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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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Jun 22, 2013 15:47
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TLG James posted:my roommate moved out, I need pots and pans!! Have these people never heard of a thrift shop? If not, Macklemore will be more than happy to tell them all about it.
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Aug 7, 2013 13:39
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Gothmog1065 posted:Some people refuse to pay online in any form. I had a coworker like this. I don't think she had a bank account and would cash her checks by taking them to WalMart and getting them put on a prepaid Visa card (I can only imagine the bullshit fees involved in this). She would drive to the cell phone store to pay her bill in cash and use money orders for all her utilities. She would also do stuff like put her mother's cable TV under her name because her mother didn't have enough money for the first month. Why didn't you just loan her some drat money??? One of my tasks at that job was "guardian of the petty cash" and maybe every 6-8 weeks she would get a loan of like $30 "for gas money" (the boss had ok'ed this). Once payday rolled around, she'd promptly pay it back, but really?
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Aug 21, 2013 13:46
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Why did you buy a school bus?
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Aug 22, 2013 13:41
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FrozenVent posted:That's actually not too bad as far as weddings go  God, the amount people spend on their weddings shocks and horrifies me. My husband and I got courthouse married, it cost about $90 and I spent about $100 on my dress. I also bought my own ring for $800 (heirloom diamond, new setting). Tell me all your wedding finance horror stories.
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Aug 23, 2013 04:10
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Not so much a person, but... At my new job I was recently given the task of following up on a bunch of unpaid insurance claims going back to 2010. They were either denied, never sent to the insurance, sent to the wrong insurance, or submitted correctly and paid but no one had actually processed the payments. The woman who was supposed to have been doing them hadn't because she "didn't know how to check the claims" or "didn't know how to fix the denials". Well dammit, woman, LEARN. There was over $6000 missing and unaccounted for because this woman couldn't be bothered to make a couple phone calls or get online. I've been able to get about $700 in two weeks of minimal effort. I wonder what her personal finances are like, and no, I don't know why she's been allowed to neglect her duties at work without repercussion.
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Sep 29, 2013 04:30
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cowofwar posted:If someone wants to forego $750 a month health insurance with a $11,000 deductible then they should at least seed an account with $11,000 and pay $750 a month in to it. This would require people to understand what a deductible is and how it works, and as a person who does the insurance/patient billing for a doctor's office, I assure you that they do not. They also do not understands copays, coinsurance, or noncovered charges. They'll pay these huge monthly premiums with no clue what their insurance actually covers or what the rules are. It's kind of astonishing.
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Oct 13, 2013 15:00
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Giant Goats posted:Whereas when my sister wants to get laser eye surgery or wants to try some juice diet and needs a juicer, she seems to think that because she makes 70k a year, the money must be in her account, or nearly there, so why not just put the purchase on a credit card and surely it'll work out by next payday... I work for an eye doctor who does LASIK surgery. There was some error with the credit card machine where all the surgeries from May to September didn't actually get charged to peoples' credit cards until mid October. There were some two dozen people who never called to see why their $4000 surgery fee was never taken from their account, and once the charges did go through, only one of them called. She said it had overdrawn her account by $3700 and could we please give her a refund and set her up on a payment plan instead, because when she noticed that we hadn't collected the money back in June, she moved it to a different account, which her bank had then closed (???). I asked why she hadn't called us instead, and she said she was too busy and just never got around to it. Anyway, I said I'd have to talk to the office manager about it and call back, but she didn't answer the phone or return my call sooooo... I simply cannot believe that for SIX MONTHS not a single person called about not having been charged for their surgeries. Did they all just hope it was going to be free?
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Oct 17, 2013 17:48
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martyrdumb posted:I can't believe you guys didn't notify the customers about your billing error before charging them months later for a very expensive procedure. Not your fault personally, but that was an incredibly stupid business decision. I was pretty incredulous as well, because that is some "bad with money" poo poo right there. The first I heard of it was "hey the credit card machine malfunctioned, so you might get some people calling about their LASIK payments" so I'm not entirely sure what chain of events lead up to it. LASIK money is weird because it's completely separate from the rest of the patient and insurance money, which are my responsibility. If I had been in charge of the LASIK money, you can bet I would have noticed. Oh, and the woman who wanted a payment plan almost certainly spent the money on something else, which is why she wanted a refund and payment plan. It was kind of sketchy.
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Oct 18, 2013 13:53
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You are
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Oct 31, 2013 13:36
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SpelledBackwards posted:To summarize, it basically says that in specific favorable circumstances, which are hard to put a finger on, buying luxury goods that which enhance your social status and which you normally wouldn't be able to easily afford could open the door to opportunities you wouldn't normally have access to. There was also a lot of emphasis on behavior in that article, so I'm not sure that expensive clothing is the only issue. I mean, the stylist looking to get an office job could have sacrificed to buy a silk shell to wear under her blouse instead of a cotton tank...but the VP could have considered that the stylist was trying to move upwards on a minimum wage budget and never been in a silk shell position before and been a little more compassionate. I don't think the stylist was in the wrong there. And you can certainly look more than "bare minimum presentable" on a budget. You might have to spend some extra time trawling sales and thrift stores, but it can be done.
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Nov 2, 2013 04:15
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MrKatharsis posted:I think everybody knows someone like this guy: TRD Supercharged Toyota Tacoma 2013 Access Cab 4x4 Automatic - $40000 posted: posted:Email for more questions. Thanks! Yes, I have a question: can you detail the thought process that went into this?
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Dec 20, 2013 14:49
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Giant Goats posted:It's not for being Seminole - it's for belonging to a band that owns a casino. Lord, I hope that guy hasn't been gambling away his money at his band's own casino.
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Dec 25, 2013 23:06
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Baja Mofufu posted:...top of the line designer glasses... Fun fact: almost all of the "designer" brands are made by a company called Luxottica and are just licensed collections and aren't designed by the brands. The markup is INSANE and they aren't any different than any other glasses. It's ridiculous and you don't even get the benefit of having much better quality for the higher price.
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Jan 9, 2014 05:47
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corkskroo posted:I'm sad to hear that Kangen water is MLM. There's an awesome Rasta family at our farmers market who make great fried fish sandwiches with soul food sides. They also have a Kangen water thing and are always talking about it. We just laugh about it. They even gave us a DVD once with interviews with people talking about how great Kangen water is although I don't remember if we watched it. It makes me sad to think that they're caught up in it since they're cool folks. At least selling soul food is a real business so at least they have that going for them.
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Jan 10, 2014 03:10
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You'll never see that money again. Edit: You're bad with money by giving him money.
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Feb 1, 2014 03:04
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Spiteski posted:As much as doing right goes, food, clothes, and rent/utilities comes before anything else. Sounds like you need your own thread!
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Feb 11, 2014 14:49
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That woman spends $20k on a live in au pair who has to have her own bedroom. 
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Feb 15, 2014 19:02
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I work for a doctor's office in the billing department. I recently spoke with a patient who wanted a payment plan for her surgery balance, which is nothing new...except she hadn't scheduled the surgery yet, but wanted to have it in early April. She wanted me to give her a complete estimate of what she would owe after the insurance paid so she could decide if she wanted to have the surgery and if it was cheap enough*, she wanted to start paying part of it every two weeks before she even had the surgery. I told her that based on her insurance, she'd pay $800 at most, but probably less, and that I wasn't going to collect money for a surgery that wasn't even scheduled, so she should just put it aside and save it until then. She told me that she couldn't do that because she would spend it. Geez, lady, even if you can't save up, if you can pay biweekly before the drat surgery then surely you can pay biweekly afterwards as well! *I hear this a lot, and it's kind of baffling because these are all people with cataracts who are having surgery to save their eyesight, and they all have insurance so they most they'd pay is like $1000.
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Mar 2, 2014 04:00
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^^^^^^^^^ Yes, the US Healthcare system is totally bad with money but it should be getting better. VideoTapir posted:How exactly are people supposed to know that? From the perspective of the consumer, medical costs are wildly unpredictable...is there really anything stopping doctors from being more up front about pricing on things that really are as predictable as what you're describing? We tell them! I am being upfront. I'm not just telling these patients "lol I dunno." An answer of "no more than $800" is a pretty good answer for someone who hasn't even scheduled the surgery yet. Once they decided that yes, they'd like to have the surgery, I will contact their insurance and get an actual exact dollar amount and inform the patient a few days before the surgery so they can set up a payment plan or back out or whatever. Our office also contacts insurances before patients have any type of appointment so they know if there will be an additional cost for any testing, etc. Medical costs should start to become more transparent over the next few years, since most of the plans in the Affordable Care Act are high coinsurance/high deductible, and consumers are going to want to know more of their out of pocket costs up front. It'll be pretty interesting.
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Mar 2, 2014 18:36
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Oxxidation posted:My little brother broke his hand (on a punching bag, he tells me, but I'm dubious). He then deliberately sought out a surgeon who wasn't on my dad's health plan, so now he's on the hook for $5000. This kid never went to college, I don't even know if he has a job. At least your dad won't be on the hook for the bill even though he's the policy holder. The surgeon can only bill the person who signs the financial agreement (assuming the patient is an adult). I've had multiple patients at the doctor's office where I do the billing be like, "Oh, please send the statement to my mom, she pays all my bills" or "my ex-wife is supposed to cover all the medical bills for our son so I need you to send her the bill". I don't care who is ~supposed~ to pay this bill, you signed the paperwork and legally accepted the debt. Feel free to tell the collections agency to call your mom, though.
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Mar 29, 2014 17:11
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If you get a medical bill and send in a check, but your check never gets deposited and you keep getting bills and then collection letters but ignore them because you totally paid, perhaps you should follow up on that and see if your check got lost in the mail or something before your account actually gets sent to collections and the collectors start calling you. I don't even know how to help these people sometimes.
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Apr 9, 2014 03:35
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MickeyFinn posted:It would help if the average hospital (mine) didn't send a high bill, accept payment, then send the discounted bill and tell you to gently caress off when you want the difference back. To say nothing of getting charged separately for the hospital, the doctor and any tests and 3 or 4 times for each. Going to the doctor and getting 12 bills, of which 2/3 to 3/4 should be ignored, is totally normal. You can contact your insurance company if you overpay and the doctor won't refund you, that's against their contract. But I'm talking about getting the same finalized bill for like $175 for 6-8 months straight. I think maybe people don't know to make sure their checks have cleared. I had a friend from high school have a fit on Facebook because her landlord didn't cash a check for like six months and when he did, it overdrew her account. Everyone was like, "yeah, that sucks, it would have been nice for him to call before he did that, but why didn't YOU call HIM?"
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Apr 10, 2014 13:54
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Bloody Queef posted:But now I'm worried that my brother will be pissed I'm buying his kid so much poo poo. He's a tightwad like I am. Well, the real issue in all these situations is less "money" and more "communication" so maybe you should ask him.
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Apr 11, 2014 01:13
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You can Life Flight a cat?
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Apr 13, 2014 16:34
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From Reddit's relationships subreddit: "Is it intrusive that I [F23] want some control over my SO of 3 year's [M26] finances? Is this considered a dealbreaker?"quote:My SO is terrible with money. This is as much as I can say. 11 days later: Update quote:First off, I'd like to thank everyone who gave me the perspective that this CAN be a huge dealbreaker, and I should no longer sit on the side with my legs crossed and just wait patiently for him to figure his stuff out, and let him keep me out. This relationship is over.
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May 9, 2014 14:05
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I'm just as desperate to stop dwelling so much on this.
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fruition posted:But to use your own logic against you...making your kid wear a hideous mouth full of braces while they're in their reckless teenage years may keep them from being social butterflies until their early twenties, well after they've made it through middleschool and most of highschool. I'm pretty sure no one in middle school/high school cares if you have braces anymore, because so many kids have them at some point. Yesterday, my coworker was complaining about how her 24 year old son didn't pay his car payment on time because he "didn't get around to it", so she had to pay it for him to avoid the late fees AGAIN. I suggested that maybe she shouldn't bail him out like that, but she told me she had to, because the car was in her name, due to the fact that her son's credit score is so screwed up (he's already done the jail/rehab/halfway house thing a couple times) that he can't get a real bank account and has to get his paycheck deposited onto a prepaid Visa card that has a ton of rules and fees. I wanted to ask how she expected this to turn out but that seemed kind of rude.
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May 17, 2014 16:54
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froglet posted:If you or somebody you know has a problem with gambling, get help. All the casino ads on the radio here end with "Problem gambling? Your best bet is getting help." which I think is a little insensitive.
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May 20, 2014 13:47
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Your sister is bad at money AND relationships. Someone make a BFC/EN Venn diagram (zaurg goes in the middle).
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May 23, 2014 14:02
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DEAR RICHARD posted:Health insurance: I give my parents $100 a month for being on their plan. My other options aren't much cheaper... How are you 26 and on your parents' insurance? You can only be a dependent on their insurance up to your 26th birthday per the ACA (I'm assuming US here, since you're talking about paying for health insurance). Are you on COBRA or something? If not, you need to make sure that $100 is actually getting you coverage.
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May 31, 2014 03:05
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Oh, I don't think we have that in Missouri or Kansas, which is I do all my insurance stuff (I live in Missouri and work in medical insurance in Kansas). Looks like New Jersey even lets you stay on your parents' insurance until 31. That's actually a pretty sweet deal if you're lucky enough to be in one of those states, DEAR RICHARD.
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May 31, 2014 04:44
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oh redditquote:Been married a few years, and I knew she had some problems in the past with some overdue bills here and there that hosed up her credit (got her to eventually pay them off with a tax return of hers). I thought, well, maybe I can help her fix this and she will get better. Nope. We have separate bank accounts (although we have a joint account to pay our joint bills) and she gives me money towards our joint bills every check. Well, she goes to the hospital often for things she doesn't really need to go for, and just won't ever pay the bills she gets in the mail from them. Before she had insurance she went a couple times and we have gotten a few bills and she will just leave them sitting on the table for weeks and weeks without even opening them (some of them are only like $25). She says every time I ask her to pay them or make payments on them it just makes her not want to do it even more. Every time she gets paid, she will give me the money for our bills, save just a little bit for groceries and gas, and just blow the rest within a few days. She saves $0. Sometimes she won't have any for groceries and expects me to pay for them and said I shouldn't have a problem paying for it all because we are married and we should help each other out. A lot of times she asks me for gas money as well. She said that a counselor told her that her blowing money like she does it probably part of her mood disorder and she does it to make herself happy. Anytime we wanna go on a vacation, or anything like that, I will have to pay for it because she can't save money. I know this is something that can greatly affect our, and my future, especially when it comes to something like retirement. Every time I try to talk to her about money, she just has the "I know, I know" type attitude. I want to help her with this, and do what I can, so please don't suggest divorce as an option. Any advice and thoughts greatly appreciated.
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Jun 5, 2014 02:09
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Rick Rickshaw posted:Do not look at other people. You don't know the details of their finances. Some of them are debt slaves, while others may have inherited wealth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0HX4a5P8eE I'm in debt up to my eyeballs! somebody help me
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Jun 6, 2014 01:42
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Eden posted:I s'pose that this is even worse than r/personalfinance but if it's shadenfreude you're after, it's schadenfreude you'll get. Haha, someone even posted divorce.gif in that thread.
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Jun 14, 2014 02:08
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NancyPants posted:I want someone to spend a stupid amount of money for a retarded trinket for me That reddit guy is selling his ring for like $5,000 (a $13,000 loss on his part). Maybe you should treat yourself.  I think it's a pretty stone, although I'd personally get it reset.
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Jun 17, 2014 02:54
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Spill the details. 
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Jun 17, 2014 14:00
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My coworker has crippling pain in her hand and arm due to tennis elbow or carpal tunnel or something, and she refuses to go to the doctor "because it costs too much!" but she and her husband just bought TWO new cars. She also has car payments for two or three other cars for her kids, two of whom are in college. The whole family just got back from a week long resort vacation in Aruba.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:17
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Oh, Reddit: "Youngish couple (27,25). Married. Two full time jobs. Making a combined 60K per year before taxes. $0 debt. Wife wants to join Disney Vacation Club. If we do, we could be $16,000 in debt. Current living expenses are about $1200 per month. We have lots to think about and I need help please  "quote:As I mentioned above, me and my wife got married a little over a year ago. We both have full time jobs, she is an admissions recruiter for a college and I am in sales. The husband and the wife both start replying using the same account, which is weird: https://www.reddit.com/user/personalfinancethway My favorite quote from the wife is "I am the financial grue of the family."
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Jul 12, 2014 01:48
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Disney husband lives in a guesthome on his family farm and does chores for rent. Edit: staying at a Disney resort for every vacation sounds super boring. Aren't they all really manufactured and same-y because Disney has such a specific brand image? Family friendly, squeaky clean, etc. Disney has always struck me as not a "real place" (if you know what I mean) and it just seems really unappealing. Maybe ok for a one day visit. HelloIAmYourHeart fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 02:58
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:My coworker has crippling pain in her hand and arm due to tennis elbow or carpal tunnel or something, and she refuses to go to the doctor "because it costs too much!" but she and her husband just bought TWO new cars. She also has car payments for two or three other cars for her kids, two of whom are in college. The whole family just got back from a week long resort vacation in Aruba. This coworker's husband just signed up for Slim4Life (weight loss program with a bunch of expensive supplements/snacks and hidden costs) and told one kid that if he lost 15lbs he'd take her to Aruba again. Coworker told her other kid that if her dad lost the weight, the two of them could go to Aruba too. Also for this diet he has to eat 3lbs of beef a day for three days, so add a bunch of steak and hamburger costs to that as well.
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Jul 23, 2014 03:39
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