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A thousand bucks on food a month for a family of four means that they're idiots. There's no way it should cost that much. Also, they have nobody to blame but themselves for believing that breaking 100k a year would somehow make them "rich". Yeah, making 100k a year somehow means that you're insulated from housing bubbles and nosediving stocks. 
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Mar 28, 2012 18:38
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Install Gentoo posted:There's nothing wrong with buying him a car. A brand new car however, instead of an older used one that would cost much less... It's not even that, it's the fact that it's for pizza delivery. Many places any tipped employee makes less than half of minimum wage, to say nothing of wear and tear on the car. They're literally throwing money away in the name of "bootstraps".
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Mar 28, 2012 18:40
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Install Gentoo posted:There's nothing wrong with buying him a car. A brand new car however, instead of an older used one that would cost much less... Absolutely. My first car was a used pile of poo poo and I had to help pay for the thing. etc. You bought your 16-20 year old kid a nice new car. Congrats, your insurance bill just went through the roof. ^^ Agreed. Even $500 a month on gas is suspect.
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Mar 28, 2012 18:44
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They're not spending wisely for sure, but it does serve to illustrate how pants shittingly expensive living what used to be thought of as a normal, regular life has become. 30 years ago you could probably have had the same sized house, same number of kids in similar levels of education, same driving habits, same relative level of gadgets/services etc. without having to be in the top few percent of earners. I mean, seven grand for tuition and books at community college? That's insane. University is even more.
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Mar 28, 2012 18:56
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Leon Einstein posted:A thousand bucks on food a month for a family of four means that they're idiots. There's no way it should cost that much. Also, they have nobody to blame but themselves for believing that breaking 100k a year would somehow make them "rich". 8.30 dollars per day per person for food is totally reasonable.
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Mar 28, 2012 18:59
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redmercer posted:It's not even that, it's the fact that it's for pizza delivery. Many places any tipped employee makes less than half of minimum wage, to say nothing of wear and tear on the car. They're literally throwing money away in the name of "bootstraps". Yeah I mean, the buying it for pizza delivery things is dumb, but it's not exactly uncommon for families to buy their older teenaged kids a junky $800 used car so they can get to work (usually involving the kid helping to pay for the car later from their job). Of course they probably went and spent $19,000 on a brand new car instead.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:04
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Leon Einstein posted:A thousand bucks on food a month for a family of four means that they're idiots.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:08
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IAMKOREA posted:8.30 dollars per day per person for food is totally reasonable. Fatkraken posted:without having to be in the top few percent of earners. Leon Einstein fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 19:22
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Leon Einstein posted:Not really. You can buy in bulk when feeding four people, and it will cost you far less than feeding four people individually. If you have the means to store food long term. I buy for two and we're at about nine dollars a day.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:31
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When you turn to eggs for a majority of your protein you can save a ton on meat. Going ovo-lacto vegetarian knocked about 35% off my grocery bill. Healthy living at 8.30 a day requires some planning but is very feasible.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:31
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Elim Garak posted:If you have the means to store food long term. I buy for two and we're at about nine dollars a day. What are you buying that's going bad so quickly? Knowing the right produce to purchase is half the battle.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:32
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SlipUp posted:What are you buying that's going bad so quickly? Knowing the right produce to purchase is half the battle. None of my food is going bad, but I certainly don't have the space to buy in bulk. edit: And I'm pretty close to ovo-lacto vegetarian, I only eat meat on the weekends, and the wife is full ovo-lacto veggie.
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Mar 28, 2012 19:33
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Leon Einstein posted:Not really. You can buy in bulk when feeding four people, and it will cost you far less than feeding four people individually. I'm really curious about how you eat if you think $1000/month for four people is unreasonably expensive.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:01
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IAMKOREA posted:I'm really curious about how you eat if you think $1000/month for four people is unreasonably expensive. I don't think a thousand a month is completely unreasonable, but it is obvious to me that you can spend a lot less than that if you're really worried about money. Like I said, cooking for four can be done much cheaper than four people cooking their own meals. How much do you think it'd cost to make a big pot of chili? Or tacos? Or pasta or rice dishes?
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Mar 28, 2012 20:10
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Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels (PDF) You can obviously spend less, but 1k / month isn't ridiculous for a family of four.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:13
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels (PDF) It's not ridiculous but I think the moral of the story is this guy is whining about how he reached his dream of having a household income of $100k a year and all of the sudden his financial problems didn't magically disappear. It's like he told himself, "We're making $100k a year! Now we can afford new SUV's so we fit in with our neighbors in the suburbs and pay for our kids to go to school!" as if that's some magical number without realizing that $100k as a household puts him in the middle of middle class and 20 gallons of gas in his SUV that gets 11 MPG that he uses to commute 50 miles a day to his job costs a lot of money, insurance for all of the cars costs a lot of money, paying for your kids to go to any school costs a lot of money, and basically living at your means is a lot harder than living below them. Literally every system that he pays into is out to gently caress him and he does not grasp that concept. He put $3k down on a house before even seeing the subdivision during the bubble because BUY BUY BUY. He does what he's told and puts 10% away for retirement and like everyone else, got hit during the crash in 2008. Then he tops it off and says: quote:I may never have money to burn, but I hope to have a chance to enjoy something before the tax man takes his cut. Just like Joe the Plumber. You're not making $250k a year. Obama isn't out to tax you more. He's got the starry eyed visions of being an upper middle-class working man held down by the god drat government. He needs to take a good look at reality instead of the one he's got in his head.
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Mar 28, 2012 20:46
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How is paying for all of your necessities as well as a lot of luxuries not "enjoying" something? Jesus, people like that will never be happy. My dad has issues with trying to buy happiness. He has a Durango, an Escalade, a Jaguar, an Altima, and 3 different Harleys...just for himself. He talks poo poo because I don't make as much as he did, and will never be as wealthy as he is. Um, I've got happiness and that's worth more than all the stupid poo poo you could ever buy.
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Mar 28, 2012 21:03
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mintskoal posted: SheBut yeah that's what bugs me about this story - there are some legitimate points (groceries are expensive! sending your children to school is expensive!) but that's not the point of the article. Instead, the author focuses on how they don't feel rich and that if they had the chance to do it all over again, her answer would be to buy a bigger house. You're well in the top 15% of household incomes in America. Big loving deal that you don't feel rich.
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Mar 28, 2012 21:11
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Kim Jong III posted:You're well in the top 15% of household incomes in America. Big loving deal that you don't feel rich. Really? Anyone have a link to somewhere I can find out where my household income falls?
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Mar 28, 2012 21:15
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rt4 posted:Really? Anyone have a link to somewhere I can find out where my household income falls? Looks like if your household made right at 100K that put you into the top 20% in 2009 http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0692.pdf As a married couple, it would put you in the top 30% compared to other married couples.
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Mar 28, 2012 21:34
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Personally, I can empathize with the guy. He doesn't outright make the point, but the larger point to be drawn from this article is that everyone is getting hosed by a fundamentally flawed system. The fact that this guy in the top 25% of household incomes and has a hard time living a "comfortable" life, should be pretty frightening to most people. If he's not entitled to society's definition of a comfortable life, at what point then does someone deserve it? Being in the 10%, 5%, 2%, 1% of wage earners? Which percentage bracket is it? What was that percentage number forty years ago? Sure, he's not suffering as bad as the couple with 3 kids earning 15k; but his woes are still legit to him -- and more importantly they are indicative of a systemic issue.
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Mar 29, 2012 00:19
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Saint Sputnik posted:
Bullshit. I've been applying for work for quite a while now and huge percentage of those jobs asked for demographic information (generally to comply with federal regulations required of businesses with government contracts and those that accept Medicare and Medicaid) and this always includes whether the applicant is non-White Hispanic or White Hispanic. Goldberg is just projecting his own side's views onto his opponents. It was the conservative, racism-denying side that began with the trope that Trayvon's murder couldn't have been due to racism because Zimmerman is actually Hispanic. Now that this has been corrected to a more accurate picture of his ethnic/racial identity, it's suddenly the "liberals," "race baiters," etc. who are the ones trying to manipulate the facts to support their narrative. Kim Jong III posted:
More important is the direction of her anger/frustration, at government. She's not mad at the banking and financial industry for destroying the economy and turning her investments to poo poo. She's not mad at oil speculators for driving up the price of gasoline. She's not mad at employers for making wages stagnant for three decades for all the people who make the median wage or less. She's not mad at the housing bubble driven by banks, mortgage brokers, housing speculators, etc. All of her frustration and disappointment is misdirected at this conservative stereotype of government rather than people who actually made things worse for her and her family because the solutions to the actual problems and their actual causes are things she, as a conservative, probably wouldn't like, such as greater regulation of the banking and financial industry, greater regulation of the stock and commodities markets, greater government investment in alternative fuel research, raising the minimum rage, etc. 2nd Rate Poster posted:Personally, I can empathize with the guy. He doesn't outright make the point, but the larger point to be drawn from this article is that everyone is getting hosed by a fundamentally flawed system. Sure, wanting a "comfortable life" is a legitimate goal, but that's not really what this woman is seeking. Her entire diatribe is about how she "doesn't feel rich," despite making more than twice the median household wage, not that she and her family aren't living comfortably. Americans generally have pretty obtuse concepts of wealth, comfort, and need vs. desire. As I previously wrote, she's misdirecting her frustration when there are actual, tangible forces that are making her life less than ideal, but it's far easier to be a relatively well-off person apologizing for the wealthy and corporate interests rather than doing something beyond just bitching about taxes.
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Mar 29, 2012 02:36
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I'm living with my parents right now, so we're 3 people. We spend maybe $100/wk. Scale that up to 4 people and it's $133, double it it's $266. They literally spend about double what my family does per person per month. 
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Mar 29, 2012 04:30
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2nd Rate Poster posted:Personally, I can empathize with the guy. He doesn't outright make the point, but the larger point to be drawn from this article is that everyone is getting hosed by a fundamentally flawed system.
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Mar 29, 2012 04:57
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ts12 posted:What an awful argument. Everyone's woes are "legit" in their own minds, that doesn't make them legitimate to anyone else or worth entertaining. To be fair, 2nd Rate Poster is somewhat right about people understandably wanting a "comfortable life" which I personally interpret as being a life without constant worry about making bills for food, rent, etc. or worrying that an illness, market correction or other problem completely ruining you and your family. That said, I agree with you that while one person's "woes" are legitimately distressing to them, that doesn't mean that they are reasonable woes. E.g. I love the part of the article where the author goes "Although I admire people who live on fixed incomes or minimum wage, I have no idea how they do it" and then end's her piece with "I may never have money to burn, but I hope to have a chance to enjoy something before the tax man takes his cut." How obtuse do you have to be that you're making six figures a year and your biggest problem is that you don't "feel rich" because of that evil "tax man." Maybe if she was a bit more self-aware she'd actually have some empathy for people who make minimum wage (hint: they're not like her son delivering pizzas just to pay for textbooks in college) instead of just lamenting how unfulfilling it is to not "feel rich" when you make twice the median household wage. Maybe she'd also understand that all those things she currently has, but complains about not being enough to make her feel rich, are actually luxuries to people trying to survive on minimum wage. Her entire piece just reeks of first-world, upper-middle class, white people problems.
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Mar 29, 2012 10:10
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2nd Rate Poster posted:Personally, I can empathize with the guy. He doesn't outright make the point, but the larger point to be drawn from this article is that everyone is getting hosed by a fundamentally flawed system. The only systemic issue this woman's rant points to is the obscene American need to constantly make more money so you can buy more stuff, hth.
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Mar 29, 2012 13:27
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2nd Rate Poster posted:Personally, I can empathize with the guy. He doesn't outright make the point, but the larger point to be drawn from this article is that everyone is getting hosed by a fundamentally flawed system. may also be because the American idea of a "comfortable life" is pretty much specifically designed to make schmucks like this buy buy buy buy. gently caress society's definition of a comfortable life is what I'm saying.
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Mar 29, 2012 14:05
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This was on my Facebook this morning.  
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Mar 29, 2012 14:10
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Fun fact: if you take a photo of Hitler and save it as JPG for enough times, eventually the artifacts will morph into Obama!
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Mar 29, 2012 14:12
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arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh those stupid shits
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Mar 29, 2012 14:13
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Should ask them if they think that highways are evil as well.
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Mar 29, 2012 16:46
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2nd Rate Poster posted:Personally, I can empathize with the guy. He doesn't outright make the point, but the larger point to be drawn from this article is that everyone is getting hosed by a fundamentally flawed system. You need to read the rest of that shithead's articles. She wrote an article bitching about how moving to a new apartment or house was a money sink because they had to renovate so they bought cherrywood bullshit or something and then it didn't match so they had to get a floor made out of solid gold or something and that didn't match so they had to get priceless ming vases which lead to the ark of the covenant which lead to new dishes which lead to getting a puppy or some poo poo. That article was actually the tamest of that bitch's complaining.
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Mar 29, 2012 18:07
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Guilty posted:You need to read the rest of that shithead's articles. She wrote an article bitching about how moving to a new apartment or house was a money sink because they had to renovate so they bought cherrywood bullshit or something and then it didn't match so they had to get a floor made out of solid gold or something and that didn't match so they had to get priceless ming vases which lead to the ark of the covenant which lead to new dishes which lead to getting a puppy or some poo poo. That article was actually the tamest of that bitch's complaining. Do you have a link by chance?
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Mar 29, 2012 19:24
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:I'm living with my parents right now, so we're 3 people. We spend maybe $100/wk. Scale that up to 4 people and it's $133, double it it's $266. They literally spend about double what my family does per person per month. Maybe food is especially cheap where you are?
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Mar 29, 2012 19:54
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Strudel Man posted:$100 a week? That would seem remarkably low, going by the USDA's food plans posted earlier. Even the cheapest 'thrifty' plan would have about $125 for a family of three adults. We shop pretty much exclusively at Aldi and eat a LOT of leftovers. We'll make spaghetti once and freeze a couple containers of it so we can have it two more times, for instance.
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Mar 29, 2012 20:13
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mintskoal posted:Do you have a link by chance? VideoTapir did this author justice: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3186581&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=278#post401835805
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Mar 29, 2012 20:34
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I don't think wanting to eat foods that are grown locally and organically is unreasonable, and I don't think it's unreasonable to want to buy dairy/meat products that don't come from factory farms or feedlots. Your body is the most valuable thing you've got and the earth is the most valuable thing you live on. So to me $1000 dollars per month for food seems fine. Their food budget isn't really a problem it's all the other stupid poo poo they do.
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Mar 29, 2012 20:43
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Kim Jong III posted:VideoTapir did this author justice: Holy loving poo poo. No wonder she doesn't have any money left at the end of the day. Her husband is hedging his 401k with loving comic books and Magic: The Gathering cards.
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Mar 29, 2012 20:47
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Kim Jong III posted:VideoTapir did this author justice: This is the one I was talking about : http://voices.yahoo.com/first-person-spending-domino-effect-8549641.html?cat=3 edit: she's apparently also a loving genius!! http://voices.yahoo.com/new-research-proves-cutting-calories-works-10932158.html?cat=2 Guilty fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Mar 29, 2012 |
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Mar 29, 2012 21:54
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Actually, thinking about the whole thing, I'm wondering if she's just making up some numbers. She's mentioned in earlier articles that her sons have Bright Futures, which is a college scholarship program here in Florida. And she posted how much the older son's tuition is for this academic year:quote:First fall semester Both are going to the same school, she says, so with those tuition costs and then most of it (~$70 per credit hour) being paid for through Bright Futures, where the hell is she getting $15,000 for two? And she did also say this: quote:My older son was able to get what's called the "Bright Futures" scholarship in Florida. Eligibility is based on grades, SAT scores and volunteerism. While the program is great, I was frustrated when the state legislators made it tougher to get the scholarship for the following year. My younger son, who thought he already had all the volunteer hours needed, would have to volunteer more to get the highest level of the scholarship in a year. Volunteerism is great, but it's just one more hoop to go through when senior year is busy enough as it is. The increase she was talking about was 25 hours. I had to do 150 hours for the IB program! While being in IB! And, it seems that a lot of her finance related articles have been pulled.
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Mar 29, 2012 22:18
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