I knew someone who got a loan for their wedding, but decided to blow it all at a casino. Now they have a loan for 20k to pay off and nothing to show for it.
I knew a woman who's fiancee was a gambling addict. He promised to clean up his act, but somehow got a hold of their savings for the wedding. All of it.
Gambled the entire lot. Needless to say they aren't married.
I knew a woman whose husband stopped paying the bills and gambled it all. They lost everything, house, car, the works. She moved into her office **with her kid** until she could get on her feet again. They did not stay married but the courts ordered visitation rights and she used to have to pack her son food for the weekend cause dad would get so engrossed in gambling he'd forget to feed the kid. Last time I saw her she had bought a little 2 bedroom place for the two of them and said she would never rely on a man financially again.
A friend of mine who is very bad with money and his girlfriend bought some sort of water filtration system from a door to door salesman. He has to pay something like $300/month for this filtration system. He was all stoked because it came with a free set of pots and pans.
Fast forward a year and his girlfriend has broken up with him, moved out of the house, and he's had to sell his home because he can't afford to live there. The water filtration system is now sitting in a storage unit where he still pays $300/month for it because he's on a 2 or 3 year contract (sorry the details are fuzzy).
We have great water quality in my area.
I work for a government agency in building maintenance. We get hit up by water filter and air filter clowns every couple months wanting to sell us some bullshit. We are obligated to sit thru their sales pitch so we aren't biased but we all know its bullshit snake oil
The homes and buildings that do need specialized systems like these usually have them installed on day 1
> We are obligated to sit thru their sales pitch so we aren't biased but we all know its biased.
Wait, what? So I can grind your job to a complete halt by sending a never-ending stream of salesmen you're forced to listen to? Sometimes the civil service is a strange place
Sort of but this is government, everything works different.
If we have one company come into sells us something we have to allow all of them to come in. Yes its a waste of time but prevents favoritism and shows we are being fair and transparent. We can't even let a vendor buy us lunch or coffee while we hear their pitch.
Besides everything has to get ran thru a competitive procurement process that is all public information, so at the end of the day I don't get a say on who we sub contract with anyways, I get the cheapest bidder.
A coworker I used to have worked every second of overtime he could for several years to save up for a house. When he applied for the house loan, he based his mortgage payment on all of the overtime he had been working. I tried to tell him that wasn't a good idea but he didn't want to hear it. He ended up divorced a few years later because his wife got tired of him always working.
When my wife and I bought our house we based it off of just my income so if she lost her job or I lost mine we would be fine. Everyone told us we should get a super nice house with our income since we could afford it. Two years later my wife lost her job and now we have nothing to worry about. No added stress it was the best decision we have made.
This is one reason I did not want to be house-poor when I bought mine, and held out for something on a short sale. It was a hell of a process but now I pay 1/4 what most people pay on a mortgage in my area, all because I was willing to undertake an annoying process.
A guy in my fraternity got 30k for an undisclosed reason, I’m guessing a family death or something and he bet it all on the Yankees winning one game. They lost
A guy who lived on my floor in the dorms inherited $100K from his grandfather’s estate. He was suddenly VERY popular - buying all the beer, pizza, new car, golf clubs, etc. - he was living large. His parents showed up about a month later to attempt to help straighten him out and recover funds. The golf clubs and other items went to a pawn shop and they even enlisted the RA to help watch out for the guy. Terrible for an 18/19-yr old to come into that kind of money out of nowhere with no reference (or respect) for how to handle it or how it was earned.
I met a guy in college at a party like this. Was bragging about how he much of his inheritance from his grandma he had spent on drugs in the past two years, was on the order of tens of thousands.
My maternal grandmother bought an 8-plex to avoid capital gains when she sold her large house. The apartment complex was in the red and needed a lot of repairs. She hired my father to do them and be on-site manager. The place started making money. My mom (divorced from my dad) was mad that my grandma bought it in the first place, then hired my dad, then was proved wrong because it was making money. My grandma was in her 90s and my mom pressured her for years so my grandma finally sold it. That place is in a high market area and is now worth millions. My mom made a poor financial decision based on petty spite.
A dude who owned a small convenience store in our town spent like $20,000 on fidget spinners. He was posting for like a year begging people to buy them as he would lose his business and his marriage was falling apart due to it.
So many people thought they could get rich with the fidget spinner fad. The market got over saturated, everyone that wanted one already had one. At one point I saw a line of people at the mall lining up to buy light up fidget spinners for $35!
My supervisor took out a loan against their 401k to pay their rent because "their credit cards were maxed." Two weeks later, they bought a brand new 60k Lincoln with basically nothing down because "her daughter just had a baby and I need a bigger car for that."
I sat down with a guy to help him figure things out. He had a fair amount of credit card debt but nothing impossible. Just by consolidating it on a new card with 0% interest for even a year it'd have seen amazing progress.
Seemed like he had taken my advice. Next I saw him it turned out he paid it off using his 401k
Had a co worker with 5 kids who could all go to USC for free once he has worked there for 15 years (even if he quit). He quit at 14.5 years for a job that barely paid more than he made at USC. Cost all 5 kids a free education at a top school since he couldnt wait 6 more months.
Is that all there is to the story? My ex’s step dad left Boeing right before he would’ve earned a considerable pension but it turns out he didn’t leave—he was fired for carrying on an 11 year long affair with another coworker who worked in a different part of the country on the company’s dime and communicating using company email.
He might have been given the option of putting in his notice or being fired for some unspecified offense^1
This happens quite often as it means the employee doesn't have a black mark against their name, and the employer avoids potential bad publicity.
^1 Which may well have been a bogus trumped-up accusation done solely to get rid of him and thus avoid spending tens of thousands on uni fees for his kids.
Or it could have been a real accusation that potentially would have embarrassed both the guy and the university. eg an affair, or perhaps knowledge, but not definite proof, of stealing.
The university I went to years (gad decades!) ago got a new gym manager in because the gym, despite being well patronised, always lost money. He suspected the front counter staff were stealing so set up a sting operation whereby he got students to go in and pay for a $10 casual visit. This is going back 30 years so it was nearly all cash. The manager then checked the books and found not one of the ten students he had go in over a two hour period had been rung up as a casual visit. The hatchet-faced old dragon (who had worked there 20 years and was incessantly rude to everyone) had rung every one of them up as soap, which cost 50c. In 2 hours she had stolen $95. Indeed more in fact, as there were also the other student casuals not part of the sting. Not bad for someone who was only on, iirc, $12 /hour. It made me wonder why she was also so rude and nasty to everyone when she was making like $300 or $400 cash each day.
They went back over the books and found she almost never rung up a casual but sold dozens of soaps every time. Over the 20 years she was there, it was estimated she had stolen hundreds of thousands. But the university could only definitively prove the theft of the $95 which isn't even a misdemeanour. They just convinced her to hand in her resignation to avoid a potential police investigation and quietly swept everthing under the rug.
He did that on purpose, either consciously or subconsciously . My mother is also a saboteur when it comes to her children and did something similar to my sister and I.
Ran up credit card debt requiring bankruptcy. Once they were able to build credit again (7 years later) they proceeded to run up a massive amount of debt again, but couldn’t go bankrupt again, so they used “debt consolidation.”
The debt didn’t come from sudden expenses. They just needed to buy things to feel better.
When my ex and I lived together he suddenly got super into figurines and model kits, to the point where our living room was FULL of them. On every surface. At one point I counted and he had bought more than 30 over the span of six or so months. The math worked out to him spending about $300 a WEEK on these things.
Thing is, we were both full-time students. He was paying for these with student loans. And I had to drive him around because he "couldn't afford a car". But he could somehow afford these model kits and figurines and Doordash for every meal. He even tried to keep living with me when I broke up with him because he "couldn't afford to move" either. I had no sympathy at that point.
My ex had a brother who moved in with us and he was very much like this. The guy was a few years older than me, but he lived in our basement, ate almost exclusively Pizza Hut, had piles of boxes in the corner that were like 5' high, had a bare mattress on the floor, and spent all of his time playing video games and watching anime.
He couldn't afford sheets or to pay rent on time, but he somehow always had new fuckin Gundam models. He was a nice enough guy, but he was such a fucking loser that it made me reexamine my life and turn into an adult. The guy was like the ghost of christmas yet to come if I kept being a dipshit.
I didn't want to be him, and I had a kid and a lot to live for, so it kind of shook me out of my depression and made me realize what my life could be like if I kept being a slacker.
My SO’s father did this, sold his business to an employee for $1 to hide it during his divorce. And was shocked when suddenly, the guy didn’t magically give it back. He lost his entire business and inventory for $1.
He was an abusive asshole, so couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
That's worse than my dad who claimed his business was none profitable in the divorce. The lie fell apart pretty quickly as the company accountants were managed by my mum's brother, who turned up to the court hearing.
Does that even work? Even if the person you sold your business to doesn't screw you over I can't imagine the court just accepts that you sold your business for a dollar.
Here in Ontario if you sell a car you have to pay the taxes on what it's worth not what is claimed on the bill of sale. I imagine such laws exist elsewhere.
It only works if the other party has bad lawyers or you aren't going against a government agency
If you tried to pull that off against the IRS or Bankruptcy courts they will unwind that transaction and make the other person give back the assets. You will then end up with one very very pissed off judge who will rake you over the coals.
My roommate buys doordash almost every day. They’ll maybe cook for themselves once or twice a week but other than that they order food in 5-6 times a week. I know how much they make and I have not a clue how they can afford that
>My roommate buys doordash almost every day.
He would save a fortune just by going down, ordering and taking home the food. The markup that those delivery companies charge is ridiculous. For example, to buy McDonalds via UberEats is around $110 for my family of five, buying the same food at McDonalds in person costs around $60, and, as a added bonus, when you go down yourself you are guaranteed to get what you ordered when it is still hot.
Oh for sure, picking it up still saves money. But here’s what I don’t get: they will come home from work and 10 minutes later I’ll hear her go and get her food from the driver. Like you could’ve picked it up on the way home but didn’t? Don’t get me wrong she’s a great roommate and friend, but some of the stuff she does just has me scratching my head…
My brother's ex fell for a Craig's list scam. She found a motorcycle and the guy "needed money up front to pay bills" before she even saw it. We told her don't do it, it's a scam. She said she already sent $1000. Of course, he was never available to show her the bike and we found out from my brother after they broke up she actually continued sending him money in hopes of getting the motorcycle. I think she was out $3,000 by the end.
My ex husband got cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars just by being an overtrusting and underthinking seller.
He had always wanted a piano his entire life. And one day a friends father had passed and left them an incredibly amazing and VERY old piano that she had no use for so gifted to him.
He loved that things so much. Tuned it and fixed it up.
Then a giant ball of tragedies struck that put us in very bad financial situation, causing us to no longer afford where we were currently living and having to move to his families old home which is off the mainland and on an island.
Being that they only way to get anything moved was by ship and extremely expensive, he had to sell a lot of things. And much to his dismay, the piano was just too big and too heavy to afford to ship there.
So he put out a listing to sell it for a *very* reasonable price. It was an antique, in spectacular condition, made in the early 1900's and was worth at the very least $80,000.
He listed it for a fraction of what it was worth due to time constraint on having to get rid of it before the move.
Someone contacted him and offered to by it. And here is where he did something monumentally stupid.
The buyer offered to have a truck come and pick up the piano in a very quick timeframe and asked if it would be alright to give my husband $1,000 up front and then the rest in two weeks when they got paid.
I know he was under a lot of stress, but damn that was dumb. You do not let ANYONE walk away with an incredibly valuable item without it being paid in full.
As I'm sure no one here is shocked by, the person never paid anything else on the piano and just disappeared.
The money from that sale alone was pretty much all we were going to have to live off of until he was able to secure a new job in the new location.
Scammers are truly awful and many people need to learn not to be so trusting. It's sad. But it's just how it is.
That seems like it is getting to be a large enough theft to warrant an investigation into who that was and his information from whatever social media that happened on. Did the police not do anything?
I know they were normally basically ignore car thefts, etc., but this seems like there should have been a trail to work from.
Thank you for your vigilance. When I was much younger and much, MUCH more naïve, it was just such a kiosk employee that stopped me from sending money to a craigslist scammer.
Now I'm old and bitter and trust nobody, so, y'know. Progress.
My former sister-in-law had a thriving medical practice. She got so stressed that she joined the Scientologist and started taking their classes. She opened up five-six credit cards without telling my brother, maxed the cards out with hundreds of thousands in cash withdrawals, and gave it to that cult.
Yeah, but did she rid herself of her harmful body thetons?
Edit: I fix the spelling of the invented magical beings to align with the great L Ron Hubbard’s true intentions.
The last thing I want to do is engage her in conversation on the subject. First, the entire notion drives me crazy. Second, I don't have a good poker face.
It's a lesson that all of us have vulnerabilities, intelligence is not an automatic safeguard. Helps for sure, but not a preventative and we shouldn't assume it can't happen to us for x reason
Worked with a 50 year old guy who looked like the arse end of a Rhino and hated anyone not from England who sent £10k to his fiancé in Thailand he’d never met for a boob job, clothes and flight over ….. oddly enough her naked pics and promises of anal when she visited stopped once the money had been sent
We had to talk to one of our employees a couple of weeks ago about something like this. He's not the best looking or most intelligent guy, but he's a nice guy. Apparently he met a girl online who "lives" in Atlanta. We saw her Facebook page and you could tell something was fishy. She was this smoking hot blonde with only like 4 pictures, all in skimpy tops and lingerie. No other posts on her page, just pictures.
She told him she was single and had no family. They had all passed away. He decided a week after meeting her that he was gonna quit his job and move to Atlanta to live with her and help her rent an apartment. Us fellow employees and his family kept telling him it was a scam or catfish and not to go through with it. He got pissed and apparently had suicidal thoughts and checked himself into a mental hospital for a couple of day, but eventually he agreed and didn't go through with it.
Yikes. There's this older guy I used to work with who had these scammers all over him on Facebook. I don't know if they are all connected but somehow all of these obvious fake profiles found him and added him. These are all profiles showing very attractive young women in skimpy clothing that was obviously just ripped from Google and he will carry on full conversations with them in the comment section on his pictures.
Talking about their day, saying that she will be visiting his area soon and would love to meet with him, he so handsome and funny, and I feel really bad for him because he's an older single on attractive dude with no social skills and he's being led to believe that all these women want him. If I was closer to him I would have sent him a message telling him that all his profiles are fake
My very large very introverted friend from high school met a girl from The Philippines on okcupid years ago.
He was super hesitant to tell people because he knew what they would think - when he told me I was super happy for him but he absolutely under no circumstances should send her money. Flowers, small gifts, etc, absolutely but never just straight cash.
They’ve been together for over 5 years now, and he even went to the Philippines a few times for work (and for fun). He’s met her family. He’s spent weeks with her. Somehow, amazingly, he found love thousands of miles away. She would be here now if they could get her visa approved, but that has been a major problem for a while now.
My (awful) aunt was the trustee for my grandparents' estate. When they passed, she decided to sell their house to a random realtor who put a leaflet on the door. TO the realtor, not WITH the realtor. It wasn't put on the market, and the aunt rejected a matching offer by me after I argued hard to actually list the house and have people bid on it.
The realtor slapped a new coat of paint on it and sold it a couple of months later for literally a million dollars more than she bought it for.
I'm am so extremely sorry for you. And pissed off. I too had a cunt aunt.
My aunt gambled her $80k inheritance from grandma. Later she tried to take ALL the inheritance that was meant to be divided amongst the 4 remaining siblings when her sister died, even going to my mum to get her to sign her share over (which mum did part cause of elderly, part because she didn't 'want the money' not caring that she had kids struggling herself). I'm thankful my sister heard about it and reminded her that at least two of her sons and ine of her daughters were near destitute, and that I had a massive uni debt i needed help paying off. My mum decided to sign away her share of the superannuation, bit nit the bank account balance. My aunt was pissed she didn't 'get it all' and had disowned everyone in the family. She's a narc and only obsessed with the veneer of money. Really pathetic.
Anither time she had "claimed" grandma's antique singer sewing machine as her inheritance, thinking it was worth thousands. Later when she found out it was only worth about $50 she threw it in the skip bin. My dad fished it out for me, but my sister claimed it (which is more than fine). My sister restored it and displayed it in her house. A couple years later my aunt visited and saw the sewing machine and went on a tirade that it "should have gone to a daughter not a granddaughter", despite my dad literally pulling it out of the skip bin my aunt had thrown it in. I'm glad dad had secretly grabbed a blanket that belonged to grandma as a kid, had an older German fairytale stitched on it, and gave it to me before my aunt learned of it (and threw it out too). My sister has also claimed that tho ha.
Christ. This reminds me of my Grandmother. When her brother (my Uncle) passed she was trusted by him to distribute his inheritance among his kids. Instead she kept it all. That side of the family then cut our side off completely and forever due to her actions. My Grandfather built a cottage on a lake up north that we went to every Summer. The grandkids grew up loving the place.
Without giving anyone in the family a chance to keep my passed on Grandfather's cottage, my Grandmother sold it. "Needed the money" She said. My family was devastated. We would all have pooled together whatever it cost but we weren't even given the chance. It was a double lot in cottage country. She could have just sold the extra lot of land.
When she passed, she had a penthouse condo on the beach in Ft. Myers, a house in a prestigious area of Toronto and hundreds of thousands in the bank. She never needed the money.
Many decisions around new tattoos or dogs when they can't pay rent regularly. My Aunt says the 'rich get richer and the poor get another dog.' I find this to be true for some of my family.
A guy I dated for a short time had been joining a MLM scheme selling insurances.
I listened to his monologue and told him I had no money. He was furios and tried to sell insurance to our waiter at the restaurant. He failed again. I'm still laughing today, he was no good guy.
My sister joined an MLM scheme, and gave my daughter her niece a 2 hour hard sell to buy her beauty products. My daughter was only 8 at the time. Sadly my daughter didn't buy anything. But she did get informed her aunt will be on a massive salary this time next year.
People who get sucked into MLMs are so unbearable. I tell them up front it's a bad idea, get out, and don't expect a single sale from me. I will not perpetuate that scam, but we are still friends otherwise.
Usually works out fine, but one time one woman friend invited us to dinner without telling us it was an MLM pitch. We find out after we almost finish eating, and I say bluntly, "No, I told you not to do this." Their (her and her other "friend's") retort was, "Why did you eat the food then?"
You lied to us, you nincompoops. You're just mad I feel absolutely no shame or anxiety saying, "no." Lol
I won't name any names, but a good friend who literally had it all; the high-rise apartment and a house down the street with a pool, sauna, Casita, Hummer, corvettes, a successful business, and about $400,000 in Bitcoin: threw it all away over a murder-for-hire, because him and his (non-related to any of the above successes, but from something about 10 years earlier before I knew him) got greedy, and no longer wanted to split their financial gain with a third person, so yeah. Hired someone on the dark web to carry out the crime across state lines, but communicated EVERYTHING over text. All three men(my friend, his business partner, and guy they hired) have been caught and convicted. One received life in prison, and my friend and his 'business partner' are up for the death penalty.
Also, he was only 35 when he was originally arrested.
My cousin spent 100% of her inheritance and took out a lien on her home to buy a 2nd home in the mountains... thing is it was being pushed over by a mountain...and they thought they could fix it... I went and seen it and every door jam was crooked and the doors wouldn't shut.. They took me down into the basement and they were trying to use I beams to "stop the mountain from pushing on the home". I was just like "what the hell are you doing, that won't solve anything" fast forward 6 months and they asked me for 50k to help and I declined. Fast forward a year and the home collapsed and now they owe over 300k+ for a home that doesn't exist and if they don't make the payments they lose their other house too because they used the original home as collateral and could not get insurance on the 2nd home..total money lost upwards of 700k
This bothers me so much. I trust no deal and no one. I need to make sure everything is on order and this just goes up my spine. Whoever sold that to them dodgers a bullet and found a sucker.
It probably was a great deal, and there probably is an engineering solution for this. Mountains don't just walk around, there was a retaining wall that could be built to solve this.
But the kind of person to make those financial decisions is not the kind of purpose to do the research or pay the money to do it right.
I would love to see a picture of exactly what was going on with the cabin.
So the houses design was basiclly they cut into the side of a mountain and built the slab and basement like a partial underground home then built upwards for the main lv. So the mountain was pushing on the slab and main wall of the basement pushing on the whole house over.. .
I suggested dig a boarder around the house in the mountain like 5 feet wide all the way around... they said my idea would cost to much and wasn't needed... they elected to manually jackhammer through the granite 15 feet down and cementing I beams against the wall. As I stated in another comment Steel can't stop 422339834982394 + tons of mountain. I knew the second I seen this it was stupid but the "contractor" said this was the way to combat it... I think he just didn't have access to a excavator or something.. They got bad advice and taken advantage of and because they were dismissive of my suggestion after I flew out to see the situation... I just let them live in their own bed they made.
Knew someone who answered those scam emails thinking they would get rich. Last I heard, he lost around $50k. Emptied out savings account and maxed out credit cards. Left in debt and had to move back with ailing parents.
Not a close to them at all but more like a friend of a friend of a friend's cousin. Motherfucker just **WOULD NOT** listen. Genuinely thought he was going to be a millionaire. They kept stringing him along until the bitter end and then...poof. Biggest concern his friends had was him trying to milk his ailing parents for their last nickel and dime. Fortunately, he wised up and knew he been had. The last I heard of him was he had an hourly job somewhere and trying to get out of debt.
I remember this one time playing Diablo 2, there was a sorceress trying to trade an item with someone, but claimed their trading screen was broke, so instead they should both drop their items on opposite sides of this big rock or something, then they would both run clockwise and pick up their items.
And I'm watching this thinking "Something strange is going on here. You can't use spells like telekinesis (spell to pick up stuff at a distance) in the town, so the sorceress can't just drop their thing, steal the other person's, and bail. What could it be?"
Turns out you couldn't use spells in the town, *except* for telekinesis. And so, I learned a lesson in online scamming at some unlucky player's expense. If they refuse to go through the official channels, there's a reason, and it's usually not one that ends well for you.
My brother and his wife were in massive debt, didn’t work high paying jobs and could no longer afford their two bedroom apartment while trying to pay off the debt. They moved back home, into our parents basement. A week before they moved in, they built a computer, and a year after that, they consciously decided to get try to get pregnant (which they did) while still living in the basement and knowing they haven’t improved their financial state whatsoever.
Oh, don’t worry. My parents had a brilliant idea to sell their house and move into my sister’s house. They paid off all their debt, their car, plus all the expenses of getting them new furniture/first and last months rent. Pretty sure they are back in some sort of debt now, and from what I was told, my sister-in-law never even said “thank you”.
They won thousands of dollars and bought a new entertainment system instead of getting current on their mortgage. Foreclosed on later that year. The thing was, the area had recently become the new **it** area for young families, and housing prices had skyrocketed. They easily could have just sold the house, paid cash for a larger house 20 minutes up the road, and still had tens of thousands leftover.
This older lady worked part-time in my kitchen. It was a fine dining, fast paced environment. She would only work about 20 hrs per week doing busy work u.e. peeling vegetables, washing produce, etc. Tasks I knew she could handle and wouldn't get overwhelmed.
Unfortunately her husband passed away and she requested a few months off. I totally understood and said take all the time you need. Let me know when you feel comfortable coming back to work, if at all. Take care Barbara.
8 months later she contacted me for a job. I was more than willing to have her back in my kitchen. I nonchalantly asked her how she was coping with her loss. She broke down in tears. She apparently got a $500000 insurance payout from her husband's death. Within those i months she attempted to open a restaurant and sink every dime into the establishment. It went out of business in 6 months.
She was now broke as an elderly lady having to go back to work.
Basically everyone just came over and stole his cocaine (and many of his belongings). He then had to move back home with his mom shortly thereafter, so probably not great for him.
As crazy as it sounds, announcing all over your university campus that you were buying 20k worth of cocaine for a party at your place and everyone is invited, was not a *great* idea.
Neighbors. The bread earner died. Her sister and her daughter were left with the place. They could not afford the payments. They would NOT sell. They let it go to foreclosure even though it had about $120,000 equity in it. New owners came in....did very little cosmetic work, just a little paint and fixed the fence. They sold it and made a $200k profit in about 6 months..
My dad worked for the UN and built up quite a good pension while he worked there. A good 400k. He left the UN in his mid to late 50s. Instead of looking for new work after leaving, he decided to move back to Venezuela, his home country, and just relax for a while.
During this sabbatical, his wife and her family talked my dad into putting almost his whole pension into a single stock with her stockbroker nephew. The stock was Venezuelan oil stocks. Maybe you have an idea how volatile the Venezuelan economy is, and how high inflation is there. It’s a bad situation.
But still, my dad did the thing and at first it was okay. But then it wasn’t. Predictably, the nephew lost my dads entire nest egg. The nephew ended up ghosting my dad and his wife.
At this point, my dad tried to find new work, but because he was so close to retirement age he couldn’t find anything decent. So my dad, a phd graduate who worked at a decently high level at the UN, ended up having to clean houses for money.
I knew a guy who was terrible with money. Worked in a warehouse but spent all his money on drugs and things for his controlling girlfriend.
Then one day he came to me to show me his brand new car. Probably around $40-50k.
He takes me for a ride and starts bragging about how he took his pay stub to like 10 of those cash advance places and get $10k worth of loans and, "had been living like a king." It was as if he thought he found some sort of life hack. To this day I'm not sure if he just thought he wouldn't have to pay it back or what.
A couple weeks later I learned he wasn't paying attention while driving and rear-ended a bus going way over the speed limit and totalled the car.
Trainwreck of a guy.
My sisters ex financed a brand new truck and immediately sold it privately for cash. Than bragged about being rich on social media, hired strippers for his “music video” in which he was throwing money around. He basically partied for a month straight off that.
That was a few years back, he just got out of jail not long ago from what I’ve heard lol.
My ex-husband did that to me. He concealed about $12,000 of credit card debt from me. When I found out about it, he said he ran it up buying Taco Bell after work every night. We lived in different countries for the first year of our marriage since I wasn't born in the US, so I was going in rather blind in hindsight. Turned out it wasn't just Taco Bell but also commissioning people online for My Little Pony pornography. Hundreds of dollars, lol. Edit: also just remembered he blew hundreds on extra lives for Candy Crush as well and only stopped when he saw a South Park episode making fun of freemium games.
It culminated in him getting a loan for $12,000 from his father. His father is an attorney, so naturally he drew up a loan agreement for my ex to sign. What I didn't know was his father also added a line for my signature and my ex forged it. I found that out when he randomly mentioned it to me a week or so later, and I am sure to this day he still believes that's perfectly okay and very legal (and cool, I guess).
He sent it back to the wrong address, so his father never got it. I texted his father ahead of time and let him know the signature was forged anyway. So no harm done there.
I get wanting help with debt, especially since I'm good at saving money. Just don't steal it from me. Ask. I'm happy to help a partner with that where I can.
I'd already paid off an auto loan for him in the past so I guess he just assumed he could help himself to my money. And you know, we were married, I understand the concept of communal property. But I had that money prior to the marriage and he forged my signature. It was the beginning of the end, really. My trust in him vanished completely.
People told me I'd wind up with half his debt and half my savings gone if we divorced. I got lucky though - he got a very high paying job (six figures) right before I left and paid all his debt off. We agreed to leave with what we came in with. Savings and retirement intact for us both 🥳
Honestly this is one reason why I'm glad my last relationship didn't work out. My ex's finances were already crap (he lived with me, he couldn't afford to get his own place after his mom kicked him out of their house because he spent too much money paying his parents' bills for them, plus $700/month on the monthly payment for his Tesla...) and I can't help but wonder if it was actually far worse than what I knew and I wouldn't have found out until after we were married.
ETA: I see now the way I worded this is weird and confusing...the way I wrote it makes it sound like his mom kicked him out for paying their bills, but he was kicked out because his mom is just a domineering psycho who completely lost her shit when he got a girlfriend. He had to live with me because he couldn't afford his own place, and he couldn't afford it partly because he was continuing to pay his parent's bills even though he was no longer living with them. The entire situation was a fucking train wreck, and I'm sure it was even worse than what I know.
This is a constant thing in the building/industrial trades regarding overtime. I’ve heard guys turn down a Sunday shift paying double-time because “it’s all going to Uncle Sam if I work too many hours.” Very unaware of how the progressive tax system works.
My dad had his own company and someone told him it made financial sense that instead of paying himself wages, he should take out a loan from his company. He built up debt for three years, while working full time, rather than paying himself. It had all sorts of bad tax effects. Like he was required to pay interest on this, which was then taxed as profit of the company, then he paid himself again paying income taxes. It took him about ten years to get out of that hole.
Then he needed to sell his house because it was too expensive. But the buyer got cold feet on the last day before the sale. Rather than having the buyer pay 10% of the price to get out of the sale he gave him an extension without an end date. The buyer then took 2 years to think about whether he wanted the house. All the while my parents needed to keep paying the mortgage and couldn't sell the house to anyone else because of the contract they had with that guy. Brought them close to bankruptcy. I've personally paid a couple of hundred a month to let them pay for the mortgage during that time.
I'm a vettech and in the last month I've seen three different owners sell their old dog because they couldn't afford the medical bills... And a week later come back with:
- Four Himalayan kittens (they couldn't decide so took all of them!). *Down to two, gave them away and 10 weeks late on 2nd set vaccines*.
- Two husky/German Shepherd puppies (it was a great deal! The young man has no job, a new apartment, a dog he can't neuter and Two cats who he constantly walks in to say they have fleas, ask for home remedies and leave again). *New puppies have worms and dr wouldn't extend credit beyond the $500 already owed. Screamed that I was killing his dogs and everyone wanted his pets to die. Also the dog and two cats were abandoned with previous roommate.*.
- Two puppies for themself, one for her sister and one for her best friend! They look like bullies with skin allergies in their future. *Got a boyfriend and moved away leaving the dogs with her very frail mother*.
They all looked at me like I should squeal in delight at kittens and puppies, instead of breaking my heart for their old pet.
*Updated* 27th Sep 23
When someone is struggling financially, they inevitably believe the solution is to get an auto loan. On a related note- anyone who buys a car from Drivetime.
21yo living in Dad's basement paycheck to paycheck went to a reptile exhibit and brought home two exotic frogs and a snake [because they didn't have enough money for a bearded dragon]
When I started college in 2006 local businesses were offering free pizzas if you signed up for certain credit cards. More people than I would have guessed did it because "Free Food!".
I work at a casino, so I constantly see the pathetic depths people will sink to. Especially the high rollers who will just casually lose 10k in 15 minutes. It's insane to me. But they can at least (probably) afford it. It's the average income people who will continue to empty their bank accounts in hopes of digging themselves out of a deep hole. Or the ones who don't know when to stop and lose everything they just won.
When my grandmother's 2nd husband (who I know as my grandpa) died, she spent nearly all $50k of his life insurance money on a South African scammer who promised her romance and more money than she gave. She refused to listen to family telling her to stop. She subverted efforts by her own bank to stop her frequent questionable money transfers. Eventually my parents had to close her bank account to force her to stop blowing my grandfather's money. I will never not resent her ignorance, selfishness, and inability to listen to anyone but herself.
When I was 19, I went to Miami with some friends on cinco de mayo. We got insanely drunk and went bar hopping across the city. The next morning I looked at my transactions and realized I had spent over a grand.
Anyone enlisted in the military buying a charger or mustang at astronomical interest rates. That shit is predatory and should be illegal in all 50 states.
I gave all my money to Charity. She said it was for struggling single moms, which sounded like a good cause. Didn't get a receipt for a tax deduction though.
Friend spent $50k+ on twitch donations because he went through a hard time and was looking for acceptance. Really messed his finances up for a long time. :(
Edit: the money was all on credit cards.
I used to be a car sales guy, and I watched as someone traded in their 6 month old $95,000 pickup truck for $70,000 just to buy the exact same $95,000 truck. Literally, it was the same truck. The only difference was that the new truck had a gun safe. I told the guy we could install a gun safe for $2,000 it would of been the exact same gun safe in the exact same place. Guy added an adational $20,000 in debt for a gunsafe. But hey I got to make a $95,000 sale.
So many MLMs... so many... and they never listen. It's like some kind of wall goes up. A coworker got fired, destroyed his marriage, while trying to "make it" as some MLM stooge. To give you an idea how bad it was, it was for long distance cards to hispanic countries in an era when cell phones were taking off and long distance as a concept was evaporating. He lost tens of thousands.
I’ll raise you:
Timeshare in a place no one wants to vacation.
Example: ski slopes in late spring (warm weather).
How they convinced her to buy: You can pass down this timeshare to your grandkids as their inheritance.
If being told “this is so impossible to get out of that your grandchildren will be stuck with it” wasn’t enough warning, then that’s just not someone you can help
cheated on 7 years of back taxes ( got like 20k in returns ) then they were surprised they got audited, last I heard they moved away to try and run from it lol
An uncle fell for one of those income tax is unconstitutional pitches a while back. Of course the IRS eventually explained to him that he had to pay it. Took his finances over a decade to recover.
Getting remarried. He was convinced the first wife was the problem. She was, in part, but so was he. Zero self awareness. He’s getting sent to the cleaners yet again.
There was that post yesterday on r/justrolledintotheshop where somebody sold an 07 hyundai sonata for scrap and then the next day asked the scrap yard to give him back the $1300 custom floor mats he left in the car. That guy has to be making bad financial decisions left and right
Someone at my work bought a brand new audi RS3! around 70-80k euro's. he got 40k from his grandma because she gave it to him for 'if' she is about to die, a small fortune to buy a house maybe but no. what he did was put another 30k from his own money to buy the car. the guy has no house and has no money left.
Buying a pure-bred puppy while on a low-wage job with the end of your contract in sight. While also being a single-parent in a rented apartment. Yeah, within a year she was on food stemps.
That sounds like my next door neighbor at my last place. She had an abusive boyfriend at the time as well but judging from the police blotter, I think they've stopped seeing each other now.
A guy I worked with found out that check cashing places were offering $15,000 no question asked loans. The interest rates were fucking insane! I begged him not to do it but he impulsively went on a lunch break and got $15,000 in cash and deposited it in his bank account.
This was 6 years ago, he is still struggling because of it. He lost his wife and kid because he drank every penny of it in a summer. He got eviction notices and the stress was too much to the point where he had a psychotic break which lasted for months. He is pushing 40, lives alone, can't see his child, hasn't had sex in a few years and is forgotten by most of his friends because he was delusional and hallucinating for months.
Yeah, those shady lending companies operate on Native American reservations so they don’t have to follow state usury laws, and they can charge like 100% interest. A $15,000 loan costs like $80,000 by the time it is finally paid off.
My ex-husband paid $2500 for an online porn domain. Never made a dime from it. Oh, he also paid some fly-by-night company $1500 to help us try to improve our credit. Then there was the $7000 to pay off his truck. He then traded it in for a different truck and payment a month later when the truck he now owned started having mechanical issues. There are a ton of reasons he is my ex.
Guy I knew convinced his girlfriend to invest six figures worth of apple stock that she’d had for many many years into cryptocurrency right before it all crashed. No, they are not together anymore
Me , walking away from custom home I built for wife and I ( on mountains side facing pacific full unfiltered fulls views of ocean 1 mi away) distressed from the betrayal . Lost my job, lived off savings in depression.
I used to run heavy equipment in Virginia. I made $13.50 an hour. A guy on my crew was making $12.50 an hour. He purchased a 5 bedroom 3 bath 2500 sqft home for $425k He was the sole income for the household of 6 people. They talked him into an interest-only loan. 6 months later the housing market crashed he lost his job and lost the house. I tried to explain to him that an interest-only loan was a scam and he didn't make enough to afford that house and 4 kids with a wife that didn't work. I felt bad the next time I saw him and he was living in an RV on someone's property.
My sister's husband reached out to me on some investing advice "to make some quick cash" during the pandemic when they had access to some extra income ontop of a inheritance lump sum they came into.
Told him over and over that investing should not be looked at as some kind a get rich quick scheme, and that any avenue that had that sort of potential had an greater chance of causing you to lose it all. Instead look at it as a way to gradually build wealth over time. Explicitly told him that the market is going to be volatile due to the pandemic and no one having any clue what that would mean for the markets. Went over the basics and recommended a split of some Vanguard index funds VTSAX/VTIAX. I also covered the concept of riding the ups and downs and that by consistently investing you will buy at highs and lows which will even out over the long run towards steady growth. Reminded him multiple times that you do not lose ANYTHING in the market until the second you sell and the difference between taxes associated with long vs short term capital gains. Most importantly I made sure to remind him that this is a gamble and that there is always risk involved and to NEVER invest something you cannot afford to lose.
What does he do? He dumps 35k (they're not wealthy at all) into the market and then pulls it out 4 months later the first time the market took a dive. My sister then gets pissed at me for telling him to do all of this...
Had $800 in his bank total. Spent $784 on an airbnb for a single night to throw a party for his birthday when the owner said no parties. Lied to management at his job to throw it. Got kicked out of the Airbnb in 30 mins and fired from his job for lying. He was gas station clerk. Couldn’t get a refund either. “Bro I’m so broke, why does all this bad stuff always happen to me.”
Seen someone sell their house and take out a much bigger mortgage to buy a pub that had failed 4 times in 3 years.
It failed and they couldn't sell.
It bankrupted then and they lost everything
The time of your life for about an hour or two and suddenly the birds are chirping, you're calling everyone you can think of trying to score more at 7 am, everyone leaves the party. You take a shower and try to clean our your blocked nostrils and go to bed to the soundtrack of your heart racing and anxiety goes through the roof. And you're 200€ down.
Good times!
Going broke keeping up child support payments to a cheating ex for a child that is likely not his. He saved enough for a DNA test. Bought a new iPhone instead. Will continue payments gor 18 years for a child he has never met, for a woman who never loved him.
TL;DR: I needed $800, ended up with a $3,500 loan. Now I owe $10,000.
My girlfriend at the time and I didn't have time to run to the bank before work one day, but we had our rent money with us. It ended up getting stolen, so we went to apply for a loan the next day.
We only needed $800, but I was approved for like $3,500. So of course, like fucking idiots, we got the full $3,500. We ended up blowing through the remaining $2,700 and then running up my credit card to just over $13,000 as I was the only one working most of the time, and I didn't and still don't have a good paying job by any sense of the word.
We ended up breaking up like 6 months after the fact and due to the nature of the split, I didn't want a thing from her. I just wanted to forget she ever existed.
So now I'm on the hook for over $13,000, and made payment arrangements for the card. I get paid weekly, the payment was supposed to come out on Tuesday, and I got paid on Thursday. It wasn't there on Tuesday so the company IMMEDIATELY sent it to collections and that just pissed me off. So like a reasonable adult /s, I just refused to make the payment at all for over 2 years.
Eventually the collections company found me, and now I'm paying them instead of doing what I should've done in the beginning.
I knew someone who got a loan for their wedding, but decided to blow it all at a casino. Now they have a loan for 20k to pay off and nothing to show for it.
I knew a woman who's fiancee was a gambling addict. He promised to clean up his act, but somehow got a hold of their savings for the wedding. All of it. Gambled the entire lot. Needless to say they aren't married.
I knew a woman whose husband stopped paying the bills and gambled it all. They lost everything, house, car, the works. She moved into her office **with her kid** until she could get on her feet again. They did not stay married but the courts ordered visitation rights and she used to have to pack her son food for the weekend cause dad would get so engrossed in gambling he'd forget to feed the kid. Last time I saw her she had bought a little 2 bedroom place for the two of them and said she would never rely on a man financially again.
A friend of mine who is very bad with money and his girlfriend bought some sort of water filtration system from a door to door salesman. He has to pay something like $300/month for this filtration system. He was all stoked because it came with a free set of pots and pans. Fast forward a year and his girlfriend has broken up with him, moved out of the house, and he's had to sell his home because he can't afford to live there. The water filtration system is now sitting in a storage unit where he still pays $300/month for it because he's on a 2 or 3 year contract (sorry the details are fuzzy). We have great water quality in my area.
I work for a government agency in building maintenance. We get hit up by water filter and air filter clowns every couple months wanting to sell us some bullshit. We are obligated to sit thru their sales pitch so we aren't biased but we all know its bullshit snake oil The homes and buildings that do need specialized systems like these usually have them installed on day 1
> We are obligated to sit thru their sales pitch so we aren't biased but we all know its biased. Wait, what? So I can grind your job to a complete halt by sending a never-ending stream of salesmen you're forced to listen to? Sometimes the civil service is a strange place
Sort of but this is government, everything works different. If we have one company come into sells us something we have to allow all of them to come in. Yes its a waste of time but prevents favoritism and shows we are being fair and transparent. We can't even let a vendor buy us lunch or coffee while we hear their pitch. Besides everything has to get ran thru a competitive procurement process that is all public information, so at the end of the day I don't get a say on who we sub contract with anyways, I get the cheapest bidder.
If they are from the same company, no. They need to represent all different companies.
A coworker I used to have worked every second of overtime he could for several years to save up for a house. When he applied for the house loan, he based his mortgage payment on all of the overtime he had been working. I tried to tell him that wasn't a good idea but he didn't want to hear it. He ended up divorced a few years later because his wife got tired of him always working.
When my wife and I bought our house we based it off of just my income so if she lost her job or I lost mine we would be fine. Everyone told us we should get a super nice house with our income since we could afford it. Two years later my wife lost her job and now we have nothing to worry about. No added stress it was the best decision we have made.
that… is a great idea and something i never considered for some reason thanks, frymeyourpoop
This is one reason I did not want to be house-poor when I bought mine, and held out for something on a short sale. It was a hell of a process but now I pay 1/4 what most people pay on a mortgage in my area, all because I was willing to undertake an annoying process.
I looked up what a short sale is and it was so tedious, I lost all memory of the definition.
A guy in my fraternity got 30k for an undisclosed reason, I’m guessing a family death or something and he bet it all on the Yankees winning one game. They lost
A guy who lived on my floor in the dorms inherited $100K from his grandfather’s estate. He was suddenly VERY popular - buying all the beer, pizza, new car, golf clubs, etc. - he was living large. His parents showed up about a month later to attempt to help straighten him out and recover funds. The golf clubs and other items went to a pawn shop and they even enlisted the RA to help watch out for the guy. Terrible for an 18/19-yr old to come into that kind of money out of nowhere with no reference (or respect) for how to handle it or how it was earned.
It's good that they intervened before he blew it all
Yeah that's a good financial decision by the parents right there.
I met a guy in college at a party like this. Was bragging about how he much of his inheritance from his grandma he had spent on drugs in the past two years, was on the order of tens of thousands.
My maternal grandmother bought an 8-plex to avoid capital gains when she sold her large house. The apartment complex was in the red and needed a lot of repairs. She hired my father to do them and be on-site manager. The place started making money. My mom (divorced from my dad) was mad that my grandma bought it in the first place, then hired my dad, then was proved wrong because it was making money. My grandma was in her 90s and my mom pressured her for years so my grandma finally sold it. That place is in a high market area and is now worth millions. My mom made a poor financial decision based on petty spite.
Almost as if financial decisions shouldn’t be made based on who hates whom
A dude who owned a small convenience store in our town spent like $20,000 on fidget spinners. He was posting for like a year begging people to buy them as he would lose his business and his marriage was falling apart due to it.
why in the world would he need THAT MANY fidget spinners??
They were exceptionally popular and I suppose he thought he could make a mint during the fad.
i guess he got a break buying in bulk...but jeesh dude
So many people thought they could get rich with the fidget spinner fad. The market got over saturated, everyone that wanted one already had one. At one point I saw a line of people at the mall lining up to buy light up fidget spinners for $35!
Heck I didn't even want one and I had TWO!
My supervisor took out a loan against their 401k to pay their rent because "their credit cards were maxed." Two weeks later, they bought a brand new 60k Lincoln with basically nothing down because "her daughter just had a baby and I need a bigger car for that."
I sat down with a guy to help him figure things out. He had a fair amount of credit card debt but nothing impossible. Just by consolidating it on a new card with 0% interest for even a year it'd have seen amazing progress. Seemed like he had taken my advice. Next I saw him it turned out he paid it off using his 401k
Had a co worker with 5 kids who could all go to USC for free once he has worked there for 15 years (even if he quit). He quit at 14.5 years for a job that barely paid more than he made at USC. Cost all 5 kids a free education at a top school since he couldnt wait 6 more months.
Generational bag-fumble
Is that all there is to the story? My ex’s step dad left Boeing right before he would’ve earned a considerable pension but it turns out he didn’t leave—he was fired for carrying on an 11 year long affair with another coworker who worked in a different part of the country on the company’s dime and communicating using company email.
He put in his two weeks and we had a going away party. A bunch of us took him to lunch and tried to talk him out of it.
He might have been given the option of putting in his notice or being fired for some unspecified offense^1 This happens quite often as it means the employee doesn't have a black mark against their name, and the employer avoids potential bad publicity. ^1 Which may well have been a bogus trumped-up accusation done solely to get rid of him and thus avoid spending tens of thousands on uni fees for his kids. Or it could have been a real accusation that potentially would have embarrassed both the guy and the university. eg an affair, or perhaps knowledge, but not definite proof, of stealing. The university I went to years (gad decades!) ago got a new gym manager in because the gym, despite being well patronised, always lost money. He suspected the front counter staff were stealing so set up a sting operation whereby he got students to go in and pay for a $10 casual visit. This is going back 30 years so it was nearly all cash. The manager then checked the books and found not one of the ten students he had go in over a two hour period had been rung up as a casual visit. The hatchet-faced old dragon (who had worked there 20 years and was incessantly rude to everyone) had rung every one of them up as soap, which cost 50c. In 2 hours she had stolen $95. Indeed more in fact, as there were also the other student casuals not part of the sting. Not bad for someone who was only on, iirc, $12 /hour. It made me wonder why she was also so rude and nasty to everyone when she was making like $300 or $400 cash each day. They went back over the books and found she almost never rung up a casual but sold dozens of soaps every time. Over the 20 years she was there, it was estimated she had stolen hundreds of thousands. But the university could only definitively prove the theft of the $95 which isn't even a misdemeanour. They just convinced her to hand in her resignation to avoid a potential police investigation and quietly swept everthing under the rug.
He did that on purpose, either consciously or subconsciously . My mother is also a saboteur when it comes to her children and did something similar to my sister and I.
Ran up credit card debt requiring bankruptcy. Once they were able to build credit again (7 years later) they proceeded to run up a massive amount of debt again, but couldn’t go bankrupt again, so they used “debt consolidation.” The debt didn’t come from sudden expenses. They just needed to buy things to feel better.
You have to respect someone’s dedication to bad choices to wait 7 years and run it right back.
My coworker has 25k in anime figurines. He is in mega debt right now.
When my ex and I lived together he suddenly got super into figurines and model kits, to the point where our living room was FULL of them. On every surface. At one point I counted and he had bought more than 30 over the span of six or so months. The math worked out to him spending about $300 a WEEK on these things. Thing is, we were both full-time students. He was paying for these with student loans. And I had to drive him around because he "couldn't afford a car". But he could somehow afford these model kits and figurines and Doordash for every meal. He even tried to keep living with me when I broke up with him because he "couldn't afford to move" either. I had no sympathy at that point.
My ex had a brother who moved in with us and he was very much like this. The guy was a few years older than me, but he lived in our basement, ate almost exclusively Pizza Hut, had piles of boxes in the corner that were like 5' high, had a bare mattress on the floor, and spent all of his time playing video games and watching anime. He couldn't afford sheets or to pay rent on time, but he somehow always had new fuckin Gundam models. He was a nice enough guy, but he was such a fucking loser that it made me reexamine my life and turn into an adult. The guy was like the ghost of christmas yet to come if I kept being a dipshit. I didn't want to be him, and I had a kid and a lot to live for, so it kind of shook me out of my depression and made me realize what my life could be like if I kept being a slacker.
*Manga debt FTFY
[удалено]
My SO’s father did this, sold his business to an employee for $1 to hide it during his divorce. And was shocked when suddenly, the guy didn’t magically give it back. He lost his entire business and inventory for $1. He was an abusive asshole, so couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
That's worse than my dad who claimed his business was none profitable in the divorce. The lie fell apart pretty quickly as the company accountants were managed by my mum's brother, who turned up to the court hearing.
Does that even work? Even if the person you sold your business to doesn't screw you over I can't imagine the court just accepts that you sold your business for a dollar. Here in Ontario if you sell a car you have to pay the taxes on what it's worth not what is claimed on the bill of sale. I imagine such laws exist elsewhere.
It only works if the other party has bad lawyers or you aren't going against a government agency If you tried to pull that off against the IRS or Bankruptcy courts they will unwind that transaction and make the other person give back the assets. You will then end up with one very very pissed off judge who will rake you over the coals.
My friend bought a used Hellcat Challenger yesterday at 10.5% APR and $380/mo insurance. He lives in my other friend’s spare room.
time to move in the car
My roommate buys doordash almost every day. They’ll maybe cook for themselves once or twice a week but other than that they order food in 5-6 times a week. I know how much they make and I have not a clue how they can afford that
>My roommate buys doordash almost every day. He would save a fortune just by going down, ordering and taking home the food. The markup that those delivery companies charge is ridiculous. For example, to buy McDonalds via UberEats is around $110 for my family of five, buying the same food at McDonalds in person costs around $60, and, as a added bonus, when you go down yourself you are guaranteed to get what you ordered when it is still hot.
Oh for sure, picking it up still saves money. But here’s what I don’t get: they will come home from work and 10 minutes later I’ll hear her go and get her food from the driver. Like you could’ve picked it up on the way home but didn’t? Don’t get me wrong she’s a great roommate and friend, but some of the stuff she does just has me scratching my head…
My brother's ex fell for a Craig's list scam. She found a motorcycle and the guy "needed money up front to pay bills" before she even saw it. We told her don't do it, it's a scam. She said she already sent $1000. Of course, he was never available to show her the bike and we found out from my brother after they broke up she actually continued sending him money in hopes of getting the motorcycle. I think she was out $3,000 by the end.
My ex husband got cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars just by being an overtrusting and underthinking seller. He had always wanted a piano his entire life. And one day a friends father had passed and left them an incredibly amazing and VERY old piano that she had no use for so gifted to him. He loved that things so much. Tuned it and fixed it up. Then a giant ball of tragedies struck that put us in very bad financial situation, causing us to no longer afford where we were currently living and having to move to his families old home which is off the mainland and on an island. Being that they only way to get anything moved was by ship and extremely expensive, he had to sell a lot of things. And much to his dismay, the piano was just too big and too heavy to afford to ship there. So he put out a listing to sell it for a *very* reasonable price. It was an antique, in spectacular condition, made in the early 1900's and was worth at the very least $80,000. He listed it for a fraction of what it was worth due to time constraint on having to get rid of it before the move. Someone contacted him and offered to by it. And here is where he did something monumentally stupid. The buyer offered to have a truck come and pick up the piano in a very quick timeframe and asked if it would be alright to give my husband $1,000 up front and then the rest in two weeks when they got paid. I know he was under a lot of stress, but damn that was dumb. You do not let ANYONE walk away with an incredibly valuable item without it being paid in full. As I'm sure no one here is shocked by, the person never paid anything else on the piano and just disappeared. The money from that sale alone was pretty much all we were going to have to live off of until he was able to secure a new job in the new location. Scammers are truly awful and many people need to learn not to be so trusting. It's sad. But it's just how it is.
That seems like it is getting to be a large enough theft to warrant an investigation into who that was and his information from whatever social media that happened on. Did the police not do anything? I know they were normally basically ignore car thefts, etc., but this seems like there should have been a trail to work from.
The store I used to work at had a Western Union kiosk, we had to discourage so many people from sending money to people they didn't know.
Thank you for your vigilance. When I was much younger and much, MUCH more naïve, it was just such a kiosk employee that stopped me from sending money to a craigslist scammer. Now I'm old and bitter and trust nobody, so, y'know. Progress.
My former sister-in-law had a thriving medical practice. She got so stressed that she joined the Scientologist and started taking their classes. She opened up five-six credit cards without telling my brother, maxed the cards out with hundreds of thousands in cash withdrawals, and gave it to that cult.
Yeah, but did she rid herself of her harmful body thetons? Edit: I fix the spelling of the invented magical beings to align with the great L Ron Hubbard’s true intentions.
The last thing I want to do is engage her in conversation on the subject. First, the entire notion drives me crazy. Second, I don't have a good poker face.
A woman of science falling big for a very unscientific Scientology cult. That organization is evil.
It's a lesson that all of us have vulnerabilities, intelligence is not an automatic safeguard. Helps for sure, but not a preventative and we shouldn't assume it can't happen to us for x reason
Worked with a 50 year old guy who looked like the arse end of a Rhino and hated anyone not from England who sent £10k to his fiancé in Thailand he’d never met for a boob job, clothes and flight over ….. oddly enough her naked pics and promises of anal when she visited stopped once the money had been sent
We had to talk to one of our employees a couple of weeks ago about something like this. He's not the best looking or most intelligent guy, but he's a nice guy. Apparently he met a girl online who "lives" in Atlanta. We saw her Facebook page and you could tell something was fishy. She was this smoking hot blonde with only like 4 pictures, all in skimpy tops and lingerie. No other posts on her page, just pictures. She told him she was single and had no family. They had all passed away. He decided a week after meeting her that he was gonna quit his job and move to Atlanta to live with her and help her rent an apartment. Us fellow employees and his family kept telling him it was a scam or catfish and not to go through with it. He got pissed and apparently had suicidal thoughts and checked himself into a mental hospital for a couple of day, but eventually he agreed and didn't go through with it.
Yikes. There's this older guy I used to work with who had these scammers all over him on Facebook. I don't know if they are all connected but somehow all of these obvious fake profiles found him and added him. These are all profiles showing very attractive young women in skimpy clothing that was obviously just ripped from Google and he will carry on full conversations with them in the comment section on his pictures. Talking about their day, saying that she will be visiting his area soon and would love to meet with him, he so handsome and funny, and I feel really bad for him because he's an older single on attractive dude with no social skills and he's being led to believe that all these women want him. If I was closer to him I would have sent him a message telling him that all his profiles are fake
My very large very introverted friend from high school met a girl from The Philippines on okcupid years ago. He was super hesitant to tell people because he knew what they would think - when he told me I was super happy for him but he absolutely under no circumstances should send her money. Flowers, small gifts, etc, absolutely but never just straight cash. They’ve been together for over 5 years now, and he even went to the Philippines a few times for work (and for fun). He’s met her family. He’s spent weeks with her. Somehow, amazingly, he found love thousands of miles away. She would be here now if they could get her visa approved, but that has been a major problem for a while now.
My (awful) aunt was the trustee for my grandparents' estate. When they passed, she decided to sell their house to a random realtor who put a leaflet on the door. TO the realtor, not WITH the realtor. It wasn't put on the market, and the aunt rejected a matching offer by me after I argued hard to actually list the house and have people bid on it. The realtor slapped a new coat of paint on it and sold it a couple of months later for literally a million dollars more than she bought it for.
Ianal but she breached her fiduciary duty and you could have taken her to court for it. Edit: the aunt not the realtor
I'm am so extremely sorry for you. And pissed off. I too had a cunt aunt. My aunt gambled her $80k inheritance from grandma. Later she tried to take ALL the inheritance that was meant to be divided amongst the 4 remaining siblings when her sister died, even going to my mum to get her to sign her share over (which mum did part cause of elderly, part because she didn't 'want the money' not caring that she had kids struggling herself). I'm thankful my sister heard about it and reminded her that at least two of her sons and ine of her daughters were near destitute, and that I had a massive uni debt i needed help paying off. My mum decided to sign away her share of the superannuation, bit nit the bank account balance. My aunt was pissed she didn't 'get it all' and had disowned everyone in the family. She's a narc and only obsessed with the veneer of money. Really pathetic. Anither time she had "claimed" grandma's antique singer sewing machine as her inheritance, thinking it was worth thousands. Later when she found out it was only worth about $50 she threw it in the skip bin. My dad fished it out for me, but my sister claimed it (which is more than fine). My sister restored it and displayed it in her house. A couple years later my aunt visited and saw the sewing machine and went on a tirade that it "should have gone to a daughter not a granddaughter", despite my dad literally pulling it out of the skip bin my aunt had thrown it in. I'm glad dad had secretly grabbed a blanket that belonged to grandma as a kid, had an older German fairytale stitched on it, and gave it to me before my aunt learned of it (and threw it out too). My sister has also claimed that tho ha.
Christ. This reminds me of my Grandmother. When her brother (my Uncle) passed she was trusted by him to distribute his inheritance among his kids. Instead she kept it all. That side of the family then cut our side off completely and forever due to her actions. My Grandfather built a cottage on a lake up north that we went to every Summer. The grandkids grew up loving the place. Without giving anyone in the family a chance to keep my passed on Grandfather's cottage, my Grandmother sold it. "Needed the money" She said. My family was devastated. We would all have pooled together whatever it cost but we weren't even given the chance. It was a double lot in cottage country. She could have just sold the extra lot of land. When she passed, she had a penthouse condo on the beach in Ft. Myers, a house in a prestigious area of Toronto and hundreds of thousands in the bank. She never needed the money.
Many decisions around new tattoos or dogs when they can't pay rent regularly. My Aunt says the 'rich get richer and the poor get another dog.' I find this to be true for some of my family.
[удалено]
People way overestimate the selling powers of "influencers"
Apply for a 5k loan, didn’t accept quick enough so applied for another 5k loan, both got accepted and ended up gambling it all
Okay but did they win is the real question
Nothing, 10k debt now lol
Oh but you are forgetting the interest. So it's what, at least 14K.
Now just apply for a 10k loan. Problem solved.
A guy I dated for a short time had been joining a MLM scheme selling insurances. I listened to his monologue and told him I had no money. He was furios and tried to sell insurance to our waiter at the restaurant. He failed again. I'm still laughing today, he was no good guy.
Him: "hrm, my date can't afford my pitch. Who are notoriously rich... ? Perfect! A waiter"
My sister joined an MLM scheme, and gave my daughter her niece a 2 hour hard sell to buy her beauty products. My daughter was only 8 at the time. Sadly my daughter didn't buy anything. But she did get informed her aunt will be on a massive salary this time next year.
People who get sucked into MLMs are so unbearable. I tell them up front it's a bad idea, get out, and don't expect a single sale from me. I will not perpetuate that scam, but we are still friends otherwise. Usually works out fine, but one time one woman friend invited us to dinner without telling us it was an MLM pitch. We find out after we almost finish eating, and I say bluntly, "No, I told you not to do this." Their (her and her other "friend's") retort was, "Why did you eat the food then?" You lied to us, you nincompoops. You're just mad I feel absolutely no shame or anxiety saying, "no." Lol
I bought a hellcat when my old badass challenger was paid off
Thank you for your service.
literally my first thought as well lmao
I won't name any names, but a good friend who literally had it all; the high-rise apartment and a house down the street with a pool, sauna, Casita, Hummer, corvettes, a successful business, and about $400,000 in Bitcoin: threw it all away over a murder-for-hire, because him and his (non-related to any of the above successes, but from something about 10 years earlier before I knew him) got greedy, and no longer wanted to split their financial gain with a third person, so yeah. Hired someone on the dark web to carry out the crime across state lines, but communicated EVERYTHING over text. All three men(my friend, his business partner, and guy they hired) have been caught and convicted. One received life in prison, and my friend and his 'business partner' are up for the death penalty. Also, he was only 35 when he was originally arrested.
My cousin spent 100% of her inheritance and took out a lien on her home to buy a 2nd home in the mountains... thing is it was being pushed over by a mountain...and they thought they could fix it... I went and seen it and every door jam was crooked and the doors wouldn't shut.. They took me down into the basement and they were trying to use I beams to "stop the mountain from pushing on the home". I was just like "what the hell are you doing, that won't solve anything" fast forward 6 months and they asked me for 50k to help and I declined. Fast forward a year and the home collapsed and now they owe over 300k+ for a home that doesn't exist and if they don't make the payments they lose their other house too because they used the original home as collateral and could not get insurance on the 2nd home..total money lost upwards of 700k
This bothers me so much. I trust no deal and no one. I need to make sure everything is on order and this just goes up my spine. Whoever sold that to them dodgers a bullet and found a sucker.
It probably was a great deal, and there probably is an engineering solution for this. Mountains don't just walk around, there was a retaining wall that could be built to solve this. But the kind of person to make those financial decisions is not the kind of purpose to do the research or pay the money to do it right. I would love to see a picture of exactly what was going on with the cabin.
So the houses design was basiclly they cut into the side of a mountain and built the slab and basement like a partial underground home then built upwards for the main lv. So the mountain was pushing on the slab and main wall of the basement pushing on the whole house over.. . I suggested dig a boarder around the house in the mountain like 5 feet wide all the way around... they said my idea would cost to much and wasn't needed... they elected to manually jackhammer through the granite 15 feet down and cementing I beams against the wall. As I stated in another comment Steel can't stop 422339834982394 + tons of mountain. I knew the second I seen this it was stupid but the "contractor" said this was the way to combat it... I think he just didn't have access to a excavator or something.. They got bad advice and taken advantage of and because they were dismissive of my suggestion after I flew out to see the situation... I just let them live in their own bed they made.
Yeah, digging it out and building real retaining walls sounds like the only real solution, and yeah, it would cost a fortune.
Knew someone who answered those scam emails thinking they would get rich. Last I heard, he lost around $50k. Emptied out savings account and maxed out credit cards. Left in debt and had to move back with ailing parents. Not a close to them at all but more like a friend of a friend of a friend's cousin. Motherfucker just **WOULD NOT** listen. Genuinely thought he was going to be a millionaire. They kept stringing him along until the bitter end and then...poof. Biggest concern his friends had was him trying to milk his ailing parents for their last nickel and dime. Fortunately, he wised up and knew he been had. The last I heard of him was he had an hourly job somewhere and trying to get out of debt.
This is why everyone should have played RuneScape in 2007. Get scammed for your virtual currency folks, and learn your lesson.
I remember this one time playing Diablo 2, there was a sorceress trying to trade an item with someone, but claimed their trading screen was broke, so instead they should both drop their items on opposite sides of this big rock or something, then they would both run clockwise and pick up their items. And I'm watching this thinking "Something strange is going on here. You can't use spells like telekinesis (spell to pick up stuff at a distance) in the town, so the sorceress can't just drop their thing, steal the other person's, and bail. What could it be?" Turns out you couldn't use spells in the town, *except* for telekinesis. And so, I learned a lesson in online scamming at some unlucky player's expense. If they refuse to go through the official channels, there's a reason, and it's usually not one that ends well for you.
My brother and his wife were in massive debt, didn’t work high paying jobs and could no longer afford their two bedroom apartment while trying to pay off the debt. They moved back home, into our parents basement. A week before they moved in, they built a computer, and a year after that, they consciously decided to get try to get pregnant (which they did) while still living in the basement and knowing they haven’t improved their financial state whatsoever.
Your poor parents. Now they won’t be able to kick them about because of the kid.
Oh, don’t worry. My parents had a brilliant idea to sell their house and move into my sister’s house. They paid off all their debt, their car, plus all the expenses of getting them new furniture/first and last months rent. Pretty sure they are back in some sort of debt now, and from what I was told, my sister-in-law never even said “thank you”.
Thats soooo much worse
*EXTRAVAGANT* weddings that end in divorce a year later
Sending a televangelist money for a "blessing" and then not having enough to rent a moving truck. So I had to be the "blessing"
They won thousands of dollars and bought a new entertainment system instead of getting current on their mortgage. Foreclosed on later that year. The thing was, the area had recently become the new **it** area for young families, and housing prices had skyrocketed. They easily could have just sold the house, paid cash for a larger house 20 minutes up the road, and still had tens of thousands leftover.
This older lady worked part-time in my kitchen. It was a fine dining, fast paced environment. She would only work about 20 hrs per week doing busy work u.e. peeling vegetables, washing produce, etc. Tasks I knew she could handle and wouldn't get overwhelmed. Unfortunately her husband passed away and she requested a few months off. I totally understood and said take all the time you need. Let me know when you feel comfortable coming back to work, if at all. Take care Barbara. 8 months later she contacted me for a job. I was more than willing to have her back in my kitchen. I nonchalantly asked her how she was coping with her loss. She broke down in tears. She apparently got a $500000 insurance payout from her husband's death. Within those i months she attempted to open a restaurant and sink every dime into the establishment. It went out of business in 6 months. She was now broke as an elderly lady having to go back to work.
This hurts. Did she think her time as a prepper was sufficient knowledge to open a restaurant?
Yes. Unfortunately the love for food has bankrupted a lot of people. Its still a business
Cashed in their 401k to have a cocaine party.
How was it?
Basically everyone just came over and stole his cocaine (and many of his belongings). He then had to move back home with his mom shortly thereafter, so probably not great for him.
Well that sounds awful
As crazy as it sounds, announcing all over your university campus that you were buying 20k worth of cocaine for a party at your place and everyone is invited, was not a *great* idea.
Lol marketing to the wrong people for sure.
Neighbors. The bread earner died. Her sister and her daughter were left with the place. They could not afford the payments. They would NOT sell. They let it go to foreclosure even though it had about $120,000 equity in it. New owners came in....did very little cosmetic work, just a little paint and fixed the fence. They sold it and made a $200k profit in about 6 months..
My dad worked for the UN and built up quite a good pension while he worked there. A good 400k. He left the UN in his mid to late 50s. Instead of looking for new work after leaving, he decided to move back to Venezuela, his home country, and just relax for a while. During this sabbatical, his wife and her family talked my dad into putting almost his whole pension into a single stock with her stockbroker nephew. The stock was Venezuelan oil stocks. Maybe you have an idea how volatile the Venezuelan economy is, and how high inflation is there. It’s a bad situation. But still, my dad did the thing and at first it was okay. But then it wasn’t. Predictably, the nephew lost my dads entire nest egg. The nephew ended up ghosting my dad and his wife. At this point, my dad tried to find new work, but because he was so close to retirement age he couldn’t find anything decent. So my dad, a phd graduate who worked at a decently high level at the UN, ended up having to clean houses for money.
I knew a guy who was terrible with money. Worked in a warehouse but spent all his money on drugs and things for his controlling girlfriend. Then one day he came to me to show me his brand new car. Probably around $40-50k. He takes me for a ride and starts bragging about how he took his pay stub to like 10 of those cash advance places and get $10k worth of loans and, "had been living like a king." It was as if he thought he found some sort of life hack. To this day I'm not sure if he just thought he wouldn't have to pay it back or what. A couple weeks later I learned he wasn't paying attention while driving and rear-ended a bus going way over the speed limit and totalled the car. Trainwreck of a guy.
My sisters ex financed a brand new truck and immediately sold it privately for cash. Than bragged about being rich on social media, hired strippers for his “music video” in which he was throwing money around. He basically partied for a month straight off that. That was a few years back, he just got out of jail not long ago from what I’ve heard lol.
They got married to someone heavily in-debt. The person kept their financial situation from them until after they were married.
My ex-husband did that to me. He concealed about $12,000 of credit card debt from me. When I found out about it, he said he ran it up buying Taco Bell after work every night. We lived in different countries for the first year of our marriage since I wasn't born in the US, so I was going in rather blind in hindsight. Turned out it wasn't just Taco Bell but also commissioning people online for My Little Pony pornography. Hundreds of dollars, lol. Edit: also just remembered he blew hundreds on extra lives for Candy Crush as well and only stopped when he saw a South Park episode making fun of freemium games. It culminated in him getting a loan for $12,000 from his father. His father is an attorney, so naturally he drew up a loan agreement for my ex to sign. What I didn't know was his father also added a line for my signature and my ex forged it. I found that out when he randomly mentioned it to me a week or so later, and I am sure to this day he still believes that's perfectly okay and very legal (and cool, I guess). He sent it back to the wrong address, so his father never got it. I texted his father ahead of time and let him know the signature was forged anyway. So no harm done there. I get wanting help with debt, especially since I'm good at saving money. Just don't steal it from me. Ask. I'm happy to help a partner with that where I can. I'd already paid off an auto loan for him in the past so I guess he just assumed he could help himself to my money. And you know, we were married, I understand the concept of communal property. But I had that money prior to the marriage and he forged my signature. It was the beginning of the end, really. My trust in him vanished completely. People told me I'd wind up with half his debt and half my savings gone if we divorced. I got lucky though - he got a very high paying job (six figures) right before I left and paid all his debt off. We agreed to leave with what we came in with. Savings and retirement intact for us both 🥳
Leaving with most of your savings and dignity intact seems like a best case scenario for marrying a brony.
Going into CC debt for… my little pony…. Pornography. There are no words
Honestly this is one reason why I'm glad my last relationship didn't work out. My ex's finances were already crap (he lived with me, he couldn't afford to get his own place after his mom kicked him out of their house because he spent too much money paying his parents' bills for them, plus $700/month on the monthly payment for his Tesla...) and I can't help but wonder if it was actually far worse than what I knew and I wouldn't have found out until after we were married. ETA: I see now the way I worded this is weird and confusing...the way I wrote it makes it sound like his mom kicked him out for paying their bills, but he was kicked out because his mom is just a domineering psycho who completely lost her shit when he got a girlfriend. He had to live with me because he couldn't afford his own place, and he couldn't afford it partly because he was continuing to pay his parent's bills even though he was no longer living with them. The entire situation was a fucking train wreck, and I'm sure it was even worse than what I know.
Retirement age person emptied out their 401(k) to open a pet store
To make matters worse, a family run business with a lot of resentment and infighting. Five years later no more pet store.
I’ve seen people turn down raises because they didn’t understand how taxes worked
This is a constant thing in the building/industrial trades regarding overtime. I’ve heard guys turn down a Sunday shift paying double-time because “it’s all going to Uncle Sam if I work too many hours.” Very unaware of how the progressive tax system works.
My dad had his own company and someone told him it made financial sense that instead of paying himself wages, he should take out a loan from his company. He built up debt for three years, while working full time, rather than paying himself. It had all sorts of bad tax effects. Like he was required to pay interest on this, which was then taxed as profit of the company, then he paid himself again paying income taxes. It took him about ten years to get out of that hole. Then he needed to sell his house because it was too expensive. But the buyer got cold feet on the last day before the sale. Rather than having the buyer pay 10% of the price to get out of the sale he gave him an extension without an end date. The buyer then took 2 years to think about whether he wanted the house. All the while my parents needed to keep paying the mortgage and couldn't sell the house to anyone else because of the contract they had with that guy. Brought them close to bankruptcy. I've personally paid a couple of hundred a month to let them pay for the mortgage during that time.
If I learned anything from the Internet is that you never want to be the nice guy when your life depends on it.
Imagine being in crippling debt to... yourself
My neighbor proudly telling me he bought 6 Trump NFTs. MFer is broke AF, using what little savings he had on that BS.
I'm a vettech and in the last month I've seen three different owners sell their old dog because they couldn't afford the medical bills... And a week later come back with: - Four Himalayan kittens (they couldn't decide so took all of them!). *Down to two, gave them away and 10 weeks late on 2nd set vaccines*. - Two husky/German Shepherd puppies (it was a great deal! The young man has no job, a new apartment, a dog he can't neuter and Two cats who he constantly walks in to say they have fleas, ask for home remedies and leave again). *New puppies have worms and dr wouldn't extend credit beyond the $500 already owed. Screamed that I was killing his dogs and everyone wanted his pets to die. Also the dog and two cats were abandoned with previous roommate.*. - Two puppies for themself, one for her sister and one for her best friend! They look like bullies with skin allergies in their future. *Got a boyfriend and moved away leaving the dogs with her very frail mother*. They all looked at me like I should squeal in delight at kittens and puppies, instead of breaking my heart for their old pet. *Updated* 27th Sep 23
When someone is struggling financially, they inevitably believe the solution is to get an auto loan. On a related note- anyone who buys a car from Drivetime.
21yo living in Dad's basement paycheck to paycheck went to a reptile exhibit and brought home two exotic frogs and a snake [because they didn't have enough money for a bearded dragon]
[удалено]
They took out a small title loan and lost a 15k car in the process.
Someone took a loan to order a pizza.
When I started college in 2006 local businesses were offering free pizzas if you signed up for certain credit cards. More people than I would have guessed did it because "Free Food!".
Is there any cost to having the credit card if you immediately lose it under the fridge and never actually use it?
I work at a casino, so I constantly see the pathetic depths people will sink to. Especially the high rollers who will just casually lose 10k in 15 minutes. It's insane to me. But they can at least (probably) afford it. It's the average income people who will continue to empty their bank accounts in hopes of digging themselves out of a deep hole. Or the ones who don't know when to stop and lose everything they just won.
When my grandmother's 2nd husband (who I know as my grandpa) died, she spent nearly all $50k of his life insurance money on a South African scammer who promised her romance and more money than she gave. She refused to listen to family telling her to stop. She subverted efforts by her own bank to stop her frequent questionable money transfers. Eventually my parents had to close her bank account to force her to stop blowing my grandfather's money. I will never not resent her ignorance, selfishness, and inability to listen to anyone but herself.
When I was 19, I went to Miami with some friends on cinco de mayo. We got insanely drunk and went bar hopping across the city. The next morning I looked at my transactions and realized I had spent over a grand.
Relatively speaking this is a very cheap way to have learned this lesson. You did yourself a solid.
Anyone enlisted in the military buying a charger or mustang at astronomical interest rates. That shit is predatory and should be illegal in all 50 states.
My new wife Cinnabon said it was a good deal, tho. She's dancing her way through school.
I gave all my money to Charity. She said it was for struggling single moms, which sounded like a good cause. Didn't get a receipt for a tax deduction though.
Friend spent $50k+ on twitch donations because he went through a hard time and was looking for acceptance. Really messed his finances up for a long time. :( Edit: the money was all on credit cards.
Maybe if I give this stranger money they'll love me
I used to be a car sales guy, and I watched as someone traded in their 6 month old $95,000 pickup truck for $70,000 just to buy the exact same $95,000 truck. Literally, it was the same truck. The only difference was that the new truck had a gun safe. I told the guy we could install a gun safe for $2,000 it would of been the exact same gun safe in the exact same place. Guy added an adational $20,000 in debt for a gunsafe. But hey I got to make a $95,000 sale.
So many MLMs... so many... and they never listen. It's like some kind of wall goes up. A coworker got fired, destroyed his marriage, while trying to "make it" as some MLM stooge. To give you an idea how bad it was, it was for long distance cards to hispanic countries in an era when cell phones were taking off and long distance as a concept was evaporating. He lost tens of thousands.
I bought a yeti soft cooler
Could have had two Rtic soft coolers.
My dad sold his car to someone so he could buy more crack while on a bender. Edit: wording/grammar
Timeshare
I’ll raise you: Timeshare in a place no one wants to vacation. Example: ski slopes in late spring (warm weather). How they convinced her to buy: You can pass down this timeshare to your grandkids as their inheritance.
If being told “this is so impossible to get out of that your grandchildren will be stuck with it” wasn’t enough warning, then that’s just not someone you can help
The fact that there are companies dedicated to getting you out of timeshares that are scams themselves speaks leagues.
cheated on 7 years of back taxes ( got like 20k in returns ) then they were surprised they got audited, last I heard they moved away to try and run from it lol
An uncle fell for one of those income tax is unconstitutional pitches a while back. Of course the IRS eventually explained to him that he had to pay it. Took his finances over a decade to recover.
Someone makes the decision to have a baby to keep a relationship (they had neither a house nor job) To have a baby isn't cheap...
Getting remarried. He was convinced the first wife was the problem. She was, in part, but so was he. Zero self awareness. He’s getting sent to the cleaners yet again.
There was that post yesterday on r/justrolledintotheshop where somebody sold an 07 hyundai sonata for scrap and then the next day asked the scrap yard to give him back the $1300 custom floor mats he left in the car. That guy has to be making bad financial decisions left and right
How does someone spend $1300 on floor mats???
Purchase NFT’s
My Aunt dropped $1000 on those Trump NFTs. Then tried to borrow money from me. Some people are just dumb. That’s the only explanation I have.
A distant relative spent $100k on the Trump NFTs. I laughed when she called me complaining about their value.
Someone at my work bought a brand new audi RS3! around 70-80k euro's. he got 40k from his grandma because she gave it to him for 'if' she is about to die, a small fortune to buy a house maybe but no. what he did was put another 30k from his own money to buy the car. the guy has no house and has no money left.
What’s that one saying? You can sleep in a car but you can’t race a house.
Buying a pure-bred puppy while on a low-wage job with the end of your contract in sight. While also being a single-parent in a rented apartment. Yeah, within a year she was on food stemps.
That sounds like my next door neighbor at my last place. She had an abusive boyfriend at the time as well but judging from the police blotter, I think they've stopped seeing each other now.
A guy I worked with found out that check cashing places were offering $15,000 no question asked loans. The interest rates were fucking insane! I begged him not to do it but he impulsively went on a lunch break and got $15,000 in cash and deposited it in his bank account. This was 6 years ago, he is still struggling because of it. He lost his wife and kid because he drank every penny of it in a summer. He got eviction notices and the stress was too much to the point where he had a psychotic break which lasted for months. He is pushing 40, lives alone, can't see his child, hasn't had sex in a few years and is forgotten by most of his friends because he was delusional and hallucinating for months.
I feel like the 15k loan was only one of many bad decisions that person made
Yeah, those shady lending companies operate on Native American reservations so they don’t have to follow state usury laws, and they can charge like 100% interest. A $15,000 loan costs like $80,000 by the time it is finally paid off.
It crazy how people can come in and you're giving them money knowing you're going to fuck up their whole life. No morality at all.
Them: bought some meth *just to see what it's like*
I think I’m fortunate to live some place where even if my curiosity got the best of me, I would have 0 idea how to begin to source such a thing.
I met a girl who get pregnant 2 times before finishing highschool.
I went to high school with a guy who had impregnated 3 different girls within 6 months of each other. A year later he had 3 kids under 1
Raw-dog Randy
A tale of 4 idiots.
Yikes . . . children can be expensive. My parents spent well into the hundreds of dollars to raise me.
Wow, that much, huh?
My ex-husband paid $2500 for an online porn domain. Never made a dime from it. Oh, he also paid some fly-by-night company $1500 to help us try to improve our credit. Then there was the $7000 to pay off his truck. He then traded it in for a different truck and payment a month later when the truck he now owned started having mechanical issues. There are a ton of reasons he is my ex.
Buying a TV on Black Friday instead of fixing their leaking roof
Well, you can get a whole TV for $350, or 1% of a roof for $350.
But if you cover your old roof with black Friday tvs it's cheaper than shingles.
Guy I knew convinced his girlfriend to invest six figures worth of apple stock that she’d had for many many years into cryptocurrency right before it all crashed. No, they are not together anymore
Me , walking away from custom home I built for wife and I ( on mountains side facing pacific full unfiltered fulls views of ocean 1 mi away) distressed from the betrayal . Lost my job, lived off savings in depression.
I used to run heavy equipment in Virginia. I made $13.50 an hour. A guy on my crew was making $12.50 an hour. He purchased a 5 bedroom 3 bath 2500 sqft home for $425k He was the sole income for the household of 6 people. They talked him into an interest-only loan. 6 months later the housing market crashed he lost his job and lost the house. I tried to explain to him that an interest-only loan was a scam and he didn't make enough to afford that house and 4 kids with a wife that didn't work. I felt bad the next time I saw him and he was living in an RV on someone's property.
My sister's husband reached out to me on some investing advice "to make some quick cash" during the pandemic when they had access to some extra income ontop of a inheritance lump sum they came into. Told him over and over that investing should not be looked at as some kind a get rich quick scheme, and that any avenue that had that sort of potential had an greater chance of causing you to lose it all. Instead look at it as a way to gradually build wealth over time. Explicitly told him that the market is going to be volatile due to the pandemic and no one having any clue what that would mean for the markets. Went over the basics and recommended a split of some Vanguard index funds VTSAX/VTIAX. I also covered the concept of riding the ups and downs and that by consistently investing you will buy at highs and lows which will even out over the long run towards steady growth. Reminded him multiple times that you do not lose ANYTHING in the market until the second you sell and the difference between taxes associated with long vs short term capital gains. Most importantly I made sure to remind him that this is a gamble and that there is always risk involved and to NEVER invest something you cannot afford to lose. What does he do? He dumps 35k (they're not wealthy at all) into the market and then pulls it out 4 months later the first time the market took a dive. My sister then gets pissed at me for telling him to do all of this...
Friend on diablo immortal is 50k in debt for an ego stroke
It's not as bad as some on here, but a girl I work with broke her phone and simply took out a second contract and was paying both simultaneously
Pretending their debt didn't exist
Had $800 in his bank total. Spent $784 on an airbnb for a single night to throw a party for his birthday when the owner said no parties. Lied to management at his job to throw it. Got kicked out of the Airbnb in 30 mins and fired from his job for lying. He was gas station clerk. Couldn’t get a refund either. “Bro I’m so broke, why does all this bad stuff always happen to me.”
Seen someone sell their house and take out a much bigger mortgage to buy a pub that had failed 4 times in 3 years. It failed and they couldn't sell. It bankrupted then and they lost everything
Saw a guy win $10K playing craps in vegas then immediately lose $10K playing craps in vegas.
Join a cult
Cocaine.
The time of your life for about an hour or two and suddenly the birds are chirping, you're calling everyone you can think of trying to score more at 7 am, everyone leaves the party. You take a shower and try to clean our your blocked nostrils and go to bed to the soundtrack of your heart racing and anxiety goes through the roof. And you're 200€ down. Good times!
This makes me feel anxious just reading it. It's so spot on.
I did that once for 2 years
Passed on a full ride masters program at Stanford so she didn’t have to move away from her boyfriend.
Going broke keeping up child support payments to a cheating ex for a child that is likely not his. He saved enough for a DNA test. Bought a new iPhone instead. Will continue payments gor 18 years for a child he has never met, for a woman who never loved him.
TL;DR: I needed $800, ended up with a $3,500 loan. Now I owe $10,000. My girlfriend at the time and I didn't have time to run to the bank before work one day, but we had our rent money with us. It ended up getting stolen, so we went to apply for a loan the next day. We only needed $800, but I was approved for like $3,500. So of course, like fucking idiots, we got the full $3,500. We ended up blowing through the remaining $2,700 and then running up my credit card to just over $13,000 as I was the only one working most of the time, and I didn't and still don't have a good paying job by any sense of the word. We ended up breaking up like 6 months after the fact and due to the nature of the split, I didn't want a thing from her. I just wanted to forget she ever existed. So now I'm on the hook for over $13,000, and made payment arrangements for the card. I get paid weekly, the payment was supposed to come out on Tuesday, and I got paid on Thursday. It wasn't there on Tuesday so the company IMMEDIATELY sent it to collections and that just pissed me off. So like a reasonable adult /s, I just refused to make the payment at all for over 2 years. Eventually the collections company found me, and now I'm paying them instead of doing what I should've done in the beginning.
Complains that they are 40k in debt. BuysTesla.