How to say no to tipping. Or First World Problems. by 6ixStringJack

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

How to say no to tipping. Or First World Problems.

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Friday, October 27, 2023 11:53
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Thursday, October 26, 2023 1:59 AM

I’m Sorry, But I Can’t Tip the Whole World

Everyone today—from cashiers to robot kiosks—expects a big gratuity for ringing up an order. Olivia Reingold asks: Can you refuse without looking like a jerk?

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-to-say-no-to-tipping-inflation

I'm just laughing while reading this article because not a single one of these things that supposedly happen now are something I've ever once experienced.

A few thoughts...

Quote:
This summer I was at Newark Airport, racing down a moving walkway to grab a bottle of water before takeoff. I snatched a Smartwater, scanned it at a self-checkout, and then gritted my teeth at the price: $8.

What a rip-off, I thought. But I know retailers hold us captive at the airport, so with no other options, I swiped my card.

Suddenly another notification flashed in my face: Would you like to add a tip?

The kiosk listed three amounts: 15%, 18%, 20%.

The chutzpah of this robot. Surely it was infected with a virus to think it could ask me, a human, for a tip at a time when inflation has hit record highs.

If you really felt that you had no other option than to spend $8 on a "smart"water, when the option was to not buy the water, I think you should probably have given that nice robot a 20% tip.

Quote:
This is where we find ourselves in 2023. After enduring three years of rising prices, where the cost of ground coffee, gasoline, and other staples has jumped by 20 percent since 2020, the machines are now asking us for spare change.

But we humans can’t pony up, because we are struggling. At least half of people making over $100,000 are living paycheck to paycheck, according to one study.

If you make over $100k per year and are living paycheck to paycheck, there is not one single scenario in any timeline in the multiverse where you are not 100% responsible for your current financial situation and as pathetic a waste of carbon paypig consumer you are, you deserve no pity from anyone.

Quote:
So, in a moment when everyone’s feeling the squeeze, how do you turn down these requests with class?

Stop buying a bunch of shit you don't need all the time.

I have one situation where I'm put in a position to tip somebody in my life and that's when I get a haircut. I also wait to get a haircut when I can get a coupon. That's not for me. That's for the girl cutting my hair. I will spend $20 on a haircut. Now that they cost $17.99, that would only be a $2 tip without a coupon. The coupons are only usually $12.99 too after Bidenflation, but sometimes I get them for $9.99 still. Long gone are the days when I'd get a $5.99 coupon and she'd get a nice $14 tip.

And for fuck's sake... If you're going to be doing things where you need to tip people, tip them with cash so they have the option not to report all of it.

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 5:38 AM

ANONYMOUSE

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

If you make over $100k per year and are living paycheck to paycheck, there is not one single scenario in any timeline in the multiverse where you are not 100% responsible for your current financial situation and as pathetic a waste of carbon paypig consumer you are, you deserve no pity from anyone.

FINALLY, someone has SAID it!!!

There's a similar attitude in the UK, i.e. someone on six figures can be having a hard time.

Oh, please.

At the moment I'm on four figures because I'm currently out of work. Despite what the Department of Work & Pensions says, I am not fit for work. Hell, I'm barely fit for life! I had a stroke on Thursday 8th May 2022, and I am still recovering. I'm on medication for my high blood pressure (seeing the doctor today to see how I'm doing), and a side-effect is that I'm very unsteady on my feet. But if it's that or have another stroke, which it's unlikely I'll survive if I do...well. I daren't even ride a bike, much though I would prefer to even though I now tire very easily, because it's a) cheaper and b) a fuck sight more reliable than the damn bus - which is why I started riding a bike again in the first place.

So I have zero sympathy for anyone who's 'having a hard time' on six figures, okay? As 6ixStringJack says, their problems are entirely their own.

"I Am What I Am."

- Descartes (or Popeye - sources differ)

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 6:52 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

its 'inflation' now its 15–20%, expected. They say noble aristocratics might have brought this gratuity thing from Europe to America, first recorded in 1706

but some Tips can be rude in France where they are already well paid? and especially rude in Japan where it goes against custom and tradition?

https://epicureandculture.com/french-dining-etiquette-eating-out-in-fr
ance/

https://japantruly.com/tipping-in-japan/

but some might welcome Tipping in Spain or Greece or Singapore or Philippines however most locals don't tip and there might be a “No tipping policy” even displayed, in some regions of Italy Venice, Florence and Rome have grown accustomed to foreigners leaving tips, Australia tips are generally not expected but appreciated. In general tipping with cash is best but in some cultures it is considered rude or even frowned upon, some can be surprised/confused if tipped, might return it. The Mandatory tip is almost like a tax, added automatically to the customer's bill, without the customer determining the amount or being asked. Some Chinese do have 'tips' in the westernized regions of Hong Kong and Macau. In Canada they have their own new IRS type Law and gratuities are deemed direct tips plus the employee's responsibility to declare them taxable income when filing for income tax.

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/canada-pension-pl
an-cpp-employment-insurance-ei-rulings/cpp-ei-explained/tips-gratuities.html

Dystopia land says
PAY YOUR TAXES ON THOSE TIPS !! and Truckers are racists, sexists says Trudeau!

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 12:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Anonymouse:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

If you make over $100k per year and are living paycheck to paycheck, there is not one single scenario in any timeline in the multiverse where you are not 100% responsible for your current financial situation and as pathetic a waste of carbon paypig consumer you are, you deserve no pity from anyone.

FINALLY, someone has SAID it!!!

Hey. Yeah. I've said it quite a few times over the last few years whenever I see an article with rich people whining about things. I probably haven't been that rude about it before though. I don't expect you to know that though since I post a lot of inflammatory crap on these boards in current year, and since you rarely ever make an appearance in the RWED cesspool, I don't know how much of any of this you subject yourself to. My advice would be RUN!!!!!

Quote:
There's a similar attitude in the UK, i.e. someone on six figures can be having a hard time.

Oh, please.

Yeah? You've been getting that for a while now too, huh?

I don't even see how it's possible to have financial issues even in 2023 if you're making six figures, but I've only spent $5,000 this year, so what do I know about anything?

Quote:
At the moment I'm on four figures because I'm currently out of work. Despite what the Department of Work & Pensions says, I am not fit for work. Hell, I'm barely fit for life! I had a stroke on Thursday 8th May 2022, and I am still recovering. I'm on medication for my high blood pressure (seeing the doctor today to see how I'm doing), and a side-effect is that I'm very unsteady on my feet. But if it's that or have another stroke, which it's unlikely I'll survive if I do...well. I daren't even ride a bike, much though I would prefer to even though I now tire very easily, because it's a) cheaper and b) a fuck sight more reliable than the damn bus - which is why I started riding a bike again in the first place.

I'm sorry to hear about all of this. I hope the Dr. gives you good news and that at least you're getting the blood pressure at a good level. You can't very well do the physical work you need to do in your situation unless that gets evened out first.

I'm not familiar at all with how the UK does things, but I know here in the US that with great persistence the healthcare system can actually work for those who need it. It took my old man about 3 years to do it, but he finally got my disabled brother on Social Security Disability. He suffered multiple strokes from a blood clot to the brain which resulted in a brain hemorrhage when he was only 6 years old. He made a pretty decent recovery since he was so young at the time, all things considered, but he'll never be right after that. My parents should have done what they needed to do financially for him at that time, but they were too busy in courts over child support and other BS, so by the time he was an adult and failed job after job after job the system didn't want to acknowledge his limitations or pay any disability. It was a ton of work for my Dad to get that taken care of, and after my dad passes on it's going to be my responsibility to make sure he's taken care of since none of my other brothers are going to do it and the Government is going to spend the rest of his life trying to kick him off of the assistance.

Quote:
So I have zero sympathy for anyone who's 'having a hard time' on six figures, okay? As 6ixStringJack says, their problems are entirely their own.

The one thing that I'll give them is that our Education System, at least in America, doesn't teach anything about finances unless you specifically chose to major in Economics in College. 12 full years of Public School designed to put you in the poor house. Hell... College itself is the first step into a lifetime of wage slavery because of the costs, and if you can't even start your financial education until you've started taking out college loans for tuition, what good is it?

And further, being wise with money (as I'm sure you know) is about EXPERIENCE. If you didn't learn it and live it while you were young, it's going to very hard to apply anything you're taught in books to your lifestyle after all those bad habits have already been how you live your life.

I didn't learn it young. I learned it out of necessity after I lost the best job I'll ever have before my 21st birthday, and I was lucky enough that my Grandmother took me into her home, where I spent the next 5 years doing odd jobs and living in the basement with the 2 worst behaved out of 7 cats... the ones that pissed all over everything.

I swore if I ever got another opportunity to make the kind of money that you could actually save it up I would do right, and that's what I finally did when I had to move out of state. That job lasted nearly 5 years and it was enough for me to be in the right place at the right time to set myself up right during the housing market crash. In the last 12 years now I've averaged a 4-digit income. When I do work, it's part time shit jobs and I'll make between $11k and $17k. Even those lowly jobs aren't safe. One place I worked the company went out of business, and the other one laid off half of their staff, including the entire night crew that I worked on. Many of the last 12 years I haven't worked at all. But because of my EXPERIENCE with budgeting and knowing the difference between Wants and Needs, it's become a pretty copacetic existence.

But a lack of knowledge is the ONLY sympathy they'll get from me. Nobody ever taught them any better. Not the schools. Not their parents. They raised 2 generations of entitled little brats who can't figure out how to make ends meet when they're making over 10 times per year what I get by just fine on.

Take care of yourself, and try to keep positive. You seem to be able to type still and your post here was intelligently written. If you didn't tell me that you had a stroke I never would have suspected anything was wrong with you physically or mentally. It could have been a LOT worse. My brother was so bad the doctors said that he'd never walk or talk again. They were wrong about that, but he still has trouble using the right half of his body nearly 40 years later and 50% of his vision on both eyes is just gone. Imagine putting duct tape over the right half of both of your eyes and that's what he's seen for the last 4 decades.

I've got my own health issues as well after being diagnosed with Type I Adult Onset Diabetes in March out of nowhere. This also led to me being diagnosed with a 35% blockage of one of my arteries. The Diabetes already forces me to eat a pretty healthy diet, but the blockage limits other foods that otherwise would be fine too, so it's a struggle.

But we got our new normal we have to live with now. Just got to be strong, eat right, take our vitamins and do the physical work we need to do to not just eek out an existence, but live a life worth living, right?

Good luck today. Hope you get good news.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 2:49 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by Anonymouse:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

If you make over $100k per year and are living paycheck to paycheck, there is not one single scenario in any timeline in the multiverse where you are not 100% responsible for your current financial situation and as pathetic a waste of carbon paypig consumer you are, you deserve no pity from anyone.

FINALLY, someone has SAID it!!!

There's a similar attitude in the UK, i.e. someone on six figures can be having a hard time.

Oh, please.

At the moment I'm on four figures because I'm currently out of work. Despite what the Department of Work & Pensions says, I am not fit for work. Hell, I'm barely fit for life! I had a stroke on Thursday 8th May 2022, and I am still recovering. I'm on medication for my high blood pressure (seeing the doctor today to see how I'm doing), and a side-effect is that I'm very unsteady on my feet. But if it's that or have another stroke, which it's unlikely I'll survive if I do...well. I daren't even ride a bike, much though I would prefer to even though I now tire very easily, because it's a) cheaper and b) a fuck sight more reliable than the damn bus - which is why I started riding a bike again in the first place.

So I have zero sympathy for anyone who's 'having a hard time' on six figures, okay? As 6ixStringJack says, their problems are entirely their own.

"I Am What I Am."

- Descartes (or Popeye - sources differ)

Oh, heavens! I feel for you! Any chance of your health stabilizing some time next year?

AFA ppl $100K or more living paycheck to paycheck... yep, no sympathy from here either. They probably equate having expen$ive things... McMansion, new fancy vehicle, designer clothes.. as being rich. But what they are in IN DEBT. These ppl...they can't distinguish "wants" from "needs".

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 2:51 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Automatically tacking on Mandatory "Gratuity" after the facts, without informing the customer in advance, is just tacky. And rude.

Recently heard a story of one place where customers walked out without paying, in rejection, and the waitress or manager threatened to shoot them.

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 3:12 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Anonymouse:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

If you make over $100k per year and are living paycheck to paycheck, there is not one single scenario in any timeline in the multiverse where you are not 100% responsible for your current financial situation and as pathetic a waste of carbon paypig consumer you are, you deserve no pity from anyone.
FINALLY, someone has SAID it!!!

There's a similar attitude in the UK, i.e. someone on six figures can be having a hard time.

Oh, please.

At the moment I'm on four figures because I'm currently out of work. Despite what the Department of Work & Pensions says, I am not fit for work. Hell, I'm barely fit for life! I had a stroke on Thursday 8th May 2022, and I am still recovering. I'm on medication for my high blood pressure (seeing the doctor today to see how I'm doing), and a side-effect is that I'm very unsteady on my feet. But if it's that or have another stroke, which it's unlikely I'll survive if I do...well. I daren't even ride a bike, much though I would prefer to even though I now tire very easily, because it's a) cheaper and b) a fuck sight more reliable than the damn bus - which is why I started riding a bike again in the first place.

So I have zero sympathy for anyone who's 'having a hard time' on six figures, okay? As 6ixStringJack says, their problems are entirely their own.

"I Am What I Am."

- Descartes (or Popeye - sources differ)
Oh, heavens! I feel for you! Any chance of your health stabilizing some time next year?

AFA ppl $100K or more living paycheck to paycheck... yep, no sympathy from here either. They probably equate having expen$ive things... McMansion, new fancy vehicle, designer clothes.. as being rich. But what they are in IN DEBT. These ppl...they can't distinguish "wants" from "needs".

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

Butbutbutbut they NEED to spend thousands per month for a, a, a phone.

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 4:32 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

You never read Getting By On $100,000 a Year by Andrew Tobias. That was a preposterously large sum when this collection of magazine pieces appeared in the late Seventies, though even then there were more than a few who failed to see the humor in it. Today, it’s become less and less funny even to the middle class, who may, in a two-income family in a high-cost locale, be bumping up into just such straitened circumstances.
https://andrewtobias.com/getting-by-on-100000-a-year/

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-100-000-Year-Other-ebook/dp/B01MU2EEHG/

GETTING BY ON $100,000 A YEAR
(NO, IT'S NOT EASY—BUT IT CAN BE DONE!)
Things are rough all over. I have this little Filipino girl—Lenisa —through the auspices of the Foster Parents Plan, who, if she really exists (and if she doesn't, someone is making $18 a month writing me little crayon letters in Filipino), sleeps on the floor of a toiletless hut. She thanks God and me in each letter for my generosity, and I thank God I have running water, Charmin, and a king-size bed with Magic Fingers.
Last night I had Stanley over for dinner. Stanley, an investment banker in his early thirties, has his own problems. And, as he is a graduate of a well-known business school and a resident of Manhattan's Upper East Side, you can imagine they are rather more sophisticated than little Lenisa's. If he were to outline them for me once a month, they would come typed on an IBM Correcting Selectric II, "dictated but not read," and signed for him in his absence by his secretary. (Stanley travels a lot.)
Unlike Lenisa—whose letters, as translated, tend to be quite straightforward ("I tell you that I passed the year of studies. I tell you also that during the rainy season part of our house fall down. Greetings and best wishes")—Stanley manages to retain a sense of humor about his problems. He's half serious and half joking when he tells you, which is the first thing he told me, "You know, it's incredible, but you just can't live in this city on a hundred thousand dollars a year." (And here I thought $80,000 or $90,000 was all it would take.)
When I say Stanley was half joking, I don't mean he was kidding, simply that he recognized the absurdity of the situation— that on a six-figure income he could still have money problems. That he had, for example, to park his car down by the docks somewhere to save a measly $80 a month over what it would have cost him to park in his building.
It is an absurd situation that a fair proportion of the world's elite find themselves in, and one, I thought, worth exploring.
"You can't live on a hundred thousand a year?" I asked, pouring Stanley a Scotch. "How many kids have you got?"
"None that I know of," he smiled.
"Wife?"
"No wife."
"Alimony?"
He shook his head.
"Well, then, how can you possibly spend so much?"
The first $40,000 or so, I knew, he would immediately dismiss as the tax collector's share. (Technically, the federal, state, and city income taxes a New Yorker pays on $100,000, assuming a bare minimum of deductions, would be closer to $50,000, but Stanley's deductions are more robust.) The next $12,000 I assumed would be the annual rent on a $l,000-a- month luxury high-rise apartment, of which there are many in New York (one- and two-bedroom, mostly), but no: his rent is a mere $415 a month. He would like to move to a larger apartment, he says (or to buy one—a great tax shelter), but he can't afford to. This one, "rent stabilized" by New York's rent control laws, is too good a deal.
So—$40,000 for taxes, $5,000 for rent (plus another $1,000 for utilities, Christmas tips to the building staff, and home phone)—I was now fairly on tenterhooks to discover where the remaining $54,000 goes.
Ten thousand, he said, goes to the summer rental on Long Island.
"Just ten?" I asked. (Sarcasm is not my middle name, but could be.) "What—no tennis court?"
"No," he acknowledged sadly, and that meant having to maintain membership in the local tennis club ($500). Also, back in the city: a Princeton Club membership ($350), Racquet Club membership ($500), and New York Athletic Club membership ($650). Physically fit, socially impeccable, perpetually tan.
No, far from its having a tennis court or even a pool, Stanley said, considering the ice cubes in his Scotch, this was a relatively modest place in the Hamptons he got to use only about ten weekends a year, when he wasn't out of the country on business.
"Aha!" said I, seeing a way to breathe new life into his bank account, "why not share the house with a friend? You'd save five thousand dollars."
"When you make a hundred thousand dollars a year," he said, "you feel you don't want to share."
"Well, then, why not take a house in a somewhat less chic Hampton and save the five thousand that way?"
"When you are making—"
"But it's only fifteen minutes away!"
"Business," Stanley explained. "You've got to be there for business. You've got to run in the right circles if you want to do the big deals. It's the old self-fulfilling prophecy." You can't play with the high rollers, in other words, if you're out in the lobby feeding the slots.
We tabled discussion of the summer place, began hacking up a slab of pate de campagne, and moved on to transportation. One has to get out to a summer place, does one not?
It was toward this end that Stanley bought the Mercedes-Benz he can't afford to garage for $120 a month and takes the subway to retrieve. Being constrained by fairly conventional office hours, however, he found driving out to the Hamptons to entail a great deal of idling in traffic and disappointingly little 110-mile-an-hour cruising (of which his motorcar is effortlessly capable, given the proper stretch of road). Hence the seaplane he wound up taking to the beach as often as not ($40 each way). His girl friend, who was able to get out of the city early, sometimes even on Thursday, would take the car and meet Stanley at the plane.
His girl friend, it developed—and those preceding and contemporaneous with her—represents a fair portion of Stanley's fiscal dilemma. A night out in New York mounts up: $35 or $50 for theater tickets (unless they are scalped, in which case they are $50 each), $15 for cabs, $60 for dinner, and perhaps $30 at Regine's or Studio 54. Because, Stanley explained, if you like to date dazzling women, as he does, such an evening is not the Big Night Out—it is the typical night out.
"I used to think," he said, palm outstretched to stay the objection he could see forming on my lips, "that these gals would love to skip all that glitz and glamour and just come over in blue jeans for a quiet evening by the fire—is that what you were going to say?" It was. "Well," he concluded, "they don't."
So you've got the unreimbursed $150 nights out. Once or twice a week: $7,500 or $15,000 a year. And, largely for business reasons, you have the cocaine, which Stanley estimates runs him another $3,000 per annum. ("Listen, if the stuff is going around, every so often you've got to reciprocate with some of your own.") A legitimate business expense, he maintains, but one he declines to itemize on his tax return.
Now, even after we add these and other incidentals—steak for the freezer for those occasional nights home alone, tapes for the Betamax, $228 a year for cable TV and Home Box Office (not that he ever gets much chance to watch it), the weekends in St. Croix, the maid, the $100 Andre Oliver sweaters (that is as much as Stanley will spend for a sweater, even though Andre Oliver offers another style at $250), the obligatory charitable and political contributions—even after all this, he does have some money left over. But that goes toward his retirement. He wants to save at least $25,000 a year, in one form or another (tax-sheltered oil and gas deals are the current form), because he wants to become rich. This is very clearly the point of being an investment banker, after all, whatever subsidiary satisfactions the career may provide. And you can hardly become rich—after starting with nothing but debts to a variety of classy educational institutions—if you don't put at least $25,000 a year away. After twenty years, assuming you've been adroit enough to make your money grow fast enough after taxes to keep up with inflation, you will have put away the equivalent of half a million 1978 dollars. And something tells me Stanley doesn't want to wait twenty years to be worth half a million. Such a sum may go a long way in St. Paul, Minnesota—or the Philippines—but in Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, or Belgravia it is the price of a nice big house, with enough left over to remodel the kitchen—maybe.
Stanley knows this. He knows he should be putting more than $25,000 into those oil partnerships, and he also knows he's not putting away even that much. Poor Stanley.
Stanley is probably one of the million most privileged human beings on earth. And yet, whatever it says about social justice or human nature—or, simply, the human comedy—to this very special, extraordinarily fortunate group, the problems are real.
"No joke!" a normally lighthearted friend of mine interrupted with real feeling when I told him the topic of my story. If there was humor in the notion of "getting by" on $100,000 a year, he didn't see it. A commuter, he pays, among other things, federal income tax, Social Security tax, Pennsylvania income tax, New York State nonresident income tax, New York City nonresident income tax, sales tax, county tax, township tax, and school tax, the last three being billed as one and amounting to a modest $2,200 per annum. To Lenisa, whose family's entire electrical consumption consists of the power to run two 25-watt light bulbs, this commuter's life might seem inordinately complicated, not to mention lavish (just getting to and from work requires a car, a train, a subway, an elevator, and approximately $3,000 a year). But to my friend, it is a struggle just to afford the life his middle-class parents seemed to manage with relative ease. They had bought a house in a similar exurb for $28,000 thirty years ago, and it came with fifteen acres of property and a 5 percent mortgage. Sleep-in help cost next to nothing. His house, 25 years later, had cost five times as much, sat on a third as much property, and cost 8.5 percent to finance. And there was no longer such a thing as sleep-in help—or if there was, he didn't know anyone who could afford it. A new roof this year cost him $6,000. To earn that extra, unexpected $6,000, after tax, he had to earn an extra $14,000 before tax. Next year he will probably have to paint.
There is inflation—just when we were getting used to $10 ties, Saks started charging $15 and, for some, $30. There is the inflation tax—the effect of putting a larger and larger proportion of your income into the highest tax brackets. There is the illusion effect—your income seems so large you assume you can afford things you really can't. And there is the credit trap—you buy them anyway, on time (with your income, you can borrow a fortune). Add to this the ratchet effect (a luxury, once sampled, becomes a necessary comfort incorporated into all future budgets) and the self-deception effect (if I'm smart enough to be earning $100,000 a year, surely I'm smart enough to earn more), and you have the six-part formula for high-income anxiety.
"I'm taking seventy-five or eighty thousand dollars in aftertax money out of the business each year," says a Tennessee real estate developer who pays little or nothing in taxes because of the way his real estate ventures are structured. "It is the equivalent of—what? maybe a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars a year before tax, or even more—and I don't make it on that! It's unbelievable, but I don't." To make up the deficit, he goes deeper in debt. His personal debt is now into six figures, secured by his real estate interests. He didn't want to sell off any of the real estate until recently, he says, because he anticipated divorce proceedings and "wanted to keep a low profile on what I may have been worth, in case it got nasty." (It did not: alimony was set at $15,000 a year; he got to keep, and provide for, the three children.)
Before ticking off his personal expenses (which totaled $11,000 more than the $80,000 he was taking out of the business), he ticked off some of the perks he and his partners don't have to pay for personally: $1.5 million of life insurance, each; complete medical insurance, down to the last penny; golf and tennis club memberships (they own the club); horses (maintained to show off properties to prospective buyers); a 40-foot boat (which, before allowing for the captain, costs about $10,000 a year to pay off and maintain); season tickets to sporting events; one automobile apiece; business lunches and dinners.
He says that at the end of the year, after he's sold off some property to pay back the bank, he will go through his personal expenses to bring them into some sort of balance. "There's no question there are places to cut," he says (thinking, perhaps, of the day his ex-wife—in one day, at wholesale, no less—went through $1,000 at the pro shop). "But that doesn't mean that there's any provision for the kids' college, or for a savings account. I'm assuming that my savings are my share of the real estate values in the business—and that's an advantage most people don't have. If I had to face the full realities of life at, say, a hundred twenty-five a year before tax—but without the perks and without the equity I'm building in the business—I'd be crying more blues than I am now."
Finally we have an unmarried woman, a movie executive, who might be making $100,000 a year if she were a man, but who is nonetheless doing quite well—$72,000. The difference is not $28,000 as one might at first conclude but—after tax—$12,600.
"The interesting thing to me," she explains, "is that I have so much paid for by the studio—my car, my insurance, and virtually all food and entertainment—and I'm still broke. It makes me nervous. I don't know where it all goes." She has no savings account. She worries that her checks may bounce. "Literally! I remember being in New York, stocking up on the Pierre Michel shampoo I buy there—one hundred nine dollars' worth—and calling my secretary back in L.A. to be sure she had deposited my paycheck, so the hundred-nine-dollar check wouldn't bounce."
So what are we to make of these sad cases? That the rich deserve a tax break? Hardly—although it surely would be encouraging to see a token decrease in the maximum federal tax rate on earned income, from 50 percent to say, 47.5 percent. (That way, before state taxes, anyway, high-income people would at least feel they are the majority shareholders in their lives, not just fifty/fifty partners.)
Or are we to think that these elite are somehow evil to be living so well—and complaining to boot—when billions live in squalor? Hardly—although I will confess to not having been bowled over by the amounts they budgeted to charitable giving. (Eighteen dollars a month through the Foster Parents Plan really is all it takes to make a difference in a family's life, pointless as that may seem given the size of the problem.)
The real bottom line, it seems to me, was provided by an unemployed friend I have quoted elsewhere, who explained to me: "You can live well if you're rich and you can live well if you're poor. But if you're poor, it’s much cheaper."
May 1978

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, October 26, 2023 8:58 PM

ANONYMOUSE

Thanks for the good wishes, guys. The doctor took a blood sample, and I didn't wuss out this time! One time years ago they had to stop as I got giddy and faint. Not this time, though. :) My BP was a bit high but not too much. I should lose a bit of weight, so I'm going to look into sit-down exercises. We'll see what the blood test says.

Also...I'm getting a bit thoughtful about dating apps. I'm reading a romcom (stop laughing! :) Men like a good laugh and a bit of sexy fun as much as women do!), Divorced (Not Dead), about a 50-year-old woman who decides to try the dating app scene. She finds, as you'd expect, the usual crowd of tossers (catfishing is a new term to me, but I love the way Frankie spots them, strings them along and then says something like 'my email is frankie at - don't want this site to turn it into a real email address or people might try it out, aren't I a thoughtful guy? - fuckoffscammer.com'!).

But she has fun, too. That made me think.

I've always regarded dating apps as being for losers and I have zero presence on social media (except nthellworld.com), but the author sounds experienced. Generally I prefer my own company - I can't imagine being beholden to anyone else's schedule, or theirs to mine - but...

I'm 'only' 57, nearly 58. But I feel as if my 11-plus was only yesterday. Every day I think "What the fuck happened?! Where have the last 46 years gone?!" I don't think I look 57. Sure, I'm mostly bald, but I've been that way since I was 25, so even if I could do anything about it, I'm not inclined to. I write, and my characters - especially one Jennifer Harrison, a 35-year-old single mum who finds herself joining SHADO, is of the 'take me as I am or take a hike' school, even refusing to shave her armpits or conceal her redhead freckles. In many ways, after heartbreak during my teens and early 20s, so am I.

I'm not too old - there's no such bloody thing. People older than I am use these apps. So I might, I just might, start. I can't remember the last time I had a relationship, even a casual FWB thing...a sign that perhaps it's been too long.

I'll finish the book and think about it. It's a brilliant laugh - you have to love a book where the protagonist is sitting in a quilting shop with fellow female enthusiasts and she says "It's more likely that pigs would fly out of my arse than a man come into my shop on his own" - and then a man does just that!

And on reflection...well, people in the 6-figure bracket have to have problems, just different ones from the majority in the 5-or-less bracket. Hmm.

"In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don't, then the agenda-makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you.
And you may not have what it takes to pay."

- Quellcrist Falconer
Things I Should Have Learnt By Now, Vol. II

Richard Morgan, Broken Angels

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Friday, October 27, 2023 11:53 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by Anonymouse:
Thanks for the good wishes, guys. The doctor took a blood sample, and I didn't wuss out this time! One time years ago they had to stop as I got giddy and faint. Not this time, though. :) My BP was a bit high but not too much. I should lose a bit of weight, so I'm going to look into sit-down exercises. We'll see what the blood test says.

Haha... Yeah. I used to be terrified of needles, but I've been poked so many times this year it doesn't phase me anymore. The only time it bothered me was when I had 6 vials drawn at one time. I did feel a little spacey for a while afterward.

My BP was always higher than it should be, but never high enough to get put on meds. That's why I found it funny now that I started working out again and I have to eat right because of my conditions and my BP is awesome they put me on BP meds because of what Diabetes can do to you if you're not on them.

Good luck with the blood test. If it's just your standard test, even if one or a few of the levels are wrong on it, there's usually pretty easy ways to fix those problems unless you get something weird like I got with the glucose level off the charts. Catch the problems early and most of it can be remedied. If you haven't already, you should do the blood test every year. I didn't and that's why I'm where I'm at now. I'm going to be getting them at least every 6 months for the rest of my life now.

Quote:
Also...I'm getting a bit thoughtful about dating apps. I'm reading a romcom (stop laughing! :) Men like a good laugh and a bit of sexy fun as much as women do!), Divorced (Not Dead), about a 50-year-old woman who decides to try the dating app scene. She finds, as you'd expect, the usual crowd of tossers (catfishing is a new term to me, but I love the way Frankie spots them, strings them along and then says something like 'my email is frankie at - don't want this site to turn it into a real email address or people might try it out, aren't I a thoughtful guy? - fuckoffscammer.com'!).

But she has fun, too. That made me think.

I've always regarded dating apps as being for losers and I have zero presence on social media (except nthellworld.com), but the author sounds experienced. Generally I prefer my own company - I can't imagine being beholden to anyone else's schedule, or theirs to mine - but...

Yeah. I'm 44. I think my generation is the last who thought that dating apps were for losers because when we grew up the only equivalent things were the ads in the paper and it was just so sad.

That ain't the case anymore. One of my brothers landed a knockout who's going to make more money than he does once she gets her Doctorate. I've got some friends who got married from people they met on dating apps too.

Good luck to ya, if that's what you want. My "grass is always greener" days are long behind me. I don't reminisce about the good times in the past too long before I remember all the drama and bad times and focus on that and get my mind right. I know I wasn't built for relationships. I'm just lucky I never got into one and had the mistake of having kids and ultimately putting them through what my parents put me and my brothers through.

But don't let me scare you off. Companionship and having somebody who cares about you around is a great thing if you can manage it.

Quote:
I'm 'only' 57, nearly 58. But I feel as if my 11-plus was only yesterday. Every day I think "What the fuck happened?! Where have the last 46 years gone?!" I don't think I look 57. Sure, I'm mostly bald, but I've been that way since I was 25, so even if I could do anything about it, I'm not inclined to. I write, and my characters - especially one Jennifer Harrison, a 35-year-old single mum who finds herself joining SHADO, is of the 'take me as I am or take a hike' school, even refusing to shave her armpits or conceal her redhead freckles. In many ways, after heartbreak during my teens and early 20s, so am I.

I'm not too old - there's no such bloody thing. People older than I am use these apps. So I might, I just might, start. I can't remember the last time I had a relationship, even a casual FWB thing...a sign that perhaps it's been too long.

It sounds like you're ready. Find yourself a good woman that makes you feel young again.

Quote:
I'll finish the book and think about it. It's a brilliant laugh - you have to love a book where the protagonist is sitting in a quilting shop with fellow female enthusiasts and she says "It's more likely that pigs would fly out of my arse than a man come into my shop on his own" - and then a man does just that!

And on reflection...well, people in the 6-figure bracket have to have problems, just different ones from the majority in the 5-or-less bracket. Hmm.

I remember my uncle telling me that even rich people have problems, like when their yachts break down.

"Mo Money, Mo Problems" ~Notorious BIG

I don't mind not being rich. All I'd do with all those extra 1's and 0's in a bank account is keep stacking them anyway. Whenever somebody is talking about winning that huge powerball lotto I just say "Give me $100k and I'll be set for the rest of my life". If I ever did win a big lotto payout (which I won't because I don't play) the only thing "reckless" I'd even do with it is buy myself a nice new pickup truck, and then I'd just live off the interest for the rest of my life.

Quote:
"In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don't, then the agenda-makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you.
And you may not have what it takes to pay."

- Quellcrist Falconer
Things I Should Have Learnt By Now, Vol. II

Richard Morgan, Broken Angels

Brilliant.

Nothing is free. If you're not paying for a product or service, than you're the product.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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