brianmanahan
Lifer
- Sep 2, 2006
- 24,627
- 6,011
- 136
PlanetJosh
Golden Member
- May 6, 2013
- 1,814
- 143
- 106
I lean to left and one of the reasons why my upper middle class family is doing better is because of the overall stock market bump up ever since the '16 election.
So a number of months after the election I realized this bump appeared to be something long lasting and that's when I toned down my criticism of the current administration. Otherwise I'd sound like a hypocrite. Kind of a moral dilemma for me. I don't mean to make this too political for OT.
Last minute edit: I could start a thread over in P&N about it: Has the stock market bump affected your criticism of the White House? (Don't want to use his name in the OT forum.)
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madoka
Diamond Member
- Jun 22, 2004
- 4,344
- 712
- 121
What!?!?! You're supposed to wait till they sue you. Then if they win, you keep appealing the decision. It's the American millennial way.
ImpulsE69
Lifer
- Jan 8, 2010
- 14,946
- 1,077
- 126
LOL. Market hasn't done crap for me. I'm in the wrong everything and going sideways at best....sigh.
Kaido
Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
- Feb 14, 2004
- 51,612
- 7,261
- 136
A lot of it boils down to financial priorities & really, truly understanding that small things add up. Two discussion points: (not for bragging purposes, but to compare where you put your funds)
1. My wife & I both leased our cars for a good ten years
2. I eat steak & salmon weekly
Leasing was always a fun point of discussion with friends & coworkers because many people consider it a waste of money. I have multiple thoughts on it, but for me, it mostly boils down to having a fixed recurring expense bill every month with no random big-bill surprises. You can get a nicely-equipped Honda Civic (Bluetooth, backup camera, cruise control, etc.) for under $300 a month on a lease (including taxes), which works out to about $10 per day.
If you compare that to, say, common ingestible vices (coffee, alcohol, cigarettes), you can quickly see that a lot of people who complain about not having a good car do, in fact, have the money for one, but choose to put their free cash elsewhere. I have a buddy who consistently spends $100 every weekend drinking. That's $400 a month. That may be excessive for some people, but there's also $7 Starbucks lattes, $12 packs of cigarettes, etc., or even a combination of lower-priced options like a $3 Dunkin Donuts coffee & vaping. I know plenty of people who still spend $300/mo on cable TV for sports as well.
Food is a similar situation. I cook the majority of my meals at home, for a variety of reasons. I can get a frozen salmon filet in bulk at Sam's Club for $2 or a large NY Strip steak for $8. A basic McDonalds meal is $6 and it's easy to spend $10 or $12 when you're there. I've invested in a few convenience tools over the years (deep freezer, sous vide machine, electric pressure cooker, etc.) to help improve my homemade food game & to make cooking easier so that I'll actually do it on a regular basis instead of just eating out all the time ($$$), which have all pretty much paid for themselves over time. Steak & salmon seem like premium products, but even my friends with budget issues always seem to make funds available for drive-through, take-out, and dine-in eating options. Five bucks here, ten bucks there, it all adds up throughout the month & very few people track their expenses to the point where they have a clear picture of where they money actually goes & how it accumulates in certain areas.
It's surprisingly easy to spend $300 or $500 or even $1,000 a month on non-homemade-food, even when you're just buying a $5 Footlong or a Value Meal every day. Which is fine, if you're aware of where your money is actually going & if that's your choice, but then people make the argument that they "can't" do something because of limited funds. In some situations, that is true (I was a poor student once, so I definitely understand being strapped for cash), but in many situations, it simply boils down to where you choose to put your money.
Alternative options are available if you're willing to examine your daily spending over time & if you're willing to shift those funds into other areas. And of course, it's all situational...the bottom line of good financial hygiene is that you can buy anything you can responsibly afford, so if you have the budget available, then more power to you - but like you said, you know why a lot of people are broke, and a lot of people just like to complain, but don't actually want to change their situation. The reality of the situation is often vastly different than what is verbally advertised...
- Oct 28, 1999
- 62,484
- 8,345
- 126
I feel like an an asshole parent, but yeah this is a major pet peeve of mine. It comes across as being cheap, but the reality is that kids just have too much shit. Birthday parties are insane any more. Parents are dropping $200-$500 for an hour or two of bouncy house or gym time. They invite 10-15 kids and they all bring toys for gifts. Rinse and repeat that by 2-10 birthday invites a year. Grandparents and other relatives just want to shower with piles of plastic junk that is interesting for a few minutes and then just sits in a box in closet until it's either tossed, donated or sold in a garage sale. An obscene amount of money is spent on toys that get a few hours of actual play in most cases.
We have really scaled back Christmas gifts for this very reason and I ask relatives to not give any more toys. We are GOOD on toys. And it's all useless anyway when they have a roomful of shit and they mope around claiming they are bored and just want to sit and turn into a retarded pile of goo in front of a TV or watching youtube for hour hours on end.
And don't even get me started on candy. The amount of candy tossed at kids any more is horrifying. I've put a ban on all candy as gifts from relatives because we end up with so freaking much of it between school and holidays.
We have really scaled back Christmas gifts for this very reason and I ask relatives to not give any more toys. We are GOOD on toys. And it's all useless anyway when they have a roomful of shit and they mope around claiming they are bored and just want to sit and turn into a retarded pile of goo in front of a TV or watching youtube for hour hours on end.
And don't even get me started on candy. The amount of candy tossed at kids any more is horrifying. I've put a ban on all candy as gifts from relatives because we end up with so freaking much of it between school and holidays.
Linflas
Lifer
- Jan 30, 2001
- 15,395
- 78
- 91
I think I learned by age 7 to never ever ever ever say I was bored around my parents. That kind of crazy talk led to all sorts of things they could come up with to help me not be bored.
Our friends are spending $1200 for their daughter's 1st birthday party. Why? It will have zero impact on her life compared to a $200 party. (And they argue about money at times) I also know some grandparents that feel stuck in competition with the other set of grandparents. So the kids get showered with toys and the parents just let it go on and on
I waste money my self have the big screen tv, a nice computer and other random toys. I also as of 3 months ago was wasting $500/month on beer and weed. Even then though I saved money in other areas and still had a decent amount in checking. All of this is on 30 - 40k/year, which a lot of people seem to act like its some sort of poverty wage. Which is crazy I live just fine no where near poor. Yet I see people who make way more than me begging for a discount on a furnace repair so they won't freeze. While I politely say sorry can't do it, I'm thinking fuck you buddy your house looks like you need to visit a pawn shop so you won't freeze.
- Jan 2, 2001
- 25,322
- 4,987
- 136
DietDrThunder
Platinum Member
- Apr 6, 2001
- 2,262
- 326
- 126
2,700 sqft with a 3 car garage is the smallest in our neighborhood (paid $168K in 2002) with the largest topping at 4,500 sqft. Everyone's garages are full of junk and they all park in the driveways or street. We are different than most as we park our cars in the garage, and the third bay is my shop.
My wife and I have a method of getting rid of stuff. If we haven't used it in 6 months, it goes into one certain closet, with a get rid of date tag on it. If it hasn't been used in a year it goes to Good Will. My wife is polar opposite of a hoarder. Which I'm glad as we only have what we need, and there is no clutter (well, except for my desk).
My parents and in-laws are a different story. My dad built a $3,000 shed to hold $250 worth of junk. It is full, and they can only pull one car into their two car garage. Their house isn't too bad, but they have a lot of worthless trinkets that will probably be tossed when they are gone.
My in-laws have 5 acres with a 60'x40' building, a 1,400 sqft. storage building, a rear half of a Schlitz Malt Liquor truck, and a two car garage all full with junk. You can only walk through on narrow paths. There are 15 or so vehicles spread around the property. Their house is full of junk as well. AND! They inherited my wife's uncle's hoarder house, which has been sitting untouched for 8 years. They just keep paying the taxes and not doing anything with it. My wife and I have offered to clean it out for them and have it sold, but they are afraid we will throw out something valuable(it is just junk).
I place most of the blame of their hoarding on the fact that they all grew up during the Great Depression, were dirt poor, and had little to no possessions during their youth. So everything has value to them and they can't part with it.
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purbeast0
No Lifer
- Sep 13, 2001
- 53,643
- 6,527
- 126
Every time I go into my garage I notice my wife has moved some of our sons old shit into the garage out of another room. It grinds my gears.
But we plan on having another kid so we don't really want to throw it away because we can use it again on another child. After that though, it's all getting donated.
But we plan on having another kid so we don't really want to throw it away because we can use it again on another child. After that though, it's all getting donated.
purbeast0
No Lifer
- Sep 13, 2001
- 53,643
- 6,527
- 126
Kaido
Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
- Feb 14, 2004
- 51,612
- 7,261
- 136
Great video! The homes in that video looked like my house growing up - cluttered, middle-class suburbia. We weren't hoarders, but we definitely dealt with clutter & "piles". Oh my gosh, the piles. Piles of laundry (clean AND dirty), piles of dishes, piles of stuff on the dinner table, etc. As I've gotten older, I've given a lot of thought to three of the topics in the video, in particular:
1. The mess
2. The hustle
3. The food situation
After watching the hoarder's TV show, I realized that there's such a thing as being "hoard-blind". Kind of like beer goggles, I guess. You become immune to the way your home looks because that becomes your default environment. I eventually settled on a couple of rules at my house, for keeping it clean & presentable:
1. Living spaces require (1) a blueprint, and (2) a maintenance calendar
2. Storage spaces require (1) accessibility, (2) labeling, and (3) inventory
So your two basic types of spaces in a home are (1) living spaces, and (2) storage spaces. Living spaces include bedrooms, kitchen, living room, family room, bathroom, etc. Storage spaces include closets, under your bed, the attic, etc. The basic rules for a living space is that it needs a blueprint, which is basically just a defined layout for where things go. One of the keys to keeping your house clean is that every permanent or transitory item in a room needs a "home", so that when you clean up, you can put things back where they belong. That doesn't just include big stuff like your couch or your TV, but also stuff like a box of tissues or your work bag.
Blueprints are important for several reasons. First, having a home for each item means that cleanup is easy, because it's like pressing the "undo" button on your computer - you can go through & kind of just reset everything back to where it needs to be. But if you've never decided where things need to be, then it's kind of hard to clean everything up because then you're fighting indecisiveness instead of clarity, and then piles happen & over-stuffed storage happens & clutter happens. Second, there's a huge amount of subconscious mental friction that occurs when you're cleaning up & don't have a place for everything because then you're all like "ugh, I have to clean up" because it's a mental fight because things are vague. Third, having to do a "big" cleanup project is also a mental barrier because unless you get in a cleanup mood, nobody wants to waste hours cleaning up their house. It's a huge chore!
So doing that initial push to create a defined blueprint is important because it creates a low-friction "restore" feature for each room, plus it's easy to update your blueprint as you acquire new items or get rid of old items. The next step is to combine that with a maintenance chart, aka a list of chores. I've found that I hate doing long hours of deep cleaning & that I can avoid that by (1) identifying all of the maintenance items that need to be done, and (2) spreading them on a calendar. For example, my half-bath has 22 maintenance items, everything from scrubbing the toilet to taking out the trash to oiling the door hinges to disinfecting the doorknob to cleaning the toilet to washing the mirror to sweeping the floor to mopping the floor. None of them are hard, and they don't all need to be done at once, but they do need to be done on a recurring basis (some daily, some weekly, some monthly, some annually, some as-needed) & writing them out & putting reminders of them on a calendar make it so that there's only a few minutes of required work per day.
When you combine an updated blueprint with a maintenance calendar, then you'll know exactly where everything goes & be reminded of what to do to keep things clean & maintained, without ever having to think about it again. It's a very low-friction system because it takes the thinking out of it & it takes the work out of it. For example, if you have kids, things can get messy quickly. My current after-work living room cleanup procedure is:
1. Pick up all trash & put it in the trash can
2. Pick up all laundry & put it in the laundry bin
3. Pick up all dishes & put them in the sink
4. Put everything in the room back to its "home"
5. Put anything else in the lost & found bin
6. Vacuum the floor
Even if every single thing has been removed from the bins & shelves in the room and items from other rooms have been introduced into the living room (i.e. the room is a total wreck), it's a quick five or ten-minute job to zip through the checklist above & get it back to a clean, usable living space. All of that may sound like over-analyzing it, but if you struggle with the type of middle-class suburban Hoarding 101 type of situation, then it can be a lifesaver in terms of keeping your sanity.
Similar rules apply to storage spaces. First, make sure you can get to your stuff. The easier access you have to your stored items, the better. Shelves & tubs are great options, if you have the space available. When it's hard to get to, it's way more of a hassle. Second, label things (if it isn't obvious what it is, like if it's in a box or whatever) & if you have shelving, label where things go. This makes both finding items down the road easy & also putting things back easy, because you know where it goes. Third, have an inventory list. Gmail is free, Google Docs is free, make a simple spreadsheet of what's in each box so you can just google your inventory when you're looking for something. Ah, the Christmas lights are in the attic in box #17. No more searching for stuff, no more losing stuff, no more having to find stuff.
And of course, living spaces need to be clear of storage items. Living spaces are for being used. You can store items in living spaces, but they can't interfere with your living space functions (when possible, that is...my first apartment was tiny & we just had to deal with shuffling storage items around because we had no space lol). There are a lot of little tricks you can do here. For example, we bought some bed frames with 18" of clearance underneath, which fit 27-gallon totes. I think a full bed can fit 4 and a queen can fit 6 of those bins underneath, so we have a place for spare sheets, winter clothes, out-of-season sports equipment, etc.
None of this is rocket science, but as you get older, get married, have kids, work, get tired, and get busy, it's not like there's anyone there to teach you how to deal with keeping a house neat & tidy, so you get exactly the situation you see in the video from all of those people they interviewed...a plastered fridge, overstuffed fridges & freezers & storage cabinets, piles of stuff everywhere, and too much crap in general. Oh, and one more note on storage spaces - I firmly believe that you can have as much stuff as you can responsibly afford. If you want to store three storage container's worth of garbage & can afford to pay the monthly fee, then more power to you. Not everyone will agree with this opinion, but if you have a need to keep stuff for whatever reason, as long as it's not cluttering up your living spaces & you've got your storage labeled, accessible, inventoried, and can responsibly afford to keep it all, then whatever. Jay Leno has like 300 cars & nobody complains that he's a hoarder, partly because it's not cluttering up his house & making life rough on his family & partly because his storage is neat & clean & organized. But collectors are different than hoarders, and excessive storage is separate even from those two. So if you want to keep a bunch of crap, as long as it's out of your way & you can get to it, it's fine imo.
Anyway, moving on to the second item - the hustle. In the video, they talked about how there are pinch points, like the bathroom or the kitchen, and how many homes only had one bathroom to share for the whole family & things got a little crazy. The way I approached this was by tracking time spent & activities done at certain parts of the day. Like in the morning, you take a shower, so you need a towel & clothes. And you need breakfast & you need to pack a lunch. Things get a little crazy when you're on a deadline to get out the door, so you can switch things up by laying out your towel & clothes the night before & by making your lunch and deciding what you want to eat for breakfast the night before. That way, when you wake up, everything goes nice & smoothly because you've prepared everything for yourself or for your family or for your kids. Just like making the living space blueprints, it's a little bit of a push up-front, but the payoff is less stress & smooth sailing when the time comes to execute. And that changes the morning from a stressed-out yell-fest where everyone is hustling to popping in the shower, getting ready, enjoying breakfast, and getting out the door early. Total gamechanger, just from a few small changes.
Third item, the food situation looked eerily familiar too...cluttered countertops, over-stuffed freezer, a zillion random items in the fridge, and no one really eating healthy or consistently. Plus, family dinner was hard to come by because the dinner table often had piles of stuff on it, and we didn't really follow a set dinner menu, so sometimes it'd just be frozen pizza or pizza delivery or Chinese take-out in front of the TV. Those things equate to poorer healthy, more money spent on convenience foods, and less quality family time spent together. But in the heat of the moment, you respond as best you can, and the way the economy is setup combined with the way human nature works kind of funnels people into this situation that they've somewhat hilariously, yet sadly, identified in their video.
Most people aren't in the situations they're in because they've actively chosen that lifestyle, but more because it's been a passive reaction over time, partly due to a lack of tools & methods for dealing with those situations, which is why I've spent so much time thinking about them & tinkering with how they operate in my own life...I got to the point where I didn't personally want to live in piles-ville or have a crappy diet or have to hustle to work & hustle to bed. I'm definitely still not perfect at it, but that video highlights a situation that a lot of people find themselves in without really knowing why they're in it or how to fix it. And you're absolutely right - I hardly know anyone who actually uses their garage to park their cars in, because their garages are so overloaded with stuff that there's no room, which is funny but also sad.
- Oct 28, 1999
- 62,484
- 8,345
- 126
Yeah but a smash cake for the kid to make a disaster of is like $20. What do spend the extra $1180 on? You can cater in a pretty good meal and stock a decent bar for $500.
purbeast0
No Lifer
- Sep 13, 2001
- 53,643
- 6,527
- 126
The cost of food and drinks completely depends on how many people you are providing food and drinks for, as well as the quality.
It could be $100, it could be $10000.
- Oct 28, 1999
- 62,484
- 8,345
- 126
There's probably some cultural/regional thing at play here too. I'm midwest white as white can be. We potlocked the shit out of parties. Host usually provided some main protein of sorts. Everyone else brought sides/desserts/drinks/ect.
Sure but maybe if you're fighting in front of other people about money don't spend $1200 on a birthday party
Kaido
Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
- Feb 14, 2004
- 51,612
- 7,261
- 136
Yup, lifestyle creep is real! I've posted this elsewhere, but I have a buddy who makes over $100k a year (in a place where that means something) & has to mooch off us (our group of friends) to pay for his lunch when we go out (not that we go any place fancy...it's usually just like splitting a pizza or whatever) because he's broke all the time. Not divorced, no crazy medical debt or student loans or anything, just refuses to budget properly & feels a need to inflate his purchases to match his paycheck.
I think it mostly boils down to a personal willingness to work on things (or not). There's lots of useful systems & tricks out there, if you're willing to try. Simple example, I pre-ordered my VR system & started tucking away money for it every week. It wasn't cheap ($799) & my job doesn't pay zillions, so I have to budget to get what I want. 6 months x 4 weeks on average = 24 weeks. $800 / 24 weeks = about $33.34 per week. I have a little financial tool that auto-withdraws a set amount into a savings account, and my budget at the time allowed for something like $35 a week or whatever, so I just had it fill up that coffer automatically for six months, and now I have a really nice VR system that I can use whenever I want.
Everyone who tries it out loves it & wants one, but most people throw up barriers about the price because they either want the instant gratification of buying it now (which is fine, if you can afford it) or else aren't willing to make other lifestyle adjustments to get what they really want. Which is totally fine, if that's not something that is in your personal set of financial goals, but it always seems like the people who are complaining the most are the people who refuse to track their spending, especially on a daily basis, and don't have a solid system in place for managing their personal finances, i.e. basically aren't willing to do any work to change their situation to be how they really want it to be.
I run into the same situation a lot with the whole health & fitness thing. I carry around a huge lunchbox with all of my food for the day, and have some really good stuff in there to eat, haha. People constantly complain about how they want to get in shape & eat better & get shredded & blah blah blah, but when it comes down to it, they don't really want to change & aren't willing to do some simple things like meal prep. What I do isn't rocket science...a quick morning workout & then eat tasty food all day. But the results compound over time in a positive way, just like saving up for my VR headset did.
Of course, if you're an ATOT Baller, then none of this applies
One of the funniest things I found on the video was when they went into the fact that it is the female - or mother I should say - that gets elevated stress levels by all the clutter/mess. I laugh, because thats exactly how it is at our place. If there is the slightest mess, it's the wife that complains and says we need a maid. The problem is, the wife doesn't want to take the time to LOOK for a good maid... hence it never happens.
But my point is simply this: Yeah, I never get stressed by messes. Why? Because it's not really my stuff... If it were up to me I would toss shit out in an instant. We have things like an entire book-shelf (large, to the ceiling) filled with tons of books and some decoration figures from childhood and college past. I would grab every single thing there and throw it in the garbage (Goodwill) if it were up to me. But it's not up to me, because it's not my shit. I know it has no monetary value. I know that now that we have kids there is no way in hell we are going to have time to read a full book - much less want to read one that we have already read in the past.
EDIT: I guess my main points is that women are great at bullshitting. They have an ideal sense of what they want - but as far as actions to get to their ideal situation? They don't really map that out real well. I think since the wife grew up in a poor family she has a little bit of hereditary Hoarder in her as well.
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For birthday parties we provide everything. Any other parties are potluck. So if we had a bunch of people over for a birthday (we don't) it could get pricey.
And I can really see the benefit of having a kids party at a bounce place or whatever. Pay to have the mess some place other than your house. The flip side is that most kids have as much fun just running around your house and playing with your toys for a birthday party. We've had more than one kid cry when leaving our house because they were having so much fun.
Back on topic, we have a bunch of crap we don't need. I'm a terrible procrastinator. I'll put stuff in the basement to evaluate later and it sits for ages. I really need to purge but when I do have free time I never feel like going through any of it.
pete6032
Diamond Member
- Dec 3, 2010
- 8,148
- 3,586
- 136
rh71
No Lifer
- Aug 28, 2001
- 52,844
- 1,049
- 126
We moved out of our starter house when the twins were 2 due to the amount of large toys (kitchen, ride/push, etc.) and lack of storage. The house had no attic or basement and everything was in the living room & den. As infrequent as they played with everything, they did play with them and I would do it again if we had to. If we didn't have the means to move into a bigger house, we certainly wouldn't have allowed it. It's not like a bigger house isn't more comfortable and the ultimate prize for working hard seeing that we live in it everyday.
Now that they're older, there's undoubtedly less bulk in the toys they want (video games/electronics). I also get a high out of offloading their old things on Craigslist or FB Marketplace for some return. Win/win if you ask me. Our attic is only 1/4 filled and the basement has only 2 shelves of kids stuff also... we're not hoarding despite the abundance of storage space. We use it for a hockey-shooting area, bike storage, and patio furniture storage for winter. I'll probably set-up a workout area at some point too since it's nice and cool down there for summer.
Now that they're older, there's undoubtedly less bulk in the toys they want (video games/electronics). I also get a high out of offloading their old things on Craigslist or FB Marketplace for some return. Win/win if you ask me. Our attic is only 1/4 filled and the basement has only 2 shelves of kids stuff also... we're not hoarding despite the abundance of storage space. We use it for a hockey-shooting area, bike storage, and patio furniture storage for winter. I'll probably set-up a workout area at some point too since it's nice and cool down there for summer.
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Kaido
Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
- Feb 14, 2004
- 51,612
- 7,261
- 136
Part of that is the implementation cycle:
1. Hire a maid
2. Decide what goes where, so you can tell the maid what to do
3. Well now you've solved half the problem - deciding what goes where, lol
If you look at the photos of the clutter in the video, that's half the problem - they haven't whipped up a little blueprint for the room, and they don't have a little chore chart telling them what to do every day, so that they're only spending a max of 15 minutes doing after-work/after-school/before-bed chores. If you're just being reactive & letting the rooms be as they are (i.e. undefined & messy) & doing mood-based reactive cleaning (ah crap, it's a wreck in here, time to clean up!) then you don't get that consistency of living in a clean house all the time & you end up with a mini-hoard that stresses you out to live in. But people lack a system like that, thus they can go to dozens of homes like in that video & see the same situation over & over & over again.
Kaido
Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
- Feb 14, 2004
- 51,612
- 7,261
- 136
I think that's what it boils down to right there - you had things setup like you wanted. Your space was limited, you had little kids, and their job was to play with toys, so you were using your living spaces as intended for your situation. Whereas in the video, there was just a lot of clutter because it hadn't been dealt with because it had built up over time & people didn't have a method for dealing with it properly.
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