scrabbler1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 6,712
Wow. Thanks for tip; worked great
It worked for me, too. Thanks tfud'er.
Wow. Thanks for tip; worked great
Thanks for reminding me of this guy. He is really an old school social critic more than a cheerleader for ERI see they quote Robert Bell in the article....his blog "Living Stingy" is one of my favorite sites...he hits the nail on the head about how much money people waste on nonsense, and how to avoid the pitfalls of debt....
He is also REALLY BIG on personal responsibility...
Check it out!!!!!!
This that he mentions above I only figured out 10 or 15 years ago- ie. it was high time for me. My wife used to chide me when I would express puzzlement at why someone or some group was behaving a certain way. She's say, for god's sake, they are just stupid like people usually are!There are a lot of really, really stupid people in this world. It took me a long time to figure this out. I had always assumed that most folks were pretty bright, but just lazy thinkers on occasion. The reality is, of course, that most people are dumb as posts. Even so-called "smart" people with important jobs like airline pilot, doctor, lawyer, or even congressman, can be dumb as dirt and believe the stupidest things.
There are a number of people that I worked with that made around 200k or more and many of them lived paycheck to paycheck. I once knew a business owner that made over a million each year and when he died, his family was broke. His fractional jet, his California mansion that lost a grundle in the last rececssion and his wild spending habits cost his family their business. So, LBYM is a state of mind....some people have it, some don't.
I have a harder time understanding how some can live on less than 40k a year then understanding how others end up broke making over 200k a year. I've done well and LBYM all my life. This is a great blog because we hear from all types of folks; mostly good, honest folks of all income ranges......and, it helps me keep my thinking reality based. I read the WSJ story this morning.......I hope it wakes up some of their readers to cut back......the money gets spent quick when you lease luxury cars, buy expensive homes and eat out in expensive restaurants because you think your 200k a year makes you an entitled person.
Sadly, some governments go down this path too and we all end up paying for it.I wonder if many of these fall into the trap of not understanding the expensive carrying costs involved in some purchases.
The movie Idiocracy comes to my mind here!Thanks for reminding me of this guy. He is really an old school social critic more than a cheerleader for ER
This that he mentions above I only figured out 10 or 15 years ago- ie. it was high time for me. My wife used to chide me when I would express puzzlement at why someone or some group was behaving a certain way. She's say, for god's sake, they are just stupid like people usually are!
I was blown away by the lady first mentioned in the article. Even after going through a half-million $$ bankruptcy 9 years ago, she gets herself right back in deep financial trouble by vastly overspending what her big $200k/yr income could sustain. Her explanation: "I felt entitled".......What utterly oblivious, misguided, narcissistic CRAP. No one is "entitled" to continuously spend on luxuries far beyond their means. Some one eventually gets stuck with the tab.
And BTW- after that 2005 bankruptcy, (Ch 13 vs Ch 7 not stated), what mental midgets in the financial industry approved her credit limit increases to get right back to $300k in the hole?
And agree 100% with JoeWras. This is NOT a unique story. I've seen it a few times too. Hardly the kind of folks a solid economy is built on.
There's a way to read paid sites, with the "Google First Click Free" hack:
It works like this. You first copy the web address of any news article that is behind the registration firewall and paste that URL into the Google Search box. Now click the first Google result and you’ll be able to read the full text of the corresponding story without registering or subscribing.
It worked like a charm. Thanks!
( I can always count on this forum to learn something useful now and then. )
The phenomenon of individuals with six-figure incomes spending themselves into financial ruin puzzled and angered some readers of our weekend story on these affluent overspenders. Readers offered their own financial advice.
The Journal's article is an example of "insidious reporting", writes the Los Angeles Times's Michael Hiltzik, asking readers to sympathise with high-earners in "situations that middle- and working-class families can only dream about".
The article's theme is that even rich people can live beyond their means. Not really news. What's insidious about reporting like this is that it asks us to commiserate with high-earners who run into financial trouble despite having the flexibility to deal with their situations that middle- and working-class families can only dream about.
Yet if you turn from the Journal's news pages to its editorial page, you'll find the latter being cursed for the moral turpitude, and the former getting the benefit of the doubt. If the Journal's editorial writers read their news pages, they may discover that their reporters are undermining their usual argument that we need to safeguard the income of the "job creators" at the top of the economic pyramid by cutting income and benefits for the rank and file at the bottom.
[…]
Articles like this fall into the category of reverse econ-porn. They offer the chance not to salivate over the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but to chortle over their heedlessness and stupidity. Fine: give us this glimpse into how high earners can spend their way to ruin. Just don't ask us to feel sorry for them.
Or you can just copy the headline into Google search and click on what is usually the first search result. Almost always works unless you're reading more than 5 or 10 articles from the same newspaper.
But the corollary story that the WSJ won’t touch is this: if it families making $400,000/yr are feeling like they are struggling, then how must 150 million people getting by on less than $50,000/yr feel? Where is the WSJ chart showing us the typical distribution of expenses for a family making less than $50 grand a year? Show us that chart WSJ, and then explain to us, since you advocate for cutting all programs that benefit or help support these people, exactly where the fat is in their budgets?
That gives you the answer - the world's average salary is $1,480 (£928) a month, which is just less than $18,000 (£11,291) a year.
But these dollars are not normal US dollars. The economists use specially adjusted exchange rates - the average salary is calculated in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars. One PPP dollar is equal to $1 spent in the US.
Essentially, the PPP dollar takes into account the fact that it is cheaper to live in some countries than others. The idea is that we don't care how many actual dollars somebody is paid in, say, China, but we care about what sort of stuff those dollars can buy.
So it is OK for someone to make 50k? They shouldn't be derided? Ask the majority of our earthly inhabitants... they may differ. From the same BBC: they say a USA adjusted average worldly wage is 18k.
So what's enough? We should all be able to live on 18k, I guess, unless we want to get into the envy game.
But anyway, how about all the rock stars and movie stars who run into trouble? Once their royalties diminish, they suddenly are having trouble making it work.
As I mention, it's an almost impossible task to truly equate the 'average world wage', but there are some very relevant, major variables that need to be attempted to be taken into account, which I don't know have been in their study.
I just take this article as a cautionary tale that anyone can get in trouble.
So it is OK for someone to make 50k? They shouldn't be derided? Ask the majority of our earthly inhabitants... they may differ. From the same BBC: they say a USA adjusted average worldly wage is 18k.
So what's enough? We should all be able to live on 18k, I guess, unless we want to get into the envy game.
But anyway, how about all the rock stars and movie stars who run into trouble? Once their royalties diminish, they suddenly are having trouble making it work.