This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps

[Engineer]

how is it piss poor planning?

I guess if you're making $120,000 per year and in two months, you don't have a pot to piss in, that's poor planning. I do understand that location effects this (i.e. New York City would burn through 120,000 quickly with cost of living).

 

[OutHouse]

The writer is correct that they shouldn't have sold the Mercedes to buy a crappier car with payments

why have payments? the trade in value of that car would have been more than enough to get a beater for around 3K that is cheap to maintain/insured/registered.

last year I bought a 1998 accord with 160,000 miles for my 17 year old for 2500 bucks and its a solid car, have had zero issues with it. it gets her to school and work.

if i was in her shoes that merc would have been gone. paid off or not they were just holding onto a memory of the good times and could not part with it.

 

[JEDIYoda]

So... are we supposed to feel sorry for this person? Clearly she can afford Mercedes maintenance, those cars are not known for being cheap to fix. If you own a Mercedes, you're not poor. If you were poor, you'd sell the Mercedes and buy an old Honda, and come out thousands of dollars ahead.

Just wow....how do you know that her husband wasn`t changing the oil and taking care of the basic maintenance. I owned a Mercedes once and I found everything except major repair I could do!!

I know you responded that way bwcause its fun being an idiot!!

 

[OutHouse]

I guess if you're making $120,000 per year and in two months, you don't have a pot to piss in, that's poor planning. I do understand that location effects this (i.e. New York City would burn through 120,000 quickly with cost of living).

to be fair they were fairly new to the 120K club, now if they were in the 120K club for 20 years and were broke in 2 months then yes i would say that would be piss poor planning.

 

[JEDIYoda]

The left, champions of missing the point.

There was no point....have you checked the resale value of a Mercedes....not good.....the poster was not posting out of research or knowledge...

 

[Engineer]

to be fair they were fairly new to the 120K club, now if they were in the 120K club for 20 years and were broke in 2 months then yes i would say that would be piss poor planning.

If they were fairly new, don't you think that they should have been more moderate for a while until they had established themselves? It's been preached for years to build at least a 6 month FULL emergency fund and lately, even more (a year). I think it's poor planing but that's just me.

 

[Cozarkian]

why have payments? the trade in value of that car would have been more than enough to get a beater for around 3K that is cheap to maintain/insured/registered.

last year I bought a 1998 accord with 160,000 miles for my 17 year old for 2500 bucks and its a solid car, have had zero issues with it. it gets her to school and work.

if i was in her shoes that merc would have been gone. paid off or not they were just holding onto a memory of the good times and could not part with it.

Go back and read the rest of my post. The very next word in the sentence you quoted was "but" and that sentence went on to criticize the writer for failing to consider the possibility that she could purchase a reliable car without the need for payments.

 

[OutHouse]

Go back and read the rest of my post. The very next word in the sentence you quoted was "but" and that sentence went on to criticize the writer for failing to consider the possibility that she could purchase a reliable car without the need for payments.

sorry missed that.

 

[Zodiark1593]

With a relatively poor resale value, keeping the Mercedes was probably the better choice as compared to taking a chance with a used car they knew little about, especially as it was in good running condition. In this case, the devil you know is preferable to the devil you don't.

 

[zanejohnson]

the mercedes was paid off lol..... if it was in sound shape, and paid off, there's ABSOLUTELY NO REASON AT ALL to try to swap it up for something "more economical." wtf is more economical than a paid off, one of the most reliable makes, and probably efficient as fuck (most mercedes are)

and it's a QUALITY CAR. parts might be a little more expensive, but i bet the car goes for 400,000 miles if properly maintained....



these people who think they should have ditched the mercedes remind me of my sister's logic...

she drives 06 Passat V6 (the one i used to daily drive, sold it to her)...... the car is rock solid... does't drink a bit of oil, everything is in good mechanical condition, A/C needed a recharge, i did that for her...

now.... she threw the biggest hissy fit in the world. THE WORLD. when shortly after i sold it to her (for family price too, in fact, i dont think i ever even got paid more than half of the thousand i asked her for it, but it's family, it's no big deal)

but she threw the BIGGEST FIT because shortly after i sold it to her the ball joint on the driver side started going bad..you know, clicking and popping during slight turns.... me and a buddy threw a case of beer and some wrenches at it, replaed both sides, along with all the buschings/boots, etc...

car's still going strong to this day....drives like almost new....


basically, there are people out there who can't see past the ends of there own noses.....my sister was ready to trade that passat in to the hyundai dealership.....they were gonna give her some ridiculously stupid low number towards the down payment, and then she'd be stuck with a 300 dollar a month car payment.... she would have done it too..


now she has slightly older car.....but it's in damn good condition, and has 200k miles on it, drives better than my little Chevy Tracker that has 100k miles on it...it'll probably outlast it... i KNOW the car itself will, it's just a sturdier, better built car... the motor will need major repair (head gasket, timing belt), but that car itself aint falling apart any time soon...

just like that mercedes..

some people just think different, those the are types that demand satisfaction NOW, and that's how you dont get satisfaction, that's how you get disappointment... you get satisfaction by stepping back, assessing your situation and weighing pros and cons of said situation, and making the SMART MOVE. not the move that trades in, beautifully engineered (built to last, built to not fall apart on the autobahn)....because of a 100 dollar part......for a brand spankin new...throw away car, that is just that...you drive a hyandai for 100 thousand miles, and its either falling apart, or ready to be thrown away....

 

[Bitek]

^^^ thank you for some sense.

Pissing about the merc completely misses the point

 

[Zaap]

So... are we supposed to feel sorry for this person? Clearly she can afford Mercedes maintenance, those cars are not known for being cheap to fix. If you own a Mercedes, you're not poor. If you were poor, you'd sell the Mercedes and buy an old Honda, and come out thousands of dollars ahead.

The irony is... they HAVE a Honda also! It just wouldn't start the day she went to collect.


So lets see if we have this straight, I'm trying to channel the lib-logic outrage here:

It's Bush's fault she got pregnant and decided to give up her job as a producer to be a stay-at-home mom.

It's Bush's fault a newspaper laid off her husband in 2008... and still his fault he can't find a job 6 years later. But of course not Obama's. Job was probably outsourced, right? Some dude in India is just making up stories for a local US paper.

Bush forced her to be a stay at home mom, but not him to be a stay at home dad (even though if he hasn't found a job, he is anyway.)

Its heart-wrenching first world plight when ONE of your cars won't start and so you must suffer the terrible indignity of *sniffle* driving your Mercedes down to pick up your social services. Oh man, that's hardship first-worlder style.

So basically the guaranteed middle class existence can get derailed by having twins, quitting your job to raise them, buying a house for 3x more than it was *ever* worth while everyone was caught up in "flip this...!!!" insanity that was surely going to last forever and ever...

...but everything will be fine so long as we've got Obama to stick it to those greedy businesses and get everyone on the dole. Thanks Obama!

Wow. Heartwarming.


In all seriousness... I find her tale of woe neither special or all that terrible. Her circumstances went from "nothing to write home about" to "not really all that terrible". Whoopidy.

 

[Zebo]

People are stupid. Unless you can pay cash for your house and your Mercedes you don't need a Mercedes. Nothing but a money pit preventing wealth accumulation. Obvious right? made 120K and have no savings and using food stamps.

white, affluent suburb, where failure seemed harder than success.

Anyone catch this entitlement? I'm sure they felt entitled to a 6Ksqft house luxury cars etc learned behavior from their boomer parents who are also irresponsible spend thrifts living off and destroying greatest/silent generations sacrifices and habits.

 

[Victorian Gray]

The irony is... they HAVE a Honda also! It just wouldn't start the day she went to collect.


So lets see if we have this straight, I'm trying to channel the lib-logic outrage here:

It's Bush's fault she got pregnant and decided to give up her job as a producer to be a stay-at-home mom.

It's Bush's fault a newspaper laid off her husband in 2008... and still his fault he can't find a job 6 years later. But of course not Obama's. Job was probably outsourced, right? Some dude in India is just making up stories for a local US paper.

Bush forced her to be a stay at home mom, but not him to be a stay at home dad (even though if he hasn't found a job, he is anyway.)

Its heart-wrenching first world plight when ONE of your cars won't start and so you must suffer the terrible indignity of *sniffle* driving your Mercedes down to pick up your social services. Oh man, that's hardship first-worlder style.

So basically the guaranteed middle class existence can get derailed by having twins, quitting your job to raise them, buying a house for 3x more than it was *ever* worth while everyone was caught up in "flip this...!!!" insanity that was surely going to last forever and ever...

...but everything will be fine so long as we've got Obama to stick it to those greedy businesses and get everyone on the dole. Thanks Obama!

Wow. Heartwarming.


In all seriousness... I find her tale of woe neither special or all that terrible. Her circumstances went from "nothing to write home about" to "not really all that terrible". Whoopidy.

So, not only did you miss the point of the article, you went out of your way to completely misrepresent what was written. Congratulations I guess.

 

[Matt1970]

It's Bush's fault a newspaper laid off her husband in 2008... and still his fault he can't find a job 6 years later. But of course not Obama's. Job was probably outsourced, right? Some dude in India is just making up stories for a local US paper.

.

The problem was thinking a career in newspapers is going to last. Sorry but the times are changing and print is dying.

 

[Zaap]

She says absolutely nothing about what happened to her job. She could have gone back to work and her husband raised the twins. Isn't being a stay-at-home mom kind of a sell out in libby-loon-land anyway?

Eventually, when the first-worlder entitlement syndrome wears off, both of them will realize they were actually lucky as hell. Both getting to stay home and raise their kids during the best years -they don't seem to have sacraficed *anything* as far as house/cars, three squares a day... just *gasp!* a little pride in temp loss of first worlder entitlement. And their fellow taxpayers paid for a lot for them. Oh wait, I'm sorry... lib-speak only.... Obama paid for things for them.

First-worlder plight. I'm sure third-worlders living in huts wishing they had a bicycle to go miles down to the nearest river where their only source of water is read this on their wireless iPads and just weep at the hardship of it all.

 

[Zaap]

So, not only did you miss the point of the article, you went out of your way to completely misrepresent what was written. Congratulations I guess.

Yeah yeah we know... the point was she knows what it is to be poor because on one day when her Honda wouldn't start, she had to use her husbands Mercedes and people looked at her funny. That's the very face of poverty.

I didn't misrepresent anything... you didn't read the article. But then, you never understand anything that's being discussed.

 

[Zebo]

She says that the car was paid off long before she even met her husband, so it's likely an older Mercedes (late-90s, maybe), and probably not a high end S-Class or what have you. If we're talking an E-class sedan with 150,000+ miles on it, the car isn't worth much (probably less than $5,000). It's easy to sit back and say, "YEAH, flip that Mercedes and get an old Buick and save money" but without knowing the facts, you're talking complete nonsense. Not all Mercedes have a huge resale value, and we have absolutely no indication of what specific Mercedes they own. You can't just assume it's worth a lot of money solely based on the badge.

OK, I'm wrong, it says it's a 2003 Kompressor. So like $10,000 tops? KBB estimates around $6,000 for good condition in the area mentioned in the article. That's not going to buy you a ton of car with money left over.

And how much did it retail for? all the trimmings was 60-70k. Imagine if put in stock market for term and bought a $12000 echo? talking about having 120K cash instead of 10K-6k you cant sell. Plus echo gets better mpg and has more room you enjoy for 10yrs.

cars are a liability not an asset best to minimize liability spending until you're really rich. Like set for life.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Yeah yeah we know... the point was she knows what it is to be poor because on one day when her Honda wouldn't start, she had to use her husbands Mercedes and people looked at her funny. That's the very face of poverty.

I didn't misrepresent anything... you didn't read the article. But then, you never understand anything that's being discussed.

Would you mind pointing out just where in the article she wrote or even implied:

"It's Bush's fault she got pregnant and decided to give up her job as a producer to be a stay-at-home mom."

"It's Bush's fault a newspaper laid off her husband in 2008... and still his fault he can't find a job 6 years later. But of course not Obama's. Job was probably outsourced, right? Some dude in India is just making up stories for a local US paper."

"Bush forced her to be a stay at home mom, but not him to be a stay at home dad (even though if he hasn't found a job, he is anyway.)"

 

[Zaap]

Would you mind pointing out just where in the article she wrote or even implied:

"It's Bush's fault she got pregnant and decided to give up her job as a producer to be a stay-at-home mom."

"It's Bush's fault a newspaper laid off her husband in 2008... and still his fault he can't find a job 6 years later. But of course not Obama's. Job was probably outsourced, right? Some dude in India is just making up stories for a local US paper."

"Bush forced her to be a stay at home mom, but not him to be a stay at home dad (even though if he hasn't found a job, he is anyway.)"

That's from Dumb McOwned's #2 post in this thread, dummy. It was all Bush's fault. This is a forum. People discuss things and comment on them, or have you not figured out how forums work?

 

[Strk]

And how much did it retail for? all the trimmings was 60-70k. Imagine if put in stock market for term and bought a $12000 echo? talking about having 120K cash instead of 10K-6k you cant sell. Plus echo gets better mpg and has more room you enjoy for 10yrs.

cars are a liability not an asset best to minimize liability spending until you're really rich. Like set for life.

So you're assuming he bought an AMG Merc? He could have bought the basic Merc just to say he owns a Merc. Hell, we don't even know if he bought it brand new.

 

[Victorian Gray]

That's from Dumb McOwned's #2 post in this thread, dummy. It was all Bush's fault. This is a forum. People discuss things and comment on them, or have you not figured out how forums work?

There's a good boy. Have a cookie

 

[zanejohnson]

So you're assuming he bought an AMG Merc? He could have bought the basic Merc just to say he owns a Merc. Hell, we don't even know if he bought it brand new.

this.


and op said trade it in for an echo???


fucking echo would fall apart in under 200k miles. the mercedes is a FAR superior built car, all around.


let see....... choices are....keep the paid off merc that is gonna last another 200k miles probably?

or trade it in, have a car payment, and a car made of plastic that's gonna fall apart in 100k miles...

 

[OverVolt]

Rent the car for rental income?

 

[werepossum]

If they sold it right away, sure, but if they only sold if after the unemployment turned into months, then a year, and as their savings dwindled (but before the savings disappeared) then I think they would still be confident in knowing they made the right choice.

Yeah, had they sold it only when they actually needed the money I don't think they would have been kicking themselves if their situation immediately thereafter improved.

Rent the car for rental income?

+1