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Cyrano4747 posted:That isn't the rip off it's being represented as. I mean, don't get a $1000 top end phone when you came in for a $500 basic phone because of it, but it's also no reason to turn down the free thing. If you want the phone it comes with anyways get it, don't activate the service, and enjoy your bauble. That's not how it works. The watch is "free" only when you activate it on a service plan and keep it for a couple of years. For instance, here's a recent promo: https://bgr.com/2018/11/26/t-mobile-is-offering-a-free-apple-watch-series-4-or-ipad-to-new-customers-for-cyber-monday/ quote:T-Mobile on Sunday announced that it’ll offer buyers who join T-Mobile either a free Apple Watch or an iPad. That’s up to $529.99 in savings, which will be spread out over 24 monthly bill credits. Needless to say, the caveat is that you’ll owe whatever payments are left on the “free device” if you cancel your service before it’s paid off.
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Feb 9, 2019 22:19
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silence_kit posted:I don’t know—I personally use credit cards, but I find it really difficult to argue against his point. It makes spending easier and the consequences more abstract and less immediate. I don’t doubt that they increase spending. This is a personal thing and not a universal truth, though. I’ve never bought anything significant with physical cash. When I get physical money, it’s basically Fun Bucks, not “real money,” as far as my brain’s concerned. The consequence of spending is that my wallet is a bit emptier, but it usually doesn’t have cash anyway, so there’s no psychological impact. Credit cards, on the other hand, have an obvious impact on what makes me feel financially secure or insecure: the balances on my accounts (which I check all the time) and my net income for the month. It’s easy to see how that could flip in the other direction for someone who grew up with cash and only checks their credit card balance when the statement hits. Neither one is inherently better; what you need to do is figure out what works for you, stick with that, and ignore gurus like Ramsey who try to attach moral superiority to one way of managing money.
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Apr 10, 2019 02:15
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Sock The Great posted:DR recommends no more than 25% of net pay, not gross, for housing costs. I feel like this advice is pretty conventional. Ramit Sethi uses the same number and he's much more in like with SA/BFC's approach to personal finance. That seems incredibly unrealistic unless you're either in a very low CoL area, or making tons of money. Say you're a single person who strikes gold, and is able to find a $1200/month 1 bed apartment, in a no-income-tax state, with two federal withholding allowances that end up roughly accurate at tax time. You'd need to make over $70k/year for your housing to be 25% of post-tax take-home pay - with zero paycheck deductions for 401k, healthcare, or anything else. Want to live in a house? Good loving luck unless you're a San Francisco software developer who commutes from Stockton. It also completely ignores the fact that living in a city can mean much lower transportation expenses, but DR's audience does tend towards the "riding the bus? with minorities?" crowd.
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Jul 7, 2019 19:49
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:My bad on the gross/net mistake. It depends! Talk to a payroll processor, and they'll tell you that your net pay is what's paid to your bank account after every deduction including taxes, 401k, insurance, and so forth. Talk to a financial advisor, and they might consider your 401k contributions and other voluntary deductions part of your net pay, because you're free to adjust them. Talk to a tax policy analyst, and they'll probably say that gross pay minus taxes and taxes alone is net pay. No matter which definition you use, though, "your housing should be at most 25% of your net pay" is unrealistic unless you either make a ton of money or live somewhere with unusually cheap housing. It also pushes people towards longer commutes and higher transportation expenses, because the easiest way to lower your housing cost is typically to live far from where anybody else wants to live or work. morothar posted:Yeah. And if you make a ton of money, the 25% rule is kinda irrelevant. https://www.ogaracoach.com/vehicle-details/new-2019-lamborghini-huracan-rwd-spyder--beverly-hills-ca-id-30257357 At that price, might as well get two!
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Jul 7, 2019 20:18
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uvar posted:I'm not making fun of the kid, but what might they mean about not having enough money to go bankrupt? Filing for bankruptcy takes an attorney. Every personal bankruptcy attorney requires payment up front, for obvious reasons. If you can't scrounge up enough cash to pay a lawyer, you don't have enough money to go bankrupt.
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Jul 10, 2019 14:52
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H110Hawk posted:The free ones are on a different scale and use different factors than what a bank is using for a lot of things. There's a reason it's free. It's almost like what everyone should focus on is having a clean credit history, not the score itself. Not necessarily. A lot of free products use Vantage, and more lenders use FICO, but you can find banks that use Vantage, and it's not hard to get a free FICO score if you go looking. Credit scores are generated by an algorithm, and as long as you're providing the same inputs to the same algorithm, it's 100% deterministic. People just accept anything that generates a 300-850 number without asking how it got there, then think that the free products are somehow juicing their "real" score or something. There is no real score. Ur Getting Fatter posted:Also, I imagine banks have more information than your score to go from. They have the information somewhere, but banks are ground zero for horrible legacy software that nobody wants to touch because it was last updated in 1982 and has been working fine since then.
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Jul 24, 2019 19:31
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Moneyball posted:With a few exceptions, what person making over $400k has the time/interest to post on online forums as well as the lack of other resources, leading them to such forums? I can think of one guy who makes a six-figure salary, has access to some of the greatest minds in the world, but still spends all his time shitposting on twitter and taking advice from questionable sources including some really crazy forums. His salary is exactly $400k. I'd argue that the mansion in the middle of DC and the private 747 push his total comp over the pure salary number though.
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Sep 6, 2019 15:24
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Interestingly enough, the original post has a very similar spreadsheet but it's "only" $300k/year. It's mildly amusing to compare the two and see exactly where Dogen pumped the numbers. The overall point isn't insane, though: a stereotypical "middle class" lifestyle is way out of reach for most people, because we don't define "middle class" statistically. It's the middle between people who can't afford to save much even with minimal expenses, and "one does not inquire after prices" level rich. If you can live a stereotypical middle class lifestyle in the US, especially in a coastal city, you're probably in at least the top quintile of income nationwide.
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Sep 13, 2019 15:43
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Weatherman posted:Don't you have a regular PAYE system with a published payment schedule? Yes. This is essentially how our system works by default and it's what the vast majority of the population does. You can, if you want, submit paperwork to adjust the per-paycheck withholding manually. This lets you take other factors into account, so you don't end up with the government holding on to withheld money until you can file your return. There are penalties if you seriously undershoot your withholding number, but if you're a relatively high earner in a job with variable pay (bonuses, commissions, etc) then it can be worth it to do the math and turn in the form.
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Oct 6, 2019 15:08
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OctaMurk posted:You can also get your taxes done for free through a government provided calculator from the IRS in America as well No. The Free File system exists, but it has eligibility requirements and the actual software is provided by third party companies like Intuit (Quicken/Mint/TurboTax) and H&R Block. These third party companies mostly use the Free File versions as upsell opportunities to their paid services, and lock out any "advanced" functionality - frequently including retirement savings accounts - behind a paywall. The only service that's actually free and available to everyone just lets you plug in the numbers from each box on a paper form. You're responsible for all calculations and there's zero guidance. The tax preparation companies tried to pass a law not long ago that would make it illegal for the IRS to offer its own tax prep software to the public: https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-the-government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax Those same companies are responsible for blocking legislative attempts to simplify the filing process, because if people can easily do their own taxes, that's a direct threat to their revenue.
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Oct 6, 2019 15:36
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:The lack of attachment. You can unmoor yourself and all your belongings at a moment's notice. Maybe you even hop from port to port, experiencing the world from the comfort of your own home. Most houseboats are just floating platforms that have a house built on top and a bilge pump in the basement. Sometimes they have a tiny outboard motor so they're legally a boat instead of a barge. Moving one takes a tugboat and weeks of planning. The "romance" of a houseboat usually involves dodging property taxes, and trading a huge obvious land purchase cost for a ton of non-obvious maintenance nightmare money pit costs.
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Oct 19, 2019 17:34
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TraderStav posted:Since these are all stupidly rich guys I assume that they're losing on these for big tax scams while having their hand in some other pocket to make up for it. There are some very wealthy people who have exotic 4D chess tax scam investments that might look silly at first glance. There are also a lot more very wealthy people who are just incredibly stupid with their money, but they stay insulated from any possible consequences because of their massive wealth. Without any more context - the second one is way more likely. Having tons of money doesn't make you good with money.
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Oct 21, 2019 03:49
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quote:A whopping 92% of workers currently in their 40s say they plan to keep working part-time in retirement, according to a survey by TD Ameritrade and The Harris Poll. Even among those in their 70s, 52% say they plan to continue working an average of 10 hours a week. Wow, it's a good thing that age discrimination isn't a thing, and it's super easy for older people to keep working on their own terms, because otherwise these people would be hosed.
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Nov 24, 2019 18:42
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Krispy Wafer posted:Look at this guy. Thinking Boomers won’t vote to eat the young instead of the other way around. In Soylent Green, they also literally scooped up desperate protesters as raw material. The only thing that movie really got wrong was the idea that the people thing would be a secret, instead of promoted as the brainchild of a hero foodtech disruptor with new ideas about what we eat.
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Nov 24, 2019 19:56
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captkirk posted:Ugh, I could respect his attempt to reach out to the tech industry in under considered/represented countries if only he left bitcoin out of it. Talking about "Africa" instead of work to be done in specific cities and countries is a dead giveaway for the kind of person who thinks that the magic of his white thoughts can solve every problem the singular mass of poor backwards Africans might have. He's never going to have any kind of effective outreach, and even if he hadn't mentioned cryptocurrency, he wouldn't deserve a scrap of respect. FrozenVent posted:It’s @jack, one of the most influential supporters of neo-nazis there is, so don’t for a second think his motives were altruistic. By all accounts, he's the kind of narcissistic moron who really does believe he's being altruistic, but can also be trivially manipulated by convincing him he's deeply enlightened for daring to step outside mainstream thought and accept bullshit. Take the kind of stereotypical hippie who's really into brotherly love in the abstract, but will also talk your ears off about how Pinochet was totally treated unfairly, because he stumbled across some weird fringe-fascist source and had the courage to accept it without a hint of criticism. Give that guy four billion dollars and a massive global media platform. That's Jack Dorsey.
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Dec 3, 2019 09:31
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untzthatshit posted:What I don't understand about this story is how her boss gets in that position in the first place. Like, if you're a heartless monster why did you go into social work and how did you perform well enough at it to earn a number of promotions so that you're in charge of other social workers? There are a couple of different personality types who get involved in the kind of charitable work like what's described in the Reddit post. The first are people like the Reddit OP. They've had some experience, or at least brush, with desperate poverty, and they're activists doing everything they can to stop it. They're willing to take poo poo pay, and suffer through awful work conditions, because they believe what they're doing is incredibly important. The second are wealthy people who feel some sense of noblesse oblige, or who just can't get a job anywhere else. They're willing to take poo poo pay because Mother and Father (or maybe their spouse) covers all the expenses. They like the inspiring stories but they've never come to grips with the reality of poverty. They're rich kids who don't bother to grow up. When it comes time to hit up rich donors for big checks, the second group of people tend to do very well. They come from a similar cultural background, they really like the inspiring stories that get donors to pull out their checkbooks, and they're not "super intense" about the whole thing. They genuinely like the fundraising side of the organization. Meanwhile, the activists see a $300/plate prime rib fundraiser dinner that costs $250/head to host at a country club's event room, and want to loving scream at the top of their lungs. Sure, it might be a net benefit, but every plate of nice beef could feed a starving kid for a month. Oh, and those "inspiring stories" are half a step away from making someone dance for the money they need to live. They believe it's not OK to ask someone to get on stage and share personal, sometimes embarrassing details about the reality of their life to rich people eating a fancy dinner for the sake of a few bucks. In small organizations, the big donors just sit on the board and directly promote the rich kids who build relationships with them. In big organizations, fundraising is job number 1, because they're all run like a business and you gotta grow your revenue centers. The rich kids are good at that work, while the activists would rather go out and actually try to help one more person before they collapse back in bed at the end of the day. The rich kids get promoted into management roles. Oh, and once management is full of rich people who've never seen poverty and don't ever need to bother managing money, they're perfectly happy to do the classic rich person thing of saying "oh, you want to talk about money? How trashy, clearly you just don't care about more important things, like I do." That includes things like "the paycheck you are giving me is literally below the poverty line and probably minimum wage, so I need to use the food bank to survive."
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Dec 6, 2019 16:15
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H110Hawk posted:This is amazing and perfect. I love submitting the defcon "receipt" for reimbursement. Cash only at the door. The receipt is a pdf published after the con on their website. Oh, look at the fancy-pants with a nice official-looking machine generated PDF. Try putting through a PNG of a post-it from an after hours social at a cash-only dive bar that says "[person] paid $[x]05 for [y] drinks and snacks". $[x]05 does not include the expensed tip. These are the moments where you realize that, whatever the org chart might or might not say, the local office's clerical/admin staff should get a really nice gift basket every year.
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Dec 28, 2019 11:26
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Hoodwinker posted:Quick shoutout that it's piss-easy to set your 2FA to a google voice account, which is literally impossible to SIM swap. This is true, but it also doesn't protect you from other attacks. Someone with contacts at a phone provider in a bribe-friendly country can just advertise "hey, world, if you want to send an SMS to +1 234-567-8901 they're on our network right now" through the same mechanisms that route legitimate international calls for travelers. It's a lot more effort than a SIM swap, but for a six figure heist, it has happened quite a bit and will continue to happen as long as international phone systems are built on trust-by-default. Don't use SMS for 2FA on anything you care about, and if someone lets you run a password reset over SMS, run like hell in the other direction no matter how trivial the service is. Google Voice isn't enough to make it safe.
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Jan 16, 2020 19:11
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greasyhands posted:Uh, can you cite examples of this happening? https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzvxv/criminals-hackers-ss7-uk-banks-metro-bank quote:Sophisticated hackers have long exploited flaws in SS7, a protocol used by telecom companies to coordinate how they route texts and calls around the world. Those who exploit SS7 can potentially track phones across the other side of the planet, and intercept text messages and phone calls without hacking the phone itself.
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Jan 16, 2020 20:41
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totalnewbie posted:I want to ask though - in general, do you all think it's okay for your work place (i.e. HR) to be concerned about your financial health? For example, you make 150k in a low COL area but you're driving a beater year round. I don't mean just "an old car" but something that clearly needs repairs but isn't getting them (let's just accept that this is objectively true for the sake of this hypothetical). Absolutely loving not. It's OK and even good to think about finances in a collective policy sense. There's the obvious "pay your employees a living wage, goddamnit" aspect, first of all. When people get enough money to take care of themselves and their things, they'll usually take care of themselves and their things. Beyond that, there are some other things that they can do. For instance, my current employer puts aside quite a bit of time in new-employee orientation to talk about benefits, including a big section on retirement planning basics, 401(k) information, and even a bit on personal finance and saving that more or less matches the advice you'd get here. We also have a "employee fronts the costs and gets reimbursed on their next check" policy for work travel after orientation, and there's an expectation that managers will talk to their reports one-on-one and make quiet arrangements to use a company credit card if there's a hint of hardship there. But, here's the critical thing: it's bad to single people out based on what amounts to a guess about their situation from a tiny scrap of evidence. Employers shouldn't pry into or try to control someone's personal life because they feel like it. If somebody is violating some kind of reasonable workplace rule - say, they don't make it in several times because of car problems, or their car is so bad that it's loving up the parking lot or they have to leave it sitting for a week - then it might be OK to ask, "is there anything going on in your personal life that's making it hard to fix this problem, and is there a way that we can help fix it?" But beyond that, no, it's their business and not their employer's. If you want to see nicer cars in the parking lot then pay for them - or, better yet, move your office close to a busy bus stop and then buy your employees all bus passes.
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Jan 23, 2020 16:10
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Volmarias posted:How does that work? I thought that if your school isn't in the US the degree doesn't apply? It can; graduates of medical schools from outside the US and Canada can practice medicine in the US if they complete a residency program and pass certain exams. Competition for those residency programs is intense. Basically, in a given year, there are about as many open US residency slots as there are US med school graduates, as an intentional policy. Those US grads get priority. Everybody else gets to fight over the scraps of what's left. The picture for Caribbean med school students intending to practice in the US is not pretty. First of all, those schools have to keep up a reputation for graduating reasonably knowledgeable students even with their loose acceptance standards. They do that by aggressively kicking out underperforming students. No tuition refunds, of course. The ones who make it through still have to match into a residency, and as mentioned, the odds are stacked against them. Even the students who get to graduation can end up with mid six figures in debt and an MD that they can't use for clinical practice. There are still jobs you can get with just an MD - but they tend to make a lot less than practicing physicians, and the debt load remains the same.
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Feb 5, 2020 05:31
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Power of Pecota posted:Wait, I've never bought a car from a dealer before, what's the key scam part of things? Do they take that as a handshake for a deal, do they refuse to give them back until the end of something, or what? It's just another pressure tactic. They take your car "so they can evaluate its trade-in value." Or, they might take your driver's license to "make a copy for our insurance records." If you decide to back out of buying a car after the test drive, you don't have a way to leave. You might think that this is a dumb move that's likely to backfire and make the customer angrier. This is true. But they were going to lose the sale anyway, and some people are really susceptible to a scumbag in a cheap suit wearing cheaper cologne, negging them and pushing ridiculous lies (see also: everyone in the WSJ article upthread). For someone who's scummy enough to pull the stunt in the first place, there's no downside to it.
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Feb 17, 2020 02:25
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Ulf posted:You’d think the downside of constantly having the police called would be something but maybe people don’t do that often enough. This kind of tactic started back before cell phones were even invented, and it's been refined to the point where the dealership isn't likely to ever be punished for it. These days, they'll mysteriously find your keys before the 911 operator can finish introducing themselves. Once that's done, 95% of people who would be willing to call the cops in the first place will just leave angry. For the rest, the whole sales floor can give the same story: "wow, what a weird customer, they got really bent out of shape and started screaming and threatening us when we had a little mix-up with their keys. It's fixed now, though. Can you please just make them leave?"
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Feb 17, 2020 03:37
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This is what happens when every product is cost- and supply-chain-optimized to the point where it's only marginally usable.
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Mar 5, 2020 16:11
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tater_salad posted:we don't need a "Performance" bucket. Society absolutely doesn't need a performance bucket. But there's a market niche there from people who are so aggravated by the cheap crap flooding the market that they're willing to pay a ridiculous, emotionally-driven price for "a bucket that just doesn't loving suck." There's another, probably larger, niche of people who want to buy things that let them play out a proud redneck blue collar fishin' life but still show off their money. Capitalism doesn't make decisions based on what's good for society. DaveSauce posted:Hopefully in the near future we will be able to enjoy the option of items of moderate quality at slightly higher prices, rather than the "luxury or garbage pick one" market most things seem to have now. Limited volume and relatively small per-unit margins? Sorry, you'll never hit the growth numbers we need to invest, take your idealistic "products that work well for people" poo poo out of here and let us focus on some real work. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Mar 5, 2020 |
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Mar 5, 2020 17:08
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smackfu posted:Loeffler’s defense is that her portfolio is controlled by a third party advisor and she didn’t direct the sales. "Hey, Jimmy, how are the kids? Great. Look, someone who isn't me might have heard something important and thinks that it would be a really good time to sell everything I own and put it into the most conservative investments possible - bonds or something, you're the expert. Got it? Thanks. Have a good one!"
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Mar 20, 2020 15:08
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Vice President posted:In Seattle (and probably the bay area) it sure seems like every quirky vintage boutique or collectable toy store which are all pretty much two steps above a nice-looking Goodwill in a better neighborhood are pretty much guaranteed to be run by the spouse of someone in the tech industry who wants them to keep them busy, or someone who just cashed out their portfolio and is now retired at age 40 and looking to relive their childhood. There's a fantastic example of this in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Sandwiched between some trendy restaurants, new condo construction, and a bondage club, there's an old-school auto parts warehouse. I went in there to buy an oil filter for my Honda, once - it's the only auto parts store that's within even a long walk of my place, and I might have started changing my oil without double-checking I had a new filter to put on. When I went in, there were no employees anywhere that I could see. The one guy in the place was somewhere in the back and took a few minutes to come up to the front. They had a bunch of tools that looked like cheap junk from the 70s and 80s on the walls, still in their packaging. I got my oil filter, and was informed that the purchase had to be cash only: no cards, no checks, cash or nothin', ATM's down the street if you need it. This, in the middle of a place where tiny shoebox apartments are sprouting like weeds at $1800-2500/month and large properties change hands for tens of millions. I'm pretty sure that my $6 oil filter was recorded on their books as a cash purchase of something like twelve Ferrari engine blocks. GWM(Laundering) for sure. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Apr 13, 2020 |
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Apr 13, 2020 15:37
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Krispy Wafer posted:Are human food oats that expensive in bulk? No. You can get a 50 pound bag of rolled oats for $30 or so at a restaurant supply store. Less, if you're stocking a bunker and want to buy ten bags at once. Even the fancy Bob's Red Mill organic stuff is well under a dollar a pound. Online, shipping is more expensive, but you pay the same amount to ship a bag of goat-grade oats or a bag of human-grade oats. Oh, and animal feed usually includes the hulls, which are impossible for humans to digest and really unpleasant to eat. A big part of the cost difference, besides safety standards, is that the animal feed has ~30% waste material in it that still needs to be processed out. There's absolutely no reason for people to eat animal feed.
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Apr 17, 2020 15:41
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lostleaf posted:Sorry for the youtube link Is there some kind of summary for people who don't want to watch a right wing talk radio host play at being a youtube superstar?
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Apr 21, 2020 14:54
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Nope, it's strictly bring your own truck/train car/supertanker. Oil only goes into barrels for hacky political cartoons these days.
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Apr 22, 2020 02:12
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Is BWM just for people living above their means, or does any expensive hobby qualify? Can't imagine anyone going into debt for that Porsche. That car is a Franklin Mint plate for ultra-wealthy people who have developed a ~brand relationship~ with Porsche. Almost all of it is built on top of a car that's still stunningly expensive and very fast, but only costs half as much. The rest is nostalgia-based bodywork that's supposed to look like a famous 1970s race car. The extra price comes from nostalgia and "oh, it's limited edition." It's perfectly capable of going around a race track very fast, but most of those are going to go straight into climate-controlled storage and never come out in order to preserve their valuable limited-edition-ness.
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Apr 26, 2020 16:55
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quote:What first motivated you to live a more sustainable lifestyle? *drives 4 mpg luxury land yacht in an ascetic, sustainable way*
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Apr 27, 2020 04:44
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For years, Cheryl Dopp considered the ding on her phone from a new Airbnb Inc. booking to be the sound of what she called “magical money.” A property she rented out in Jersey City, N.J., on Airbnb could gross more than $8,000 a month, she said, double what long-term tenants would pay. Now, Ms. Dopp associates the dings with cancellations and financial misery. The 54-year-old information-technology contractor said she had about $10,000 in bookings evaporate overnight in March. She has $22,000 in monthly expenses for a largely Airbnb portfolio, she said, that included another Jersey City home and a house in Miami. In her mind, the promise of more rental income offset the growing debt, she said. “I made a bargain with the devil.” Ms. Dopp is part of an upper-crust dimension of the gig economy: property owners and speculators who bought or leased real estate in pursuit of Airbnb profits. Airbnb spawned a cottage industry of homeowners running their own property empires, turning the startup into a hotelier without any hotels. The coronavirus’s spread has exposed swaths of the U.S. economy that were ill-suited for a crisis—great for offering inexpensive goods and services quickly, terrible in an economic disaster. The sharing economy has proven particularly unstable in the pandemic. Silicon Valley championed the concept of turning America into a land of entrepreneurs taking advantage of flexible hours, unimpeded by regulations or specialized training. People who bought into the idea turned their cars into work stations for Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. or became couriers for food-delivery services like DoorDash Inc. They have taken a hit, but with Airbnb, the problems are broader. Hosts brought with them cleaning services, interior designers and property-maintenance workers who helped build miniature property empires—so their plight has ripple effects that go far beyond their own listings. Airbnb hosts saw $1.5 billion in bookings vanish in mid-March as the travel industry froze, according to market-research firm AirDNA LLC, which analyzes bookings. Airbnb gave guests full refunds and forced hosts to dip into their pockets or beg for leniency on April loans and rent. “Hosts should’ve always been prepared for this income to go away,” said Gina Marotta, a principal at Argentia Group Inc., which does credit-risk analysis for real-estate loans. “Instead, they built an expensive lifestyle feeding off of it.” The startup that gave rise to the short-term rental economy is slashing expenses and secured $2 billion in financing this month, including a $1 billion loan at a hefty interest rate. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Airbnb had racked up hundreds of millions in losses due to the pandemic. The company hasn’t publicly reported figures. Though most real-estate economists say there are too few Airbnb properties to ignite a housing crisis, the breakdown of the Airbnb economy could strain lenders, undermine property values and validate some local governments’ long-held suspicions that Airbnb contributed to the affordable-housing crisis. “No one anticipated that a global pandemic would require the country to shelter in place, upend the economy,” said Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas. “This is temporary: Travel will bounce back and Airbnb hosts—the vast majority of whom have just one listing—will continue to welcome guests and generate income.” Mr. Papas said the company accounts for a fraction of the global housing stock and would have minimal effect on the broader market. Airbnb has more than 3 million hosts and more than 7 million listings globally, he said. Airbnb hosts’ backgrounds, financial circumstances and businesses vary, which makes addressing their woes challenging. They operate in a gray market in many cities because short-term rental laws are still evolving. Their models range from owning property to signing long-term rental agreements for apartments. AirDNA estimates that a third of Airbnb’s U.S. listings for entire homes or apartments—excluding shared rooms—are by hosts with a single property. Another third are run by hosts with between two and 24 properties. The remaining third involve hosts with more than 25 properties. Some of those hosts renting 25-plus properties are managed by startups such as Sonder Corp. and Lyric Hospitality Inc., which pay to rent hundreds of apartments they sublease on Airbnb and elsewhere. Many of those companies have furloughed or laid off staff in recent weeks. Airbnb’s Mr. Papas said the company doesn’t break down data by properties and can’t comment on the accuracy of AirDNA’s data. He said more than 70% of hosts world-wide have only one listing, and those listings account for about half of Airbnb’s listings. He declined to break down the percentage of hosts listing entire homes versus those subletting rooms. No bookings Smaller players have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars each buying homes for short-term rentals. Jennifer Kelleher-Hazlett of Clawson, Mich., spent about $380,000 to buy two Michigan properties in 2018. She said she and her husband cashed out their financial investments and borrowed $100,000 from employers to furnish them. The 47-year-old expected to net up to $7,000 a month from Airbnb after mortgage payments, supplementing her income as a part-time pharmacist and her husband’s as a schoolteacher. Before the virus struck, the couple was considering buying more homes. Now, they can’t make mortgage payments because no one is booking, she said. “We’re either borrowing more or defaulting.” Airbnb let hosts set their own refund policies over canceled stays. Hosts with strict policies would receive half the money on canceled stays. Many factored a steady stream of income when planning for the future. Airbnb’s Mr. Papas said the majority of active listings didn’t have strict cancellation policies. Hosts’ sense of control disappeared as the crisis took hold and the company stepped in to ameliorate travelers’ panicked cancellations. Airbnb granted guests full refunds for stays between March 14 and May 31, wrenching the finances of those who had used Airbnb income to underwrite and sustain their mini-empires. Airbnb has said while it gave hosts the flexibility to set their own cancellation policies, hosts agreed to an “extenuating circumstances policy” that allowed the company to override them—as it did when the pandemic hit. Some hosts feel Airbnb hung them out to dry. “I don’t think that hosts ever thought their policies would be overridden,” said Ms. Kelleher-Hazlett. “They’re very guest-centric.” Later, Airbnb said it would pay hosts 25% of what they would have received for canceled bookings and created a $17 million fund to help top-rated hosts cover mortgages. Airbnb said it would cap grants at $5,000 per host. That sum would provide little relief to hosts such as Jennifer and David Landrum of Atlanta. In 2016, they started a company named Local, renting the 18 apartments they leased and 21 apartments they managed to corporate travelers and film-industry workers. They spent more than $14,000 per apartment to outfit them with rugs, throw pillows, art and chandeliers. They grossed about $1.5 million annually, mostly through Airbnb, Ms. Landrum said. They spend about $50,000 annually with cleaning services, about $25,000 on an inspector and $30,000 a year on maintenance staff and landscapers, Ms. Landrum said, not to mention spending on furnishings. When Airbnb began refunding guests March 14, the Landrums had nearly $40,000 in cancellations, she said. The couple has been able to pay only a portion of April rent on the 18 apartments they lease and can’t fulfill their obligations to pay three months’ rent unless bookings resume. They have reduced pay to cleaning staff and others. Adding to the stress, Georgia banned short-term rentals through April. “It’s scary,” said Ms. Landrum, who said she has discounted some units three times since mid-March. The Landrums have negotiated to get some leniency from apartment owners on their leases. If not, Ms. Landrum said, they would have to sell their house. Florida, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Delaware also have clamped down on short-term rentals, instituting temporary bans on Airbnb properties and similar listings. Local governments including California’s Sonoma County and Myrtle Beach, S.C., have enacted similar restrictions. The measures have made it harder for some Airbnb hosts to fill properties with families looking to quarantine outside their homes or near relatives. Nearly one in five hosts that Airbnb recently surveyed said hosting on the platform helped them avoid eviction or foreclosure. The company presented these findings to U.S. Congressional leaders and successfully lobbied to have hosts covered under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act—known as the Cares Act—making them potentially eligible for small-business loans and unemployment assistance, among other things. That program’s funds ran out but were replenished with Congress’ approval this month of another $484 billion in aid. It wasn’t clear how many hosts would qualify or whether disbursements would be fast enough to cover their losses. In March, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said owners of investment properties with loans backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac could seek forbearance if they couldn’t pay their mortgages due to loss of income related to the coronavirus—a change that could help some Airbnb hosts. The agency later moved to help mortgage companies facing a cash-flow crunch, capping at four months the period the companies are on the hook to make monthly payments on behalf of homeowners who fall behind on their loans. ‘No rescue’ The pandemic’s financial hit could cause lenders to re-evaluate their exposure to Airbnb, said Susan Wachter, a real-estate professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business. “There’s no rescue in place for this.” Many Airbnb hosts are desperate to sell properties, say real-estate brokers like Greg Hague, who runs a Phoenix real-estate firm and helped state lawmakers draft short-term-rental legislation. “There’s been a flood of people. You have people coming to us saying, ‘I’m a month or two away from foreclosure. What’s it going to take to get it sold now?’ ” he said. That has diminished overall property values, he said. Airbnb’s Mr. Papas said there was no statistical evidence suggesting home sales or prices had been affected. As short-term-listings bans were passed around the country, Airbnb said it was shifting to focus on long-term stays and encouraged hosts to allow them. Some hosts under pressure to generate income have pursued traditional 12-month leases on Zillow, Craigslist and other sites. In Nashville, Tenn., which grants permits to hosts, about a dozen of the city’s 3,600 nonowner-occupied listings—which include Airbnb properties—surfaced in the first days of April as advertisements for one-year leases on Zillow or Craigslist, according to Host Compliance LLC, a software provider tracking permits for the city. City leaders said they feared more would follow. One of the apartments is in City View, a development with a swimming pool and rooftop views of downtown. When City View was completed in 2015, councilman Freddie O’Connell, who represents the district and has worked to rein in short-term rentals, hoped it would lure young professionals and families and help ease the city’s housing shortage. Instead, he said, it became a haven for short-term rentals. “With Airbnb, magical thinking got out there,” said Mr. O’Connell. “People have taken on a lot of risk, and we’re seeing the consequences of that now.” City View declined to comment. Ms. Dopp, the IT contractor, bought two Jersey City properties in 2015 each with multiple apartments. She listed one apartment for $140 a night and generated $4,200 from it that month, she said. She also bought a Miami house that she listed on Airbnb and other short-term rental sites under a pseudonym and used the anticipated revenue from the properties to support a six-figure loan for maintenance, she said. When states began locking down, Ms. Dopp said, “I thought, ‘Holy God. We’re about to lose everything.’ ” Though some of her properties had long-term tenants, she lost most Airbnb bookings through spring, she said, and can’t cover April’s mortgages, property taxes and insurance. A family rented her Miami home at a discounted rate on Airbnb, she said, providing some relief. She also plans to apply for a small-business loan, seek forbearance from banks, find long-term tenants independently of Airbnb and sell one property. She has begun shutting down her Airbnb account, she said. “I don’t want to bargain with the devil any more.”
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Apr 29, 2020 11:04
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Krispy Wafer posted:Do non-marriage partner benefits still exist or did those go away now that everyone can legally marry anyone they choose (outside of Kentucky). They still exist in Washington, but only for senior couples (where at least one partner is 62 years or older). It turned out that the "you're effectively married but not married-married" approach was useful for people who were receiving survivor benefits from a previous marriage. There are quite a few widows who still receive their ex-spouse's pension benefits, but with a clause that says "if you ever get married to someone else, you're cut off." Domestic partnership let couples in that situation get things like hospital visitation and inheritance rights without having to give up their benefits.
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May 18, 2020 16:19
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:hot take, evidently: forcing people to carry insurance for their 2 ton deathwagons is good look, if those pedestrians actually cared about their safety, they'd carry an accidental death and dismemberment policy why should I be held responsible for their bad behavior?
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Jun 6, 2020 16:56
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Phanatic posted:Can you *please* link the source when you post these? A lot of subreddits will keep an eye on referrer traffic, and if they get too many links that aren't from google, they'll delete the post for the safety of the community. It's pretty dumb, but that's reddit. Just search for the title.
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Jun 22, 2020 15:38
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rufius posted:Except when you lived where my parents did in which case the HOA treasurer and HOA president were the two people punching each other in the front yard at an HOA meeting. The entire point of HOAs is to get around anti-discrimination laws, and make life hell for minorities. Harassment over siding colors and lawn height is just a side effect. If a city government passes a law that says "no Black people, Jews, or homosexuals," then a good lawyer will destroy them in court and collect a nice paycheck of city-paid legal fees for their trouble. So, racist cities basically outsourced very minor code enforcement to sub-municipal governments. That gives HOAs enough power to harass people, but few real responsibilities, and not much in the way of finances. You can sue them for obviously unequal enforcement of their petty rules, and you'll probably win - but there won't be much of a payday for the lawyer who does it, so it's hard to find anyone to take the case. The HOA can just declare bankruptcy, evaporate, and a new but legally distinct HOA can spring up to keep harassing "undesirables." This isn't just a Jim Crow era thing, either, although it definitely has its roots there. When I was in college, I had a friend who found a fantastic deal on housing, renting a room from an widow in an old-money neighborhood. My friend's of Southeast Asian descent, which is important later. The landlady had money and didn't need more; she just wanted someone else to live in her giant house after her husband passed away. My friend had it made until she struck up a conversation with one of the neighbors. It turned out that everyone in the neighborhood had assumed she was a live-in maid. Once it was clear that she was actually a resident, just like them, the HOA came to her and the landlady and made it very clear that she was not welcome in the neighborhood, and she needed to move out or there would be trouble. This was less than a decade ago, in an outwardly liberal Pacific Northwest suburb. (e: I should point out that the problem wasn't renting a room; there were a few other houses in the neighborhood that did that without trouble. You can probably guess what those tenants looked like) Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 16:33
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quote:I also don’t ever pack lunches. I decided a few years ago that I’d rather be broke than be someone who packs lunches because it’s the ultimate sign of adulthood and I’m a drag queen so why should I not be glamorous? There is genuinely not one possible glimmer of glamour to be found in and around the world of Tupperware. If you are a person who takes a packed lunch to work with you, I admire you. But we can probably never be lovers, sorry. Anyway, a classic Pret for me: halloumi and falafel wrap, sweet and salty popcorn, honey and yoghurt granola pot. This is the UK equivalent of saying "I would never want to seem like some grown-up white collar worker, so I got a classic Panera sandwich."
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Jul 7, 2020 03:14
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I felt like this had to be bullshit, so I did some digging. Not only is it real, there's a Park Service manual that covers it. Page 30 even has a diagram of a dead horse that shows where to put the explosives.
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Jul 14, 2020 15:09
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:You say "status symbol" like it is a bad thing. Our society no longer has a way to evaluate the fitness of people at a glance. We previously had obvious status displays like a family crest or physical fitness, but today the most physically fit person may not be actually wealthy or high status. It's tacky as gently caress to just yell out your status or bank account, but you are delusional if you think it doesn't matter. So yes, I've got a $30,000 submariner and I wear it all the time. Do I need to spend that much to tell time? No. But, I can make the payments easily. Money is just there to get stuff or save time. Saving time with bullshit trying to let people know your status is a waste of time. Plus it looks loving awesome. "Hey everybody, look how high status I am, I can afford monthly payments on a $30k watch" If Rolex isn't offering a lease program, they're leaving money on the table.
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Jul 25, 2020 02:56
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