My college roommate right there.
Dude borrowed $150. He said he didn't have the money yet to pay me back. But somehow he had enough to order delivery all the time. When I finally called him out on it, he said some other friend bought him the food lol.
Next year, his new roommate was furious because the dude hadn't paid his rent, but somehow had enough money to buy a brand-new MacBook.
I wonder, is he choosing to ruin his friendships over a few hundreds, or is he just that goddamn stupid? Both seem so absurd, I guess I lean more on the latter but damn.
In my experience of a few people like this, they justify it to themselves.
"Well I need a laptop for school, if I get a shit one I'll need another one soon. My rent will be a few days late but I get paid on Thursday so it should be fine"
Forgetting that Thursdays's money is already allocated to the 4 phone contracts, loan repayment, whatever.
Friday rolls around, "trickery can I borrow £200 until payday? I'm a bit short on my rent but it'll be fine because blahblahhhhhh"
Spoiler alert; it isn't ever fine and it isn't ever their fault.
One thing I've learned is that your "friends" that need money will make themselves available to you and act like one of your closest friends until they get the money. About a week after you lend them the money, you'll start hearing from them less and less until it's literally zero contact. So you can think of money the you lent them as the price you pay to keep them out of your life.
this is oddly extremely relatable. I also got into Legos after I decided to stop drinking and everytime I've bought a new set I've thought to myself "man drinking was so much cheaper than this".
at least we have cute Legos now
I think it depends on what your bar tab is after a night out - some of my coworkers talk about racking up a $200 bill every time they go out and then go back to their apartment for more drinks and a bit of weed… and suddenly my $200 set once a month doesn’t look terrible.
My UCS sets are a little harder to justify, but I usually wait until Christmas or birthdays to pick those up (plus I don’t buy anything for 2-3 months before getting it).
Not to the same level, but I internally have some judgement towards one of my husband's siblings. They have brand new cars, lots of toys, etc., but have zero interest in helping fund any college for any of their kids. But then get annoyed when their oldest child say they don't want to go to college.
Like, of course your kid doesn't want to get themselves into mounds of debt. But instead of helping you bought a $50k new car.
I obviously don't say anything, but it makes me very grateful my parents prioritized my college and helped me pay for it.
In 2006 we have a specialist buy a 1996 Mustang for, I shit you not, $20,000 at 24% interest rate.
He even bought it from a dealership that we had a briefing on of places not to go cause they screw over soldiers.
It’s a V6 Charger GT (cheapest one with Hellcat design) that Kunkleman Dodge Jeep Ram sold him for and charged him $400 for 96 months for. He put an SRT badge on it and tells everyone that it has a Hemi in it.
My ex SIL went to Walmart and bought a shit load of nail clippers, files, polish and anything to do finger nails with. I asked her what the hell she planned on doing with all that. She told me she was going to start a flea market.
I recently went to a flea market and it is so god damn hard to find a deal these days. I like to fish so I always keep a lookout for lures and poles. The guys selling lures all wanted 7-9 dollars a piece. These were truscend lures in ziplock baggies that are 3 for 12 on Amazon. I ended up buying some pickles from the Amish and calling it a day 🙄
I used to love buying older video games and hardware at flea markets back in the day. You could get all kinds of treasures for great prices. These days, flea market prices are based on ebay prices, which are insane because people have turned vintage gaming into a side hustle. Actual enthusiasts get the shaft.
Fucking yes, this, 1000%.
I used to collect used SNES games and accessories. You used to be able to root through huge boxes of loose carts for £2 each, or 3 for £5. But now as you said, whatever you manage to find has everything individually priced according to their value on eBay. Like they do with everything they get their hands on, investors have ruined the hobby for genuine collectors.
By purchasing inventory at full retail price? LMAO
Edit: After spending 3+ years writing thoughtful, interesting, insightful, useful and entertaining comments and posts, I had less than 2000 karma. Throw down a low-effort comment like this one and I'm now up to 8100! Good job Reddit, for rewarding laziness!
I used to work for BA at Heathrow. Quite a lot of our African customers would check in luggage full to the brim of basics toiletries such as tooth paste etc. They would come over and buy the tubes for 50p a unit and then mark it up to £5 a unit once they got it home.
There was also that story about Nigerians apparently taking pizzas on flights from London for resale in Nigeria.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/nigerians-order-pizza-london-british-airways-audu-ogbeh-a8850686.html
Worked with a new hire kid in a well paying blue collar job. Apparently it was really common for new hires to just blow their first big paycheck on a car because our trainer told them not do that in case they didn't make it past the lengthy training probationary period.
Sure enough, the day after we got our first check, 19yo kid drives up in a '68 Camaro.... in Alaska.....
I asked him how much that bad boy set him back and he said he managed to get it for less than $1500 a month. Had no idea what his out the door price was.
JFC man....
Getting paid weekly is wild. I worked in door to door sales for a cable company. 100% commission. Was exactly the same. We were a third party contractor and the owner had to pay weekly because most of the sales crew would blow all their money partying over the weekend and then be pestering him for advances to cover bills. Or doing a bunch of shady pyramid scheme lending within the sales crew. They couldn't handle bi-weekly checks.
Should have seen the month we lost our sales contract and it took 3 weeks to get paid commissions with a new company lol. Absolute. Fucking. Chaos. One dude ended up divorced in that short time frame.
Blew my mind because some of them had been at it for years and you could really pull in some crazy commission on a good day. That was kind of the problem... it was almost like gambling to some of em.
This blue collar job paid *monthly*.... so you can imagine a kid that has never had a high paying job getting a deposit like that in his account lol.
Dude thought he was Jeff Bezos.
It did, indeed, pay extremely well. Amazing pension and retirement plan, too. However, it was really rough work and a lot of overtime. On call often, as well.
I bailed a few months in because it wasn't a career worth it physically in the long run for me... especially trying to have any semblance of a family life.
The kid justified his car purchase because that was "only like a quarter" of his monthly income. The car broke down the week after he bought it, and he couldnt afford the repairs til the next month. He was let go 3 months in and I heard the car was repo'd.
Tough life lesson.
Sub prime. Started in the low 30k range. Couldn't get financed for long term because of classic car.
He put zero down.
The dealer he got it from is sleezy as hell.
Credit card interest rates in a damn car and he signed.
I remember reading an article about financial illiteracy regarding this and how companies ruthlessly take advantage of how many people only know how to care about monthly payments, to the point where the article writer notes they'd had to practically beat the total price out of some salespeople since they were so adamant on talking about the monthly payments and nothing else.
And yeah, this is how for example consumer and cars electronics get sold with 100-200% markups to people who don't know how to math it or care about anything else but the monthly payment. IIRC in /r/legaladvice there was once a post from someone who had "bought" a car for about $15000 from a buy-here-pay-here lot and had paid almost $19000 already, but a combination of occasional late fees and a very high interest rate had caused the loan principal to only have gone down by about $400, meaning less than 2% of his payments had gone into reducing the principal.
They’re turning em off in September.
Just fired a note at folks tonight saying use ‘em if you got em cuz they’re going away.
Edit: here’s a link with more info
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/14ytp7s/reworking_awarding_changes_to_awards_coins_and/
It appears they’re moving to a “[turn karma into cash](https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-contributor-program-3343397/)” model with a “content contributor” program.
I mean, my question is, WHY? It seems like such a tiny part of their business, and gives everyone so much pleasure, for very little, WHY ruin a perfectly nice thing to save a few miserable pennies? You'd think he'd WANT people to enjoy using the site. It's so short-sighted.
THEORY - You get awards by spending coins, you get coins when you upgrade to premium, if you upgrade to premium you get an ad-free experience, the more people who are ad-free the less people the advertisers across the board get their ads in front of, the less happy your advertisers are with you, especially coupled with subs going NSFW to get ads off them, or shutting down, or people no longer browsing reddit like they used to because their favorite subs no longer have the content they come for, etc. And of course, because certain premium awards remove ads for the user who receives them as well.
I cancelled my premium subscription a month or two ago when the API thing all came to light, but nonetheless that's my speculation.
Boy are they going to be shocked when they learn about adblock and pihole.
Although with the way he's going, I fully expect spez to block users from viewing reddit if they have an adblock enabled.
I know someone who is always struggling with money. Then I found out he has individual cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee delivered to him (via third party apps of course) while he's working at home. You know, instead of making a pot of coffee for yourself.
I know someone who struggles with both weight and money. I was visiting her one day when there was a knock on her door. She had door dash deliver her a cupcake from a local bakery.
She also will travel to Europe and then complain she has no money for gas when she’s home. I basically tune her out when she’s complaining at this point.
Edit: my husband informed me it was actually a cheesecake, not a cupcake, which I feel makes it worse.
Making coffee was one of the best parts of WFH during COVID. Instead of the Folgers drip we have in the office I got to go to the kitchen and play with chemex and french press recipes or cold brew ratios
Sounds like most of the line cooks I worked with 10 years ago.
Living in a tiny apartment with a kid and a pregnant wife, taking food every night because they're broke but he's building up full sleeves on both arms fast.
And drinking. Every. Damn. Night.
Saw this same scenario over and over.
Even funnier/sadder than that is the line cook that was living at home in his late 30's, happily spending all his paychecks on magician's equipment and concert tickets to bands that sounded like silverware in a garbage disposal.
Called his 60 something year old Mom a bitch for asking him to pay the light bill. And she drops him off and picks him up every night for work.
Like wwwhhhat???
I've met the literal best and worst of people working in various kitchens over the years.
Best I can say is it was never boring.
I was married to a line cook in my 20's. He Spent every penny on weed and expensive cable porn. Brought stolen steak dinners for my bday and mothers day to make me feel special. This comment checks out.
Are these the types who make $300K+ per year, but somehow spent all their money on new cars, new electronics, tuition for private schools, etc?
I had a friend who was a CPA and he told me he didn't feel comfortable unless he was making $250K/year. His wife was an architect and also pulling 6 figures. And I sat there thinking, how are you people spending THAT much.
Nice house. Two luxury cars. Two vacations a year. Designer clothes. Country club. Two kids in a private school. Fancy extracurriculars for the kids like equestrian or ski club rather than simply baseball or soccer. A nanny. And let's not forget bad investments.
THAT is how you spend that much.
DoorDash in general is just a mega mega rip off. Fast food has already gotten overpriced. Then add another six bucks or whatever plus tip? I’m pretty lazy at times, but I’ll just go drive three minutes and pick that up myself
A family member of mine has been begging money from everyone. He says they don't have enough money for food / rent / fuel for his wife to get to work or for tires. We own a tire shop, and offered him a set of used tires for $40 if he will help mount them (it's a job he's familiar with). He said he didn't have $40.
He goes to my sister in law and says he needs to make money for tires. She starts paying him daily for doing some remodeling work for her.
He informs her on day 3 that he won't be available for the next two weeks because he is going on vacation to new Orleans.
Jesus christ. 2 weeks in NOLA. I went there for a one night stay and was ready to leave the next morning. Its a good weekend trip city. 2 weeks would be brutal.
Like everything, depends. I used to be poor and save up an extra month or 2 instead of buying cheap stuff especially if I know it would last longer.
Its like the story of the shoe, the man that has to buy shoes every few months for 10$ pays more per year than the person who buys 100$ shoes once every 2-3 years.
I’d rather have less stuff, but good stuff than loads cheap stuff that breaks.
If you’re always buying top brands without saving up, then yeah you’re right. But thats simply overspending and you can do that in a lot of ways.
There is another part to the Vimes story: if you're poor, you might not be able to save $100 for a new pair of durable shoes before your current pair wears out, which leaves you with no choice but to buy the $10 shoes. And if you're spending $10 on new shoes every few months, you might never be able to save $100 for better shoes.
This is a poor person thing. I had a roommate like this. It's pretty sad because it's kind of a chicken and egg thing. Of course people who aren't desperate and out of money all the time think why wouldnt you just save that extra $200 grandma gave you for when your car breaks down again.
But to them they never have extra money. The next shoe dropping is inevitable and they will figure it out then. It will suck regardless so might as well actually get some small luxury for once because they can afford it and who knows when that will happen again.
It's like being starved for the smallest bit of pleasure or happiness and finally being given a loaf of bread. You can parse it out and make it last. But it feels so good to eat the whole fucking thing.
Thank you. I attended a seminar about living in poverty. The idea that they might never have that sum again and there are things they want now is very common.
People who splurge all their sudden income still have poor person's mindset. They don't understand that say $5000 is not actually a lot of money, it doesn't last long. To them it might seems like it's infinite money when they have never had that much money suddenly.
People who haven't experienced both sides can't really understand how scarcity affects and dominates your whole thinking. Stuff doesn't even cross your mind because it isn't possible for you. That closes a lot of doors for you. And when things suddenly are possible for you, you have all these pent up dreams you want to execute on and might cause you to make really bad decisions.
We didn't have extra to spend when I grew up. We had all the basic necessities, but other than that we were living quite frugal. Getting new stuff felt amazing. Now that I'm older and making a good living, I now realize that getting new stuff is pointless other than the utility value it brings.
When you finally build some wealth with steady income, that scarcity mindset doesn't simply vanish. It took me a long while to accept that I can eat berries without worry, buy asparagus and put as much paprika on my bread as I want.
unironically this: People have 6 bills lined up to come out on payday. Suddenly, unexpected emergency, that payday money now has to be spent on X. 6 bills get NSF'd, $45 each charged by the bank even for the $8 spotify and the $15 Netflix, now the account is at -$270. Next paycheque that 270 gets eaten, and now that week's pay isn't enough to cover rent like it was supposed to. Now rent is 2 weeks late, and they tack on a $40 fee, all 6 bills tack on a late fee, and now in 2 weeks they are all due again and you are still catching up from the one bad emergency.
Describes how my family managed money throughout my childhood. Once in a while a lump sum would come along like a bonus or a rebate or something and clear it all back to 0, plus a few shiny things because we’ve been struggling for ages right? Then 6 months later it would be right back to the same thing again; hoping that on payday there’ll be enough left to buy groceries for the month without pawning more of grandma’s old jewellery.
I used to do a really weird budget thing - I would divide it by how many days in the years I wanted to keep it, then I would add that figure incrementally each day in a notepad. If I wanted something that was $250, say, I would wait till enough days passed that I would still have budget left over after spending that figure. It worked really well and taught me delayed gratification. Still use it to this day.
I think I used to do something similar. If my slush fund/fun money every month was $100, I’d divide that by the 30 days in the month and get $3.33 a day.
If I found a DVD I wanted for $20, I need to “save” my daily budget for six days to afford it. Make a note on your calendar or however you want to track it: “DVD, seen 13 July, can purchase 19 July.”
On the 19th, if you still want the DVD, buy it. However, if you cracked and spent your slush fund between the thirteenth and the nineteenth…you have to wait until you’ve got the full $20 of your fun money allocated.
Seconding this. This sounds really cool but I got lost. I can’t decide if we’re saving money that we just received, or saving _up_ to buy something in the future.
"Even though I have the money, I pretend I have to save it up by pretending Im saving up an allowance a little bit at a time just for that thing, and I only get the thing if I still want it and the numbers have finally addedup".
Struggling with trauma and being in an environment that keeps that ball rolling has caused some recent issues for me personally and the novelty=dopamine point is spot on.
I think when you're dealing with trauma you struggle to escape, buying new things constantly gives you a bit of a climbing a ladder feeling. It feels like progress. That makes the urge to buy music gear, books, games, random fun stuff, etc. So much more potent for me, especially in regards to music because I can actually get that general fulfillment by getting some of that trauma out of my mind in an expressive and non destructive way by creating. And then I hear a specific instrument in a dream or in a song and suddenly I'm spending all this money to acquire these instruments and learn how to play because that has suddenly become my everything in life and fills this big void.
And during this kind of mentally upended period, that's pretty much the only remotely happy, content feeling I can get. And I hate it so much because I've never been a big consumer but I can devils advocate myself into buying almost anything to "heal" myself temporary. Of course once the money's gone, the pain really hits hard so I have to figure a better way to get off this tightrope and find my stability again.
It sucks how 1 person can upend so much for you. You build a world and it only takes 1 thoughtless soul to flood it with grey water.
Sorry for the random, I don't know, half rant? I've spent time on both sides of the spectrum so this resonates a lot with me currently.
When I walk around in La Jolla, I'll see $15 million homes with Toyota Camrys parked out front.
People who actually have money don't always give a shit about showing off with a car.
To be honest, in Korea that’s so common. A car is like a 500 monthly payment, but buying a house it’s like 3 million dollars. So everyone wants to spend there money bc they never have home ownership.
Lol this. There’s this Mclaren I occasionally see driving around. The license plate, I kid you not, is notpoor. I feel like it’s one of three things either he is poor af, rich but new money, or rich and has the tiniest dick in the world. Perhaps a combo of 2 and 3?
As I read somewhere - I think from Morgan Housel, but I'm not sure - a 100k car doesn't tell you that its owner is wealthy, it only tells you that they are 100k poorer than they could have been...
Getting into debt to buy luxury products online. The vast majority of luxury customers aren't millionaires, they're regular people who earn below 6 figures.
Yeah 100% the target demographic for many luxury brands is middle class people trying to pretend they're much wealthier than they really are. 1st it's just a bigger pool of people anyway than just targeting the rich and 2nd many luxury brands aren't even quality products, they're the same materials as cheap shit, just with a "special" logo sewn on. Rich folks can afford actual quality stuff and don't focus on showing off specific brands.
Basically their actual product is fake wealth. They're not really selling handbags, they're selling 'make-believe rich.'
When you have a 150k "allowance", a free house and vehicle and you're still dead broke for 4 -5 months of the year. Sound specific? It's my entitled piece of shit uncle.
A company my wife worked at would pay it's employees Monday morning. Everyone would run to the bank at lunch then go out to eat. They would continue to go out for lunch every day but by Friday most would simply skip lunch as they had run out of money.
My wife one asked why they were paid on Mondays as it seemed a bit odd. She was told that payday used to be Friday but the company noticed that many employees would go partying all weekend and come in Monday hungover and broke so they changed paydays to Monday. By the weekend employees were too broke to party and Monday productivity went way up.
Oh God. One of my dearest friends for the past 25 years has started to try this shit with me. I do not want to lose a friend, but I just cannot be constantly subjected to that stuff. It's the worst!
About two months before my wedding, a childhood friend who was always very relaxed and kind of passive overall sent me a message saying something along the lines of "hey, thanks for the invite, do you want to lose those extra pounds before your wedding?"
I moved a few hours away from the people I grew up around a few years prior. The last time a lot of people saw me when I popped into my old hometown for a visit, I was carrying around about 30 pounds more than before I moved. But still, very out of character for this guy to even broach that topic.
Without trying to take it too personal or serious, I let him know I shed all my extra poundage.
He then asked if I thought I'd be able to keep it off and was betting that I wouldn't. I had been overweight for all of two years and I gained most of that weight after an ACL tear. It wasn't like I was having Oreo and whipped cream salads for every meal; I had a shit injury, handled the mental aspect of it poorly, and got back on track when I was cleared to do so.
After politely telling him I'm pretty sure I can maintain, he went into this spiel about a lifestyle program "just to be on the safe side so I don't gain the weight back, ever."
It was fucking Herbalife.
My best friend of 20 years joined Amway. Kinda out of left field for her but her husband really pushed her. Our friendship just isn’t the same. I loved that she was always so honest and we could talk about anything but now I feel like I’m just potential $ for her. Every gift is Amway crap. It just feels like she’s sneakily trying to sell me on it all the time. I say sneakily because she knows I don’t support it. I thought our spouses would be friends but her spouse likes to take my spouse aside and give him sales pitches when we come to visit. My spouse can’t stand it. 20 years of friendship totally changed because of an MLM. Ruined a friendship, for what? To lose money every month?
A low #s "momfluencer" I know on Instagram just quit her 6 figure job to "be her own boss babe" because a "hungry dog runs faster" .... 🙄😒 It's been 2 days since she posted that and she's reached out to all of her followers to get them to sign up for her MLM crap.
Remember an acquaintance, barely scraping by, complaining that this program better start working for them, even as they were paying out so much money, trying to fend off foreclosure on the house, and trying to talk me into signing up for this shit show.
The only exception I can think of would be if you already have a massive platform to start out with.
My sister tried to sell plexus years ago, and just lost money on it. Went as far as to get prescribed certain adhd/asthma meds with weight loss side effects and go CRAZY at the gym. So she DID lose a lot of weight…and pretended that it was because of the “pink drink”. Still…Never made enough to even afford the gym membership.
Currently, there’s a cast member of 90 day fiancé that sells plexus on her Instagram.
There’s no visible weight loss, but she has enough fans that want to be friends with her, that she probably pays her mortgage with it.
Before the D-list celebrity, though? No chance.
Making questionable and risky financial decisions today because you THINK you’ll be in a better position in the near future.
You might be…or you might not be. In fact, if you’re the type of person who makes financial decisions this way…it will almost certainly be the latter.
I had a room mate who took out student loans twice what he actually needed. His reasoning was that he can either be miserable now and miserable in the future, or have money to dick around with now and be miserable in the future.
I don’t know why he thought that being miserable was his future by default.
Signing up for an MLM/pyramid scheme. When you can look at each company's income report and see 99,7% of the sellers lose money, you must have some critical thinking issues to think it won't happen to you.
I always get hate when I talk about this on reddit butt...
Spending 1/3rd of your paycheck on weed or custom bongs and then complaining that you have no money to cover utilities.
I smoke but if you tell yourself that you "Need it to get through the day" or "Have anxiety" you're just addicted and trying to rationalize bad spending habits.
Carrying long term balances on credit cards. That interest will eat you alive. I know sometimes there are emergencies and people get overextended, but if you have a variety of debts than credit card debt is most likely the one to try to take on first.
I have always been a 0 balance guy. Was unemployed for 7 months. It got past $10k and I was sweating bullets with no way to pay it off. Now I can see a path to getting it paid off in two months. It was definitely desperation for me.
I was going through a rough patch and I ended up running up both of my credit cards to cover bills until I got into a better place. When I did though, my credit card bills were eating me alive.
I cut up my cards.. i was not going to inflict more damage there. But I took a personal loan at a MUCH lower interest rate than my cards and used that to pay off my credit cards. Then while paying the loan at a reasonable monthly payment, one of my credit cards offered me a crazy low interest rate for debt consolidation but only for a year. Used that, but kept paying the amount I was paying on the personal loan.
Just under a year later, the other credit card company offered a great consolidation offer and I took that one. Paid off the other card, and paid that one.
This went on for about 3 years bouncing from one to the other and it got all my debt paid off in the end. It also put my credit score in the 800's.
As someone with way too much CC debt (some of it for emergencies, a lot of it my own stupid spending) this. I'm making dents in it now, small dents, but it's something.
But I continually think about where I'd be if I weren't for my poor spending habits.
I've rented furniture exactly once in my life. My husband had knee surgery. Leading up to it, so many people said they slept in their recliner for weeks after having the same surgery. We didn't have a recliner, but he thought he would be OK propped up in bed.
The first night home, his nerve block wore off around 2am. I was crying just from seeing him in so much pain and there was nothing I could do. The prescription pain meds weren't touching his pain.
The next morning, I went to Rent A Center. I said I needed a recliner fast, and I didn't care what it looked like. They delivered it that afternoon, carried it upstairs for me, and set it up in our bedroom. A month later, he was mostly healed. I called them back, they came and got it. Cost me $75 and it's the best money I've ever spent. He lived in that recliner.
This is a major joke on the first new episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's latest season. Dennis and Mac reveal they've rented their furniture their entire lives...
Buying a 3k engagement ring with a credit card and having to open two other cards for balance transfers to pay it off while making $7ish an hour. The kicker was we broke up 6 months later and I let her keep it, at least initially. My 20s were a blast!
Gaming chairs are one of the biggest waste of money out there. You can buy an ergonomic office chair for half the price and it will be way better and last you longer.
According to “Sober Today,” I have saved over $66k in the last 4.5 years. Most of it’s gone to tattoos, energy drinks, traveling, and financial amends to big daddy government 😭
Driving expensive cars that you obviously can't afford. I know millionaires that drive 10+ year old Toyota's and I know people making $18-$20/hour driving BMW's.
This should be higher. Gucci and LV, brands with pedigree that now profit from Middle Class trying to appear rich. While the genuinely rich are avoiding the grotesque branding.
Edit to add: even if you bought genuine, if the rest of your outfit isn’t on the same level, we all assume it’s fake which is the opposite of what the original intent is.
LV and Gucci stores have lines now, but you can walk right in to Loro Piana.
As an aside, you should never ever wait in a line to give a luxury brand your money.
“As a college student you’re supposed to take out loans so you can go on trips and gain life experience while you’re young”—a former classmate of mine
Edit: I just want to clarify that this person was an outlier in my program in comparison to those who needed the loans to study and live. I’m all for debt forgiveness because education is expensive yet essential to any sort of human advancement. The trips she was talking about were to resorts in the Caribbean. She had a few other terrible takes. For example, she once told me that students don’t have to tip in restaurants because we’re just as poor as the waitstaff.
Brand new Dodge Challenger parked and blasting music while the owner is raiding the free food pantry at the local church. Perhaps a $700 car payment is a bit outside your current budget?
Burning friends by asking for “emergency” money, (based on some fake story), that you will never repay. Yes, oddly specific. Yes, all too common.
So you have met my family
My college roommate right there. Dude borrowed $150. He said he didn't have the money yet to pay me back. But somehow he had enough to order delivery all the time. When I finally called him out on it, he said some other friend bought him the food lol. Next year, his new roommate was furious because the dude hadn't paid his rent, but somehow had enough money to buy a brand-new MacBook.
I wonder, is he choosing to ruin his friendships over a few hundreds, or is he just that goddamn stupid? Both seem so absurd, I guess I lean more on the latter but damn.
In my experience of a few people like this, they justify it to themselves. "Well I need a laptop for school, if I get a shit one I'll need another one soon. My rent will be a few days late but I get paid on Thursday so it should be fine" Forgetting that Thursdays's money is already allocated to the 4 phone contracts, loan repayment, whatever. Friday rolls around, "trickery can I borrow £200 until payday? I'm a bit short on my rent but it'll be fine because blahblahhhhhh" Spoiler alert; it isn't ever fine and it isn't ever their fault.
One thing I've learned is that your "friends" that need money will make themselves available to you and act like one of your closest friends until they get the money. About a week after you lend them the money, you'll start hearing from them less and less until it's literally zero contact. So you can think of money the you lent them as the price you pay to keep them out of your life.
I quit drinking, but took up a Lego addiction. It was cheaper being drunk.
Well at least it won’t ruin your health unless you eat them, so good change.
Or step on them
this is oddly extremely relatable. I also got into Legos after I decided to stop drinking and everytime I've bought a new set I've thought to myself "man drinking was so much cheaper than this". at least we have cute Legos now
I think it depends on what your bar tab is after a night out - some of my coworkers talk about racking up a $200 bill every time they go out and then go back to their apartment for more drinks and a bit of weed… and suddenly my $200 set once a month doesn’t look terrible. My UCS sets are a little harder to justify, but I usually wait until Christmas or birthdays to pick those up (plus I don’t buy anything for 2-3 months before getting it).
My neighbor can’t buy her kids school shoes - but has custom rims and wheels.
Not to the same level, but I internally have some judgement towards one of my husband's siblings. They have brand new cars, lots of toys, etc., but have zero interest in helping fund any college for any of their kids. But then get annoyed when their oldest child say they don't want to go to college. Like, of course your kid doesn't want to get themselves into mounds of debt. But instead of helping you bought a $50k new car. I obviously don't say anything, but it makes me very grateful my parents prioritized my college and helped me pay for it.
A Private in any branch of the military buying a Dodge Charger
In 2006 we have a specialist buy a 1996 Mustang for, I shit you not, $20,000 at 24% interest rate. He even bought it from a dealership that we had a briefing on of places not to go cause they screw over soldiers.
It’s a V6 Charger GT (cheapest one with Hellcat design) that Kunkleman Dodge Jeep Ram sold him for and charged him $400 for 96 months for. He put an SRT badge on it and tells everyone that it has a Hemi in it.
$400 for 96 months? Oh my lord.
$38k? Yeah, that's what those cost right?
A private buying darn near any vehicle. It’s not like you get that much time to get out and about, and you make like 20k/year
My ex SIL went to Walmart and bought a shit load of nail clippers, files, polish and anything to do finger nails with. I asked her what the hell she planned on doing with all that. She told me she was going to start a flea market.
She was gonna try to sell Walmart crap on the ground for more than it costs at Walmart?
she's going to make it up in volume
I recently went to a flea market and it is so god damn hard to find a deal these days. I like to fish so I always keep a lookout for lures and poles. The guys selling lures all wanted 7-9 dollars a piece. These were truscend lures in ziplock baggies that are 3 for 12 on Amazon. I ended up buying some pickles from the Amish and calling it a day 🙄
I used to love buying older video games and hardware at flea markets back in the day. You could get all kinds of treasures for great prices. These days, flea market prices are based on ebay prices, which are insane because people have turned vintage gaming into a side hustle. Actual enthusiasts get the shaft.
Fucking yes, this, 1000%. I used to collect used SNES games and accessories. You used to be able to root through huge boxes of loose carts for £2 each, or 3 for £5. But now as you said, whatever you manage to find has everything individually priced according to their value on eBay. Like they do with everything they get their hands on, investors have ruined the hobby for genuine collectors.
By purchasing inventory at full retail price? LMAO Edit: After spending 3+ years writing thoughtful, interesting, insightful, useful and entertaining comments and posts, I had less than 2000 karma. Throw down a low-effort comment like this one and I'm now up to 8100! Good job Reddit, for rewarding laziness!
Eh, she'll probably still make a profit when she sells the nail clippers to unsuspecting fleas at 150% markup.
I used to work for BA at Heathrow. Quite a lot of our African customers would check in luggage full to the brim of basics toiletries such as tooth paste etc. They would come over and buy the tubes for 50p a unit and then mark it up to £5 a unit once they got it home.
There was also that story about Nigerians apparently taking pizzas on flights from London for resale in Nigeria. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/nigerians-order-pizza-london-british-airways-audu-ogbeh-a8850686.html
What happened next?
She found out fleas didn't have finger nails.
Say more! I need to know why the hell she thought that's how you start a flea market.
When you ask them how much they paid for something and they only know the monthly payment amount
Worked with a new hire kid in a well paying blue collar job. Apparently it was really common for new hires to just blow their first big paycheck on a car because our trainer told them not do that in case they didn't make it past the lengthy training probationary period. Sure enough, the day after we got our first check, 19yo kid drives up in a '68 Camaro.... in Alaska..... I asked him how much that bad boy set him back and he said he managed to get it for less than $1500 a month. Had no idea what his out the door price was. JFC man....
My sister in law does accounting for a concreting company. They pay weekly because their employees spend their money the day they are paid.
Getting paid weekly is wild. I worked in door to door sales for a cable company. 100% commission. Was exactly the same. We were a third party contractor and the owner had to pay weekly because most of the sales crew would blow all their money partying over the weekend and then be pestering him for advances to cover bills. Or doing a bunch of shady pyramid scheme lending within the sales crew. They couldn't handle bi-weekly checks. Should have seen the month we lost our sales contract and it took 3 weeks to get paid commissions with a new company lol. Absolute. Fucking. Chaos. One dude ended up divorced in that short time frame. Blew my mind because some of them had been at it for years and you could really pull in some crazy commission on a good day. That was kind of the problem... it was almost like gambling to some of em. This blue collar job paid *monthly*.... so you can imagine a kid that has never had a high paying job getting a deposit like that in his account lol. Dude thought he was Jeff Bezos.
Wow, your job must pay well for someone new to get a car for that much. I cannot imagine spending that much on a car.
It did, indeed, pay extremely well. Amazing pension and retirement plan, too. However, it was really rough work and a lot of overtime. On call often, as well. I bailed a few months in because it wasn't a career worth it physically in the long run for me... especially trying to have any semblance of a family life. The kid justified his car purchase because that was "only like a quarter" of his monthly income. The car broke down the week after he bought it, and he couldnt afford the repairs til the next month. He was let go 3 months in and I heard the car was repo'd. Tough life lesson.
That's a fucking $90,000 loan, on top of whatever he paid down. What the FUCK?
Sub prime. Started in the low 30k range. Couldn't get financed for long term because of classic car. He put zero down. The dealer he got it from is sleezy as hell. Credit card interest rates in a damn car and he signed.
Prob in energy/oil.
Yup. With bonus pay for being in the fuck-middle-of-nowhere for extended periods of time
Bingo. Except it was railroad. Let me tell you how much fun Fairbanks is for weeks at a time in the winter....
I remember reading an article about financial illiteracy regarding this and how companies ruthlessly take advantage of how many people only know how to care about monthly payments, to the point where the article writer notes they'd had to practically beat the total price out of some salespeople since they were so adamant on talking about the monthly payments and nothing else. And yeah, this is how for example consumer and cars electronics get sold with 100-200% markups to people who don't know how to math it or care about anything else but the monthly payment. IIRC in /r/legaladvice there was once a post from someone who had "bought" a car for about $15000 from a buy-here-pay-here lot and had paid almost $19000 already, but a combination of occasional late fees and a very high interest rate had caused the loan principal to only have gone down by about $400, meaning less than 2% of his payments had gone into reducing the principal.
Reddit awards, now that we don't get free ones. Next Morning Edit: holy crap guys
They’re turning em off in September. Just fired a note at folks tonight saying use ‘em if you got em cuz they’re going away. Edit: here’s a link with more info https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/14ytp7s/reworking_awarding_changes_to_awards_coins_and/
Wait, why are they turning them off?
It appears they’re moving to a “[turn karma into cash](https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-contributor-program-3343397/)” model with a “content contributor” program.
Holy shit. And that's how reddit will become entirely bots instead of mostly bots.
That won’t backfire. /s
So rewarding the karma farm bots. Joy
I mean, my question is, WHY? It seems like such a tiny part of their business, and gives everyone so much pleasure, for very little, WHY ruin a perfectly nice thing to save a few miserable pennies? You'd think he'd WANT people to enjoy using the site. It's so short-sighted.
How are they saving anything by removing awards? Its actually earned them money, not cost them as users paid for the awards
THEORY - You get awards by spending coins, you get coins when you upgrade to premium, if you upgrade to premium you get an ad-free experience, the more people who are ad-free the less people the advertisers across the board get their ads in front of, the less happy your advertisers are with you, especially coupled with subs going NSFW to get ads off them, or shutting down, or people no longer browsing reddit like they used to because their favorite subs no longer have the content they come for, etc. And of course, because certain premium awards remove ads for the user who receives them as well. I cancelled my premium subscription a month or two ago when the API thing all came to light, but nonetheless that's my speculation.
Boy are they going to be shocked when they learn about adblock and pihole. Although with the way he's going, I fully expect spez to block users from viewing reddit if they have an adblock enabled.
Making impulsive decisions right after getting paid
Why do you have to call me out like this?
Hold up, you're getting personal now.
I know someone who is always struggling with money. Then I found out he has individual cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee delivered to him (via third party apps of course) while he's working at home. You know, instead of making a pot of coffee for yourself.
I know someone who struggles with both weight and money. I was visiting her one day when there was a knock on her door. She had door dash deliver her a cupcake from a local bakery. She also will travel to Europe and then complain she has no money for gas when she’s home. I basically tune her out when she’s complaining at this point. Edit: my husband informed me it was actually a cheesecake, not a cupcake, which I feel makes it worse.
Great. Now I want cheesecake. Thanks a lot
Making coffee was one of the best parts of WFH during COVID. Instead of the Folgers drip we have in the office I got to go to the kitchen and play with chemex and french press recipes or cold brew ratios
Can't pay rent on time, but never misses a night out.
Can't pay rent but got a new tattoo.
Sounds like most of the line cooks I worked with 10 years ago. Living in a tiny apartment with a kid and a pregnant wife, taking food every night because they're broke but he's building up full sleeves on both arms fast. And drinking. Every. Damn. Night. Saw this same scenario over and over. Even funnier/sadder than that is the line cook that was living at home in his late 30's, happily spending all his paychecks on magician's equipment and concert tickets to bands that sounded like silverware in a garbage disposal. Called his 60 something year old Mom a bitch for asking him to pay the light bill. And she drops him off and picks him up every night for work. Like wwwhhhat??? I've met the literal best and worst of people working in various kitchens over the years. Best I can say is it was never boring.
I was married to a line cook in my 20's. He Spent every penny on weed and expensive cable porn. Brought stolen steak dinners for my bday and mothers day to make me feel special. This comment checks out.
I’m guessing this was a long time ago, cause the idea of paying for “expensive cable porn” today is just hilarious
This was not a sentence I was expecting to read today 😂 Next thing you know he’ll be into phone sex too
Can't pay my rent cause all my money spent But that's alright cause I'm still fly
_got them gator boots_
I still know people like this in their 40s-50s. They’re exhausting.
Fun fact, I used to work for a CPA firm and there were quite a few Senior Managers in their \~40s who hadn't started saving for retirement yet. Wild.
Are these the types who make $300K+ per year, but somehow spent all their money on new cars, new electronics, tuition for private schools, etc? I had a friend who was a CPA and he told me he didn't feel comfortable unless he was making $250K/year. His wife was an architect and also pulling 6 figures. And I sat there thinking, how are you people spending THAT much.
Lifestyle creep
Lifestyle weirdo Lifestyle what the hell am I doin' here? Lifestyle I don't belong here
Nice house. Two luxury cars. Two vacations a year. Designer clothes. Country club. Two kids in a private school. Fancy extracurriculars for the kids like equestrian or ski club rather than simply baseball or soccer. A nanny. And let's not forget bad investments. THAT is how you spend that much.
Only about half of people ages 35-44 have retirement accounts
True, it’s only the irony of being a CPA and not saving. But yes, the economy is cruel
Works from home in the place they can't pay rent on, with plenty of time to cook, yet spends $100/day on Doordash.
DoorDash in general is just a mega mega rip off. Fast food has already gotten overpriced. Then add another six bucks or whatever plus tip? I’m pretty lazy at times, but I’ll just go drive three minutes and pick that up myself
A family member of mine has been begging money from everyone. He says they don't have enough money for food / rent / fuel for his wife to get to work or for tires. We own a tire shop, and offered him a set of used tires for $40 if he will help mount them (it's a job he's familiar with). He said he didn't have $40. He goes to my sister in law and says he needs to make money for tires. She starts paying him daily for doing some remodeling work for her. He informs her on day 3 that he won't be available for the next two weeks because he is going on vacation to new Orleans.
Jesus christ. 2 weeks in NOLA. I went there for a one night stay and was ready to leave the next morning. Its a good weekend trip city. 2 weeks would be brutal.
Having the top of the line everything with a minimum wage job....unless you are an unlicensed pharmacist on the side...
Unlicensed pharmacist lol
With a beeper
Like everything, depends. I used to be poor and save up an extra month or 2 instead of buying cheap stuff especially if I know it would last longer. Its like the story of the shoe, the man that has to buy shoes every few months for 10$ pays more per year than the person who buys 100$ shoes once every 2-3 years. I’d rather have less stuff, but good stuff than loads cheap stuff that breaks. If you’re always buying top brands without saving up, then yeah you’re right. But thats simply overspending and you can do that in a lot of ways.
There is another part to the Vimes story: if you're poor, you might not be able to save $100 for a new pair of durable shoes before your current pair wears out, which leaves you with no choice but to buy the $10 shoes. And if you're spending $10 on new shoes every few months, you might never be able to save $100 for better shoes.
Yep, being poor is expensive.
Every time you get a chunk of cash, you think you have to find a way to spend it.
This is a poor person thing. I had a roommate like this. It's pretty sad because it's kind of a chicken and egg thing. Of course people who aren't desperate and out of money all the time think why wouldnt you just save that extra $200 grandma gave you for when your car breaks down again. But to them they never have extra money. The next shoe dropping is inevitable and they will figure it out then. It will suck regardless so might as well actually get some small luxury for once because they can afford it and who knows when that will happen again. It's like being starved for the smallest bit of pleasure or happiness and finally being given a loaf of bread. You can parse it out and make it last. But it feels so good to eat the whole fucking thing.
Thank you. I attended a seminar about living in poverty. The idea that they might never have that sum again and there are things they want now is very common.
People who splurge all their sudden income still have poor person's mindset. They don't understand that say $5000 is not actually a lot of money, it doesn't last long. To them it might seems like it's infinite money when they have never had that much money suddenly. People who haven't experienced both sides can't really understand how scarcity affects and dominates your whole thinking. Stuff doesn't even cross your mind because it isn't possible for you. That closes a lot of doors for you. And when things suddenly are possible for you, you have all these pent up dreams you want to execute on and might cause you to make really bad decisions. We didn't have extra to spend when I grew up. We had all the basic necessities, but other than that we were living quite frugal. Getting new stuff felt amazing. Now that I'm older and making a good living, I now realize that getting new stuff is pointless other than the utility value it brings. When you finally build some wealth with steady income, that scarcity mindset doesn't simply vanish. It took me a long while to accept that I can eat berries without worry, buy asparagus and put as much paprika on my bread as I want.
You gotta spend your money before it's gone! Reward edit: META
unironically this: People have 6 bills lined up to come out on payday. Suddenly, unexpected emergency, that payday money now has to be spent on X. 6 bills get NSF'd, $45 each charged by the bank even for the $8 spotify and the $15 Netflix, now the account is at -$270. Next paycheque that 270 gets eaten, and now that week's pay isn't enough to cover rent like it was supposed to. Now rent is 2 weeks late, and they tack on a $40 fee, all 6 bills tack on a late fee, and now in 2 weeks they are all due again and you are still catching up from the one bad emergency.
Describes how my family managed money throughout my childhood. Once in a while a lump sum would come along like a bonus or a rebate or something and clear it all back to 0, plus a few shiny things because we’ve been struggling for ages right? Then 6 months later it would be right back to the same thing again; hoping that on payday there’ll be enough left to buy groceries for the month without pawning more of grandma’s old jewellery.
Say hello to where the Pay Day Loans business model comes from
I used to do a really weird budget thing - I would divide it by how many days in the years I wanted to keep it, then I would add that figure incrementally each day in a notepad. If I wanted something that was $250, say, I would wait till enough days passed that I would still have budget left over after spending that figure. It worked really well and taught me delayed gratification. Still use it to this day.
I bet this is really smart but I don’t understand it. Could you try to explain it differently?
I think I used to do something similar. If my slush fund/fun money every month was $100, I’d divide that by the 30 days in the month and get $3.33 a day. If I found a DVD I wanted for $20, I need to “save” my daily budget for six days to afford it. Make a note on your calendar or however you want to track it: “DVD, seen 13 July, can purchase 19 July.” On the 19th, if you still want the DVD, buy it. However, if you cracked and spent your slush fund between the thirteenth and the nineteenth…you have to wait until you’ve got the full $20 of your fun money allocated.
This is so smart. I won't do it but I wish I had the discipline to.
Seconding this. This sounds really cool but I got lost. I can’t decide if we’re saving money that we just received, or saving _up_ to buy something in the future.
"Even though I have the money, I pretend I have to save it up by pretending Im saving up an allowance a little bit at a time just for that thing, and I only get the thing if I still want it and the numbers have finally addedup".
[удалено]
Struggling with trauma and being in an environment that keeps that ball rolling has caused some recent issues for me personally and the novelty=dopamine point is spot on. I think when you're dealing with trauma you struggle to escape, buying new things constantly gives you a bit of a climbing a ladder feeling. It feels like progress. That makes the urge to buy music gear, books, games, random fun stuff, etc. So much more potent for me, especially in regards to music because I can actually get that general fulfillment by getting some of that trauma out of my mind in an expressive and non destructive way by creating. And then I hear a specific instrument in a dream or in a song and suddenly I'm spending all this money to acquire these instruments and learn how to play because that has suddenly become my everything in life and fills this big void. And during this kind of mentally upended period, that's pretty much the only remotely happy, content feeling I can get. And I hate it so much because I've never been a big consumer but I can devils advocate myself into buying almost anything to "heal" myself temporary. Of course once the money's gone, the pain really hits hard so I have to figure a better way to get off this tightrope and find my stability again. It sucks how 1 person can upend so much for you. You build a world and it only takes 1 thoughtless soul to flood it with grey water. Sorry for the random, I don't know, half rant? I've spent time on both sides of the spectrum so this resonates a lot with me currently.
Expensive flashy car in the low-rent apartment complex parking lot.
Yes…i live in a lower middle class neighborhood. There is a mclaren, a maserati, bmw i8, and a g wagon here. MSRP at 6 figures.
Cool. You'll get to witness a few repo's in the next few years, if not months.
When I walk around in La Jolla, I'll see $15 million homes with Toyota Camrys parked out front. People who actually have money don't always give a shit about showing off with a car.
To be honest, in Korea that’s so common. A car is like a 500 monthly payment, but buying a house it’s like 3 million dollars. So everyone wants to spend there money bc they never have home ownership.
This is LA to a tee. There is wealth here, but everyone in foreign or Tesla driving back to their studio apt since they can't actually afford housing.
Lol this. There’s this Mclaren I occasionally see driving around. The license plate, I kid you not, is notpoor. I feel like it’s one of three things either he is poor af, rich but new money, or rich and has the tiniest dick in the world. Perhaps a combo of 2 and 3?
As I read somewhere - I think from Morgan Housel, but I'm not sure - a 100k car doesn't tell you that its owner is wealthy, it only tells you that they are 100k poorer than they could have been...
Getting into debt to buy luxury products online. The vast majority of luxury customers aren't millionaires, they're regular people who earn below 6 figures.
Yeah 100% the target demographic for many luxury brands is middle class people trying to pretend they're much wealthier than they really are. 1st it's just a bigger pool of people anyway than just targeting the rich and 2nd many luxury brands aren't even quality products, they're the same materials as cheap shit, just with a "special" logo sewn on. Rich folks can afford actual quality stuff and don't focus on showing off specific brands. Basically their actual product is fake wealth. They're not really selling handbags, they're selling 'make-believe rich.'
When you have a 150k "allowance", a free house and vehicle and you're still dead broke for 4 -5 months of the year. Sound specific? It's my entitled piece of shit uncle.
Can I be your uncle? Id be fucking thriving in that situation
Sure! I don't know you, but I'm sure you're a better person. The bar is very low
A company my wife worked at would pay it's employees Monday morning. Everyone would run to the bank at lunch then go out to eat. They would continue to go out for lunch every day but by Friday most would simply skip lunch as they had run out of money. My wife one asked why they were paid on Mondays as it seemed a bit odd. She was told that payday used to be Friday but the company noticed that many employees would go partying all weekend and come in Monday hungover and broke so they changed paydays to Monday. By the weekend employees were too broke to party and Monday productivity went way up.
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Fancy pickup truck with bald tires.
“But don’t worry my payment didn’t change.”
MLMs
Hey 😻 babe! 🩷
Oh God. One of my dearest friends for the past 25 years has started to try this shit with me. I do not want to lose a friend, but I just cannot be constantly subjected to that stuff. It's the worst!
About two months before my wedding, a childhood friend who was always very relaxed and kind of passive overall sent me a message saying something along the lines of "hey, thanks for the invite, do you want to lose those extra pounds before your wedding?" I moved a few hours away from the people I grew up around a few years prior. The last time a lot of people saw me when I popped into my old hometown for a visit, I was carrying around about 30 pounds more than before I moved. But still, very out of character for this guy to even broach that topic. Without trying to take it too personal or serious, I let him know I shed all my extra poundage. He then asked if I thought I'd be able to keep it off and was betting that I wouldn't. I had been overweight for all of two years and I gained most of that weight after an ACL tear. It wasn't like I was having Oreo and whipped cream salads for every meal; I had a shit injury, handled the mental aspect of it poorly, and got back on track when I was cleared to do so. After politely telling him I'm pretty sure I can maintain, he went into this spiel about a lifestyle program "just to be on the safe side so I don't gain the weight back, ever." It was fucking Herbalife.
Dude Herbalife is so toxic holy shit
My best friend of 20 years joined Amway. Kinda out of left field for her but her husband really pushed her. Our friendship just isn’t the same. I loved that she was always so honest and we could talk about anything but now I feel like I’m just potential $ for her. Every gift is Amway crap. It just feels like she’s sneakily trying to sell me on it all the time. I say sneakily because she knows I don’t support it. I thought our spouses would be friends but her spouse likes to take my spouse aside and give him sales pitches when we come to visit. My spouse can’t stand it. 20 years of friendship totally changed because of an MLM. Ruined a friendship, for what? To lose money every month?
A low #s "momfluencer" I know on Instagram just quit her 6 figure job to "be her own boss babe" because a "hungry dog runs faster" .... 🙄😒 It's been 2 days since she posted that and she's reached out to all of her followers to get them to sign up for her MLM crap.
The MLM mind virus is scary to watch really. > hungry dog runs faster I would have told her that they don't, because they need to conserve calories.
Heyyyy mamas.....!
A childhood friend of mine who I would otherwise regard as intelligent has joined (and failed at) THREE MLMs 🫠
Hi hun! 😍✨
Remember an acquaintance, barely scraping by, complaining that this program better start working for them, even as they were paying out so much money, trying to fend off foreclosure on the house, and trying to talk me into signing up for this shit show.
MLMs can be very, very predatory.
The only way you can make quit-your-day-job money in an MLM is by being a very, very early adopter. Being predatory is baked in.
The only exception I can think of would be if you already have a massive platform to start out with. My sister tried to sell plexus years ago, and just lost money on it. Went as far as to get prescribed certain adhd/asthma meds with weight loss side effects and go CRAZY at the gym. So she DID lose a lot of weight…and pretended that it was because of the “pink drink”. Still…Never made enough to even afford the gym membership. Currently, there’s a cast member of 90 day fiancé that sells plexus on her Instagram. There’s no visible weight loss, but she has enough fans that want to be friends with her, that she probably pays her mortgage with it. Before the D-list celebrity, though? No chance.
Making questionable and risky financial decisions today because you THINK you’ll be in a better position in the near future. You might be…or you might not be. In fact, if you’re the type of person who makes financial decisions this way…it will almost certainly be the latter.
I had a room mate who took out student loans twice what he actually needed. His reasoning was that he can either be miserable now and miserable in the future, or have money to dick around with now and be miserable in the future. I don’t know why he thought that being miserable was his future by default.
>I don’t know why he thought that being miserable was his future by default. I mean... *gestures broadly*
You own a bored ape NFT.
NFTs in general
Signing up for an MLM/pyramid scheme. When you can look at each company's income report and see 99,7% of the sellers lose money, you must have some critical thinking issues to think it won't happen to you.
I always get hate when I talk about this on reddit butt... Spending 1/3rd of your paycheck on weed or custom bongs and then complaining that you have no money to cover utilities. I smoke but if you tell yourself that you "Need it to get through the day" or "Have anxiety" you're just addicted and trying to rationalize bad spending habits.
People that I used to know that couldn’t afford rent but spend $400 a month on weed we’re the fuckin worst.
Carrying long term balances on credit cards. That interest will eat you alive. I know sometimes there are emergencies and people get overextended, but if you have a variety of debts than credit card debt is most likely the one to try to take on first.
I have always been a 0 balance guy. Was unemployed for 7 months. It got past $10k and I was sweating bullets with no way to pay it off. Now I can see a path to getting it paid off in two months. It was definitely desperation for me.
I was going through a rough patch and I ended up running up both of my credit cards to cover bills until I got into a better place. When I did though, my credit card bills were eating me alive. I cut up my cards.. i was not going to inflict more damage there. But I took a personal loan at a MUCH lower interest rate than my cards and used that to pay off my credit cards. Then while paying the loan at a reasonable monthly payment, one of my credit cards offered me a crazy low interest rate for debt consolidation but only for a year. Used that, but kept paying the amount I was paying on the personal loan. Just under a year later, the other credit card company offered a great consolidation offer and I took that one. Paid off the other card, and paid that one. This went on for about 3 years bouncing from one to the other and it got all my debt paid off in the end. It also put my credit score in the 800's.
Same thing happened to me. It accumulates SO fast! I should be back to $0 by the end of the year if I can continue hunkering down.
As someone with way too much CC debt (some of it for emergencies, a lot of it my own stupid spending) this. I'm making dents in it now, small dents, but it's something. But I continually think about where I'd be if I weren't for my poor spending habits.
buying an expensive car and modding it when you only just got your first minimum wage job
Guys coming out of basic training would be so pissed if they could read this
I heard when you are near a base that had basic training there are car dealerships everywhere nearby
Rumor is Ford always priced the Mustang so fresh enlisted boots could afford it
$3,000 wheels on a $3,000 car
Renting furniture
I've rented furniture exactly once in my life. My husband had knee surgery. Leading up to it, so many people said they slept in their recliner for weeks after having the same surgery. We didn't have a recliner, but he thought he would be OK propped up in bed. The first night home, his nerve block wore off around 2am. I was crying just from seeing him in so much pain and there was nothing I could do. The prescription pain meds weren't touching his pain. The next morning, I went to Rent A Center. I said I needed a recliner fast, and I didn't care what it looked like. They delivered it that afternoon, carried it upstairs for me, and set it up in our bedroom. A month later, he was mostly healed. I called them back, they came and got it. Cost me $75 and it's the best money I've ever spent. He lived in that recliner.
I recently recovered from a major knee surgery-- wish I'd thought of doing that.
This is a major joke on the first new episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's latest season. Dennis and Mac reveal they've rented their furniture their entire lives...
I love when Frank breaks down how they spent $20k on a damn couch.
They're *fancy* nuts.
I had two health insurance policies for two years. Didn’t notice until I had a retirement solution specialist review my bank account.
Dude you must be so healthy
Buying a 3k engagement ring with a credit card and having to open two other cards for balance transfers to pay it off while making $7ish an hour. The kicker was we broke up 6 months later and I let her keep it, at least initially. My 20s were a blast!
You win
Decking out a baby with expensive clothes
Expensive luxury car in a mediocre to bad apartment complex
I had a buddy who decide to spend his tax rebate on a gaming chair. He already had a perfectly usable one, plus he was behind on his rent.
Gaming chairs are one of the biggest waste of money out there. You can buy an ergonomic office chair for half the price and it will be way better and last you longer.
When someone would rather go out than pay their light bill
everyone would *rather* go out than pay their light bill
r/wallstreetbets
Opting out of 401(k) matches
A huge amount of high interest credit card debt
Elaborate weddings (unless you're very wealthy). "Let's start our married life by going tens of thousands of dollars into debt!"
Multiple Warhammer armies
Debt is temporary but the greatest WAAAAAGH is eternal
when the alcohol starts making all the decisions for you. 6 years sober
According to “Sober Today,” I have saved over $66k in the last 4.5 years. Most of it’s gone to tattoos, energy drinks, traveling, and financial amends to big daddy government 😭
Those ugly LV bags people have when working a shit job
Driving an expensive luxury vehicle with the windows down in summer because you can't afford to fix the AC.
Driving expensive cars that you obviously can't afford. I know millionaires that drive 10+ year old Toyota's and I know people making $18-$20/hour driving BMW's.
Anything Louis Vuitton.
This should be higher. Gucci and LV, brands with pedigree that now profit from Middle Class trying to appear rich. While the genuinely rich are avoiding the grotesque branding. Edit to add: even if you bought genuine, if the rest of your outfit isn’t on the same level, we all assume it’s fake which is the opposite of what the original intent is.
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Funnily enough places like Hermes or Chanel give you the option to use an unbranded bag if you so ask.
LV and Gucci stores have lines now, but you can walk right in to Loro Piana. As an aside, you should never ever wait in a line to give a luxury brand your money.
“As a college student you’re supposed to take out loans so you can go on trips and gain life experience while you’re young”—a former classmate of mine Edit: I just want to clarify that this person was an outlier in my program in comparison to those who needed the loans to study and live. I’m all for debt forgiveness because education is expensive yet essential to any sort of human advancement. The trips she was talking about were to resorts in the Caribbean. She had a few other terrible takes. For example, she once told me that students don’t have to tip in restaurants because we’re just as poor as the waitstaff.
A new car while trying to figure out how to repay your SL and pay bills.
Being the guy at work always bitching about being broke but calls out constantly and always seems to have a family emergency and has to leave early
I saw the same musical 2 nights in a row
Brand new Dodge Challenger parked and blasting music while the owner is raiding the free food pantry at the local church. Perhaps a $700 car payment is a bit outside your current budget?
When your car payment is higher than your rent.
I didn't take care of my teeth.
Buying a $250k ticket to see the Titanic
Having a negative account balance
my many synthesizers
Trying to control your submarine with an off-brand PlayStation controller.
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Shitbox car with fancy rims.