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AA is for Quitters posted:ooo, is this where i get to talk about my brother in law? Hell yes. Suggest to her to have as much of the debt converted so that it's only in his name. Divorce, have him declare bankruptcy, remarry? As for people bad with money, I have a friend we'll call Tom. He and his wife have a kid. They each have jobs that pay somewhere in the $35k/year range (totally guessing, but I suspect it's close enough to that). They each buy a new car every year or two, on loans. By new I mean used, but new to them. They've been doing this for as long as I've known them. They have never NOT had car payments. That'd be fine, I guess, if constantly trading cars is your thing. Except that, between the two of them, the own like 6 cars. The other thing is that they are stuck paying high rent in a condo because they can't get a mortgage, at least in part because they always have so many car payments. Their income isn't enough to get approved for anything due to the car loans. Essentially they are paying at least as much on rent as they would to own a place outright...because of these drat cars. Anytime I point out that they should maybe pay off a vehicle entirely and stop buying cars for a few years, is met with "yeah.... I know." and that's the end of discussion. I try to point out how my wife and I purchase cars, which makes enormous sense in comparison: We start by buying the best used car we can afford. Drive it a while, until it starts to become too problematic or we come into more money, sell that car and put extra cash toward another, newer, nicer used car and buy it in whole. Repeat as necessary. Rather than paying interest on car loans, you're saving money to be used for whatever, including buying another car. But he doesn't seem to comprehend why they would be better off that way and continues getting car loans every year or two. Theres that other thread here where a guy asks what to do with his thousand dollar gift he received. I suggested he put it toward his $500/month car payment. I finally thought of a concise way to put why he should do that: You're paying interest on something that is very very rapidly depreciating. Pay that poo poo off as fast as you can. johnny sack fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 16:24
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Slow Motion posted:I should make my own 'fix my finances' thread. Please do make a 'fix your finances' thread. Sorry to say, but I'd love to hear about your poor decisions (but I would contribute whatever I could to help fix said poor decisions!).
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Jun 26, 2013 02:42
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I can second the grad students making terrible decisions. When I was in grad school, most other students went to the bars at least 3 or 4 times per week. Most had brand new laptops, always buying $4 coffees, buying sandwiches for lunch every day, etc etc. Granted, the stipend we received wasn't much, but it was enough for rent, books, and buying food to cook at home. I couldn't understand the purchases most students made. They must have been taking loans out to subsidize their coffee and laptops.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:49
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My sister and her live-in boyfriend unfortunately fit the bill for this thread. They live in a mobile home, that's paid off. Their only bills are utilities, lot rent, and gasoline. Between the both of them, they could easily afford to rent a much nicer townhouse or to buy a modest house. They're trying to save for a downpayment but... Just estimating here, they both earn probably $30-35k. So together that's a decent amount of money, considering they don't really have any major expenses. However, my sister owns more than 1000 DVDs. She buys at least a few every week. If we assume she somehow averages $5 per movie, that's easily $60+ a month on DVDs. Chances are the average is much higher than $5 each, as new releases are typically close to $20. I've pointed out to her that she could have the max Netflix account for like $20 per month, she nods and says she'll look into it, only to buy more DVDs. They also pay for cable or satellite, whichever. My sister has a 6 year old son from a previous relationship. Our mother ends up watching him, on average, 4 days per week and he spends the night with my mom at least one of those days. This frees up a lot of saved money for my sister, as she doesn't even pay my mom gas money for driving her kid around. That'd be fine if she used that money to save for her downpayment on a house, but instead she and her boyfriend go out every single weekend, at least one if not both nights. Even if they each have 2 drinks per night, that's easily $40 per weekend wasted at bars that could be used to get out of that trailer park. Added up, it's another $180ish per month. Rounding down, that's an extra $250 a month she could be saving. But the frivolous spending doesn't stop there. She likes to buy Starbucks coffees, goes tanning at tanning booths, spending $100+/each on 2 tickets to a Kenny Chesney concert, and offered to pay for my mom's ticket, who turned her down. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say she shouldn't have fun or be able to go out with friends. How I found out she buys so many DVDs? I knew all along she has a lot of movies, but my mom was at my house last week. We got to talking about my sister and she told me that my sister was having "3 more movies delivered (that day)" to my moms house. Why? Because she doesn't trust her trailer park neighbors to not steal the package from her doorstep while she's at work. Her son can't play freely outside because it's a shady old trailer park, full of trailer park stereotypes. That is why it bothers me that she is wasting all this money on movies she's never going to watch and on drinking at bars. Want to drink with your friends? Buy a case of beer for about the price of 3 drinks at a bar and invite them over/go to their house. Save money and meet the same end. Need to see that new movie? Go to Red box for $1.50 or get netflix and burn the DVDs onto your own discs if you must. In summary, her spending on worthless poo poo is preventing her from moving out of the trailer park. At the same time, it's that same spending that would probably send her back to a trailer park if they managed to buy a house, without fully changing some of her habits. johnny sack fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 12, 2013 15:55
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Lacertine posted:This is a great point. Every teacher I know of is awful with their money. Agreed with the parents thing. My parents were dirt poor until I was a teenager. Even then, they were never wealthy, just less poor. They divorced when I was really young and each ended up living in mobile homes. I grew up around poverty and experienced it for years. My sister did too. Now, I'm one of the most frugal/responsible money people you could imagine and she goes around wasting money on DVDs and drinking at bars. The main difference between me and her, growing up, was that I worked for an allowance and she didn't give a gently caress. She also didn't have a job until after high school. These 2 factors probably played a big role in me learning financial responsibility and her not caring.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:14
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systran posted:The biggest obstacle to me was thinking that my undergraduate degree was a free ticket to a "real job". "Well, once I'm out of college, I'll have a job and can start budgeting and saving." This may have been somewhat true, before, but the big financial crash happened during my last semester of college. I remember on that morning suddenly realizing that "real life" was right around the corner for me and that this crash was going to change things significantly. Even when I was in the middle of college, I had always heard about various bubbles/crashes/"economy is bad" stories and thought, "Well, I'll have a degree and a job... so..." It's very easy to assume you will come out okay because you're doing the thing that you're supposed to do. There is such a path after high school. Its called going to a trade/community school. I wish I had gone that route and learned HVAC or electrician or plumbing instead of undergrad and grad school. The earning potential is high for skilled trades and the time in school is short in comparison to a 4 year school. I had an English professor with whom i was close tell me once, he was in his late 60s about to retire, that he wished he had gone to technical school for a trade instead. He acknowledged that his professor job was good and paid well, but all the years of schooling and relatively low pay early in his career versus the more steady pay that comes with a trade, he felt he would have been able to retire with more money going the trade route. He was probably right. Caveat being that he was strictly a teaching professor, no research or anything, so he probably had little to no grant money to supplement his salary. I have likewise worked for professors who run big labs that are very well funded who take home hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. There aren't many professors who do that well, though. Regardless, when my kids are nearing the end of high school, which is many years from now, unless things have changed drastically, I will do my best to explain why a trade can be very appealing.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:16
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Just look at all of these trades that have faster than average growth and good median pay. There are plenty more if you care to look for a particular trade. Every link I posted above has faster than average job growth and all of them have decent median pay. The downside to these jobs, of course, is that many of them require lifting/bending/kneeling/climbing ladders/etc, and that can take its toll later in life.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:37
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To contribute a story to make up for no story above. I recently bought a new water softener. I was telling my mom about it and why I bought a Fleck instead of some cheapie from Sears. She told me a terrible story how she and her husband had been renting a water softener since he bought the house in 1987. Something like $15/month, and that didn't include salt. 15 x 12 x 25 (years) = $4500 if my quick math hasn't failed me. For reference, if they had bought the very water softener AND had Culligan install it, it would have been like $275 back in the late 80s.
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Jul 27, 2013 02:30
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April posted:It's not so much that they could/should use it to pay medical bills, but there are so many related expenses. Like, if one or both of them has to miss work while he is undergoing treatment, they will have less income, but they will still need gas, groceries, and so on. It just seems like they are making the absolute worst decisions. "Hey, we are in dire financial straits and the main provider is facing a major health crisis, and our special needs child requires expensive schooling and our car is dying and our house is falling apart around us... whoa! we got some money! Let's take a vacation!" I have family-in-law who are in a similar situation. The husband had leukemia and the wife was the only one working. The medical bills were considerable even though they have decent health insurance. One of the husband's family members decides to throw a benefit for them, raising some money by selling items people donate and by selling food at high prices. They appear to raise quite a bit of money as the benefit was packed and people were buying lots of stuff. Not even 2 months later, the family (4 kids + husband and wife) take a vacation to an Oceanside resort. I felt a little ripped off having gone to the benefit and purchased some stuff only to see them use the money for a family vacation. The least they could have done, assuming they weren't hurting for money that badly, is to postpone the vacation a few more months so as not to look like everyone generously donated so they could vacation rather than pay medical bills.
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Jul 28, 2013 19:01
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DwemerCog posted:You sure she doesn't gamble? Online poker and you'd never know. Yea it's got to be gambling, drugs, or something else illegal. Any chance she somehow got mixed up with the wrong inmates and is paying them off in secret? Or any chance she isn't making nearly as much money as you think? Nothing adds up from what you said except gambling, drugs, or something else illegal.
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Aug 1, 2013 15:56
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I don't even know what to say about chupes mother anymore. Obviously something totally hosed is going on there. Probably drugs. People can be very good at hiding drugs and the usage of drugs. Someone who works at a prison would probably be an expert on how to use drugs/use. You mentioned she was married, does the spouse know nothing of her habits, spending or otherwise? Is she buying brand new Prada purses every week? Fancy watches and or jewelry? Why not try to see a bank statement of hers?
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Aug 2, 2013 15:27
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Something in this thread just reminded me of a friend, "Jon", I had back in high school/college. This friend was always borrowing and loaning money, for whatever reason. He would borrow $20 from me, but he knew that Jim and Adam each owed him $10. So when I wanted my $20 back, he told me to collect it from Jim and Adam. The first time this happened, it wasn't a big deal. I was friends with Jim and Adam as well and I was able to collect my money. However, soon after a pattern developed. Next thing we knew, everyone was constantly trying to collect money from everyone else because of Jon borrowing and loaning money. It quickly spiraled into: Adam would pay Brent the money that Adam owed to Jon, but Jim was expected to collect some of that money from Brent for a separate loan, meanwhile I had to ask George for $20 because of a separate loan. It was never more than maybe $10 to $30 exchanging hands. He would literally break it down to where you might have to ask 2 or 3 people each to pay back the portion of money that you had loaned to Jon. But Jon was always broke, so if you wanted your money, you had no recourse but to ask those people. After just a few weeks of that, it got to the point where nobody would ever take or give money to Jon ever again. Jon went on to make a series of really bad decisions regarding rental homes during college, took out way more in student loans than he should have, and ultimately moved to Korea. If someone moves out of country, are they still liable for student loans? I know generally they are the one thing that will follow you just about forever, but not sure about this.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:06
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zmcnulty posted:Speaking as someone who moved out of the country and is still liable for student loans: yes. If you ever want credit extended to you while living overseas, and you say you're originally from the US, the credit check will often (but not always) include a query of your credit history in your home country. Yea I guess that was the sort of answer I was looking for. I knew they wouldn't just magically disappear, but rather if they would have any recourse to garnish wages or otherwise collect from you. One quick story: my cousin bought $500 worth of Minnesota Twins Homer Hankies when they re-released them a few years back. He and I were both under the impression, which might have been totally wrong, that it was the first time they had re-released them since the Twins were relevant in the 90's. His plan was to flip them on Craigslist or ebay for 3 or more times than he paid. Ends up, they sell them regularly all the time now. He managed to sell most of them, but he took a big hit on them, selling them 3 for a buck, that kind of deal.
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Aug 26, 2013 06:47
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I can never understand the whole winning lottery/inheritance and then blowing it all immediately. There was a tv show that focused on lottery winners who did that. These people are rarely wealthy prior to the influx of money, and then they blow it all. You'd think that being relatively poor to begin, you would be even more careful of how you spend all that money.
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Sep 27, 2013 15:25
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oldskool posted:Tons of studies have been done on this. Most popular one would be the marshmallow experiment. Mostly they summarize into "Poors had the concept of delayed gratification driven out of them from an early age": they learn early on that when they want something expensive and try to save for it, they end up nickel and dimed out of their savings long before they save enough to get the big-ticket item. Yea, this is interesting. Very unfortunate that it's the way it works. I can see it happening to people I know, as well. Not that I know people who've come into big sums of money, but rather my mother raised my sister and I, and she was very poor. We never had extra money for anything. I've managed to understand not to blow what money I have, my sister is much worse about it. Those who I keep in contract with from the neighborhood where I grew up, for the most part, still make poor financial decisions. I will be sure to teach my kids how not to blow money.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:59
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drat Bananas posted:I didn't come into the thread with the intent to spill personal details, but I'll compare my choice of what I'm focusing on to the common choice of paying off debt with the highest interest first versus paying off the smallest balance for the sense of victory/motivation. I'm doing the latter (focusing on health insurance problems, the legalities of changing my name, and some my-house-will-fall-down home repairs) but I still have these inheritance matters still on my immediate to-do list. When I opened my IRA with Vanguard, I called them up because I had a few questions. It was very easy to talk to an actual person (American, not a foreigner overseas) who was able to answer my questions. What I'm saying is, call them up. It probably won't take more than twenty minutes. Opening the account might take a bit longer, but at least calling them won't.
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Sep 27, 2013 19:51
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^^Sometimes leasing can be really attractive. I just saw a deal for some tiny little Nissan for $139/month. It required $2k down, but it got somewhere close to 40mpg. For me, for example, I have a pickup truck as my only vehicle. If I were to get a job with a 20 mile commute each way, it would literally save me money to lease such a vehicle, assuming I don't go over the allotted miles each year. Selling the truck isn't an option, as I use it to haul ladders with some frequency and we haul poo poo around in it all the time. Driving my truck 40 miles per day would be almost $3200/year in fuel at $3.50/gallon. Plus my truck is 10 years old and will have maintenance costs. Leasing that car for 3 years is $6865. The same commute would use about 1.2 gallons of gas per day, 6 gallons per week, for a yearly cost of $1100. $3200 * 3 = $9600, not counting things that will inevitably need replacing on a 10 yr old truck. $6865 + 1100*3 = $10165. Almost the exact same price, and you will have 0 maintenance costs during that time. Sure you could buy some $2500 commuter car and hope for the best, but again that's a gamble. If no major mechanical issues come up, you save a ton of money over leasing. Engine or transmission has a problem, suddenly you're paying as much as if you had just leased a car. For the record, I've never leased a car nor advocated for most people to lease a car. About the only scenario where I see it making sense is the one above. Even then, if I was really looking to do this, I would probably buy a used car before leasing. I can understand why others would want the peace of mind that the car won't break down on them, however. ________________________________________ Sometimes its just really expensive to park. When I last worked at a huge university, my options were 1. pay $125/month for underground, climate-controlled parking, literally connected to the building where I worked. 2. Pay ~$80 a month for outdoor parking in a huge gently caress-off lot, 10-15 minute walk from the building I worked or catch the campus bus, but unless it was rainy or cold, you were better off just walking versus waiting for whenever the bus might show up. 3. Pay ~$45/month for a city-wide bus pass. 4. Drive to the neighborhoods surrounding campus and look for street parking. COMPLETE GAMBLE, but free. I opted for 1 and never regretted it. Yes it was very expensive, but having a car that isn't freezing in the winter or scalding hot in the summer is worth something. Additionally, the extra time to walk from the lot far away is a considerable factor. I tried riding the bus before committing to the parking pass. The best I could do, was to drive to a nearby church (2 miles away), park there and wait for the bus, which would take me close to work, but would require another 1 or 2 transfers, depending on whether the Express buses were running at that particular time. When riding the bus with these transfer, my commute went from about 25 minutes to 55 minutes (walking out of my house to sitting down in my desk chair). That's an extra hour per day. I did option 4 when I started, until I figured out it was terrible. Some days you might spend 5 minutes looking for a spot to park and then luck-out and get a spot only 10-15 minutes away. Other days you might spend 20+ minutes looking for parking, saying "gently caress it," and then paying the daily parking rate of about $6-7/day. While I did hate paying the $125/month, and always had to justify it to people, it was worth it considering the other 2 options were not much cheaper and certainly took much more time. johnny sack fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 01:26
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Having just spent a few days in Las Vegas, I've seen more bad money decisions in these 72 hours than I have in the rest of the year. One guy was playing cheap roulette, like $3 minimum bet, just throwing out chips any and everywhere. He was betting on the lines and corners. I did the quick math on one of his bets, and he couldn't have made money even if his biggest bet had hit, which it of course didn't. I don't care how wealthy you are, when you're betting such that you can't possibly recover your bet, you're just giving away your money. I could write a whole post entirely on how much money people spend on alcohol here, but whatever. At least with booze, you get drunk.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:57
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oldskool posted:Joke's on you, by pre-paying for the year he saved $4 I will admit to being one of those people who feels I would be losing money by passing up such opportunities. I think that's why I like shopping at Costco so much.
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Oct 18, 2013 17:24
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Jeffrey posted:Are you sure here? I'm discounting the green tiles, but all the numbers/corners/etc in roulette have the same odds. You can put chips out all over the table, and all it varies is how often you get any sort of win. Betting a number is a 1/36 bet and pays out 36x, betting a line is a 1/18 bet and pays out 18x, etc. Of course, there are green tiles and so the house has an edge and it isn't actually even, but it is pretty close to the same odds no matter how you spread out your chips on the numbers. He was betting multiple corners, lines, red or black (not both, he wasn't that dumb), just throwing them out there with impunity. I'm sure he thought that he had a strategy but I only saw his chip stack decrease. I mean there really is no strategy to roulette, the 0's are there solely to prevent any such strategy.
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Oct 18, 2013 17:56
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FrozenVent posted:Shopping at a thrift store is actually being good with money, though. Agreed. I have a wealthy aunt who does almost all of her shopping at thrift stores. She dresses in very nice clothes; you would never guess they came from thrift stores. She and my uncle also drive old cars and they do it until they drive them into the ground. I've started buying as many of my kid toys as possible from thrift stores. So much cheaper.
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Jan 26, 2014 02:22
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baquerd posted:It's like there's a fundamental mindset difference that results in a near dichotomy of "I'm better than this and I'm going to make something of myself even though I didn't get any help" and "I'm going to help people because I didn't get any help myself and that wasn't right". It's more like you're a lovely poster and person, if you really believe what you're typing.
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Feb 20, 2014 05:22
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