Author Topic: Your Latte isn't why you're in Debt, and the people who say it is are lying  (Read 17601 times)

Spork

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Well, hopefully the 32oz vodka did not follow my peers to their jobs!!

Let me introduce you to my sister.

seathink

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Well, hopefully the 32oz vodka did not follow my peers to their jobs!!

Let me introduce you to my sister.

Sigh. :/ I was trying to be polite, but yeah, the law of averages....

LAL

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I guess I see more people struggling to afford a house honestly they shouldn't have bought in the first place. They are stressed about PMI, insurance, repairs, etc.  I mean seriously when the house cost 50% of income of course you have no extras.  And are using CC because balancing a budget doesn't work when there isn't enough money period.  I mean I see people buying $700k homes on $125k.  And they say they are struggling? Of course they are.  Well how do you survive when there isn't enough?

ender

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I guess I see more people struggling to afford a house honestly they shouldn't have bought in the first place. They are stressed about PMI, insurance, repairs, etc.  I mean seriously when the house cost 50% of income of course you have no extras.  And are using CC because balancing a budget doesn't work when there isn't enough money period.  I mean I see people buying $700k homes on $125k.  And they say they are struggling? Of course they are.  Well how do you survive when there isn't enough?


Clearly the solution is to go out for drinks or a fancy restaurant that you deserve.

The house stuff is what I find insane. My wife and I are spending a little over 30% of my income on a PTI for a house we're buying with 20% down and it feels like a lot. Because it is a lot and it's a nice house. But that's after tax, tithe, maxing an HSA and 401k, so it's... ah, not the same comparison a lot of other people have when they have 30% income ;)

I can't imagine buying a house on 30% actual takehome pay! It'd be close to double what we're buying..

LAL

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Most can't and say so but won't give up the house.  Then when you see them driving a Yukon or Suburban for their two kids it becomes obvious that the budget is so out of whack that a $5 latte isn't going to change anything.  By the time they have money not allocated for mortgage, $200 cable, $200 cell phone, $1k car payments, $500 student loans, $500 kids activities the latte is nothing.

I will say I stay at home but I don't get parents who stay at home full time and send their kid to daycare/preschool 5 days a week almost full time? Why are they staying at home?  But I guess I can see it's a choice, but a very expensive choice I would argue. And another thing that makes the budget unable to balance versus the $5 latte.

TheGrimSqueaker

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Most can't and say so but won't give up the house.  Then when you see them driving a Yukon or Suburban for their two kids it becomes obvious that the budget is so out of whack that a $5 latte isn't going to change anything.  By the time they have money not allocated for mortgage, $200 cable, $200 cell phone, $1k car payments, $500 student loans, $500 kids activities the latte is nothing.

I will say I stay at home but I don't get parents who stay at home full time and send their kid to daycare/preschool 5 days a week almost full time? Why are they staying at home?  But I guess I can see it's a choice, but a very expensive choice I would argue. And another thing that makes the budget unable to balance versus the $5 latte.

The same reason a non-employed "stay at home" person will hire a nanny or impose on an older child or relative for large amounts of free babysitting. It's because they want more "me time", and have someone willing to enable that decision by substituting their labor or resources to make sure the kids get cared for. That's how they get away with it.

Chris22

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I will say I stay at home but I don't get parents who stay at home full time and send their kid to daycare/preschool 5 days a week almost full time? Why are they staying at home?  But I guess I can see it's a choice, but a very expensive choice I would argue. And another thing that makes the budget unable to balance versus the $5 latte.

Having sent a kid to daycare and now preschool, they are not the same thing.  Daycare is basically "keep my kid alive and reasonably happy so I can go to work" and preschool is "keep my kid alive but also make her learn some things that will be valuable to her in the future while you're at it."  Daycare ran 730AM to 630PM and you dropped your kid off and picked him up any time in those hours; preschool is 8:15-2:15 and ideally they are there the whole time most days, plus there's extra-cost care outside those hours to accommodate working parents which is much more play time and not structured. 

Assuming I could afford it, I would send my kid to preschool regardless of the status of a stay at home parent, because I think it is valuable for the kid.  Daycare, on the other hand, offers much more of a dubious reward, but I still can get how a parent wants some time to him/herself throughout the day; I would agree the kid doesn't need to be in daycare 40 hours a week, but on the flip side you may be paying for that time whether or not you're using it all depending on how the daycare is structured.  You don't always get a discount if your kid is going less than 5 days or less than 8 hours.

opnfld

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The latte is a state of mind.

Papa Mustache

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Ten years ago I worked with a guy who simply had no clue.  He lived with his grandmother so he had no rent, made around $55,000 / year, but never had a nickel to his name.  We were paid biweekly, so of course he hated the longer months, since they had extra days after payday.  Where did it go?  Not lattes exactly, but carryout lunches, fountain sodas and the daily purchase of lottery scratch-off tickets.  He called the scratch-offs his retirement plan.

I work with a few people like this - in other departments. Never had to pay for a place to live - either inherited or continued to live with parents until the parents died. None married. No kids.

Still can't retire somehow - and have made good money forever...

Its a conversational toss up among my other coworkers whether these people work for the income or because they don't have anything else to do with their time.   

SoccerLounge

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Ten years ago I worked with a guy who simply had no clue.  [...]  He called the scratch-offs his retirement plan.
The sad thing is, folks like that often end up squandering their winnings even if they do win, so they end up with nothing to show for it a few years after "retirement".

MgoSam

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Ten years ago I worked with a guy who simply had no clue.  [...]  He called the scratch-offs his retirement plan.
The sad thing is, folks like that often end up squandering their winnings even if they do win, so they end up with nothing to show for it a few years after "retirement".

Yup! Sadly that's how I feel about playing the stock market and why I stick with index funds. Every once in a while I'll look at a stock that I was thinking about back in 2008 and realize how much I would have earned had I invested in it. But I know that had I done so, I likely would have sold out and put the money into another stock, and continued the dance. As this was pre-MMM, I likely wouldn't have considered it, and would instead be trying to earn as much money and living for that instead of living for life as I currently am.

RetiredAt63

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Yup! Sadly that's how I feel about playing the stock market and why I stick with index funds. Every once in a while I'll look at a stock that I was thinking about back in 2008 and realize how much I would have earned had I invested in it.
And then there was Nortel.  Made some people a lot of money, made a lot of people loose a lot of money. 

TheGrimSqueaker

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Yup! Sadly that's how I feel about playing the stock market and why I stick with index funds. Every once in a while I'll look at a stock that I was thinking about back in 2008 and realize how much I would have earned had I invested in it.
And then there was Nortel.  Made some people a lot of money, made a lot of people loose a lot of money.

The stock market is the world's most efficient and bloodless system for transferring large amounts of money from the have-a-littles to the have-a-lots.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!