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froglet
Nov 12, 2009

You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.
Since Cornholio managed to dig himself out of debt and zaurg's last thread got gassed we haven't had the opportunity for much 'this was a bad idea financially' discussion. So, tell us cautionary tales about your friends, acquaintances or relatives whose little money mistakes spiralled out of control or who just made one big mistake that cost them dearly. If you're feeling particularly brave you can include your own stories about the dumb things you've done.

For this sort of thread a few ground rules are probably necessary, so here we go:
  1. If you need to name them, just call them Dave or Annie rather refer to them by their initials.
  2. No internet detectiving.
  3. If your acquaintance or relative is known to be struggling with mental health issues that surface in the form of compulsive spending or similar, don't talk about it here. That sort of thing usually isn't funny, it's just sad. You're welcome to try and prove me wrong, but 'my brother in law is bipolar, spent $5000 on barbies and is now living in a cardboard dreamhouse he made for them in a park' isn't really what we're after.
  4. Try to explain why a decision was financially dumb if it's not obvious (e.g. some might not know anything about multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes and why they often don't work out).
  5. Work through the numbers if you feel it'll add something to the discussion - we like math here.
Other welcome topics:
  • Multi-level marketing (MLM) discussion
  • Scams and how to identify them
  • When a dumb financial decision becomes a good one (e.g. leasing a car)
So, let's get started! I don't really have much to contribute in terms of personal stories, although I used to live down the road from a family where the primary income earner was rather bad with money in that he apparently dodged taxes in large enough sums that he got sent to gaol for it.

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Eggplant Wizard
Jul 8, 2005


i loev catte
A very intelligent 29 year old friend of mine, on saving for retirement: "I just don't care about it."

Maybe no fireworks, but it's going to be a big problem later on. :ohdear:

secular woods sex
Aug 1, 2000
I dispense wisdom by the gallon.
Thanks to a lack of financial education and a deluge of credit card applications when she turned 18, my older sister declared bankruptcy at the age of 23. It just recently came off her credit report. In the interim, she's gotten much better with her finances (and also married a man with excellent credit and common sense).

Because of that, I stayed far away from credit cards. I didn't get my first one until I was 27 and was facing an uncertain medical situation and thought I could use some back-up. Just in case my debit / checking account couldn't cover it.

GoGoGadgetChris
Mar 18, 2010

i powder a
granite monument
in a soundless flash

showering the grass
with molten drops of
its gold inlay

sending smoking
chips of stone
skipping into the fog

Eggplant Wizard posted:

A very intelligent 29 year old friend of mine, on saving for retirement: "I just don't care about it."

Maybe no fireworks, but it's going to be a big problem later on. :ohdear:

I get this from EVERYONE. I'm 26 and any of my friends/coworkers within 3 years of me in either direction say they just don't care. Or that they "should'nt do that NOW! I'm young!". OK it will be much easier when you have a house payment great job

Nocheez
Sep 5, 2000

Can you spare a little cheddar?
Nap Ghost
My elderly neighbor asked me for help putting a daybed on Craigslist. A day later she called me to say she had sold it, at full asking price! Then she asked about "Pal Pay" because the buyer had already sent her $350 more than her asking price, so she could Western Union the difference back. I felt like I crushed her spirit when I explained that it was all a scam, and how it didn't make any sense that they would send her more money than she asked for.

Lyz
May 22, 2007

I AM A GIRL ON WOW GIVE ME ITAMS
I had a coworker who, on day two of her job, told us all about the fact that she was filing for bankruptcy. Totally out of the blue, no one was even remotely talking about money stuff. According to her, she got a credit card for some medical bills and then "just couldn't stop spending." She kept bragging about how it was some special bankruptcy that would let her keep her car, a fairly new Mitsubishi Eclipse. We all pointed out that now that she had a full time job with us and was pulling down 30k easily she could just pay her debts and not get screwed down the road, but nope, she wanted a fresh slate (I believe the overall debt was something like 11k).

A couple months after everything was resolved she totaled her car and then was unable to get a loan for a new one, and complained constantly about the cheap beater she had to drive to work. Karma's a bitch!

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

I get this from EVERYONE. I'm 26 and any of my friends/coworkers within 3 years of me in either direction say they just don't care. Or that they "should'nt do that NOW! I'm young!". OK it will be much easier when you have a house payment great job

I'm 32 and have been begging my 28 year old coworker to start his 401K. Our company matches 4% if you put in 5%. FREE MONEY. He won't do it. He spends more on coffee every month than the out of pocket difference of his 5% pretax 401k contribution would be.

My wife and I started when we got our 'real jobs', and combined we have over 50K, almost 60K already. We're behind the 8 ball from where we should be, but we're way ahead of most of the people we know. No one on my side of the family, parents included have any retirement savings whatsoever. Most of the folks on my wife's side have pensions from their jobs to count on.

I probably won't live to see 70, but at least I know my wife will be taken care of after I'm gone.


The only funny thing I can think of is a family member that is so deep into the Mary Kay Kool-Aid it's not even funny. Her facebook is plastered with how she's an independent woman, working towards financial freedom and blah blah blah. Last I heard she made under 15K last year pre tax selling Mary Kay. If she put half the energy she puts into MK towards finishing college, or a different career she would make 4 times that amount easily. Can't talk to her about it though.

Poison Cake
Feb 15, 2012
Beanie Babies as an investment. Defending Beanie Babies as an investment. Filling your bedroom with ugly plastic bins to keep your Beanie Babies in pristine condition.

Flavor Truck
Nov 5, 2007

My Love for You is like a Truck
I've been *friends* with a guy I've known since the fifth grade (we're in our mid-twenties now) who decided that it was a good idea to pay someone on craigslist $400 cash for a motorcycle the seller wanted $1200 for on the verbal agreement that he would hold onto it for him until the other $800 had been delivered. Dave's so bad with money that I knew he'd never come up with the rest. At the time, his girlfriend was weeks away from delivering his baby. He's impossible to give advice to. If you try telling him that something he's about to do is stupid, he'll deliver his famous line of "I don't care." repeatedly until the topic changes or you leave in frustration. He's since lost custody of his kid, lost two jobs, and changes tires at an auto-body chain store for minimum wage. It's really too bad he was never able to mature along with the rest of our group of friends.

Xenocides
Jan 14, 2008

This world looks very scary....


A brother of a friend of mine. An "idea guy". Wanders from scheme to scheme trying to con people into creating a business for him with him investing a modest amount of money. He is rountinely taken by cons taking the money and running while real professionals rightly scoff at how he want to provide about $1000 and an idea, have you do all the work, and collect 80% of the profits.

He got married young, had children quickly, and shifted the whole of childcare onto her even when she was making money while he sat around playing video games and dreaming of his escalator to riches. I had to fight hard to keep from laughing when he told his parents he would support them in their old age. Today he offered me $500 to build a dating website for him and run it. He wants 70% of the revenue and I get the rest minus expenses. I am not a programmer and have edited websites but never built one. I ignored him.



Another friend. Nice guy but not all that bright. Spent 8 years studying and came out with a masters in Philosophy. Married another grad student in the same field. Between them they had over $200k in debt when they finished with over $150k of it being student loans. They live in near-poverty with a combined income of about $35k. They just decided to start a family and their income is about to take a nosedive. Hooray!

Saeku
Sep 22, 2010
I had an ex who spent way more than he could afford. He didn't have a steady job so his main source of income was medical studies and (I later learned) prostitution. He treated credit cards like "free money" and never paid them off, just paid the minimums. One day he got a new card and immediately went out and bought a new laptop, a plasma screen, and a PS3 and Xbox 360 -- then days later his dog ran through the room, got caught in the chords connecting the laptop and the TV, and knocked the whole setup down destroying everything, and he's left with a maxed out credit card and nothing.

I broke up with him the month that he missed rent becuase spent $150 on a World of Warcraft turtle mount. It's just a digital turtle, it doesn't even do anything.

CuddleChunks
Sep 18, 2004

A buddy of mine went and listened to the siren song of some mutual friends and now they all have a lovely mortgage together. Naturally they got this property before the housing bubble popped so it's tanked in value.

He's now basically married to these folks financially because holy poo poo they are stuck paying off this stupid house for the rest of their lives. His credit rating is now shot, they keep flailing around on the edge of foreclosure and because the cosigners live below him he can't very easily tell them, "Hey, tenants, your rent is going up" without them murdering him in his sleep (figuratively speaking).

It's an object lesson in why you never *ever* cosign a loan for anyone ever unless you can personally pay off that loan all by yourself.

The level of drama in this situation is nuclear. Heh.

The Experiment
Dec 12, 2010


My sister and her husband make about $80k a year in the rural midwest, where the cost of living is low. However they have nothing to show for it, live in a dumpy house, and are getting deeper and deeper into debt. They insist that they're ok but they're not. Her husband makes flailing attempts at fiscal responsibility yet my sister wants to spend money like it's nothing. She needs a tattoo, needs to go shopping, and needs to go to Chicago for a weekend to "get away from it all." She whined about not having enough money to vaccinate her dogs but then was on Facebook the day before talking about going to a sushi restaurant. I never really cared about all of this except she wanted to borrow $5,000 from me to get a newer, nicer car. This car was going to be $30,000 or so, about $17,000 more than what I spent on my car. The reason was because she works hard and deserves it! I told her no. Now she talks poo poo about me all the time and didn't even get me a Christmas present or nothing last year.

As for me:

- In high school I worked two jobs and had nothing to show for it. I wanted to save for college but my beater car kept falling apart. I lived in the middle of nowhere so not driving was not an option. The first taste of disposable income was in the form of a Capital One card with a $300 limit. Within a week, I had maxed it out. I bought a GBA SP, a few games, some McDonald's, and a Talib Kweli album. I kept getting told my card was declined but I wouldn't believe it! How the hell could I have maxed it out? Clearly I didn't think about how much stuff costs apparently. I was 18, still lived at home and kept all of this secret from my parents. They must never know.

- In college I always took out the maximum amounts of loans. I would have $3500 in spending money per year, go through it all on either games, alcohol, weed, or some other dumbass activity. In the end, I wound up $87,000 in the hole when I graduated. This is at a public university where I paid in state tuition and even got some grant money.

- I stepped up in credit cards and had two with a combined limit of $4000. I spent it all on a kickass Sega Saturn collection, a 60 GB iPod Video, and lots and lots of top shelf booze, good weed, and weightlifting supplements. I went through my $1750 or so in spending money from my loans, maxed out the two cards (and always got told I was declined), and had maybe $200 in my name. I was going to run out of money and be late on some bills and not even have enough for poo poo like gas money to go to back home for Christmas when the semester ended. So I had to fire sell everything almost right away and made just enough to get by to get more money, which I promptly spent through. At that point I had a revelation and did better with money. Now I'm debt free and have a shitload in savings and investments.

Skipopatomus
Aug 30, 2007

Ozzy Osbourne simply duplicated the event.

This one is on a smaller scale but it's easily one of my favorite stories about the kid. Actually there are two stories!

Story #1
I worked with my close friend and her cousin at a store. The cousin was ringing a customer up and was paid with a two dollar bill. He had never seen one before and asked if we could accept it, we assured him that yes, it's real money. The rest of the shift he kept going on about how neat it was and if he could keep it and we told him as long as he puts $2 in the register sure. That night my friend and her cousin went to Walgreens to buy cookies. His total was $4.00 but didn't have enough to save the $2 bill. He was pretty bummed but really wanted the cookies so he handed the clerk the $2 bill and one more dollar. The clerk says "oh I'm sorry, your total is $4.00" and the kid points his finger at the $2 bill and says "That's a two dollar bill!" The clerk repeats himself. "Your total is still $4.00..." Rather indignantly he starts stamping his finger down on the bill saying "THAT'S TWO DOLLARS IN ONE DOLLAR BILL" My friend got fed up with this and yanked his wallet out of his hands and put down another dollar. As they were walking out of the store the kid is still trying to figure out if he got ripped off. Literally stopped in his tracks and started mumbling to himself "two dollars, three bills... no no, ohhh ok yeah"


Story #2
The same kid came into our store to work his shift and the first words out of his mouth were "Welp, I just lost five bucks!" We asked where and he said at the gas station. We asked him if somebody grabbed the five bucks or what and he says "No, I prepaid to get gas and didn't estimate right and gave them too much money" Me and his cousin are just staring at him and we needed him to clarify. He prepays for gas but if he fills his tank before using the entire amount of what he paid the clerk he just goes "well poo poo, there goes another three bucks" It never dawned on him to ask for his change inside. By our estimates he's probably lost close to $150 dollars from just leaving $2-$5 ever 2 weeks. :psyduck:

ATP5G1
Jun 22, 2005
Fun Shoe
Oh boy story time!

Guy and Guy's Wife are in their late 20s and got married last summer. Wife is in her eighth year of her PhD, in a humanities subject that is the least job-getting subject you can imagine. Part of the reason it's taking so long is because her thesis idea is so ridiculous nobody will fund it, but she refuses to change it. Guy nonchalantly tells me he expects she will take 15-16 years, Guy thinks this is totally normal and not weird at all.

Salient points:
1) Humanities PhDs are generally the Worst Idea Ever. There are no jobs and very rarely do you get funding. You are essentially paying tens of thousands a year for the benefit of getting a completely useless degree.

2) If you are in your sixth year of your PhD and aren't defending, people start looking at you funny and your advisor sits you down to discuss when you're leaving. In your eighth year, people assume you're failing at life. More than that, and it is only acceptable if you're working full-time to support the Ph.D. and classes and research are done on the side. Guy's Wife is not working full time.

What this comes out to is Guy's Wife has been living off of student loans for the past eight years, expects to live off of student loans for another eight years, and there will be no job at the end of it. Furthermore, Guy did not find out until a few months ago--over half a year into the marriage--that now that they're married he's responsible for his wife's student loan debt, and said debt cannot be discharged by bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Guy's job is working as a cashier in a supermarket.

Oh yes, and they're constantly complaining about how poor they are and how they need help from their parents to pay bills, while at the same time somehow having enough money to buy Macbook Airs, iPhones, and all the newest video game systems.

particle409
Jan 15, 2008

Thou bootless clapper-clawed varlot!
Netflix has an ESPN movie called 30 for 30: Broke. It could be better and go into more detail, but it's a decent look into how so many athletes earn millions of dollars, but end up in massive debt at the end of their careers.

Content: My brother bought a failing bar with money he inherited. He couldn't hold a job as a waiter, so he thought this qualified him to manage a business. It was run like a clubhouse. All his friends, which was every single customer, got to drink for free. Employees stole left and right. It was all ok though, because it got my brother laid.

He would have closed within a few months, but lasted a year because he had the money. At the end, somebody broke in (with keys, so an employee) and stole the mounted plasma televisions he had stupidly purchased. He then had to buy new ones for the landlord, since they were "installed fixtures." All said, he spent maybe $400k on a failed business.

kansas
Dec 3, 2012
I am hired an employee who earns approximately 40k a year in San Francisco. Got a ride with him to lunch this past week and found out he drives a ~$45,000 BMW.

froglet
Nov 12, 2009

You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

I get this from EVERYONE. I'm 26 and any of my friends/coworkers within 3 years of me in either direction say they just don't care. Or that they "should'nt do that NOW! I'm young!". OK it will be much easier when you have a house payment great job

I have a friend who's a bit like this. Her story is that she invested some of her own money on top of the mandatory superannuation (Aussie retirement savings) contribution and reckons she lost it all in the 2008 financial crash. So she's fighting the man by shredding all the documentation that her various superannuation funds send her. Which is dumb, because she has at least 3 different superannuation accounts, all of which would be charging fees on her retirement savings and once the balance gets low enough (something like $2000) it will get sent to the federal government as an inactive account. She has the option of reclaiming it through the tax departments 'find my lost super' initiative, but in the mean time she's giving an interest-free loan to the Australian government and seems to think that this is a good idea as opposed to just accepting she lost a bit of money and just rolling all her super accounts over into the one that charges the least fees.

If you live in Australia, don't ignore the letters your superannuation sends you, check to see if you've got lost super from when you picked up a job at uni and if you have more than one account, pick the one that best suits you and roll it over. You can easily lose thousands of dollars just from fees charged on old accounts you don't use anymore.

evobatman
Jul 30, 2006

it means nothing, but says everything!
Pillbug

kansas posted:

I am hired an employee who earns approximately 40k a year in San Francisco. Got a ride with him to lunch this past week and found out he drives a ~$45,000 BMW.

Did he buy it used, or could it have been a lease? I drove a $120,000 BMW, which I paid about $6000 for. There are nuances.

Midtown
Jun 16, 2013
A good friend of mine lost his job a while back and has been trying to use his newly acquired free time to his advantage. So he invites me over for a discussion about a business opportunity he is starting and that I "can't miss out" and "Donald Trump". So I arrive and am greeted by a 45-minute presentation for some generic pyramid-scheme knock-off thing for "making huge profit selling telecommunications and earning RESIDUAL INCOME $125,000 PER YEAR FEAT. DONALD TRUMP'S ENDORSEMENT". With no job or job prospects lined up he dropped $499.99 on the starter set and has been begging me, his other friends, family, and anyone who still hasn't filed a restraining order to sign up too.

I sadly decline even despite the unbelievable directorial quality of their training videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ler-4LwiaWk

kansas
Dec 3, 2012

evobatman posted:

Did he buy it used, or could it have been a lease? I drove a $120,000 BMW, which I paid about $6000 for. There are nuances.

It was brand new. Could have been a lease but that would probably be even worse.

corker2k
Feb 22, 2013

Midtown posted:


I sadly decline even despite the unbelievable directorial quality of their training videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ler-4LwiaWk

I am still confused about what this company is all about. Maybe that's the point? If I get baffled enough, I will sign anything?

OrangeKing
Dec 5, 2002

They do play in October!

corker2k posted:

I am still confused about what this company is all about. Maybe that's the point? If I get baffled enough, I will sign anything?

I'm going to pretend that we're supposed to sympathize with the potential investors, who aren't actually going to show up for the meeting later.

CuddleChunks
Sep 18, 2004

The Experiment posted:

I never really cared about all of this except she wanted to borrow $5,000 from me to get a newer, nicer car.
You are the *worst* brother. How dare you not drop 5 grand on your sister so she can buy a kickass car? Ahahahahah the gall of some folks to demand you spend your money on them.


Friends of mine are really really good people but I worry about how far into credit card debt they put themselves. Husband has a good job, wife brings in a little spare change with some etsy work and they keep food on the table and their kids in clothes so nothing is precisely wrong but in conversations with them I hear credit credit credit and I wonder if they have any savings building up or if they are so far in hock that any little emergency is going to wreck them. This is a brand new way of thinking about money for me because until recently the idea was that you had to have credit card and car debt because otherwise you probably weren't an American. Having paid off all my poo poo it's neat to see that you can live without it.

Thanks for the stories everyone.

Acquilae
May 15, 2013

CuddleChunks posted:

This is a brand new way of thinking about money for me because until recently the idea was that you had to have credit card and car debt because otherwise you probably weren't an American.

I really don't like that American stereotype; the fiance and I are Indian and were both raised the same way with the save, invest, then spend hierarchy. Our parents both worked in medicine, were good friends, and despite living well-off the only thing they truly spoiled us with was to not have the burden of college loans. In my case, it wasn't until high school that I completely realized why my dad would be investing rather than treating himself to luxuries like his co-worker doctors.

We have friends who got married straight out of undergrad and now(we're 28) have kids who basically enslaved their parents. When they come over to chat, the main topic is usually over budget hardships and it's not hard to figure out when they do things like Disney World vacations EVERY year, have 3+ credit cards, and buy all this crap for their kids because "so and so bought x for their child and we want ours to be happy too."

Acquilae fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jun 25, 2013

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Acquilae posted:

We have friends who got married straight out of undergrad and now(we're 28) have kids who basically enslaved their parents. When they come over to chat, the main topic is usually over budget hardships and it's not hard to figure out when they do things like Disney World vacations EVERY year, have 3+ credit cards, and buy all this crap for their kids because "so and so bought x for their child and we want ours to be happy too."
Crap like this blows my mind. I have a toddler son and I thought I was blowing a lot of money by buying him a couple toys off Amazon a month. Now we're more careful about spending and always look on craigslist first, and let my mom do most of the spoiling (grandparents own). Do we have a general frugality discussion thread?

Crazyweasel
Oct 29, 2006
lazy

I hear ya about vacations...My girlfriends parents were both very succesfully in companies/industry that benefitted during the tech boom of the 90's and early 00's. On top of a huge combined salary, the mothers company would book rooms in hotels outside Disney for employees to go to for vacation. Fortunately, they are a smart bunch and saved enough...but the "1 big vacation a year" is heavily heavily ingrained in my gf and her sister because they did Disney every year, cruises to Bermuda, Myrtle beach. Her mother has taught them "you need to treat yourself to a vacation, something to look forward to." Meanwhile my folks took my brothers and I camping once a year and even that stopped by the time I was 14.

It's honestly tough for her to understand that while I now make good money, I can't and will not a spend a stack of cash to go halfway across the country once or twice a year. Other than that she is smart with money and supportive of me paying loans, but vacations man, some people cant live without them. :psyduck:

Oh yeah and to contribute I know a kid who overdrew his bank account in high school to buy decals and spray paint for his dodge stratus, that was awesome. poo poo like a new shifter knob and a car bra. The best was when his sister inherited it and it promptly broke a fuel line under the hood and went up in flames, all in front of a store security cam.

canyoneer
Sep 13, 2005


I only have canyoneyes for you

ATP5G1 posted:

Oh yes, and they're constantly complaining about how poor they are and how they need help from their parents to pay bills, while at the same time somehow having enough money to buy Macbook Airs, iPhones, and all the newest video game systems.

I've got a couple good ones. Both are stories about two married idiots who have a bad relationship that isn't based in trust. This couple are both retarded with money, but have strict rules about who pays for what. E.g. she pays the electric bill, he pays the phone bill, etc. The wife is just incredible. We'll call her Nancy.

Here are some of her exploits:

This one is my absolute favorite. Nancy had an iPhone 4S (like a scrub!), and wanted an iPhone 5. She didn't have $750 cash to buy an iPhone. Her contract wasn't up for a new phone or upgrade for another 18 months. She thought $200 to get one with a new account and 24 month contract with data plan sounded like a bargain, because her husband pays the phone bill. She opens up a new line on their family plan at an extra cost of $60/month for the next 24 months that her husband will pay for, so she can get the discount on her new phone. That phone line doesn't even have a device tied to it :gonk: Yep, put her husband on the hook for almost $1,700 over the next two years with an extra phone line they aren't even using so she can replace her 6 month old phone.
He didn't even know about this until he saw his $150 phone bill jump to $410 the next month. :staredog:

Nancy has over $10k of credit card debt, much of which is from before she got married. Due to tax credits for education, she anticipated a large tax return, about $3,000 I think. She and her husband agreed that she should apply the entire thing towards her double digit interest rate credit card debt. When she got the tax return, she lied to her husband and told him it ended up only being $800, and spent the other $2k on a Louis Vuitton handbag. She hid the bag from him for a few weeks, and when he finally saw it, she lied and told him that it was a fake, and cost $50.


edit: If you haven't already seen it, fire up Netflix and watch Queen of Versailles. It is, like, the height of noveau super-rich extravagance and arrogance

canyoneer fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jun 21, 2013

Harry
Jun 13, 2003

I do solemnly swear that in the year 2015 I will theorycraft my wallet as well as my WoW
My coworker was telling me how she visited her son and his wife sometime in the past. The son then asked for money because they were out of it because of whatever reason so she wrote them a check for like $500 I think. When she got back, she noticed her digital camera was missing and called them. The wife said she took it because my coworker didn't give them enough money. She hasn't talked to either one of them since.

Damn Bananas
Jul 1, 2007

You humans bore me
This is a whole new way to be bad with money - be bad with OTHER peoples' money on a professional level! I have a (former) friend who works for one of those pyramid scheme financial companies that sells life insurance, retirement plans, investments, etc. Anyway, 14 days after he got his license to invest other peoples' money, he confronted my husband and I to invest my (recent, rather large) inheritance money through him. When we politely declined (a 26 year old with a degree in theater, and a minor in philosophy, who's so good with finances that he still lives with his mom, is not the one I'd prefer to trust my money to) he got mad and posted our entire financial situation to Facebook - including tagging my husband and I. I called his company to report him and I assume he's been either fired, license revoked, or at the very least had a very serious sit down reprimanding chat (it's probably the latter, I don't have high expectations for the shady company with the harassing tactics it teaches employees).

Also, my very sweet and financially savvy but way-too-trusting mother in law who owns her own business has:
1. Cosigned a loan intended to cover her employee's credit card debt on his company card that he used at strip clubs, etc (....yeah) that he (!!) did not ever pay again after he got fired.
2. Gave a completely undocumented loan to a different employee because she needed to a) buy a new car to get to work because she totaled hers in a drunk/high driving accident, and b) needed to pay the court costs of said drunk/high driving incident. This admirable young lady not only was on average 17 minutes late to work every single morning for several months, but also turned out to be lying about her deceased mother for about 5 years, as they found out when they got a call from the mother warning them that she believed her daughter to have a drug addiction that could be influencing her job performance. Mother in law/boss gave her the option to resign instead of be fired, which she did. M-I-L gave her a months severance pay and additional cash because the lady claimed she was unable to pay for her baby's food. This employee is now pursuing unemployment, and also, oddly, is not interested in paying back that undocumented loan.

Mother in law, you are the absolute sweetest lady in the world, but stop letting people walk all over you because it's the easier thing to do at the time! If an employee can't make it to work because she crashed her car with a cocktail of drugs in her system, maybe you should look at new employees!

Edit: #2 lady is also on food stamps, and stands outside of grocery stores offering to buy people's groceries with them in exchange for cash.

Damn Bananas fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Jun 22, 2013

ATP5G1
Jun 22, 2005
Fun Shoe
Oh yes, the best part of my aforementioned Guy and Guy's Wife? They're on food stamps. (I assume) All that stuff they're purchasing is on credit and student loans. :psyduck: For me this is the worst part because it only feeds the stereotype that people on food stamps are lazy and money-wasting. I was on food stamps and it made a huge difference in my life, and I lived extremely frugally. So hearing them talk about how poor and sad and food stamps their lives are and then tout around thousands of dollars in electronics, well, it makes steam come out of my ears.

Nog
May 15, 2006

In college, I met these two dudes who were both MAKING TONS OF MONEY.

You see, they had found out about this awesome thing on the Internet where you invest money with this one dude, watch ads on a website he had set up, and then he would produce a return of 10% per week on your investment, somehow just by you watching those ads. How ads could generate that much money and why he needed money from them was to get started were questions they never bothered to ask. I tried to explain to them that this was obviously a huge and very obvious scam, and they explained that it couldn't be a scam because they had already made thousands of dollars off of this...

Me: "You mean you've actually had thousands of dollars transferred into your bank accounts as a result of this?"

Them: "No. We keep the money invested so that we make more when it compounds. But we have made thousands so far."

I kept trying to explain to them how it was a scam but they refused to believe me. Thankfully, neither of them had sunk more than a thousand into it so far, so they hadn't sunk their full tuition into it or anything. I felt terrible for them, just sitting there staring at Internet ads for hours each day and throwing their money away. I didn't really know them that well, so I never really heard what ended up happening. I'd like to think they didn't "invest" anymore, or convince anyone else to, and that that just ended up being a relatively cheap $1000 lesson in life.

April
Jul 3, 2006


Ohhhhhh, I've wanted to vent about this one for a while!!!

So, I was really good friends in high school with a girl named "Brenda". We lost touch when we went to college, and I found & friended her on Facebook about a year ago. I haven't gotten together with her in person, but her FB posts tell me that she's had a rough time. Her posts for the last year are pretty much all about her money woes: She & her husband have a very limited income and one of their children has special needs (Aspergers). She's tried to get government assistance but didn't qualify. They live in a rental house where everything is falling apart and they can't afford to move or fix anything on their own. Their car is almost dead, and they don't know how they can replace it. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, her husband was diagnosed with cancer - it sounds like a treatable, usually non-fatal type, but still.

So, last week, their family got some kind of windfall. She posted: "We have had a huge shift (for us) in our finances and I am still stunned. I can't believe it is real and happening! It means we can pay for boys' school and they can go to camp this summer and maybe even a vacation! We're not millionaires but the amount for us is so great that it raises our ability to manage so much that it feels like we are to us."

And a couple of days later, she posted asking if $4100 for a 7-day, 6-night Disney vacation was a good deal. Yes, her plan was to blow a large chunk of cash, and drag her husband, who has CANCER and all the kids to Disney for a week - next week. Like, not even to plan it out a few weeks in advance to pay a little less on airfare, or anything. I don't think that included food for 5 people.

I tried to be diplomatic, and suggested that while it's nobody else's business how she spends her money, with so much uncertainty in her life right now, it might be better to stash that money and plan a great trip over Christmas or something. She deleted the whole conversation, so who knows what they decided. But seriously - with his incoming medical bills/missed work/car repairs/house issues/kids' various needs/you name it - planning a trip to a super overpriced theme park??? In Florida, in the hottest time of year?

Then yesterday, she was complaining about working "2 part time jobs and 1 very part time job and taking care of a sick husband" and how tired she was. You know what? Why not stick that 4k in the bank, quit one of the jobs, and portion that money out to cover the difference for a few months?

I mean, I'm glad that her family got some kind of a boost, but it sickens me that they are given a chance to really improve things, and they don't look further than this summer.

particle409
Jan 15, 2008

Thou bootless clapper-clawed varlot!

canyoneer posted:

I've got a couple good ones. Both are stories about two married idiots who have a bad relationship that isn't based in trust. This couple are both retarded with money, but have strict rules about who pays for what. E.g. she pays the electric bill, he pays the phone bill, etc. The wife is just incredible. We'll call her Nancy.

Here are some of her exploits:

This one is my absolute favorite. Nancy had an iPhone 4S (like a scrub!), and wanted an iPhone 5. She didn't have $750 cash to buy an iPhone. Her contract wasn't up for a new phone or upgrade for another 18 months. She thought $200 to get one with a new account and 24 month contract with data plan sounded like a bargain, because her husband pays the phone bill. She opens up a new line on their family plan at an extra cost of $60/month for the next 24 months that her husband will pay for, so she can get the discount on her new phone. That phone line doesn't even have a device tied to it :gonk: Yep, put her husband on the hook for almost $1,700 over the next two years with an extra phone line they aren't even using so she can replace her 6 month old phone.
He didn't even know about this until he saw his $150 phone bill jump to $410 the next month. :staredog:

My mother pays for my brother's, father's, and my own smartphone (and hers as well) through her business. My brother stopped answering her calls and emails, so my mother stopped paying for his phone, and he had to downgrade to a regular cell phone after his hand-me-down Blackberry broke (easily fixed, he couldn't be bothered). Then my mother wanted to pay for a smartphone again, so he could get emails. My brother had already spent his upgrade on his cheapo cell phone, I forget the brand but it was basically a waste of an upgrade.

He decided the best thing to do was buy a Kindle Fire so he could answer emails! He couldn't be bothered to wait two weeks for Black Friday deals, and he bought it full retail price. Never mind that he can't afford a data plan. All he uses it for is to read digital comics, he still doesn't answer emails. He's completely broke, has a lovely cell phone, and no reliable way to answer emails unless he has wifi access.

SlapActionJackson
Jul 27, 2006

corker2k posted:

I am still confused about what this company is all about. Maybe that's the point? If I get baffled enough, I will sign anything?

You're supposed to be so impressed with rented Bentleys that you'll give them $500 in the hopes that you will one day be able to afford to rent your own.

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

Coworker Sam cashes the bi-monthly paycheck. Everyone else is set up direct deposit - and I wasn't even given the option to have a live check - but this individual cashes it every single time. Automatic no savings per month.

detloc
Oct 13, 2003

Poofter? In the footy stands, [b]maybe[/b], but in the office? I think not!

froglet posted:

I have a friend who's a bit like this. Her story is that she invested some of her own money on top of the mandatory superannuation (Aussie retirement savings) contribution and reckons she lost it all in the 2008 financial crash. So she's fighting the man by shredding all the documentation that her various superannuation funds send her. Which is dumb, because she has at least 3 different superannuation accounts, all of which would be charging fees on her retirement savings and once the balance gets low enough (something like $2000) it will get sent to the federal government as an inactive account. She has the option of reclaiming it through the tax departments 'find my lost super' initiative, but in the mean time she's giving an interest-free loan to the Australian government and seems to think that this is a good idea as opposed to just accepting she lost a bit of money and just rolling all her super accounts over into the one that charges the least fees.

If you live in Australia, don't ignore the letters your superannuation sends you, check to see if you've got lost super from when you picked up a job at uni and if you have more than one account, pick the one that best suits you and roll it over. You can easily lose thousands of dollars just from fees charged on old accounts you don't use anymore.

When the crash happened in 2008 I got to hear all sorts of stories from people in their 50s who were incensed that their high-risk growth super plan had lost a bunch of money and suddenly wasn't returning 14% anymore. As if 14% returns could be achieved with 0 risk.

I'm also amazed at people in their 30s with half a dozen super accounts, paying fees for each, with no idea what they are invested in. I check mine on a weekly basis and have a single account with lowest possible fees. Makes a big difference over 40 years.

froglet
Nov 12, 2009

You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

detloc posted:

When the crash happened in 2008 I got to hear all sorts of stories from people in their 50s who were incensed that their high-risk growth super plan had lost a bunch of money and suddenly wasn't returning 14% anymore. As if 14% returns could be achieved with 0 risk.

I'm also amazed at people in their 30s with half a dozen super accounts, paying fees for each, with no idea what they are invested in. I check mine on a weekly basis and have a single account with lowest possible fees. Makes a big difference over 40 years.

The thing is, we aren't that old (early to mid 20s), so she has time on her side to make it all back, which is what makes this attitude all the more inexplicable.

Another thing I notice a lot of my friends doing is replacing their phones whenever their existing contract is up. While I won't comment on if anyone really needs a new phone every two years, a phone on a contract can cost up to $1800 over two years, including calls and data. The thing is, buying the same phone outright and getting a sim-only plan can be up to $900 cheaper.

I guess there is a lot to be said for not having to fork out several hundred dollars upfront for a new phone, but I'm unsure if they can downgrade if their circumstances change.

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES
I have a relative who cashed out all of his retirement accounts sometime in Jan '09 (2 months shy of DOW 10,000, woo!), citing concerns that Obama might find a way to take it all on top of 'I got tired of seeing my retirement disappear.' Once remarked that he didn't consult a financial adviser because, quote, "he'd've told me not to."

Stayed completely liquid way too long. Thought the whole problem was government inserting it's childlike hand into the affairs of men, thought he'd wait. Thought it was a good idea based on everything he'd learned from Beck and Limbaugh. Acting on his beliefs roughly halved his retirement accounts, cost him 50K - 70K, and from what I can tell he learned nothing.

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HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib
I had this roommate who was a really good roommate but god drat was she financially retarded. We lived together for about two years and for most of that time, she paid rent and utilities regularly but the last 3-4 months she'd ask if I could cover her share of the water bill or whatever. Uh, no.

She worked two part time jobs and went to school part time. I don't know how much she made but it wasn't much.

She was always borrowing money from one family member or friend and lending money to another. Her friend Morgan owed her $700, her cousin Brian owed her $1500 because she put all his utilities in her name despite not living with him and he never paid, she owed her dad $???? for a car...I suggested she make an actual list and pay all these people back and try to get the money she was owed, but that never happened.

The loving cars. We lived in the hood, like the get-shot-at-the-bus-stop hood. Our house was right near the intersection of two major bus lines so people walked by all the time. For a while, her car had plastic taped over a missing window, and she would do stuff like leave her MP3 player in plain sight. Someone peeled off the plastic and stole it, along with a gallon of laundry detergent. She promptly bought another MP3 player but also replaced the window. Several months later, during a snow storm, she left her car unlocked and running to warm it up while she was inside. It got stolen (presumably by someone on their way to the bus stop) and a few weeks later was recovered after having been totaled and abandoned.

She got a new (used) car. Her dad lent her the initial money but it was under her name, so she was paying back her dad AND the car loan place. She never got the temporary tags replaced and racked up like two months of fines before getting it registered. Meanwhile, she would get tickets whenever she parked on the street because her car had expired tags. The car ended up getting repossessed some time after we stopped living together.

She went to the Bahamas with a couple of her friends for a week. I have no idea where she got the money for that. Three months later, she went to a family reunion in Hawaii. Her family is actually Hawaiian and most of them live there, so it wasn't a destination reunion or anything, but still. I'm pretty sure her family helped pay for that, but while she was there, she lent one of her aunts $100 and when she she got back she asked if I could cover part of her rent for two weeks and then she would pay me back. I told her to stop lending people money she didn't have.

When I moved out of our house, it was in large part because I couldn't stand dealing with her finances any more. All the utilities were in my name (because she owed the utility company a huge amount of money thanks to her cousin Brian) and I had to twist her arm every month to get her share.

A couple months after I moved out, she sent me a text asking for $20. I didn't reply and we haven't hung out since, which is a shame because she was a good friend when we weren't dealing with money.

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