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oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Just wanted to thank this thread for recommending Queen of Versailles. Incredible film. It was weird hating that woman and sort of pitying/admiring her in some way at the same time

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oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
To be fair, at least that 700 bucks a month isn't all wasted money. His kids will get a nearly free education at BYU if they so choose

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Yeah bad decisions + youth + predatory practices of for profit colleges is the stuff of nightmares. Those schools are probably the most corrupt and indefensible industry in America today.

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

This is accurate compared to other truck engine alternatives, but purchasing the truck in the first place is probably stupid as heck.

Yep. Financial morons everywhere buy trucks and justify it with things like "I'll need something to tow the boat I haven't purchased yet" or "it'll be great when I have to move some big stuff."

I had a former coworker making 50k who used the latter justification for buying a brand new 45k Ford F-250. He uses it to move stuff maybe 2-3 times a year. I told him he could keep his paid off 2001 Accord and spend $19 to rent a truck from Home Depot when needed. His response was "THAT'S A RIPOFF"

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
I know a guy who's an accountant for a big company and had been doing it for 10+ years. They background check when you apply for a job and sometimes post "incidents." The guy was making 120k and applied to another accounting job in the same company in a different business unit. He did this for a 10k raise, and I'm assuming he knew he'd get a new background check. Sure enough he was up to debt in his eyeballs and after getting an offer on the new position, they rechecked his background.

Now he's out of a job altogether :suicide:

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Got background checked when applying for a 10k increase job change at his company. Had lots of debt. Lost his job. He wouldn't have been checked had he stayed put.

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003

Good lord. If this leads to him breaking it off with her, you could consider this good with money. The almost certain divorce lawyer and alimony would be waaaaay more than 18k. Also he could save the diamond for the next girl who would appreciate it.

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Yeah it's terrifying the disconnect from people's salary to car price. I make six figures and it still scares me that I bought a 12k Kia.

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
People who have kids and buy pickups for a daily driver are, themselves, literal children. Jesus

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
I understand why people commit all sorts of thieving crimes, except:

1. Stealing a cheap bike
2. Breaking one of those small triangular windows (a ~$200 repair) in order to jack a car stereo worth $20

gently caress you if you do either thing.

I've had a car stolen and an iPod stolen on top of the previous two things and neither made me as mad. I guess it just is more infuriating if the crime costs you way more that the benefit gained by the thief. Also one time I got a credit card stolen and used to buy premium gasoline before it was turned off. I'd have been a lot less pissed off if you had just filled your car with regular, rear end in a top hat

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003

Gabriel Pope posted:

and the people are even nicer if anything.

Look how dumb you are. People from the Pacific nw are insufferable cunts and I'd rather deal with Bostonians.

Des Moines is a pretty cool places, as is Omaha and Iowa City. There are several pretty nice places in the Midwest. Still would rather live in Seattle though

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Me neither but you'd think "Put 70% of it in one of those 2055 targeted retirement funds and the rest of it towards college" would be simple enough

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
:lol:

quote:


A lot of people who buy bits of physical gold aren't looking to make a bracelet or ring. They buy gold because they believe disaster is imminent.

These investors are convinced gold will spike to $10,000 an ounce (it's currently around $1,225) when the U.S. government implodes, said Peter Hug, an executive at metals retailer Kitco.

Hug calls these people "crazies" and says they form a substantial amount of the U.S. physical gold market -- at least 25%.

It's no secret that gold has long been viewed as a form of insurance against disaster. The thinking is that even if the financial or political system collapses, gold will still hold value.

The yellow metal is also widely seen as a hedge against inflation and the collapse of the dollar. Those are two things gold bugs have been deeply worried about given the massive amount of money printing the Federal Reserve has done since the Great Recession.

Related: Winklevoss twins say Bitcoin is better than gold

The end-of-the-world trade: Hug's comments at the Inside ETF Conference last month may raise some eyebrows because he is an executive at one of the largest online retailers of precious metals in North America.

These so-called crazy gold provide lots of business for Kitco. He said their influence is most obvious in the market for smaller units of physical gold between one and 32 ounces.

"These investors buy the metal and it just disappears. It goes under their mattress. They want to use it when the world ends," Hug told CNNMoney.

Related: Tim Geithner says Europe may be in worse spot than Japan

Irrational fears or smart safeguards?Peter Schiff, an outspoken gold investors for years, said this characterization of gold buyers is unfair.

"The fears of an economic collapse in the United States are not irrational. I think it's more irrational when people are complacent that nothing can go wrong," Schiff told CNNMoney.

It's tough to second guess those who bet on gold before the meltdown of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Prices spiked from around $800 an ounce in late 2007 to more than $1,800 in 2011 as central bankers raced to stabilize the financial system and get out of the Great Recession.

Where's the hyperinflation? Yet inflation remains nonexistent. Heck,deflation is more of a concern right now in many parts of the world. That's partially why gold has dipped to under $1,250 an ounce today.

Schiff concedes that some people are so paranoid that they own nothing but physical gold.

"That is being too fearful and maybe obsessed with it. But is that any less rational than the person who owns no gold whatsoever?" he asked.

Schiff said his brokerage firm, which sells physical gold for delivery, recommends people have 5% to 15% of their investment portfolio in physical gold.

Related: Gold is sexy again

Playing the fear card: Hug, a Canadian, said the fear trade is far more common in the U.S. than it is north of the border. This could partially be because Canada's financial system is viewed as less risky than Wall Street and experienced far less stress in 2008.

"You can't play the fear card if you're a dealer or a speaker as well in Canada as you can in the United States," he said.



http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/12/investing/buy-gold-market-fear/index.html?category=home

I was going to delete the interstitial links/ads but that Winklevoss one is too funny

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
My wife and I are certain to inherit a pretty good amount of money when our parents die but being responsible sucks because it's not like I'll ever be able to spend it. I intend to leave more to my kids than what was left for me dammit.

Sometimes I actually get jealous of people who can throw caution to the wind and drive giant trucks and get expensive electronics and vacations that are hilariously out of line with their annual incomes. I almost had a breakdown a few months after I bought a $12k car which i could easily afford and budget for. I just can't imagine what goes on in people's minds as to what they'll do when they can no longer work

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Haha haha holy poo poo how are any of you defending that idiot redditor drinking at a work lunch? That's not a cultural norm, no one else was drinking and his boss specifically forbid it because it affected his ability to keep government contracts. I would've fired him on the spot in front of everyone

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Most of your specific arguments are lovely but I kind of get what you're getting at. The kind of person who thinks it's ok to "show up" their boss by googling something and parading it around like a know it all jackass surely would show some of those behaviors in any sort of comprehensive interview.

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003

Powerlurker posted:

I'll be making sure to tell my hypothetical future child not to major in chemistry like I did. Any number of easier majors have better career prospects and don't require you to go to grad school.

I hear that. Except I would've gone to a marginally harder degree in ChemE.

30k a year starting with no prospects of major improvement vs 70k starting and tons of room for growth

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003

SiGmA_X posted:

http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/2zm5pd/22_year_old_in_us_in_decent_amount_of_debt/
Funny/sad. Dude probably isn't a contractor by law, but he went so far as to ignore taxes it sounds like

Yeah these weed shops in Denver try to get away with that kind bullshit too. Contractor wages were common in some of the dispensaries. Either that or they pay just over minimum wage with less benefits than McDonalds. Every single weed shop owner probably votes democrat but when it comes to their business they're just as lovely as every big business owner.

On another note working at a pot shop is really loving bad with life/money. Want to get a job in another state or industry? lol try to explain your budtender job or the massive unemployment gap because you couldn't put "bud tender" on your resume

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
If you're poor and Mormon tithing is no joke good with money. Say what you will about their politics or MLM schemes, those people will rally around you when you are down on your luck, especially if you've been in good standing with the church

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
That guy is dumb with money but the insurance companies are the true villans of that story. They hosed so many people out of legitimate claims even those with flood coverage. I want to get into that business (insurance). Profit off of peoples paying you for risk mitigation but when you've arbitrarily decided it's too expensive to cover the risk you profited off of in the past tell your customer to gently caress themselves with the full backing of the us court system. Selling insurance is good with money

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
This idiot:

http://www.vice.com/read/what-happens-if-i-dont-pay-my-student-loans-182?utm_source=vicefbus

Lives in NYC? Check
Master's Degree in Liberal Arts? Check
Over 100k in debt? Check.
Encourages others to pursue a masters degree? Check
Works for a known Sweatshop publication (Vice) making nor more than probably 45k? Check

Student loans in the US are hosed, but I certainly can't feel too bad for people like this

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
You guys need to stop writing "BWM" because I keep seeing "BMW" and I can't seem to wrap my head around how some of these non car chat posts are about cars

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
On second thought the two acronyms are basically synonymous so I'll allow it

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003

mastershakeman posted:

It seems like every person thats over 6'0" thinks they're wilt chamberlain and cant fit into a normal car

This poo poo cracks me up. Like the dude in the bad car loan thread who needed a BMW or whatever for his 6'2" massive size.

I'm 6'5" and drive a Kia Forte. I find it more comfortable than truck/SUV driving. People use lots of excuses to be bad with money

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Does anybody have that link for the investment forum with the people melting down after that potential apple supplier's stock plummeted?

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Holy poo poo. Apple absolutely raped GTAT on that contracy. Looks like the company management and those "investors " both made the same basic mistakes lol.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2014/10/30/this-is-why-apple-did-not-want-its-gtat-contracts-made-public/

tldr: GTAT made furnaces to melt rocks and minerals into lenses and glass and poo poo. Apple came to them initially with the intention of buying a shitload of furnaces. Then Apple came back to the company later and were like "you know what gently caress that we don't want to buy these furnaces. How about instead you guys buy them and make a factory despite the fact you have no experience building components for consumer electronics. We won't pay any capital costs but we'll cosign for you on a giant loan. After that we might consider using you as a supplier (but we'll have no obligation to do so). Oh and also you can't sell any parts from this plant to anyone but us"

And GTAT signed that contract. hahahahahahhaaa

oxsnard fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Oct 9, 2015

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Don't read the D&D climate change thread. It's terrible. They (rightly) yell about people ignoring science but then pounce on ever single doomsday theory or hypothesis as if it's peer reviewed science.

Also there are a bunch of human caused environmental issues that will gently caress us well before climate change does.

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003

Dawncloack posted:

Hey, I totally don't want to derail, but can you give me a bucket list of those issues? (I assume ocean acidification is one?)

I need to do some more anxieting this week.

Running out of clean water, fertilizer runoff, acid mine drainage in developing countries. Disease is a biggie with the irresponsible use of antibiotics and close human contact with exploding population growth in the third world

Ocean acidification is about a billion times scarier and much more "model-able" than warming.

Honestly though a phosphate shortage and mass starvation is probably the scariest thing I can think of right now. Most phosphate is dispersed throughout the biosphere and earth's crust with the exception of like 2 places in the world where its mined. Meanwhile the US government pays farmers to grow excess corn which we inefficiently turn into combustible fuel and lose the phosphate to the groundwater and open water forever.

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
How else? Lobbying. Also American farming has been treated this way since FDR

Also note that Iowa has a huge role in selecting the president due to primaries and mentioning cutting subsidies to corn is political suicide in that state

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
People are advertising on that Kanye GoFundMe with $5 "donations" and pleas to check out there more deserving GoFundMes. People are the worst :suicide:

oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
This is amazing you guys


quote:

An Open Letter To My CEO
Dear Jeremy,
When I was a kid, back in the 90s when Spice Girls and owning a pager were #goals, I dreamed of having a car and a credit card and my own apartment. I told my 8-year old self, This is what it means to be an adult.
Now, seventeen years later, I have those things. But boy did I not anticipate a decade and a half ago that a car and a credit card and an apartment would all be symbols of stress, not success.

I left college, having majored in English literature, with a dream to work in media. It was either that or go to law school. Or become a teacher. But I didn’t want to become a cliche or drown in student loans, see. I also desperately needed to leave where I was living — I could get into the details of why, but to sum up: I wanted to die every single day of my life and it took me several years to realize it was because of the environment I was in. So, I picked the next best place: somewhere close to my dad, since we’ve never gotten to have much of a relationship and I like the weather up here. I found a job (I was hired the same day as my interview, in fact) and I put a bunch of debt on a shiny new credit card to afford the move.
Coming out of college without much more than freelancing and tutoring under my belt, I felt it was fair that I start out working in the customer support section of Yelp/Eat24 before I’d be qualified to transfer to media. Then, after I had moved and got firmly stuck in this apartment with this debt, I was told I’d have to work in support for an entire year before I would be able to move to a different department. A whole year answering calls and talking to customers just for the hope that someday I’d be able to make memes and twitter jokes about food. If you follow me on twitter, which you don’t, you’d know that these are things I already do. But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s get back to the situation at hand, shall we?
So here I am, 25-years old, balancing all sorts of debt and trying to pave a life for myself that doesn’t involve crying in the bathtub every week. Every single one of my coworkers is struggling. They’re taking side jobs, they’re living at home. One of them started a GoFundMe because she couldn’t pay her rent. She ended up leaving the company and moving east, somewhere the minimum wage could double as a living wage. Another wrote on those neat whiteboards we’ve got on every floor begging for help because he was bound to be homeless in two weeks. Fortunately, someone helped him out. At least, I think they did. I actually haven’t seen him in the past few months. Do you think he’s okay? Another guy who got hired, and ultimately let go, was undoubtedly homeless. He brought a big bag with him and stocked up on all those snacks you make sure are on every floor (except on the weekends when the customer support team is working, because we’re what makes Eat24 24-hours, 7 days a week but the team who comes to stock up those snacks in the early hours during my shift are only there Mondays through Fridays, excluding holidays. They get holidays and weekends off! Can you imagine?). By and large, our floor pummels through those snacks the fastest and has to roam other floors to find something to eat. Is it because we’re gluttons? Maybe. If you starve a pack of wolves and toss them a single steak, will they rip each other to shreds fighting over it? Definitely.

I haven’t bought groceries since I started this job. Not because I’m lazy, but because I got this ten pound bag of rice before I moved here and my meals at home (including the one I’m having as I write this) consist, by and large, of that. Because I can’t afford to buy groceries. Bread is a luxury to me, even though you’ve got a whole fridge full of it on the 8th floor. But we’re not allowed to take any of that home because it’s for at-work eating. Of which I do a lot. Because 80 percent of my income goes to paying my rent. Isn’t that ironic? Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can’t afford to buy food. That’s gotta be a little ironic, right?

Let’s talk about those benefits, though. They’re great. I’ve got vision, dental, the normal health insurance stuff — and as far as I can tell, I don’t have to pay for any of it! Except the copays. $20 to see a doctor or get an eye exam or see a therapist or get medication. Twenty bucks each is pretty neat, if spending twenty dollars didn’t determine whether or not you could afford to get to work the next week.

Did I tell you about how I got stuck in the east bay because my credit card, which amazingly allows cash withdrawals, kept getting declined and I didn’t have enough money on my BART Clipper card to get to work? Did I tell you that my manager, with full concern and sympathy for my situation, suggested I just drive through FastTrak and get a $35 ticket for it that I could pay at a later time, just so I could get to work? Did I tell you that an employee at CVS overheard my phone call with my manager and then gave me, straight from his wallet, the six dollars I needed to drive into work? Do you think CVS pays more than Yelp? I worked a job similar to one at CVS. A manager spends half an hour training you on the cash register, you watch a video, maybe take a brief quiz, and you’re fully trained to do the entire job. Did you know that after getting hired back in August, I’m still being trained for the same position I’ve got? But Marcus at CVS has six dollars in his wallet, and I’m picking up coins on the street trying to figure out how I’ll be able to pay him back.

Speaking of that whole training thing, do you know what the average retention rate of your lowest employees (like myself) are? Because I haven’t been here very long, but it seems like every week the faces change. Do you think it’s because the pay your company offers is designed to attract young people with no responsibilities, sort of like the CIA? Except these people don’t even throw away their trash, because they still live at home and this is their very first job and they don’t have to take an aptitude test like at the CIA. Do you know how many cash coupons I used to give out before I was properly trained? In one month, I gave out over $600 to customers for a variety of issues. Now, since getting more training, I’ve given out about $15 in the past three months because I’ve been able to de-escalate messed up situations using just my customer service skills. Do you think that’s coincidence? Or is the goal to have these free bleeders who throw money at angry customers to calm them down set the standard for the whole company? Do you think there’s any point in training a customer service agent to learn and employ customer service skills? Or is it better to attract those first-time employees with their poor habits and lack of work ethic with the same wage part-time employees at See’s Candies make for standing by the door in a stupid outfit and handing out free chocolate? Do you think those free chocolates cost $600 a month per employee? Have you ever seen an angry See’s Candies customer? You know what I could do with $600 extra a month? For starters, I probably wouldn’t have to take money from Marcus at CVS just to get to work.
Will you pay my phone bill for me? I just got a text from T-Mobile telling me my bill is due. I got paid yesterday ($733.24, bi-weekly) but I have to save as much of that as possible to pay my rent ($1245) for my apartment that’s 40 miles away from work because it was the cheapest place I could find that had access to the train, which costs me $5.65 one way to get to work. That’s $11.30 a day, by the way. I make $8.15 an hour after taxes. I also have to pay my gas and electric bill. Last month it was $120. According to the infograph on PG&E’s website, that cost was because I used my heater. I’ve since stopped using my heater. Have you ever slept fully clothed under several blankets just so you don’t get a cold and have to miss work? Have you ever drank a liter of water before going to bed so you could fall asleep without waking up a few hours later with stomach pains because the last time you ate was at work? I woke up today with stomach pains. I made myself a bowl of rice.

Look, I’ll make you a deal. You don’t have to pay my phone bill. I’ll just disconnect my phone. And I’ll disconnect my home internet, too, even though it’s the only way I can do work for my freelance gig that I haven’t been able to do since I moved here because I’m constantly too stressed to focus on anything but going to sleep as soon as I’m not at work. Should I sell my car? It’s not my car, actually, it’s my grandpa’s. But the back left tire is flat and the front right headlight is out and the registration is due to be renewed in April and I already know I can’t afford any of that. I haven’t even gotten an oil change since I started this job (in August). But maybe I could find someone on Craigslist who won’t mind all of that because they’ll look at the dark circles under my eyes and realize I need the cash more than they do.

How about this: instead of telling you about all the ways I’m withering away from putting my all into a company that doesn’t have my back, I offer some solutions. I emailed Mike, Eat24’s CEO, about a few ideas to give back to our community for the holidays. He, along with someone named Patty, politely turned them down. But maybe you could repurpose them?
Originally, I suggested that Eat24/Yelp employees volunteer at local soup kitchens and food banks to give back to our Bay Area community (I see on your twitter that you care deeply about the homeless epidemic in our city) while also helping the different departments meet and mingle. Maybe instead, you can help set up something to allow Eat24/Yelp employees to get food from local food banks and soup kitchens? I’m pretty proficient at rice, but some hot soup would sure make up for not being able to afford to use my heater.

Originally, I suggested that Eat24 offer a matching donation with customers where they can choose a donation amount during checkout and Eat24/Yelp would match it and donate those profits to a national food program. Maybe instead, you can let customers choose a donation amount during checkout and divide those proceeds among your employees who spend more than 60% of their income on rent? The ideal percent is 30%. As I said, I spend 80%. What do you spend 80% of your income on? I hear your net worth is somewhere between $111 million and $222 million. That’s a whole lotta rice.
Originally, I suggested that Eat24 offer special coupon codes where half of the code’s value ($1) goes to charity. Maybe instead, you can give half the code’s value ($1) to helping employees who live across the bay pay their transit fares? Mine are $226 monthly. According to this website, you’ve got a pretty nice house in the east bay. Have you ever been stranded inside a CVS because you can’t afford to get to work? How much do you pay your gardeners to keep that lawn and lovely backyard looking so neat?

I did notice — and maybe this was just a fluke — that Yelp has stopped stocking up on those awful flavored coconut waters. Was that Mike’s suggestion? Because I did include, half-facetiously, in that email he and Patty so politely rejected that Yelp could save about $24,000 in two months if the company stopped restocking flavored coconut waters since no one drinks them (because they taste like the bitter remorse of accepting a job that can’t pay a living wage and everyone kept falling over into the fetal position and hyperventilating about their life’s worth. It really cut into the productivity that all those new hires are so prolific at avoiding). I wonder what it would be like if I made $24,000 more annually. I could probably get the headlight fixed on my car. And the flat tire. And maybe even get the oil change and renewed registration — but I don’t want to dream too extravagantly. Maybe you could cut out all the coconut waters altogether? You could probably cut back on a lot of the drinks and snacks that are stocked on every single floor. I mean, I could handle losing out on pistachio nuts if I was getting paid enough to afford groceries. No one really eats the pistachios anyway — have you ever tried answering the phone fifty times an hour while eating pistachios? Those hard shells really get in the way of talking to hundreds of customers and restaurants a day.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I know they’re not worth your time — did you know that the average American earns enough money that the time they would spend picking up a penny costs more than the penny’s worth? I pick up every penny I see, which I think explains why sharing these thoughts is worth my time, even if it’s not worth yours.
Your Friend In Food,

Talia

UPDATE: As of 5:43pm PST, I have been officially let go from the company. This was entirely unplanned (but I guess not completely unexpected?) but any help until I find new employment would be extremely appreciated. My PayPal is paypal.me/taliajane, my Venmo is @taliajane Square Cash is cash.me/$TaliaJane. Thank you so much for helping my story be heard.

https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.cr3agenea

People living as slaves in SV is sort of sad but also kind of hilarious. You could work at a McDonalds in a decently fun midwestern, say Des Moines and have a waaaaay better quality of life. But this delicate flower, like millions of others like her, are drawn to the big dreams of a place like San Fran like moths to a flame.

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oxsnard
Oct 8, 2003
Its almost like US labor laws/wages can be hosed up AND this girl can be an entitled, BWM moron at the same time!

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