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Adar
Jul 27, 2001
Based on this thread, there's nothing you can really do (and yes, your teller friend is right; selling your car now that you've made the mistake of buying it is a stupid, only-in-BFC idea.) On this income, with this much debt, you're hosed. Your only good options are to increase your income or declare bankruptcy, which I'm pretty sure is easier in Canada.

To be fair, though, if you're actually going to get that promotion and live responsibly for the next few years you can chalk your mid-20's up as a lesson and still be debt free and in a house by 30.

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Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

Are you joking? June was a budget write-off, July was much better, and with the apartment expenses gone, rent cut in half from July, and 280 bucks already saved from a week of field time, as well as a month of field time and a course coming up in September, I can't see this situation as bankruptcy-worthy. As long as I pay poo poo off and then save for my next vacation, I can't foresee how I'm exposed to enough risk to really throw me into a spiral of ruin and bankruptcy at this point.

This thread wasn't really to ask for how to change my lifestyle. I went to a military financial councillor in June, made lifestyle cuts, hosed up in July, made more cuts and took budgeting more seriously. Then I posted this thread. The reason that I seem unable to change is because a lot of change has already taken place, as much as possible I guess. I was wondering of the Internet had any other ideas that I couldn't get from cornholio's thread but I guess not.

Also, I'm terrified of buying a house. It seems like a trap. I also don't really want kids. I'd be much happier with a nice apartment downtown, nice car, and lots of trips and an interesting life than a wife, 1.5 children, pets, front-loading washing machine, the whole American dream. I'm like the anti-BFC except for right now when my dream lifestyle got me into a ton of trouble.

Here's the thing: you are 56K in debt. If absolutely nothing happens, you maintain this lifestyle, get the promotion and live exactly the same as you do now, yeah, you'll pay it off in four years and can start talking about how much you hate houses and kids (this is also a discussion you don't want to have right now). If your car breaks down, you take a dozen more vacations (like the one you're planning on right now! again!), you want to propose to your girlfriend, you want to pay your girlfriend's bills for a couple of months if she can't find work (heh), you want to leave the Army or, really, pretty much anything, you have no cushion. You know why this is very close to bankruptcy worthy? Take a look at Cornholio's first page, where he was just about in the same shape you are, and guess how much credit he could get if he went to a bank. The answer is > $0, yet nobody wants to loan you any money.

Also, I reiterate selling the car is a very dumb idea.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

Yes. I understand that money is a means to an end. I am not interested in making it an end in itself. Having an ever compounding number in my web browser is not fulfilling for me. I don't have contempt for people who find that very satisfying, it's just not for me.

BFC falls into that trap a lot, but based on your annual income you passed the line where this is an excuse somewhere around $40K ago.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
Scrimping on a mattress is pretty stupid unless you like back surgery. I'm not saying you need a thousand dollar memory foam thing, but yeah, don't give yourself permanent back problems because you decided you really needed BFC approval.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Zeta Buttforce posted:

I refuse to believe that getting a new mattress rises to the level of emergency. It is a priority, it is something he should have already done, but it’s not an emergency. I have a feeling that this only came up because he found out he could get an interest free loan for it. He will have the money in a month. All he has to do is to reduce his debt payments to the minimum payment, eat frozen vegetables, and go an entire month without getting a speeding ticket.

Counterpoint: interest free loans don't rise to the level of fiscal irresponsibility (and even if they weren't interest free, the extra month of interest would cost < :10bux:) unless you can't pay them back. The extra month of sleeping on a lovely mattress *isn't* free. It might not rise to the level of foregoing leukemia treatments for a month until you have the cash in hand, but for a guy with a preexisting condition it's got a non-negligible chance of making it worse.

Anyway, this is really a question of willpower. If he's committed to spending the money wisely and knows he can eat frozen veggies, he can do it on a good mattress. If he needs the crutch of cash in hand because he's had repeated problems doing otherwise, Dave Ramsey might be applicable. Personally, I prefer the willpower approach until proven otherwise.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

A more pressing concern is the fact that I really want to get out of the military. People I respect and who have a lot of good sense are telling me that I should. They're making emotional appeals that I find really hard to ignore and I'm starting to think that they're right. Life is too short to spend four years of it being unhappy (when you could be happier for those four years just by making one decision).

tuyop posted:

I won't get descriptive or specific unless someone is interested, but this meeting was an awful, offensive, degrading experience.

I can't have another officer trade because there are none open that my education qualifies me for. I would need an engineering degree.

So I have two choices (which is really three choices).

1. I can decommission and take a specialist trade, which is a trade that pays ~25% more at each rank than normal trades.

2. I can voluntarily release.

3. I can fight for a trade that I want.

1. Has many upsides, but it's very emotional for me for some reason. I've spent the last 5 years in the army, including four years in university, and three years in high school streaming my life in a direction to basically manage and lead people, and I'm not bad at that. I've made a significant number of sacrifices and endured a lot of hardship to get where I am and I don't feel like I deserve to give it up. Decommissioning means that I'll be giving up my (laughable) position of power and connection and my rank and transferring to a Non-Commissioned Member trade. I was offered a lot of ridiculous trades that don't fit me at all (army plumber, barnacle scraper, etc) but I can pick almost any trade that I want because my aptitude test scores are high.

There are three specialist pay trades open right now, one of them I can't enter into. They are Hull Tech (barnacle scraper and boat plumber) and Aeronautical Technical Information Systems Tech (ATIS) (Air Force IT guy). I think I'll round out my three choices with vehicle tech. I'm not interested in any of these trades, or anything at all that's open. But they pay well. The other major consideration is training time. I have to serve three years in a new trade if/when I get qualified. ATIS has 48 weeks of training. H Tech has 25 weeks of training. Vehicle tech has ~95 weeks of training. I have the leadership training to qualify me as a Master Corporal right away, and the time in to qualify as a Corporal once trade qualified.

Right now I make 4322 a month before deductions and everything. Starting spec pay for an ATIS corporal is 5100. For a mcpl it's 5362 or 5559 depending on who you ask.

If all goes well with option 1 I can expect to be out in March 2016 with sizable savings, no debt, and qualifications that make me highly competitive in the civilian market for companies abroad with a 6-figure income, easily.

I don't really want any of that, I want to get the debt out of the way, leave the army military as soon as possible, go back to school, and teach. I don't care how much I can make in Dubai when I'm 27. I'm mentioning it because it's a pro of plan 1.

2. If I refuse to decommission, the only option available is to release. Since the military paid for two years of my university, I owe them 36 months. If I release I have to pay back the time owed minus the time served. I have served 22 of those months. I can't get an estimate of what my personal obligatory service buyout would be because it's highly individualized and they only tell you after you've gone the release road and military lawyers do the estimate and manage the whole process.

I spent a lot of time today trying to figure out what my buyout would be. I'd have to repay two years of university and two years of salary minus 8 months. I think I've got it figured out at somewhere between 20 000 and 52 000. This doesn't have to be paid in a lump sum, but they'll garnish your future earnings for basically forever.

The other problem is that you request release, the army can say no for the duration of your contract. Common reasons for saying no to a voluntary release (VR) are unresolved medical problems and debt. If I do 2 I may simply be denied and stuck in my current position... forever.

The end-state on plan 2 is, in 6-8 months I have an additional 20 to 50k in debt, no employment, no income, and no job prospects. I'll have to take on an additional 20 000 in debt to get a teaching degree, and may have trouble finding a teaching job for an indeterminable amount of time. I would be living with my parents, unemployed, unemployable, dead broke, and stuck. The end result would almost certainly be bankruptcy in the next 3-5 years.

The only reason to consider 2 is that it gets me the gently caress out of the military quickly. I think I'm learning that freedom isn't really worth any amount of money, and I definitely don't feel free. I didn't make any of my plans or sacrifices to do a job that is basically putting servers together in Cold Lake, Alberta. I can't identify with a job in any sort of technical trade for a lot of reasons. I feel like a classist gently caress for feeling this way, but I have a skillset that will not be used effectively in any of the options that the military is giving me. I'm also worried now that I've been treating my girlfriend, who is a vehicle tech and certified carpenter, like I'm superior because I have some kind of managerial status. She's in the field right now, but I need to have a long talk about these options, and not just because they affect our ability to make a life together.

The third option is to fight. Basically it involves scouring the school for anyone in a position of authority who has ever had a positive interaction with me, getting them to put in writing that I demonstrated qualities of a good combat arms officer, having the commandant of the Infantry School sign off on the fact that said that I should be an armoured officer, and pouncing on the BPSO with all of this ammunition.

The main problem with the third option is that it will take a very long time. That would be an agonizing, lengthy process that will probably take this whole year. The training time in another officer trade won't go away, and the required service afterward won't go away either. I will be (more) satisfied with my job in the end, but I may be in the military until I'm 30 because of it. It'll also make me feel really really good because I beat the BPSO by loving around the system.

Financially, nothing really changes in 3. I won't be getting any promotions or pay increases the entire time, my job won't change at all, and my location won't change. The end result is eventual qualification and work in another officer trade only to leave three years later so that I can do what I really want.


I don't know what to do. I've talked to my parents, they want me to get out. I need to talk to my girlfriend. And now I'm consulting you guys.

Did anything about that post change in the last couple of months?

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
I think you should reread this entire thread from the beginning and then think long and hard about ammo teching your way through the next few years, because as bad as I'm sure it sounds there's a very good chance you're gonna regret this decision really quickly. At this point, you're almost better off joining the Foreign Legion than any of the ideas you've come up with ITT.

-starting a very long road towards what you acknowledge as a low paying save the world gig very deep in the hole
-resigning yourself to being broke forever
-doing all this so you can stay with your girl, then, one post later, 'oh, all those long distance charges are gonna stop now'

Yeah, I don't buy this. Ammo tech wouldn't be my cup of tea, either. But if you go as badly wrong as you have the potential to right here, you're one of those people that's gonna be legitimately better off emigrating and changing their citizenship just to avoid the fuckups they made in their 20's.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

So what would you tell someone who was about to graduate from university with a BEd right now, but they just went straight through school to do it (about 6 years of school)? They would have 50-70k in debt, and be looking at a job that pays ~46k - if they're lucky enough to find one in the next 9 months. Would you recommend the French foreign legion to them over teaching?

What's different about me other than the military thing and not yet having a BEd? If I was 22 and the past two years had never happened, that is EXACTLY the situation I would be moving towards. If I had graduated university then went straight for education, that's exactly the situation I would be in now.

I'm just trying to give myself the best possible chance. My decision is made and can't be unmade, so now that I've decided, what should I do?

Actually, yes, if someone was in this exact situation you described I would recommend teaching English overseas -> pay down loans on the cheap while learning a useful language -> transition to something else over their education degree paying nothing forever. In fact, I did exactly that like three days ago. Unfortunately, the thing that *is* different about you not having a bachelor's is that the English teaching option requires one of those, which leaves the FFL. Okay, fine, I understand being an ammo tech isn't what you wanted to be when you grew up...but I promise you it beats being a 30-something BEd with 70K in debt.

Seriously, right now you're in a situation where joining another country's military for five years simply to clear your debt and get a new identity is quite possibly objectively better than the crazy thing you're about to do. Six months of squatting in a car to save 2,000 bucks is not even the craziest part of that plan, FYI.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
What's done is done, and obviously, my FFL advice was rather tongue in cheek (lol @ BFC for picking it up and running with it; give me a break, people.) On the other hand, KBR is a legitimate employer that hires people with your qualifications and ships them over to places only slightly more dangerous to you than tank roads for much larger amounts of money than you'll otherwise see in your life. If that's not for you, I hear Canada's got oil now and lots of inhospitable places to get it from that *also* pay obscene amounts of money for the privilege. If *that's* not for you...well, you're talking about squatting in a car for somewhere around 1-2% of the rest of your life expectancy to save two thousand Canadian dollars, and you don't see anything wrong with that. That's quite the zaurg decision level of penny wise, pound moronic.

Look, from the silence from you on the topic I'm gonna make the educated guess that you no longer have a significant other to worry about and not much tying you to the general area you're in. The correct answer here is to forget about any of the really dumb ideas you've come up with so far and go do blue collar work in the areas where people are actually hiring 25 year olds for lots and lots of cash for a year or two (hopefully your back is good enough to handle it) until you've wiped the slate clean, then go back to school and *then* figure out what to do with the rest of your life before you turn 30. Or you can go squat in a car to save $10 a day. Maybe you can collect beer cans after work for another $2. 20% more savings!

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

I got permission from my chain of command to seek civilian employment. They'll approve leave for interviews and stuff now. I've been working on my resume and once I got my memo back I wrote up some cover letters, proofed them with my mom (:blush:), and applied for a couple of government jobs in Nunavut. The salaries are both ~110k after northern living allowance and I seem to be qualified, except that I don't speak the language up there - which was listed as an "asset" - and they give preference to natives. But we shall see!

Is it appropriate to post my resumé here or anything?

Now this is more like it. Caveat: in the US, your apps would go nowhere due to 'preference'/'asset' being more like 'requirement' in practice. But it's a start. Go apply to 50 other highly paid for lovely lifestyle jobs and you might even get a few to pick from.

Re: your resume, I'd make a one page version of that (idk about Canada, but in the States, 1 page is standard for non-PhD's) with experience ahead of education, making sure to focus only on the interesting parts; as Cuddlebottom said, the 'skills' section is the weakest. Once you have it down to one page, you can expand to a second page if you must, but I feel like what you've got there is either a strong one page resume or a weak two pager.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Shooting Blanks posted:

Probably Roustabout. I'm in Houston (though not O&G), and that's not how you get a job here. It's all offices here.

That IS, however, how you get a job in the fields in West Texas that are booming right now. I've got friends working out there right now that say that anyone with a pulse that's willing to work will be given a shot, almost. And they much prefer to deal with people who just show up locally, since half the people who apply from elsewhere wind up being a waste of time.

He's Canadian. It's gonna be quite a bit harder for him to get a job in the States, probably close to impossible without a degree. Alberta isn't much different, though, except for the whole weather thing.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
He's 24 and has a seemingly perma-long distance girlfriend. If you've never spent money you didn't have to go do something with a girlfriend at that age, you haven't lived. Stop BFC'ing, BFC.

tuyop: the thing that's gonna make your life suck in the next few years isn't spending money on seeing her, it's quitting the military without a very well paying backup plan unless you get one Right Now.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

The job thing has gotten a lot less urgent. I'm going on permanent medical category. Ottawa has to evaluate whether I can serve in some other capacity for a period of time, or whether I should be released with full benefits (two years 70% salary and unlimited reeducation, medical care forever), or be released with partial benefits (medical care forever and some variation of full benefits above). Going on permanent category also involves a terminal posting, I'll probably go be a company 2IC at a school in Borden, where the girlfriend is posted. I'll get all my furniture back as well, and all the travel claims and posting bonuses that go into that. Either way I won't be unemployed anytime soon, think like 12-18 months, with lots of notice and six months of retirement/reeducation leave. At my normal rate of savings and repayment and selling the car next April, I could probably end up out of the army with <25k debt and a BEd and Masters of Education.

Is toeshoes a military lifer, getting out when you are, or something else?

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
I'm more aiming at whether they see themselves as permanent and whether that means tuyop is going to have to look for a job near her in whatever frozen wasteland she's in :canada:

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
Hey BFC, you know when I said if you haven't spent money you didn't have on a girlfriend in your early 20's you haven't lived?

Yeah, I can't even really imagine the mindset that leads someone to skip your parent's brother's funeral because you can't spare the :10bux:. Okay, you'll have to pay 20% over the cost of the trip in interest and it'll be that much harder to get out from under. You still do it, because you're not a gigantic miser.

tuyop: now get a plan before BFC nags you to death because aside from the gigantic goonrush into shaming you out of going to a direct relative's funeral they have a point.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

Visa - 12.5%
Student line of credit - 4.5%
Car - 1.9%

Hypothetically, if your disability award and inheritance are exactly $11,350 each, you paid off (a portion of) the car first with one of them and waited 6 more months to pay off the Visa with the other, it'd cost you in the neighborhood of $550 to do this.

Of course you pay off the CC first, why is this even a question

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Baloogan posted:

I'm kinda glad there is one less maniac depressive person in the military.

Good news! He's still in the military!

Fortunately it's the Canadian one so the chances of him getting redeployed regardless of disability and then hitting the depression part of the cycle in Afghanistan are relatively small if he weren't tuyop

Toeshoes: whatever he's on, he needs a larger dose of it. Get him an appointment before he can't find the doctor's address and decides he'd rather just camp outside for the winter instead.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
No seriously, the tirechat and housechat and basilchat and and and is a pretty classic indicator of 1)a pretty good troll or 2)being Bipolar As gently caress

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

El_Elegante posted:

Yeah, why don't you ever apply that manic drive to well-thought out bargain hunting?

Because tuyop is no jokes bipolar which means the manic drive is either too manic for less than the best or culminates in trying to live out of a car in the Canadian winter.

tuyop, see a clinical psychologist.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

I'm torn about nutrition though. My back has been very bad for the past couple of weeks and I can't help but think that it might be related to diet.

Probably not. It might be due to your new desk, though (posture changes).

Phone plans: You're both still in the army and have no clue where you'll be this summer and what kind of fourth rate network that place will have. Go prepaid.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Dr. Video Games 0050 posted:

Is there a point where you'll stop...announcing what you're doing over the Internet?

You know what I mean? Like, certain things are better kept between you and the wall?

You'd be surprised how easy people can find out all about you, and if you're in a public position (pun intended, why not) this could seriously ruin your life.

That point was crossed about eight manic phases ago

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
How do student loans work in bankruptcy in the land of glorious socialism?

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
Whether it's an option now has nothing to do with it; you have to make sure what they are because, as long as you're not committing fraud aka planning to file BK in six months, it always makes sense to pay nondischargeable loans with dischargeable ones, even if they had a slightly higher rate instead of lower.

In this case, replace 'dischargeable' with 'how much do you like your dad?'

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
I think the best thing you can do for yourself right now is hit the question mark under your avatar, read every one of your posts ITT, then get on lithium, *then* make plans.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

In the summer I didn't find biking to aggravate it much at all. It's like the perfect position for that part of my back to be relaxed in. And I think the weather has something to do with it, because lately it's been very bad.

I'm not sure Really loving Far North is the right place for you, just sayin'



tuyop posted:

If it's childish to want to stop feeling like a fool for chasing a stupid carrot on a stick that is "benefits" and "medical release", and wanting to spend the good years of my life doing something that I feel is worthwhile and in line with my values, then I don't want to be an "adult". You guys have a pretty hosed up sense of maturity, if you ask me. I'm done trading my values and health for a sum of money.

Yes, it is childish and immature of you.

It was *possibly* an OK idea to quit when you hadn't proposed, had an option of oil fielding the debt away and a variety of blue collar but high paying careers to pick from. At the moment, you have none of those things and the only good way of paying for the one career option you do have is through your current job, whose worst feature is that you're really bored a lot. The career you're thinking of is a low paying one unless you live in a literal frozen wasteland that will probably murder your back and wallet at the same time. On top of this you're getting married to a girl in the army so no matter what else happens, you've got multiple years of long distance if she gets moved mid-schooling (and multiple sets of household expenses) to worry about, not to mention how debt is going to interact with any potential kids. This is going to end badly.

But you're bipolar so it doesn't matter what I say and you'll probably do a 180 halfway through your classes anyhow :v:

Adar fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Feb 9, 2013

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

I'm pretty sure, from what I've read so far, that using human waste as fertilizer is this simple:

  1. Get some sawdust.
  2. Get a bucket.
  3. Attach a toilet seat to the bucket.
  4. poo poo and piss in the bucket, every time you use the bucket, cover your leavings with some sawdust.
  5. When the bucket is full, pour it into your compost pile along with all of your other organic waste.
  6. Wait a year or so.
  7. Use the composted human manure as you would normal compost.

I'm not talking about taking a big steaming dump onto some tomato plants and chucking some soil onto it like a cat, microorganisms in the compost pile neutralize any pathogens in the waste through heat and competition. If you leave the pile to "cure" for a whole season after the decomposition is complete, it is literally impossible for any of the nasties from the poo poo itself to survive. You still wouldn't want to eat the compost itself, because it's full of amoebas and nematodes and a bunch of fungus and stuff, but plants love it and it's safe.

The good news about this post is that you're engaged so if you try this, you don't need to worry about having anyone of the opposite sex over ever again.

The bad news is that you probably do still have friends and you're never having them over ever again.

The worse news is that you're still bipolar and I've just quoted the post so when you cycle back down you can't just pretend it never happened

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

DoctorTristan posted:

I think Tuyop is more than capable of making poor decisions while not manic.

But the mania makes them funny bad decisions which makes this thread worth posting in

e: I'm pretty sure I made the first bipolar Internet diagnosis ITT so it's also good Internet cred validation

Adar fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Mar 1, 2013

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

ToeShoes posted:

Here's a problem I'm noticing, those who read Tuyop's posts and think he's jumping into a crazy idea aren't fully reading his posts! How about if you want to help him and give him advice, you read his post, and then decide whether or not your piece of advice is actually going to help him FINANCIALLY.

Don't skim through the OP's post. It's sort of disrespectful.

No really, making GBS threads in a bucket and spreading the results over plants you plan to consume later on is dumb whether he wants to do it now or in the glorious future where the two of you are growing BASIL in a yurt.

(it also matters a lot that he is genuinely not 100% mentally well)

tuyop posted:

The rest of your post is spot-on. The way I see it, and I discussed this with my psychologist, is that I feel really really guilty when I do something that doesn't follow my morals. My job really doesn't follow my morals, and there's nothing that I can do, for the most part, to fix that other than release RIGHT NOW. In the past I've just kind of felt really bad about that, been miserable, and taken pills and gotten drunk to stop thinking about it.

With help, I see now that there are only two things that I have control over with regards to moral behavior: how I spend my money and how I spend my time. So I'm trying to fix what I can to line up my monetary expenses with my morals (start a garden instead of buying a TV, eat meat that is less morally suspect, purchase entertainment from locally owned businesses when possible), and my time with my morals (volunteer, plan for a "better" life) while understanding that I can't reasonably quit my job RIGHT NOW - which is my largest expenditure of time - and feel morally good about the effect that will have on my family.

I feel like this attitude is okay in moderation but, combined with your mania, has turned into a form of OCD Tumblritis.

Normal people have doubts about morality when they join the armed forces and when they eat at McDonalds after reading Upton Sinclair. Your doubts are all over the place and every idea you have about them is zanier and dumber than the last one. As funny as reading about a grown man planning on never using soap or toilet paper while smearing his own feces on his vegetable crops can be, there's going to be a time when you look back at this and think 'what the gently caress?', and it's probably going to be when you finally give in and get that lithium sub filled.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Arakan posted:

Are you guys aware that large numbers of people in other countries have been composting their poo poo and using it for fertilizer for centuries and still do today? Sure it might be pretty useless for this one guy to do it, but stop acting like it's a bad idea in general.

He's in Canada. All of his options for glorious poo poo-grown BASIL include some manner of being frozen solid, not composting properly or smelling like poo poo. Or all three.

Also, there's a big correlation between people who compost their poo poo in the developing world and people who die of cholera.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
Tuyop: I remember thinking that that guy was really messed up

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

razz posted:

I like how Tuyop posted a very nice update on his finances where he cut his phone bill and credit card payments way down, and is looking into cheaper auto insurance stuff, and everyone just decided to ignore it and continue with the poopchat.

quote:

Anything we buy in March must either:

a) be directly consumable, like gasoline or food, or

b) directly replace something that is sold or donated.

Their financial progress came at the cost of a $0 fun budget. It's unsustainable, just like his mania.

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

tuyop posted:

That's for THIS month. And "consumable" things include entertainment. We went to see a movie and had thai food on the weekend. Both of those things are in the budget for fun money.

A cookbook is not a "consumable" thing, and since we get on fine without one to sell or donate, obviously we won't die if we don't buy one for March.

However, if I wear out my last pair of totally excellent underwear, for instance (my underwears are in top shape, don't worry!), then we can buy another pair of underwear because it will not be a new thing in our lives, and will be replacing something that broke, got sold, or got donated.

Last month we spent nearly $400 on fun things (I'm away from the budget so I'm not sure on the exact numbers). I get $40 for fun stuff, we have a common entertainment budget of $30-50, and toeshoes gets $100 because she didn't make the debt but she's contributing to paying it off because she's awesome.

That fun money is not including other discretionary poo poo that we buy, like potting soil or walmart pizza or meat.

See, this is a completely reasonable post. Just put, like, a couple of hundred of these together and you'll pay down your mania in no time!

Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Fraternite posted:

He's already eaten the depreciation and he needs a car, so he should obviously keep driving it. Frankly, he shouldn't sell it even when he's right side up on it.

The only red flag to me is that it's a 3 year old car with 80k miles on it. I don't know anything about cars, so someone else should tell us whether it's likely to die once it hits twice that number.

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Adar
Jul 27, 2001

Breetai posted:

Oh look. Tuyop's mood disorder has swung the other way. :geno:

Get a better therapist, because you're going to regret every purchasing and life decision you make until you get properly stabilized.

I've learned more about BPD in this thread than I have about financial decisions and it's awesome.

"An unfinished basement in the Canadian winter? Can making GBS threads in a bucket and throwing it outside be part of the deal!?!?!!"

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