Fellow Americans, how do you deal with the fact that so many of our friends and neighbors are financially autistic? I know that it's their problem and I shouldn't get into their business, but fuck. Are we just better people for understanding everything we charge on a MasterCard we do have to pay back and living within our means? It's so damn infuriating to hear my coworkers with children bitch and moan about how expensive Christmas presents are and how they can't afford them, but buy them anyway. I grew up impoverished and learned monetary values from a young age, but so few of the other members of my generation have any financial concepts of any kind. No savings, no nest egg, nothing. Please help me make sense of this.
Trust me OP I've been there, I understand how you feel. My parents are an example. My mom is okay, but my dad... my dad is just so fucking stupid. And I hope the inheritance he got from his father is too big for him to fuck up because he's a retard with money. Never checks credit card statements, bought a new car every 2 years for the last two decades, owns two houses one of which is still underwater after paying the mortgage for 8 years, thinks he's a "trader" and picks stocks thinking he can beat the market. I've told him all the stupid shit he's doing but he doesn't listen to me because, fuck, I'm only 21 what the fuck do I know about money? Like someone being younger has any fucking bearing on whether or not they can understand a field.
Anyway, as you can see, it's easy to get upset about. The best thing is to just let them do their thing and focus on improving yourself and your situation. I expect you'll find that as you become more and more financially secure (while these idiots dig deeper and deeper holes) you'll begin to care less about the mistakes they've made and focus more on the success you've had.
>>1009203
Actually it's mostly that the upperclass has been assraping the middle class for about 3-4 decades now, which has seen no real-pay increase over the period, despite the fact that corporate profits and thus also the coffers of the upper class have ballooned.
>inb4 bootlickers defending this open war of attrition on your own countrymen
>>1009350
If you're trolling, that was lazy. I can't even tell what point you were trying to make.
Wealthy people count assets, not dollars. As long as the masses are focused on numbers the wealthy can entrench themselves with types of inflation. So while granddad is busy bitching about young people making "good wages" at 15$/hr, no ones doing the math to realize housing and investment are out of reach.
Public servants get the gravy train, private companies make a return and the circus goes on, while the wealthy keep close to their assets and everyone else is either infighting or counting.
>>1009203
you sound like one of those people that think they are a "different type of intellect"
>>1010097
>I live in crippling debt but its' okay because everyone else does too!
If you don't realize how shitty everyone else is with money, you're probably pretty shitty with money, m8.
>>1010105
>lol just stop being poor
>>1009203
sell them consumer loans
>>1010107
>Poor people need to take out credit card debt
Holy shit. If you don't have the self control to not spend more than you make, that's your own goddamned fault. Budget your goddamned money.
>Fellow Americans, how do you deal with the fact that so many of our friends and neighbors are financially autistic?
By owning rental properties.
>>1010131
Im tossing around the idea of buying my first rental. Any advice?
>>1010105
Or maybe I don't see it because I live in an area where people are generally pretty decent with their money. Why do you see it to be so prevalent? m8.
>>1010138
Be an officer renting properties near base to enlisted purchased with a 2.7% interest VA loan. Don't not be an officer renting properties near base to enlisted purchased with a 2.7% interest VA loan.
>>1010141
Solid.
>>1010146
Yep. No renter problems because enlisted getting into financial trouble can get their security clearances revoked and possibly get them discharged if they don't straighten out their debt. BAH ensures that they can pay rent. It's basically a racket for current and retired officers.
>>1010149
Sounds like you have a pretty good gig going.
>>1010128
You do realize that most of the average USA consumer's debt isn't credit cards, right? It's mortgages and student loans. If there were no such thing as credit cards, OP's chart would still show a depressing amount more debt growth than income growth.
>>1010154
Everybody has rackets going on around base. From movers to landlords.
>>1010163
>tfw no racket, and 30k needed for shitty condo down payments in crime neighborhoods around you.
>>1010141
I thought the house has to be your primary residence with the VA loan?
Any other advice is appreciated.
(Former grunt thinking about doing same thing)
>>1009203
D-don't you just have to not spend a lot of money, save a lot of money, and pay your cash back card's charges off the month you make them?
>>1010201
First you have to make decent money, but yes, it works out fine if you do that. The problem is most Americans can't do that.
Don't get me wrong, I make more than 70% of US households by myself so I'm doing fine, but that's exactly it, isn't it? 70% of US households are getting beat by a single 26 year old jacking off while working from home.
Something is wrong.
>>1010213
how do you make that money ?
>>1010233
He's a camwhore transvestite.
>>1009203
It's honestly the most pathetic thing i've ever seen.
The general public is absolutely retarded when it comes to Finances, and everything else really.
No wonder they get scammed so easily and so frequently.
>>1010092
What do you mean they count assets, not dollars? I'm genuinely curious.
>>1010141
Kek'd. Smart man, that's why you're an officer.
>>1009203
What's the problem. The economy needs morons like common people, keeps the wheels rolling. Christmas presents, new cars, what ever, credit card pays.
Meanwhile your job is to collect the easy berries
>>1010141
Cant use va loans for investment properties texhnically
>>1010174
Them's the breaks.
>>1010194
That hasn't been an issue so far because while you have to initially occupy the home, you have 175k that the VA is loaning you without the need to put anything down. Say you up-size houses, switch the first one to a rental property (easy to do if you're deployed) and come back and put money down on a second house. Okay, now you just need a 20% downpayment on that second house while that first one is now accruing you money. And whether it's the house that you live in or the house that you're renting, BAH covers your mortgage.
Potentially you can switch up houses every time you go TDY without too much fuss so long as you don't make the moving a major headache.
>>1010264
I've met some dumb fucks who somehow passed college and got to be officers. Not always safe to assume that we're smart cookies.
>>1010157
Who is complaining about that kind of debt?
>>1009203
> cost of living has gone up well over 100%
> wages for bottom 75% have hardly increased
> most all people want to live "the good life"
so debts went up
>>1010262
One of the grand secrets of being wealthy is to "never lose money" --Warren Buffett
Cash is a currency, in truth no one wants cash, they want what cash buys, if you look into the history of money, people used to trade seashells, beads, etc... fairly worthless trinkets etc.
There is only one real asset and that's time.
We are of course still burdened with the expenses of the human condition. As such we have a few things that are considered essentially pure assets.
Primary Assets are property, Rights, information, food, anything that can be exchanged with little to no state changes.
Secondary assets, have had time to be altered in some way. steel from iron ore for example.
Tertiary assets are generally final products, a full house, which is just a simple assembly of sticks, stones, glue, paper and mud.
Currency is an easily divisible medium/standard of exchange, so you can compare apples to oranges, so we don't have a Chinese alphabet exchange rate between everything. I'll trade you 5000 apples, 20 goats, 10 favors, 3 daughters, 2 valuable secrets, 100 casks of wine, 16 servants, and this pretty necklace for that house over there.
Some what of a hassle right. so we use cash which stores value.
Some time ago, inflation was invented, as a method to move currency from stocked up places. When times were tough people hoarded, and business would lock up. Inflation eats at the value of currency. they used to do it by shaving metal off coins, to make new coins.
as such by holding wealth in currency, its value is eroded over time.
The term for this is Purchasing Power Parity.
When I was a kid. I could by the Huge 1/2 pound hershey bar for $1.75. Now that is the price of a 2.6 oz, used to be 3, king size hershey bar. That money as far as the hershey bar is concerned buys me 32% of what it used to buy me. that's a compound annual inflation rate over 25 years of 1.15% that was taken to spread wealth thru the growing populace.
>>1010281
You can, as I legally occupied and intended to occupy the home. Now I would technically be safer in terms of paperwork if I refinanced the homes with an IRRRL loan while renting it out, but I do not feel that anybody is going to come down on me for it. I think that I've just found a loophole that hasn't been closed yet, and in the event that the VA explicitly closes this loophole I will be scrambling to put in IRRRL paperwork as fast as I can.
>>1010233
Went into CS at a state university, mostly programming. I took an IT work study for 3 years while I was there. I graduated and made entry level salary at an IT Support Specialist job that slowly turned into call center support for corporate idiots. Once I had 2 years of corporate experience under my belt, plus programming degree and 3 years of IT hardware, I used all the connections I kept from college to see who had open positions (people normally get referral bonuses, so a few colleagues wanted me on). I took the best offer for 70k, worked for 2 years, got promoted and make 81k now with plenty more room to grow at the new position if this project works out.
>>1010293
I've always loved the intention of Buffett's quote, but hated the practicality. For a vast, VAST majority of the world, cost of living eats 50% or more of their net annual earnings. Telling someone to "never lose money" only works if they don't fall into that trap. What he's really saying is: make more money than most people in the first place, then we'll talk.
>>1010233
>>1010305
And I didn't actually answer your question at all: Release Engineering. It's like Dev Ops automation, I create and maintain systems that turn code into installers, let test builds run, and handle automated reports for developers. tl;dr I automate and tweak systems to replace a lot of chump jobs. Company pays me 81k to save them 200k, really.
>>1010293
Also are you Chinese?
>>1010293
Are you Chinese or not?
>>1010293
>they used to do it by shaving metal off coins, to make new coins.
Not /pol/ but, I thought this was something Jews did in Europe which forced people to make coins with ridges?
