In addition. Don’t worry about who cut that last hole in your parachute as you drop at high speed towards a most inevitable and abrupt stop… And maybe a dead cat bounce.
Anyway, my wife’s car was rear-ended and totalled twice this past year. We buy used but recent so I am 20 grand down this year. Thanks Obama LOL. It hurt financially, emotionally and physically. I was riding and had the kids with us for that second splat, and it was painful. I don’t know what kind of stupid fuck crashes onto a car waiting to make a left at a school zone bus stop corner non the less… On a nice straight away! That stupid asshole bitch was on her phone and petting her dog with driving a good 45mph on a 30. Comes out saying she can’t find her phone… regret on her face for driving while texting.
Anyway the point is that my much older sister in law gave her Honda pilot to her daughter and ordered a Lexus for 70 grand. WTF! She calls it a retirement car. Me, I’m sweating bullets at work trying to keep my job and jump start a couple of the most dull interns you could imagine ever to graduate driving my good old Prius. Everyone seems to have it better than me… except for the interns. I’m having to use my sharpest chisel and mallet to teach them a nice sharp cutting edge. They’re gonna need it. But I digress…70grand on a car while you’re near retirement? She’s either dying and not telling or just plain dumb like a bell. Or loaded. Or both loaded and just stupid. Or maybe that’s easy for people with money and it’s just far from something I would ever do.
My kids are so wasteful…lord have mercy! When I was in school I would keep one pencil for most of the length of the pencil. I would sharpen it with a blade…at school. Now that’s illegal. The kids are required to bring a box of pre-sharpened pencils! Apparently sharpening a pencil is a waste of time. Imagine that! So you open a pencil box, you pull out a new pencil and you write until that tip gets dull. Then you throw it away? And you grab the next pencil??? Oh and my oldest chews thru the tip of her shoes like they were free. Come to find out my wife is going to buy her new $175 dollar shoes??? When I was a kid shoes were $15 to $25 bucks at K-mart. No rebook stuff, We always got the unbranded white foam fake leather upper running shoes. I haven’t seen those in a while but man, those were good shoes. $175??? Holy shit, that’s like a couple of outfits at Goodwill.
It’s a new reality for me. That’s why I just go to work and I let my wife handle the money. I don’t care how much I make or how it’s used up. I grew up poor and if I end up under a bridge one day, so be it, I guess. I just hope that journey teaches them kids something before it’s too late. Live within your means. Life is an unfair bitch ass game and we already lost before even knowing the rules. Only the rich can decide what to do. The rest of us can pretend to make decisions.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
This started at the same time that top-tier income tax rates were brought down from their 93% peak in the late 1950s. Turns out that when you find yourself above that line, you take efforts to actually spend money on things you can deduct, rather than buying up shares that you can’t deduct. When you find yourself $10,000 over the line, and you’re told to send $9,300 to the IRS, you tend to say “Well, fuck that, I’d rather pay out $10,000 to the guys who brought me here, rather than $9300 to the tax man. The good will I get from that bonus is worth a lot more than the $700 the IRS is going to let me keep.”