Broke Breeders are Financing Themselves into the "Middle Class lifestyle"

I don't know if any of you have access, but the WSJ ran an article a couple of days ago entitled "Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class."

Three couples are profiled. I'm paraphrasing the stats and information for each of the couples under fair use for discussion. I suspect many of you have the same feelings that I do.

As usual, when I read these sob stories, I have a different view from many. For one, these idiots are NOT living a middle class lifestyle, at least not the one I knew growing up as a Boomer. (Yes, feel free to hate on me now, I'm technically at the end of the Boomer designation.)

These morons are living an upper class lifestyle on a middle class budget. I myself spent my childhood in the middle class, then the lower class (after the untimely death of one parent) and eventually we scraped back into the middle class after my widowed mom obtained a college education and secured a middle class job. Middle class then was: living in a 1700 square foot house. Sharing a room with siblings. No Iphones, one TV in the living room, one phone in the hall upstairs (which was probably a luxury item) and one in the kitchen downstairs. Throughout the 1960's my parents shared ONE car. We ate processed foods at home like Hamburger helper and Rice a Roni. Going to the pizza place every couple of weeks was a treat. Travel meant going to a national park or the beach and staying in a cheap motel.

Yes, college costs are outrageously expensive now and that often comes with debt, but these idiots are compounding their problems by having student loan debt, indiscriminate breeding, and outrageous spending, which is tanking their situations.

The comment section is surprisingly pro-Breeder with another helping of "it's the government's fault!" I would have expected something different from the WSJ. And note: I am not unsympathetic to young people today and how expensive things are--I'm just saying that these people, not including couple #2 who are at least saving something, are idiots.


Couple #1:
28 years old with infant
West Hartford, CT
combined family income: $130,000
debt:
$270,000 mortgage
$51,000 student loan debt
$18,000 in auto loans
$50,000 over 8 credit cards, including $7500 on a TJ Maxx card


Choice quotes:

Dud: "“I’m normally a worrier, but this is next-level stuff. I’ve never been more stressed. Never would I have thought with the amount we make I would have these problems.”

From the article:

"They no longer dine out several times a week. Other hits to their budget were hard to avoid, such as a wrecked car that forced them to borrow more." Editor's note: does that mean they were driving uninsured?

"Ms. Breeder has not used her T.J. Maxx credit card in more than a year. She makes the minimum monthly payment on its balance of approximately $7,500. Her monthly statement says if she continues at this pace, she will need about 23 years to pay it off. Earlier this year, Mr. Breeder put his credit cards in a Ziploc bag with water and placed it in the freezer. In May, however, they went to two weddings, and needed a card to cover the cost of a gift and a rental car. Mr. Breeder removed one of the credit cards from the freezer. “A lot of things came at once,” he said. Since then, he’s taken the rest of them out, too."

Couple #2:
34 years old, one chyld
Seattle Metro area
combined family income: $155,000
They want to buy a house and have $30,000 saved as a down payment, but the house they want, a two bedroom, 2 bath house with a yard, starts at around $600,000 in Seattle

Debt: paying $1,000 per month on $88,000 debt.
Expenses:
half their take home pay goes out the door for the student loan payment, $1750 in rent each month and $1,200 per month for chyld care
car payment on a 2013 Subaru is $240/month, and they will pay off the car when it's nine years old.



Couple #3:
33 and 40 years old, infant and toadler
Arizona
combined family income: $58,000

Debt: around $97,000 in student loan debt
$48,000 for cars, financed in 2017
$106,000 mortgage


This couple went through a downhill slide of dumb fuckery and bred an infant and a toadler in the midst of it all, compounding the problems. From the article:

"The two-child couple earned just over $100,000 until 2017. They had a roughly $106,000 mortgage, about $97,000 in student-loan debt and $24,000 in car loans.
Then Ms. Breeder, 33, moved from a full-time to a part-time faculty position at a university because of its budget cuts. With income reduced to around $70,000, they still felt confident enough in their earning power to borrow $48,000 to finance two cars in 2017.
They rolled $13,000 of loan balances after trade-ins into loans for two modestly priced vehicles: a 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe and a new Chevrolet Cruze. The $1,070 monthly car payments were manageable until Mr. Breeder, 40, left his job working for the city after incurring several pay cuts.“We both had solid situations,” Ms. Breeder said. Then “mine became the dicey one and then we both got into dicey situations.”After another job didn’t work out, Mr. Breeder switched to selling real estate and driving for Uber and Lyft. The family’s income slipped to $58,000.

Mr. Breeder cashed out $8,000 from a pension to pay off a credit-card balance racked up last year. The two have been able to postpone student-loan payments, citing financial hardship and Ms. Breeder's Ph.D. studies. The Breedersons have cut back on gym memberships, stopped buying organic groceries and canceled cable TV. Ms. Breeder was recently hired as an adjunct professor at another university beginning this fall.
Growing up, Mr. Breeder says, he was taught to work hard to get a nice house and a reliable vehicle. Now he realizes how easily borrowing too much can undermine this plan."

Ya think? How about borrowing too much and having kyds you cannot afford?

So many expenses that don't make sense. Like how the fuck do you end up owing thousands of dollars to TJ Maxx? If they had to stick the credit cards in the freezer it sounds like they clearly have a problem, and would be better off cutting them up altogether. How can people claim to be adults when they haven't even mastered the basics of financial planning? They are not so poor that they have to take high interest loans just to survive, so getting into this debt spiral was entirely due to bad choices.

Mortgage is one of the few debts that makes sense, and then only if you purchase a modest home that is within your means. All these other debts are ridiculous. Why do people think they need new cars, etc? I'm so glad none of this is my life. People are stupid.

It's pretty stupid to do that to yourself. My husband and I have a mortgage for a modest home in an affordable neighborhood. He recently retired, which is causing us a little financial change, but now I'm working. Once I'm finished my course, I'll be making quite a bit more than I am now.

Thank Goddess we have no brats to support. That would suck us dry. We have no real big outstanding debts. Our car is paid for, little credit card debt, and only bills and groceries, etc. is what we have to deal with.

That's a lot of trainwreck. Gotta say, though, Couple #3 is my favorite. Income got slashed by a third, they were carrying $24k in car loans, and piled another $50k on top of it. And then their income got hit again. And somewhere in there, they decided to have a kid? What the actual fuck is wrong with people?

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bell_flower
Ya think? How about borrowing too much and having kyds you cannot afford?

Yeppers. No excuses there-- everybody knows kids are expensive. People in those income brackets (from the article) know how to prevent pregnancy, have access to birth control, etc. etc...there's no excuse (and in my case, no sympathy) for that level of stupidity.

Damn! And I thought I was bad with money for living paycheck to paycheck. {I make ~= 1,500 a month working full time. 6% of my pretax income goes to a 401k. $400 a month goes to a high yield savings, $150 a month goes to Home Depot. I have a small debt to Home Depot for a financed floor. I financed it for 16 months but I’ll have it paid in 10. $100-$200 a month goes to electricity, $50-$60 a month goes to water, $65 to internet, $50 for my phone. About $60 for dog food, but I didn’t have that last month because I stockpiled when I had extra income. I owe $150 on a card that I will pay next check, 10 days before it’s due.} My car is 15 years old and I plan to drive it until it dies, hopefully for another 5 years. My dad doesn’t think it will live that long, but who knows? My brothers first car, a Nissan, is over 20 years old and it runs.

I thought I was bad for running myself low {Savings first, then bills and debts are paid. The rest I usually spend too frivolously for my own good, but I tell myself that it’s ok because my bills and debts are paid} but those people are ridiculous. $7,500 for Tj Maxx?!?! That’s 18 months of my savings. A $600,000 house? I will probably not earn that much in my life. How can people finance SO MUCH? What do they think will happen when they’re older and retire? Surely a $600,000 + debt can’t be paid in 40 years? I don’t think it can be paid with social security, Just wtf....

And that’s even assuming they will collect social security. What if they don’t? What about saving for retirement??? I always speculate that I might not collect social security {i’m 23} and people always tell me “nah it’s fine, they’ve worried about running out forever,” but I mean.....the way I see it, it’s better to ASSUME I WON’T collect SS and save, in which case I’ll retire with a nice nest egg, than to ASSUME I WILL, not save, and be left desolate.

Lock him up or put him down.
Stolen from Shiny.

I'd like to address the red "Editor's note" from the OP about Couple #1. The owners of the wrecked car may have simply dropped their Collision coverage while keeping their required Liability coverages. This is pretty common with owners of older cars whose book values have dropped a lot. If they then wreck their Collision-less cars, they would be on the hook for replacing them.

Car loans, especially multiple ones and large one are really bad ideas IMHO because they only add to the total cost and are for assets whose values decline quickly over time. If I can't pay cash for a car, I don't buy it.

I also never had at the same time more than one of any of the "big 3" of loans: student loans, cars, mortgages. I paid off my student loans 2 years before I got my mortgage, and never had a car loan. And even then, I always paid my credit card bills in full each month. I always found it unthinkable to carry a credit card balance. BTW my student loans had a high interest rate, 7-8% (I forget which).

The debt in these examples is staggering. But to add kids to this debt while trying to maintain an extravagant lifestyle is dumb, really dumb. You don't have to be poor in order for it to be a bad idea to have kid. These people are equivalently poor.

My income is exceedingly low, but I don't have much in the way of bills. I do spend over $110 on Internet and $58 on unlimited plan for my cell phone, but I've no debt. In fact, my bank hates me. I've a habit of running credits on the two cards I've got, my Bank of America rewards card and my Amazon store card. I've a credit hiding in my Internet company.

My income's about $1799 a year. When you add up my odd ball behavior on the books, I save about $400 a month.

Admittedly I got a steal deal on housing, I pay $300 a month rent for subsidized housing.

These three couples are baffling to me.

+++++++++++++

Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

I recently got a new (to me) car and I hope these people keep it up. I love that there are so many low-mileage, just-paid-off cars flooding the market so that you can get a reliable car that will last you a decade for a quarter of what these idiots paid for it. I also like that in a last minute I’m-only-going-to-wear-this-dress-once situation that I can stop at the Goodwill and find a cute $5 dress with tags on it because one of these retards just Kon Maried.

Seriously, the wrecked car forced them to borrow more? You can get a perfectly decent car for what she spent at TJ Maxx.

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deegee
Car loans, especially multiple ones and large one are really bad ideas IMHO because they only add to the total cost and are for assets whose values decline quickly over time. If I can't pay cash for a car, I don't buy it.

Yeah I don't get that. As soon as you drive a new car off the lot, the value goes way down. You can buy 5-year-old cars in good condition for a much more modest sum. That is what my parents do, and then they keep it for 10-20 more years, until it starts to cost too much to repair. (In general, my parents have a repair-rather-than-replace mentality which seems to be really lacking today in society at large. People are just so much more wasteful than I remember from childhood.)

I read that article the other day and for some reason was not very surprised at it.

To start with, and I agree these people are not living a middle class lifestyle, they are trying to live the upper class lifestyle, maybe they waste their spar time trying to "Keep up with the Kardashians", I don't know. In my day, it was more like "Keeping up with the Joneses".

Second - if a couple is making over $130,000 combined income and cannot "make ends meet" they need to re-evaluate their priorities and stop being materialistic fucks. Seriously.

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yurble

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deegee
Car loans, especially multiple ones and large one are really bad ideas IMHO because they only add to the total cost and are for assets whose values decline quickly over time. If I can't pay cash for a car, I don't buy it.

Yeah I don't get that. As soon as you drive a new car off the lot, the value goes way down. You can buy 5-year-old cars in good condition for a much more modest sum. That is what my parents do, and then they keep it for 10-20 more years, until it starts to cost too much to repair. (In general, my parents have a repair-rather-than-replace mentality which seems to be really lacking today in society at large. People are just so much more wasteful than I remember from childhood.)

That's what we did. We purchased an older Mercedes for a good price. It's a beautiful car. My aunt bought a brand new Honda SUV for a crazy amount of money and she's stuck with paying it all back now. Our car was purchased with a debit card, as we had the savings for it.

My aunt is constantly talking about what a beautiful car we drive. I think she's a little jealous that we drive a Mercedes Benz and she drives a Honda.

I don't really care about that. We got it for a good price and it's a safe, reliable vehicle. I researched that car very well before we went to the lot and bought it. I don't regret my purchase one little bit.

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yurble

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deegee
Car loans, especially multiple ones and large one are really bad ideas IMHO because they only add to the total cost and are for assets whose values decline quickly over time. If I can't pay cash for a car, I don't buy it.

Yeah I don't get that. As soon as you drive a new car off the lot, the value goes way down. You can buy 5-year-old cars in good condition for a much more modest sum. That is what my parents do, and then they keep it for 10-20 more years, until it starts to cost too much to repair. (In general, my parents have a repair-rather-than-replace mentality which seems to be really lacking today in society at large. People are just so much more wasteful than I remember from childhood.)

I've no car, but I noticed this when dealing with computer repair. Basically, I would replace whatever part that needed to be replaced, or upgrade the part when needed then sell the old part on eBay. The only time I ever replaced a PC was when it started to SMOKE. When smoke is coming out of your air vents, that computer is DEAD. I've had several computers, most of which are rebuilt.

+++++++++++++

Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

When I was a Gen X kid being middle class meant two cars, around 1,700 - 2,000 square ft. house, mostly hand me down clothes, kid sharing bedrooms, daycare wasn't prevalent, meals were eaten at home and most of us didn't take vacations other than camp. It was typical for kids to have four pairs of shoes: dress shoes, active shoes, flip-flops and school shoes. Why buy more when the kid will just outgrow them anyways?

We had toys but nothing extravagant and a birthday party that wasn't a homemade cake at home was rare and particularly extravagant. Casa Bonita or Chuck E Cheese were considered very extravagant. And I grew up in the Midwest which is much cheaper than the coasts. Kids I knew who lived on the coasts were in AWE of our common house size and yard. Many of them lived in houses that were barely over 1,000 square ft with no yards.

At work I heard a woman talking about her parent's generation and how poor they were as kids with only two pairs of shoes and that she couldn't imagine that. I'm thinking lady, I'm a few years older than you and none of the kids I grew up with had very many shoes until their feet stopped growing. I never thought it was a big deal as a kid, actually never thought of it at all until my shoes were too small!

I think this woeful attitude of middle class is most likely a holdover where kids grow up and expect to do better than their parents. I see this with my siblings and they. fail. I watch them struggle and end up living above their means when they insist on "having it all." I don't know why people insist on setting unreasonable goals for themselves.

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whining "middle class" members
Couple #2:
34 years old, one chyld
Seattle Metro area
combined family income: $155,000
They want to buy a house and have $30,000 saved as a down payment, but the house they want, a two bedroom, 2 bath house with a yard, starts at around $600,000 in Seattle

Debt: paying $1,000 per month on $88,000 debt.
Expenses:
half their take home pay goes out the door for the student loan payment, $1750 in rent each month and $1,200 per month for chyld care
car payment on a 2013 Subaru is $240/month, and they will pay off the car when it's nine years old.

Well, looks like someone wants the world handed to them and thinks just because they make $155,000 they deserve instant gratification. Pay off the student loan and wait for the brat to get out of daycare. Then save for a house with the funds saved for both those things. And the house means no private school for jr. and no expensive extracurriculars. Wanting a house now is foolish, they'd be house poor and really up a creek if anything financially changed for them. There is no way they could afford maintenance on a house either and they may have serious issues obtaining a loan because their debt to income ratio is high. And they've likely been paying on the student loans for 10 years and they still have a high balance.

I know someone with almost identical income who bought a house in 2007 and then the recession hit and now they are in their mid-50's with a youngish son with learning disabilities and were upside down on their loan for over 8 years. They are struggling and house poor. And no equity to borrow against or the ability to refinance to a lower rate either.

Having a yard in Seattle proper really isn't middle class unless the family lived there 25 or more years ago. The minimum income expected to afford a home in Seattle is $175,000 and you can bet that means not having $2000 or more immediately go out the door to pay for daycare and student loans. I'd guess that it also means either one high income with a parent at home with kids or two incomes with no kids.

If they really wanted to live like middle class they should have not had a brat until the student loans are paid off. And under no means should they have more brats unless they want to live in apartments forever!

My parents lived a lower middle class lifestyle in San Jose when I was in elementary school. For us that meant 2 used cars, (parents had a habit of buying used cars with cash), a 1000-foot house with a yard, two pairs of shoes, and clothes bought at discount stores. This was in the 70s in California, as I looked up my childhood home and found it to be worth 1.3 million.

As I'm disabled, I didn't keep up with my parents, much less do better than they. I live in a subsidized housing scheme in a four bedroom home with three roommates. I'm doing as well as I am because I didn't have brats.

+++++++++++++

Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

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utter retards
Couple #1:
28 years old with infant
West Hartford, CT
combined family income: $130,000
debt:
$270,000 mortgage
$51,000 student loan debt
$18,000 in auto loans
$50,000 over 8 credit cards, including $7500 on a TJ Maxx card


Choice quotes:

Dud: "“I’m normally a worrier, but this is next-level stuff. I’ve never been more stressed. Never would I have thought with the amount we make I would have these problems.”

From the article:

"They no longer dine out several times a week. Other hits to their budget were hard to avoid, such as a wrecked car that forced them to borrow more." Editor's note: does that mean they were driving uninsured?

"Ms. Breeder has not used her T.J. Maxx credit card in more than a year. She makes the minimum monthly payment on its balance of approximately $7,500. Her monthly statement says if she continues at this pace, she will need about 23 years to pay it off. Earlier this year, Mr. Breeder put his credit cards in a Ziploc bag with water and placed it in the freezer. In May, however, they went to two weddings, and needed a card to cover the cost of a gift and a rental car. Mr. Breeder removed one of the credit cards from the freezer. “A lot of things came at once,” he said. Since then, he’s taken the rest of them out, too."

I've seen this before, people become smug because their income is about 2x their mortgage and think they can go hog wild on a huge rant of materialism. These are some big spenders, indeed.

How on earth do they have $50,000 in credit card debt? This is next world stupid! And they have to have some serious crap with that amount of debt. Something tells me it isn't medical debt either. And if you have $118,000 in consumer/student load debt you don't attend weddings, period! And they no longer dine out several times a week?
I'd like to think if I spent some of that $50,000 of debt on home furnishings I'd want to be home to enjoy my crap while eating meals. Only paying the minimum on at least one of these cards? And now for the "compulsory" breeding to go into more debt. Why breed at 28 when in over nearly $400,000 of debt? These people are absolute idiots.

Bet a house refi is on the horizon for these morons. I give it 18 months after the refi for them to be in worse shape than they are now. And I don't see daycare in this situation but I bet that expense rears its ugly head in the near future.

I'm fortunate to make good money (six figures) after 30+ years in the same field. (I moved for jobs and made the most of my experience.)
I live below my means. I have saved 20% of my income for the last 25 years. I do not have credit card debt.

Having a $1,000 credit card balance freaks me out. I cannot imagine buying $7500 worth of crap from TJ Maxx. I would FREAK THE FUCK OUT if I had $50,000 in credit card debt. How do these people sleep?

I stumbled upon this article which is about another Seattle couple who is just starting out. I wonder if they will take the financial advice to heart and save for 10 years and get that house, or if they will be like most other breeding idiots and just have the kids and tank the budget.

It also seems unrealistic to me that this couple will be able to do all three things: save for retirement, buy a house and have a fambilee.

Holy fuck these people are dumb. I mean yes, job loss or cuts can be totally unexpected and I wouldn't fault people who experienced that after they had homes, vehicles and brats, but the ones who are barely hanging on by the skin of their teeth financially and go and tack more expenses onto their already strained budgets get no sympathy from me.

Seems these people and many, many others all have the same problem: they think they can continue living comfortable lifestyles in spite of job/pay cuts and the costs of having kids. Buy nice houses, organic food, new cars, have brats, have expensive phones with super expensive plans, shop at expensive stores, eat out all the time - it catches up to you eventually. It's not hard to cut a few corners and they could probably still afford some luxuries if they just budgeted better. Like did they really need new cars? I mean yes I would love one of the new Civics because they're adorable, but hey since I don't have $20K to blow on one, know what that means? I don't buy one!

I don't know why this is such a hard concept to grasp: if you don't need it and you can't afford it, then don't fucking get it. These people live beyond their means and prioritize the wrong things, and then wonder why they're broke and miserable. I know stuff is super expensive these days, especially college, and I don't fault people my age and younger for being so poor. But these people need to spend some time with a financial planner/advisor yesterday.

Dang! I wish I had that kind of income. It's just me with 3 cats and no kids. I used to think I would follow the Script, but then I saw how many of my coworkers have struggled over the years. I knew one girl, she just had a baby a year ago. She worked with me part-time, but told she and fiancee were over 80,000 in debt. From both hospital bills and excessive buying.

At the time was like, "how the hell did you manage that?" Apparently she had bought all new furniture and appliances I think from a rental place. All because this breeder idiot, had to have everything "just right". It completely blew my mind!!

I work in the medical field, don't really make that much. But my costs of living are way way low, thank goodness. I buy used whenever I can. In fact, now I have gotten to prefer it. Yard sales, flea and farmers markets are downright fun for me. Because I can buy whatever I want, and leave whenever. I don't have to drag a nasty, cranky, disgusting toddler with me. I can enjoy myself.

In fact, 99% of my home is stuff I have purchased/been given is second hand. All from decor to kitchenware, I absolutely love it. But that's just me. I won't lie, I would love to have a bigger apartment. I've always wanted more space. But for now, I am grateful for what I have and don't want to push my luck.

My credit hasn't always been great, I made many poor decisions earlier in my life. But now, I am fortunate to have it growing and I am hoping if I find better employment. I can move to somewhere a little bigger with maybe an extra bedroom I can turn into a craft/plant room/library.

Which in hindsight, I still feel is a reasonable goal unlike these idiots.

I agree with others who say the definition of middle class sure seems to gotten greedy. My parents did have a big home, but I grew up in a rural area. All the furnishings were second-hand, acquired when they got married and only replaced as things broke beyond repair. Two used vehicles. I don't remember how many shoes I had but there would have been some for each season and some for each activity (school, playing/working). I really feel that materialism has gone into overdrive in the last three decades or so.

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demonkitten
Dang! I wish I had that kind of income. It's just me with 3 cats and no kids. I used to think I would follow the Script, but then I saw how many of my coworkers have struggled over the years. I knew one girl, she just had a baby a year ago. She worked with me part-time, but told she and fiancee were over 80,000 in debt. From both hospital bills and excessive buying.

I've known so many people that live by their paycheck. The minute they get a raise it is buy a new car, even if their current one is in great shape. Or get married and the minute there is a raise/promotion time to make a baybee! And the tax refund money means a vacation they could never afford otherwise.

And then they wake up from their spending hangover and are $80K in debt. Yikes.

Contrast this with a few smart people. One man I know inherited a small house from his grandmother. He avoided the whole marriage/baby trap and stayed in his house even when he started to earn good money. He simply updated his house once he could afford to. More money to him means some spending, no mortgage and mostly saving.

Now if we could just find a way to get small paid off houses for the childfree!

Yeah, you earned that stress you dummies. Medical debt & student loans are the only acceptable kind of debt IMO. Running up a bunch of credit cards like that is just retarded. No sympathy for that behavior. I'm a millennial raised by a (proud) tightwad boomer, lol. If you can't pay in cash you probably can't afford it.

The U.S. economy/working conditions are fucked compared to other first-world nations but these people seem to be making a killing at whatever they're doing. $130,000 is a lot of money. If you can't make that work you have a major spending problem & need to work on your gratitude. Plenty of folks will never see that kind of $$$ in this lifetime no matter how hard they work.

They say "no" to nothing. One recent example by me.....40 yr old Neighbor tells hub she has 40k saved and her hub always wanted a pick up truck....so I assume she's gonna buy it for him....now mind you they have FOUR cars and only 2 drivers as it is....the cars arent new I'll give you but you get the point. They have THREE daughters ranging from 6-12.....also a son that is outta the house.....well,....I said to my hub.....what the fuck are they gonna do with a pick up truck...you can't put 3 girls in that, he doesn't work construction or anything like that......they are middle aged forty year olds w/ 4 kids.....time is over for this bullshit.....SAVE YOUR FUCKIN' 40K FOR COLLEGE ! They will be the first to complain that 'college is so expensive" or "it should be free" but this is why people are broke.....they spend spend spend on stuff they dont fucking need.


I griped about my 'poor' divorced SIL, (mother of two twenty-somethings) before who I'm supposed to "look out for" becuz she has no money.....well, I went to Philly for vacay for a week....she...went to Itally and went on 500 dollar tours of Rome or whatever....granted her BF probably did the heavy lifting on this but WTF She is ALWAYS on vacay......but all "poor me' the rest of the time.

I worked with someone once who claimed financial hardship.

The Feds stormed her house one night and hauled her husband away. (He was guilty.) She asked for my help. I am ashamed to say I did help her with her house payment one month. (I was going through a stressful time and my judgement was not what it should have been. I felt more sorry for her pets losing their home than her. The pets and her kid were innocent.)

Anyway, right after I helped her with the house payment, she came to me a couple of days later and said "something had come up" (she did not specify) and asked me for $500 more. What a scammer. Needless to say I will never do that again.

She ended up declaring bankruptcy and getting some help from family. I later found out they were pretty much sick of her sob stories regarding money. I also found out she had declared bankruptcy before but had not learned her lesson. I was actually unsure what she made but looked up her salary one day after this all happened. I was MORTIFIED to find out that she only made $48,000 per year. (ETA
not that it wasn't decent $ but she lived like someone who made much more.) This woman dressed TO THE NINES. We are talking Neiman's, Nordstrom's and had set upon set of truly impressive jewelry. They took vacations all the time. Here's some of the other dumb financial shit she had done within the last five years of her "financial hardship"

Gutted the equity in her house to pay down credit cards, then ran them back up again.

She and her husband had FOUR cars between them with high payments on two of them. I think one of them was leased.

Bought two timeshares. Took 'luxury" vacations 2-3 times a year.

Went to the Red Door salon all the time.

Ate out all the time,

Bought two purebred dogs.

Used her $25,000 savings, her only emergency fund, as a down payment on a house for her idiot 21 year old so he "wouldn't have to live in an apartment." What the fuck is wrong with these coddling parents who feel the need to financially gut themselves for their grown kids? Why can't he work for it and buy his own damn house? True to form for someone who is given something and doesn't have to work for it: He lost his job after about a year and didn't tell her. The house was repossessed so she sacrificed her own financial well being for nothing.

I could go on.

I know financial hardship can hit people: job loss, medical bills. But many people spend everything they have (and more) and they do not plan for emergencies, and they get into trouble.

Quote
bell_flower
......She ended up declaring bankruptcy and getting some help from family. I later found out they were pretty much sick of her sob stories regarding money. I also found out she had declared bankruptcy before but had not learned her lesson. I was actually unsure what she made but looked up her salary one day after this all happened. I was MORTIFIED to find out that she only made $48,000 per year. (ETA
not that it wasn't decent $ but she lived like someone who made much more.) This woman dressed TO THE NINES. We are talking Neiman's, Nordstrom's and had set upon set of truly impressive jewelry. They took vacations all the time. Here's some of the other dumb financial shit she had done within the last five years of her "financial hardship"

Gutted the equity in her house to pay down credit cards, then ran them back up again.

She and her husband had FOUR cars between them with high payments on two of them. I think one of them was leased.

Bought two timeshares. Took 'luxury" vacations 2-3 times a year.

Went to the Red Door salon all the time.

Ate out all the time,

Bought two purebred dogs.

Used her $25,000 savings, her only emergency fund, as a down payment on a house for her idiot 21 year old so he "wouldn't have to live in an apartment." What the fuck is wrong with these coddling parents who feel the need to financially gut themselves for their grown kids? Why can't he work for it and buy his own damn house? True to form for someone who is given something and doesn't have to work for it: He lost his job after about a year and didn't tell her. The house was repossessed so she sacrificed her own financial well being for nothing.

I could go on.

I know financial hardship can hit people: job loss, medical bills. But many people spend everything they have (and more) and they do not plan for emergencies, and they get into trouble.

Kind of surprised she had $25K in savings in the first place. This woman sounds delusional and it seems to go beyond bad spending judgements. We'd all love to buy everything we want but most normal people who live on a budget understand this isn't realistic and just causes bad consequences.