General Politics Discussion (X) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1437

At my first nursing job I worked with this girl who was very nice, and her parents had bought a house that needed a little bit of work in a sought after town in MA. The parents paid for all of the work to be done and made the house beautiful and updated and then gave the house to this girl and her fiancé. They sold it a little while later for a ton of money and bought another bigger fancier house in the area. Someone else at work was talking about her and described her as "good with money" and then relayed how she had sold the first house and bought a bigger one.

It went up my ass sideways because she hadn't done anything smart or wise or good, she had just taken advantage of a very nice opportunity that someone had gifted her. I suppose there was always a chance she could sell the first house and then blow all of the money on expensive frivolous things, which she didn't do, which I suppose is a "good with money" maneuver, but if that's the only bar to clear then I am "good with money" also, even though I don't fucking have any.

The person I was complaining to and pointing out that she wasn't actually "good with money" said I was just jealous and being an asshole. I admitted that I was indeed jealous, because I would love to be gifted a free house in a prime area, but I wasn't being an asshole, I was just correct and they were wrong and stupid.

 

One that stands out to me I was at an event and talking to a friend of a friend who was kind of lecturing me on becoming successful by working hard and starting his own business after college even though he chose a major that he couldn’t find work in. It happened because I was complaining that I couldn’t find a job in HR which is what I went to undergrad for thinking there were a lot of jobs in HR (in 04 there were but by the time I graduated in 08 we were in a recession and HR was often the first to be cut down). Turns out after college his parents bought him a bar for over a million dollars. Like yeah if you own a bar debt free you can probably be a successful small business owner thanks for the advice.

 

Yeah, that's not "good with money" it's just privilege plus not being bad with money.

Being "good with money" is maybe going to help you a little bit at the margins, but it's not going to be enough to afford you any class mobility. And most of what people traditionally describe as being "good with money" is just foregoing current enjoyment and overworking yourself when you're young and have the energy so that you don't have to work as long or as much when you're older. And while that may be the right decision for some, it's not for everybody.

 

Everyone loves to conveniently leave out that information about how you clear that first financial hurdle and go from having the math work against you to working in your favor.

 

It's why Dave Ramsey (though he sucks) even though I think a lot of his shit is not exactly the correct route to take but it works for folks because typically they are already in a hole and looking for a way out and forces budgeting and focus on your finances. That said, the pay cash for everything mindset is something that I just don't understand but I get it from a discipline aspect. Because honestly the smart financial thing is to take the super low or 0% interest rate rather than pay cash for something.

 

This is at a different job, but years ago when I was looking at trying to buy a house, one of my supervisors told me to make sure I put down at the absolute bare minimum 25% of the cost as a down payment, but ideally more like 30-35%. I told her that I understood mathematically why she would say that, but that I did not have the several tens of thousands of dollars that she was describing to use as a down payment. She said "ask your parents to give it to you". She said it just like that.

We knew each other at work because she was one of my supervisors, but I had/have no idea why she thought my parents had tens of thousands of extra dollars lying around or why she thought they'd just give it to me if they did.

 

We were able to buy our first home and do the traditional 20% down payment, avoiding PMI and getting a better interest rate (at a time they were already historically low), only because my wife's grandparents set aside money for each of their grandchildren. It was put in trust until they turned 40 and could only be used before that for education, medical expenses, starting a business, or buying a home. Even still, we didn't go overboard and bought a relatively cheap house in an area we knew and liked and had a good idea would grow, and were able to sell 6-years later for significantly more than we paid.

Some of that was being "good with money" but it was mostly privilege and luck.

Also I don't think putting down more than 20% really makes that much of a difference, it will lower your payment some and maybe get you a slightly better interest rate, but you might be able to make up that difference taking the extra amount you would've spent on the down payment and investing it.

 

Hurricane is about to roll through Florida again so soon.

Desantis and all his goons should be forced to go door-to-door, visiting all the houses that still have blue tarps on their roof from Hurricane Ian and apologize for being so inept and purposefully bad at their jobs.

 

tip number 1, simply don't be poor

 

I'm both financially literate but also not "good with money", IMO. And what I mean by that is I spend money on frivolous useless shit too often lol.

But I am pretty financially literate and good with money otherwise, and even have some basic investment knowledge, and it's never going to help me "get rich" because the old adage "got to have money to make money" still rings true. I knew some really smart investments in the stock market to make during covid, and they were indeed smart investments. But I've only made a little amount of money off of them specifically because I didn't have a ton to invest in the first place.

I also think back to my friends when I was in HS/just graduated HS that I worked with at a restaurant, asking why my parents didn't just get me a new car when mine was crappy and had an oil leak and etc. Two private school kids. It was kind of funny seeing them realize they were now friends with a public school kid whose parents couldn't afford to just buy a new car.

 

Blue-Collar vs. White-Collar Pay: Why a Decadeslong Trend Is Flipping

 

My problem is no one can convince me that the stock market isn't monopoly money

 

Obligatory

 

Hey my realtor has been saying this to me all weekend looking at houses!

 

make sure your realtor is a certified ghost realtor otherwise they won't tell you if it's haunted

 

Don't borrow any of the money for the house, just use cash to pay for it - otherwise you end up paying the bank more in the long run! Much more, actually.

 

Being good with money means being good at using it to get or do things

 

It’s one house, Grant. How much could it cost?

 

A whole house? More like whole paycheck!

 

does he look like a realtor?

 

kinda yeah