Bad With Money 2018: When I die, bury me in the blockchain.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Bad With Money 2018: When I die, bury me in the blockchain.

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greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

monster on a stick posted:

I'm gonna run away and ~~join the circus~~ become a ski bum

The first mistake is deciding to become a ski bum right as summer starts

# ¿ May 2, 2017 21:17

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 15:50

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Good Parmesan posted:

On which line does everyone else put tumbling/tumbling dues/tumbling shoes on their budget? Isn't becoming a professional cheerleader BWM, unless you marry an NFL player?

Yeah they get paid about $100 a game and nothing for practice, public appearances, calendars, etc., all of which are mandatory: http://abcnews.go.com/US/cheerleaders-sue-nfl-alleging-conspiracy-unfair-wages/story?id=45176620

The lawsuit's already been chucked out too: https://www.bna.com/nfl-cheerleaders-pay-n73014451636/

# ¿ May 31, 2017 22:07

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

curufinor posted:

thought of ants and

dude not cool

# ¿ Jun 11, 2017 17:12

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Ashcans posted:

It wasn't one person burning the whole thing down. What happened is that one person dumped a ton of currency, and that flood began to fill up all the available orders, dropping the trading price - the first person kept on selling, so the price kept on dropping. They sold from $317 down to $224, so they only lost any money if they had bought up some of their share at higher than $224, but the original trigger stopped selling at $224, they didn't drive it all the way to the floor.

But what happened is that that price drop was severe enough to trigger a bunch of 'stop loss' orders other people had placed- basically people could set an order to automatically sell if the price dropped below X. Every time one of those stop-loss orders triggered, it dropped more available ether into the market, and kept pushing the price down further, triggering more stop-losses.

The whole thing got even worse because people were margin-trading:

So someone might be sitting there holding a certain amount of ether and with a number of margin trades. The first person sells a bunch, triggering stop-loss sales, which continue to push the price down, and now margin calls are coming in to prevent even larger losses - but what this does is dump the trader's held ether into the market at whatever the current price is, which just drives the trading price even further down and triggers even more stop losses and margin calls. It bottoms out when its blown through all those and hit a floor where there are no more stop losses and all the margin calls have been met; depending on the exchange, that was somewhere between $13 and $0.10.

oh man this is the good poo poo right here

# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 01:06

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

KingSlime posted:

This isn't a derail because this is about being GWM with learnin', ok mods?!?

Google Scholar is surprisingly robust and has a lot of free resources, I often rely on it during my freelance writing when helping students in academia who don't know the difference between a mommy blog post on vegan alternative treatments to cancer and a robust medical article on the potential hazards of vaping tobacco. No logins required if you sort by "include only those with a PDF" or something like that.

You might not have access to the whole enchilada (some articles are blocked or only accessible thru a database login) but it's a solid starting point for lit reviews, mining other sources, etc if you want to try and find a little more objective info on any given topic

Before this topic gets overlooked, Sci-hub is the place to go when you don't have access to the millions of dollars required for academic journal access. The guy who invented modern journal ripoff practices is a real evil fucker: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science

The woman who runs Sci-Hub is pretty cool though: http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/a-pirate-bay-for-science

# ¿ Jul 12, 2017 22:00

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

/r/vandwellers

:barf:

# ¿ Aug 6, 2017 08:11

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

Potentially GWM.

No. Dudes who smoke that much and start selling just end up smoking more for the same cost. Probably smoke up their custies too and are dumb as hell so soon get invaded and lose all their poo poo.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2017 09:20

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Moneyball posted:

TB is gone for a few days. When he/she/it returns, please don't feed the dinosaur troll.

Or we could try not posting so much dumb, inconsiderate, bigoted poo poo?

# ¿ Aug 31, 2017 23:39

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Punkbob posted:

FACTA is really ducking onerous, and why there is an exemption on paying tax on income under 100k or so, compliance with FACTA will cost you $1500 a year in accounting fees while also making your life hell. As I understand it you have to report any account you have authority on that holds more then 10k at any point over the course of the year. This runs the gamut from standard checking accounts to business accounts that you have authority to spend on behalf of. It’s a giant nightmare and giving up American citizenship to get out of taxes is GWM/GWL because it’s such a mess.

If the dollar value total of all your foreign bank accounts (based on the highest dollar amount in each one on any calendar day of the year) is over $10,000, then you have to report all of your holdings.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2017 07:16

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

ate all the Oreos posted:

Wait is this just going to be a "list of resources" thread or an actual rainy day fund, as in actual donations? I'd be down for either one, I'm just confused

It started as a Patreon/paypal.me thread cos there were a couple people in/approaching a crisis and other people wanted to help. Then it was decided that the way it had been set up may not be optimal/efficient and it was left with a suggestion to form a friendship society or benefit society or something like that.

I can't remember because there was a thread but it got deleted. This is the "What happened to that thread" thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3836641

# ¿ Oct 6, 2017 16:45

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Guinness posted:

Say what you will about the quality or necessity of a lot of dental stuff, at least when you call most dental offices and ask "what does it cost to do X" they can usually tell you pretty accurately. Same with most eye doctor offices. Incidentally dental and vision insurance tends to be pretty worthless as "insurance" and is mostly just a pre-paid service plan that hardly pays anything for stuff beyond the routine.

Try doing that at a doctor's office or hospital and you'll get nowhere at all. The whole "market based" medical care concept is fundamentally flawed for so many reasons, but if you can't even know what things cost up front then you don't have a market at all.

There's a new project being started to try and gather some kind of data on medical pricing.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/16/16357790/health-care-prices-problem posted:

Americans pay exorbitant prices for all kinds of care. As a health care reporter, I find myself writing about $25,000 MRIs, $629 Band-Aids — even a $39.95 fee just to hold one’s own baby after delivery. People send me these types of bills quite regularly via email.

The health care prices in the United States are, in a word, outlandish. On average, an MRI in the United States costs $1,119. That same scan costs $503 in Switzerland and $215 in Australia.

These are uniquely American stories, and they are the key to understanding our dysfunctional health care system. High prices are hurting American families. Most Americans who get insurance at work now have a deductible over $1,000. High prices are why medical debt remains a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and nowhere else.

As Elodie’s case shows, health care prices in the United States are both high and unpredictable. We rarely know what our bill will be when we enter a doctor’s office, or even when we leave. The prices aren’t listed on the wall or a website as they would be in most other places where consumers spend money.

Today, I am launching a project inspired by these reader emails. My colleagues and I at Vox are asking readers to submit hospital bills through our secure system so we can start getting a nationwide picture of one particular hospital fee, called an emergency facility fee. The reason we’ve selected this fee is because nearly all hospitals charge one for seeking emergency room care, but the price varies enormously and is typically kept secret.

We plan to report back on our findings both here at Vox and in my new podcast, The Impact, a reported series that explores the big challenges in American health care through the lives of people who experience it. If you’d like to participate, there are more details for you here.

As that project launches, I wanted to spell out why these prices are such a problem for the American health care system. Obamacare didn’t tackle America’s high health care prices; neither did the Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Our health care prices explain why reform efforts continue to vex each political party. When you’re paying the highest prices in the world for basic services, for scans and drugs, it will undoubtedly be a struggle to provide all citizens with health care.

This is true for a Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act — and a plan backed by 17 Democrats to create a single-payer health care system. The problem is the prices — but right now, there is little political will to fix it.

greazeball fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Oct 21, 2017

# ¿ Oct 21, 2017 21:02

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:

Yeah and also there are people who legitimately never be able to save because there are millions and millions of extremely lovely jobs that don't pay living wage while physically exhausting and crippling the people that work them. Think Amazon warehouse stockers. We are heading towards an absolute crippling demographic wave of broke old people who didn't dutifully fill their 401(k)s at their minimum wage job and are going to depend upon the government to support them until they die in nursing homes.

It's worse than that already! Young people aren't getting hired as seasonal Amazon warehouse staff because Amazon is aggressively recruiting senior citizens who lost their retirement savings in 2008 to live in campers and work themselves to death walking 15 miles a day as highly monitored human drones: https://www.wired.com/story/meet-camperforce-amazons-nomadic-retiree-army/

:smith:

# ¿ Nov 2, 2017 10:15

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Co-signing for someone else's student loans may be bad but I think my sister's got them beat.

She took out the full amount of student loans for 3-4 years of a very expensive private university in southern California, which my dad was already paying for, to fund her then husband's magic internet woo-woo company in 1997-99. I can't remember what they were doing exactly, I think designing e-commerce portals using flash or some crap, but he and his brother and their 4 employees needed a massive office in LA with a marble foyer to do this and since he'd already bled his dad's retirement savings dry he had the brilliant idea of getting low-interest loans entirely in my sister's name. We don't talk a lot about money between siblings, but my mom says it was over $200,000 that she gave him.

Guess what happened in 2001? Yeah, *poof* all the money's gone, he's got no business and tons of bills and he's bust. Fortunately, she got a degree in pharmacology and passed the state licensing test so she could start working as a pharmacist/pharmacy manager so they didn't get evicted from their internet-cool-guy Santa Monica apartment. Meanwhile he's all depressed and mopey and not working so when she gets a job offer in a small town near the mountains they decide to move. "They" got approved for a mortgage on a duplex (she was the only one with any income), so he said he'd be the handyman and fix it up and be the landlord etc. etc. while she works but instead he got into rock climbing and just spent any money she brought home on ropes, harnesses, shoes, bags and whatever else he wanted. Never did any work on the house at all. Eventually she made him get an actual job so he got a job at the rock climbing gear store and just worked directly for gear basically and then made her pay when he wanted to go out with his buddies.

In the end, she got sick of his bullshit and divorced him. In the settlement, he graciously gave up his "equity" in the duplex in exchange for the loan debt. But seeing as how he'd never actually done any work on the house (and not to mention she'd made all the payments anyway), it was in desperate shape and I think she barely managed to break even on it after it was all over.

I'll skip a lot of E/N drama to let you know that she later married a guy who is on the deadbeat dad register because he'd been paying his child support in cash to his ex and once the kid was 18 she reported him for non-payment to get that gravy train started again.

And dude? Last year his new company (he was co-founder and C level) got bought for an absurd sum of money and he's suddenly worth several hundreds of millions of dollars and getting glowing profiles written about him in Forbes and poo poo.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2017 10:19

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Yeah, dude is the ex-husband shitbag leech.

The new husband comes from a really rough background and did a lot of under the table work, I guess, and trusted his ex waaaaaaayyy too much. He's really kind but he veers from over-trusting to just rejecting common sense stuff depending on his mood.

She can really pick 'em.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2017 19:16

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

therobit posted:

Sometimes I wonder if bankruptcy attorneys ever turn away business. Looking a someone's bankruptcy history once, they had filed like 8 times and only actually had the judge accept the petition like 2 or 3 times. It was the same lawyer over and over, every couple of years.

Pro publica did a good story on this. You can file chapter 7, which wipes out all debts but also takes your assets (which poor people have few of) or chapter 13, which allows you to keep your assets but only wipes out your debt if you successfully make all your payments for 5 years. Guess which one white lawyers overwhelmingly push on low income PoC in the south?

https://features.propublica.org/bankruptcy-inequality/bankruptcy-failing-black-americans-debt-chapter-13/

# ¿ Dec 2, 2017 10:48

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Harry posted:

Are we supposed to pretend that if they had blacks overwhelmingly take chapter 7, you wouldn't be deriding them for having them choose the option that makes them lose their car?

If someone is truly in an unsustainable debt spiral and goes to a legal professional to resolve the problem, you better believe I'll criticise them for recommending a solution that doesn't work in 4 out of 5 cases:

quote:

For decades, the most prolific bankruptcy firm in Memphis has been Jimmy McElroy�s, known for its long-running TV commercials featuring the now-deceased Ruby Wilson, a legendary blues and gospel singer dubbed the Queen of Beale Street. At the end of 30-second spots, she exclaimed, �Miss Ruby sings the blues, and you don�t have to!�

McElroy, a mild-mannered white man in his 70s with a genteel lilt to his speech, told me that �the ultimate success� for a Chapter 13 filing is �to pay it out, get a discharge, get out of debt. And then learn to live within your means.� From 2011 through 2015, McElroy�s firm filed over 8,000 Chapter 13 cases and fewer than 900 Chapter 7 cases. About 80 percent of his clients come from predominantly black neighborhoods.

But �ultimate success� is rare at his firm. Only about one in five of the Chapter 13 cases filed by his black clients reached discharge, a rate typical for the district. When I asked why, McElroy, whose office is in the same tower as the bankruptcy court, said clients generally �get the temporary relief they needed,� but then things just happen: �They lose their job. They get sick. They get a divorce.�

Sometimes Chapter 7 does seem like a better choice, he said, but the client can�t afford to pay the attorney fee, which, at his firm, is about $1,000. In those cases, he�ll advise them to start with a Chapter 13, since it�s �more affordable to get into,� he said. �I tell them � �If you get in a better situation, we can convert later.��

[the article explains that Chapter 13 is regularly offered at no money down, with the fees rolled into the 5 year payment plans]

Debtors are, indeed, allowed to switch from Chapter 13 to Chapter 7 after their cases have begun, although it typically requires paying an additional attorney fee. But this rarely happens in the district. Only about 5 percent of Chapter 13 filings since 2008 converted to Chapter 7, according to our analysis. For McElroy�s firm�s cases, it was 2 percent.

quote:

A FEW FLOORS ABOVE THE BANKRUPTCY COURT are the offices of Cohen & Fila, a firm with a mostly poor clientele and one of the highest volume practices in the district. I asked Tom Fila, a Yankee transplant who has practiced bankruptcy law in Memphis for more than 20 years, about one of his clients: The firm had filed 17 cases on her behalf, all but two under Chapter 13. She was one of at least 465 people who had filed for bankruptcy 10 or more times in the district between 2001 and 2015, ProPublica�s analysis found. These repeat filers tend to be among the poorest.

Fila bristled at the implication that his firm had filed the cases for any reason but the best interest of the client. �I�m not making money on these cases, and I probably shouldn�t file them,� he told me. �I often tell my clients that repeated filings aren�t doing them any good. They are ending up in the same spot they started in, only now they have multiple bankruptcy cases on their credit report � but at the end of the day I�m not the one living without utilities or being evicted or being without transportation.�

Of course, most of the time attorneys in the district do get paid something. When we analyzed the Chapter 13 cases filed in 2010, we found that, on average, attorneys in the district collected $1,340 per case out of their full $3,000 fee. Some firms, like Fila�s, collected much less (about $700), and some collected more.
But what has made bankruptcy a viable business for the biggest firms in Memphis for so long is the sheer volume. From the 12,000-plus Chapter 13 cases they filed in 2010, we estimate that attorneys reaped at least $16 million in attorney fees over the next five years. McElroy�s firm, the largest, collected at least $2 million.

Things have worked this way in the district for as long as anyone can remember. The district�s chief judge, David Kennedy, who has presided over cases since 1980, said attorneys have been charging $0 down to file Chapter 13s at least since the 1970s.

He sees no clear need for reform. Chapter 13 �provides, I think, better relief, depending on the circumstances,� he said, adding that the large number of dismissals is not necessarily bad. �Just because it doesn�t go to discharge doesn�t mean it�s a failed case.� A homeowner might file Chapter 13 to stop a foreclosure, he said, then use the breathing room to work out a loan modification with the mortgage servicer and drop the case voluntarily.

That undoubtedly does happen. But most debtors in the district don�t own a home.

Judge Latta said efforts to help the poor file under Chapter 7 for free have met with resistance. �We get a lot of pushback on pro bono programs here,� she said. �[Attorneys] say, �But, judge, we can put them in a Chapter 13, and we can get paid for that.��

It�s no secret in Memphis that bankruptcy works differently outside the South, but the scope of that contrast is staggering. In 2015, for example, there were 9,000 Chapter 13 cases filed in Shelby County, while in Brooklyn, New York, there were fewer than 300. Brooklyn has a similar poverty rate, median income and higher housing costs. Like Shelby County, it has a large black population. It also has 1.6 million more people.

What�s the biggest difference? How bankruptcy attorneys are paid. In Brooklyn, attorneys usually ask for around $2,000 upfront to file a Chapter 13, said Michael Macco, a trustee in the Eastern District of New York. As a result, poorer households simply can�t afford to file. The typical Chapter 13 debtor who hired an attorney in Brooklyn in 2015 was a middle-income homeowner with $420,000 in assets � over 40 times more in assets than filers in Shelby County.

The reasons for vast differences like these among courts are largely arbitrary. While bankruptcy is a federal institution, ruled by laws made in Washington, D.C., each local court is essentially its own kingdom with its own customs shaped by the judges, trustees and attorneys who work there. Scrutiny of these differences, and how they affect debtors, has been scant.

While judges like Kennedy are untroubled by the flood of unsuccessful Chapter 13s, our analysis found Memphis attorneys who have built successful bankruptcy practices in a different way. In an office park on the eastern edge of the city, I met Jerome Payne, who has filed more Chapter 7s on behalf of black clients than anyone in the district in recent years, despite not being in the top 10 firms in terms of total volume.

That alone would make Payne stand out. But Payne is also, unlike all but a few debtor attorneys in Memphis, black.

A cop turned nurse turned attorney, Payne, 66, has been practicing bankruptcy law in Memphis since the 1990s. Inside his office, the thick carpeting and friendly banter between Payne and his two long-standing employees give the place a homey feel, albeit a home with files stacked everywhere and large binders labeled �GARNISHMENTS� spilling out of a cabinet.

African-American identity is a major part of his practice. When his firm sends out letters to prospective clients � usually people who have been sued over a debt � he tries to make sure they know. �I use black heritage stamps,� he said. Sometimes he uses Kwanzaa stamps. He includes a page with inspirational sayings, like one with a quote from Marcus Garvey, a leader of the Black Nationalist movement, who is depicted with his body in the shape of Africa.

The emphasis on blackness is not just a marketing gimmick, he said. Because the clients are �people who look like me,� he said, �they feel more comfortable with me.�

And that, he said, may help in convincing debtors that Chapter 7 is a better choice. Payne�s challenge, he said, is getting them �to take the emotions out of a home, the apartment, out of the vehicle� and decide that they are better off without the debt.

This discussion is what he calls his �come-to-Jesus meeting.� Contrary to Arthur Ray�s emphasis on teaching his clients financial discipline through five years of payments, Payne promotes the discipline of letting go of possessions they can�t afford.

�Me being African American, and me understanding my community, maybe I�ve been more successful in showing them that this is not the way you ought to go,� he said.

Crucially, Payne also approaches fees differently. Whether it�s a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, the down payment is usually a couple hundred dollars, and his clients can pay the remainder in installments.

He doesn�t file Chapter 13 cases for no money down, because he just doesn�t like the idea. And he has an employee, instead of him, discuss fee arrangements with clients, he said, because �I found that it colors the way that I do business.�

Brad George is another attorney in the district who often files Chapter 7 cases for his clients. His approach is simple. �It�s not rocket science, I can tell you that,� said George, who is white and has practiced bankruptcy in Memphis for 20 years. If there is a good reason to do a Chapter 13, like a threatened foreclosure or driver�s license issue, then he will file that way. Otherwise, he said, �I think you should try and always, always, always do a [Chapter 7].�

To file a Chapter 7 with George, it costs the debtor $555, with most of that due upfront. That is about half of what many other attorneys charge in Memphis. But, to George, it just seems like enough.

�I figure I spend about two hours on average per Chapter 7 [case],� he said. �So that�s pretty fair, I�d say.�

George also doesn�t file Chapter 13 cases for no money down, instead asking for around $200 dollars, giving his clients a much more balanced choice between how much money they have to come up with to file Chapter 7 versus Chapter 13.

George�s black clients file under Chapter 7 almost half the time, according to our analysis, a rate that is almost two and a half times what is typical in the district. There is also little racial disparity in what portion of his black and white clients end up in Chapter 7.

Payne and George agree that their flexibility with fees is likely a key reason they are able to file more Chapter 7 cases for black clients.

There are understandable reasons why attorneys tend to be less flexible with Chapter 7 fees. When debtors receive a discharge of their debts at the end of the case, outstanding fees to their attorneys are also wiped out. Any further payments are voluntary. As a result, debtor attorneys � in Memphis or anywhere else � generally require the entirety of their fee upfront. To address this problem, some scholars have called for Congress to change the law to make attorney fees clearly exempt from discharge.

Such a change could have a large effect. The firm that files the most bankruptcy cases in Atlanta, for example, files Chapter 7 cases for $0 down, with the entirety of the fee due through an installment plan that lasts several months. The chief judge in the Northern District of Georgia has ruled that such arrangements are legal, and other large firms in the Atlanta area have adopted the practice.

The result is clear. In the heart of the South, most of the filings in the Northern District of Georgia are under Chapter 7 � compared to less than 30 percent in the rest of the state. And notably, black debtors in that district file under Chapter 7 almost half the time, a rate significantly higher than even the white debtors in the Western District of Tennessee.

John Smith posted:

Yup, got it. It is all the White Men's fault. How can any reasonable man think that it is the poor's fault for getting into such debt?

Everybody gets into debt, but when white people in Memphis file for bankruptcy, they're much more likely to actually get their debt discharged than black people.

Filings by Disposition, 2008-2010, All Chapters, Majority Black Census Tracts vs. Majority White Census Tracts:

# ¿ Dec 2, 2017 20:04

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Youth Decay posted:

aww thanks

It's the dril tweet about candles but instead of candles it's LuLaRoe

More #BossBabe math.

Top bottle is 20g per serving, It Works snake oil bottle is 4.25g per serving. So cost per gram is 12 cents for the top bottle vs 43 cents for the bottom bottle. The nutritional amounts mentioned are calculated per serving rather than per gram, so the difference in calories on a gram-per-gram basis is negligible. Also, she is very clearly at Wal-Mart, not a health food shop.

she's also barefoot in walmart :barf:

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 13:46

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

I hear Des Moines has a low cost of living, tremendous job opportunities and all the amenities of Chicago or New York.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2018 23:51

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

a dingus posted:

Thanks Dad, if you want me to pay this back I'm going to have to kill you.

Those people are BWM but they're also a testament to how crazy horse people are.

Eh, my dad is loaning one of my sisters money against her inheritance. She's been insisting for a few years that she's definitely going to make it as a writer but she is just too stressed after like ~working~ to write properly so she makes candles and does other random stuff while borrowing money every time her finely calibrated trickle of cash can't handle emergencies like regular car maintenance, etc. She also thinks she could be a professional poker player. Anyway, dad figures he'll loan any of us money now against the inheritance since she's got no realistic plan to actually pay her debt off and if someone else wants a loan/gift for a deposit on a house then there's a mechanism in place for that so there's no resentment between siblings after the parents are gone.

BTW, this is not the same sister I talked about earlier, who took out student loans (when dad had already paid for university) to fund her ex-husbands internet startup in 2000 only for him to go totally broke and leave her with a dilapidated duplex in trade for the debt in the divorce (and then to become a paper billionaire 10 years later).

# ¿ Jan 22, 2018 13:50

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

He sends us an updated spreadsheet that the will references every year and his financial adviser/estate manager knows the details of the loans, the will and his intentions.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2018 14:43

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Inept posted:

So everyone gets to see how much their siblings withdrew from the bank of dad?

We already know she's been hitting him up for the last 4-5 years and one of the conditions of her continuing to get the support was that he would share the documentation with the rest of us. There was a point earlier this year when she was gonna lose her place without another big injection and that's when he got her to agree to the new conditions.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2018 15:18

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Guest2553 posted:

Don't know how to link embedded reddit videos but this one is bitcoin in a nutshell and is somewhat prescient.

It's already out of date since bitcoin dipped to like 6k overnight lol.

this is fantastic

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 15:21

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

They did not pay for the premium stock photo package:

Their video library looks like hipster millenial bank to me (except for grandma maybe)

# ¿ Feb 25, 2018 14:29

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Switchback posted:

5:30 p.m. � It was my birthday a few months ago and I was gifted tickets to Meteor Shower on Broadway with Amy Schumer. The show was written by Steve Martin, whom I LOVE, so I'm very excited. We decide to eat dinner downtown instead of trying to find somewhere near Times Square and end up at a cute Italian place we've never been to before. We split an appetizer, husband orders lamb off the specials, and I go with pasta. Finish off the meal with cr�me br�l�e and then almost have a heart attack when the check comes: the two bottles of still water we ordered were $9 each! $170 (including tip)

I like how $18 for water made that $140 check a big surprise

# ¿ Feb 28, 2018 11:58

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Based on the sophistication of the execution, it could be something as dumb as reporting his wage bill as higher than it was to eliminate any profits and therefore tax on those profits

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 09:48

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Barry posted:

As if they're getting their vidja game graduate degree at a real University

Just wait til you see the research they're doing!

# ¿ Jul 13, 2018 21:36

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Vox Nihili posted:

Yeah I try my best not to think about all the lovely expats we send to places like Thailand and Vietnam. It's disgusting.

(Un)fortunately, scumbags from all countries head there, not only Americans and not only English speakers.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2018 20:03

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

A lot easier to get that down payment money with multiple people!

I just don't know how people handwave away the risk that their business partner will just stop making payments and still reap all the benefits.

Mr Money Mustache had an excellent blog entry on his one failed real estate venture with a friend, worth reading.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/02/01/mr-money-mustaches-big-mistake/

loving hell

# ¿ Jul 29, 2018 19:56

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

OctaviusBeaver posted:

I think it's the opposite: people think their refund is the government giving them free money.

I think people would have a much better understanding of what is going on, and be much madder about it, in a simpler system where you had to write a giant check at the end of every year instead of having it quietly deducted a little bit at a time.

This is how we do it in Switzerland. It took about 3 years before I stopped literally dropping the letter, gasping and jumping back when I read, "Your bill is CHFXX,000, payable in 30 days." Somewhere in my hind brain I'm still the college student calling the phone company the day my final notice is due cos I know that will give me 5 more days to mail the check and then I should have been able to take my paycheck to the bank so my phone won't get shut off.

Anyway my dad laughed when I explained the system and said the federal government's cash flow would collapse in less than a month if they weren't getting regular injections every Friday.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2018 21:31

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

therobit posted:

I work for a super-regional, and if you come in depositing amounts of cash that carry no money laundering risk the tellers are not going to stop you. We have a back end system to prevent smurfing, and will ID for balance inquiries or cash back on checks, but otherwise it is not uncommon to send someone you trust down to the bank for you to make a deposit if you can't get to it. You have to already have the acvount number though.

I have never had an issue the times I have made a deposit for a greyhound, and would not police a transaction that did not otherwise appear to be suspicious.

You could argue that the check thing could be, but then you would be overestimating the degree to which bank tellers feel sympathy for people who write bad checks. Most tellers I have seen deal with this thought it was hilarious after the fact, because gently caress people who write checks that they can't cover, and then inevitably scream at you about the overdraft fees later.

What's smurfing?

# ¿ Aug 10, 2018 21:14

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

If you get replacement trees maybe someone will cut those down too and then you can bankrupt another view-seeking prick

# ¿ Aug 18, 2018 14:35

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Ashcans posted:

That's because maintaining a castle is actually cripplingly expensive, especially that now you don't get swathes of land and serfs to support them, and have to pay specialist masons and other expensive craftsmen to patch up your hundreds-year old place.

Besides, just buying some castle is weak, real enthusiasts build them themselves

This is pretty cool, tbh.

Tamba posted:

http://www.castlesandmanorhouses.com/castlesforsale.htm

Many of these are cheaper than an apartment in one of the big American cities.

This though, reminded me that the Irish Times (Ireland's another place with a super over-heated property market) runs this thing each week called Take 5, where they compare what you can get for the price of Irish real estate abroad. So, for example, if you had �140,000, would you rather have...

A huge house with views over a lovely valley in Slovenia

A five-bedroom, three-story house in France

A 1970sq ft, 3 bed, 2 bath property with veranda and a shared pool in Spain

A 2 bed house on a quarter acre of tropical gardens, with views of the ocean in Grenada

Or this charming 3 bed cottage on half an acre in Ballina, Co. Mayo (population: 10,000, precise navigational coordinates: middle of nowhere)

The property market in Dublin always seemed particularly insane when I lived there. Sometimes I wonder what happened to my co-worker, who took out a 110% mortgage with his girlfriend (soon to be fianc�e, he always promised) to buy some lovely terraced house in Drimnagh. For extra laughs, it was a house that his sister could no longer afford so his dad was using him to get her out of that one and then going to finance a different one for her. This was in about 2004-5 so a lot of home values absolutely tanked about 3 years later. He was such a smug prick, always asking me why I was throwing my money away on rent and just could not comprehend any advantage to not living with your parents or in having a nicer place than you could ever get a mortgage for.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2018 17:51

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Elysium posted:

So that San Fran hillside got me looking at the most expensive houses in San Fran (a paltry 29 million) and then near me, and then in NYC (80 million) until finally I found the ultimate BWM real estate.

not bad not bad but how about ONE BILLION DOLLARS for 157 acres that may not even be eligible for sale at all?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/10/la-worlds-most-valuable-real-estate-billion-dollar-lot

quote:

The only certain thing may be that nothing in this story is what it seems. The cast of characters associated with the property down the years has included the shah of Iran, Brad Pitt, a Cuban American philanthropist convicted and jailed for running a property scam, and the feuding heirs and trustees of the founder of Herbalife, the global wellness promotion behemoth that has itself been accused of perpetrating scams on its customers.

On top of that, the Mountain has been at the center of a never-ending lawsuit whose stultifying complexities and ever-wandering trajectory from party to party and from court to court rival the infamous Jarndyce v Jarndyce case from Dickens�s Bleak House. A major character in the story is in fact called Charles Dickens, or Chip Dickens, as he prefers to be known, an Atlanta businessman who came to Los Angeles more than a decade ago to pull off the ultimate real estate deal, only to pile up enough regrets for a jukebox�s worth of hard-luck country songs.

Research by the Guardian suggests the property may not be eligible for sale at all. At a federal court hearing in April, lawyers on opposite sides acknowledged a �cloud of title� � legalese meaning it�s not clear who owns it, never mind who owes whom for the tens of millions dollars spent to date on grading the hillside and other expenses associated with preparing the land for sale. An exasperated federal bankruptcy judge, Barry Russell, washed his hands of the case at the hearing, saying that after 10 years of litigation �this has to come to an end�, at least in his courtroom.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2018 22:53

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Lead out in cuffs posted:

I forget the definition, but my vague recollection was that it was something more like "has visited Disneyland/world at least once".

loving hell, Disneyland's gotten expensive

# ¿ Sep 18, 2018 22:37

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

https://disneyrewards.com/vacation-perks/

# ¿ Sep 19, 2018 14:34

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Sock The Great posted:

The benefits they removed were fringe things anyways like price protection and extended warranty on purchases made with the card. Nothing I, or anyone I can think of, would ever bother actively using or even knowing existed.

AMEX's return policy or customer protection or I don't know what it's called is legit though and more people should use it. We bought a cell phone from a cheap online retailer and it broke after 3 days. We contacted the merchant, they said to return it and when we did they said they had to send it to an engineer to check it out. That took 3 weeks and a note came back that said "it's broke" with an $80 fee for the analysis. We said gently caress you, replace the phone, they said lol no pay us $80 to get your broken phone back and this went back and forth about 3 times before we sent copies of the correspondence to AMEX and told them to reverse the charges and they did it in under an hour and we never heard from the bastards again.

Always know about the fringe benefits of your cards.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2018 22:32

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Past 30 days and the seller can and did say that we broke the phone whereas we said it was defective. Most CCs here (Switzerland) have no customer service at all and you have to work to get even fraudulent charges reversed.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2018 22:42

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Sic Semper Goon posted:

Hah, I hear that all the time at work.

It's everybody saying that it's somebody else's responibility, and worst case scernario being that management will still get their bonuses, so...

"What if we train our employees and they leave?"
"What if we don't and they stay?"

# ¿ Sep 25, 2018 09:53

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

FrozenVent posted:

My girlfriend did some freelancing work for a friend of hers. Friend is about a grand in arrears, claims she can’t afford to pay.

Friend just posted on Facebook asking for recommendations for a Mexican all-inclusive resort.

:ugghh:

But think about all the *~*free experience*~* she got

# ¿ Sep 28, 2018 16:46

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 15:50

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

As an American who lives outside the US, who gets paid in real money that's not USD, whose money never touches a US bank account in any way and still has to file federal tax returns every year, gently caress that guy. The IRS has a page where you use their currency exchange rate value to convert your income to USD. Maybe he can make a case that there was no conversion value for 'legal tender' on the page?

I loving hate having to do taxes for a country I don't live in and I really loving resent the FBAR but like gently caress am I not going to be in compliance with US tax law while I still want my passport. Why yes I did just spend this weekend doing taxes for the second time this year.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2018 09:07

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Bad With Money 2018: When I die, bury me in the blockchain.

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