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Why did you make this thread if you're just going to ignore all the advice people give you and keep doing whatever you want to?
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Jul 19, 2013 21:37
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Slow Motion posted:I'm going to use the car today! But just 5 miles across the city and back. I could find parking for it outside my building. Two blocks away would be $160/mo rather than $225. Two miles a away at a friends house would be free. But I really like having it at my finger tips. Please buy a god drat bike. Slow Motion posted:Time is money and all that jazz. You know what is money? Paying $300 a month on a car that you own.
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Jul 19, 2013 22:00
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moana posted:Why did you make this thread if you're just going to ignore all the advice people give you and keep doing whatever you want to? Guys, its okay. Look at his budget after I entered it into YNAB. He's all good   (Assuming he gets paid once a month, his expenses never change, and he pays bare minimums on his credit, he has 0% interest, and everything in his life remains static) Edit: Oh, and if he only eats $230 worth of food a month. All of which he cooks at home. Edit2: That $3000 you have to budget is basically our checking account, slowly dwindling down to zero - this is at your current pace of spending. Shadowhand00 fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 19, 2013 22:05
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$2,000 a year for loving parking alone?!? Wow. And you have the audacity to think you're getting a great deal because it's better than $225 a month. You're devoting almost two months of your floating money just for the privilege of parking two blocks away from where you're supposed to be. Walk or get a bike man. Don't try to LOOK rich. BE rich.
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Jul 19, 2013 22:30
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Demented Guy posted:$2,000 a year for loving parking alone?!? Wow. Come on... we all know how good it feels to just have a car waiting for you in the parking lot when you need it.
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Jul 19, 2013 22:34
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Slow Motion posted:I'm going to use the car today! But just 5 miles across the city and back. I could find parking for it outside my building. Two blocks away would be $160/mo rather than $225. Two miles a away at a friends house would be free. But I really like having it at my finger tips. Time is money and all that jazz. Time isn't money. They're almost mutually exclusive - you can spend money to save yourself time, or you can spend time to save yourself money. Problem is, you're already out of money to spend. Now you're in debt, spending future time (and money) you don't even have yet in order to have minor conveniences now. Do you think it's worth cutting your retirement, making quality-of-life sacrifices in your future that could affect you for thirty years of your life or more, just so you can spend the next two years in a penthouse instead of a regular apartment and have a fancy parking space for the car you don't use? "Time is money" doesn't fit your situation unless you get paid more for having a shorter commute. If you don't pay off those debts fast, the only ones making money off your time will be the ones charging you double-digit interest.
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Jul 20, 2013 00:25
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moana posted:Why did you make this thread if you're just going to ignore all the advice people give you and keep doing whatever you want to? well that IS the BFC poster modus operandi, after all
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Jul 20, 2013 03:43
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Yesssssss fresh blood for the sacrifice to please us. Keep posting in this thread, Slow Motion, because you sure as gently caress ain't learning any time soon so the pain you go through will be hilarious.
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Jul 20, 2013 04:30
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Honestly, from a cost perspective, you're better off ditching your car and just RENTING a car from enterprise on the few days you want to run around town with a car. You can get a decent rental for like $50 a day which is a hell of a lot cheaper than maintaining a car, parking, etc for something you barely use. I'd start there. Also, your housing costs are way too high for someone without a huge amount of investments/savings backed up. Unless you live a very high cost area (NYC, DC, etc) you shouldn't be spending so much...look for places in the 1k range and you'll still find a very nice place and only be spending HALF of what you are currently. Ditch the cable tv...get Netflix/hulu plus account and save yourself $200 a month. Also you can probably get a promotional rate on your internet if you call them and complain. I used to pay $29 a month for 12D/1U DSL from centurylink that they wanted to charge me $50 for. Same goes for your cell plan, cut back from the unlimited everything plan and just get what you need. Cut back on going out to 1 paid event per week (movie, bar, dining, etc), the rest of the time read a book, go to the park, work out, or do other things that don't cost so much. You realize your bar tab is higher than what some people pay in rent?? You have a ton budgeted for clothes and misc items....way too much, you should be able to cut that in half at least. Based on what you have coming in, you should be able to live very comfortably on 2-2.5k per month. With all those savings you've have the debt done in just over a year and if you keep those habits going, you'd be putting away tons of money to get a real house or a very nice investment portfolio. I only wish I was making that much because it would be so much easier than the 30k a year I live on now.
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Jul 20, 2013 06:27
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I thought I'd do a pie chart for you so you'd have a visual representation of where your money is going, perhaps it'll help give you some perspective. Are you still living with a flatmate? You mentioned it once in the Breakup Megathread. If so, is your rent just your share or is that total rent for the place? What are you currently doing with the leftover money that isn't going to pay for your ex's rent? Speaking of which,  man stop sleeping with your ex-wife. It's likely going to gently caress with your ability to concentrate on getting this financial poo poo sorted out.If you really want nitpicky critique, post a complete expenditure breakdown by category of your accounts + cash in hand (that means keeping a picture of your receipts) over the last month/s and next month--goons can help you work out a more concrete budget then. And help spot where exactly you're haemorrhaging money, if any. I mean really, percentage wise your expenses could be much worse--it's mainly the rent and your ex-wife's rent taking a monumental chunk out of your take home pay. Move somewhere half as expensive, and once you've stopped paying for the ex-wife's rent you've got like 43% of your take home money to throw at the debt/build up an emergency fund. What moana said, basically. Also, holy moly 6 credit cards. I have 2 and I think that's excessive. Is this an American thing? Do/did you need all of them? e: I didn't see Slow Motion mention anything about cable tv, did I miss that somewhere?
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Jul 20, 2013 07:41
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Yes getting a store credit card to access a discount is an American thing and I too think it's loving stupid, but you're not going to win that fight. Holy poo poo, though, the OP is sleeping with his ex-wife he's currently in the process of breaking up with?!? loving hell, please link us to the drama there. That's incredible. OP, you have exceptional judgement.
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Jul 20, 2013 07:56
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http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3386887&userid=59274&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post417589845Slow Motion posted:Ok I know I'm not supposed to drama queen so much in here. But I feel like I should report my bad behavior mostly so that I can't pretend it didn't happen. I helped the ex wife take a couple things to the dump on Sunday. And then we had a moscow mule on the beach. That really should have been the end of it. Dated the 19th of July, so yeah. Actually, that brings up another point--where's the budget item line for legal fees for the divorce?
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Jul 20, 2013 08:04
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Dear Internet, Today I hosed girl #9 since I dumped my stupid wife, oh then I hosed her too after loving a runway model, also I make so much money I don't even care about credit cards and poo poo, just as long as I can drink, smoke pot, and play pizzle and dragons, and tell the internet about it. What should I do? 
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Jul 20, 2013 08:13
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I would just like to comment on the brilliant, prophetic and almost meta-gimmick name of this thread.
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Jul 20, 2013 10:02
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You pay as much for your "penthouse" in rent as I do for a mortgage on a 1990 sq ft house. In Massachusetts, an hour away from Boston. Just to give you some perspective. Sell the car, use the money to pay off a large chunk of debt, and move to a cheaper place. You do not deserve to live that extravagantly if you owe that much on credit cards.
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Jul 20, 2013 14:19
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Nam Taf posted:
See above, but also make sure to read the earlier posts where he mentions how she punched him, bit him, put things on fire in their home and other assorted madness. Subscribing to this thread and the e/n one because it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion! 
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Jul 20, 2013 16:00
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Lyz posted:You pay as much for your "penthouse" in rent as I do for a mortgage on a 1990 sq ft house. In Massachusetts, an hour away from Boston. Just to give you some perspective. Do we actually know where he lives? I'd guess since it's 2k for a "pent house" it's some midwestern suburb, but until we know I don't think you can compare. 2k rent wouldn't even get you a 500 sq ft studio in many/most parts of manhattan unless you lived in Harlem
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Jul 20, 2013 19:32
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I'd like to reiterate that stealing from yourself in the form of borrowing against your 401k is a really poor idea. You are not in dire enough circumstances to justify this move. Downgrade or sell your car. Downgrade your apartment. Keep your receipts and track your expenses better, it works. I used to go out for lunch a lot at work, thinking it wasn't that much money since I usually aimed for less than $10. $7 here, $9 there.. no big deal, right? I started writing down the total spent on lunch every day for a few weeks and realized that I could have been saving significant money on food, not to mention gas, if I packed my lunch a few days a week or ate from our cafeteria which is much cheaper. Yeah, it kinda sucks because you get bored of leftovers and turkey sandwiches, but I like money more than food.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:40
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I would like to see pictures of this "penthouse" because in the OP he made it sound like maybe it wasn't that great. I think the phrasing was "as much of a penthouse as this place has but I still like it".
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Jul 21, 2013 14:51
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nyerf posted:I thought I'd do a pie chart for you so you'd have a visual representation of where your money is going, perhaps it'll help give you some perspective. I don't have cable tv. I don't even own a tv. The flatmate was a temporary thing for the 3 months directly after my (now failed) sever with the ex wife. I moved into a spare room in a coworkers condo and I paid her $700 a month for rent. In a way that contributed to deciding I had enough for a 2k apartment. Along with the ex wife's rent it was nearly the same price. As for the whole 'penthouse' thing I will say that it's not some crazy luxury suite. My apartment is a 700 square foot one bedroom top floor corner unit in a building that finished construction four weeks ago. It does have top-of-the-line appliances and the building has nice amenities. Calling it a corner doesn't do it justice because the building is so skinny at my end that I have a room with 3 walls of windows. I reviewed my lease and it would cost me $3100 to break the lease early. I walk five minutes to work. Someone said commute time only matters if I would get paid for it. Well I do. If I bill an extra hour a day I get paid for it. So a half hour on either end of the day over 24 working days and $75/hr is $1,800/month (pre-tax). That assumes of course that I actually work the extra hour and don't gently caress around on the internet. I definitely appreciate that I have gains to be made in cutting expenses. Parking my car in particular seems like a great place to shave some serious dollars. But in terms of the tools available to me working more seems like the most powerful option. The above calculation holds just as well if I don't Facebook for an hour every day at work. And it holds if I were to commit to staying an hour later every evening. Right now my plan is to hit the problem from both sides. First I'll cut the egregious discretionary spending. Then I'll commit to some larger hours targets for myself at work. I'll run the numbers to figure out what I need to do to pay off the rest of the credit cards with my December bonus. That way I won't have to dick around with a 401k loan either. Oh and if the vultures want something to pick at I did save my Costco receipt yesterday. Here's a slightly rolled up summary: Alcohol: $108. This was super high because I wanted to stock my liquor cabinet at my new place. I don't expect to buy more than $20 or so in the future. The only non spirits in my alcohol purchase were $16 worth of champagne. Frozen meats: $50. The first meats that I've stocked in the new apartment: chicken breasts, meatballs, and hamburger patties. This is way more meat than I will eat in a month. Coffee: $14 Celery: $3 Eggs: $8 sixty eggs Greek yogurt: $15 Canned Chili: $11 Cheese: $8 Salsa: $5 This will be plenty of food for a month at least. I supplement my diet with free fresh fruit at work.
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Jul 21, 2013 18:10
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Slow Motion posted:I don't have cable tv. I don't even own a tv. The flatmate was a temporary thing for the 3 months directly after my (now failed) sever with the ex wife. I moved into a spare room in a coworkers condo and I paid her $700 a month for rent. In a way that contributed to deciding I had enough for a 2k apartment. Along with the ex wife's rent it was nearly the same price. FIGURE OUT A PLAN. It makes me sad to see people like you because you could be living one of the best lives in human history - financial independence in fifteen years. Hell, then the job could roll over to two other people in your lifetime and that one job is responsible for three amazing lives. Instead, you're planning on working 45 years, being mediocre, and just sucking in general. drat. You're negotiating with the posters here. This is your life, get a plan, be an adult.
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Jul 21, 2013 20:47
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Two pages of advice, and you ignored ALL of it. Wow. And I love how your idea of cutting expenses consists of switching to a slightly cheaper parking lot. All your big ticket items are still there, and instead of slashing them you are choosing to work more hours. The problem is that because you have zero discipline, you will use your increased income to justify spending even more extravagantly. On top of all this, you are still sleeping with your ex-wife. 
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Jul 21, 2013 20:49
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No Wave posted:This is all crap. You could easily find someone to take over your lease or negotiate with your landlord to transfer the lease. Like, this is the real world, not student-land, things are flexible, cutting the costs won't make you work less. I feel like you're projecting your own goals and priorities on to the OP. He wants to get his finances under control, meaning paying off his debt, saving appropriately, and understanding where his money is going. This is all very possible for him to do in the short term (say, the next year), without giving up his apartment or his 5 minute commute, both of which he clearly values very highly. Assuming he doesn't hate his job, I think it makes a lot of sense to focus on further increasing his income while cutting back on extravagant dining/alcohol/entertainment spending and paying down debt as aggressively as possible within that framework.
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Jul 21, 2013 21:23
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greatZebu posted:I feel like you're projecting your own goals and priorities on to the OP. He wants to get his finances under control, meaning paying off his debt, saving appropriately, and understanding where his money is going. This is all very possible for him to do in the short term (say, the next year), without giving up his apartment or his 5 minute commute, both of which he clearly values very highly. Assuming he doesn't hate his job, I think it makes a lot of sense to focus on further increasing his income while cutting back on extravagant dining/alcohol/entertainment spending and paying down debt as aggressively as possible within that framework. Going forward, I'll try to focus on points where the OP is being dishonest with us/himself, like when he talks about the cost of breaking the lease or when he implies that cutting costs and increasing income are mutually exclusive.
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Jul 21, 2013 21:32
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Slow Motion posted:Celery: $3 Goddamn BFC gets its panties twisted sometimes. Just ignore the haters, cut the celery, and you'll be fine.
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Jul 22, 2013 07:08
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I didn't see any line item budgets for peanut butter OR raisins, what the gently caress are you doing buying celery if you're not making ants on a log?
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Jul 22, 2013 07:19
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Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha "Help everybody I'm in debt I plan to cut my stupid expenses but first let me pay over $100 to stock my liquor cabinet so I can drink away the misery of my pitiful financial existence every night" You clearly do not have any priorities and you don't give a single poo poo about fixing your situation.
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Jul 22, 2013 11:12
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Nam Taf posted:Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha The best part is that once he starts working more, he will also drink more to deal with the stress.
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Jul 22, 2013 11:21
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enraged_camel posted:The best part is that once he starts working more, he will also drink more to deal with the stress. His expenses will just scale accordingly, by booze or any other medium, simply because it's got nothing to do with how little or how much he works and everything to do with his attitude towards money. He's the textbook example of zero financial discipline.
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Jul 22, 2013 12:36
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This is about 70% of a joke, but any mods want to check this dude's IPs against Zaurg? Seems like a Mullholland Dr. Zaurg masturbation fantasy. - Make a bunch of money? Check. - Divorcing the wife? Check. - Still banging the wife? Check. - So much crazy mad pussy on the side? Check. Oh please help me I make a lot of money and if I wait two months until I stop paying for things it will look like I've made great financial progress thanks. LOL have you read my e/n bragpost about all the sex I'm having with the entire female population? Oh woe is me, all this money and vag falling from the heavens  Moana I'm sorry if this post isn't helpful at all. I'll take a probation, it had to be said.
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Jul 22, 2013 13:02
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Nam Taf posted:His expenses will just scale accordingly, by booze or any other medium, simply because it's got nothing to do with how little or how much he works and everything to do with his attitude towards money. He's the textbook example of zero financial discipline. I meant it in the sense that he's going to make even poorer financial and relationship decisions when drunk.
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Jul 22, 2013 16:14
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Nam Taf posted:His expenses will just scale accordingly, by booze or any other medium, simply because it's got nothing to do with how little or how much he works and everything to do with his attitude towards money. He's the textbook example of zero financial discipline. I'm guessing the OP is an attorney. I've worked with several attorneys, and to all of them, lifestyle and image are VERY important - cars, clothes, homes, spouses, and yes, even liquor cabinets all have to be the flashiest. It's extremely unlikely that he'll cut back on anything relating to his image.
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Jul 22, 2013 16:23
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He's a financial consultant, iirc from another thread. Let that sink in for a moment.
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Jul 22, 2013 17:14
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moana posted:He's a financial consultant, iirc from another thread. Let that sink in for a moment. But is he a financial consultant in that he advises people on managing their money, or is he the salesman kind of financial consultant who cold-calls people to sell them on certain kinds of investments? Cause I've known a few of the latter, and the image thing applies to them as well.
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Jul 22, 2013 18:15
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My company consults to corporations, not people (gently caress you SCOTUS). And I'm no consultant, not yet at least. If I was these debts would be trivial. Part of my lack of interest in saving is the belief that I'll get there and then save. Analyst is my current title.
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Jul 22, 2013 18:51
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Slow Motion posted:My company consults to corporations, not people (gently caress you SCOTUS). And I'm no consultant, not yet at least. If I was these debts would be trivial. Part of my lack of interest in saving is the belief that I'll get there and then save. Analyst is my current title. So if I'm understanding you correctly, you had always planned to save once you are earning above a certain amount? At what point would you be earning enough to start saving? And once you reach that point, what percentage of your earnings are you planning to save?
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Jul 22, 2013 18:56
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April posted:So if I'm understanding you correctly, you had always planned to save once you are earning above a certain amount? At what point would you be earning enough to start saving? And once you reach that point, what percentage of your earnings are you planning to save? I'll start worrying about saving when my income stops going up by more than 20% every year, or when I'm comfortable with my life and don't feel the need to spend anymore. In the past I've felt comfortable at $55k a year and saved $15k of that in a savings account. So who knows. Right now is a weird period in my life. I know that's not a very satisfactory answer. I certainly think I should set a short term savings goal of 6 months living expenses. For now I'll concentrate on the debt though.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:04
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April posted:So if I'm understanding you correctly, you had always planned to save once you are earning above a certain amount? At what point would you be earning enough to start saving? And once you reach that point, what percentage of your earnings are you planning to save? Op, life happens now! Change your habits and live an awesome life, and do it now. You need some friends to tell you to make the harder decision now so you can enjoy everything life throws at you in say a year. Also, what degree and how much experience do you have in field. I'm curious because financial analysis is something I find interesting and it's semi related to my soon to be field. Thanks.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:07
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Slow Motion posted:I'll start worrying about saving when my income stops going up by more than 20% every year, or when I'm comfortable with my life and don't feel the need to spend anymore. In the past I've felt comfortable at $55k a year and saved $15k of that in a savings account. So who knows. Right now is a weird period in my life. I genuinely don't understand this mindset. "I will spend everything I earn, until I am happy with my life. Also, once I stop making more money, I'll start putting it away." It just seems really backwards. And not having definite goals such as "If I am earning X, I will invest Y" sounds like a good way to give yourself a license to blow as much as you want, for as long as you want. Really, I don't think the debt is a problem, or the lack of savings, but your attitude is terrible. As other posters have said here, what were you hoping to get out of this thread?
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Jul 22, 2013 19:10
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Slow Motion posted:I'll start worrying about saving when my income stops going up by more than 20% every year, or when I'm comfortable with my life and don't feel the need to spend anymore. In the past I've felt comfortable at $55k a year and saved $15k of that in a savings account. So who knows. Right now is a weird period in my life. This is so stupidly wrong headed that you should just close the thread now, live your lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, then come back under a new handle when you have a few unexpected children, ruinous credit, unbearable debt, and a third of the income that you were banking on.
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Jul 22, 2013 19:10
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