Author Topic: LOL @ DC Urban Moms  (Read 33296 times)

anonlawyer

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LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« on: May 19, 2013, 01:22:53 PM »
This forum is hilarious.  http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/forums/show/54.page

You have your usual threads about people who make $375K a year who can't make their ends meet -- http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/304867.page

What made me laugh the most was this thread where a poster was concerned about not spending money on themselves, and everyone rushes in to tell her to see a therapist to diagnose some sort of mental illness -- http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/302728.page

Frugal_in_DC

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2013, 02:38:20 PM »
Good heavens, $3,000/month for daycare...

There's even a MMM thread - http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/305428.page .  My favorite post is on p. 3: "This is a classic mental illness of hording money and not spending it. I forsee many medical bill in the near future."

brewer12345

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2013, 04:12:37 PM »
What a bunch of ignorant jackasses.

this is precious:

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I know this is a DCUM cliche, but I feel sorry for his child.

As Mrs. Lovejoy on the Simpsons squeals, "Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!"

footenote

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2013, 04:34:24 PM »
Thanks for posting the DCUM MMM thread. My favorite reply: this is how "dirty hippies live."

Whenever someone says "Your choice is awful [because it's not my choice]" it almost always means "Your choice threatens my choice, so I have to hate on your lifestyle with scorn and anger."

Self-employed-swami

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2013, 04:39:41 PM »

BPA

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2013, 04:42:27 PM »
Awesome!

But I'm actually surprised at how positive some of the comments are about MMM.  The other comments are hilarious.

oldtoyota

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2013, 04:58:23 PM »
I went to one of the threds on DCUM mentioned above and could not understand this post. How could you net only $12,500 from a HHI of $290K? OMG!!!!!!


" Our HHI is around $290K and we also have 3 kids in daycare. Our take home, after maxing out both 401(k)s, benefits, dependent care, taxes etc., is around $12,500.
Our big monthly fixed expenses are:
$4800 mortgage
$3000 daycare (soon to drop to $2000 as one starts K)
$600 to 529 plans
$800 to various savings accounts
$450 for a car loan

After that, it's groceries, utilities, yard care, life insurance, parking, etc. We are fortunate to have paid off our student loans before kids! "

Self-employed-swami

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #7 on: May 19, 2013, 05:00:13 PM »
They are talking in monthly net income, with yearly gross salaries.

oldtoyota

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #8 on: May 19, 2013, 06:51:09 PM »
They are talking in monthly net income, with yearly gross salaries.

Yes. That means they spend $140K+ per year. Holy cow.

**Updating this to add "K" after the "140."
« Last Edit: May 19, 2013, 07:24:54 PM by oldtoyota »

FlorenceMcGillicutty

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #9 on: May 19, 2013, 07:18:58 PM »
Yeesh. These are hilarious but they are painful reminders of my area (also high cost of living). We have a hefty mortgage ($3900) and spend a ton on child care. When you pull out those two expenses, our spending looks a lot more reasonable. Still, I have heard people in our neighborhood say that they can't imagine how a family could get by on less than $200k/year. This was when I was happily living in the 'hood on less than that. Sigh.

citrine

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #10 on: May 20, 2013, 08:31:46 AM »
Wow....I read a few of the posts and I am blown away!
I especially loved the post about spending $10K for clothes in one year!  Holy mother of god!

mbk

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #11 on: May 20, 2013, 08:44:18 AM »
They are talking in monthly net income, with yearly gross salaries.

Yes. That means they spend $140K+ per year. Holy cow.

**Updating this to add "K" after the "140."

Not that much I think. I won't count the mortgage and the $1400 they are putting in savings. It comes out much less. To me they seems to be doing well with the 401k and 529 plans.

AllChoptUp

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #12 on: May 20, 2013, 09:08:35 AM »
Thanks, very entertaining! 

RedMaple

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #13 on: May 20, 2013, 09:35:09 AM »
"Wow, you make $14,000 AFTER taxes and you only donate $25 to charity? Wow."

See this way, they can tell people they donate to charity monthly... 

Self-employed-swami

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #14 on: May 20, 2013, 09:42:08 AM »

plantingourpennies

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #15 on: May 20, 2013, 09:49:09 AM »
What an odd forum! Nothing but Anons.

Its like /B for rich urban mothers.

Best,
Mr. PoP

Buttercup

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #16 on: May 20, 2013, 01:54:34 PM »
On the thread about MMM someone posted "He is an illegal immigrant."
How exactly do they know that? Just because someone isn't originally from this country doesn't mean they are illegal. I'm pretty sure their families were immigrants at one point.
Just because someone has chosen a path less followed people feel the need to always criticize and find a way that the cheated or scammed their way into it.
Someone also posted that MMM must has his hand hidden in a trust fund somewhere. No!

mindaugas

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #17 on: May 20, 2013, 02:15:28 PM »
We used to pay $1100 (half my wife's salary) a month for an infant. I can understand $3k in daycare if you have 3 kids.

FlorenceMcGillicutty

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #18 on: May 20, 2013, 02:54:07 PM »
We used to pay $1100 (half my wife's salary) a month for an infant. I can understand $3k in daycare if you have 3 kids.

Yes to this. The cheapest child care I could find was $1700/mo. It's not what you want to skimp on either, if that means poor quality. We ended up doing a nanny share where our half is $10/hr. Three kids would be a bargain at $3k.

That said, once you carve out a ridiculous mortgage because of high cost-of-living and the child care, there's still a lot left over if you're making $200k+. But I agree with some of the uban moms that the money doesn't go as far as you think it will.

Jamesqf

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #19 on: May 20, 2013, 04:49:25 PM »
Heres one about retirement age...

This one really struck me:
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I will need roughly 65% of my current income ($150K for me; $110K for DH)

That's $169K/year.  Barely enough to survive on :-)

oldtoyota

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #20 on: May 20, 2013, 07:16:52 PM »
We used to pay $1100 (half my wife's salary) a month for an infant. I can understand $3k in daycare if you have 3 kids.

Interesting you compare the cost to your wife's salary. Why not your salary?

Splashncash

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #21 on: May 22, 2013, 03:58:50 PM »
Yet another reason I am glad we got out of the DC area.  It is truly like that living there.   

foobar

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #22 on: May 23, 2013, 11:15:21 AM »
Umm you do realize that you are laughing at someone with a mental illness?  We are not talking about someone buying levis instead of prada. We are talking about someone whose inability to spend money on basic life necessities (ie. I am assuming those holes in the clothes are not fashion statements) is negatively affecting her life. She suffers the same problem as the profligate spender just at the other end of the spectrum. Instead of getting great joy from spending, she suffers great pain. You want to be in the middle. A CBT might be a good solution. At 150/hr it will not take her long to learn that buying 100 bucks of clothes is a lot cheaper:)

Personally whenever I read those forums, I like to imagine what a family in ethopia would think of my spending. I imagine it would go something like: 500/mon (Yes per month not decade) for food. Can you believe how wasteful americans are.






What made me laugh the most was this thread where a poster was concerned about not spending money on themselves, and everyone rushes in to tell her to see a therapist to diagnose some sort of mental illness -- http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/302728.page

foobar

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #23 on: May 23, 2013, 12:59:15 PM »
Probably because he is a sexist pig. He should have wrote "We considered having the lowest wage earner in stay home with kid but we figure even though it was about revenue netural short term, long term we would have more money by having both of us work.".

We used to pay $1100 (half my wife's salary) a month for an infant. I can understand $3k in daycare if you have 3 kids.

Interesting you compare the cost to your wife's salary. Why not your salary?

skyrefuge

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #24 on: May 23, 2013, 09:38:42 PM »
Personally whenever I read those forums, I like to imagine what a family in ethopia would think of my spending. I imagine it would go something like: 500/mon (Yes per month not decade) for food. Can you believe how wasteful americans are.

Poor Ethiopia! By dint of a famine that happened almost 30 years ago, it remains frozen forever as our go-to stand-in for the poorest of the poor. When really that's just because most of today's Internet chatterers were at an impressionable young age in 1984 (and, there was a big ol' concert).

Yeah, they're still tremendously poor relative to the US; their per-capita GDP (PPP) is about 40 times lower (meaning they might expect your monthly food budget to last 3-4 years, rather than a decade). But people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the undisputed kings of poorness in the modern era, surely wish they were Ethiopians, who are massively richer, by more than 3 times (a difference greater than the one between the US and Libya!) So you were actually dead on with your guess of making your food budget last a decade, you just had the wrong country!

Jamesqf

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #25 on: May 23, 2013, 11:27:57 PM »
But people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the undisputed kings of poorness in the modern era...

Undisputed?  Where do you get your figures?  Certainly appears that North Korea beats everywhere on the poorness scale.

Or maybe it's statistics: I think the lists of poorest countries (like this one: http://www.therichest.org/world/poorest-countries-in-the-world/ ) just take the country's GDP and divide it by population.  So North Korea might have a higher per-capita GDB, but the ugly fat kid and his clique glom on to most of it, leaving the scraps for most of the population.

foobar

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #26 on: May 24, 2013, 07:41:27 AM »
I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Democratic republic of congo. Long live Zaire..... And damm Ethiopia has had a good run over the past 10 years pretty much tripling their gdp.



Personally whenever I read those forums, I like to imagine what a family in ethopia would think of my spending. I imagine it would go something like: 500/mon (Yes per month not decade) for food. Can you believe how wasteful americans are.

Poor Ethiopia! By dint of a famine that happened almost 30 years ago, it remains frozen forever as our go-to stand-in for the poorest of the poor. When really that's just because most of today's Internet chatterers were at an impressionable young age in 1984 (and, there was a big ol' concert).

Yeah, they're still tremendously poor relative to the US; their per-capita GDP (PPP) is about 40 times lower (meaning they might expect your monthly food budget to last 3-4 years, rather than a decade). But people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the undisputed kings of poorness in the modern era, surely wish they were Ethiopians, who are massively richer, by more than 3 times (a difference greater than the one between the US and Libya!) So you were actually dead on with your guess of making your food budget last a decade, you just had the wrong country!

skyrefuge

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #27 on: May 24, 2013, 08:55:10 AM »
Undisputed?  Where do you get your figures?  Certainly appears that North Korea beats everywhere on the poorness scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita

"Undisputed" because while other countries move several places up or down depending on which of the 3 lists you look at, DRC is dead last in all of them, and it's not even close. The CIA list is the only one that includes North Korea, but they're 164 out of 195.

It's certainly possible that the per-capita figures hide the effects of inequality, though it's worth noting that 55 of 1,000 North Korean households have TVs, while in DRC it's only 2.

Jamesqf

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #28 on: May 24, 2013, 01:25:22 PM »
"Undisputed" because while other countries move several places up or down depending on which of the 3 lists you look at, DRC is dead last in all of them, and it's not even close. The CIA list is the only one that includes North Korea, but they're 164 out of 195.

Still, all those lists are basically working off per capita GDP, and as the Wikipedia article itself admits "...GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living;[2] although this can be problematic because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income..."

Quote
It's certainly possible that the per-capita figures hide the effects of inequality, though it's worth noting that 55 of 1,000 North Korean households have TVs...

I'm not entirely happy with the idea that having a TV equates to wealth, since I don't own one, yet am in the upper quintile of US wealth.  But even so, the figures would seem to support my argument.  If the fat kid's clique and their hired enforcers are 5% of the population, they're the ones with the TVs.

garg33

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #29 on: May 24, 2013, 03:23:50 PM »
The problem with calling something is undisputed is that, once somebody disputes it, you are automatically and forever wrong, regardless of how much evidence you have on your side. ;)

BPA

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #30 on: May 30, 2013, 04:01:37 PM »
Umm you do realize that you are laughing at someone with a mental illness?  We are not talking about someone buying levis instead of prada. We are talking about someone whose inability to spend money on basic life necessities (ie. I am assuming those holes in the clothes are not fashion statements) is negatively affecting her life. She suffers the same problem as the profligate spender just at the other end of the spectrum. Instead of getting great joy from spending, she suffers great pain. You want to be in the middle. A CBT might be a good solution. At 150/hr it will not take her long to learn that buying 100 bucks of clothes is a lot cheaper:)



What made me laugh the most was this thread where a poster was concerned about not spending money on themselves, and everyone rushes in to tell her to see a therapist to diagnose some sort of mental illness -- http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/302728.page

I think it's a stretch to call it a mental illness.  If it is then MMM must have it too.  He says he wears clothes with holes and the Mrs. gets a haircut once a year.

Anonlawyer:  FWIW I am medicated for an anxiety problem and I didn't find your post offensive in the least.  And some of the comments that followed the OP in that thread were ridiculous.

killingxspree

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #31 on: May 31, 2013, 12:13:18 PM »
Having holes in your clothes (why wouldn't you stitch these up?) and not cutting your hair for a year is not the same as not spending money on basic necessities. I won't die if I don't cut my hair. If I wanted or needed a haircut there is nothing stopping me from getting a sharp pair of scissors and doing it myself. To me it sounds more like a 'i-feel-sorry-for-myself' whinge fest.

nktokyo

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #32 on: May 31, 2013, 11:46:58 PM »
I wear clothes with holes around the house on weekdays when everybody else is at work. Boom.

BPA

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #33 on: June 01, 2013, 09:40:33 AM »
I wear clothes with holes around the house on weekdays when everybody else is at work. Boom.

Awesome.  I'm jealous.  It's like my friends on FB who hate Mondays because they have to wear pants again.

You know what's creepy?  I'm starting to feel like the MMM equivalent of a Trekkie.  Anyone else remember the SNL skit where William Shatner is at Trek convention answering questions and the Trekkies know more about his life than he does?  How did I remember that MMM has holes in some of his clothes and his wife gets a haircut once a year?  As William Shatner said during that skit, "Get a life!"  lol

Self-employed-swami

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #34 on: June 01, 2013, 10:00:28 AM »
I wear clothes with holes around the house on weekdays when everybody else is at work. Boom.

Awesome.  I'm jealous.  It's like my friends on FB who hate Mondays because they have to wear pants again.


Fuck pants.  That's what I think.

I LOVE that when I am at work, I can roll out of bed, make a coffee, and do my morning updates for my clients, all without getting out of my pyjamas. 

BOOM. :)

When I eventually do 'get dressed' it is usually old sweatpants and wholy t-shirts.

Grigory

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #35 on: June 01, 2013, 02:11:53 PM »
What made me laugh the most was this thread where a poster was concerned about not spending money on themselves, and everyone rushes in to tell her to see a therapist to diagnose some sort of mental illness -- http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/302728.page
Well, going to a therapist that charges by the hour for listening to your money woes is certainly a fashionable way to spend money. :))

texscrooge

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Re: LOL @ DC Urban Moms
« Reply #36 on: June 01, 2013, 04:40:13 PM »
Thanks for sharing this forum.  I don't know whether to laugh or cry when someone says something like this (wondering what MMM does all day):

"what does a 30-year-old dude with a family do all day that doesn't involve earning, or spending, money? I guess he could meditate all day, that's a time-consuming but free activity, but otherwise, I'm baffled."