Stanley Johnson is my hero.

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Originally posted by Shakka Stanley Johnson is my hero.

I'm not sure what part I should feel the worst about...

1. I watched that 5 times

2. I laughed harder each time

3. I personally know 4 people living like that

4. How the terrible truth is making me laugh

My favorite part is the look he has on his face, and the goofy smile, when he says "I'm in debt up to my eyeballs."

Stanley Johnson is American Dream/American Illusion.

(I've tried Lending Tree...I'm not that impressed)

Stanley's lucky on a couple of counts, the most important being he has a source of equity and would be able to go around looking for premium loans anyway to do some consolidation.
If you're not like Stanley in the add and don't have a source of equity and still up to your eyeballs in debt, you're basically still utterly screwed and will be locked into the cycle of paying off interest without making a dent into your actual loan.

It's why the financially naive come up and say to me-
"Oh Lilith you're in so much debt! I'd never pay that off and how do you sleep at night being caught up in the mechanism of financial interest?"

Admittedly, some nights, I don't sleep crunching numbers and yes that debt is fairly staggeringly large number when I think about it, but I've not been out spending it on Ferrari's, clothes and home entertainment systems. No, my debt is covered by the fact that my properties are worth equity and the income they generate is covering both the interest and the actual loan + associated expenses like insurance, rates and so on. Why I still work is to offset things like inflation and to provide some income for myself and my partner who's still at uni, it's not perfect by any stretch of the situation, but by 35 I don't intend to be working and those debts will be paid off, perhaps sooner if house prices go up and I can make a large enough profit off them.
Debt is a good thing for me and it can be a good thing for other people, if they don't live beyond their financial/asset means and it's given me opportunities to otherwise give myself an income which, given I'm not well educated/qualified, would limit me to a fairly standard working class income.

And I'm still more or less on a working class income and still spend as if I'm on that, but it won't always have to be that way in the future. If Stanley in the advert still refuses to lower his financial bleeding out after consolidation, it's still not going to help him one iota.
It's simply one thing to living how you'd like, making a means to do so to keep that standard of living as a process which is work in of itself outside your day job. But a lot of people skip that process and move straight onto living how they think they deserve, without putting in place the mechanism to do so.

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Originally posted by Lilith I've not been out spending it on Ferrari's, clothes and home entertainment systems.

Americans do have a debilitating addiction to clothes and big screen tv's. Do you know what the mark-up on clothes and shoes is?! These items are the usual fare of the credit card, impulse purchasing.

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but by 35 I don't intend to be working

Ohhh?! Do share your early retirement plan, please.

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living how they think they deserve

That's the main issue/problem with "entitlement thinking"

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Originally posted by zookeeper Americans do have a debilitating addiction to clothes and big screen tv's. Do you know what the mark-up on clothes and shoes is?! These items are the usual fare of the credit card, impulse purchasing.

Lucky I'm not american then
I still like shoes a lot... just sort of curbed to to one pair ever couple of months if they're on sale and nice...

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Ohhh?! Do share your early retirement plan, please.

In my early 20's I inherited my mothers estate, which was a farm, sum of money and shares.
I lost the farm, through no fault of bad management, just happened to be in a crap country which was nationalising land ownership and there's only so many times you really want to wake up and have to shoot and and be shot at to keep it. Still kind of bitter about it.
Shares worked out well, I sold them when Cisco peaked around 00-01 when they split and basically made a lot out of that, after that I went into energies shares for pretty much up until early this year. I no longer fiddle with them.
And on advisement of what to do with the cash, I bought my first home outright and used that as collateral to buy other properties in what was a booming industry at the time. I bought and sold a lot of property for a fairly big profit on top of the shares.
Buy property, stack more loan on top as collateral against it, repeat a few dozen times, sell when a profit is assured and make money.
The banks liked lending me money, interest rates where very low and basically made hay while the sun was shining, working my normal jobs, contracts and so on on top of that.
At the end of it I ended up with a half dozen properties to keep and lease out and most of them paid off by the time the downturn had started on the real estate market.
Markets currently at a lul, if the interest rates drop, I'll do it all again with a vengeance.

Oh, if you think I was working less than 12-16 hours a day, fairly much 7 days a week, most every week for about 8 years straight, you'd be gravely mistaken.
But I think I deserve more than the socio-economic bracket I was born into, (because I unashamedly know that I am a precious little princess and the finest thing on this old earth) hence I work very hard to provide for my expensive tastes. Yes a Lilith is a high maintenance animal.
I just want to be a lazy, high maintenance animal that doesn't work one day
Basically, if life gives you a break for once and that doesn't happen very often, (trust me, it's kicking my arse more than kissing it most any other day) you've got to take that chance it's given you and choke the bastard for all it's worth.

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Originally posted by zookeeper Americans do have a debilitating addiction to clothes and big screen tv's. Do you know what the mark-up on clothes and shoes is?! These items are the usual fare of the credit card, impulse purchasing.

some of us Americans (the more i know anyway) like to do it the old fashioned way and save up cash and buy the things they like.

i saved up a few months and bought a 50" Samsung DLP (720p model) this year. it was on sale

i've done that with most of my stereo equipment too. i was making signifigantly more money back then though.

now if i could only do that for a new Audi. hmmmm. yeah, not gonna happen.

i'm recently divorced. most my credit cards are long gone save for one.

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Originally posted by Q5echo i saved up a few months and bought a 50" Samsung DLP (720p model) this year. it was on sale

Ha--we have the same TV. I love it. You probably got a much better deal on yours though!

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Originally posted by Lilith

Well I certainly wish you the best of luck, but if you're only in your early 20's and you're talking about never working after 35, what about your long-term planning? You never know what could happen tomorrow--you could get cancer or accidentally drive over a baby and have someone come after you for all of your assets? Doesn't uncertainty about the future give you the slightest bit of pause? Man, I wish I didn't have to work and could just play golf all week long, but I have other people depending on me and plenty more that keeps me up at night. Then again, maybe you got a Paris Hilton sized trust fund with your inheritance. Must be nice!

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Originally posted by Shakka Well I certainly wish you the best of luck, but if you're only in your early 20's and you're talking about never working after 35, what about your long-term planning?

Late 20's.
Long term planning is just maintenance of assets and income really, but at a lower level of intensity than it has been, that and I didn't go to university, I've been in the workforce since I was 17, 10, close to 11 years down the track I'm very tired and worn out.

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You never know what could happen tomorrow--you could get cancer or accidentally drive over a baby and have someone come after you for all of your assets? Doesn't uncertainty about the future give you the slightest bit of pause? Man, I wish I didn't have to work and could just play golf all week long, but I have other people depending on me and plenty more that keeps me up at night.

Course I worry, I'm a professional worrier about all sorts of things, best you can do is basically be prepared for most kinds of unforeseen eventualities and do your best to head off and minimise the ones you see coming. That's nothing special really, I'm nothing special aside from the fact I work harder than a lot of people and had one small opportunity to make the most of it, maybe a no small amount of sheer ruthlessness as well.

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Then again, maybe you got a Paris Hilton sized trust fund with your inheritance. Must be nice!

No actually I prefer my money to be honest after working for it, it gives me a certain level of satisfaction and achievement. Dumping large amounts of cash on a peasant just seems to make for a cashed up peasant with nicer clothes, doesn't seem to make them much smarter in the case of people like Paris.
It was middling 6 figures when I started and now it's well into the 7's + a 7 figure debt, which is a manageable debt on my income and I do have the ability to liquidate 80% of the debt with savings from the sale of my shares which I invested into finance or sell the property the debt is on for a small profit. I'd rather just hang onto it as an appreciating asset because it literally does pay to be patient.

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Originally posted by Lilith Late 20's. Long term planning is just maintenance of assets and income really, but at a lower level of intensity than it has been, that and I didn't go to university, I've been in the workforce since I was 17, 10, close to 11 years down the track I'm very tired and worn out. Course I worry, I'm a professional worrier about all sorts of things, best you can do is basically be prepared for most kinds of unforeseen eventualities and do your best to head off and minimise the ones you see coming. That's nothing special really, I'm nothing special aside from the fact I work harder than a lot of people and had one small opportunity to make the most of it, maybe a no small amount of sheer ruthlessness as well. No actually I prefer my money to be honest after working for it, it gives me a certain level of satisfaction and achievement. Dumping large amounts of cash on a peasant just seems to make for a cashed up peasant with nicer clothes, doesn't seem to make them much smarter in the case of people like Paris. It was middling 6 figures when I started and now it's well into the 7's + a 7 figure debt, which is a manageable debt on my income and I do have the ability to liquidate 80% of the debt with savings from the sale of my shares which I invested into finance or sell the property the debt is on for a small profit. I'd rather just hang onto it as an appreciating asset because it literally does pay to be patient.

Sounds like you're doing great and that's awesome to hear.

I'm working towards keeping the wife home to raise our new podling since theoretically we only need to find an extra couple hundred dollars a month to do it.
So worth it considering all the crap thats been going on in the daycares these days.
I won't even get into the nanny situation...

___________________
"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sounds like you're doing great and that's awesome to hear. I'm working towards keeping the wife home to raise our new podling since theoretically we only need to find an extra couple hundred dollars a month to do it. So worth it considering all the crap thats been going on in the daycares these days. I won't even get into the nanny situation...

Christ--our due date is this Friday. The woman has been off work officially for 3 weeks now (but still collecting income for a while longer). I abhor the thought of letting someone else raise our child so the plan is for her to stop working and for me to double my efforts, so to speak. Things will tighten up a bit, but we'll adjust and it will be worth it.

lol--podling!