[long] Fucking QUIT IT ALREADY!

The BBQ Pit
41

My husband has a 67 Mustang (original owner…20,000 miles on it) and he wouldn’t sell that car unless he was under such financial stress that he absolutely had to. But, he paid $4K for it and it’s now worth somewhere $80 and $100K and still appreciating. Way cooler than two 'vettes ( :wink: )

Personally, I don’t see the trauma here. There are back-up plans out the whazoo and everyone’s capable of putting in a day’s work. So the wife takes a step down in employment if she has to. No biggie. Beats the hell out of not being able to work at all. There are plenty of assets to dump if you have to, and $6K in credit card debt, while not my idea of a good time exactly, isn’t all that bad.

Things will get better. Y’all need to take a couple chill pills. You’ll be fine.

42

Hey jerkwad, maybe you missed the deaths in the family, anxiety issues, wife becoming unemployed, sucky job, child care problems, and struggle to keep the finances stable. How about having yourself a nice warm cup of “shut the fuck up.”

43

Retirement plans, college funds, and other tax-deferred savings might be included in the liquid number. While one can turn these into cash quickly, it might not be the best choice when the tax penalties hit.

I’ve got a fairly comfortable lifestyle. If Mrs. D_Odds were to lose her job, while I wouldn’t be homeless and hungry, it would seriously affect that lifestyle. And it would cause lots of stress. Sure, I wouldn’t be in immediate danger of eviction, but the loss of creature comforts one has become accustomed to enjoying is depressing. Add in other family issues to the mix (which are the greater stressors), and it is not surprising that Unintentionally Blank might start to feel overwhelmed. It can and does happen to the middle, upper-middle, and even high income families.

44

I dunno…if it’s got penalties attached, I don’t call it “liquid.” Liquid, to me anyway, is free money. Savings and CDs that are about to mature.

45

Deaths in the family I can sympathize with. But telling me how momma might not want to watch her own kids cause it’s too stressful, I’m $10K in debt but have 4 cars, I can’t afford to fix my corvette, etc.
Most people wish they had those problems. It’s called the American Dream.

Call me when your both unemployed, are up to your ears in debt, can’t afford to keep one car running, and your house is beeing foreclosed on like a lot of people I know.

46

Bolding mine:

REPLACE?!? Are you fucking kidding?? You only have $10,000 in debt and you are whining that you don’t want to sell even one of your impractical Corvettes? Try being about $50,000 in debt (not even counting the mortgage) and only afford to live in a single-wide and only afford to drive a Hyundai and a Kia (me and my husband, respectively) and THEN start whining.

Yeah, but now you have kids. Suck it up and cut your losses.

I really wish that we had the luxury to have expensive hobbies like that. Hell, we couldn’t have hobbies like that before the baby.

I aspire to be in your financial shape.

Your vehicle expenses:
$460 car payment
$100 gas
150 insurance/tax 75 bus fare

$785 total

Our vehicle expenses:
$308 my car
$246 husband’s car
$300 gas
$185 ins

$1039 total

I’m sorry your wife lost her job, but she’s in IT? For Christ’s sake, when she does find a job, she’ll be making more than my husband and I put together.

Before you find the nearest bridge, put your problems in perspective. With an IT background, your wife will find a good-paying job in no time, you have healthy twin babies and you have only $10k in debt and still afford to keep your twin Corvettes.

I’m sorry if I sound bitter or jealous, but I guess I’m bitter and jealous. :rolleyes:

47

Re: Twins.

My kids aren’t twins. They are less than 13 months apart and arrived less than six months apart. So I didn’t have twins - but I did have two in diapers, two toddlers, two not sleeping through the night, two incapable of getting their own juice or snacks. And, while in some ways I’ve no doubt twins are harder, in some ways having them at the same stage would have been easier.

They are now six and seven - kindergarten and first grade. I’d say it got alot easier when the oldest got to be 3 1/2. That was about the time he potty trained (my daughter did it a year later), but also about the time he didn’t need constant supervision, he could get into the fridge to grab his own sippy cup, and could get himself dressed in a basic fashion. They both started really sleeping ten hours at a shot then too, and we stopped waking up more nights than not with extra bodies in our bed. Cleaning up from meals didn’t involve washing down the walls. It got WAY easier a year later when his sister hit the same stage. Then they could actually play together and interact.

A year or so later they started to make some (sometimes) intellegent decisions about food - i.e. they could make themselves a peanut butter sandwich if they really wanted to.

We are now past the needing to watch them like a hawk in the bathtub stage, and where they are gone to school, friends homes, etc. as much as they are home.

It still isn’t EASY, but it isn’t as physically demanding. You get a full nights sleep. You do less laundry. It can be emotionally draining, they are only starting to grasp emotional logic - and I don’t think my daughter will get it until her 20s.

48

There’s this behavior I’ve seen since having kids. I call it having a “Dick Size competition”. You think YOU have it bad, look at ME!

Problem is, when everythings said and done, all you have is a bunch of dicks.

It is not my fault you are in the situation you are in. It does not, however, invalidate how I’m feeling about my situation.

If there’s one thing that scares the everlovin CRAP out of me, is not how far I’ve fallen, but how far yet I COULD fall.

I’ve gotta tellya, the difference between your Kia and a Corvette, once you’ve had it long enough, isn’t that big a deal. I’ll bet your Kia’s got power locks, windows, AC and a CD player. How dare you complain when there’s people that can’t afford two cars!

And the American Dream is flawed. On another level, my family had reached the point where we had everything you could say you wanted from the american dream. Money sure as hell doesn’t buy happiness, anybody that tells you that is selling something. And I’ve seen this from people that earn less than $10k a year (my brother in law), and I’ve seen it from people worth more than $10 mil. (my ex fiancee.)

It doesn’t matter how much you have, you most likely won’t be happy with it.

49

I have a lot of sympathy regarding the grandfather, the loss of your father, and your wife’s unemployment.

Financially, you’ve made your decisions, so now you might have to make more decisions.

Sorry about your granddad.

50

Maybe it’s just part of ‘seeing the best in people’ (STOP LAUGHING!), but when I see someone listing “Corvette transmission problems” as one of their big recurring stress inducers I see something like this…

(wavy dream sequence effect, camera pulls in)

Some guy bought hisself a super-sexy chick magnet when he was fresh out of high school. Sure, he could barely afford it while working loading trucks down at the local shipping terminal, but he’d wanted one all his life. Besides, he needed a car, why not get a cool one? The payments were only two hundred more a month. All that pussy would be worth $200 a month.

Our modern-day David Wooderson’s life continues and, eventually, he ends up with a wife and kids. The Corvette is, of course, long paid off. It’s also their only car. So, we get a family struggling to make ends meet. David can work on a car, so with the help of some friends he can get that transmission running again when it causes problems - which it does. Often. But it’s the only car they have, and they can’t come up with the money for another one because the Corvette keeps wiping out whatever savings they try to scrape together.

The wife, let’s call her Cynthia Dunn, has to work too. Kids are expensive, and with twins you can’t even manage the whole hand-me-downs-thing. Everyone carefully did the math and determined that it would be a financial net-gain to have the kids in daycare.

Now that Cynthia is unemployed, however, our young couple is in a world of hurt. But at least she can stay home with the kids and save the family that cost.

(wavy dream sequence effect - camera pulls out)

Gosh, that would be a bitch. Having to replace transmissions in cars that you don’t aren’t dependent on isn’t. You are being financially inconvenienced. There’s a whole hell of a lot of people out there who would kill to be able to drop $4000 to travel cross-country to visit a dying relative. Having ‘money problems’ and keeping the kids in daycare because the wife doesn’t want that much quality time with the kids? Cry me a river.

I do have sympathy on some things. Relatives dying is terrible - but it’s something that happens to everyone. But the money? You’re LUCKY.

-Joe, offering four cents to whomever works out the names first

51

True, money doesn’t buy happiness. But family is important. Your healthy, your wife and kids are healthy, they have a great-grandfather that’s still alive, your dad passed but he still lived long enough to witness you becoming successful and having children. Family is what is of value to you. Treasure it.

52

I work in the financial industry, so I tend to take a literal (versus figurative) definition of financial terms. Liquid is defined as easily converted into cash - generally within 3 days (settlement time on a stock sale). In a literal definition of liquid, the penalty for conversion does not render a liquid asset illiquid.

I also understand why you might consider a 401(k) illiquid, because of the value lost in converting to cash. It’s just a much looser definition of the term liquid.

53

When I first read your post I wanted to reply angrily, as a lot of people have. I wanted to bitch about my own past problems -
[ul]
[li]finding out I was pregnant one week before signing the final papers on a house, then getting laid off two weeks after the sale went through[/li][li]Trying to temp for the duration of my pregnancy and finidng it impossible[/li][li]My hubby getting laid off four months after she was born, causing our moderate financial problems to head into severe[/li][/ul]

But then I remember that some women don’t get to take the time off to spend with their child that my country allows, I got 1 year maternity benefits from EI, that was pretty good, and we still had a roof (albeit a cheaper one because we had to seel teh house) and food on the table. We didn’t end up on the street. And we all stayed healthy.

But at the time it was horribly stressful and we struggled and fought and cried alot.

Even though some people had it worse, it was certainly bad enough for us at the time.

As I am sure it is for you. Everyone has their breaking points and your experiences are personal to you, as is the way you react to them.

So even though I could be jealous and twisted because you have some things better, my parents are healthy so in some ways I have things better too.

I know things can seem dark, but they do get better. I realize you stil ahve the loss of a loved one, but the pain does soften over time.

Take care.

54

Yeah, man. You just gotta keep LIVIN. L-I-V-I-N.

Anyway, deaths and sick relatives suck, and I can understand that your wife is probably stressed about not having a job and all.

But your money “problems” look pretty good from somebody a paycheck away from tits up.

55

I just keep picturing a guy walking through a cancer ward…but as he walks he’s bitching about his hangnail.

-Joe

56

Man I could sure use some of what you’re smokin. And I really love the laserbeam focus some folks have on that there Corvette aspect of my life. I added it into the OP as an indication of my past life on hold. Fix something, it breaks, don’t look at it for 6-8 months, scrounge some spare change, get it fixed, it breaks, parkit for 8-12 months, rinse repeat. Hey, this is the Pit, I’d not expect less.

Well, at the time, we were doing pretty damn well, financially. I went out to see Dad while he was still alive, knowing I’d hate myself if I didn’t…then he died and it was important the family be there for mom. Okay, we’re still good financially, it’ll take longer, but perhaps we’ll be debt free by Xmas. BZZT. Wife loses job.

The point is: That was a tight grouping of crap in a list about 15 items long. Can i look at where I’m fortunate? sure. I’ve got plenty of socks. My grass is green. The TV works.

But I also wonder when I get to stop being the head of the family and lick my wounds a little. Yea. Pity party poor me. I still wouldn’t wish my situation onya. And I sincerely hope you never feel this way.

I’m terribly sorry I didn’t run this by my PR guy first, my wife isn’t a shrew, and she needs time to get her job back…or whatever happens. I’d like to see a show of hands from all the parents out there who have, at one time or another, gone back to work to recover from a bad weekend with the kids.

57

Sometimes I go back to work to recover from a bad weekend wth the (pregnant) girlfriend. It’s an unplanned kid (we found out about two weeks after she moved in), and the finances would have been so much easier if it had happened a year later. But it didn’t. And I recognize that there’s plenty of people in this country getting by and raising kids on a fifth of what the two of us pull in.

Life’s a bitch, but most of us get by.

The reason so many people are focussing on your Corvettes is because it’s pretty irritating to listen to someone bitch about money problems when they have tens of thousands of dollars in assets that can be liquidated fairly quickly. Not just assets like granny’s antique wedding ring or Junior’s college fund. Not a kidney or lung. No, these assets are cars three and four in a two adult household.

-Joe

58

If someone’s got 3 vacation homes, and tough times force them to have to liquidate two, most people won’t say “Well, I still have the Aspen cabin, at least”. They’ll bemoan the loss of the Hampton’s and Boca homes. Sure, it isn’t the end of the world, nor even the end of their world, but just the choice of choosing which one they’d have to let go will cause stress. And while most of us think it would be nice to have that kind of stress, when you have it you won’t want that stress.

59

That’s funny. As jealous as I may be of your financial situation, I wasn’t the one complaining in this thread. I was merely pointing out our differences. You are the one who started a thread to complain about life. As heavily in debt as we are and with the cheapo cars that we drive and the trailer we live in, we’re happy.

I’ve got all I need to be happy–a husband, a daughter and extended family that loves me. We scrape to get by and we have no savings whatsoever, but we’re happy.

Re: wife staying home with the kids

If it were up to me and I were worried about money, I would think this was a no brainer. Yeah, I don’t have twins and I’m sure they are twice as much work as the one baby we have, but there are plenty of women who stay home with twins and haven’t felt the need to check themselves in to a mental institution. In fact, there are plenty who would love to be able to stay home with them. As a mother, I would think this aspect of losing her job would be one she would find to be a blessing, not another stressor.

There’s got to be a silver lining here somewhere. Just try to find it.

60

Yeah, well, the jury’s not out yet. They may have to go. But the bitchofitis: those four cars were purchased over 10 years. The reason we have four cars is: we bought them, paid them off and kept them. It’s not my fault folks have multiple car payments, it’s not my fault someone leased their car, or took a bath on it when they sold it early, or panicked when gas got pricey and lost $6000 to get 5 more mpg. Heaven forbid someone would work hard for something, then have someone jealous because they couldn’t get one too. Ever had anything someone else wanted? Heck, you’re not eligible for concern then.

I think the distilled essence of my problem is loss. There’s a natural fear of losing something you already have. It’s why we have an insurance industry and extended warrantees. It’s a powerful emotion.

The cars represent a loss of financial wherewithal we used to have. A loss of our previous freedoms. I’ve got a loss of my father. We’re dealing with the potential loss of a bunch of things. Our Dream house, financial security, things we’ve learned to take for granted.

Nothing quite like trying to do the right things the right way and still getting kicked in the nards.