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I don't think you should move more than a couple hours drive from where you are. Half your posts are things like "I've got an old friend's wedding coming up" or "I went for drinks with my brother-in-law." Your whole life revolves around family and friends. If you move far away you will be lonely and miserable and you will quit. Take it slow. Don't waste time interviewing for far-off jobs.
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Apr 21, 2015 20:07
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You seem to be a bit easily sold on things. My feeling is you'll get an awesome offer in bumfuck nowhere 6 hours away, and take it because the interviewer persuaded you it is fantastic. Then when you move your family there you'll realize that you hate living in a place with no nice restaurants and no friends or family to hang out with. You'll be driving back home every weekend to keep in contact, and it'll be exhausting. You'll need a new car to do this. Your wife will have to quit her job to move, and might not be able to get anything better than part-time minimum wage in the new town. You'll end up with not much more money than before with the extra car payment and loss of your wife's income. Then eventually you and your wife will confess to each other that you are miserable where you are, and you are going to quit your job and move back home hoping for the best. People here will rip the poo poo out of you for it, and you'll be saying "I did what you people told me! I sacrificed my happiness at my old job for a higher salary, just like you told me to!"
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Apr 23, 2015 16:39
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Knyteguy posted:Well we won't be driving home every weekend from Virginia which is the top prospect so far. That's 2,500 miles away. I am trying to consider the fact that my wife could lose her income especially in a rural town. It won't do us any good at all if I get a job paying $90,000/yr and then my wife loses her job which means our gross income goes up by $1,000. However opportunities to move up have been thrown out there. Oh, that's even worse. I like your thread, you are clearly a great guy. You talk about nothing but friends and family. You need to "know thyself" and understand that if you pack up and leave all your loved ones thousands of miles away, you will be miserable. No amount of money will replace friends you went to high school with. If your mother gets sick, how will you bear it being too far away to visit regularly? Don't forget to factor in the eye-watering cost of daycare. It might well end up that your wife can't get a job worth paying daycare. Is she OK with being a stay-at-home mom? It drives some women crazy, especially if they are in a new place with no friends and all the other moms are in tight-knit cliques.
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Apr 23, 2015 17:57
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I can't see any point in studying hard and spending money on education for a pay cut. Could you work toward retail management?
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May 18, 2015 20:17
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Horking Delight posted:Also maybe I'm just biased against recruiters but you do know he just wants to place you somewhere as soon as possible for the commission, right, so he's just going to try and get you to take whatever the first offer he can get for you is? Right. The recruiter wants to get KnyteGuy placed ASAP so that he can move onto the next person. It is better for him to get 2 people into $100,000 a year jobs (commission on $200,000) than one person into a $120,000 a year job (commission on $120,000). So the recruiter has no incentive to get KnyteGuy the absolute best job possible, just a good enough one. Usually this works for people, because they need a job *yesterday* since they are unemployed. But KnyteGuy already has a great job, and can take his time and play hard to get in order to get a great job in a great place at a great salary. But he is very vulnerable to salespeople as his personality is impulsive, which meshes well with the salesperson patter of trying to close a deal as fast as possible, even if it is not the best possible deal. The sheer number of interviews this recruiter has lined up for KnyteGuy in completely random locations suggest he is not giving KnyteGuy the service he needs, but just flinging poo poo at the wall and hoping something sticks. No doubt KnyteGuy's employer has a fair inkling that something is up due to the random and often-changed days off, and might already be pondering replacing him. But the recruiter doesn't care about that.
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May 22, 2015 16:59
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I'm wondering whether this whole thread is serving KnyteGuy wrong. You've taught him the basics of pinching the pennies, but I'm not sure the few hundred bucks here and there on restaurants and fun stuff was as significant as the thousands burned on big, impulsive decisions like breaking leases and moving across country to an area with higher cost of living. San Diego isn't a walkable area as far as I know, so they'll probably need a second car just so the wife doesn't go stir crazy stuck at home all the time.
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May 25, 2015 16:30
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Iron Lung posted:Have you even read the thread? The entire thread has been trying to beat it into his head that while saving $10 a day on energy drinks is important, actually planning on big decisions like breaking a lease (for the 2nd time in a year) is extremely important. San Diego is beautiful and in a dream world I'd want to live there too, but this seems like a bad plan, even without know the job details. Once again something that started with "lets test the waters" and changing to "we're moving away from everything we love, this is the best offer (maybe!)!" in a few short weeks. I read the whole thread and my impression was that KnyteGuy was getting more comfortable with small acts of self-denial (skipping that bachelor's party) but thinking that $100 saved there made up for very big sums of money blown on large life decisions that felt good. "Penny wise, pound foolish" as the old wives say. The ability to say "no" to Starbucks is clearly not the same skill as saying "Let's proceed cautiously on the job hunt."
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May 25, 2015 19:01
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I think you *do* need to move jobs within the next year or two, but what is worrying is that you are jumping at the very first offer. That's like someone leaving a bad relationship (good) and marrying the first person who goes on a date with them (the rebound, bad.) Normally, when a person is job-hunting they can't be picky, because they just lost the last one. They are burning through their savings. They need a job in the next couple of months. A recruiter who can say "I can place you in a new job with a higher salary within the month!" is like an angel sent from heaven. But you are not unemployed. You can play "hard to get." Employed job-seekers in high-demand careers are highly desirable. When a person is unemployed, potential employers think "This guy doesn't really want to work for us. He's desperate. He probably got fired for surfing porn on the internet." But with a guy who is employed and putting out feelers, the roles are reversed. Employers think "How can we poach this guy? He must be getting a lot of offers. How can we persuade him to work for us?" I think the main deal with this offer you have got is that it depends on you being a workaholic, and you are a laid-back new dad. I don't think your wife is going to like you working all the time and leaving her alone with a pre-verbal baby in a new town. You need to find out how much you'll make from your base salary, and draw up a budget with that, which assumes your expenses will increase by 1.5 (as people have said that is the cost of living difference.) Does it still work? Find out how much a typical rent in a nice area costs. How much does a good daycare cost if your wife wants to work? Assume you'll need two cars in this budget. The received wisdom on this forum is that you should not have two cars, but I can see from your posts you are *this close* to cracking and getting a second car. You assume you can live close enough to work that you can bike, but I think this is a case where your sunny optimism is getting the better of you. Is there a nearby suburb with nice, affordable houses, low crime, and a safe road to work?
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May 25, 2015 20:20
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Knyteguy posted:I'm not really all that laid back; I feel like I'm pretty driven. I've spent thousands of hours trying to get businesses going. I've cancelled family trips to work on businesses (microscope reseller in this case, which has been worth it). I spent the entirety of last weekend plus a lot of time after work getting my software ready for an initial release and creating a website. Y'all can see it here: http://www.hometheatertablet.com/ realize it's a work in progress though. The site is a little schizophrenic right now so I'll be working on that. But I did that from start to finish in a weekend (not including writing the software) including most of the articles, so you can imagine that wasn't a fast process. That doesn't include my biggest project to date which ate up I don't know how many hours, and there's still lots to go. And countless more anecdotes. I think those things are interesting and worthwhile, but still a little impulsive. You've started a bunch of little businesses but not really devoted yourself to any one. I guess they didn't go anywhere? Or you got bored of them? One weekend is *most definitely* "a fast process." By "laid back" I don't mean "lazy." I mean you are a chill guy who goes with the flow and always looks on the bright side. Not really compatible with working at the office until 10pm while your wife asks where you are so she can finally throw the baby at someone else and get 5 minutes to herself!
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May 25, 2015 21:01
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Knyteguy posted:I can't say on the second car being a need, but I think I've shown a degree of self-control with holding out on a second car. I'd really like to avoid needing one. If you move your family into a lovely area to save on having a second car, the same thing as happened with the apartment you just complained about will happen again. (don't buy a car right now though - you'll just have to pay to ship it, and you don't need it yet.)
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May 26, 2015 22:10
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Perhaps instead of jobs, you should be looking at places. Where would you like to live, in terms of lifestyle, career opportunities, climate, cost-of-living and proximity to friends/family?
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May 27, 2015 02:34
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Knyteguy posted:I love my family a lot guys, but how come you guys are pushing harder for proximity than I am? Are all of you born and raised in the same city? Because you talk of nothing else but hanging out with your family and friends. You moved to be closer to your mother. You depend on your sister-in-law for childcare. It suggests that family are a higher than average priority for you. I moved several times for my career and personal satisfaction, leaving family and friends behind every time. But I'm not all that big on family. What works for one person won't work for another, and you are giving the impression of being a guy who maintains strong long-term relationships above all else, and would spend a *lot* of money on visiting them several times a year if you moved away. Or even getting horribly homesick and moving home as soon as a family crisis occurs. "Know thyself"
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May 27, 2015 17:40
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Financial independence guys actually *enjoy* extreme thrift. They are not sitting there going "God, I'd love a Hawaiian vacation right now, BUT I MUST NOT. SELF-DENIAL!" - they are like, "Look at those rubes spending the price of a decent car on a Hawaiian vacation, when I'm having more fun camping in the woods in a tent I got off Craigslist for $10, fishing for a more delicious supper than even a five-star chef could make." Knyteguy should accept that his real goal is to live within his means and retire comfortably at 60, not to scrimp and save and retire at 40. That's not to say that he should give up on the budget thing, but FI is kind of flavour-of-the-month right now, and not for everyone.
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Jun 2, 2015 14:25
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Knyteguy posted:Lol a recruiter from a company I've never worked with before just called my boss and asked if I was available to speak regarding job openings. Be sneaky? Call him back when you get home. Unless you think that you don't want to work with such an incompetent recruiter (seems reasonable.)
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Jul 14, 2015 21:36
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Talk about unprofessional. It sucks too, because he specialized in west coast remote work but I had to loudly blow him off as my boss is in the office. I would have at least heard him out.
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You have more hair-brained schemes than a sitcom dad.
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Jul 18, 2015 18:06
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Hiding purchases from a thread you specifically started to coach you on avoiding unnecessary purchases is worrying. And you are being so hostile about it. It's like an alcoholic telling his wife to throw out any booze he buys, but then buying some anyway and snapping at her when she throws it away. Everyone could see you were planning to buy another car. You are no Mr Money Mustache and you clearly loathe having to share and bike. Why hide it? Buying an Oculus Rift is just an expensive hobby. If you had wanted to blow some money with a chance of making some, an old iPhone and a developer account would have had an outside chance of making money back. The Oculus is just tempting nerd junk. You need more time than Sunday afternoons to develop worthwhile apps for it. It'll be in the garage gathering dust in a year. Sharing your plans with the thread would have helped you distinguish between the car purchase (inevitable) and the Oculus (pointless).
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Sep 20, 2015 17:38
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Honestly, I think you should get a car. But not impulsively. Plan and budget for it. Bike on nice days.
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Sep 28, 2015 21:59
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I think it's also important to acknowledge purchases that are actually important. The second car wasn't just a whim. He was talking about it for months. He should have saved up for it and planned which car to get, instead of nobly holding out for months and then completely cracking and getting a sports car, like a failed dieter eating the whole box of cookies. He didn't want to acknowledge that he really wanted a second car because the received wisdom of this thread and the financial independence community is to have *AT MOST* one car. But "financial independence" is a whole lifestyle that you need to buy into much harder than Knyteguy does, in order to make it work. I think he should stick with the sports car for a bit, because chopping and changing all the time isn't helping him. Don't sell it just to please the thread, Knyteguy. Use it a bit and see if you come to hate the impracticality of it on your own.
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Sep 30, 2015 19:16
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Ergo carriers are great. I had one. You can always get baby carriers for practically nothing second hand, if you know where to look, because a lot of people get given them in a baby shower and then never use them or use them once. I got mine free from a cousin whose baby never got on well with it - it was pristine! Never buy an expensive baby carrier new.
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Oct 2, 2015 20:25
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Since you tried to hide buying a car, people are going to be playing detective for a bit to find the llama farm hidden in your Misc. Expenses budget 
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Oct 5, 2015 19:15
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There's no time like the present. My mother-in-law quit by just stopping in the middle of a packet, without giving herself any warning. Had the packet in the drawer for years... If you get irritable say the baby kept you up all night
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Oct 6, 2015 20:07
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ITM posted:Janus, make a budget line for the grand canyon NOW. Even if it's a small amount a month going in there, in a few years you can take the trip instead of KG getting a bonus and the two of you going "gently caress it we've been thinking about the grand canyon for years, let's just do it." Yeah, every big purchase they make, they talk about for pages and pages beforehand, all the while denying it is in the cards any time soon. People like you say "put it in the budget" and KG tells the thread that they just can't afford it so they are depriving themselves as instructed *martyred air.* Then he disappears for a while and comes back sheepish, having bought the thing. You'd think he'd be able to spot the pattern now. Grand Canyon next year for sure! Budgeted or not!
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Oct 7, 2015 18:52
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Knyteguy posted:I don't believe "put it in the budget" has been said very often regarding things I've brought up in here. And why are we harping on hypothetical situations that haven't even happened? That's pretty disingenuous. Put the trip in the budget! You need a vacation, you want a vacation, you can afford it, so plan for it. What do you mean "hypothetical"? This is what happened with the new apartment and the new car. You can go back over this megathread if you want. You start talking about them, deny you will do them, bemoan the pain of self-denial, vanish, do them, reappear. It's a pattern. You are doing the same with this dream trip. Talking about it repeatedly, denying you will do it. It's logical to expect the same conclusion as last time. Enjoy your vacation 
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Oct 7, 2015 19:09
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Knyteguy posted:Do me a favor and stop with the sarcasm, if only because I'm losing your message here. Are you genuinely advising that we put it into the budget? I'm trying to be friendly. Probably doesn't come across in text. I like you and your wife from what I have read in this thread, and I also wish to visit the Grand Canyon one day. The point of budgets is to stop wasting money on crap that doesn't satisfy you, and save it so that you can spend it on things that you really want. I'll wager you'd both get more fun out of a vacation than that Oculus Rift devkit and a bunch of cigarettes that will just kill you in 20 years anyway.
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Oct 7, 2015 19:44
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Knyteguy posted:Why don't we just sell the Camaro and take that instead? I thought you were trying to be less impulsive? You'd still need a second car when you got back. So you'd need to exist without that second car *in winter* until you could get another. You don't have the money for another, because you just spent it on a vacation, so you'd need to finance it. Also most decent vacations to Europe/Greenland would cost more than that. Don't be too optimistic about that sort of costs. They always cost more than you think, especially once you've done things like "gently caress it, it's our last day, let's eat somewhere special."
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Oct 7, 2015 19:54
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$105 a month could turn into a trip to the Grand Canyon in a year.
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Oct 9, 2015 19:24
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(removed on reflection not good advice)
BarbarianElephant fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 02:02
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No point getting anything for your baby. Relatives will give him something. Thrift store toys are as good as new to a baby that age.
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Oct 13, 2015 12:36
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Knyteguy posted:So, which is it then? Do I budget for the things I want like everyone is saying and buy them responsibly within the budget, or do I try to go austere again? I feel like this is contrary to what everyone else has been saying, but perhaps I'm wrong. These are not mutually exclusive. You are approaching austerity like a bad dieter; you eat nothing but boiled beans for a month and drive yourself mad, then you binge on cake and steak until all your weight that you lost came back. You need to have "nice things" as a carrot, but not just to indulge in them all the time. Sensible dieters have "cheat days" when they can go out and eat steak in cream sauce, but that doesn't mean that every day is a cheat day. What you need to do is really follow the budget. So budget for that Grand Canyon trip you are hankering after. But if you blow your discretionary on small stuff, take it out of the trip fund. That way, you have immediate consequences to you that really mean something. If you blow your $50 a month you are saving for a vacation on cigarettes and alcohol, you don't get to spend it on a nice vacation. As for the weight set, most people who buy these things use them briefly then get bored. People think they will make it easier to get fit, but they don't. They are only really appropriate if you have done all the exercises you can do without weights, and reached the limits of what can be achieved that way. Weights help you take it to the next level. Are you already as fit as you can get with home exercises? BarbarianElephant fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 22:28
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I'm wondering if all Knyteguy's problems with budget come down to substances... Cigarette and alcohol and now coke (wow I never realized it was so expensive, I'm sheltered!) Even dumb impulse purchases might be explained by drinking. He sure is getting veeeeery defensive about it. I think therapy is really the only thing that could help right now. It's expensive but if you need it, it's a false economy not to. In my experience therapists don't take insurance, so why put it off due to insurance?
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Oct 15, 2015 00:36
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I really hope Knyteguy is OK because he seems so nice and so does his wife, and he's been dropping dark little hints about his drinking problem coming back 
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Dec 15, 2015 23:08
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I think your substance abuse problems would be greatly helped by seeing a CBT therapist about impulse control, as well as your spending. Spending can be a sort of addiction. You seem to have a problem with saying "no" to yourself.
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Jan 12, 2016 22:53
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Knyteguy posted:Alright fine I scheduled an interview for tomorrow evening, and it sounds like he's thinking I'll get some offer based on his verbage during the phone call. He's the president of the company so at least his say would be final. One of the things about being a dev with no degree is that you are going to get the less glamorous offers. They often still pay pretty well. Someone has to maintain the "unique" systems used by small/medium-sized businesses out there. If they are feeling really good about you, you can ask for a nice salary. And if you are in charge you can say to the bosses "Access is an obsolete technology. Here's my timeline for upgrading it to current technology." and get some nice experience in whatever you port it to.
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Jan 14, 2016 19:05
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Knyteguy posted:That would be a hell of a responsibility to lead the charge on an entire conversion, but it does sound exciting I suppose. That's more for after you have been working there a while, not the job interview.
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Jan 14, 2016 20:00
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SiGmA_X posted:I agree with the above comments. And working for IBM would suck, as someone who works with IBM on the business side... They're frigging horrid at computer services. IBM is a big name still. It'd be a good thing to have on the resume because Knyteguy is a little limited by no degree and no big names on his resume.
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Jan 15, 2016 15:45
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Knyteguy posted:I was thinking too that I may be able to make a bit of money on the side (if I took the job) by freelancing with my current company and the company in Texas. Not with your new hell-commute. Be realistic about yourself. You have very little patience for personal suffering, and a multi-hour commute each way is *hell.* I assume you are underestimating the time as you are one of nature's eternal optimists. You say it's about 1 hour more each way - what is your current commute ? I assume that it's at least a half hour. So you are driving at least 3 hours per day. You'd do like 2 months of that and say "gently caress it" and break your lease not to have to do that.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:29
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Knyteguy posted:Huh? No that's not on top of my current commute - It's total from home to potential work place. It's 45 minutes to 1 hour 10 minutes total each way (according to Google Maps using time to leave stuff). Hmm, not so bad, never mind then. Figure an hour and a half on bad days.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:30
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Horking Delight posted:"We can't afford $120k." Not all employers are willing to haggle like the shopkeepers in Moria (the roguelike.) If you name a price $20,000 above what their best-paid guy in the position got, they won't necessarily say "We can't do that. How about $90k?" They might just say "Thanks for your time. We'll get back to you." (Of course they will not get back to you.) Often it can be best to just ask for what you really want, plus a little more for luck.
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Jan 18, 2016 20:26
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No Butt Stuff posted:Does anyone actually use all or even close to all their sick leave at any given time? Parents do Not for themselves, but if the baby is too sick for daycare, someone needs to stay home. And babies get sick *a lot*.
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Jan 20, 2016 18:00
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I'd suggest not replacing older pets as they pass away until you are down to a couple of pets. It's easy to think of pets as just costing the price of a bag of food x 12 months. But the real cost of owning a pet is that $5,000 pet bill that they get about once a lifetime on average. Five pets means the once-in-a-lifetime bill will come around about every 3 years on average, assuming a lifetime of 15 years per pet. This is a good case for having a large emergency fund.
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Jan 26, 2016 18:16
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