything. Most our money goes to food, bills, gas and that sort of stuff. Which is quite boring. Another weird intersection between bad with money(so he can't save up to buy anything he wants...unless he stashes it physically?) and e/n(he needs to have a discussion with his wife about this yesterday).
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May 13, 2014 15:37
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tuyop posted:Haha as if grades in high school matter.
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May 17, 2014 16:21
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kissekatt posted:To be fair, there's no way he could have known that he would be graduating in two months. Just reading his post I certainly wouldn't have expected it.
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May 25, 2014 16:46
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Nail Rat posted:There's also a brita pitcher at about the same price per month as the cooler water, with a much lower startup price. )
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May 30, 2014 14:57
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QuiteEasilyDone posted:You wouldn't believe the amount of educational institutions that poorly prepare their students for the actuality and reality of the living world. *From what I remember, those sadly did make up the bulk of the scholarships out there. It seems kind of bullshit when everyone tells you "there are scholarships for everything!!!", and when you actually search for scholarships you see that most of them are $250-500 scholarships for really obscure things. Yeah, investing an hour into writing an application would still be a really good return, but at the time all you're thinking is "what the hell, I thought scholarships gave you more money than that." (I did have over half my college paid for thanks to being poor, having good grades, and filling out my FAFSA, but  )
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Jun 14, 2014 18:29
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Craptacular posted:Anyone who uses this is terrible with money. Get $10 of quarters mailed to you each month for $15. quote:Despite Washboard being completely legal, Washboard violated our payment processor's terms of service. They graciously gave us 14 days to find someone else. Sadly, most payment processors had the same terms of service. I looked into payment processors that would accept us and even found a few (with shockingly decent rates!) but the truth is it would have taken significant time and energy to switch processors. While I do believe Washboard solved a real problem for real people, I didn't think there was really an opportunity to grow Washboard beyond quarter delivery. What I'm getting from this is that there's now a market opening for someone else to mail quarters to lazy people(but this time without breaking your payment processor's TOS). Get on it, entrepreneurs! There are plenty of people so allergic to banks that they'll gladly pay you 25-50% markup for their laundry money! (Incidentally, I'd say that starting an online business without checking to see if it's kosher with Paypal or whatever is also bad with money. It doesn't seem like they're out much of anything, but jeez.)
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Jun 26, 2014 23:27
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Effexxor posted:And for a bad with money story, I once talked to a woman who had a $3k a month energy bill. How does that even happen?! Volmarias posted:Bitcoin mining. Or someone's stealing power from her and she's too dense to realize it.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:40
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A lot of "useless" degrees also require you to think outside the box a little in terms of job prospects. Pretty much every company needs graphic designers of some sort, it's just not as romantic as the pure starving artist ideal many people have built up in their heads when they go to get art degrees. Every company uses written communication of some sort - there's your use for an English degree. The career options involved aren't anywhere near as clear cut as "get engineering degree->do something with "engineer" in the job title" or "get nursing degree->become a nurse", but they exist. And there's the whole "should college be about learning or job training?" debate, but that's outside the scope of this thread(beyond making fun of people who take on way too much debt for either purpose).
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Jul 4, 2014 15:42
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:Oh, Reddit: "Youngish couple (27,25). Married. Two full time jobs. Making a combined 60K per year before taxes. $0 debt. Wife wants to join Disney Vacation Club. If we do, we could be $16,000 in debt. Current living expenses are about $1200 per month. We have lots to think about and I need help please Of course, you have to wonder what harebrained idea the wife will have next, considering she thought going 16k in debt to have Disney vacations was a good idea. Hopefully this was just them buying into the Disney glamour, since their finances are okay otherwise. But reddit continues to deliver, because it's full of people allergic to having an emergency fund in a regular old savings account: quote:Basically, I have cancelled all my credit cards - All I have now is an AMEX green card. These are different since you MUST pay them off at the end of each month. Since you cannot carry a balance on it, there is no interest to pay. poo poo like this pops up on r/personalfinance constantly. They can't have a few thousand bucks in a stable account, then they're not making mad gains! No, they have to make complicated systems for e-funds so they can squeeze another few percents of returns out of their money. Haifisch fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 18:15
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axeil posted:I feel really bad for that girl. She's making a life ruining decision but she doesn't know any better. I guess she's 18 so she can make her own decisions but it's gonna really screw up that family. Someone should've stopped her. (can you imagine the sheer level of resentment because they didn't support her dreams?)Someone needed to sit her down and give her a nice, long talk about how nobody's going to give a poo poo about what school she went to unless a)it's Harvard or something, or b)they went there themselves. And about how the "college experience" is nice, but not worth a lifetime of debt and familial financial issues. And how maybe she should take a gap year or something because it seems like she's picking schools on impulse and doesn't actually know what she wants from a college degree. (It might be too late now, but could she look into these? If she really did have good high school grades, that's several thousand bucks of free money right there. And she has filed a FAFSA, right? Potentially more grants(or at least semi-reasonable government loans) from that.)
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Jul 15, 2014 17:51
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canyoneer posted:The best part is that I've worked closely with people for over a year and still didn't know what they drove. So plenty of people don't notice, and most of those who do probably don't care. (Although I suspect that part of those conversations is because I'm in a tiny car, since huge car=better in a lot of people's minds for whatever reason. And "safer", because your SUV is totally going to save you when you drive terribly on snowy roads. )At least I'm better off than the coworker who has three cars for two people. She and her husband both have the same model of SUV(as in, one each), and their third car is her former daily driver that she wrecked. Still drivable, but not pretty, so her husband uses it to haul tools and whatnot for his job. I asked them why they don't drop one of the SUVs, but it was handwaved away with "oh, it's convenient." And they don't want to drop the smashed-up car because they don't care if it gets dirty during the husband's work.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:27
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sanchez posted:It's probably because you're in a tiny Kia, they might be ok these days, but an older Rio is not something you want to crash in. I guess it's better than a cavalier. Dangit Ronpaul posted:My parents have that beat. Four vehicles for two people - an old beater sedan, a motor scooter, and two brand new leased SUVs. They both work ~10 miles away and don't really go places much outside of work. My dad insists on leasing cars despite the fact that he always ends up turning them in with like a third of the allotted mileage, it's unreal.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:17
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Bugamol posted:Dollars cannot replace a human life. There's definitely a line to be drawn somewhere; your disagreement is just where that line is. And remember, this is about risks - obviously everyone would pay $100 to avoid certain death, but paying $100 to reduce chance of death by 0.0001% is much less clear.
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Aug 25, 2014 20:47
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