I'm having trouble understanding the point of credit cards. I just use mine the same way I would use a debit card, then pay it off manually at the end of the month. I've never accrued more debt than I had savings in the bank. Somehow, that means I can be trusted with huge sums of debt? I've never put more than $1,000 worth of debt onto that card, it's purely for food and gas, yet the bank thinks that means I can be trusted with a mortgage? How does that justify a 6-figure loan?
The system is nonsense. If you sit down and really think about it, credit cards don't exist for the sake of empowering the impoverished. It's meant to be a temptation towards materialism/consumerism and poverty for the masses. Pretty fuckin gross dude.
The purpose of a credit card is to provide credit. The point of it contributing towards a credit score is to prove you can handle credit. As you are able to be trusted to not spend more than you actually can because you don't. They gave you the rope and you didn't immediately hang yourself.
The reason that's important is because a loan is negotiated into monthly payments. They don't give a shit what you do with the loan, just that they are filled every month. Even in the case of say, losing your job, you could just restructure the loan. It's basically a budget test.
Basically the only reason to use one unless you spend enough to get airline miles that matter or something.
Cause realistically no one's going to completely fuck themselves up with an overdraft and 99% of the population won't be negative in a debit account.
Irresponsible with a debit card is over drafting paying for a mechanic. Irresponsible with a credit card is a two week vacation in Thailand. Just because someone can sit with 20 bucks in the bank account doesn't mean they can handle 100,000. However if they can manage 5000 in credit consistently then they have at least some control over their life.
>How does this justify a 6-figure loan?
Because you were responsible with the small sum and paid it back on time, the data says you're incredibly unlikely to blow the large sum and never pay it back. Same reason why you can poll 1000 people and get accurate measures of the general population.
I use a credit card for most things. I have it automatically paid off every month. It’s a travel reward card, so my points buy me a free round trip flight to Europe every year. Plus it builds credit and I can get my money back if it’s stolen
>I'm having trouble understanding the point of credit cards.
Really only two half decent reasons:
1. Building a credit score so you can get a better mortgage
2. Getting certain benefits that come with card usage (cash back, airline miles/status, etc)
I'm pretty sure reason #1 is about coercing people into opening credit card accounts so the number of cardholders is large and they can milk merchants for transaction fees.
*Oh you'd like a mortgage? I don't really trust you. You know how I could trust you? If you buy one of my credit cards and use a lot for a long time... that would go a looong way!*
It's a stepping stone to prove you can handle a mortgage. If someone pays off their credit card every month, then the bank can give them a loan and make some income for a solid while. If someone doesn't pay off their credit card every month, the bank makes money off of their interest payments.
Makes a lot of sense to me tbh.
Seriously. I see some people trying to buy gpus for months while waiting for a discound when buying in credit. Like man all this time that you were waiting you could have kept that money and pay 15%~ less now.
edit: 30>15%
But if they are waiting for a discount why would they instead buy full price + a couple months worth of awful credit card interest?
Most people aren't emptying their account to buy a GPU, they just don't want to pay so much for it
As a generally anti-car person, I support your ability to own a truck, because you have a job that justifies it by necessity.
How it worked prior to the mass availability of automobiles, is that the farmer would go into the nearest town for whatever he needed, and if he needed to go to any other town, he would take the train.
The unfortunate thing about the USA is that the train systems are not efficient. For one they only cover certain cities. Another problem is that unless you have a gas guzzler its often about the same price to drive a vehicle (gas cost) as a single ticket. If you drive with multiple people in the car it can be significantly cheaper than travel by train. Let alone the flexibility of both time and destination. Public transportation is abysmal in this country.
If you're in the US and in a suburb, then it's quite possible that won't be enough to cover the expensive suburban infrastructure. There's a reason why so many local governments go through a bankruptcy crisis every 30 years
You mean the toll road I pay to drive on? What infrastructure do you think they build just for suburbs? I've watched my suburb turn from bumfuck nowhere surrounded by cornfields to a city proper & the government hasn't spent one goddamn dime on infrastructure. I'm sorry you have a hardon with hate for the suburbs, hopefully your mortgage application gets approved next time buddy!
Well, on top road infrastructure, most suburbs have highly spread out and therefore inefficient utilities such as water and electricity. The property taxes should ideally account for the upkeep of that infrastructure in perpetuity, but the costs these massive systems amass over the years far outweighs the amount of taxes paid in US low density suburbs.
>Water & electricity are private co-ops, so the government isn't involved with them either, same with my trash & recycling service.
Check how much government money those private co-ops take.
Co-ops are nonprofit entities owned by the members, numbnuts, my power bill is so much cheaper than it used to be when I had to have a city owned for profit entity, why? Because the city owned entity tried to make fat profit to put into the general fund so they could do dumb shit like spending millions of dollars on bike lanes, just for cyclists to ride on the sidewalks. Austin, TX, is the city, if you're wondering.
Utilities are subsidized and it’s not just the roads, but the need for parking lots to take up most of the lot on which a business operates. It is in no uncertain terms that sprawling suburbs and the commercial areas around them are rarely self-sustaining in design.
I have a lot of conservative takes, but favorability to the way suburbs are built now in North America, in fact the way they effectively must be built by law is not one of them. A lot of money is sunk into something which ultimately comes up negative in terms of returns, putting the government in more of a deficit. Negligent, excessive spending and corruption do a lot more of that, don’t get me wrong, but why defend the modern suburb? In principle, it jacks up housing prices, necessitates ownership of a car to get anywhere, and puts people out of some natural form of exercise for it.
Turns out that when you sprawl out, you need to sprawl out your infrastructure too, making those costs orders of magnitude higher. Generally what happens is either the suburbs go broke, or the dense city center gets to bail out the suburbs.
Yeah, that way you get the benefits of both a vehicle and a pedestrian with none of the restrictions! Red light? Now you're a pedestrian. Green light? You are now a vehicle. Lay into those peddles and never look back. You are now everyone else's problem.
Did you just change your flair, u/heple1? Last time I checked you were a **Leftist** on 2023-6-1. How come now you are a **LibCenter**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know?
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You have to walk across hills and valleys, across 6 lane stroads, up and along embankments, hike along train tracks, go within 2 feet of cars going 100 miles an hour without any protection, trek through virgin forest, and wade across a polluted river just to walk to a fuckin pizza store a half mile away in much of America, if you have a car, you can just drive.
Millions of people live in walkable cities in the US. It's so pleasant those cities have done everything they can to ban guns because they all want to kill each other.
it'd take me an hour to get anywhere, and where I live the weather is miserably hot and humid 8 months outta 12
I mean I do have a bike, but I only use it for exercise
Everything around here is designed for cars, even discounting the shocking number of people who would actually run over cyclists for fun you'd probably still get hit by a car.
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You can be frugal in the suburbs, I live there. Also most bars around me would literally be burned down if they tried changing 12 bucks for cocktails. Still gets pretty expensive drinking at bars so there's these things called parties, BBQ's, backyards, shit like that.
My cousins live in the burbs. They both got jobs in a little shopping center that's literally a five minute walk from their house. They had to get cars to go to work because people drive like maniacs out there are and their commute was legitimately too dangerous to walk.
You basically have to match the madness of everyone else to survive out there. Drive at their insane speeds (70 is old-people speed) or getting rear-ended is an inevitability. I went to a family gathering a few weeks ago, and my cousin picked up my family at the train station. On the 20 minute ride to the party, we were nearly hit on two separate occasions. I was front passenger.
First, some dude just straight up yolo'd into our lane with a huge trailer, no signal. Cousin braked hard to avoid taking the trailer to the side of his car.
Second, dude's out in the crosswalk (no one is stupid/insane enough to use it anyway) in the middle, straight only lane, no turn signal. We're in the left-turn lane. Cousin says "I feel like this guy is gonna turn left on the green, so I'm not going to go immediately or he'll hit us." When the light turns green, other guy immediately slams the gas and takes the left turn, still no signal.
The problem is there is no first offense, let alone second offense. The police might've had something to say about the trailer thing, but otherwise they generally condone this behavior. They also drive like maniacs in their civilian vehicles.
Driving is the single most dangerous thing that most people do. I promise no matter how other people are driving you're more likely to die while driving a car than walking, unless you're in an area with gang violence. If they told you that's why they were lying, probably just too lazy like 90% of other people against walking anywhere.
I'm not really a fuckcars guy. I live in NYC, and though my neighborhood has been experiencing a lot of changes which are bringing in some really unsafe, asshole drivers, the vespa/small motor riders are still the biggest shitheads on the road by a mile, followed by bicyclists. They will go faster than our fairly slow speed limit while ignoring any lights, drive/ride in the opposite direction of traffic, and basically threatening to crash into pedestrians. Bikers will weave in and out between street and sidewalk in busy neighborhoods where half the sidewalk is already eaten by restaurants which were allowed to overexpand during covid. They feel like enemies in a video game who are on a somewhat fixed path but are trying their best to collide into something and suicide-kill it.
What were you ordering? I'm a recovering alcoholic but I would purposely order Manhattans not too sweet because it was cheaper than 2 shots of whiskey. $6-$7 instead of $8-$10 even with non-house liquor just mid range.
Depends on where you live. If you live in rural Appalachia and make 119K a year you can according to the Banks (so grain of salt) afford approximately 360K mortgage. If you put 20% down (which you can maybe do with savings/personal loan/loan from 401K (which you pay off with a personal Loan) you can afford a 450K house theoretically which again, given the location stated will probably have 4 or 5 beds, 3 Baths. And around 3-4K sq. ft and will usually also be on a lot larger than 3 or 4 acres.
Ball parking all of this because it depends on a million different factors.
In my area, most 4 bedroom houses are small row houses with very small bedrooms. When I think mansion, I think 7-10 bedrooms. Those houses always go for a couple mil. They are way out of reach for people making low six figures.
big house != opulent mansion. There are countless poorly finished McMansions out there in flyover states that nobody wants and you could easily afford on 119k a year.
Actually, the real question is live with your parents to save up for property or move out hoping for that slim, sliver of a chance you might get laid having your own bachelor pad.
Of course, if you pick the second it's *totally* society's fault if you can't afford rent all by yourself.
ELI5 how boomers made it impossible to own a home.
I believe it, because to buy my parents’ house I would need to make roughly 50-75% more than they were at the time adjusted for inflation, but I don’t know how.
It's not boomers who were snatching up all the real estate when prices shot up this last year or two. I bought my first house a few months ago and it needs a lot of work, and a few years ago it would've been a hundred thousand less. But it is what it is. I blame spoiled kids who work in HR, DEI, or advertising and get paid more than people in tech and the sciences. We gotta cut HR positions from like 100k a year to 50k tops, and hire chemists and physicists at 100k instead of 50k. It's all backwards. The morons get paid way more than people who are competent. And we wonder why these banks are failing.
I mean, sure, but that's still a quarter of your wage? Half your wage? The thing about having zero standards for yourself and just pocketing all the money you save eating your parent's food underneath their roof with their electricity and their water is like doubling your wage.
Housing unaffordability is a bit of a meme from young people that legitimately do not understand that budgeting is essential for social mobility. If you're under 30, you might want to rethink the whole journeyman thing when you move far from your family and support network.
I mean, or you could do the going away to college to have loads of sex meme?
You'll totally be one of the dudebros slaying the tinder scene, collecting all the collectables, I know it bro! I believe in you!
Two-thirds of my wage.
I intend to live like this my whole life. I have zero intention for social mobility. I do not want to escape poverty. I love living in poverty, sincerely. Fewer possessions = fewer worries. No subscriptions, my only bills are rent and groceries. This is the life!
Personally if that your outlook on life great
I probably recommend a van life so you can travel and enjoy new places and new experiences
Though remember your young enjoy it though I believe your outlook will change a bit later on but
Live life in the way it make you the most content
Kinda
Automobiles are a tool helpful in many aspects but in others,other modes of transportation should be used.
Shouldn’t be banned or rid ourselves but decrease some of our dependence on it.
I understand where you're coming from, but I'd like to add some nuance to your argument - the expansion of automobile infrastructure is extremely damaging to society - public transport is far superior for the vast majority of travel, if the infrastructure is maintained efficiently, which it can be for significantly less than huge automobile infrastructure. This doesn't take away from the practicality of working people like musicians and interior decorators for whom the use of a van improves the efficiency of their work significantly (fuck carrying entire PA systems on trains lol) - so it's not the automobile itself that does that much harm, but the odd culture that surrounds it and unnecessary expansion of its infrastructure, when maintenance combined with expansion of *public* infrastructure is far more efficient.
You cant plan ahead when your future is impossible to build anyways. Just riding the Kali Yuga. Enjoying this circus, clown show. Cant feel sadness anymore.
Could be for some, but not for all. Some people are happy with less than others and if someone’s happy, then let them be happy regardless of your or someone else’s opinion. Additionally, how much do you think blue collar workers make? I can guarantee it’s more than you might think
The guys I've worked with were making $10-$15 because it was in Backwater USA. Maintenance crew made around $15-$20, welders approximately $60K.
They were happy making less because the alternative was working at a meat plant or automotive plant where they'd be worked even harder. The guys I was with were working 60 hour weeks in the Summer, it was brutal enough
Ahh, ok
I did concrete labor/finishing to get through college and was doing similar enough, but that was entry level. I lived in the Dakotas, but even in rural shops you could get $20 minimum with a year or two of experience even in rural towns
I recently started at a machine shop in here Kansas. Starting pay is $18/hour, with a $2,500 sign on bonus (paid out over 6 months). And as long as you learn the machines and meet your quota's, it is possible to make up to $29/hour after a few years.
But this is the same town I was born and raised in, and I have no intention of moving. The occasional vacation, which will probably be roadtripping through the Plains/Rockies or down to Texas (which are the two I usually do). But I make plenty of live my life, and am engaged and hope to actually settle down sometime in the next few years.
$20 is good but those guys deserve way more, I couldn't last a week doing the shit they did. It was sad to see the old guys with blown out backs and busted knees
Interestingly enough the old guys we had (not rural) could move pretty well which surprised me and some of the other younger guys. It wasn’t Union, so there is that, but for me it was able to get my engineering degree and pay rent so I can’t complain
Sitting in my home village, seeing the same 10 people every day and not travelling further than a couple miles would be literal paradise for me. I can always look at pretty pictures of places online, but local friendships are forever.
Average leftist be like "*No dont be content with good wage and job security. You must ALSO want to travel the world instead of being content with the nature around you.*"
There is definitely something to learning to cast off one’s materialism, reducing one’s ego and learning to live happily and free
Unfortunately such a thing is tremendously difficult but I believe it would go a long way to healing the hearts of those who live in constant discord as a result of their lifestyles
>Unfortunately such a thing is tremendously difficult
It was extremely easy for me but I grew up with a Jewish father so he taught me how to save my shekles
So many people have an aversion to canned vegetables and beans now. They have no idea how much money people save by buying canned goods over fresh per year
This is called Epicureanism, in philosophy.
The philosophy of avoiding pain, weighing what you want vs how much you’ll need to work to get it, and living simply.
It was the inspiration for St Augustine’s vision of how Christian monasteries are supposed to be.
Stoicism also dips heavily into this. Seneca holds that the more things you possess, the more liability you have, because everything you own you have to protect, maintain, and use in order for it to provide happiness to you. Thus, it's better to own less.
In Raleigh you kinda get a good mix
Thought our public transportation kinda suck
I mean i can bike to most place using sidewalk/trails with my bike
Some sidewalk needs some work but do able
With good public transportation raleigh could achieve being more walkable
I used to have a similar opinion but one day i went biking around and realized how interconnected our city was and godamn
Could it be better yes but really not that bad especially with the number of trails and sidewalk paths.
And this is outside of downtown area not in it
Literally went walking to my college to see if it was possible technically i drove a bit because their was one section that is know for pedestrians accident but most of the walk was on a trail and it was nice(took me 2 hours but did it cause i wanted to)
I got to give it to the city planners they did a fairly decent job
>Income: $119,000 Expenditures: $130,000
I think it is a "I can't manage money problem".
The same thing can happen with a lower income but it's harder to recover from your bad spending being poor than being well off.
I honestly don't know what you could spend more than $40,000 on. Sounds like a waste of your free time. Take for example dining out. There are people in this world who dine out every day at some fancy restaurant. Why? You spend at least 30 minutes commuting back and forth between your house and the restaurant, then spend 60 minutes eating. But that's not all! Because you're rich, and rich people can afford to "eat healthy". And that means 3 meals a day. So you will also spend 30 minutes preparing and eating breakfast, because you're apparently too bougie to eat eggs and toast. And then in the good case, you spend the same length of time preparing and eating dinner. In the worst case? You dine out again.
And now you've spent 2.5 hours of your life eating. Per day. I'd rather starve myself.
That’s got to be after taxes as well as when home prices weren’t insane.
Gonna pull in just over 6 figs as our household income and after, taxes, rent, car payment, 401k, health and car insurance, gas, basic food (not eating out) student loan payments, phone bill, internet, pet food etc.
there isn’t much wiggle room as I thought there would be.
Still a bit rough. Even with the poverty pill. It gets a lot harder as you have more kids and need to go from a studio to a 2-3bedroom unit. On the bright side, at least I'm not in debt and I didn't make dumb college $$ choices.
There’s people living in rent controlled apartments near where I live, nice area but paying 400 monthly rent for at least a decade and mid-high six figure salaries
$12,000 barely covers my health insurance alone, and that's before copays and such. I need my health insurance or I will literally die from my disability. Medicaid only covers the crappy medicine for my disability which will keep me alive, mostly bedbound (definitely unable to work), and miserable.
Credit card debt is cringe
I'm having trouble understanding the point of credit cards. I just use mine the same way I would use a debit card, then pay it off manually at the end of the month. I've never accrued more debt than I had savings in the bank. Somehow, that means I can be trusted with huge sums of debt? I've never put more than $1,000 worth of debt onto that card, it's purely for food and gas, yet the bank thinks that means I can be trusted with a mortgage? How does that justify a 6-figure loan? The system is nonsense. If you sit down and really think about it, credit cards don't exist for the sake of empowering the impoverished. It's meant to be a temptation towards materialism/consumerism and poverty for the masses. Pretty fuckin gross dude.
The purpose of a credit card is to provide credit. The point of it contributing towards a credit score is to prove you can handle credit. As you are able to be trusted to not spend more than you actually can because you don't. They gave you the rope and you didn't immediately hang yourself. The reason that's important is because a loan is negotiated into monthly payments. They don't give a shit what you do with the loan, just that they are filled every month. Even in the case of say, losing your job, you could just restructure the loan. It's basically a budget test. Basically the only reason to use one unless you spend enough to get airline miles that matter or something.
Then why don't they use your debit card history? Overdrafts count against your score, constant positive balance counts towards your score.
Cause realistically no one's going to completely fuck themselves up with an overdraft and 99% of the population won't be negative in a debit account. Irresponsible with a debit card is over drafting paying for a mechanic. Irresponsible with a credit card is a two week vacation in Thailand. Just because someone can sit with 20 bucks in the bank account doesn't mean they can handle 100,000. However if they can manage 5000 in credit consistently then they have at least some control over their life.
I mean, I guess. I just don't like that you have to constantly take out debt to get a good credit score.
Then how would they know you’re good at managing debt?
If you're good with money you have, it's not a fat stretch to say you'll be good with money you don't have.
>How does this justify a 6-figure loan? Because you were responsible with the small sum and paid it back on time, the data says you're incredibly unlikely to blow the large sum and never pay it back. Same reason why you can poll 1000 people and get accurate measures of the general population.
So the trick is to be a responsible consumer for a few years, then take a big ass loan and hide somewhere in south east asia? I have an idea, brb
Forsin
Another reason is that reverting a false or fraudulent charge on credit card is extremely easier than reverting a debit card charge.
I use a credit card for most things. I have it automatically paid off every month. It’s a travel reward card, so my points buy me a free round trip flight to Europe every year. Plus it builds credit and I can get my money back if it’s stolen
>I'm having trouble understanding the point of credit cards. Really only two half decent reasons: 1. Building a credit score so you can get a better mortgage 2. Getting certain benefits that come with card usage (cash back, airline miles/status, etc) I'm pretty sure reason #1 is about coercing people into opening credit card accounts so the number of cardholders is large and they can milk merchants for transaction fees. *Oh you'd like a mortgage? I don't really trust you. You know how I could trust you? If you buy one of my credit cards and use a lot for a long time... that would go a looong way!*
It's a stepping stone to prove you can handle a mortgage. If someone pays off their credit card every month, then the bank can give them a loan and make some income for a solid while. If someone doesn't pay off their credit card every month, the bank makes money off of their interest payments. Makes a lot of sense to me tbh.
Why save money for 6 months to buy a pc, when you can buy it now and pay for it for the next 6 months?
> pay for it for the next 7 months? FTFY, don't forget to account for interest.
Seriously. I see some people trying to buy gpus for months while waiting for a discound when buying in credit. Like man all this time that you were waiting you could have kept that money and pay 15%~ less now. edit: 30>15%
But if they are waiting for a discount why would they instead buy full price + a couple months worth of awful credit card interest? Most people aren't emptying their account to buy a GPU, they just don't want to pay so much for it
0% interest for 6 months
why buy something you don't have the money for up-front?
I *do* wish I could live without a car, but unfortunately my town is **W I D E**
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I live in a town of 4500 people and run a small farm. Unfortunately, it would be near impossible not to have a truck.
As a generally anti-car person, I support your ability to own a truck, because you have a job that justifies it by necessity. How it worked prior to the mass availability of automobiles, is that the farmer would go into the nearest town for whatever he needed, and if he needed to go to any other town, he would take the train.
The unfortunate thing about the USA is that the train systems are not efficient. For one they only cover certain cities. Another problem is that unless you have a gas guzzler its often about the same price to drive a vehicle (gas cost) as a single ticket. If you drive with multiple people in the car it can be significantly cheaper than travel by train. Let alone the flexibility of both time and destination. Public transportation is abysmal in this country.
What’s even sadder is that we used to have a much better passenger train system, but it was mostly dissolved by the 1960s and 70s
Based libs
Damn suburbs with their massive front and back yards, wide roads, minimum parking spaces and low property taxes.
Low property taxes? Bitch my property taxes alone are over $12k a year
If you're in the US and in a suburb, then it's quite possible that won't be enough to cover the expensive suburban infrastructure. There's a reason why so many local governments go through a bankruptcy crisis every 30 years
You mean the toll road I pay to drive on? What infrastructure do you think they build just for suburbs? I've watched my suburb turn from bumfuck nowhere surrounded by cornfields to a city proper & the government hasn't spent one goddamn dime on infrastructure. I'm sorry you have a hardon with hate for the suburbs, hopefully your mortgage application gets approved next time buddy!
Well, on top road infrastructure, most suburbs have highly spread out and therefore inefficient utilities such as water and electricity. The property taxes should ideally account for the upkeep of that infrastructure in perpetuity, but the costs these massive systems amass over the years far outweighs the amount of taxes paid in US low density suburbs.
Water & electricity are private co-ops, so the government isn't involved with them either, same with my trash & recycling service.
>Water & electricity are private co-ops, so the government isn't involved with them either, same with my trash & recycling service. Check how much government money those private co-ops take.
Co-ops are nonprofit entities owned by the members, numbnuts, my power bill is so much cheaper than it used to be when I had to have a city owned for profit entity, why? Because the city owned entity tried to make fat profit to put into the general fund so they could do dumb shit like spending millions of dollars on bike lanes, just for cyclists to ride on the sidewalks. Austin, TX, is the city, if you're wondering.
Utilities are subsidized and it’s not just the roads, but the need for parking lots to take up most of the lot on which a business operates. It is in no uncertain terms that sprawling suburbs and the commercial areas around them are rarely self-sustaining in design. I have a lot of conservative takes, but favorability to the way suburbs are built now in North America, in fact the way they effectively must be built by law is not one of them. A lot of money is sunk into something which ultimately comes up negative in terms of returns, putting the government in more of a deficit. Negligent, excessive spending and corruption do a lot more of that, don’t get me wrong, but why defend the modern suburb? In principle, it jacks up housing prices, necessitates ownership of a car to get anywhere, and puts people out of some natural form of exercise for it.
Mine are at least twice that. $12K is cheap.
My God. Is that a million dollar house on the lake?
Nowadays that's not too bad. My guess is you're in NE.
Turns out that when you sprawl out, you need to sprawl out your infrastructure too, making those costs orders of magnitude higher. Generally what happens is either the suburbs go broke, or the dense city center gets to bail out the suburbs.
mfw walking exists:
I did walk to the store once, but it was more because I was bored. Took me over an hour to get there
Have you tried bikes?
Yeah, that way you get the benefits of both a vehicle and a pedestrian with none of the restrictions! Red light? Now you're a pedestrian. Green light? You are now a vehicle. Lay into those peddles and never look back. You are now everyone else's problem.
I advocate for using bikes. I don't advocate for being an asshole with bikes.
I’d have to bike for half an hour along a busy highway just to get to that one shopping complex. If I wanted to go anywhere else it’s over two hours.
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You have to walk across hills and valleys, across 6 lane stroads, up and along embankments, hike along train tracks, go within 2 feet of cars going 100 miles an hour without any protection, trek through virgin forest, and wade across a polluted river just to walk to a fuckin pizza store a half mile away in much of America, if you have a car, you can just drive.
Don't forget about the big bad wolf.
#DuuuuuuuuVaaaaaal
I don’t wish I could live without a car, I liek cars. NYOOOOOM TRY AND CATCH ME COPS
Wish there were more walkable cities in the west. In the east most are by default and it’s nice
Millions of people live in walkable cities in the US. It's so pleasant those cities have done everything they can to ban guns because they all want to kill each other.
Nice walkable cities*. I rather not be in a town we’re defending my shop gets me thrown in jail
Why not get a bicycle?
Because if I rode a bike I might lose weight, and as an American I never lose.
Based and obese pilled
Based and I'm going to start using this pilled
it'd take me an hour to get anywhere, and where I live the weather is miserably hot and humid 8 months outta 12 I mean I do have a bike, but I only use it for exercise
That is the worst possible reason to own a bike.
Eh, I enjoy it sometimes.
The worst possible reason to own a bike is having to own one because you’re poor.
Because you would die in a car crash because cars would run you over for fun.
What is fucking wrong with Americans. Afraid of people who have a bicycle?
Everything around here is designed for cars, even discounting the shocking number of people who would actually run over cyclists for fun you'd probably still get hit by a car.
I have 5 cars where did I go wrong
You go wrong with not flaring up😉
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You can be frugal in the suburbs, I live there. Also most bars around me would literally be burned down if they tried changing 12 bucks for cocktails. Still gets pretty expensive drinking at bars so there's these things called parties, BBQ's, backyards, shit like that.
My cousins live in the burbs. They both got jobs in a little shopping center that's literally a five minute walk from their house. They had to get cars to go to work because people drive like maniacs out there are and their commute was legitimately too dangerous to walk.
If you’re driving two blocks to go to work that’s inexcusable lmao.
Not too dangerous to drive though?
You basically have to match the madness of everyone else to survive out there. Drive at their insane speeds (70 is old-people speed) or getting rear-ended is an inevitability. I went to a family gathering a few weeks ago, and my cousin picked up my family at the train station. On the 20 minute ride to the party, we were nearly hit on two separate occasions. I was front passenger. First, some dude just straight up yolo'd into our lane with a huge trailer, no signal. Cousin braked hard to avoid taking the trailer to the side of his car. Second, dude's out in the crosswalk (no one is stupid/insane enough to use it anyway) in the middle, straight only lane, no turn signal. We're in the left-turn lane. Cousin says "I feel like this guy is gonna turn left on the green, so I'm not going to go immediately or he'll hit us." When the light turns green, other guy immediately slams the gas and takes the left turn, still no signal.
The only solution is to pull licenses on the second offense, impound the vehicle, and prison time for driving without a license.
The problem is there is no first offense, let alone second offense. The police might've had something to say about the trailer thing, but otherwise they generally condone this behavior. They also drive like maniacs in their civilian vehicles.
Driving is the single most dangerous thing that most people do. I promise no matter how other people are driving you're more likely to die while driving a car than walking, unless you're in an area with gang violence. If they told you that's why they were lying, probably just too lazy like 90% of other people against walking anywhere.
fuckcars moment
I'm not really a fuckcars guy. I live in NYC, and though my neighborhood has been experiencing a lot of changes which are bringing in some really unsafe, asshole drivers, the vespa/small motor riders are still the biggest shitheads on the road by a mile, followed by bicyclists. They will go faster than our fairly slow speed limit while ignoring any lights, drive/ride in the opposite direction of traffic, and basically threatening to crash into pedestrians. Bikers will weave in and out between street and sidewalk in busy neighborhoods where half the sidewalk is already eaten by restaurants which were allowed to overexpand during covid. They feel like enemies in a video game who are on a somewhat fixed path but are trying their best to collide into something and suicide-kill it.
Hell hath no fury like wisconsin drunks when you raise their booze prices.
Cocktail are $16 in my country. So about US$11
I went out to a bar tonight where the cheapest cocktail was 11 and the most expensive was 18
What were you ordering? I'm a recovering alcoholic but I would purposely order Manhattans not too sweet because it was cheaper than 2 shots of whiskey. $6-$7 instead of $8-$10 even with non-house liquor just mid range.
I got a draft beer ($6)
And yes that's a picture of my actual bike
Pretty cool bike
Very based bike
Imagine thinking that you can afford a mansion on 119k/year lol
Depends on where you live. If you live in rural Appalachia and make 119K a year you can according to the Banks (so grain of salt) afford approximately 360K mortgage. If you put 20% down (which you can maybe do with savings/personal loan/loan from 401K (which you pay off with a personal Loan) you can afford a 450K house theoretically which again, given the location stated will probably have 4 or 5 beds, 3 Baths. And around 3-4K sq. ft and will usually also be on a lot larger than 3 or 4 acres. Ball parking all of this because it depends on a million different factors.
In my area, most 4 bedroom houses are small row houses with very small bedrooms. When I think mansion, I think 7-10 bedrooms. Those houses always go for a couple mil. They are way out of reach for people making low six figures.
That the fun part, you can’t!
big house != opulent mansion. There are countless poorly finished McMansions out there in flyover states that nobody wants and you could easily afford on 119k a year.
You can if you leave the cities. At least the house would look like a mansion next to section 8 housing
Or even rustbelt. Go get that 8 bedroom for 200k in Detroit.
Actually, the real question is live with your parents to save up for property or move out hoping for that slim, sliver of a chance you might get laid having your own bachelor pad. Of course, if you pick the second it's *totally* society's fault if you can't afford rent all by yourself.
Boomers fucking trashed the dream of owning your own home. We should mooch of them as much as possible out of spite
ELI5 how boomers made it impossible to own a home. I believe it, because to buy my parents’ house I would need to make roughly 50-75% more than they were at the time adjusted for inflation, but I don’t know how.
It's not boomers who were snatching up all the real estate when prices shot up this last year or two. I bought my first house a few months ago and it needs a lot of work, and a few years ago it would've been a hundred thousand less. But it is what it is. I blame spoiled kids who work in HR, DEI, or advertising and get paid more than people in tech and the sciences. We gotta cut HR positions from like 100k a year to 50k tops, and hire chemists and physicists at 100k instead of 50k. It's all backwards. The morons get paid way more than people who are competent. And we wonder why these banks are failing.
Simple, buy an old van and go for a hippy nature loving vibe to really just smoke weed in it and get laid.
Better yet, carry a tent and some clothes on your back and live in this way John Muir pill
Better yet bring no clothes and become one with ug and live off of nature
Based and living in a van down by the river pilled
I mean, I pay $500/month and get plenty of boy ass, so I'm not mad
Whether you're a bloke or a chick, getting guys isn't even remotely impressive. Guys are easy af.
Which is itself wild cause trying to hook up with cute twinks has made me want to work out more than any of my exgirlfriends ever did.
I mean, sure, but that's still a quarter of your wage? Half your wage? The thing about having zero standards for yourself and just pocketing all the money you save eating your parent's food underneath their roof with their electricity and their water is like doubling your wage. Housing unaffordability is a bit of a meme from young people that legitimately do not understand that budgeting is essential for social mobility. If you're under 30, you might want to rethink the whole journeyman thing when you move far from your family and support network. I mean, or you could do the going away to college to have loads of sex meme? You'll totally be one of the dudebros slaying the tinder scene, collecting all the collectables, I know it bro! I believe in you!
Two-thirds of my wage. I intend to live like this my whole life. I have zero intention for social mobility. I do not want to escape poverty. I love living in poverty, sincerely. Fewer possessions = fewer worries. No subscriptions, my only bills are rent and groceries. This is the life!
that's not poverty, that's just living cheaply. Poverty is when you can barely afford basic necessities if that.
Personally if that your outlook on life great I probably recommend a van life so you can travel and enjoy new places and new experiences Though remember your young enjoy it though I believe your outlook will change a bit later on but Live life in the way it make you the most content
I genuinely believe - and this is not a meme - that the automobile is one of the worst inventions in the history of mankind
Fucking ludites. I bet you still wished we live in a time without running water, electricity, or medicine that wasn't just burn incense.
You have the stupid
How dare we make it possible for the average person to freely travel wherever they please at a moments notice, without permission from their lords?!
Kinda Automobiles are a tool helpful in many aspects but in others,other modes of transportation should be used. Shouldn’t be banned or rid ourselves but decrease some of our dependence on it.
Based and lamborfeeties pilled
I understand where you're coming from, but I'd like to add some nuance to your argument - the expansion of automobile infrastructure is extremely damaging to society - public transport is far superior for the vast majority of travel, if the infrastructure is maintained efficiently, which it can be for significantly less than huge automobile infrastructure. This doesn't take away from the practicality of working people like musicians and interior decorators for whom the use of a van improves the efficiency of their work significantly (fuck carrying entire PA systems on trains lol) - so it's not the automobile itself that does that much harm, but the odd culture that surrounds it and unnecessary expansion of its infrastructure, when maintenance combined with expansion of *public* infrastructure is far more efficient.
Thats until you get a big medical debth, sadly.
Income : 0 Expenditures : Not my problem. Take the NEETpill.
What happens when the people you are leeching off die or get pissed and kick you out?
It is what it is. Dont care lol
Based and can't plan for the future pilled
You cant plan ahead when your future is impossible to build anyways. Just riding the Kali Yuga. Enjoying this circus, clown show. Cant feel sadness anymore.
Or you could live in a rural state where 40k is the equivalent of like 150k in other states.
Yeah and then you get paid a meager salary and get trapped there I know blue collar workers that have never left their home state, kinda wild tbh
And?
You don't think it's sad to not be able to explore the world and experience different cultures?
Could be for some, but not for all. Some people are happy with less than others and if someone’s happy, then let them be happy regardless of your or someone else’s opinion. Additionally, how much do you think blue collar workers make? I can guarantee it’s more than you might think
The guys I've worked with were making $10-$15 because it was in Backwater USA. Maintenance crew made around $15-$20, welders approximately $60K. They were happy making less because the alternative was working at a meat plant or automotive plant where they'd be worked even harder. The guys I was with were working 60 hour weeks in the Summer, it was brutal enough
Ahh, ok I did concrete labor/finishing to get through college and was doing similar enough, but that was entry level. I lived in the Dakotas, but even in rural shops you could get $20 minimum with a year or two of experience even in rural towns
I recently started at a machine shop in here Kansas. Starting pay is $18/hour, with a $2,500 sign on bonus (paid out over 6 months). And as long as you learn the machines and meet your quota's, it is possible to make up to $29/hour after a few years. But this is the same town I was born and raised in, and I have no intention of moving. The occasional vacation, which will probably be roadtripping through the Plains/Rockies or down to Texas (which are the two I usually do). But I make plenty of live my life, and am engaged and hope to actually settle down sometime in the next few years.
$20 is good but those guys deserve way more, I couldn't last a week doing the shit they did. It was sad to see the old guys with blown out backs and busted knees
Interestingly enough the old guys we had (not rural) could move pretty well which surprised me and some of the other younger guys. It wasn’t Union, so there is that, but for me it was able to get my engineering degree and pay rent so I can’t complain
Sitting in my home village, seeing the same 10 people every day and not travelling further than a couple miles would be literal paradise for me. I can always look at pretty pictures of places online, but local friendships are forever.
Average leftist be like "*No dont be content with good wage and job security. You must ALSO want to travel the world instead of being content with the nature around you.*"
There is definitely something to learning to cast off one’s materialism, reducing one’s ego and learning to live happily and free Unfortunately such a thing is tremendously difficult but I believe it would go a long way to healing the hearts of those who live in constant discord as a result of their lifestyles
>Unfortunately such a thing is tremendously difficult It was extremely easy for me but I grew up with a Jewish father so he taught me how to save my shekles
Currently humblemaxxing
I love how cats are the good option here.
was meant to represent a stray cat but yeah haha
I love strays. I took in a few.
all 7 of my cats are strays, only one of them is from a shelter.
they literally kill billions of animals every year and have caused multiple extinctions.
Are you talking about humans ?
house cats actually
You don't have to sell me more on cats, I was already convinced.
Humans put billions of male baby chickens into grinders every year because they won't grow up to lay eggs.
To be fair, diamonds have always been a scam
So many people have an aversion to canned vegetables and beans now. They have no idea how much money people save by buying canned goods over fresh per year
I think people might prefer fresher foods for health reasons….
Canned foods taste bad. Buy flash frozen instead.
This is called Epicureanism, in philosophy. The philosophy of avoiding pain, weighing what you want vs how much you’ll need to work to get it, and living simply. It was the inspiration for St Augustine’s vision of how Christian monasteries are supposed to be.
Stoicism also dips heavily into this. Seneca holds that the more things you possess, the more liability you have, because everything you own you have to protect, maintain, and use in order for it to provide happiness to you. Thus, it's better to own less.
Just follow a simple rule: don't spend more than you earn.
No no you see. The ultimate chad move is to have a high ass income YET still have low expenses. (Then hide all the money from the tax man)
Car centric city planning is fucking stupid, expensive, polluting and harms the community. It also fucks the poor
Good, I don't want any poors in my neighborhood
Virgin “I don’t want any poors in my neighborhood” vs. Chad “I wish less people were poor”
How liberal of you
Google jokes
Holy hell!
New response just dropped
In Raleigh you kinda get a good mix Thought our public transportation kinda suck I mean i can bike to most place using sidewalk/trails with my bike Some sidewalk needs some work but do able With good public transportation raleigh could achieve being more walkable
Lmao someone actually lives in Raleigh thought that it was a joke
Raleigh is nice
I used to have a similar opinion but one day i went biking around and realized how interconnected our city was and godamn Could it be better yes but really not that bad especially with the number of trails and sidewalk paths. And this is outside of downtown area not in it Literally went walking to my college to see if it was possible technically i drove a bit because their was one section that is know for pedestrians accident but most of the walk was on a trail and it was nice(took me 2 hours but did it cause i wanted to) I got to give it to the city planners they did a fairly decent job
>Income: $119,000 Expenditures: $130,000 I think it is a "I can't manage money problem". The same thing can happen with a lower income but it's harder to recover from your bad spending being poor than being well off.
First I need to start printing money with stem, and then i can start taking the poverty pill with a homestead in alaska.
Live within your means
Loved my last job cause everything I needed was within a 30min walk radius. It also kept me much more healthier than my regular gamer lifestyle.
Get those expenditures down to 50-70% of your income and **RETIRE EARLY**.
*You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy*
I honestly don't know what you could spend more than $40,000 on. Sounds like a waste of your free time. Take for example dining out. There are people in this world who dine out every day at some fancy restaurant. Why? You spend at least 30 minutes commuting back and forth between your house and the restaurant, then spend 60 minutes eating. But that's not all! Because you're rich, and rich people can afford to "eat healthy". And that means 3 meals a day. So you will also spend 30 minutes preparing and eating breakfast, because you're apparently too bougie to eat eggs and toast. And then in the good case, you spend the same length of time preparing and eating dinner. In the worst case? You dine out again. And now you've spent 2.5 hours of your life eating. Per day. I'd rather starve myself.
Rent around here is $24-30K Spending 40K total is easy
Wasn't $97,000 the maximum people get with happiness in relation to money, before it doesn't make any difference?
That’s got to be after taxes as well as when home prices weren’t insane. Gonna pull in just over 6 figs as our household income and after, taxes, rent, car payment, 401k, health and car insurance, gas, basic food (not eating out) student loan payments, phone bill, internet, pet food etc. there isn’t much wiggle room as I thought there would be.
Begone europoor
I would rather sleep in a Sarajevo train station than a McMansion
Still a bit rough. Even with the poverty pill. It gets a lot harder as you have more kids and need to go from a studio to a 2-3bedroom unit. On the bright side, at least I'm not in debt and I didn't make dumb college $$ choices.
I don't want to have kids or a wife My life is happy
There’s people living in rent controlled apartments near where I live, nice area but paying 400 monthly rent for at least a decade and mid-high six figure salaries
Based
I'm going to try to work on my spending after seeing this.
Neither is good. The left side of the picture should reduce their spending by 30k.
Based and poverty pilled Common Hillman W
Downvoted because you insulted mans best friend. Dogs are always superior to cats
Don’t know what degenerate downvoted you.
Cat lovers smh my head
I think the wojaks should be swapped - the pictures on the left look great to me
depends on the person. I've always hated all of the things on the left.
$12,000 barely covers my health insurance alone, and that's before copays and such. I need my health insurance or I will literally die from my disability. Medicaid only covers the crappy medicine for my disability which will keep me alive, mostly bedbound (definitely unable to work), and miserable.
'muh'rcaaaa....
More like income: $119,000/year Income after taxes: $90,000/year
Cringe city suburb, old New England town supremacy
Haha you think you can get a house like that with 119K USD
The burbs aren't that expensive if you arent in a blue shithole.
Or just don't live in California or New York and cost of living is doable.