$70K for a new car? Good grief, that's so sad. My last car cost just 5% of that, paid in cash with no loan, and I do NOT live with my parents. If my kids ever do that (live with me and buy a $70K new car), then they will drive right back to the car dealership to give the keys back or find their own place to live.
"Budgets are for poor people"
. . . and for Fortune 500 companies.
Here's one that I've heard a couple of times over lunch from two guys who were complaining about the rising cost of college and how they will need massive financial aid or their kids will be out of luck.
Me: "Well you have lots of time if you start now, so you could also open up a 529 plan and you'll have 10 years to save. That's what I did. Even if you only put in $100 a month it would add up and help."
CW1: "You should not invest in 529 plans because you don't know if your kids will even want to go to college."
CW2: "Yeah, it's much better to have other types of investments. I would never open one of those."
Me: . . . (silently take a bite of the sandwich I brought from home.)
Ummm, okay, I'll buy that viewpoint about more flexible investments to some extent. But weren't we talking about paying for college?
CW1 complains about his small apartment and laments that he will never even be able to save up enough to buy a house-which is unfathomable to me since I know what we all make which is plenty to buy a house. Neither of them have ANY investments at all other than what our employer is putting in their retirement funds (in our case they just put in and employees don't
have to ante up to get the employer contribution.) Both sometimes complain about being buried in credit card debt and CW2 has admitted he has less than 2K saved otherwise; considerably less than his credit card debt.
Mostly when financial talk comes around I just let them commiserate and keep my ideas to myself. Because really they are just justifying that they don't save for college by blasting the particular investment mechanism as unwise. I'm not sure how they justify their overall lack of saving while they meanwhile spend money on all sorts of frivolous shit (fancy resort trips, tablets/ipads for everyone in the family, gaming systems, etc.)