Post the most financially outrageous things you've ever heard of...

[pjlla]

Back when I was in my 20's, I had a work friend who ended up pregnant (and unmarried.... no relationship with baby's father). Her parents kicked her out and she ended up living (rent free) with a family she found through a Right to Life church group. She did continue to work through most of the pregnancy. When the baby was born she qualified for public assistance and got an apartment (much nicer than the one I was living in at the time!) through the Welfare office.

So far nothing too strange or outrageous....but then she got her "last" tax return that she knew she would get for a while..... and at this point she had NOTHING for the baby except a few clothes and a crib that she had been given through the previous mentioned church.

Does she take this tax return $$ (many hundred $$$) and save it for an emergency, knowing that she would be living on public assistance for the foreseeable future? Put it in a CD or savings to fall back on later??
NOOOO!.......... She bought a large television, a stereo, and (if I recall properly) some new furniture. With the last "extra" cash she would probably have for a long time.............What was she thinking?.................P

 

[barkley]

thought of another one. had an AWFUL employee i got stuck with largly because my employer wanted him terminated and knew i would document and address all the issues (hoo-rah for me). this guy had the potential to be a 'double dipper'. he was ex military so he would have his vet's pension, and if he did'nt get fired from us he would in less than 5 years have been eligible to a government pension. he knew we wanted to fire him, his union knew we wanted to fire him-he was even told by his union and us that the writing was on the wall (blatant stuff the union could'nt defend) and if he'd just quit he could walk away with no negative ramifications (it would have been a voluntary quit-we shared no personnel info. within the gov. or outside-noone would have known anything).

he refused to quit, was fired, and instead of getting about $600 a month starting at age 55 for the rest of his life-he got only the contributions he made to the retirement program (with interest maybe $7000 pre tax) and a big black mark on his records that made him ineligible for any kind of civil service jobs.

 

[DumboPrincess]

This one is right up there, and it makes me mad. I know someone who's MIL gave her and DH her $200,000 house. They lived there for several years while on WIC, medicaid, etc b/c neither of them could/would hold a job. (God forbid you have a job that's boring, but pays the bills!) They had 3 kids in under four years (none planned) and finally sold the house to move to a new construction. They were able to pay outright for the house and pay off some bills with the left over. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson. But no. The 2000 sq. foot house was too small for them so they sold it to but a 5 bedroom 200,000 house. So now they have a mortgage, she is SAHM, he is a teacher. Still on WIC. Did I mention the wide screen TV, the vehicles purchased through a home equity line? But the topper? Still on WIC, and she gets BREAST IMPLANTS.

 

[EthansMom]

I have a friend who was looking to purchase a new Honda Civic. She went into her credit union and got prequalified for a low-interest rate loan. When she came back from buying her car, my friend told me she had leased the car instead because she could get the 6-deck CD player included for the same payments as owning. So, for a $200-$300 cd player, she gave away any of her equity in the car.

Here's another one: I was a manager over 7-8 employees and it was annual enrollment time for the 401k, so I made sure to let all of my staff know that if they weren't putting into the 401k (which included a company match), then now was the time. I had one young woman who said she couldn't put into the 401k because she was saving to send her parents on vacation. In addition, she was financially supporting a boyfriend who didn't work and paid for several expensive surgeries for her and her boyfriends several dogs (the dogs kept fighting).

Right now, I've got family members in their mid-to-late-30s who make good money but spend every dime (new cars, jewelry, vacations, expensive meals, etc...). They don't have one dime put away for college or retirement.... Not because they don't have the money, but because they choose to spend it all on depreciating assets. The husband is the only one who works (at a physically demanding job) and they have no disability insurance or life insurance on him. They've decided that disability insurance and life insurance are too expensive, but just bought a third car (for two adults). They live well, but are one prolonged illness or injury from losing everything.

 

[ducklite]

Still on WIC, and she gets BREAST IMPLANTS.

That's just wrong. I love seeing my tax dollars wasted. Not.

Anne

 

[eliza61]

Actually, my dozy is pretty much about myself and a ridiculous purchase that took me a year to pay off.

My first pregnancy (many, many moons ago) resulted it twins and so Dh and I decided I would stay home for awhile. Sharper imagine had this double stroller that was motorized! Yep, it was some sort of cadillac stroller with a motor. Of course as a new mom, I had visions of myself as some sort of hybrid "Samatha stevens/Claire huxetable" mom perfectly dressed and made up pushing her adorable twins in a motorized buggy. Price tag $3,000.

Needless to say, the thing weighed a ton, was not easy to handle and I was lucky to get a shower every day-forget about putting make up on.
Yep, I've done things that have made my financial advisor climb out onto a ledge.

Unfortunately, I think our elected officials are the biggest ones guilty of financial irresponsibity. 10 million children in the US without healthcare and I read yesterday that they want to give themselves a cost of living raise. Excuse me!

 

[MrMarv]

Toss in this ethanol hoax that the government has foisted upon its citizens for NO good reason, and add that tale to your list of things to be ticked off about!!!!!

 

[CarolA]

Toss in this ethanol hoax that the government has foisted upon its citizens for NO good reason, and add that tale to your list of things to be ticked off about!!!!!

Please keep your political debate over on the CB...... (you keep posting about this hoax, I don't think anyone but you cares!)

 

[branv]

DH has a guy under him who is nice but makes some...well..unwise personal life choices, from the woman he married to finances. Overall he has been a good father to his child and stepson(a better parent than the mother, for sure), but he thinks about 2 seconds into the future.

DH knew the family was struggling financially, wife is a compulsive spending SAHM, who hides the spending until the credit card bill comes (last month she overused the minutes/texting on the cell phone to the tune of $200...despite the fact that they have a land line with free long distance). She is also taking classes -- which means they have to pay daycare while she was at school. Except she keeps dropping her classes after the refund date, but still using the babysitting service. One day the worker confided in DH that while he had insurance through the company, they could not afford the family insurance (about an extra $100/month). Then, voila...he's taking a vacation to Hawaii! Well they can't turn it down, they're basically getting to use a friend's time share for free. But the plane tickets cost about $700, plus the rental car, food, and excursions. Somehow they found money for the trip that easily would have paid for a year of health insurance for their children.

The guy has started having problems with heart palpitations. The stress is really starting to wear on this guy and he's having to take all the over time he can to make up for the wife's spending.

 

[dementia412]

I've done my share of stupid things with money, but some people just blow you away. I had a friend who's parents bought her a used car. It needed new brakes, headlights, and some other minor work needed. So we were sitting around and she was talking about how the first thing she wanted to do was get a dent fixed, then get it painted, fix the sunroof. I asked if she meant AFTER getting the brakes replaced.... no, she was more concerned that the car looked good. At the time she had a job which her parents had to drive her to untill she got the car fixed up.. and she wanted to paint it!

I hear many things on this site that boggle my mind... for example I saw that someone on the budget board had a 3000$ morgage. I just don't get how that works... if you are budget minded then why would you have that kind of morgage? Not that you can't afford it, but that is not budget... I've never even made 3000$ in a month. (I don't know, there are a couple places in the US where that might not be so terrible... maybe they lived in NY city )

 

[ducklite]

I hear many things on this site that boggle my mind... for example I saw that someone on the budget board had a 3000$ morgage. I just don't get how that works... if you are budget minded then why would you have that kind of morgage? Not that you can't afford it, but that is not budget... I've never even made 3000$ in a month. (I don't know, there are a couple places in the US where that might not be so terrible... maybe they lived in NY city )

Being budget minded is all relevant to your personal situation and income. My mortgage is $3400 a month. I could afford a larger, more expensive home, but I don't want one because what we've got suits our needs. But just because I've got a fairly large mortgage it doesn't mean I'm drowning in debt. (I have the mortgage and a two year car loan that will be paid off in eight months--no other debt at all.) Just because I can afford "things" it doesn't mean that I buy them, and I still want to pay attention to where my money is going.

I clip coupons, shop sales, keep the a/c set at 79-80. We contribute to charity, fully fund our 401k's and have IRA's, and have plenty of savings as well. We didn't get that way by not being "budget minded." We live fairly frugally for our income level to continue to accrue personal wealth. If were weren't budget minded, we'd be like so many others described on this thread.

Anne

 

[bumbershoot]

I just heard of one last night that broke my heart.

The cousin of a friend's husband died last week suddenly - a heart attack at age 45. He wasn't overweight, ate well and exercised and it was a shock to everyone.

He lingered for several days and then died, leaving behind a wife and three young children. What he didn't leave behind was life insurance other than the 1X salary coverage provided by his employer. There is a small retirement fund and mortgage insurance - so the house will be paid for but virtually nothing else. His wife hasn't worked in nine years and now has only slightly more than their annual income with which to raise her three children.

I swear, I could weep.

My FIL left that situation behind too. Except he was 79. MIL had lied to everyone that he had life insurance, but we were helping with the finances afterwards and knew differently. She knew he had no life insurance (NONE) and that he had repeatedly cashed out his life insurance plans over the years.... Why did he have no life insurance? Because his 10-years-younger-wife had had 2 heart attacks, newly diagnosed with diabetes, and they BOTH thought she would die first, so what's the point of his having life insurance?

No savings, MIL had to search hard for the $800 for his simple cremation (Buddhist and what he wanted, not b/c of finances), b/c he hadn't even made that arrangement (though interestingly we found paperwork that the months before he died he had been looking into it).


Not only that, but he had forged his wife's signature and had taken 20K of his wife's accrued life insurance out 6 months before.

And had done the Turbo Tax electronic signature thing for taxes in '00, and since then simply TOLD his wife he had filed taxes, but hadn't since '00. Not just *didn't pay*, but *didn't FILE*. And since it's community property, joint filing, and MIL can't prove she didn't know, guess who is paying the 50K he owed in taxes over those years? He had a contract job with NO taxes taken out, and he HAD actually paid estimated taxes, but ONLY to cover his SS and pension from former career, NOT on the 100K/year job he had until the year before he retired...

So what is MIL's reaction to finding all this out, and finding out that her life insurance was so depleted (he told her a year ago that the life insurance premium had tripled b/c of her health problems (though heart attacks were 10 years ago with none since), when actually it was because of his trying to increase the balance so she didn't notice)?

CASH OUT the life insurance to take the $500 or so that was left, and just like FIL she will leave NOTHING to the grandchildren despite having held "the will and inheritance" over their children's heads their entire lives....


Oh and I could get into the fiasco that led MIL and FIL to have to find an apartment last summer...but it's hard to unravel...their first son's partner was in financial messes and his name only was on the mortgage for their shared duplex (both sides of the duplex), and he didn't pay the mortgage for a YEAR. He might have told FIL about it, and the 20K from MIL's insurance MIGHT have gone to him but we found the foreclosure paperwork and it was a month too late to try to get the duplex back by that time....one day during a grandchild's b'day party, BIL's partner moved out, taking everything that was in his name, leaving behind the foreclosure info...

And MIL had given him 50K (that she had stashed away secretly over the years and FIL didn't know about so she could never tell him she had done it) for the down payment, and with the foreclosure that was GONE but she couldn't talk about it to FIL.


They had to move inside of 1.5 months. Moved to a nice apartment complex into a nice 2 bedroom.

And now MIL insists on staying there, even though the rent is a stretch on her pension and SS (half of what his was, for both), because otherwise she would feel poor.


Oh, and they used to OWN, not a mortgage, but OWN, a home on a hill in Issaquah, a now fancy suburb of Seattle. FIL had his own shipping business, decided to be part of fraud in shipping backhoes to Malaysia and declaring a percentage of their worth, got caught a year after the fact, after he had closed his business. He had a lawyer for his business, and he had business insurance, but because he got caught a year after it happened, he decided he couldn't consult with them, and GAVE his personal assets in order to decrease the amount he would owe in cash...turned his owned house over, even though he had been incorporated and it could have been kept separate...but he never consulted with his attorney b/c he thought he knew better.



So how are those for financially outrageous?


I mean, we aren't perfect by ANY means, but we rent b/c we like to rent and we're forthright about it, we don't save enough but we're forthright about it, our retirement funds are still small...but no one is lying just for appearance's sake and IMO that's better than what FIL and MIL did!

 

[JennsBabySky]

I hear many things on this site that boggle my mind... for example I saw that someone on the budget board had a 3000$ morgage. I just don't get how that works... if you are budget minded then why would you have that kind of morgage? Not that you can't afford it, but that is not budget... I've never even made 3000$ in a month. (I don't know, there are a couple places in the US where that might not be so terrible... maybe they lived in NY city )

Well, about that $3000 a month for a mortgage -- it all depends on where you live! I live in the Los Angeles area and live in a modest house. We put more than 20% down and have a 30 year fixed mortgage with everything impounded, our payments are $3000 a month. Sure I have friends with lower payments on larger houses, but not because they put more down. Many have interest only loans or 40 or 50 year loans. Ouch. So much depends on where you live and when you buy your house. If I were to buy my same house today, my payments would be much, much more. It is very tough to buy a single family home in our area for less than $500K (and that would be for a 2 bedroom fixer in a not so nice part of town).

Not everyone with a $3000 a month house payment is financially irresponsible.

 

[KelNottAt]

Being budget minded is all relevant to your personal situation and income. My mortgage is $3400 a month. I could afford a larger, more expensive home, but I don't want one because what we've got suits our needs. But just because I've got a fairly large mortgage it doesn't mean I'm drowning in debt. (I have the mortgage and a two year car loan that will be paid off in eight months--no other debt at all.) Just because I can afford "things" it doesn't mean that I buy them, and I still want to pay attention to where my money is going.

I clip coupons, shop sales, keep the a/c set at 79-80. We contribute to charity, fully fund our 401k's and have IRA's, and have plenty of savings as well. We didn't get that way by not being "budget minded." We live fairly frugally for our income level to continue to accrue personal wealth. If were weren't budget minded, we'd be like so many others described on this thread.

Anne

Ditto.

Plus, our $3,198.25 mortgage is a 20 year term. A big monthly nut doesn't have to mean one's drowning. It might be a wise long-term plan.

 

[disykat]

This conversation is reminding me of one of the most financially outrageous things I see lately - although I know many will disagree. Kids and their spending money.

When I was in girl scouts, we went on trips and I can't even think of one time we stopped at a convenience store and were allowed to get out and buy stuff.

I went on field trips as a kid and the gift shop was not on the itinerary. NO MONEY was the rule. However, I remember well a thread on the DIS where all sorts of parents were saying things like "but how can a trip be special without buying something at the gift shop?" as if going to the zoo with their friends wasn't special enough.

Really, I see it much more on the DIS than in real life. "How can I make a trip to WDW special for my child?" would get me laughed out of town in real life.

In general, I think I still spend money like I'm living in the 70's and just don't "get" the constant buying of things.

 

[ducklite]

This conversation is reminding me of one of the most financially outrageous things I see lately - although I know many will disagree. Kids and their spending money.

You're not going to get an argument from me about that one. I'm amazed at how many parents spend huge amounts of money on "stuf" for their kids. Like you said, when we were kids, we never stopped in the gift shop on field trips. Didn't stop there when mom and dad took us to the local amusement park either. The trip itself was the gift.

When my son was younger I might give him a few dollars to get a snack or soda on a field trip, but never "plastic junk." As he got older he could use his allowance money for it, but I found that almost always because it was "his" money being used, whatever triinket he might have "had" to ahve suddenly became far less appealing. He seldom came home with anything, and the few times he did, he made good choices.

Anne

 

[mjbaby]

In general, I think I still spend money like I'm living in the 70's and just don't "get" the constant buying of things.

Here, here! I was having this same conversation with a friend the other day, talking about price pressures on so many things. "When we were kids," she said, "things were so much easier." Well, duh. So much of what we take as mandatory for a decent life these days was completely optional (if available at all) and not exactly widespead when we were growing up on the 70s and even the 80s to some degree. I feel like an old fogey anymore when I say that my kids don't need X, Y or Z or even suggest that - gasp! - kids can share a bedroom without being reported to the UN as a human rights violation, you know?

I've been thinking about this idea of "living in the 70s" but I might try and ratchet back to '65 or so, just for good measure.

 

[crisi]

You're not going to get an argument from me about that one. I'm amazed at how many parents spend huge amounts of money on "stuf" for their kids.

Christmastime on the budget board is a hoot. People who have posted all year about how to keep their grocery bill down and which credit card to pay off first and "how do you all go to Disney every year, I'm scrimping to make this one trip" post about all the "bargains" Santa has gotten for their kids. This place suddenly becomes the "bargain" board instead of the "budget" board. Someone who couldn't afford a new washer a month ago can suddenly afford $70 in shipping and handling on "free silver jewelry." The person wondering if it was cheap to send their kid to a birthday party with a $5 gift because "that's all we can afford" finds money to buy a video iPod for the same kid. Then in January, its back to "how do I pay of these big credit card bills" and "someone help me budget down."

 

[poober25]

Here's my financially outrageous story. My DH and I currently own a duplex (it will be sold in 12 days, but that's beside the point.) The tenant we've had for the last 3 years, we routinely have to send evictions notices to, and she routinely takes money out of her 401k for hardship to pay her rent. She will usually get out enough to pay 3 or 4 months rent, then after that, fall behind again, take another hardship withdrawal, the cycle continues. I don't know how she has any money left in there to take out. She filed bankruptcy just before she moved into our place, and her daughter was moving with her. I thought they were trying to get their lives back on track, but it's the daughter, (3 kids, 3 fathers, 25 years old), that keeps pulling her down. I feel like we're enabling her sometimes, but she does have other choices. She could move out to a cheaper place, and stop supporting her daughter.

All that said, we don't have the best financial track record. Our biggest problem is eating out. We have plently of debt we shouldn't have, but for the last year, it has not gone up any, and it will be decreasing after next month. We do fund his 401k (I'm SAHM, homeschooler) and as of last year both have Roth IRAs that are fully funded this year and last. After the duplex closes next month, we will owe on the home we just bought, and around $15k. Total $118k. Before we bought this house, our total debt load including 1st & 2nd mortgage on the duplex was $180k. We have made mistakes, but there are few things I would do differently. We probably spend around $2k on vacation each year, so I wouldn't cut out what we spend on that.

 

[OnourwaytoWDW]

oh oh oh my turn!!
My dear friends in Michigan are strapped. Credit cards, payment on their electric bill is stretched out, $350 a month for child support.. etc..you get the pic.
She stopped using a checkbook because the checkbook always got her in trouble and she'd bounce checks. So she started to use her debit card and he has his, and now she can't figure out why last week they were in the hole $350.00!! Those things are dangerous! Mine was stolen in Jan (everything turned out fine) and then I just never got another one. If I don't have the cash, I just don't get it. If I REALLY REALLY need it and not just want it, I"ll use checks.
Sooo..this couple...he goes behind her back and buys a HEARSE ON EBAY! Lord help them! It doesn't even run right, he got it for $600.00 and is sending the guy payment installments and is in Ohio!
They really really want to come to Disney with us fall 2008, but I told her unless they get their crap in order, it isn't going to happen.
He's all about "live for today, tommorrow may not be here" and she's all about "How in the hell am I going to may the mortgage??"

I'm saving, paying off debt and planning a trip. I am NOT about to make my trip any less because I want to stay at the Poly and they are #itchin about having to stay somewhere else.

Gayle