My wife cooks meat and fish to death, and I won’t eat eggs she cooks because instead of greasing the pan she literally serves them in a bath of oil. I’ve tried to correct this to no avail, that is the way mom and mom’mom and everyone else cooked and showed her to cook and she actually likes the taste etc etc.
I realized there is a big emotional/cultural aspect to this and to change would be a rejection of her family who she loved for good reason.
I realized I hated my family for good reason, I wonder if that let me reject things easier.
EDIT:What I am saying is that it can be hard to change “the way things are done” when you consider they are tied up in family and cultural crap.
There is nothing wrong with any of those things if you can afford them or do them in an affordable manner.
Home ownership is an option. It happens to be an option that works out for a lot of people but not for everyone. In my current situation I am actually paying less in rent per month than a mortgage for comparable square footage and amenities would cost in my area but I readily admit it’s a fluke I couldn’t duplicate if my life depended on it. I had an unusual opportunity and took it. Yay, me.
There’s a certain level of poverty under which no, you can not buy a house, you need to seek a different way to pay for housing. Berating such people for living in a rental unit or house trailer is uncouth.
There are plenty of threads on the car ownership thing. I’ll freely admit I don’t do the utmost frugal thing by buying a car a couple years old and driving it until it falls apart. I purchase new, drive them for 15-20 years, and sell them off when they start nickel and diming me too much - but I do that knowing I am making a choice to spend more for my preference. IF someone can afford to buy a new car every two-three years and chooses to do so more power to them.
Big weddings? Again, can you afford it? If so, bravo, have at it. Going 20,000 into debt for what amounts to a one time party (you hope it’s one time), though, is stupid for most middle class and lower people.
One thing that amazes me is how these threads keep getting sidetracked by people who fail to understand that the issue is finances. Not about side issues.
E.g., too many people here are downplaying home ownership because of side issues that have nothing to do with finances. Home ownership doesn’t make economic sense if you plan on moving again soon, can’t find a reasonably priced home to fit your needs, etc. But for most people in most situations, it’s likely to be a very good long term gain.
Note: pointing out rent vs. mortgage without calculating the upside of increasing equity isn’t going to convince anyone of your financial acuity.
Similarly, previous threads about car leasing vs. buying get derailed by people who point out alleged “financial benefits” about leasing such as getting a new car every 3 years or (a classic statement in line with the OP) “But I can get a better car than I can afford.”
If you make a decision because it makes you happier, fine. But don’t automatically claim that it’s a good financial decision.
And everyone makes poor financial decisions - sometimes because the poor financial decision is the best life decision (going on vacation, if you can afford it, will cost you more money than putting the money in a nice index fund - but where is the quality of life there, likewise owning a nice car - if you can afford it - is more expensive than owning a functional car, but you might enjoy owning it). Those aren’t really poor financial decisions when the rest of your finances are lined up. Sometimes people will make poor financial decisions that are really poor (the car or the vacation you CAN’T afford - or just poor choices in food, or buying people gifts you can’t really afford) because of very complex emotional, cultural, educational reasons - that are much deeper than just “well, poverty” or “well, education.” And we know that because the spend is different at different income levels, but really the base issues are the same - spending too much today on things that aren’t necessities so you don’t have money to spend tomorrow on the things you needed to save for. (Ignoring those that are so poor they can’t make ends meet at all - that’s a whole different problem set and no amount of good FINANCIAL decision making is going to stretch $1000 a month into supporting a family of three.
It can just be frustrating to watch people you care about make successive poor financial decisions - for a lot of reasons - those decisions add stress and insecurity to their lives. And, if you care about them, it impacts your life as well.
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There is nothing wrong with any of those things if you can afford them or do them in an affordable manner.
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Nor is there anything wrong with eating at McDonald’s once in a while if you can afford it. If you can’t, there is.
[QUOTE=Tuxie]
People HORRIBLE with money, vs the poster who is super smart and frugal .
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But it is not an extreme to refrain from wasting money you don’t have on things you can’t afford that are not good for you. That’s what grown-ups do. Indeed, it’s what most people do. Which is mostly why most people aren’t poor in the US.
And that’s what makes it difficult to work up a lot of sympathy for people who are poor who waste their money, no matter how good their excuse. Most other people manage somehow to not be poor. What is different about Joe Blow who can’t?
Sure, sometimes it is misfortune. But sometimes it ain’t. And there are many times when the only reasonable response is “I was poor, and now I’m not. What is wrong with what you are doing, that you still are?”
Somebody said “To understand everything is to forgive everything”. No, it isn’t. I understand that it is easier and more fun to go to Mickey D’s instead of cooking your own supper. But that doesn’t mean I am going to agree with you that it isn’t stupid. And if you can’t afford it, it is doubly stupid.
As a person who was temporarily poor (after living an OK lifestyle), the investment of time is a huge factor. Your hours at work can vary terribly if you work retail. It makes no sense to plan on thawing a chub of hamburger to make meatloaf and baked potatoes, if you can pick up extra hours at work if the high school kid doesn’t show up, and you get home at 10 p.m. If you think of yourself as being worth $8 per hour, spending an hour on cooking seems to add $8 to the cost of the meal. If you work on your feet, do you want to spend any more time on them, even if all you’re doing is scrambling an egg and washing the pan?
And a lot of quick options aren’t all that appetizing. Try bringing yogurt every day, or a hard boiled egg and an apple, because that’s all you have time to eat during a 15 minute break.
If you live alone, buying lettuce doesn’t make a lot of sense, because your apartment has a crappy refrigerator, and you’ll get one or two salads before it goes bad. Milk in a gallon is much cheaper than in a quart–you know it, but throwing out half a gallon is really upsetting. It all adds up, and grinds you into dust.
You can’t afford cable, or a DVD player. If somebody has a finite stretch of poverty, it’s bearable. But if you know it’s endless, except for death, a McDouble starts looking fucking festive.
I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you meant I was berating people when I gave them the shoe talk. I’m really not, I’m trying to help them (and keep all of those cheap shoes out of the landfill). If they don’t listen, I never say another word. Their money, their choice what they do with it.
This needs to be repeated often. It only costs 3 or 4 bucks to stop at starbucks in the morning. Most people don’t add it up and when they do, they are shocked at how much they are paying for coffee that they could make at home for much less. (I know this because a friend found an excel program that he could use to download his debt card usage for a year and learned that he had paid 1200 for coffee. He was totally shocked and amazed. When he added in the gift cards and cash that he had used, it was pretty close to 2 grand.)
I bought him a travel cup and several bottles of syrup for Christmas. I really hope he starts using them, not only will it save him money…it will stop those cups from going into the landfill.
Renting vs. owning a home can be a different calculus if you have children.
If you have kids it certainly does make sense to look for the best school district possible. A good school district will be able to provide resources that a bad one simply can’t including a nicer physical place, better trained teachers and often a wide array of electives. My local school district is a very good one with high test scores and only seventeen kids in my eldest child’s classroom. When I taught in New York City I never had less than twenty-five even while working in the elementaries as a sub. You also can’t rent in my neighborhood. I mean that literally. I doubled checked recently and did not see any rentals available in our neighborhood, certainly no single rooms being offered.
We bought a house here about thirteen years ago. The house is valued at about 400k give or take ten percent either way. While it has required about 20k in repairs, our mortgage is only about 100k and the house is likely to retain value in the future.
You can talk about a room all you want but when you have children there have to be other considerations as well. I think the same is true in some cases if you are single, especially if you are a woman. I would not want to be a single woman renting a room in East Orange here no matter how cheap it would be because I simply would not feel safe doing so.
Cool.
My house was purchased with a conventional loan slightly over 13 years ago for $130,000. It’s worth maybe 115 now. Maybe. I think the mortgage is around 105. Almost everything, from the roof to major appliances (which are usually included in good working order in rentals) is made to need replacement a couple times before the mortgage is paid off, and these things (roof, furnace, windows, AC, etc) cost several thousands each. I look forward to 17 years from now, when I will still have to pay a couple hundred per month +inflation in basic property taxes, and after making around 1/2 million bucks in mortgage payments and home maintenance over the years, the home will be “mine.”
Having kids can make a larger home even more attractive, sure. But viewed in terms of raw cash, there are cheaper ways to live, even with kids. Good schools and safety are legit things to want. Butthey are wants. It’s not illegal or against the laws of physics to live in a crappy neighborhood.
I’m surprised at how defensive people are. I’m in the market for a home myself, as we are quickly outgrowing our little one-bedroom apartment. I’m not attacking home ownership. But I certainly don’t think I absolutely NEED a home-- it’s a thing that I want, that makes sense with my income and the way I want to live.
But you pay an enormous ultimate price for crappy schools. I wish we lived in a country where ALL kids had the best education possible. We don’t. You can get a decent education in many schools but it can be much harder. A child’s academic deficits or strengths may go ignored for years when teachers are stressed out and academic resources scarce. One can hardly blame most parents for trying to find the best possible school district for their children and working hard to finance it.
Safety isn’t really a want but a need either. If you are constantly worried about your house or apartment being broken into, that’s really no way to live. You also pay a price in the sense that such neighborhoods tends to be food deserts with lousy food choices that can also make it far hard to eat healthy. They can also impose extra costs such as the need for a private security system because the local police are either indifferent or too overworked to respond to the kind of petty crime that can make people completely miserable.
As for defensiveness, I see it more from people who seem eager to condemn others who have made the decision to buy a good home in a safe neighborhood rather than rent a miserable hovel in an unsafe area.
You don’t need a McMansion to be happy but there’s surely a happy medium between the useless 3,000 square foot suburban house and the crappy backyard shed with an outhouse.
the problem is that the way schools are funded (a significant fraction coming from property taxes) keeping your kids out of shitty schools helps insure they’ll remain shitty, and best left to “those people.”
You can take the condescending remarks about my supposed beliefs and your ludicrous quote marks and stick them some place else. I know exactly how schools are funded. Hell, Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol was required undergraduate reading. I have to work within the system I am given, a system that I have no power to change. I am not going to sacrifice the education of my girls to make a meaningless political point.
And FYI, I’ve taught in some very really crappy schools. It is not just funding that is the problem. Part of the reason I left teaching is because I got sick and tired of parental indifference and lack of respect for teachers that often exists there. When I call and tell you that your little brat threw a piece of chalk at my face and then called me a dozen inappropriate curse words, your first instinct should NOT be to ask what I did to provoke his highness. The fact that an idealistic and passionately intelligent person like myself left the profession largely because of such behavior is something that needs to be thought about carefully and not just by me
FYI, President Obama sends his daughters to Sidwell Friends. Tuition there is over 35k a year per kid. Maybe the president should set a good example and actually push for an overhaul of the school funding system?
The problem with that attitude is that it can quickly lead to assuming ALL poor people are screw-ups and/or stupid because poverty is proof of that.
Frankly, I can’t see anything wrong with what I’m doing - I work my ass off (in fact, I’ve got two raises and moved from part time to full time in under a year at my present job) but even at 40 hours a week I can’t quite make ends meet most months. That’s partly because my spouse is too disabled to be hired yet too able-bodied to be officially disabled and collect a check each month. Sure, discrimination is illegal but it happens. He’d love to work, he wants to work, he has a master’s degree, several patents to his name, and various other qualifications but no one wants to hire him. He’s trying the self-employment thing, but this economy sucks for getting a business started.
So it really pisses me off when someone looks at me and, because I’m poor, assumes I never finished high school (I have a four year degree, thank you very much), I’m unreliable, irresponsible, stupid, and untrustworthy - and really, a lot of people DO think that of poor people regardless of how they came to be poor, or how long they have been poor. When I finally broke down and got food stamps because it was the only way to keep us fed how do you think it made me feel to overhear customers in the store declare they’d rather starve than lower themselves like that? No, it wasn’t directed at me but you think those comments don’t hurt?
I guarantee you, MOST of the people you see working retail these days, outside of management, are either on food stamps or getting an EIC or otherwise receiving government aid because if they didn’t they’d be homeless, starving, or both. Yet so many people have zero problem pontificating while standing at the check out counter about those leeches, those horrible poor people, those blood-suckers… do they not realize the people they’re talking about are the ones stocking the shelves and ringing up their bill?
If you look at it as a binary system. And if you look at it as a binary system, then the opposite response is “no one is poor through their own actions, everyone is a victim of circumstance.” The problem being, of course, that everyone has someone in their lives whose choices over time have created their own problems - or at very least made them worse. Just like nearly everyone knows someone who has had a rough time despite making good decisions - or maybe made some bad decisions early on (who hasn’t?), but has been trying to straighten it out and can’t get a break.
I know no one in real life who sees it as a binary problem - where ALL poor people are screw ups. Or where ALL poor people are merely the victims of circumstance. If I ever do meet such a person in real life, I’m pretty sure they’ll turn out to be an idiot.
It’s not that it’s binary, it’s more a matter of burden of proof. There can be an assumption that the poor are screw ups until proven otherwise. Or the poor are victims of misfortune until proven otherwise. An extreme version of either isn’t good.
welcome to the world we live in. you’re either with us, or against us. You’re either on the extreme left (such as it is in this country,) or the extreme right. You’re either poor because you make bad decisions, or wealthy because you make good decisions. There’s never any middle ground. Ever.