Knyteguy's BFC Thread Redux - Bigger, Badder, Getting Out of Debt

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Knyteguy's BFC Thread Redux - Bigger, Badder, Getting Out of Debt

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

Nam Taf posted:

If you were risk-averse you'd consider not taking on a risky high-interest loan. It comes across that you're actually just comfortable in this job and afraid of being pushed out of a comfort zone. I'd stipulate that it's why you so often try to spend your way out of debt - you're really spending because it comforts you that you're making an action that, in your mind, will solve the problem without actually doing the hard work.

April posted:

Here's a post from July 18, TWENTY GODDAMN FOURTEEN. Five years ago, almost exactly.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3586966&userid=81272&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post432370394

KG's Reply:

Negative equity on a vehicle "just this once"? Check.
"We used to be super broke, so we're fine now!"? Check.
"Some external factor will certainly make me straighten up!"? Check.
"Gosh, looking back, I could've done much better."? Check.

Past performance does ~~not~~ predict future behavior

# ¿ Jun 19, 2019 21:25

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 22:42

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

Dude I graduated in the recession and got laid off and had to wipe out my savings to stay afloat, yeah poo poo was bad but I learned from it. I made sure the bleeding stopped and then made sure I was progressing, despite the psychic damage I endured.

Since then there's been the longest continuous period of market growth since the last Great Depression, but you're still moving backwards. How do you explain that?

# ¿ Jul 4, 2019 01:41

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

DoctorTristan posted:

Defensive much? Yes, you were thinking of this as a stupid get rich quick scheme, I know this because (1) you have a shitload of history of doing exactly this (remember the title of your last thread?) and (2) you said so on this very page FFS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU:

You want to know where�s the harm? Your original (deleted) post was on the 7th, you came back and posted the one I quoted above 36 hours later. You�ve spent at least a day and a half thinking about some stupid couch flipping scheme - researching prices, looking up listings and generally thinking of ways to wriggle out of actually getting your finances under control.

Your current financial and living situation is the cumulative result of years of you doing this kind of poo poo. Doing it doesn�t leave you any better off at the end of the day (proof: your current finances). Your even thinking about doing it again is the equivalent of an alcoholic pouring out shots of Jameson�s while going �Hey, there�s no harm if I only smell them, right?!!!�

Breetai posted:

He doesn't want to get better.

He definitely doesn't want to do the hard, boring, tedious work it will take to get better

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 14:14

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

BloodBag posted:

Maybe I'm alone in this, but taking advantage of a place like the salvation army to flip something intended for needy families to make a quick buck seems pretty despicable, and of low cunning. I know you didn't follow through, but I wager you came here hoping someone would validate it.

Yeah, it reminds me of the assholes that would pick up things from the neighborhood donation bin meant to help out neighbors and sell them. Their greed and laziness effectively shut down a thing that was helping little old ladies and young families in need for their lifted trucks.

Not saying you were doing that KG but it rubbed me the wrong way, and I think that's what it reminded me of. Not "this is a good deal and I could use this" but "I can profit off this"

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 18:22

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

Dwight Eisenhower posted:

Yes don't look at balances when a recession hits.

No don't put too much weight in people saying a recession will hit this year, or next year. People have been saying that since 2015 enthusiastically. Some of them have pulled their money out of the market and surrendered all the growth in their investments that those 4 years entailed.

The best retirement strategy is to just keep plowing the same amount into the accounts each month.

But even if you had the worst timing ever and only dumped the accumulated money in at the peaks, it's still better than if you pulled it out when a recession hits.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 15:31

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

SlyFrog posted:

Followed Goon advice, left free (if substandard) living situation to get an apartment, sold mobile home, life poo poo blew up, now stuck in lease with crippling monthly rental cash burn, sucking dick for $20s behind the K-Mart to make rent payments (on a $5k MacBook Pro for my spouse for gaming)

# ¿ Nov 2, 2019 22:45

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

Knyteguy posted:

What question?

nikosoft posted:

Why do you have to buy a house?

Aka buying a house is RV 2.0

Remember how much money you were "going to save" with that plan? And then it was because you wanted that "lifestyle"?

# ¿ Jun 12, 2020 22:30

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

KG you consistently overestimate your own capabilities and underestimate costs. I hope you recognize this behavior and you also recognize that you are doing it right now.

gmc9987 posted:

Absolutely none of these things are reasons to buy a house outside of equity. You can do smaller versions of all these things without owning the property.

Your son can still play basketball and street hockey while you rent. Parks exist. Other families with children also rent in your neighborhood. Your son can have the formative experiences of doing stupid things outdoors without it being on property you own. You're not depriving your son of anything by continuing to rent just because he can't have the exact same specific experiences as you.

I don't have any realistic hopes that this will be what gets through to you, but: This isn't a plan to buy a house, it's a thing that allows you to daydream about hand-building a brick loving pizza oven while ignoring all the hard work, time, and money that such a thing will take (not to mention that having a brick oven that takes 24 hours to cool down after reaching temps of more than 500� seems like a pretty terrible thing to want anyway, in a small half-acre lot where a small child and 4 animals will be running around in). This sounds contradictory but I think you should, for once, STOP planning for your future and focus on getting the present in order. You already squandered a ton of money on stupid poo poo that ended up being sold at a loss ( like a 6-year-old's dirt bike and gear when your child was barely even 3, or an RV, or a truck, or...) and daydreaming about the type of speakers you'd mount in the ceiling of the house that you don't own and currently don't have the means or discipline to own is exactly the thing that put you into mountains of debt in the first place.

Again, everything I quoted here isn't a plan for the future, it's an unfulfillable wish-list that allows you to feel like you're planning while allowing you to hand-wave away all the big problems that are preventing you from ever actually doing any of the things that you you say you want to do.

Hawkperson posted:

Hey KG I know it's hard to internalize stuff that doesn't line up with your own feelings, but seriously dude from the outside this cycle of

find big thing that will make it all "better"

find reasons to justify this step making it all "better"

push back against voices saying this will not make it all "better"

go disappear and do the thing that will make it all "better"

come back and tell everyone "it did make it all better and was completely worth it, but now I'm ready to hunker down and work hard"

later admit "my anxiety didn't let me even enjoy the thing that was supposed to make it all better"

but "this new thing WILL make it all better, because things are different this time"

is pretty clear. I'm rooting for you bud, but this ain't it.

And honestly, I think these threads are part of it too. I think it helps you get into an underdog-type position in your thinking. If people are against you, you're driven to prove them wrong. Idk though, that's just spitballing. It just lines up with the cycle you're in.

Also just add in all of April's posts, holy crap man the only person you're fooling is yourself. You keep falling into the same patterns of behavior. You are doing the exact same things you did when you bought the RV - coming up for justifications why it was worth it, how much better everything would be afterwards, that THIS TIME you had it figured out... it's exhausting just watching.

Tying yourself down with an enormous financial commitment where most of your income is going to be servicing debt is not how you get out of this cycle. You're making a false dichotomy between "buying a house with a crippling amount of debt" and "my family is going to be homeless"

At the very least, rent for two or three years and make sure your finances have stabilized, that you can make and keep a budget. Thus far you haven't proven you can hurdle even that low bar, which is why saddling yourself to a 30 year commitment is such an asinine idea.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2020 14:09

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

Knyteguy posted:

What's the difference between this and renting? Renting is still a debt if you have a lease. Ask my credit report.

As far as justifications, what about facts? Everyone is focusing on the behavior. We haven't bought a house we're looking into to saving for one. No one has made a good argument against buying a house. It's financially beneficial according to many many financial websites, we get more bang for our buck, the loan can eventually be paid off, interest rates are incredibly low so it's 'good debt', we're staying here for the foreseeable future, I like to garden/landscape and do home improvement projects, etc. I've had my job for 7 years I feel like our financial situation is pretty stable.

If BFC would convince me it doesn't make sense for X, Y, and Z then I'd be more open to changing my plans. Not just 'a house doesn't fix your problems', because neither does renting and also I'm not looking for a house to fix my problems. I'm not trying to get an armchair shrink here - I want financial input. Why does a house not make sense, financially?

What could possibly be different between paying for housing month-to-month, where you aren't responsible for maintenance costs or property taxes, where you can withold your rent payment if there's some kind of fuckery going on, where you can easily just move out and move somewhere else if you like (or need to suddenly downsize) and at most pay a nominal fee, instead of being nailed down to a property and its maintenance until you try to sell hoping the housing market is ok and that someone wants to buy when you want to sell and you aren't going to lose your rear end in the sale and pay a bunch to realtors and lawyers and capital gains tax and who knows what else... nope they're just identical because they're both debt! :downs:

Nothing I say is going to change your mind, you've already demonstrated you don't give a poo poo about people's advice, so just do whatever the hell you're going to do anyway.

Thumbtacks posted:

come on guys i think if he can recover from taking a year long road trip across the US in an rv that he didnt have the money to do or have a plan in place for it and ran out of money halfway through it and couldnt sell the rv for two eyars and never fully recovered from that sale AND still talk about his dreams, he deserves to buy elon musk's house just give the guy a break

# ¿ Jun 17, 2020 23:30

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

zaurg posted:

We can't go to bars any more, Nam Taf. Duh. What a knucklehead.

Shut the gently caress up, zaurg

# ¿ Jun 26, 2020 13:07

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

If you've had $200/month extra you weren't aware of, then what were you spending it on that you also weren't aware of? What are you doing to do to address that shortfall and adjust your behavior?

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 16:56

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

Knyteguy posted:

Alright so we got actual numbers:

$299/mo for 2 months of rent, $799 deposit with pets. After 2 months rent would be $1,855 after pet rent is added.

Deposit on current place was $915, although there's not a bunch of damage I never count on that.

$799 + $598 = $1,397

$1,855/mo for rent.

Yearly:
$1505*12 = $18,060 = current rent
$1855*10 + $1397 = $19,947 = new rent
---
$1,887 difference or $157.25/mo more to move, for the first year.

Now with that said, can you explain to me why it's a bad idea to move? Again the extra BR would be super helpful, and we never got this current place planning on making it home for 5 years; especially considering my wife now works from home and we're all walking over each other. The plan was to buy a house about nowish.

Finally I've been told /by you guys/ lots of times that spending money on your place to live isn't really the place to cut.

We have until Monday to make a choice. To me another 500 sq/ft plus the extra bedroom makes sense since we're, on the thread's input, probably 2 years+ out from buying a home. But I'm open to other ideas.

You're constructing your thought process so what you want to do is what you're going to do anyway. You've decided you can't live long-term in your current place so if the choice is between buying a home and renting a slightly more expensive place, then yes renting will be better than buying.

But it's a false dichotomy, because you've already completely dismissed living in your current apartment entirely from your options. It might not be the ideal solution, but you're not even considering it in your analysis.

I hope you can recognize this pattern in your thought process. You decide what you want to happen, then construct everything so the decision you want is the only viable option.

Do you even know, or have you even considered, what you'd be able to do or how your plans might change with that extra money if you threw it at debt or into saving for a house?

You should look into using YNAB or Pocketsmith and make an actual for real grown up budget.

Edit:

n8r posted:

If you had a budget you could make cuts in other areas to pay for the rent increase. Luckily you don't have one so you don't have to make any changes to your lifestyle.

Basically this

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 20:26

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

We're going to be hard on you, you're going to have to prove that you're really doing the hard work to change your habits and make long-term changes

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 21:24

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

n8r posted:

You very well could be able to afford a bigger place. Without a budget it's a total mystery.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2020 14:44

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 22:42

DarkHorse: Dec 13, 2006; Nap Ghost

threelemmings posted:

People just want you to USE the budget. It's clear you're not because you posted this

AFTER you announced you guys were moving apartments.

It's your own fault, if you had just checked your budget first nobody would have known and we'd had have nothing to yell about. Does any of this make sense? Your rapid about face after running the numbers tells the whole thread you never actually looked at your financial situation before you made that decision to move. This is the core of the howling abyss that is your thread.

The only difference between you and zaurg is you stopped and ran the numbers after some prodding. I give you full credit there for being willing to check and admitting you made a mistake.(kind of, you really said "oh I guess we can't move lol" then "why are you yelling at me now") But people are mad you're still making the same easily prevented impulse buys.

Im trying to make the connection as clear as possible directly between your posts. No assumptions, no saying "you ignored advice," your own posts show that you yourself know you are making bad financial decisions. The instant you checked your numbers you knew it was bad!

This.

Making a list of numbers is not a budget. It needs to be something that informs and guides your spending decisions. "I'd like to move the family to a nicer apartment. Hmm, I've only got $1000/mo in the budget for rent, and the new place will be $1200/month. I'll increase my rent category to $1200, putting the extra $200/month to save up for a down payment, and once it's enough to get a good rate I'll see if it's still available. If not, I'll look for another place. "

If you want the thread to work with and encourage you, that's the thought process you should be following. "Hey guys, I'd like to move to a nicer place. Here's my spending plan. Am I using the budget properly? Do you see any other ways that we could do it better/faster?"

You need to have a goal, and you need to have a plan that lets you execute that goal. You don't just decide "I want this", tell yourself "if I just do [that] it'll solve my problems and make things better," spend a bunch of money without thinking, and then try to fix your list of numbers.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2020 16:49

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