Awkward Wealth

[Amethyst]

Now Ha, that's just not fair. I haven't hit you yet. Then again, I'm on the other side of the country, so you're probably safe.

That said, my car is by far the oldest, cheapest one in the gym parking lot, yet someone managed to hit-and-run my taillight while I was working out. It almost had to be a luxury SUV, since that's all that was parked around me.

A.

Quote:

Originally Posted by haha Who do I fear? Somebody driving an older American piece of junk with various dents all over the metal. Ha

[brewer12345]

Quote:

Originally Posted by purplesky What I said is that 20 years ago most college grads were finding good paying jobs. In the 90s. You could pay down a student loan type wages. But Now a large number of college grads are only landing a job at Starbucks or Target. These are low income jobs that high school grads can also get. Most of the new jobs being created are lower income type service jobs so I don't see why this is such a surprise. So if the avg. wage is around $20hr for college grads. That would seem to put millions of college grads in a pretty low wage demographic.

Can we administer the Turing test? This might be a Soviet bot.

[Andre1969]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amethyst That said, my car is by far the oldest, cheapest one in the gym parking lot, yet someone managed to hit-and-run my taillight while I was working out. It almost had to be a luxury SUV, since that's all that was parked around me.

I used to have a '68 Dodge Dart that was originally an antique white, but by the time I bought it, 24 model years old and with 253,000 miles on it, it was a menacing looking, dull primer black. People tended to give me a wide berth, although somebody did pull a hit and run on it one night that did some minor damage to the driver's side fender.

I did some body work on that car, including replacing the fender (in those days, you could still find a fender for something like that for about 60 bucks at the local junkyard. My neighbor, who restored old cars, helped me repaint it back to its original antique white, and it looked pretty sharp. Well, suddenly it seemed like people were coming out of the woodwork to hit the damn thing!

Got hit twice on the passenger side when people tried to change lanes without looking. The first was a new-ish Dodge Ram truck. He changed lanes without signalling or looking, I laid into the horn, even went partially off the road, and he still managed to hit me. Put a dent in my front fender, but as he pushed into me I hit the brakes, so the front edge of my fender, plus the bumper, left a big crease down the whole side of his truck...door, back edge of the cab, and bed.

I didn't have a chance to get it fixed, but was able to get my hand inside the fender, and more or less pound it out with my fist. Well, not long after that, a Toyota Tacoma tried a quick lane change into me. This time though, I wanted to make sure I didn't get knocked off the road, so instead of trying to avoid him, I swerved at him, letting momentum do its thing. So instead of getting pushed off the road it knocked him back into his own lane. That time, all it did was push the dent back in (which I just knocked back out) but it punched in the rear of his bed pretty nicely, behind the rear wheel.

I also had a few near misses in that car, and it got hit-and-runned a few times while unattended in parking lots. The one solace I had with that car was that whatever hit it usually ended up the "loser" when it came to body damage.

Maybe I should have just left the thing primer black?

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amethyst .............That said, my car is by far the oldest, cheapest one in the gym parking lot, yet someone managed to hit-and-run my taillight while I was working out. It almost had to be a luxury SUV, since that's all that was parked around me. A.

Some one damaged my car at Costco the other day, too. They left without a note. Pretty sure it was a BMW driver with a nice watch.

[eta2020]

Quote:

Originally Posted by travelover Some one damaged my car at Costco the other day, too. They left without a note. Pretty sure it was a BMW driver with a nice watch.

No it was my sister Violet - the one with Mercedes, swimming pool, sauna and the room for a pony.

[Andre1969]

I had a 2000 Dodge Intrepid that actually got totaled in a parking lot hit-and-run. From witnesses' description, who didn't bother to get a tag number, there was a work truck parked next to my car, and when the driver pulled out he cut it close and hit the front left corner of my car. They said he got out, looked at the damage, but then hopped back in the truck and took off, and they had to actually jump out of his way!

The damage didn't look *that* bad. It pulled the fascia off, cracked the headlight assembly, and put a dent in the fender and a small one in the hood. Unfortunately, it also pulled a wiring harness completely apart, that was routed outside of the protection of the engine bay area. Because of that, a bunch of idiot lights came on.

I wanted to fix the car back up, but the insurance company totaled it. Probably for the best, as it was 10 years old and had about 150,000 miles on it by this time. I could have fixed it back up, only to have the transmission or some other major component fail.

[Cassie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eta2020 No it was my sister Violet - the one with Mercedes, swimming pool, sauna and the room for a pony.

LOL, and with the Royal Dalton in the back seat!

[Bestwifeever]

Quote:

Originally Posted by travelover Some one damaged my car at Costco the other day, too. They left without a note. Pretty sure it was a BMW driver with a nice watch.

It's okay, he was just distracted when he dropped the Grey's Poupon on his pants.

[eta2020]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bestwifeever It's okay, he was just distracted when he dropped the Grey's Poupon on his pants.

No actually she got distracted by calling me on my white slimline telephone with automatic redial.

[Sarah in SC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 Can we administer the Turing test? This might be a Soviet bot.

Easier to perform the Ignore Function Test, lol.

[JoeWras]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eta2020 I see you Ha as a bit older, well behaved California millionaire in nice Cadillac.... if you would splurge on car .

And he'd look great wearing that fedora.

[Keim]

So-to be clear-you are saying an average starting wage of $45k is unacceptably low?

Riiight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by purplesky What I said is that 20 years ago most college grads were finding good paying jobs. In the 90s. You could pay down a student loan type wages. But Now a large number of college grads are only landing a job at Starbucks or Target. These are low income jobs that high school grads can also get. Most of the new jobs being created are lower income type service jobs so I don't see why this is such a surprise. So if the avg. wage is around $20hr for college grads. That would seem to put millions of college grads in a pretty low wage demographic.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 Can we administer the Turing test? This might be a Soviet bot.

Yes, the replies do seem rather machine-predictable. Hmmm, but the poster/Soviet-bot did learn to drop the question mark for each sentence, though I suppose a machine could learn that.



Can I play? I'll try running this question through my 'bot, and see if I can predict the reply?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keim So-to be clear-you are saying an average starting wage of $45k is unacceptably low? Riiight.

'bot response: 'When CEO's are routinely making mega-bazzillion dollars for shipping jobs overseas and cutting benefits and raiding pensions to fund lavish mansions all over the world for themselves while the American public just doesn't care? '


How'd my 'bot do?

-ERD50

[Keim]

You forgot one item: COMRADE.

[Amethyst]

You guys are cracking me up

We figured the people driving the fancy cars were just trying to send us a message about polluting their lot with our cheap ride. Next there'll be a warning scratched onto the windshield via diamond ring

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cassie LOL, and with the Royal Dalton in the back seat!

[Major Tom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keim So-to be clear-you are saying an average starting wage of $45k is unacceptably low? Riiight.

I'd be interested to see a bit more data, rather than just an average starting wage. Averages, as I think most of us know, don't really tell us a lot. There could be a small number of grads making a lot, and a lot making a little - or they could all be making around 45K. I'd be interested to see the distribution of wages for recent grads - including those who, for whatever reason, are not working.

The arguments (I use that term loosely) that purplesky is attempting to make are (obviously) merely opinions until backed up with data from a credible source.

[hakuna matata]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eta2020 It would not impress me because I can buy Patek watch as well as BMW in cash. I would HATE to look rich. It is impractical.......

Taking a quick peruse through your prior posts I see you don't seem to mind owning a vacation home...isn't that a bit snobbish too? Only people I know who own vacation homes are rich people right? Who needs two homes? Owning a vacation home that sits vacant a lot of the time, well now that is impractical. I saw it all the time in my architectural practice. People wanted a million dollar condo in Vail that sat there vacant all year long except for one week during Christmas.

Personally I don't see having a vacation home, or a second home, or a fancy vacation, or a watch or a fancy car as impractical or showing off. Each person has money to be spent the way they choose. Who am I to judge how they choose to do that, I am quite certain someone here (or in real life) would think how I choose to spend my money is wrong--but f*** them is all I have to say!

[Hamlet]

There is a world of difference between the early 90s recession and the recent one. We are six years into this, and the job market still has not recovered for the under-25 crowd--

Unemployment and the class of 2014: How bad is the job market for new college grads?

Six years after the 90s recession we had one of the best job markets in history. Pretty much anyone who could fog a mirror could get a job.

Look at the charts in that link and tell me that recent college graduates aren't facing a tougher environment than their counterparts in the 90s.

In addition the cost of college has skyrocketed in real terms, so the level of debt required to get that degree has gone up dramatically. I went to the U of Minn in the early 90s, and the cost of tuition was ~$3000/year. Today it is about $12000/year. That means that the cost of going to the U of Minn has more than doubled after inflation-adjustment.

You and I faced two years or so of a crappy job market before entering one of the best job markets possible. Recent graduates have faced six years and counting, and are doing it with much more student debt than people in our generation needed.

The millenials are facing a legitimately raw deal compared to us and the boomers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 Yep, if you graduated into a recession, it sucks. I came out in the tail end of the early 90s recession and suffered for it as well. I delivered pizza for a while after graduating, then worked 3 or 4 sh!tty jobs (including the only job I was ever fired from) until the economy improved enough that people like early/mid 20s me could start getting a decent job. We moved to get to a much bigger job market and ended up living almost 2 years in my parents' house as a married couple (a joy, I can tell you). But you know what? I kept testing the market, going back to school at night, saving my pennies and being aggressive about moving on when a better opportunity showed up. Today's (spoiled) millenials will eventually get there, too. The ones with an ounce of common sense and drive will get there faster than their layabout peers that the media loves to highlight with all the sob stories.

[Andre1969]

I just thought of one moment of "awkward wealth" that backfired a bit. When my wife and I were going through our marital problems and on the brink of divorce, her mother got involved, talked to a lawyer, and mentioned "Oh, and he has FIVE cars!" I think the divorce lawyer saw dollar signs, and immediately said "Well, that's going to change". The soon-to-be ex-wife relayed this information to me, as if to be a threat.

But then I told her to remind this lawyer that those cars consist of (1) a 1957 DeSoto that's titled and registered in my grandmother's name, because I couldn't afford to insure it when I bought it; (2) a beat-up $400 1969 Pontiac Bonneville that's dead in my grandmother's yard...come tow it away and it's yours!; (3) a 1967 Pontiac Catalina convertible that overheats, doesn't have working a/c or heat, and has a hole in the roof so it needs to be kept indoors or it will lose its value VERY quickly; (4) a 1968 Dodge Dart with over 300,000 miles on it; and (5) a 1988 LeBaron that I bought from my uncle, for her to drive, for $2000...but still owed my uncle the whole $2000 for!

I also mentioned that we were pushing $26,000 in credit card debt at the time, and I had no equity whatsoever in my condo. Needless to say, once he discovered those little details, it didn't take that lawyer very long to lose interest in the case...

[eta2020]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hakuna matata Taking a quick peruse through your prior posts I see you don't seem to mind owning a vacation home...isn't that a bit snobbish too? Only people I know who own vacation homes are rich people right? Who needs two homes? Owning a vacation home that sits vacant a lot of the time, well now that is impractical. I saw it all the time in my architectural practice. People wanted a million dollar condo in Vail that sat there vacant all year long except for one week during Christmas. Personally I don't see having a vacation home, or a second home, or a fancy vacation, or a watch or a fancy car as impractical or showing off. Each person has money to be spent the way they choose. Who am I to judge how they choose to do that, I am quite certain someone here (or in real life) would think how I choose to spend my money is wrong--but f*** them is all I have to say!

You are correct. My reply was inappropriate.......

BTW vacation house will not loose 10%-20% of its value the day you buy it. But if one finds enjoyment in life in buying X or Y they should go for it