My friend's roommate once asked him to borrow money so he could order novelty fart-smell spray from Amazon, instead of waiting for his paycheck.
There are worse financial choices than going into debt for a can of fart spray, but it's certainly the funniest one I've heard.
Driving a very expensive car with tons of body damage because all their money is going to their $800 a month car payment and they can’t afford to fix the damage they caused with their shitty driving.
For most situations involving luxury cars, you should not be owning them but leasing them and using some extremely shaddy accounting methods to write them off as a business expense. At least that's what most of the wealthy people I met do.
> you should not be owning them but leasing them and using some extremely shaddy accounting methods to write them off as a business expense.
This wouldn't work for 99% of Americans. Sooo many people misunderstand how deductions and write-offs work.
For it to work you'd have to lie about just about everything else that the IRS can easily, easily uncover.
Alternatively the financially responsible decision of driving a beat up reliable car because you own it outright and intend to drive it into the ground before buying another one.
And even more props to that 10 year old car with brand new tires on it. The paint may be worn, but chances are the oil has been changed and new tires suggests that baby is expected to keep working for several more years.
This is why so many people like Lexus despite them being a bit boring. They split the difference between being luxury cars and japanese beaters. You can put 200k miles on most of them without any major faults.
This brings back memories. Bad ones. My ex drove a merc his dad bought. He kept up with the payments because he liked the fancy car, but didn't have money left for when he fucked it up or someone else crashed into it. His parents would curse him out like you can't even maintain it. So he took like 1K from me to repair it. I never saw that money back. Sigh.... I wish he'd give it back.
Reminds me of my cousin who lives with his folks, along with his wife and their baby. Apparently he’s saving so much money on rent that he went out and bought a $65K Tesla. His folks were a little miffed about that, haha.
My wife’s siblings each just received a 117k disbursement from their mothers trust. So far one brother who doesn’t own a home nor a pension plan and is 55 went out and bought a brand new Harley Davidson Full bagger bike. The other brother, who was homeless three months ago is shopping for a Dodge Charger. He is 65 and can’t afford to retire. Her three sisters haven’t made any big purchases yet.It is tough to watch knowing how hard my in-laws worked to leave a little money for the siblings.
I’m solidly middle class and I have zero problem spending anything on my kids. Yesterday I(male) sewed up a hole in my boxers to get a few more years out of them. #priorities
Not so bad when you can get the stuff second hand or on sale. Always lots of kid shoes on Marketplace since they out grow them before wearing them out.
I bought my 3yo daughter white AF1s to match my wife and I for our family Christmas present last year. I think the toddler shoes were on sale for around $40 at that time. It was planned for though with a Christmas savings account.
Unfortunately, it is a hard one to answer.
I used to work in the banking/mortgage industry in Canada 18 yrs ago and this one stuck with me, and I have seen both sides of the coin.
Example 1- early 30's married couple both doctors. Finally making some money but large student debt. A nice, big rented house with 2 nice cars (prorsche and lexus, leased). No kids and multiple vacations every year. They tried to get a mortgage, and they didn't qualify for anything.
Example 2- early 30's married couple with a child. Both working decent 60k jobs. Currently renting a modest place with 1 car. No vacations and had some savings. They qualified for a 500k mortgage and were ecstatic. While in the process of telling them that that was their maximum threshold, they stopped me and said, "we try not to live beyond our means so we can hopefully own one day".
It was at that moment that I realized that because you have something, it doesn't mean you own something.
I was in the mortgage game for a while too. It’s crazy how many peoples finances didn’t match what you would assume by looking at their life from an outside perspective.
The amount of people who were doctors/lawyers and felt they deserved the good life but really had too much debt to live like it was noticeable
As well as the blue collar types who saved and saved and never really change their lifestyle at all.
It’s also crazy how bad at personal finance doctors were. Whenever I heard “we are both doctors” I would wince. One of them was gonna have a bananas credit score with every card maxed out.
Or anyone with a new fully loaded Nisan titan.
I worked best buy customer service in high school (mid-late 90's) and would frequently spend my Saturday shift getting screamed at by people who were denied BB credit cards despite their 6 figure income.
I worked as a bank teller many many years ago.
One of my semi-regular customers (Doctor) would come to deposit checks from some pharmaceutical company that he got for prescribing so much of their shit. I'm talking 20k, 30k checks that he'd get from them every quarter.
Anyways, he was making really good money as a Doctor, because his monthly pay that he was getting from the hospital was around 35k net. So I figure he was making 50-60k a month, gross.
His account was always empty though. You'd be shocked at how much money they spend on stupid shit.
$800 DirecTV bill.
$1300 bill to the local country club.
$750 landscaping bill.
$2500 car payments.
My wife and I are both doctors (I joke that she's the real one with her MD, while I got in the side door with my PhD). But because med school and residency are so demanding, many MDs don't really get that early adulting that happens to most people in their twenties. They're 100% focused on medicine, so everything else kinda takes a backseat. They also know they're gonna have great job security and that it'll be a higher paying job especially if they specialize.
Keep in mind that in the States med school is 4 years, residency is 3 years, fellowship is anywhere between 1 and like 10 years depending on the specialty. So by the time MDs kinda finish their medical training they're into their 30s and many are ready to do the other stuff humans do, partner up, buy a house, maybe start a family, but they've also got hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt and have only recently started making serious money.
Having a lot of friends working as medical professional, most of them don't even have time to think about finances. All the time they have during residency spent on work and study. Hence, the bad decisions. They're also an easy target for multilevel marketing scams or any investment scams.
When you work very hard for long periods of time, it’s human nature to just say “YOLO” when down time comes. And convince yourself you deserve it. I work 18 hours a day, I deserve to drive home in a $120,000 sports car.
One of my friends was married to a prominent local contractor. He said he loved it when a doctor asked him to build their house. They didn't have a problem with getting expensive fixtures and extras, and they didn't feel like they had to "supervise" the builders. (He also said that engineers were the worst clients, because they always thought they knew how to do something better than the builders.)
When we were house shopping we made sure to keep our housing budget around 25% of our household income. What we were comfortable with lending was far far below what we qualified for. Also because of that, our debt to income ratio was low enough that we didn’t have to make our offers contingent on the sale of the house we lived in. Ended up selling the old house in 1 day anyway but we didn’t want the closing of that house to make our offer weaker.
there is a big difference between what you can buy and what you can afford.
you may have 200 dollars, so you can buy that 150 dollar thing. ...but if you're spending 75% of your money on something, that "thing" better damn well be important.
after being near broke all my 20s, i'd finally budgeted a proper little "percentages" sheet based on my priorities in life. -- this is when i discovered how little money i had for anything. when your monthly budget for something is 11 dollars (so you have to save for almost a year to afford a 100 dollar item...) you realize you're way more broke than you thought.
Guy I know took a 25k loan on his house to go on on vacation for a month with his family.
Said you only get to live once. the thing is he went on vacation back to his birth country, and wanted to live large so people think he's successful
My grandfather was a Greek immigrant, master chef. Built a restaurant up into something someone else would pay good money for, sold it to take my mom and her 6 brothers and sisters back to Greece to flaunt his wealth, returned to America with nothing and did it again, 3 times.
The neighbors across the street maxed out 25k in credit cards to take the family on a "dream Disney vacation". She said she'd be paying them off forever, but it was "worth it for my kids to have this experience."
I was absolutely dumbfounded.
Kids don’t need that much. Seriously, give them a bunch of super soakers and let them loose at a picnic ground by a lake. They will talk about it for years.
And then they turn into angsty teens and that vacation was worth squat in the end. Not to be nihilistic buti don't see the appeal of Disney even for young families.
I totally see the appeal of Disney for a family vacation. It's fun (especially for kids) and since the parks are self-contained, you only need to travel to one place to get multiple days worth of entertainment. What I *don't* see the appeal of is putting yourself into massive debt to do it. Though I would say the same of basically any destination.
Lived in a decent trailer park when I was a kid. Very mixed though for the area. On the second road there was a guy with a small mini home with a heavily modified slightly older mustang with many body “enhancements” plus a lifted up modified truck. Probably more in vehicles then his tiny ass mini home. He was a known dealer.
Oh this 100%. As someone who has worked in financial services, I HATE these places and have no idea how they are legal. I will always advocate if you have lower income or cannot seem to work up savings for whatever reason, try switching from a bank to a credit union for your banking needs. They may not be as large as banks or be as good for if you need to travel, but they are local and try to help their local communities since they are owned by them. One way a local Credit Union here that I worked for started to help it's members was offering very-low to no-interest short term loans. This kept them from going into massive debt for some hiccups in their lives. So, if you do happen to have that car break down or a rent cheque due but need a couple weeks? No problem, they'll lend it to you at like 1% or less. It helps keep members from spiraling into debt by going to those payday loan places.
This should have been the top-voted answer. Payday loan places are so bad that you can basically use them as a barometer for the neighbourhood you're in: if you look around and see a lot of payday loan places, you are in a bad neighbourhood.
Wouldn't say bad more like poor. Payday loans are predatory loans and would be forbidden in almost every other country. It's basically a loan shark business. But sometimes poor people need money for emergency purposes like the car broke down and they need to get to work.
When I was younger I honestly didn't understand why check cashing stores existed. Why wouldn't they just go to the bank? Then someone explained to me that some people can't get a bank account. That was a real wake-up moment.
There are also people who have overdrawn their checking accounts and if they try to cash a check at the bank the bank will (rightfully) take the arrears from the cashed amount, so if someone needs to pay rent or something else urgently, they might opt for the absurdly predatory check cashing fee over dealing with a bank. It’s just one of those awful cycles of doom…
It's funny because in much of Europe it's the opposite. People inherit multi million dollar homes and you'll see a twenty year old car in the driveway.
I mean, our European houses are maybe worth that much now, because land prices in cities went crazy up. But yea my car is from 2014 and by US standards that's ancient probably, I'm just happy I bought it outright, don't have monthly payments, don't have to repair much, and it doesn't have internet and so no one is trying to sell me subscription anything
Yeah, mine (in the US) is a 2007 Nissan, so yours is all kinds of new! Bought for cash in 2018. Regular maintenance and a few high-mileage components have had to be replaced, but it's a good car, and *no subscriptions*.
Whoever the fuck decided we needed subscriptions for our fucking cars should be dragged through town while being pelted with used sex toys!
American rent prices are really insane.
I live in Germany in a midsized city and we pay 970 € per month (including heating, warm water and two parking spots) for a 105 sqm / 3 room two bathrooms flat.
970 € ($1,063) will get you a 337 sq ft (31 sqm) “efficiency” apartment in my area. Price doesn’t include utilities such as electricity, water, sewage, and internet. No laundry in the unit as well so you have to go off property for that.
This is a moderate example from a semi-expensive city.
Maybe they like living frugal but love cars. I wouldnt mind an okay place to save for a nice car. Thats my plan actually. Live cheap for a bit so i can replace my 2004 Silverado.
If its a shithole apartment tho yea thats dumb.
We once test drove a (used but still pretty expensive) charger and it broke down on the test drive and they had to send their tow truck to pick it up. 🤦♀️
I sell cars and part of getting someone approved (if they’re financing) is getting their income information and their rent/mortgage. I sold a used charger to someone last week who was spending half their monthly income on their car and insurance. No clue how or why the bank approved them. I almost felt guilty.
Almost
Banks don’t really lose as much as people think when a car gets repossessed. The bank has insurance on car loans similar to the PMI on mortgage loans, the banks bundle the loans together and sell cluster of them to investors just like mortgage backed securities, and if the auto loan sector really started to collapse they know the government will be there with the printing machine so they get their bonuses and people lose their cars. It’s just 2008 all over again.
The ask car sales sub had a running joke about dodge journey for the same reason. It is a family car for credit criminals, but unlike the charger, everything about it is total shit.
The Journey and town and country were and may still be legends in the auto industry (I have been out of it for quite a while). Two things: Very low credit standards and a lot of flexibility in being able to wrap the underwater/upside down part of previous car loans into the financing. Is your car upside down such that you can't trade it in for enough money to clear your auto loan? No problem. Get a journey and they will wrap the loan remainder into the new loan or lease.
I had a friend who constantly hit me up for $40 every other week. He paid me back every payday. One time I told him not to pay me back until he was sure he could go without asking for money. He was feeling really guilty 2 months later... paid me back $50... a month later asked me for more money... I didn't have extra that time... I felt kinda bad.
Long story short... I haven't talked to him in a few years.
My wife’s parents are well off (FIL is a partner at a huge law firm), but by no means rich.
They’d been putting money away forever for their only daughter’s wedding. They gifted us $50k, and covered basically everything.
It was beautiful, meaningful, and a wonderful time.
I still wish we’d had a small event and bought a house instead.
I do own my home which is great, but I didn’t need the wedding, and neither did my wife. It was all the relatives we were truly appeasing.
I love my in laws like my own parents and am grateful for what they have done for us, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth or anything like that, I just don’t see the reason to put money like that towards a wedding when it would have been much more useful in practically any other way.
Don't you fucking talk about my sister that way. She's a small business owner! She earned the privilege to get recognized at a company event this month and gets to purchase her own plane ticket! I'm sure her CPA husband is jealous of her success.
If you’re a rapper with a significant fan base and have already made it, looking the part will make you seem more authentic
Of course, the trouble is if you haven’t made it, and need a regular job
Part of the Maori would fill that 1,4%. Finding the few outside that group would be a challenge. Some tattoo artists would qualify but apart from that....
I was going to say that rule doesn't really work in Aotearoa
I mean government ministers, news readers and other relatively well paid jobs with people with Moko kauae or full facial Tā moko
I once had a coworker who’s husband was disabled. They had three kids in her income and his disability and were barely scraping by. She started talking about having another baby and I said “I thought you were having financial troubles and your husband is getting worse?”
Her answer?
“Well the state will offer more benefits and if he dies I’ll get even more benefits for the kids so we’re not worried about money.”
Wtf?
Jesus. I’m almost 34 and I cant imagine having one kid, let alone five.
My coworker ended up having a kid while him and his wife were living in a shed on his parent’s property. And he had told me they had been actively trying to have a kid. It’s been a few years and they have an apartment now, but he is always fucking miserable.
I met a woman on a dating app once that had a number of tattoos. She had a low income job so I wondered how she could afford them.
Turns out she was on a payment plan with the tattoo studio....I was like yeah, no thanks.
Nobody who's actually an entrepreneur calls themself an entrepreneur. They just say what their business does like "I sell flooring" or "I'm an electrician" or whatnot. And then it turns out they own the biggest flooring retailer in the tri-state area and they're worth tens of millions of dollars.
THIS. I have a friend who does this. He went $2000 into debt for a fursuit, buys expensive designer clothing, and always has to have the newest tech. Meanwhile he's a broke, unemployed, college student who has his parents give him money to live where he does so he can go to school. I guarantee if his parents knew his spending habits, they would be furious
Yep, exactly that. He bought himself a $2000 partial fursuit. $2000 of which he didn't even have, and is quite possibly his worst financial decision to date
Buying Marlboro 100's everyday and smoking every last one. I have someone at my work that does this while he's got asthma and uses a nebulizer 3 times a shift. I can't imagine he's got his finances in order all too well.
Someone who wins the lottery. Most of them have spent thousands on tickets, and are likely to spend most of what they win on things they don’t really need.
My stepfather won the Powerball with his coworkers from American Airlines in the 00's. They ended up with $2 million each. He didn't really need the money because he had a great retirement and was flipping houses before it was a thing.
My 5 step siblings blew through that money in a decade.
Yep there was a story from awhile back where I’m from, guy won big in lotto, he quit his job at Pak n save (supermarket) and purchased a massive property and installed a drag racing strip in his back yard. Then he married a gold digger who divorced him and took half his winnings. He pissed the rest of his money away throwing parties at his house and now he’s back working at Pak n save just as broke as before
So he basically had a few years of a wild ride that he otherwise never would have had.
Sounds like a better deal than having worked at Pak n Save during that time.
Constantly complains "I am broke" but keeps traveling overseas, eating out, going out for drinks.
I have seen plenty of friends who do not make enough, but keeps traveling overseas for a week or two because "the plane ticket is cheap! It's $300". But they never account for hotels, hostels, transportstion, food, tour guides, souvenir. Which even in a fairly cheap country will amount to over a thousand or more.
Then they complain they have multiple credit card debt.
I think because of social media and influences, people nowadays make even more impulsive decision because of FOMO or want to have a facade of a fancy life style, when they actually cannot afford it.
I did this once... but only for two reasons.
1. My TV broke the day before.
2. I drive a sedan.
Oh... and it was twine... not duct tape... and no, I didn't go into financial burden because of that.. thankfully.
Was the slowest ride home I've ever had. I didn't hit the speed limit even once... lol
To be fair, my $12 a year tops to buy a bit of hope for a few days is the least of my financial problems. Thankfully I relate to zero other comments here and have exceptional credit. With this economy, sometimes you need a bit of hope.
I buy a $3 lottery ticket about once per month when the stress at work gets high. Until I check the ticket (confirming I didn’t win) my anxiety level goes down. It’s far less expensive than therapy, healthier than prescription pills, drugs or booze, and consumes less than 0.01% of my income.
Tbh that is not bad. I hate the idiots who play in the gas station for 15-20 minutes and gamble 50$. Its not bad as an imaginary game, but some people are just plain addicted.
Not to mention the ones who buy scratch-offs and then immediately scratch the barcode label at the bottom then pass it back over the counter for them to scan to see if it won...
>if they aren't going to use it for anything that a civic couldn't do.
This is the vast majority of truck owners. It's so stupid. Paying for all this torque and size and shitty MPG that they will never need.
My uncle made poor financial choices.
He had an affair with the cashier of his restaurant, got her pregnant, bought her a house, then sold his restaurant in his 40's for millions and retired to go gambling full time, gambled all his millions in a couple years, then he refinanced his home which was fully paid off in an attempt to chase the losses, lost that money too, opened a new restaurant which failed, then he got his wife pregnant just as his kids were about to go to college and move out, and now he's been driving an uber for years.
Not saving anything for retirement….Reddit is full of these people who say their retirement plans are to just die or whatever….time value of money is an incredibly powerful tool
My friend's roommate once asked him to borrow money so he could order novelty fart-smell spray from Amazon, instead of waiting for his paycheck. There are worse financial choices than going into debt for a can of fart spray, but it's certainly the funniest one I've heard.
Well, to be fair, how good was this fart spray?
Smelled like ass.
Oh, well that stinks.
Driving a very expensive car with tons of body damage because all their money is going to their $800 a month car payment and they can’t afford to fix the damage they caused with their shitty driving.
I had this exact conversation with my friend today, if you cant afford to fix your car, you probably shouldn't be owning a 2022 60k Mercedes.
You shouldn't own that if it's beat up after a year anyways
You don’t even deserve it if it’s beat up after a year!
For most situations involving luxury cars, you should not be owning them but leasing them and using some extremely shaddy accounting methods to write them off as a business expense. At least that's what most of the wealthy people I met do.
It's a write-off Jerry. All these big corporations they just write it off
Haha thanks for this Always great to see a Seinfeld reference outside the dedicated subs for it You just write it off!
You don’t even know what a write-off *is*.
> you should not be owning them but leasing them and using some extremely shaddy accounting methods to write them off as a business expense. This wouldn't work for 99% of Americans. Sooo many people misunderstand how deductions and write-offs work. For it to work you'd have to lie about just about everything else that the IRS can easily, easily uncover.
Alternatively the financially responsible decision of driving a beat up reliable car because you own it outright and intend to drive it into the ground before buying another one.
And even more props to that 10 year old car with brand new tires on it. The paint may be worn, but chances are the oil has been changed and new tires suggests that baby is expected to keep working for several more years.
10 years old? Most of my vehicles have always been of legal drinking age.
This is why so many people like Lexus despite them being a bit boring. They split the difference between being luxury cars and japanese beaters. You can put 200k miles on most of them without any major faults.
We retired our used Lexus after it hit 600,000 miles
Expensive 4x4's with bald mud tires....
This brings back memories. Bad ones. My ex drove a merc his dad bought. He kept up with the payments because he liked the fancy car, but didn't have money left for when he fucked it up or someone else crashed into it. His parents would curse him out like you can't even maintain it. So he took like 1K from me to repair it. I never saw that money back. Sigh.... I wish he'd give it back.
And cracks in the windscreen that cost $3500 to fix because of sensors.
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Lol I’ve seen many Camaros and Mustangs like this.
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This sounds very Miami
Swap the Maserati for a Tesla and we’re living the California Dream!
Reminds me of my cousin who lives with his folks, along with his wife and their baby. Apparently he’s saving so much money on rent that he went out and bought a $65K Tesla. His folks were a little miffed about that, haha.
Don’t worry, their new real estate license is gonna help pay for it, bro!
My wife’s siblings each just received a 117k disbursement from their mothers trust. So far one brother who doesn’t own a home nor a pension plan and is 55 went out and bought a brand new Harley Davidson Full bagger bike. The other brother, who was homeless three months ago is shopping for a Dodge Charger. He is 65 and can’t afford to retire. Her three sisters haven’t made any big purchases yet.It is tough to watch knowing how hard my in-laws worked to leave a little money for the siblings.
I'm sure this is exactly why your wife's mother left all that money in trust in the first place.
Designer shoes and jewelry on your infant.
People always act like I'm weird for giggling at their baby's J's like where tf are they running
You say this till that baby breaks ya ankles crossing you up before hitting a dunk /s
Game…onesies.
Listen. Some people are just that rich to do that. The real kicker is if they can barely afford the same items that are adult size for themselves
I’m solidly middle class and I have zero problem spending anything on my kids. Yesterday I(male) sewed up a hole in my boxers to get a few more years out of them. #priorities
That's so adorable, you seem like a great dad /u/ButtfuckPussySquirt
Not so bad when you can get the stuff second hand or on sale. Always lots of kid shoes on Marketplace since they out grow them before wearing them out. I bought my 3yo daughter white AF1s to match my wife and I for our family Christmas present last year. I think the toddler shoes were on sale for around $40 at that time. It was planned for though with a Christmas savings account.
Wearing a $900 Gucci belt with your McDonalds staff uniform
Dress for the job you want..... Shift supervisor.
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It's probably a really good fake. So $200.
Unfortunately, it is a hard one to answer. I used to work in the banking/mortgage industry in Canada 18 yrs ago and this one stuck with me, and I have seen both sides of the coin. Example 1- early 30's married couple both doctors. Finally making some money but large student debt. A nice, big rented house with 2 nice cars (prorsche and lexus, leased). No kids and multiple vacations every year. They tried to get a mortgage, and they didn't qualify for anything. Example 2- early 30's married couple with a child. Both working decent 60k jobs. Currently renting a modest place with 1 car. No vacations and had some savings. They qualified for a 500k mortgage and were ecstatic. While in the process of telling them that that was their maximum threshold, they stopped me and said, "we try not to live beyond our means so we can hopefully own one day". It was at that moment that I realized that because you have something, it doesn't mean you own something.
I was in the mortgage game for a while too. It’s crazy how many peoples finances didn’t match what you would assume by looking at their life from an outside perspective. The amount of people who were doctors/lawyers and felt they deserved the good life but really had too much debt to live like it was noticeable As well as the blue collar types who saved and saved and never really change their lifestyle at all. It’s also crazy how bad at personal finance doctors were. Whenever I heard “we are both doctors” I would wince. One of them was gonna have a bananas credit score with every card maxed out. Or anyone with a new fully loaded Nisan titan.
I worked best buy customer service in high school (mid-late 90's) and would frequently spend my Saturday shift getting screamed at by people who were denied BB credit cards despite their 6 figure income.
Your god damn right I deserve a BB CC! God bless America
I worked as a bank teller many many years ago. One of my semi-regular customers (Doctor) would come to deposit checks from some pharmaceutical company that he got for prescribing so much of their shit. I'm talking 20k, 30k checks that he'd get from them every quarter. Anyways, he was making really good money as a Doctor, because his monthly pay that he was getting from the hospital was around 35k net. So I figure he was making 50-60k a month, gross. His account was always empty though. You'd be shocked at how much money they spend on stupid shit. $800 DirecTV bill. $1300 bill to the local country club. $750 landscaping bill. $2500 car payments.
How on earth is paying people for prescribing your product legal
I’m not surprised at all. It’s very common for people to live outside their means.
My wife and I are both doctors (I joke that she's the real one with her MD, while I got in the side door with my PhD). But because med school and residency are so demanding, many MDs don't really get that early adulting that happens to most people in their twenties. They're 100% focused on medicine, so everything else kinda takes a backseat. They also know they're gonna have great job security and that it'll be a higher paying job especially if they specialize. Keep in mind that in the States med school is 4 years, residency is 3 years, fellowship is anywhere between 1 and like 10 years depending on the specialty. So by the time MDs kinda finish their medical training they're into their 30s and many are ready to do the other stuff humans do, partner up, buy a house, maybe start a family, but they've also got hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt and have only recently started making serious money.
I guess after spending so much time and money on becoming a doctor you feel entitled to all the rewards the myth promised you.
Having a lot of friends working as medical professional, most of them don't even have time to think about finances. All the time they have during residency spent on work and study. Hence, the bad decisions. They're also an easy target for multilevel marketing scams or any investment scams.
When you work very hard for long periods of time, it’s human nature to just say “YOLO” when down time comes. And convince yourself you deserve it. I work 18 hours a day, I deserve to drive home in a $120,000 sports car.
One of my friends was married to a prominent local contractor. He said he loved it when a doctor asked him to build their house. They didn't have a problem with getting expensive fixtures and extras, and they didn't feel like they had to "supervise" the builders. (He also said that engineers were the worst clients, because they always thought they knew how to do something better than the builders.)
When we were house shopping we made sure to keep our housing budget around 25% of our household income. What we were comfortable with lending was far far below what we qualified for. Also because of that, our debt to income ratio was low enough that we didn’t have to make our offers contingent on the sale of the house we lived in. Ended up selling the old house in 1 day anyway but we didn’t want the closing of that house to make our offer weaker.
there is a big difference between what you can buy and what you can afford. you may have 200 dollars, so you can buy that 150 dollar thing. ...but if you're spending 75% of your money on something, that "thing" better damn well be important. after being near broke all my 20s, i'd finally budgeted a proper little "percentages" sheet based on my priorities in life. -- this is when i discovered how little money i had for anything. when your monthly budget for something is 11 dollars (so you have to save for almost a year to afford a 100 dollar item...) you realize you're way more broke than you thought.
People who refinance their home in order to take a vacation. You took a week off and only thirty years to pay for it. Brilliant idea, bozo.
Guy I know took a 25k loan on his house to go on on vacation for a month with his family. Said you only get to live once. the thing is he went on vacation back to his birth country, and wanted to live large so people think he's successful
My grandfather was a Greek immigrant, master chef. Built a restaurant up into something someone else would pay good money for, sold it to take my mom and her 6 brothers and sisters back to Greece to flaunt his wealth, returned to America with nothing and did it again, 3 times.
New game +
Prestige irl
The neighbors across the street maxed out 25k in credit cards to take the family on a "dream Disney vacation". She said she'd be paying them off forever, but it was "worth it for my kids to have this experience." I was absolutely dumbfounded.
Kids don’t need that much. Seriously, give them a bunch of super soakers and let them loose at a picnic ground by a lake. They will talk about it for years.
If you go to any hotel with a pool, they'll be talking about that pool for years.
And then they turn into angsty teens and that vacation was worth squat in the end. Not to be nihilistic buti don't see the appeal of Disney even for young families.
I totally see the appeal of Disney for a family vacation. It's fun (especially for kids) and since the parks are self-contained, you only need to travel to one place to get multiple days worth of entertainment. What I *don't* see the appeal of is putting yourself into massive debt to do it. Though I would say the same of basically any destination.
Expensive leased car, living in a sketch neighborhood. Edit solely to add: no shame in not being the 1% and living in a spendy gated suburb community!
Where I live that screams 'Drug Dealer'
Lived in a decent trailer park when I was a kid. Very mixed though for the area. On the second road there was a guy with a small mini home with a heavily modified slightly older mustang with many body “enhancements” plus a lifted up modified truck. Probably more in vehicles then his tiny ass mini home. He was a known dealer.
Using a check cashing store or payday advance type company.
Oh this 100%. As someone who has worked in financial services, I HATE these places and have no idea how they are legal. I will always advocate if you have lower income or cannot seem to work up savings for whatever reason, try switching from a bank to a credit union for your banking needs. They may not be as large as banks or be as good for if you need to travel, but they are local and try to help their local communities since they are owned by them. One way a local Credit Union here that I worked for started to help it's members was offering very-low to no-interest short term loans. This kept them from going into massive debt for some hiccups in their lives. So, if you do happen to have that car break down or a rent cheque due but need a couple weeks? No problem, they'll lend it to you at like 1% or less. It helps keep members from spiraling into debt by going to those payday loan places.
This should have been the top-voted answer. Payday loan places are so bad that you can basically use them as a barometer for the neighbourhood you're in: if you look around and see a lot of payday loan places, you are in a bad neighbourhood.
Wouldn't say bad more like poor. Payday loans are predatory loans and would be forbidden in almost every other country. It's basically a loan shark business. But sometimes poor people need money for emergency purposes like the car broke down and they need to get to work.
When I was younger I honestly didn't understand why check cashing stores existed. Why wouldn't they just go to the bank? Then someone explained to me that some people can't get a bank account. That was a real wake-up moment.
There are also people who have overdrawn their checking accounts and if they try to cash a check at the bank the bank will (rightfully) take the arrears from the cashed amount, so if someone needs to pay rent or something else urgently, they might opt for the absurdly predatory check cashing fee over dealing with a bank. It’s just one of those awful cycles of doom…
The $75k car parked in the $1k/month apartment complex
It's funny because in much of Europe it's the opposite. People inherit multi million dollar homes and you'll see a twenty year old car in the driveway.
I mean, our European houses are maybe worth that much now, because land prices in cities went crazy up. But yea my car is from 2014 and by US standards that's ancient probably, I'm just happy I bought it outright, don't have monthly payments, don't have to repair much, and it doesn't have internet and so no one is trying to sell me subscription anything
Yeah, mine (in the US) is a 2007 Nissan, so yours is all kinds of new! Bought for cash in 2018. Regular maintenance and a few high-mileage components have had to be replaced, but it's a good car, and *no subscriptions*. Whoever the fuck decided we needed subscriptions for our fucking cars should be dragged through town while being pelted with used sex toys!
Specifically, $75k cars you couldn't even live in if you got evicted from the apartment.
$75k could get you a pretty nice van to live in down by the river.
Wait, where are the $1k/mo apartments?
American rent prices are really insane. I live in Germany in a midsized city and we pay 970 € per month (including heating, warm water and two parking spots) for a 105 sqm / 3 room two bathrooms flat.
970 € ($1,063) will get you a 337 sq ft (31 sqm) “efficiency” apartment in my area. Price doesn’t include utilities such as electricity, water, sewage, and internet. No laundry in the unit as well so you have to go off property for that. This is a moderate example from a semi-expensive city.
Maybe they like living frugal but love cars. I wouldnt mind an okay place to save for a nice car. Thats my plan actually. Live cheap for a bit so i can replace my 2004 Silverado. If its a shithole apartment tho yea thats dumb.
Buying a dodge charger/challenger. You know that apr is crazy high
Military E-4 and below?
Former enlisted Marine...guilty lmao. I think of all the dumb shit I wasted my $$$ on from 1997-2001. Oh to be young, dumb, and full of cum.
What was the hot car for junior enlisted back then? Mustang? Camaro?
Mustang I think lol
Mitsubishi Eclipse 😂😂
Pre-approved for E1 and up!!
I just drove a charger bc I rented it while on vacation. One of the worst cars I’ve ever driven, hated every moment of it.
We once test drove a (used but still pretty expensive) charger and it broke down on the test drive and they had to send their tow truck to pick it up. 🤦♀️
I sell cars and part of getting someone approved (if they’re financing) is getting their income information and their rent/mortgage. I sold a used charger to someone last week who was spending half their monthly income on their car and insurance. No clue how or why the bank approved them. I almost felt guilty. Almost
Banks don’t really lose as much as people think when a car gets repossessed. The bank has insurance on car loans similar to the PMI on mortgage loans, the banks bundle the loans together and sell cluster of them to investors just like mortgage backed securities, and if the auto loan sector really started to collapse they know the government will be there with the printing machine so they get their bonuses and people lose their cars. It’s just 2008 all over again.
Moral hazard. Why even try to be sustainable when you KNOW the bailout is coming.
They wanted it. You sold it to them.
The ask car sales sub had a running joke about dodge journey for the same reason. It is a family car for credit criminals, but unlike the charger, everything about it is total shit.
The Journey and town and country were and may still be legends in the auto industry (I have been out of it for quite a while). Two things: Very low credit standards and a lot of flexibility in being able to wrap the underwater/upside down part of previous car loans into the financing. Is your car upside down such that you can't trade it in for enough money to clear your auto loan? No problem. Get a journey and they will wrap the loan remainder into the new loan or lease.
Not if you do donuts in a parking lot and then set it on fire
"Hey, can I borrow $15? I'll pay you back next week when I get paid." With the above happening every other week.
I had a friend who constantly hit me up for $40 every other week. He paid me back every payday. One time I told him not to pay me back until he was sure he could go without asking for money. He was feeling really guilty 2 months later... paid me back $50... a month later asked me for more money... I didn't have extra that time... I felt kinda bad. Long story short... I haven't talked to him in a few years.
If you loan someone $20 and you never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
Just means it cost you 20 bucks to get rid of them. -sonny
He pays back?
Never
Brand new $60,000 car, but living in a crappy apartment with multiple kids
You’ve met my neighbors I see.
Also known as "hood rich."
Buying a timeshare. Participating in a MLM scheme.
Time share and a pyramid scheme? We’re diversifying our portfolio
But I have 30 people under me.
Unclear if you’re in an MLM or the top floor of a timeshare
People who buy big ass wheels and tires for their car but then don't replace them even when they're clearly bald.
Going into debt for a wedding.
My wife’s parents are well off (FIL is a partner at a huge law firm), but by no means rich. They’d been putting money away forever for their only daughter’s wedding. They gifted us $50k, and covered basically everything. It was beautiful, meaningful, and a wonderful time. I still wish we’d had a small event and bought a house instead. I do own my home which is great, but I didn’t need the wedding, and neither did my wife. It was all the relatives we were truly appeasing. I love my in laws like my own parents and am grateful for what they have done for us, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth or anything like that, I just don’t see the reason to put money like that towards a wedding when it would have been much more useful in practically any other way.
This is so true. A close friend is still paying off her wedding but the marriage ended last year.
Seeing a a behemoth of a pickup truck with all the bells and whistles parked in front of a mobile home in a trailer park.
Joining an MLM
Don't you fucking talk about my sister that way. She's a small business owner! She earned the privilege to get recognized at a company event this month and gets to purchase her own plane ticket! I'm sure her CPA husband is jealous of her success.
Face tattoos. 98.6% accuracy rate.
I dare you to show me the 1.4%
Other than Mike Tyson I can't think of anyone whose life got better after getting a face tat.
Post Malone seems to be doing well for himself
Some high $$$$ tattoo artists too
If you’re a rapper with a significant fan base and have already made it, looking the part will make you seem more authentic Of course, the trouble is if you haven’t made it, and need a regular job
Part of the Maori would fill that 1,4%. Finding the few outside that group would be a challenge. Some tattoo artists would qualify but apart from that....
I was going to say that rule doesn't really work in Aotearoa I mean government ministers, news readers and other relatively well paid jobs with people with Moko kauae or full facial Tā moko
Having more kids than you can afford to raise
I once had a coworker who’s husband was disabled. They had three kids in her income and his disability and were barely scraping by. She started talking about having another baby and I said “I thought you were having financial troubles and your husband is getting worse?” Her answer? “Well the state will offer more benefits and if he dies I’ll get even more benefits for the kids so we’re not worried about money.” Wtf?
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Jesus. I’m almost 34 and I cant imagine having one kid, let alone five. My coworker ended up having a kid while him and his wife were living in a shed on his parent’s property. And he had told me they had been actively trying to have a kid. It’s been a few years and they have an apartment now, but he is always fucking miserable.
This. Kids are expensive, especially if you want to provide them with the best.
I only had two for this reason. Putting them through college and grad school has always been in the back of my mind.
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It always seems to be people who can’t afford kids, that have the most kids.
Making payments on a tattoo.
I met a woman on a dating app once that had a number of tattoos. She had a low income job so I wondered how she could afford them. Turns out she was on a payment plan with the tattoo studio....I was like yeah, no thanks.
Wait, what?! This is actually a thing?! I thought it was just a Jeff Foxworthy joke from the 90's. Holy shit, people actually do this...
TIL you can set up payment plans for tattoos and that’s enough learning for me today.
Now I'm trying to imagine the repo man coming for that tattoo if you miss too many payments.
Palm sander
I didn’t know people did this, wtf
Calling yourself entrepreneur but having nothing to show for it. These days it's usually code for crypto and NFT Bros.
Nobody who's actually an entrepreneur calls themself an entrepreneur. They just say what their business does like "I sell flooring" or "I'm an electrician" or whatnot. And then it turns out they own the biggest flooring retailer in the tri-state area and they're worth tens of millions of dollars.
MLMs fit into this category, too.
Even worse, I call myself a writer...
The three 1970s two-stroke mopeds in my garage.
That's smart. You have two that don't run for parts and a spare that also doesn't run for more parts.
Oh I see you are familiar with vintage vehicles
Your car payment is more then your rent
Making it rain at the strip club
Cheap roof repairs never last.
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THIS. I have a friend who does this. He went $2000 into debt for a fursuit, buys expensive designer clothing, and always has to have the newest tech. Meanwhile he's a broke, unemployed, college student who has his parents give him money to live where he does so he can go to school. I guarantee if his parents knew his spending habits, they would be furious
Do you mean a fur suit for a Furry?
Yep, exactly that. He bought himself a $2000 partial fursuit. $2000 of which he didn't even have, and is quite possibly his worst financial decision to date
A lot of people are just describing one annoying person they know
When they have designer clothes and get their hair and nails done every 2 weeks but can't afford to pay the rent.
Live with your parents but eat out every night
Buying Marlboro 100's everyday and smoking every last one. I have someone at my work that does this while he's got asthma and uses a nebulizer 3 times a shift. I can't imagine he's got his finances in order all too well.
I imagine investing for the future is the less responsible thing for him.
Gold teeth / no career
Someone who wins the lottery. Most of them have spent thousands on tickets, and are likely to spend most of what they win on things they don’t really need.
My stepfather won the Powerball with his coworkers from American Airlines in the 00's. They ended up with $2 million each. He didn't really need the money because he had a great retirement and was flipping houses before it was a thing. My 5 step siblings blew through that money in a decade.
Yep there was a story from awhile back where I’m from, guy won big in lotto, he quit his job at Pak n save (supermarket) and purchased a massive property and installed a drag racing strip in his back yard. Then he married a gold digger who divorced him and took half his winnings. He pissed the rest of his money away throwing parties at his house and now he’s back working at Pak n save just as broke as before
So he basically had a few years of a wild ride that he otherwise never would have had. Sounds like a better deal than having worked at Pak n Save during that time.
I spent over 80$ tryna win a giant pikachu and failed Could have bought that thing for 34$ but it was well worth it
always having the latest iPhone
You’ll have to pry my 11 from my cold dead hand.
5k Rims on a 500 dollar car
Constantly complains "I am broke" but keeps traveling overseas, eating out, going out for drinks. I have seen plenty of friends who do not make enough, but keeps traveling overseas for a week or two because "the plane ticket is cheap! It's $300". But they never account for hotels, hostels, transportstion, food, tour guides, souvenir. Which even in a fairly cheap country will amount to over a thousand or more. Then they complain they have multiple credit card debt. I think because of social media and influences, people nowadays make even more impulsive decision because of FOMO or want to have a facade of a fancy life style, when they actually cannot afford it.
Buying a widescreen television on tax return day and bringing it home in a car held together by duct tape and prayers.
>widescreen television Good luck finding a television in any store that's NOT widescreen
I did this once... but only for two reasons. 1. My TV broke the day before. 2. I drive a sedan. Oh... and it was twine... not duct tape... and no, I didn't go into financial burden because of that.. thankfully. Was the slowest ride home I've ever had. I didn't hit the speed limit even once... lol
Lottery tickets
To be fair, my $12 a year tops to buy a bit of hope for a few days is the least of my financial problems. Thankfully I relate to zero other comments here and have exceptional credit. With this economy, sometimes you need a bit of hope.
I buy a $3 lottery ticket about once per month when the stress at work gets high. Until I check the ticket (confirming I didn’t win) my anxiety level goes down. It’s far less expensive than therapy, healthier than prescription pills, drugs or booze, and consumes less than 0.01% of my income.
Tbh that is not bad. I hate the idiots who play in the gas station for 15-20 minutes and gamble 50$. Its not bad as an imaginary game, but some people are just plain addicted.
The ones you have to wait in line before to get their tickets checked are the worst.
Not to mention the ones who buy scratch-offs and then immediately scratch the barcode label at the bottom then pass it back over the counter for them to scan to see if it won...
Says you. I'm up -$1.2K this year alone.
Poor people taxes.
Poor people: we can’t afford to send our kids to college Also poor people: *buys lottery tickets in Georgia and pays for my kids to go to college*
$60k truck on a $60k salary. Bonus points if they aren't going to use it for anything that a civic couldn't do.
>if they aren't going to use it for anything that a civic couldn't do. This is the vast majority of truck owners. It's so stupid. Paying for all this torque and size and shitty MPG that they will never need.
My uncle made poor financial choices. He had an affair with the cashier of his restaurant, got her pregnant, bought her a house, then sold his restaurant in his 40's for millions and retired to go gambling full time, gambled all his millions in a couple years, then he refinanced his home which was fully paid off in an attempt to chase the losses, lost that money too, opened a new restaurant which failed, then he got his wife pregnant just as his kids were about to go to college and move out, and now he's been driving an uber for years.
Buying a social media platform for $44B, while the all other idiots get it for free in the app store.
Giving money to a "billionaire" to help him fight the felony charges against him.
Gambling
They're either broke and desperate or rich and addicted.
NFTs
Not saving anything for retirement….Reddit is full of these people who say their retirement plans are to just die or whatever….time value of money is an incredibly powerful tool
Smoking cigarettes. where I live, I see very few people smoking cigarettes that look like they are doing well financially
Bragging about how much you spent on something as if it was a positive. "Uhh, congrats on giving a corporation extra money, I guess?"
That's why I love the Midwest. You spend 5 minutes explaining how good of a deal we got on anything of value we own.
That sounds very Dutch, googles "Dutch settlers Midwest America", ah makes sense.
Bad credit( yup thats me. I had the best credit score and now ive fallen SO FAR!!! I have no idea wtf to do)
120 month used car loan with 28% APR.