*buys a $78,000 truck on a plan that results in $1,600 per month in car payments*
Logs onto twitter: "Despite earning a household income well over six figures, my family is still living paycheck to paycheck. This is Biden's America!" https://t.co/3d34813MuT
— Swann Marcus (@SwannMarcus89) April 1, 2024
I am very much *not* on TikTok — I know my limits — so when this video started popping up on the twitter feeds I follow, I assumed (hoped) it was some kind of performance art / parody. But as far as I can tell from a brief google, this is a real person, this is her actual feed, she says she’s a 28-year-old ‘stay at home 3x boy mom’ / wedding photographer in North Carolina whose husband works insane hours, and… she’s making money off TikTok hate clicks. How much money is that?
Listen, I know this lady seems too stupid to be real but as a divorce attorney lemme just tell you, three vast majority of the people in this country are absolutely terrible with money. I cannot tell you the number of times I have had to advise a client that https://t.co/ObS3bnPCJ7
— Greg “Sad Dog” Saddux (@tiebartester) April 1, 2024
neither they nor their spouse can possibly afford to get divorced. The number of times I have called opposing counsel for the first time and asked if their client is open to filing for bankruptcy. And these aren’t poor people! They’re just poor managers.
“what do you mean I can’t afford to get divorced?? We both make six figures!”
Well let’s break this down. Neither of you can afford the home on your own. Normally I’d say sell it and downsize but y’all have it mortgaged to the hilt and have mostly only paid on interest.
Ya got two $90k cars, a motorcycle, a side-by-side, a four-wheeler, a country club membership, and a timeshare, all of which you’ve paid for on credit. Oh and somehow you’ve also managed to wrack up $35k in credit card bills, mostly on expensive vacations.
Oh and both of your kids go to private school and are involved in every extracurricular known to mankind. You have nothing in savings, nothing in retirement, no meaningful investments or valuable property of any kind. You had to borrow the money to pay my retainer and you’re in
here talking about how you wanna “fight” for your kids. The legal bills alone would entirely wipe out any equity you have in anything. Are you sure you guys have done everything possible to work it out?
Made more than one client cry over the years with this little speech. But that’s why you always have a box of good Kleenex in the conference room.
News flash: math is still math. A “six figure” income is not a license to buy anything and everything you ever want at any given moment. And when you mismanage an income that ought to be enough for anyone to live well, it’s damn sure not the PRESIDENT’S fault.
Addendum: y’all would be SHOCKED at the number of people who own $650k homes and can’t afford to furnish them.
I got sucked into her TikTok rabbit hole. She bought a brand new Audi Q7 with cash, and let the dealer repossess her Tahoe.
Unbelievable.
— Melissa Savenko (@melissasavenko) April 1, 2024
You know this same guy has a Facebook post about the price of eggs going up https://t.co/Xx4PjmhrE2
— Deva Hazarika (@devahaz) March 31, 2024
"The people who want to end America all drive $50,000 trucks."
Tom Nichols elaborates on that notion: pic.twitter.com/w1W4DgOw1t
— Billyjoe (@Billeeejo) April 3, 2024
mrmoshpotato
Wow. Just wow. And I’m not exactly able throw money around right now, but these people are IDIOTS!
Tony Jay
I think the ignored child burbling away in the background has some sound financial advice for Mommy that she really should take.
Mike in Pasadena
Pretty damning description of the average Republican in that last tweet. A good description of the thugs attacking the Capitol on Jan 6.
Cthulhu
$50k trucks? That’s not much above base. The big three are all currently selling at least one trim level of their non-commercial truck lines above $100k. And then consider RVs, PWCs, boats, ATVs, etc. costing anywhere from $5k to $500k+ with often ursary rates of interest. Easy to get into a bind. Yes a dumb bind but it would suck nonetheless.
West of the Rockies
She seems like a horrible, vain half-wit. Maybe y’all (meaning you, arrogant lady) should look in the mirror and blame yourself for your predicament.
NotMax
Missed this if already discussed.
Enid, Oklahoma: “There’s the door, jerk.”
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
Our American horror story has the names to fit.
Chet Murthy
My father was a doctor in small-town Texas. He made good money, and I mean *bank*. But somehow, looking around, I wondered why it seemed like everybody I knew — all my white friends — lived materially richer lives than we did. Way, way richer. And yet clearly they weren’t making the kind of money my father made, b/c almost all of them were single-earner families where the husband worked in the defense plants in Fort Worth. Now …. well, now I know why: they were spending every cent, borrowing every cent they could find. Ah, well.
wjca
I was a high level, college-bound, student in high school. But the single most valuable class I took ( and admittedly only due to scheduling issues) was one designed for kids who were going to community college for a couple of years and then working in some small business. It taught basic accounting and bookkeeping (so you know where your money is going), compound interest (and why high interest credit card will kill you), insurance, basics of investing (how to read a balance sheet and what to look for), etc. (Plus other stuff, but those are the parts I remember.)
All the basic financial stuff that these people,** never seem to have heard of. To my mind, a class like this should be mandatory. As in, you don’t graduate high school without it.
** And, to be fair, an enormous number of my college-educated peers. Which is part of why so many of them, despite having had good jobs, end up retiring with absolutely nothing but Social Security to live on. It’s painful to watch.
wjca
But why a truck in the first place??? Especially two of them, since one which can accomodate 3 kids isn’t going to have much room to do truck-type things.
Rusty
I remember being stunned, when I was buying a cheap commuter, when the sales guy mentioned a good third of new car buyers were upside down on their old cars and were rolling that old debt into their new loans. He thought it was nuts, but that’s what people do because they want big, new and shiny. I suspect that has only gotten worse since. It’s financial illiteracy, but as pointed out, it’s also a deep self centered view of the world. That view is being fed by a culture of rampant individualism where only you matter. Groups are dieing as we only focus on ourselves, social organizations, churches, clubs, public schools and more. It’s hard to see the counter-weight to this cultural momentum that is further atomizing us.
NotMax
@wjca
“Why a truck? Why-a no chicken?”
:)
wjca
And their kids probably did the same as adults. Not least because they never had any other model for personal/family finance.
wjca
Definitely bed time and past time. Because that went right over my head.
Ruckus
This is the American Way!
Spend every dime so that one look says “They must be raking it in!”
We used to hear that we lived in the wealthiest country in the world. And that was decades ago. It’s gotten worse. Everything costs more and many incomes have not kept up with the rising tide of keeping up with the “Tautins”, you know those people who spend money like they can just print as much as they want, have the country club membership, the full 4 car garage with only the 2 of them, the 8,000 sq ft home on 2 acres, etc, etc…
NotMax
@wjca
Think Chico and Groucho.
wjca
@NotMax:
Ah, got it!
Ruckus
@wjca:
I wish it had gone over mine.
NotMax must be of a certain age, to know that old one.
NotMax
Have mentioned buying a brand new hybrid truck in the recent past (ordered August ’21, delivered Match of ’22). Not to be smug about it, $21k sticker price.
Kathleen
Back in the 90’s my sister in law worked for a bankruptcy attorney who dealt with clients like this all the time.
wjca
@NotMax:
A man after my own heart. For me, a car (or truck, in theory) is a way to get a) me, and b) my stuff (and/or family) from Point A to Point B. It’s not about making a statement. It’s not about impressing people. Point A to Point B.
The only thing more daft than people who buy cars for show, IMHO, is people who somehow think it’s a good idea to buy a new car every year or two. Burning the cash in the fireplace, because you like a fire in the evening occasionally, makes more sense.
Tony Jay
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
If you go to Ford’s website they will calculate finance costs. A 75,000 car at 5% interest car costs $1,600 per month over 4 years. Even if you drop the interest rate to an unheard of 2% it will still cost $1,500. it’s not the interest rate that kills you, it’s the amount of the loan.
Math is hard
HumboldtBlue
Wallace would have turned 37 today.
“Why it gotta be like this?”
NotMax
@wjca
Yeah, the whole keeping up with the Joneses shtick has never been my bag.
Have had a tough enough time over the years keeping up with the Yokums.
;)
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
@NotMax:
say the secret word and a truck will fall from the ceiling 🦆
Jay
Funny thing, never had a new car or truck in my life.
Currently drive, once in a while a 2000 Toyota RAV4 with 130K on the clock that we bought for $4K, (cash).
Closest I ever came to a car loan, was paying a guy I worked with $500 a month for 3 months to buy a Suzuki Players Special, 550cc motorcycle.
and there have been only two years in my life where I ever came close to six figures.
HumboldtBlue
Jus’ sayin’… The Country’s In the Very Best of Hands
NotMax
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
While I could have managed to pay it in full after a surprise windfall sealed the decision to purchase, opted for some financing on a portion of the price to reinforce my credit rating. 0.5% loan; how could I pass that up?
On the other hand, have a gas company card (which I use ONLY for purchasing gas). When there’s a balance on it, I always pay that in full. Good thing too, as only the other day received a letter from them that their new interest rate on any carry-over balance is now (better sit down first, I’ll wait) …
34.84%.
Balconesfault
Don’t forget the $1000 Adele tickets, or the $3000 weekend back in Athens or State College or Austin or Columbus to watch the Alma Mater in a big game.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
Oh. I watched the first time, I can’t again.
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
A bit interesting to compare and hear which verses were cut for the movie.
Gvg
@Jay: I bought a new truck, bare bones in 2003. That year the sales were so low, and the interest rates that a new one was cheaper than a 3 year old used low milage. Did not really understand it, but it was a good vehicle until several years later when we started fostering children. No back seat so I switched to using my sisters small car. Trucks are great for gardeners. Also home improvements like adding a laundry room and replacing a deck. Almost all cash, I had to finance about 2000.
At that time my research showed the fewer add ons, the more reliable the truck. Especially bad was 4 wheel drive. Only manufacturer that had good reliable 4 wheel was Subaru which didn’t do trucks then. I will need a new vehicle in the next few years. Would like to put it off because I don’t see anything that I really like now, and so much is changing. I do not want to buy something so new it doesn’t have a record yet. Reliability is important to me. So is price.
Citizen Alan
@Jay: Growing up, my family’s philosophy was always “b,uy the best new car you can afford and then drive it until the wheels fall off.”
Citizen Alan
As a bankruptcy lawyer, I flat out laughed when that vapid twit.Just breezily talked about letting.Both her vehicles be reposist as if that’s nothing. She has absolutely no clue that she’s about to go from owning 2 vehicles she and her husband cannot afford to having no vehicles at all and a very large unsecured debt that will be paid by a garnishment on the husband’s 6-figure salary.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay:
Really? You can do better making up ridiculous names. We know you can! We believe in you!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@mrmoshpotato: Hey, go easy on the man. It’s still fairly early in the morning in Brexitstan.
TBone
I vividly remember the day the bankruptcy laws were changed. I’ll never forget the foreboding feeling I had that day. Not for me, but for the people struggling from check to check. I struggled from check to check too, but I’ve never financed anything in my entire life, even bought my house without a mortgage (thanks to Mom and Dad). I was taught to save up in order to purchase (that’s how you’ll know if you really want/need it), and if you can’t do that, then you don’t need it. Drilled into me by my parents and I’m forever grateful. I just can’t imagine not teaching your children about debt and how to avoid it, especially in the age of the 401(k) where pensions no longer exist.
HumboldtBlue
Colin Allred: You wouldn’t let your grandparents pick your playlist for the next 6 years. Don’t let them choose your Senator.
mrmoshpotato
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Haha
Martin
So, a couple things.
On #2, Texas and Montana both have median car payments over $1000/mo. Both big truck states. Median rent in Texas is $1800/mo, so for a 2 car household that tracks pretty well. If you remove higher rent cities like Plano, that probably lines up a lot better. Median rent in Montana is $1600.
And there does seem to be some tracking between people who complain about the Biden economy and people who buy $80,000 trucks that cost $100 to fill up because they are wildly fuel uneconomical. There are choices being made here, and trends that are unsustainable. The automakers love their nearly median $50K sales price, but that’s unaffordable for most consumers (more expensive cars also brings more expensive insurance, etc. so total costs usually scale) Even the used car market is now out of reach for about 30% of Americans. This is a crisis for the industry, because it cannot hold, and communities will need to provide a solution because we cannot have ⅓ of our workforce unable to get to a job. But it’s also a problem the industry cannot solve because if you hadn’t noticed, investors have gotten VERY pushy with industry about their profits, and cheaper cars mean lower profits. They’re burning their future to keep investors off their back this quarter. It’s nothing new – companies do this all the time, but usually not industries.
There are a lot of canaries dying right now.
opiejeanne
@Gvg: We bought a pickup that year too, and got a ridiculously good price because my dad wanted one too, and I took him to a fleet dealership. I think I paid $16k, 0% financing. Dad’s cost a little more because he wanted some extra goodies on his.
We used ours for gardening and transportation, for more than ten years and 140k miles, sold it to our neighbor and with that money we bought Dad’s truck from his estate after he died. It has about 30,000 miles on it because Dad was 84 when he bought it and really didn’t need to drive anywhere by age 88, so it sat in his garage. Both had a small extended cab with two jump seats. Every time we take it in for an oil change someone tries to buy it from us. Our gardener says he has dibs on it.
TBone
On the subject of hate-watching.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/04/04/marge-is-on-the-warpath/
Apparently there is some movement talk on Ukraine funding, so the usual suspects are getting panties in a bunch.
Martin
@Gvg: Consider delivery costs. I do woodworking as a hobby, I sold my car for an ebike. I can have a truckload of lumber, appliances, trees and shrubs, yards of dirt, etc. delivered to my driveway for $45 (Postmates rates are going up, but normal commercial delivery is still pretty cheap).
I can have that done every weekend for less money than I was paying for insurance and maintenance on my 16 year old vehicle.
barbequebob
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch:
is it the name of a fish?
opiejeanne
@Martin: We had a ten year old Subaru Forester that was in really good shape, and our son and his wife were driving cars that were falling apart. They have 2 teenagers and a baby, so we offered the Subaru to him, but we also went shopping for a used car to see if he could get something reliable for a reasonable price instead. He couldn’t, and it was an irritating experience. Used cars are very expensive still, so we gave him ours in trade for his 22 year old Saturn, donated that to a charity, went shopping for a newer used one and ended up buying a new Subaru Forester.
opiejeanne
@Martin: Yards of dirt delivered for $45? Delivery is quite a bit more expensive here.
Martin
@opiejeanne: Up in CAs Central Valley old pickups are surprisingly expensive because the farmers find the current trucks both expensive and useless. They need to get hay across a field, they don’t need 4 heated seats, and a bunch of shit that will break and just cost them money. They want 20 year old ford rangers.
They should make Kei trucks legal in the US. For $12K brand new you can get a Daihatsu pickup that gets 45MPG, weighs ⅓ as much as a F-150, but has the same size bed.
The downside is you can’t look like a giant douchebag driving it.
MattF
Splurged yesterday. Upgraded the comics history Kickstarter reward I’d signed up for from ebook to ebook + physical book— for an additional $65. It was a self-indulgence, but I’m getting a few $K as a tax refund, so it’s OK.
mrmoshpotato
@barbequebob: Is it a different term for the balls used in table tennis?
Martin
@opiejeanne: Most people here don’t have trucks. Might be a business survival tactic.
Martin
This is peak American car culture.
A 4500 lb vehicle to deliver 1.5lbs of lunch.
Edit: that’s a much worse payload efficiency than Saturn V for a translunar insertion. Well done everyone – we made something less energy efficient than sending people to the moon.
redoubt
Reminder that Ford Motor Company stopped making passenger sedans a couple of years ago; not enough money in it. All they do now is trucks, SUVs, EVs, vans, and sports coupes (Mustang),
Mai Naem mobile
Is it bitchy for me to speculate that this lady may be spending $1000 on lip fillers every month and maybe not spending that kind of money on lip fillers could have been better used on car payments?
Jeffg166
Money never burned a hole in my pocket. I never owned a car. I have all that cash.
Dangerman
@HumboldtBlue: Rhymes with Chudd. I’m guessing a helluva limerick using road and choad.
barbequebob
@mrmoshpotato:
sorry, I only know them as ping pong balls, which is not the name of a fish.
from Horse Feathers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhuBZOgWbIg
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Hey, I just went through the Truck’n’Nuts Country official list of Kewl Names as published in the back of Guns, GUNS, GUNS magazine.
And Kody-Marc La Pierre Fowler-Gillette was already taken.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Mai Naem mobile:
No.
mrmoshpotato
@Martin:
We’re all adults here – you can just say moon sex.
mrmoshpotato
@barbequebob: Ping pong balls!
opiejeanne
@Martin: I get that. We have a big yard, nearly an acre, in a semi-rural area of King County. We have had dirt delivered and we have carted it home in our truck, along with fruit trees and other stuff. It’s a Ford Edge and the add-ons that Dad bought were inexpensive, Cruise Control and something else I’ve forgotten.
opiejeanne
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Does lip filler cost that much??? Give someone a grand to stick a needle into your lips, repeatedly? I’ll keep my money and my thinned-out old lady lips, thankyouverymuch.
Mai Naem mobile
@wjca: our former Republican governor in AZ was pushing for a mandatory financial literacy class in order to graduate HS. I don’t know if it happened. There’s a lot of ‘adulting’ that used to be done by parents that isn’t done anymore.
It’s easy to laugh at people for financing cars(I’m not talking about $80K keeping up with the Joneses’vehicles) but for a lot of people it’s the only way they can afford that first reliable vehicle you need to get to work. Not everybody has the knowledge/ $$$ to buy a reliable newer used vehicle for all cash.
Mai Naem mobile
@opiejeanne: i get the groupon emails and that kind of cosmetic stuff deals are always on there. IIRC I think it can be $250-$500 a pop but I don’t know how often you have to get it done. I can’t get over women who get the eyelash/eyebrow stuff done. Voluntarily choosing to have adhesives and needles near your eyes just seems really stupid but what do I know?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@opiejeanne: But millenials and anyone younger are financially irresponsible for… checks notes… eating food.
ETA: I probably could spend less money on eating out. Then again, with a combined five hour commute supporting 40 hours of my workweek that may stretch to 50 or 60 hours total with the weekend job, who the fuck has time
And avocado toast is the cheapest sandwich at Dunkin, these theoretical Boomer cloud shouters ought to know.
Andrew Abshier
That vehicle payment in the TikTok is more than I pay in rent every month. Absolute madness!
I bought a Prius new off the lot in 2016. The sales rep said their big sellers at the time were the full-size pickups and SUVs. I did my “not impressed” act with him and got my Prius for 60 months, no interest. I got a fat amount for trade-in so my monthly payments were around $332 a month. It’s been paid off for years.
So glad I was poor for a while. It really taught me the value of a dollar and how to manage money.
hueyplong
1. Now I see why the GOP and their Saudi pals get so confident about elections when they goose gas prices in the months leading up to them. The suddenly everywhere, Biden-faced “I did this” magnet stickers on gas pumps also lose their mystery.
2. That woman looks like a cartoon and appears to be even more orange than Trump. The cringe-inducing lip enlargements were only a third take. That much pushback on the still photo absolutely ruled out the thought of watching the video.
Mai Naem mobile
@TBone: does MTG say what she thinks Mike Johnson is getting blackmailed on? The pron he doesn’t watch with his son? His unusual financial arrangements regarding his paycheck? Inquiring minds want to know damnit@
Gin & Tonic
My completely impractical vehicular indulgence when I retired a few years ago was a Mazda Miata. Way more fun than a 5,000 pound $80k truck. And while I could have paid cash, the 0.9% interest rate was too good to pass up.
If I ever need a truck, I can rent one from Home Depot for $29.
Baud
In Biden’s America, I’ve had to limit myself to one massage per day.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Self-administered and highly localized…
Baud
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Still costs a fortune.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Baud: Pornhub is free.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: You could use my 66 Chev!
“I did sen 6k on a hydraulic clutch and new brakes!)
Princess
No wonder these people love Trump.he’s everything they aspire to — a bored angry narcissist who fills the void in his life by buying cheap tacky but costly junk that has no long term worth. These people have no home training.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Say, for example, a border wall.
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
I like it.
TBone
@Mai Naem mobile: I don’t know because I didn’t give a click, just read the article at Digby (my inquiring mind doesn’t need to know those details 🤢).
Princess
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Exactly.
I knew a woman like this. Country club, huge house, expensive wedding on two teachers’ salaries. Husband eventually killed himself. It won’t surprise anyone that she was a Trump voter until she died of cancer.
TBone
@Princess: 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WdRViFCvvUo
Michael Bersin
I’m lucky I attended a state school with a mediocre to bad athletic program (in those days).
“…Then you flew your lear jet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun…”
Well, okay, we’re driving a few hours south to Arkansas to do the same, but in all fairness, the cloud cover will be iffy. Besides, we’re old and we’re not under water with car loans and a mortgage…
raven
@Balconesfault: GO DAWGS!!!!!
hueyplong
This post + thread is a real eye opener for me. I had no idea that people with good salaries borrowed to the hilt for fun and status the way working poor have to shoulder bad credit due to the lack of alternatives. It makes total sense that they’d be Trumpers, because he’s always done the same, only with a lot more money.
Also had no idea of the pricing of monster trucks (due to the absence of any need to haul felled trees or whatever on a hitched trailer over the Rockies to oversee some lake, as seen on TV). A certain mindset has to exist for there to be a market for such things.
It’s no fun aging out of understanding contemporary societal pressures and realizing that you lack the context to scold with credibility, but it seems like the absolute shit-canning of cash and checks (that at least make you write out what you’re spending) leaves people completely oblivious to volume and rate of debt increase. Nothing costs anything until the bill comes due and you realize that Joe Biden has put your innocent white ass in a hole through an “increased cost of living” that had nothing to do with your financial lifestyle. “So terribly unfair to
Trumpme.”Maybe it’s all been about narcissism, and the fight to save democracy is just a sidebar.
I’ve got an agreement with the Chief. If I turn into Tom Nichols, he’s going to come into the room with a pillow.
Michael Bersin
@hueyplong:
“…Maybe it’s all been about narcissism, and the fight to save democracy is just a sidebar…”
Bingo!
satby
I only bought a new car off the dealer’s lot once. It was a Plymouth Champ, made by Mitsubishi, in 1980. My uncle or someone came to the dealer with my sister and me (she was looking too) to make sure the salesmen didn’t push us into any bad deals. Drove that car for years after I paid it off, but it was a cheap loan that I added extra payments onto. It was close to 200k miles when I got rid of it, but such a basic car it really needed only regular oil changes most of those years. One of the best and most fun cars I ever owned. I’ve always bought used cars since, except for one long stretch of driving a car I inherited. My kids have as well, though used car prices are much higher now. Buying new is the first financial mistake unless you can get a deal that makes it nearly interest free.
Baud
@satby:
Yeah, well, if everyone bought used, there wouldn’t be any new cars to become used. 🤔
Sid
@Citizen Alan:
My parents bought 2 new cars while I was growing up (and that was with my father working in a GM plant). When our oldest child turned 16, my wife and I started buying a new Subaru (Forester for me, Outback for her) every 4 years and turning the car over to one of the kids. We always had car payments but they were worth it for the peace of mind knowing the kids were driving a safe (and well maintained) car.
satby
@Michael Bersin: Yes, a lot of current social problems (anti-vax stuff too) is driven by narcissism. I include the overwhelming greed driving the insane markups on goods that have produced such huge corporate profits, and the lack of affordable housing while units sit empty to be available as Airbnbs. Enabled by policy choices made by the party that resents small d democracy.
OzarkHillbilly
On the GF telling her idiot BF he made his bed and now he can sleep in it, she is absolutely not being supportive… of his stupidity and and she is absolutely right not to.
Haysoos Crispo, if anything this could be the end of America.
OK OK, sarcasm but only a little bit.
p.a.
How I learned the value of money: mother born in 1917, father 1918, me 1959. Their memories of the Depression were sharp, they weren’t 3,4,5 yrs old at the time. They remembered.
Of course, it could go a bit too far: my birthday is around the end of the school year, so 16th birthday 1975, driver’s license, first real date! But just starting summer job hunt (found one within weeks) but, no cash at the time. No allowance (again: Depression). Asked dad for date money. $2. I looked at him, “what the hell am I supposed to do with this?!?!”
Him: “Jesus Christ what d’you have planned?”
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Same here, and most of them got driven/towed to the junkyard at the end of their lives with me.
hueyplong
@OzarkHillbilly: Same. My last convo prior to handing over the keys to a car donation charity has been either “I think I’ll make it there…” or else “You’re going to have to come get it.”
Another Scott
People are weird. The first thing that I noticed was the fancy multicolored tattoo on her shoulder. I didn’t watch the video.
I remember literally counting every penny, including tax, when I had a $70/mo grocery budget in the mid 1980s in school. But, later, I also remember spending $1500 on a high quality (Hancock and Moore) leather couch as my first real piece of furniture in the late 1980s when I had my first real job. I still have the couch.
I worked as a helper for a black guy on summer job in college. He had a fancy new front wheel drive Cadillac. I came to realize that fancy cars were one of the limited ways for many to show (to others and themselves, because of redlining and the like) that they were successful. That means a lot – I get it.
Fancy Shoulders doesn’t seem to have that excuse (but I didn’t watch the video).
It’s hard for a vehicle not to be a dead weight loss, but transportation is essential. Figuring out how to make it work is part of adulting.
For a lot of this, though, I blame the destruction of consumer protection and lack of usury laws. Finance guys know who can afford their products and who can’t, but the incentives are to get the signature no matter what. Bankrupting people starting out damages the country to shovel yet more wealth higher up the ladder. And domestic transportation industries imploding because most ultimately can’t afford their products will be damaging as well. We should have learned this stuff from the housing bubble popping, but too much of the US economy is based on bubbles.
[ sigh ]
Be careful out there.
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Baud:
Well, considering you don’t have the through-the-roof expenditures for pants that many of the rest of us have, I think you’re allowed that one indulgence.
I, on the other hand, find jackals (lookin’ at you, Omnes) get upset if I have even one message per day here.
satby
@Another Scott: 👍 co-sign
Subsole
It is beyond rich to listen to Mr Nichols bewailing the success of the Reagan Project. Man got everything he ever wanted, and all he can do is bitch about it.
JML
The syndrome of people buying big-ass trucks that they don’t use as trucks always melts my brain. It’s as bad as when you used to see someone getting groceries in a Hummer H3 in the suburbs. They’re not just incredibly expensive to buy, they’re more expensive to run (and the difference between 20 MPG and 30 MPG adds up fast). And they love to complain about how hard other people make it on them to park. Yo, dumbass: that parking ramp was designed for cars, not tools in a super over-sized extended cab ultra bed pickup that you’re using to go to the bar.
I bought my first brand-new car 3 years ago; I expect to have it for another 5-10 years easily. And much as I hate having debt, the 0% interest rate was worth financing a chunk of it. (It was hilarious when the dealer tried selling me on “gap insurance” or stretching the payments another 2 years to add a 1.9% APR…)
But I do understand a little how people can get stuck financially; I’m feeling it some right now, because I hate my job, but it’s hard to find something else that pays close to the same amount and there’s only so much of a pay cut I can take before I’d lose my house.
SFAW
I’m clearly not a Real ‘Murican: I drive a 20-year-old SUV, bought used. I’ll drive it until it falls apart, probably. [Toyota, so I may go before it does.] I have had a total of one new car in my life.What is worng with me?
This is all — clearly — Sleepy Joe Brandon’s fault. Not only that, I blame him for me becoming an old fart. [Not a curmudgeon — that’s all on my own.]
ETA: I do wish my vehicle got better mileage, however.
Soprano2
@opiejeanne: We have an ’87 S-10 pickup that’s two-tone because the driver’s door and bed were switched with a pickup that was red. People have tried to buy it from me several times even though it’s a raggedy-looking thing. They don’t make small pickups like that anymore. We use it to haul cans from the bar to the recycling center.
There were times when gas was high and the guys here were complaining about how much it cost to fill their tanks that I wanted to say “No one made you buy that huge gas guzzling crew cab with a short bed.” I started to see more older sedans in the parking lot, as these guys found old cars to drive to work to save money.
Ohio Mom
@wjca: We have a required class something like that in Ohio, at least we did when Ohio Son was in high school — he finished his senior year in 2016.
It was a mix of financial literacy and basic economic terms (supply and demand, opportunity cost, etc.) taught from the most right wing perspective possible. Not the teacher’s fault, that’s the Republicans in Columbus decreed.
Matt McIrvin
Tom Nichols is still a conservative and on some level, he subscribes to the conservative’s cyclic idea of history as “good times make soft men, soft men make bad times, bad times make hard men, hard men make good times”, rinse and repeat unto infinity. So of course he’s going to regard this kind of dumb behavior as the inevitable result of mass prosperity. I think there’s a bit more to it than that–part of it is the laissez-faire economics of our social-political system, in which we don’t try to protect people from themselves at all.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I think some of it is people running their lives the way right wing economics say a business should be run.
BretH
Wife and I decided a year and a half ago that our son needed a car even though he done really want one. (Kids these days!) Found a Nissan Versa hatchback with 190,000 miles for $2800 at a local dealership. Some googling told me it wasn’t likely to die soon (and it drove great), so $600 in repairs to pass inspection, new tires and that was that. He used it to get and keep a job and is extremely thankful.
Today reminds me of the ‘90s in the DC area when all of a sudden our little neighborhood by the Potomac River was inundated with Suburbans and other huge SUVs, and these young folk all expanded the houses to 5 bedroom silliness, all on cheap credit.
Dave
@Subsole: It’s one of the many reasons that even when I agree with him that he just he gets under my skin.
That and despite his blindness to the fairly obvious outcomes of his beliefs he is still convinced that we need to pay heed to him.
No humility in the dude at all.
stinger
@HumboldtBlue: Poor Judd is DAID!
Robmassing
I used to think I was smart with money, but it turns out I’m just not an idiot.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Incidentally, according to my Vietnamese coworker, East Asians are far worse about spending themselves into financial oblivion. He was ranting about Vietnamese women’s obsession with five hundred dollar purses the other day (one of the assemblers brings hers’ to work, in manufacturing…) his cousin who is freaking out about the taxes on the two million dollar home she just bought and so on.
Matt McIrvin
@Robmassing: I’m actually quite dumb with money–I know I could be a much richer person today if I’d spent more of my mental energy on carefully managing my wealth, but I find it tedious to even think about. But one thing I do have is a possibly excessive aversion to debt, and that’s helped.
Another Scott
@BretH: I vaguely remember a story in the WaPo by their car critics back in those days, singing the praises of the Chevy Avalanche (their pick-up-like thing with all the plastic doo-dads on the bed), talking about how great it was, but that (IIRC) it was too small.
Nuts!
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Our hyper-individualist culture means we have little concept of public goods and drives us to spend a lot of money to grab some little bit of comfort before it’s all gone. It also makes it necessary for us to do more long-term individual planning and sock away money for future expenses, and that makes all of this more dangerous than it would be otherwise. The assumption is that everyone is a rational homo economicus with a sufficiently long time horizon and if we’re not, something’s wrong with us–but almost nobody is; it’s an attitude we have to push ourselves to have.
lowtechcyclist
@Cthulhu:
I realize prices have gone up since then, but I bought my 2016 Honda Civic for $20K, NEW. It’s not like one must own a pickup truck.
cain
@Cthulhu:
I remember a friend of mine who married this guy. She complained to me about him buying a truck with all the bells and whistles. I was like wtf.. he could barely afford it. But you know he wants to show off to his pals both for admiration but also that he can afford it. It’s toxic masculinity.
My first 3 cars were all used and under $5k. I didn’t buy a new car until like 2005 or something (and I overpaid because buying cars from dealers suck) I thought long and hard before i bought that Tesla and made sure I knew what my monthly payments were going to be and whether we could afford it.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I bought a hybrid car in 2021 when the price of gas hadn’t really spiked yet (though it was up from the pandemic-shutdown slump), and it felt like a slightly irrational performative decision at the time. Then I got to feel smug when all these people with 16 MPG behemoths started complaining about Biden making their gas expensive. Yeah, I have to pay more for gasoline too. It really doesn’t bother me much because my car is going three times as far as theirs on a gallon.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
“You try and cross over there a chicken, and you’ll find out why a truck. It’s deep doo-doo, that’s why a truck.”
Uncle Cosmo
@Jay: I OTOH have always bought new autos – and just FTR the last 5 of them (over the last 40 years!) together cost less than that truck.
Denali5
I was faced with a young woman with the strange oversized lips at Easter Brunch. She was brought by my friend’s grandson, who was entranced by her. I thought she must have had plastic surgery – didn’t know about expensive lip injections. Kids these days!
Glidwrith
Tik tok lady and company are the mirror image of our billionaires: narcissistic, leveraged to the hilt and trying to destroy democracy.
Sociopathy is a learned trait.
cain
@Andrew Abshier: All my cars are paid for – except for one which is a EV Tesla lease. It’ll be gone next year. My subaru (made in my home town!) runs solidly – I haven’t had any problems with it. The 80s and 90s sucked because it seemed you were always taking it to a repair shop (car talk stories!) – but today? They build cars that really don’t show much problems and switching to EVs will have even less problems. You can keep one for a long time with just your local maintenance.
cain
All this stuff is so weird since GOP messaging is always about personal responsibility but that’s only for poor people, immigrants, and non-whites. There is definitely a racial thing underneath this.
Geminid
I ran into a guy at the local country. I was putting $20 in gas into my 2007 Honda and he was gassing up his shiny white 2023 F-250. It had a rack full of roofing equipment and there wwas a big trailor behind it.
We got to talking about his truck and his work. He was a roofing contractor, and had bought the truck for $42,000. He got a good deal because someone else had ordered two of them but hadn’t gone through with the purchase, and the dealer wanted to move them.
He said his truck got 12 miles per gallon of gas, which actually is not that bad considering what he was hauling around. Twenty years ago, it might have been 10 or less for a similar truck and rig.
lowtechcyclist
@cain:
Similar story here. My first three cars, combined, cost $5700 (all used, of course), and were my wheels from 1975 to 1996. We bought our first new car in 2000 and drove it until 2016, so it was paid off for 2/3 of its lifetime
xx
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid: Good to hear about someone buying a truck because they actually need a truck!
Brit in Chicago
A real question, asking because I don’t know and want to: if a car is repossessed does the debt go away? (As in most states mortgage debt goes away if the property is repossessed.) Or is the borrower still on the hook for the difference between the amount owed and the (no doubt extremely low-balled) estimate of the value of the vehicle?
I’m not asking for myself or for a friend (I hope I don’t know anyone that stupid), just curiosity.
JaneE
When I got my first real job I bought a car. Through the credit union at work, decent interest rate for the 70’s, and it came out of my paycheck every week. When I married, my husband always paid cash for everything, except homes. We paid cash for our cars, and saved money for the replacement instead of making payments. When the (first) home we bought together was paid off (early, extra principle payments) and a we had a really good opportunity, the misfortunes of the housing crash meant that we could and did buy our last home for cash.
Credit cards get paid off every month, so no interest there. It hurts the credit score, but not that much.
Not having debt means financial security at a far lower income than we actually have. I might not enjoy living so much on nothing but SS but we could. With savings and retirement funds, we live very comfortably. Not luxury and a lot of little purchases still add up to a lot of money at the end of the month, but the lack of stress when the bills come in is well worth it.
Millions of people in this country can’t do that because they do not and never did earn enough money, for one reason or another. Those people I feel sorry for, and hope they get help to do better. The ones who should be even better off than we are but spend like the proverbial drunken sailors and then have the nerve to say they are not to blame for their problems? They get no sympathy from me.
Balconesfault
@lowtechcyclist: currently driving a 2007 Toyota Prius that I bought about 3 years ago for $4,000.
Oh, and I do have a six-figure income, and my house is paid off!
davek319
@Jay: one of those square four two-strokes we never saw over heah?
Warren Senders
I remember 35 years ago I was making money doing office temping. I got a 2-week gig answering phones & doing light filing at a major investment firm, so I was riding the elevator every morning with all the Masters Of The Universe.
Who were, absolutely without exception, dumb as a box of hammers, and greedier than Scrooge McDuck. I thought then that I wouldn’t trust these people to supervise a stump. Nothing since then has changed that opinion. And these are the ones who are supposed to be financially literate.
JML
@Brit in Chicago: The answer (as with most things) is “maybe”.
If the value of the vehicle is more than the remainder of the loan, then you’re fine. If it’s not than the lender can sue you for the difference.
cain
@Balconesfault: I think GenX/Boomers are privileged that way – we came in where home prices were relatively sane and we could afford a home. Millennials and Gen Zs have it way worse and either have to inherit homes or wait till much later in life to own one.
I paid off my home before I was 50. I bought it for 155k, and now it’s worth $500k. Homes that costed $250k back in the 90s are going for $700k. It’s insane. Who the hell can pay off a $700k house in 30 years?
different-church-lady
@Martin:
nominated
MagdaInBlack
I took my recent Illinois drivers test in an $80k Tahoe. Not mine, belongs to a friend a wee bit higher on the food chain than I. She got $30k on her trade in so her loan was only (!) $50k. Pretty common in my suburban area, where I manage in a peon class Hyundai Elantra.
Sanjuro58
Not much to say here except that dumbasses are gonna dumbass at every opportunity they have,
Tarragon
It’s started dropping a bit since about the start of 2023 to about $47k. That’s not much in absolute terms but 3.5% in 18 months is a pretty big deal.
Also, that’s mean price. I can’t find anyone that reports median price and there doesn’t seem to be enough data available to calculate that myself.
Cheryl from Maryland
Kudos to the title of this post – based on Anthony Trollope’s book “The Way We Live Now,” written in response to the corruption in England from financial scandals. I read many works by Trollope when I was a teen in the 1970s, and so much of his work is about chancers, wastrels, and these types of poseurs. I totally recommend the book, and if one is not into Victorian prose, David Suchet, Cillian Murphy, Matthew McFayden, and Shirley Henderson starred in a great adaptation from 2001. Alas, spendthrift idiots who blame everything but themselves are nothing new.
Another Scott
@Tarragon:
The closest thing I’ve quickly found is this New Vehicles Price Index (City) from Fred.
There was a huge jump in the index starting around April 2021 and it’s only come down a little from the peak.
Cheers,
Scott.
CliosFanboy
@Citizen Alan:
that’s what I just did. 56K on a hybrid Highlander, but I plan to drive it until I’m dead.
Roberto el oso
@Cheryl from Maryland: I still remember “The Pallisers” on Masterpiece Theater years ago. Trollope was seriously talented when it came to using institutional backgrounds as almost secondary characters (the same way Dickens used London). The series of novels that the series drew on mainly dealt with politics, but lots of subplots about down-at-the-heels aristocrats, and nouveau riche types and the attendant need to keep up appearances even as one kept one step ahead of creditors.
NutmegAgain
@CliosFanboy: Sigh. I had to let my 2012 Highlander go last fall. Transfer case/transmission issues. I only had 81k miles on it! I still miss that damned car; it was a terrific Newf hauler, and easy on my bad back.
MinuteMan
@Baud:
All’s well that ends well?
Telsiree
@NotMax:
Make that three hard-boiled eggs!
Denali5
I love my 22 Prius hybrid. We found a pretty low interest loan-3.something, so the payments are not too high. It is a basic model, so just over $30,000.
wjca
I certainly wouldn’t laugh at somebody for financing a car. Or having a mortgage. Although I would definitely urge them to make sure the loan has no pre-payment penalty. Especially with a mortgage, where the first few years’ payments are overwhelmingly interest, even a couple of hundred extra a month can take years off how long you are paying.
I will, however, question the common sense of anybody who routinely fails to pay off their credit card balances in full. An instant checking the interest rates on those should be enough to know better.
MinuteMan
My wife keeps commenting about various people being loaded based on their spending habits, but my first thought is that they’re probably just heavily leveraged.
There have always been people living above their means (my dad’s co-workers were civil servants so we knew they were comparably paid) but it seems like there’s a lot more of it going around these days—or maybe we’re just skinflints—or both?
Mart
I’m so old I remember being taught how to balance a checkbook and mange household income in High School. Too bad we can’t afford to do that anymore.
taumaturgo
Ask yourself, why are US household on the hook to banks and other lender?
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, total household debt in the U.S. reached a record high of $16.51 trillion in the third quarter of 2022. This includes mortgage debt, credit card debt, auto loans, and student loans.
Breaking it down further:
When looking at debt per household, estimates varied by source but hovered around $155,000 to $165,000 of debt per U.S. household on average in 2022.
Robert Sneddon
An ex-boss of mine dropped about a hundred grand ($130,000 in Patriot Freedom vouchers) on a pickup truck twenty years ago. The base model was a honkin’ big Nissan pickup with crew cab and dual rear wheels and a giant engine, by British standards anyway (5.7 litre diesel IIRC). It was the extras that racked up the tab, things like a folding hydraulic crane and a power roller bed in the back. He used it mainly to transport lead shielding panels for X-ray room refits at hospitals and vet clinics and he reckoned it had paid for itself in a year of being able to do most of the logistics for a project in-house rather than having to hire in heavy lifting gear and load specialists on a case-by-case basis. At weekends it went home with him to help him refurbish the old farmhouse he and his long-term squeeze were working on.
wjca
Far more interesting would be the annual interest on the various kinds of debt. I’m guessing that credit card debt dollar amount leads by a fair margin, given its interest rates. But by how much?
Russell
I retired last year, my wife retired a while back. When I was getting ready to retire we talked with our financial advisor to set up 401k distributions etc.
She (financial advisor) was really happy, because a lot of her clients can’t retire. They make very large money, much much more than my wife I ever did, but they spend it all on glamorous lifestyle crap – second home, Land Rovers, etc.
These are people who shouldn’t be financially ignorant – they’re doctors, lawyers, executive management. People making middle six figures, maybe more. They just get sucked in by the bling.
wjca
Bling: a way to look rich now, so you can be poor later.
Tehanu
Yes. We long ago noticed that the “minimum payments” on our credit card bills only cover the interest — and the interest is from a rate over 30%. I agree with many others here that basic financial literacy needs to be taught in school since so many parents can’t teach it because they don’t have it themselves. But it’s unfair to blame people for getting into financial trouble because their parents didn’t teach them, when at the same time, the banks pay almost no interest on savings but charge loan-shark rates on borrowing.
burritoboy
We did buy a new car a few years back when the wife got her first spiffy job making well into the six figures. It was a Cooper Mini, which is the car she always wanted since she was a little girl. I think we paid around 27K or 28K for it. The next door neighbor just got a monster truck that is too big to fit into his garage space. Don’t know if he did it to impress the neighbors, but we’re just amused that it doesn’t fit.
emjayay
@redoubt: Not a conspiracy though, just producing what they can build (even in Mexico) and sell for a profit in the US.