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I have a friend that is so bad with money, I'm not sure how she even functions. We met at a job a few years ago where we were both making about 9 bucks an hour. I knew she had student loan payments (mine were deferred) so whenever she would complain about money I was pretty sympathetic because $9 an hour doesn't get you very far, especially when you have loans to pay. Anyway, I went on to grad school and got a decent monthly stipend out of the deal. Not enough to save much, but enough to live on and have some extra money for fun stuff. I ended up helping her get a job in my town, and this job paid her approximately $800 a month more than I was getting paid. I know this for a fact, because I was offered the same job before I got into grad school. So she came to live with me (totally free) for a month until she got her first paycheck and could put a down payment on a new apartment. That's a whole 'nother story that I won't get into here, but I ended up making her move out about 2 weeks after she got her first paycheck (I guess she wanted to get another 2 or 3 before she moved out, who knows). She then "met a lady at church" who rented her a room for $100 a month. My rent + household bills during this time was around $500 a month. She was paying $100 a month for TOTAL housing costs, still complaining about her student loans, how she had no money, how she couldn't afford her car, and all sorts of sob stories. It drove me completely insane. I was living a couple hundred bucks above the poverty line, totally keeping my poo poo together, and she was making $2500-ish a month in a VERY low cost-of-living area (not to mention paying ONLY ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH on rent) and somehow couldn't swing it. She also had a co-worker pick her up and take her to work every single day, so she didn't even have to pay for gas to drive to and from work. She'd regularly get $35 manicures, buy donuts for the entire crew at work, and buy coffee drinks like they were going out of style. She just hemorrhaged money. To this day, I have no idea where all her money went and all her co-workers said the same thing - Why the hell does she have no money? We all make the same salary and we're all pretty well off! Last time I talked to her was about 6 months ago. She lives with her mom (and doesn't pay any household bills or food really) and makes 60k a year at a job she's held for over 2 years now. She still complains about "not having money" and "but my student loans" and god knows what else. I later found out her student loans were less than half of mine. So around $8,000. Absolutely crippling for someone making 60k a year and living rent-free with Mom.
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Jul 1, 2013 19:13
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sanchez posted:Don't tell anyone how much you make, you can pretend to be horribly underpaid then. Or the opposite, people will find out how bad with money you are if you make a lot. A friend of mine and her husband make 90K+ combined and she is CONSTANTLY complaining about how much her rent is. It's $800 a month. So like... 10% of their income. Life's so hard for some people!
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Jul 4, 2013 02:01
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Jul 11, 2013 02:29
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Last week my brother-in-law had to borrow $80 from his dad for gas. I was in the room when he literally just called his dad up and told him that he needed money. Less than 5 months ago, we were all sitting around chatting and he was bragging about his $9,000 tax return. Him and his girlfriend have one lovely car between the two of them, his parents have to help them with rent (it's an EXTREMELY low cost-of-living area) and his mother babysits their baby daughter FOR FREE and drives 10 miles each way to pick her up and take her back home. They can't even be bothered to bring her to grandma's house themselves, probably because "gas is expensive" or whatever. Their financial decisions boggle my mind. How do you blow through money like that.
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Jul 12, 2013 18:11
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enraged_camel posted:Nothing to feel bad about. They made stupid decisions early in life and those decisions bit them in the rear end later on. At least now they are more likely to tell their kids cautionary tales about how to manage one's own money. I never realized about these security clearance guidelines until about a week ago when I found out a friend didn't get an internship at a nuclear power plant (an UNPAID internship) because he had his medical marijuana card when he lived in another state where it was legal. They said he was "untrustworthy". Crazy stuff. I had no idea the government could look into your medical records like that. Obviously he had other poo poo going on as well. He has one of those things in his car where the engine won't start unless you blow into it and haven't been drinking. Government clearance is serious business I guess. razz fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jul 27, 2013 |
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Jul 27, 2013 17:24
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I'm not sure I really get the whole "getting clearance" thing. So does a person apply for a job and then if they get denied, they have to go before a judge and just lay it all on the line and hopes that the judge rules in their favor? Then what happens, if the judge says "yeah you're good for clearance" then do they automatically get the job or what? Or do you ALWAYS have to go before a judge when applying for a position that requires clearance? It just seems like these people are spilling out their entire life stories to the judge in hopes of getting a job.
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Jul 28, 2013 16:56
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Dik Hz posted:Those are appeals after being rejected for US security clearance. So if your application for clearance is denied, you literally have to go before a judge to try and get them to change their mind about you? I think the whole judge thing is throwing me off. They put you on some sort of honesty trial? In a real courthouse? spwrozek posted:If they found stuff they didn't like then I wouldn't have got the job. But if they found stuff they didn't like, you could have appealed it and went before a judge to try and prove your trustworthiness or whatever?
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Jul 28, 2013 17:14
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CitizenKain posted:The job is somewhat incidental, once you get clearance, its yours and can be moved around. Its like a general rubber stamp that says "This person pretty much has their poo poo together." Okay, that makes sense! Thanks. This is all quite interesting. I'm having fun reading the clearance denial transcripts, haha. Seems like I'm good for security clearance 
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Jul 28, 2013 17:26
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April posted:Over half a million dollars... it's mind-boggling to me that some of these people even apply for clearance. Surely, they have to know they are going to be denied. I like this one: http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/doha/industrial/12-09324.h1.pdf quote:Applicant owes over $488,000 on delinquent student loans
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Jul 28, 2013 18:06
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Omits-Bagels posted:My wife and I have no retirement savings and only about 5k in the bank. I'm about to start grad school and she doesn't have a job. Ohh and there is the 50k in student loans. And we are 29. Hey, that sounds like me and my husband! 5k in the bank, no other savings, 50K in student loans. I'm in grad school. Husband works part time. Ages 27 and 33. It's not because we're bad with money (okay well, he was before we met). I've just been in school this whole time! Except for a couple years where I bummed around the country doing temp jobs making not very much money. So...I've never even had any money to save. Oh well! We don't really have any bills, my loans are deferred and his were paid by his mom so he just makes payments to her. It's all good man! Hope your wife finds a job. Luckily for me I get a graduate research stipend. It's like a dollar above minimum wage but it supports us because I really am good with money! And someday I'll get a real job! Maybe. After I graduate I'm thinking about switching majors and going back for more graduate school! I just don't know if I can handle a 9-5, you know? I'm 27 and have never had one. The idea does not appeal to me. Or my husband. We'll probably be bums forever!
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Aug 8, 2013 00:08
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Lightning Zwei posted:Holy gently caress. How do you sleep at night? Haha, no way. I only have loan debt from undergrad. My grad program pays me a stipend and my tuition is waived, so no new debt. It's basically just like having a job but I get bitched at a lot more and have to teach . The new Master's degree I'm looking into is Geography - same deal. You get a monthly stipend (actually a lot more than I'm getting now doing biology) and your tuition is waived.Most of our debt is from my husband's crappy Social Science undergrad degree but like I said, his mom paid it off and she's only making him pay her $150 a month so it's basically a non-issue. My debt is 20K-ish, his is 30K-ish. I'm actually terrifyingly good with money. Like, people in my grad program that get the same pay as me are always like "how do you have so much money?" I don't know, I just don't buy crap I don't need! My husband and I only make maybe 25K a year combined and we aren't struggling. As soon as I get a "real job" that pays me a decent wage we're gonna save money like nobody's business because we're frugal as hell, don't plan on having kids, don't care about the "American Dream" of owning a home, and all that jazz. If I made even 5K more a year every penny would go towards our debt (and ideally I'd like to have twice as much or more in savings). After that, any extra money will just go to various investments and retirement savings so ideally we can retire early. Yeah, I do think about the future! But the future is later. Right now we're just dumb hippies doing nothing Plus, my husband's family has a huge amount of land. We actually live on it right now. If I can't get a good job, we'll just get some cattle and work on the ranch. Yes we really can do this, it's not just a pipe dream. We just... I don't know... don't want to mess with all that crap right now. I gotta finish my Master's degree first! Also we're super lazy! But in the future we might! So no I don't have that mentality, and I'm actually worried that a lot of people do! razz fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 03:59
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Hey I hear those emu farms actually do pretty good if you know what you're doing! But it's a really big initial investment.
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Aug 10, 2013 23:15
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Probably something to do with Chronic Wasting Disease. It's a disease that affects deer, elk, and other cervids. It's easy to test for it though, and it can't spread to non-cervids including cattle or humans so it's basically a great example of the government flipping out over nothing because they went around culling tons of wild and captive herds. The federal and state government also spent a lot of taxpayer dollars testing animals for CWD and the reality is... it's never been shown to be a human health risk. I used to get paid $12 per animal to test them for CWD. It was dumb. There's like... 3 reported cases in my state. And like I said, it does nothing but make deer, elk, and other cervids die. Doesn't affect us. Doesn't affect cows or sheep or goats or horses. We can't get it even if we eat an animal with CWD.
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Aug 11, 2013 23:13
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SpelledBackwards posted:Yeah the elk farmer's operation seems less about being bad with money and more about being unfortunate collateral damage due to bad regulation. Yep the government is responsible for a lot of small farming business going under the bus, both due to over-regulation and also the fact that the government is in general much more supportive of large industrial farming operations than it is of small local "hobby" farms and at times seems to actively want to shut down the small farms. There's also the fact that profit margins on farms are so narrow that if anything goes wrong the farm is in danger of going under, and a couple bad years (or new costly government regulations that could be easily absorbed by an industrial farm) can lead to bankruptcy for a small operation. A good example right now is the "free range" egg industry. Sounds nice to buy eggs from chickens that are allowed outside and get to touch grass and see sunlight, right? Lots of people started these free-range egg farming operations and did well for themselves and increased animal welfare at the same time. Well, now the USDA is saying that free range chickens pose a health risk due to potential contact with wildlife (never been shown to be true), so they're working on shutting down these typically small locally-owned operations, essentially forcing all egg production to go back to the large-scale industrial battery cage type of egg production, and ruining people's livelihoods at the same time. razz fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Aug 12, 2013 |
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Aug 12, 2013 02:16
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That's hilarious. Sounds like he was great with money, he spent almost exactly the right amount during his lifetime
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Aug 20, 2013 04:09
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dreesemonkey posted:The wife travels so much and gets ~$.50/mile compensation, but can't be bothered to submit her expense forms. So her hubby has to get on her case quarterly to get her to do them, which ends up being thousands of dollars that she just claims is "too much work". I have a friend/old coworker like that. We had a travel job and got all our meals reimbursed. Eating out every single meal every single day for a week can get expensive so obviously hanging onto those receipts was a good idea. I ended up just keeping her receipts for her because we'd show up at the end of the week and I'd have $150 worth of receipts for reimbursement and she'd have managed to lose all but 2 or 3 receipts and she'd get like $40 back. And it's not like she had the money or it didn't matter to her. We made like $9.50 an hour. Every week was an epic freakout while we scoured the hotel room and the work vehicles for misplaced receipts.
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Aug 27, 2013 18:16
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My husband's cousin never wears a pair of socks more than once. He puts on a new pair every time, and throws the dirty ones away. He actually told us this. He also refuses to eat leftovers because apparently eating microwaved food will kill you.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:12
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froglet posted:
I think he just east fast food every meal, I have no idea, he is kind of a man-child. His mother and a series of wives (he's working on number 3) have always "taken care" of him. I don't think he even knows how to cook. He probably doesn't even know how to grocery shop. His mom is a hardcore conservative christian conspiracy theorist republican crazy so I'm sure that's where he got the "microwaves are sent from the government to kill you" idea from, or whatever it is that he believes. Thesoro posted:To be fair, a sock-a-day habit is substantially cheaper than a pack-a-day habit, and we don't look at smoking as a weirdo habit. Don't worry, he's also a smoker Oh and he's 39. razz fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Aug 29, 2013 |
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Aug 29, 2013 16:58
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spwrozek posted:Sounds like you are doing it right to me. Enjoy your life and the money you have extra. You are saving $12k a year on top of 401k + match and a pension. What else do people expect of you? Yeah, exactly. I guess if you want to retire early or something you might consider putting more towards savings, but I'd say you're ahead of most people by saving 12K a year.
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Aug 30, 2013 00:56
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dreesemonkey posted:I have another friend who could be wealthy, but ends up spending most of his money. My uncle has had over 50 vehicles. He says he can't even remember how many he's had. He just gets a new one whenever he wants one, like 2-3 times a year. Last time I saw him he had a F-150 truck and said he just saw it in the lot and pretty much just drove in and swapped vehicles right then and there. Honestly though if I had a trust fund that gave me $3,000 a month and my housing expenses were $300 a month I probably wouldn't even have a job. That's like $500 more a month than my husband and I make combined. If it's a trust fund that's going to last until the guy dies, and if they're not going into stupid amounts of debt (and with a $300 mortgage it sounds like they're pretty good with money or at least comfortable with a modest home), then yeah, let the guy get all the new cars he wants. It's not like he really has to save up for anything, he gets $36,000 a year just for existing.
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Sep 3, 2013 20:17
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SpelledBackwards posted:I don't know why else anyone would buy a membership at a car wash... I had to convince my ex that the "$500 unlimited car washes for a year!!!" package he wanted to buy was a really, really dumb idea. A car wash here is $10 for the ultra-premuim-deluxe-whatever wash. His reasoning was "Well if I wash my truck once a week it'll save me money!" Yeah, 20 bucks! He washed his truck about once a month IF THAT. Speaking of stupid "memberships" my school has a big food court in the student union and you can get a fountain drink there for like two bucks. The union sells these bigass cups that are $299 per year (yes two hundred and ninety-nine dollars PER YEAR) and you can get unlimited soda at the union if you have one. I just...who does that? Who thinks that's a good deal? Who buys that much soda? Seeing the school advertise that drives me crazy!
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Sep 6, 2013 02:31
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cstine posted:What kills me about the ACA is it removed some bad things from health insurance, but still allows the insurers to sell garbage insurance that's of absolutely no value to the vast majority of people. I dunno, I think having an $11k hospital bill would be preferable than a 300K hospital bill if poo poo really hit the fan. My mom had to have emergency surgery just about a year ago that saved her life, and she was in ICU for like three weeks. The entire bill was just shy of $500,000. Half a million dollars. And yes my parents have good insurance through my dad's work. But those kind of "catastrophic" things can, and do happen to healthy people.
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Oct 14, 2013 02:32
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melon cat posted:I've never understood people like her. They have strong incomes (with full benefits and a sweet pension plan with defined benefits) but are still up to their eyeballs in debt. I've seen people in better shape with half of her income. I've seen similar things with oil rig workers at Fort Mac- they pull in $2500 biweekly paycheques, and their accounts are still overdrawn. My ex's aunt and uncle were like that. We hung out with them a lot - they were young and always had us over and whatnot. Anyway they were loaded. They both made 6 figures. The aunt drove a HUMMER. Yes they literally had a Hummer, and the uncle had an Escalade. They took us on an all-expense-paid 4 day trip to Las Vegas for my birthday, we had been dating like <6 months. We had multiple $500+ meals. I heard on more than one occasion the uncle complaining about paying off their student loans. Like, what the gently caress? They both worked in insurance/sales, I doubt they had THAT much loan debt. Certainly not $200,000 or anything NEAR their annual salary.
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Oct 17, 2013 17:27
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NoControl posted:My brother decided to go to grad school to get a history of science masters, after he couldn't get a job with his BA. Surprisingly, he wasn't able to find a job with his MS either. He decided the only way to pay off his 70k in student loans is to become a lawyer, because they make lots of money right when they graduate. I'm pretty sure that even if he gets the 160k a year he thinks he will make upon graduating, I doubt it will make a meaningful dent in the 250k he is racking up in student loans. Thank god for Income Based Repayment.
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Oct 19, 2013 18:18
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Keetron posted:Yeah, but won't you be a slave for life or does this has a maximum period that it can run? It's actually a really legit deal. Your payments can't be more than 15% of your income (and it scales up or down if say, you get a better job, or lose your job or whatever). Also there's a minimum income you have to make before it kicks in at all, I think it's something like maybe $20K a year? All I know is I make like $16k a year and my IBR payments would be zero since apparently I am under that threshold (my loans are deferred right now) And it drops off totally after I think 25 years. You'll have to look it up. So theoretically if someone racked up $200K in debt and made minimum wage for the next 25 years they'd either never pay a dime of it or would never pay it all off in 25 years due to the minimum payments being so small, it would be "forgiven" before they paid it off. Edit: Here's the pertinent information. http://www.ibrinfo.org/what.vp.html Basically with IBR no one ever has to be crippled by student loan debt and it makes me crazy that people don't know about it. I still have friends who bitch about their student loan payments and they're totally eligible for IBR, they're literally just too lazy to sign up. I just put in my loan debt ($19,000) along with my current income and my husband's current income. My monthly payment would be $30. If I just paid the loan people directly, it would be around $180. Doing the math on that, if our incomes never increased (which would suck and isn't going to happen but whatever) after 25 years I'd have paid a total of $9,000. The rest would be forgiven. razz fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Oct 19, 2013 |
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Oct 19, 2013 20:12
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Oh I didn't know that. Still, the tax penalty is only going to be a fraction of the amount owed.
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Oct 19, 2013 20:34
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baquerd posted:Yeah, sure would suck if you're making $20k/yr, get $200k forgiven and end up owing roughly $50k in taxes though! Right? That would totally suck! I really, really hope that someone with a degree (supposedly, if they have that much debt) would at some point in that 25 year period be able to get a decent paying job and their IBR payments would go up, thus they'd hopefully pay it off before 25 years and not get hit with that tax penalty. That would be sad if you really were stuck making minim wage for 25 years  daggerdragon posted:Income-based payment plan to pay off the taxes incurred from the income-based repayment plan for student loans! 
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Oct 19, 2013 21:16
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Yeah, water is SO cheap in some parts of the country. When I lived with 3 other girls (obviously we used a lot of water) our bill was usually about $35. And $20 of that was a generic "sewer service charge" from the city that you got regardless of water usage, so we actually used less than $20/month in water. I'm sure all but about a dollar of that was from showering.
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Nov 6, 2013 21:39
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You should use that to your advantage. Friends/relatives with unused timeshares are the best. My husband and I got 6 nights in a couple REALLY nice timeshare resorts as a honeymoon gift from two friends who apparently have so many points that they can't use them all. I mean, there's no way we could have stayed in places this nice on our own. They were $500+/night 2 bedroom 2 bathroom fully furnished condos. We usually try to hit up the $49 Budget Inn when we're vacationing so it was a pretty sweet gift.
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Nov 6, 2013 22:28
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I really do think timeshares are dumb. What's the point of pre-paying for a vacation you may or may not take? I'm sure they make sense for people who travel and vacation a lot and know for a fact that they will always do so, but for average middle class people they make no sense.
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Nov 6, 2013 22:55
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I think the issue is that you aren't staying there "for free". You're staying there because your parents already paid for the stay up front. Your parents don't stay at a Mariott for free, they just get their Mariott punch-card punched because they're part of a club that they paid to join. I do think the points-based time shares are slightly less shady though. The one that my husband and I stayed in was a points-based timeshare. The way I understand it is, our friends bought a package for a certain amount of money that gets them a certain number of points to use per year. Some rooms cost more points (like the multiple-bedroom suites cost more than the one-bedrooms), resorts in certain cities cost more points, and certain times of year cost more points. These are also kind of nice because people will sell their extra/unused points for a fraction of what their worth, and you can end up getting a pretty good deal that way. But still, you're pre-paying for a vacation that you may or may not take, since most people don't know what their vacation schedule is going to be like a year in advance. If you're paying $10,000 a year for a timeshare, this is just my opinion, but you'd be better off not buying a timeshare and using that 10K for a vacation that you definitely know you're going to take, instead of paying up-front for a hypothetical future vacation. Also, some of those timeshares fill up FAST. I was browsing the locations for the timeshare our friends let us use, and one of them said you should reserve your room a year in advance. Unless you know for 100% certainty that you can take a vacation during that week a year from now, it's risky. razz fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 20:49
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Jastiger posted:Well I don't want to be misunderstood, I didn't mean to say it was "free". They still bought the time share. The thing is that it was modular and transferable. The room my wife and I stayed in was free because they bought a room there. That's a pretty good deal. And I'm pretty sure that if they don't go in a year it all gets put into a points bank. I don't know what the ratio is of points per dollar, but I know they were able to get 4 big suites in Florida because they skipped their stays the previous year. Would it be more efficient as you say? Probably, but I think there is value there in having flexibility. Well if your parents are happy with their timeshare and think it's a good deal for them, and they get enjoyment out of it, then it probably is good for them! I think the timeshares most people are talking about here are the predatory-seeming ones in resort towns and whatnot. It was funny, when my husband and I were staying in the timeshare, the timeshare people were ALL OVER on the boardwalk trying to sell us a timeshare. They had little booths set up and everything, and would stop us whenever we walked by. We're like "uh we're already staying there!". But I felt bad for those people. 99 out of 100 people just flat out ignore them.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:49
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balancedbias posted:Although I'm glad it works for them, remember that any fee/surcharge/other made up reason is on top of what they usually pay for the timeshare itself. That would bug the bejesus out of me. Yeah, even when I hear stories about "good" timeshares, it still is never enough to convince me that it would actually save me money. You could rent an apartment or condo for a week without a timeshare. Your options might even be more open if you weren't tied down to the ones the timeshare offers. If it's less than the cost of the timeshare + $300 then you're coming out ahead. Again, if it works for them and they're happy then all is good.
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Nov 9, 2013 23:59
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Sudden Infant Def Syndrome posted:I tell all door to door salespeople I rent. They don't bother after that. This never worked for me with the carpet cleaning people. They come to your house and want to give you a "free" carpet cleaning so you'll want to buy their vacuum. They came over multiple times when I was in college renting a house. I usually told them "You see the carpet in this room right here? This is the only carpet in the whole house. Plus I rent and the landlord steam-cleans the carpet every year anyway". Then they would say some stuff about "saving money" like it would actually save ME money if I cleaned my own carpet instead of the landlord doing it for free because he owned a carpet cleaner. Seriously there was only carpet in one room of the house, it took the landlord 30 minutes to steam-clean it and he never charged us. I would tell them this and they still did not understand why I would turn down a free carpet cleaning. Maybe because I don't want some stranger to come in and move my furniture around so they can clean my 10-year old carpet that gets cleaned regularly anyway? One time I saw an ad for a Kirby vacuum on Craigslist. The lady stated in the ad that she was selling it because she didn't have carpet in her house and never used it. Must have been one hell of a sales pitch to sell a $2,000 vacuum to someone who doesn't even have carpet in their house!
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Nov 11, 2013 20:09
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SpelledBackwards posted:But you can reverse the flow and use it to paint your fence! That's hilarious. That would totally destroy everything. Probably including the fence. The people that came to my neighborhood were often rude and pushy. They'd stand with a foot inside the door and practically be in my house when I talked to them, they'd get real close to my face so I'd have to back up and they'd inch into the house. Not cool. One guy actually said "Fine by me, have a nice life" in a sarcastic tone when I told him he couldn't come in my house.
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Nov 11, 2013 22:44
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I still can't believe this is a line they told me, as if that would convince me to buy it.
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Sounds a lot like one of my friends. She lives in rural Alabama (insanely low cost of living area) and lives with her mom. She makes $60K a year and pays no rent or bills and she's just this constant whirlwind of drama and debt and getting manicures and massages and "Oh my student loans, I'll never pay them off" and buying a new SUV every couple of years and buying a $4 coffee every day and having (and breaking) the newest phone on the market whenever possible. If I wasn't good friends with her I would think I was making all this poo poo up, she's like the perfect caricature of being bad with money. I let her live with me rent-free for 2 months and she got mad at me when I asked her for $60 to replace multiple things of mine she broke while living on my couch, while making like double my salary. A guy she worked with said she brought in donuts for the crew EVERY DAY. I finally told her to move out and she somehow convinced a "lady from church" to let her rent a room from her for $100 a month and of course this was just an outrage, $100 a month for rent, how dare she charge so much? Did I mention she made more money than me and I got along fine paying $350/month for rent plus utility bills? She's hopeless. Some people just can't figure out money or don't want to. I tried to help her but she wouldn't let me. EDIT: I realized that typing that out felt familiar, I posted about her in this thread before haha She's really the worst person with money that I've ever met.What's funny is this all happened like 3 years ago. Every time I talk to her she says the SAME stuff about having no money. Exact same story. Still living with mom. razz fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 22:57
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Jeffrey posted:That sounds unbelievably frustrating. I want to see a pie chart of her expenses so badly. I wish someone would give me a place to rent for free, I wouldn't spit it in their face like that... No kidding. We almost lost our friendship because of it. I had to buy an extra trash can because she could not walk 15 feet to the kitchen trashcan, she would throw used tissues on the floor or shove them in the couch... I asked her if she would clean the house before she left (mind you I charged her NOTHING to stay there and NEVER asked her for rent, utility bills, or help around the house except this one time). I asked if she would vacuum and dust and make sure the kitchen was clean and she said no problem. I come home and the only thing different was that her stuff was gone. I asked her if she had vacuumed and she said she had. Odd that the canister was empty and I found multiple Q-tips next to the couch.
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Nov 11, 2013 23:07
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NancyPants posted:What confuses me about this is why this situation went on for more than a week. You aren't paying rent? You're cleaning. Those are the rules. If a grown adult were living on my couch without paying bills, AND left trash on the floor because they were too lazy to get up, the second time that happened, that adult would be out on their rear end. I have kicked out siblings for this bullshit. Well, she had just moved to my town (I basically got her the job) and I told her she could crash with me until she got her first paycheck in a month so she could put down a deposit on her own place. Of course she was TOTALLY broke when she got here. We had been friends for a while and you know, I didn't know quite how big of a slob she was. We worked together and lived in hotels so it always seemed kind of a mess but I figured that's pretty typical when 2 people are living in one room out of a suitcase. Nope, turns out she was that big of a slob. I really wanted her out after 2 weeks or so but I'm a nice person and she was my friend so I let her stay. Then she got her paycheck and still hadn't found a place after 2 or 3 more weeks and broke a lamp, a hair dryer, and a can opener (how?) without telling me. The lamp thing pissed me off but also made me laugh - it was one of those tall standing floor lamps and she somehow broke the 5 foot tall pole and "fixed" it by wrapping duct tape around it. As if I wouldn't notice. Anyway I learned my lesson about letting friends crash with me for free! Never again, and I mean NEVER. The sense of entitlement some people have is through the roof. And unfortunately you never really "know" your friends until they're in your living room 24/7.
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Nov 12, 2013 01:54
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See, to me that's not stupid, that's awesome. What do most rich people do with extra money? Throw it in the stock market or some other account where it is effectively removed from the economy. These rich people are stimulating the economy and supporting a your friend's local business as well. I like to see rich people spend their money. In an ideal world, that's what all rich people would do - spend lots of money, and spend it locally. Put more money into the hands of the townspeople, you know? If they're in debt or not paying their bills or whatever, I'd change my tune. But that story seems like a net positive for everyone, and the economy.
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Nov 20, 2013 18:02
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:01 |
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Well you know, it's money that's not being spent is what I really mean. And I totally admit that I am a financial retard. Like, if I am independently wealthy and I save one million dollars a year, that money really only benefits me. If I am independently wealthy and I save a half million dollars a year and spend a half million dollars a year buying things locally, that's going to benefit a lot more people. Rich people spending money is a good thing. It's the whole basis behind trickle-down economics which doesn't work because most rich people aren't rich because they spend a lot of money, they're rich because they don't spend a lot of money. And when rich people are spending their money on tangible things, things start to get objectively better for more people and the notion that the super-wealthy are a positive factor in the economy and the welfare of less-wealthy people starts to become true. At least that's my take on things as a poor person. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong (totally not being sarcastic).
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Nov 20, 2013 20:44
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