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Careermaxxing: How I went from 31k -> 124k in 6 years [long]

Inspired by some comments on u/ForeverANightOwl's post on personal maintenance budgets, I thought I'd write a little about how I went from making $31,000/year out of university to where I am now making $124,000/year.
Honestly, making more money is a softmaxx in a number of different ways:
So let's talk about how I 4x'ed my salary over 3-4 job hops!

A bit about me:

Job 1: Baby's first gig

I graduated right after the 2008 financial crisis, during the "recovery". (Spoiler: it was not a real recovery). Job hunting was hard. I had to find a job within 6 months, because I had student loans and that's when repayments started, so I took the first thing that would take a new grad and this was it. I was mad jealous when my friends with wealthy parents who paid for their tuition were able to take 1-2 years job searching and found sweet fucking gigs that paid more at reputable places, but I was poor and being poor is hard mode.
This job was chill AF. I basically had to do no real work and could've easily stayed there forever, rotting, but I decided I didn't want to cap out at a measly $31k, I hated one of my coworkers, and I could feel my brain turning into mush. My friends were making more money and having more fun, so I quit on a dime with no plan.
Lessons learned:
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Job 2: Changing career paths

It took me more than a year to find this job after quitting. Like I said, Job 1 really fucked over my design career – It was chill as all hell but there was no real "work" to be done there, just union people sitting there collecting wages, so I had no portfolio work. Which facilitated a career shift to being a technical writer. I didn't want to accept anything less than $55k, which necessitated turning down a $55k job offer for a ux design position.
I chose money over "passion" and I don't regret a fucking thing. A coworker at this job, a software engineer and passionate beer brewer, put it well: "of the things you like doing and are good at, choose the thing that makes you the most money". People in the local beer scene kept trying to hire him as a head brewer, but a head brewer makes max 45k/year and a principal software engineer makes 148k/year. "Do what you love" is honestly a lie. Capitalism doesn't care about your passions.
The thing is: most people are passionate about doing a good job on something, even if they're not "Graphic design is my passion" passionate about it. Talent develops with time and effort. Pick something you're ok doing for 6-8 hours a day that makes you money and just fucking go for it.
I got this position due to another co-op I did during my university years. This job was stressful AF – I was the only writer, I was critical to the release path, and no one gave enough of a shit about me to actually give me resources to do my job.
Lessons learned:
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Job 3: Moving to Europe

I was sick of where I lived, had gone through a rough breakup, and was sick of my company... so I went to Europe to go work for their direct competitor.
This job was chill, the tech was better to work with/things were set up way better than Job 2, but my boss was a screeching, yelling nightmare of a man and I fucking hated him. I also learned that other writers with similar
Lessons learned:
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Job 4: The early stage startup

As I mentioned, I learned that people were making 30k more than me in the same field and high tailed it away from my screechy boss to an early stage startup. I negotiated my way up to 100kCAD + shares and i was fantastic. A month later they folded.
Slight job title change. This is something I'm hoping to revisit at some point in the future, but I went back to pure technical writing for reasons.
Lessons learned:
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Job 5: Present day

I got this job through twitter lol. I tweeted that I was looking for work and someone reached out.
This is the best job I've had to date. It's all remote (company is US based), so I started the job in Europe and then moved back to Canada because COVID (also lower taxes on that higher salary.)
I was interviewing here & one other place in Europe but took this at my friend's urging. This job allows me to make connections all over the industry as well as provides me direct mentorship under a lead writer, something I haven't had in my career yet. I took it to set myself up for the next career jump I'm hoping to make to a lead or team manager role.
Lessons learned so far:
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Closing advice:

submitted by shiningdays to Vindicta [link] [comments]

Shifting FIRE Strategies: Choosing a lower net worth. From 'as fast as possible' to maximizing certainty and flexibility. Featuring two purposeful "mistakes" - paying off the personal mortgage, and exiting Real Estate Investing. The journey from Negative 172K to nearly FI.

TL;DR: Discovered FIRE at age 26 with $172,000 in student debt. My wife and I rearranged our entire life to hit FI as quickly as possible - Heavy work schedule, plus planning to build NW with BRRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat). We are now ~seven years in (out of then-estimated 12 total) and decided to slow down: sold the rental units, paid off the personal mortgage (both financial 'mistakes' I'm very happy with) and am taking a more relaxed, surefire path to FI involving low (but comfortable) expenses, no rentals, and reducing work schedule. Journey, thoughts, and numbers below.
Journey before destination.

This is way longer than I intended; it also has all the info in it I enjoy hearing about other people’s FIRE journeys. . . sorry for the length.

Background (Skip this if you want; I enjoy reading these, so I lay it out for others)

I had terrible money habits growing up: they continued until I was 26. Really bad. I grew up on foodstamps, and we never had any excess money; anything that came in went right back out on expenses. I’d like to say they were necessities, but looking back. . . I think we could have done a lot better. The scarcity mindset that living at the financial edge instills is real, and I continued to spend every dollar available to me (by work or by loan) until I stumbled across FIRE. Constantly racked up credit card debt, and took every dollar that was ever available on student loans.
I regret taking the amount of student loans we did; we could have done less (though not anywhere near zero) They say “That first 100K is hardest”, but it’s really that “That first 100K from zero is hardest” because if you hit a low point of -172,000, compound interest doesn’t really help you for that first 272K. . .
Income/expenses listed are at the end of that calendar year.
Graduated in 2011 with a Civil Engineering Degree, wife was a student, working on a Masters in Public Health. This was the absolute peak of the financial crisis for engineering. I took a (not quite full time) temp job as a web developer making $20/hr, and we maxed out taking my wife’s student loans:
Income: 31K me, 0K wife, 31K comb || Exp: ~40K || NW: -$163,000
Wife graduated grad school halfway through the year and got a fellowship for $24/hr. My temp work finished halfway through the year, and I ‘worked’ full-time applying to engineering jobs. Finally got one after a few hundred resumes, but wouldn’t start until just into the new year, 2013. Which left that year at:
Income: 12K me, 26K wife, 38K comb || Expenses: ~40K || NW: -$172,000
Note that we moved significanly backwards the previous year in net worth due to student loan interest and spending. . .
Started a job as an engineer! $52k per year ($25/hr). Straight salary, with a terrible (in retrospect) company. Worked a ton of hours, but only got paid the base salary. I shudder to think what my hourly rate (working a lot of 70 hour weeks) actually was averaged over this year. . . Still a financial step up!
Discovered FIRE. I cannot stress enough how big of a change this made for my wife and me. My wife was naturally a frugal person (I was not) but we both had otherwise terrible habits. Once about my third real check rolled in I googled “Student Loan Repayment” and in the process of trying to find a more robust calculator (I was looking for, essentially, unbury.us, though I didn’t know at that time it existed) and happened to stumble across Mr. Money Mustache in February.
I would like to pause for a minute to point out how terrible of a name this is: I can credit this one website with legitimately changing my life in a very positive way, but if I ever try to explain what this life-altering blog was, it’s. . . mister money mustache. Sigh.
I was consumed. In less than a month I had read everything (and I mean everything) on MMM, MadFientist, and JL Collins; I devoured Your Money or Your Life, Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The Richest Man in Babylon. My wife and I planned out our financial goals (Get student loan free, then try to retire in 15 years; will finish well ahead of this) and drastically reduced expenses. Started aggressively paying down student loans by ‘minimum payment amount’ first to reduce our DTI ratio, hoping to qualify for a mortgage.
I became obsessed with the idea of having a miniature empire of rental units that would help me reach FI faster: small, clean, well-maintained places that I loved and the tenants loved. Planned to ‘house hack’ by getting a duplex and living in half – the worse shape the better! I’d always been handy, I was looking forward to sweat equity. Started looking for a house in May.
Got married in July of this year; I suppose all previous references to ‘wife’ should read fiancé before this. . .
Bought a duplex: We were approved for a mortgage due to having some long repayment lengths on student loans which kept our DTI ratio on just the right side of acceptable, and bought an absolute shithole of a duplex with 3% down in November in a pretty nice neighborhood in Minneapolis. This was $196K, which seemed really high from the lows of 2009; that sounds funny in retrospect now looking back, but everyone was worried it was the midst of a second bubble at the time. Moved in to one half, and inherited some tenants in the other. Started rapidly fixing it up with every spare hour I had, as I was still working about 60 hours a week on average.
It was a busy year.
Income: 52K me, 44K wife, 96K comb || Expenses: ~50K || NW: -$140,000
Hey, the NW is moving the right direction!! But now we reach “the boring middle” part of FIRE. My wife got a full time job with benefits (as opposed to a fellowship) with a pay bump. I got a 12% raise from my terrible company, mostly in response to threatening to leave due to working conditions. Working conditions did not improve. At the end of the year I switched companies (wont’ be reflected in this years salary) to the place I’m still with. They are a hugely better company to work for, and they pay for every hour I work. The pay was about the same per hour, but since I was working 60hweek I essentially got a 50% raise.
We began to live on just my wife’s paycheck, and used 100% of mine to pay off student loans/invest. This hasn’t changed to this day. . . except we now also invest some of hers.
Income: 58K me, 56K wife, 114K comb || Expenses: ~50K || NW: -$97,000
More of the same, paying off student loans in 2016, continuing the aggressive saving until 2020. . .
Note that NW has some weird jumps once we got past zero because the duplex went from essentially zero cash flow (lot of costs going in tended to burn all the rental income) to positive cash flow as we started to wrap the years of renovations, to a huge jump upon sale.

2020: Deciding to Simplify (Start again here, this is the point of the post!)

We had a kid.
I had already been getting worn out of rental maintenance, especially as we had moved out of the duplex entirely and were renting both halves, now that it was nice. Working a ton, and feeling like between a (more than) full time job, child, and rental, something had to give. It was amazingly difficult to find a decent rental manager.
Our personal expenses had slowly shrunk down to be about $4,000/month, $1,500 of which was the mortgage on our new house. In addition were the duplex costs, and the possibility that I had to have enough cash reserves to cover three furnaces, three water heaters, three stoves; also potential vacancies, other big ticket items (like a $14,000 roof job on the duplex, water damage from ice dams, etc) that were always potentially looming.
The rental income did cover these expenses: The duplex was working as a business. But I was having basically $7,000 a month in expenses despite a fairly frugal lifestyle that had to be covered; $84,000 a year that had to be earned and burned no matter what. My wife took a big chunk of time off for maternity, and I wanted to do significantly less, but this ‘burn rate’ was weighing on me.
Our three biggest expenses were the duplex, our house, and taxes. Taxes are as low as they can be (all tax-advantaged accounts maxed out) and I’m happy to give back to the education and food programs that helped me, growing up. But, I could sell the duplex, and roll all the profit into the new mortgage, and potentially go from needing to earn and burn $84,000 per year to $30,000. . .

Rent out vs. Sell

I ran the numbers on if I kept the duplex, vs selling and investing it in the stock market. I looked over the the next 6 years, which is about/past my FIRE date. My estimated net worth difference would be around $80,000! Nothing to sneeze at! However, it also would be the difference between ~$1.3M and ~1.2M, both of which are over my FIRE number of $950K for 3.25% SWR. If this had been the difference between $0 and $100K, that’d be huge. That 1st 100K is the hardest. The 13th 100K, however, is not.
I also had the added wrinkle that if we sold in 2020, it counts as a primary residence, and we don’t pay gains tax on the part we had lived in two of the last five years; this reduced the calculated 80k difference.
Purposeful “Mistake” number 1: The duplex is gone.
Was it worth an 8% reduction in net worth in 6 years to me to not have to deal with the rental property with a young child or two? A thousand times yes. I will have, I think, significantly less wealth in 30 years because I sold the rental duplex back in July. But I will have enough either way, and I shall never get these years back.
I think buying, renovating, and renting that duplex was the best single financial action I ever took. I’m happy I ground it out and did the completely hellish task of gutting a 110 year old building in the evenings around a 60hweek job. I also don’t think I’ll ever do it again. . .

Pay off Mortgage vs Invest

What about, now that I’ve sold the duplex, putting it all in the market vs. paying off our home mortgage? The numbers are pretty simple:
5% real returns in the stock market (8% returns, 3% inflation, assumed). Mortgage was, by happenstance, almost the same amount we got out in cash from the duplex, $153K. We would then not have to pay the $1500/month that was going to principal and interest, and could invest that. All number – as always – in 2021 dollars for simplicity.
This one was much harder; I really wanted to reduce my ‘burn rate’, but this basically means that selling the duplex and using that to immediately pay off my mortgage made us (statistically) $160,000 poorer in about 6 years, another $80k of gains gone.
However, despite me not believing (allegedly) in timing the market, the CAPE is currently quite high. . . and I’m getting awfully close to being able to FIRE anyways, 4-8 years, pending variables. I also intend to transition my 100% equities to a 100/60/100 V-shaped Bond Glide to maximize safety at the cost of potential gains. I also believe that it doesn’t make sense to carry a mortgage into early or regular retirement. These aren’t just numbers in a spreadsheet, I actually have to be able to shift the funds to be able to do this, in a way that’s not crippling from a tax perspective. It’s going to take years to shift to a bond allocation slowly; trying to pay the mortgage off at the same time could very well be impossible.
I don’t have a target FIRE date; I intend to work less and less as I slide into ER, and having the mortgage paid off means that my wife and I can do this whenever we want, without having to do 5 years of financial maneuvering in the background to ‘pull the trigger’.
The flexibility is worth it. Purposeful “Mistake” number 2: The mortgage is gone..
We now live very comfortable – I would say luxurious – lives on about $2,500/month. This will increase sporadically for large trips and childcare, but is our past and current expenses, and will be further in the future too. I intend to build a fairly large cushion in passive income over this for unforeseen events, then charity, if those don’t materialize, but we don’t feel impoverished in any way at this spending level.
We are privileged enough, lucky enough, and determined enough to now be making about $45/hr each gross, $36/hour each takehome. This means we need to work a combined 70 hours in a month to be able to cover our expenses; that’s 35 hours each, or an average about 8 hours a week throughout the year. We are primed to be able to slowly “BaristaFIRE” with reduced hours and benefits in our current jobs, which we both (mostly) enjoy.
We will both be only when we want – which might be not at all – by age 40. If you had asked me at 25 if this was possible, I would have laughed in your face.
submitted by Terrik27 to financialindependence [link] [comments]

Done with this life

My family started in a trailer in a poor part of my city. First my parents had my sister, and then me a year later. My parents never married, but they tried to make it work for me and my sister's sake. They made it into an apartment, and then eventually worked their way into beginning to pay on the house my mom still lives in today. Up until I was about 10 years old, my father and mom stayed together in this house, and it was the definition of hell. Screaming/fights almost every day. Sometimes my dad would start it, sometimes my mom would, sometimes me or my sister. My dad has thrown me across the room, slapped and punched my mom multiple times, (my mom is 5'2', my dad is 6'3'). He has issues, some from his own father dying while he was young, some from using/selling coke and weed and drinking. My mom told me when I was young (maybe 7-8 years old) she was raped by two men in her home state of Oklahoma, and I don't think I really processed it well as a kid. Her dad also died while she was young, he fell to his death on a construction site.
Me and my sister both have mental health issues nowadays, but she did make it through four years of college, which is more than either of my parents or me did. I personally have really bad anger issues and anxiety, PTSD from close range shoot outs and robberies. I struggle daily with depression and suicidal thoughts almost every day. I sold weed at a pretty decent level for a long time, 6-7 years. I started around 16 when I realized my parents didn't really have the money they were giving me for my weed/drug habit. 20 or so dollars every day was adding up and they would tell me. My mom was a manager at a Texas roadhouse around when I was 8-9-ish years old, and she ended up getting in between two drunk guys that were in a bar fight and she got punched in her neck. She ended up getting a $50,000ish settlement, but had to have multiple surgeries and will pretty much always be in pain and will always have metal in her neck to the point where she can feel it when its raining outside. My mom has never been great with finances, so that money after bills went by very fast. She did use probably 20-30 grand of it on a new truck. An brand new F-150. Remember she's 5'2" lol. That was definitely a mistake, and I think she knows it, but I've never been good with money either. My father has always been broke, to the point where he would ask my mother for money for his own weed and bills. I'm not sure where my dad lives now, last I heard it was in the mountains in North Carolina. He left the house when I was around 10 like I mentioned earlier. He went to his moms house for a while and then moved out. His mom took care of us a lot of nights that they couldn't because of work or other things. She's the sweetest most Christian grandmother you could imagine. She had four kids, and then as I mentioned her husband (my dads dad) died of a heart attack while they were all still young. I can't imagine the pain, I'm sure it messed my dad up pretty bad. I think these things are important to understand though, because they help me see why they were always so mad and upset always.
So in comes when it started getting hard. I had almost no friends in elementary school, I remember getting a "red card" in maybe second grade for punching a kid in the back, yes the back, lol. Because he was literally just talking to a girl I had a crush on. I never really talked to girls then, I would just decide I had a crush on them. In second grade. Lol. He didn't even hit me back, he was kind of just like "What the fuck?" And then I just walked away until a teacher came up to me that's all I remember. I've always been a kind of small and skinny dude, and I especially was back then. In middle school I started making some friends but I was always annoying them because I was always asking to hang out and to come over to their houses. I remember my bus route used to go through the nicest neighborhoods on my side of the city, I'm talking retired NFL player nice. they make my moms house look like a shack, and I don't know if I realized it back then, but it was making me jealous. The friends I ended up making in middle school were not very healthy friends, we were always the loud and obnoxious ones. I got into a lot of trouble starting around this time, 7th grade. I spent almost half of my 7th grade year in In School Suspension, just staring at wall while "doing" class work. It was also this year toward the end of the year that I got into my first real fight. I was always outspoken, and so was this other guy, but he lived in a super nice house and was from a rich ass family. We had a social studies class together, and one day, I'm not even sure how it started, he started making jokes about my mother working at chick fil a. She got that job after her neck was healed up just enough to get a job. She had to get a job, as she was my house's income. She loved and still loves that job, she's a manager now. But back then and how he made fun of her in front of my whole class while my teacher just didn't do anything about it, I was just so mad. So I told him I was going to beat his ass and after class (and more trolling me) we met next to the side of the school and a huge crowd gathered to watch. A lot of people, not the whole school, but most of my grade, because we all exited the same door if you rode on the bus. I threw the first punch, missed, he grabbed my neck and slammed my head into the brick wall, I tried to throw another punch, missed, and I just yelled "stop making fun of my mom" grabbed my backpack and got on the bus, Just cried the whole way home, my sister on the bus was just wondering what happened. I've never been good at explaining my thoughts or feelings to people, so most people think I'm even more dumb than I actually am. I didn't tell my family about that fight for years, even though my sister did. I just will never forget it. I even tried to tell people that I didn't lose that fight even though everyone heard about it. I just couldn't come to terms with it. 8th grade I don't have many memories of. I was a goofball, and my grades were really slipping now, even worse than the year before. Most people just saw me as that weird kid who got his ass beat. I think around this time I started to get very, very cynical with my worldview and my attitude. I was always on the internet when I could be, playing shitty games on our homes only computer; a dell desktop, and reading stupid conspiracy theories. Later I would start gaming pretty hard, and I loved watching streams all the way back to the justin.tv days. My dad had a PlayStation 1, and I loved watching him play Call of Duty. It might be my only good memory with my dad, honestly, and he never got to play a lot. The internet and my cynical world view pushed me away from religion, even though my family was heavily Christian. Even before this though, I hated going to church. From a young kid onward every single Sunday was a screaming match between me and my mom about not wanting to go to church. Sometimes she would end up getting me to go, but that was less and less, and before even middle school I just stopped going completely.
So in between middle and high-school I started smoking weed, it made me some new friends and got me into hanging out at a park near my moms house. This park would end up being where I spent most of my next 6-7 or so years. Most people knew it was a druggie park, would call us all "park rats" and make fun of us for wasting our time and money doing drugs. But I gained more memories here than I could ever write down, I probably could make a book out of those memories. There were all ages of people there, some young as me, some mid 30s-40s, a lot of weed smoking teens, a lot of acid tripping hippies, some Xanax/oxy fiends, and even some meth and heroine people. Most days it was just normal people getting fucked up to enjoy their time, but there was always plenty of drama. This park was known not just on my side of town but through the whole city. its kind of tucked away in woods, sits on a lake, and has a small disc-golf course, so you'd even have a bunch of random (probably) sober people show up to play some days, but they usually stayed on their course and away from us, minus a few of them. I started selling weed when my mom started telling me no to my almost daily asks of 20 dollars. I look back and realize she just didn't have the money to support my habits, and I understand now. But once I started selling weed, I realized I could start eating when I was hungry, I realized I could get and smoke weed almost whenever I wanted to. Being at the park always made it easier to sell it too, because people knew to come there to find some weed. I met a LOT of people selling, and I mean a LOT. I started moving up to QP's (quarter pounds) on the front (pay back later) and always found myself 100-200 short on my re-ups, usually just from smoking too much and cutting too many people deals, Like I said never been good with money.
Then the serious shit started happening. I was maybe 17-18 when I was at my weed guy's small apartment downtown one day. I always liked going over there, not only because I knew we'd be smoking a lot, but because me and my plug were close, I looked up to him, and we had a decently similar shitty upbringing. One day, I get a call to come chill downtown at his apartment, even had two of our friends come pick me up from the park and bring me there. Took fat dabs on the way (THC oil/wax) and when I got there he surprised us with sheets of Gel-Tabbed Acid. Strong shit. I took my usual 2 doses, I was known for tripping a lot back then, haven't tripped since this day. It was going to be a "No Traffic" day, meaning no sales in his apartment so we could just smoke and enjoy our time. His girlfriend at the time had arranged a deal between him and 3 people he did not know. A young (17 at the time) girl, a mid twenties white dude, and a mid twenties black dude. What we didn't know until after this, was they had set this up, and once inside (mind you we were tripping pretty hard at this point), the white dude and the black dude pulled a gun on my plug and my plug instantly pulled his and fired back and 20-30 shell casings later everyone ran to get out. This was a very small apartment. I mean very very small, 7 or so people all feet away from each other. I was literally sitting on the floor because there weren't enough chairs for everyone, even before the 3 robbers came in. I ducked behind the chair I was sitting next to. One of the people that drove me there got shot twice, once in the thigh and one through the side of his asscheek, no joke. The white guy who was robbing us took at least one to the chest, and was also crushed underneath us all as we all ran out and flooded the small staircase down, I could not describe to you how twisted and contorted his body was, and I had no doubt he was dead. I ran to find my plug, I'm not sure why, but I saw somehow he had made it all the way to the other side of the street already, and was on the ground. I ran up to him, not wanting to touch him, and told him an ambulance is coming and not to worry, he was laying there bleeding out of his mouth and chest with what I later found out were SEVEN BULLETS IN HIS CHEST. I watched him die, or so I thought. I yelled for someone to call an ambulance and when I saw some random student walking past was doing that I ran away and back to the two friends who had drove me there. They were freaking out, it was a dude and a girl, they were a couple at the time. The dude had just gotten shot two times. His girlfriend needed me to go back in and grab her purse and phone that were left in the chaos, I said no at first, but she begged me so I ran back to the staircase and over the white guy on the stairs who had robbed us, I definitely thought he was dead the way his body looked. I went back up the stairs and into the apartment and grabbed the phone and purse and all I could see was blood and holes everywhere, it was disgusting, and it makes me tear up while I type this. I got back into the car and they drove to the nearby hospital (The guy that got hit twice actually drove, believe it or not) and I got out of the car right before they pulled into the hospital.
I'm 23, and besides these last two years, I have been on probation/in legal trouble my whole life. When I was a juvenile, I was on Show-Cap probation, where a cop would most nights come check and make sure I was at home. A cop would wake my whole household up at anywhere from 10PM - 2AM just to make me show him a card I had and then would leave, almost every night. During the shooting I was talking about, I was on Show-Cap probation. That's why I got out of the car at the hospital. I wasn't supposed to be around certain people or things like guns, legally. I got out of my friends car and walked (still tripping balls) to a McDonalds a few blocks away, sat down, and called a friend, crying the whole time, and I just remember seeing black around the edges of my vision, like I was either dying or falling into a like dark area of some kind, definitely losing it to the drugs at this point. I got picked up and drove back to my moms house, I told the car full of people I was with what had happened and they couldn't offer much aside from positive words but I will never forget at least they came and got my ass quick. That was some real friend shit. I cried and cried the whole way back to my moms, got dropped off, and like clockwork a few minutes later my mom got home. I told her something had happened (but not the whole story yet) and I felt like I was going to be in a lot of trouble. About 30 minutes later, maybe in total 1-2 hours after the shooting, a black SUV pulled up to my moms house.
I had to go downtown, I will say my mom even made me one of the Sur-gel drinks I had been using to pass drug tests to drink during the car ride there. They weren't even trying to drug test me, I didn't ask her to, she was just that cool I guess. I rode an elevator up a huge building and they sat me down with two cops who were pretty convinced this was my doing in some way. They kept asking me why I had been talking to my plug that day and when I said I hadn't, they pulled up my phone logs and texts. So they not only knew about my outstanding legal issues, they also knew I was lying. I really was just lying because I thought just being there was going to violate my probation. They had me on camera every single step from leaving the car at the hospital to walking into the McDonalds. They really wanted to blame me, they even told me my friend (my plug) was dead and it made me cry and cry and cry and cry. In the end, they couldn't hold me there. They forced me to point at a picture line up of people but I told them over and over I didn't know what they looked like and that you shouldn't use what I say because I just didn't know. Whole time during all of this 3-4 hour interrogation, they yelled and screamed at me and at one point left me in the room for maybe 2 hours while I just cried and cried. They were probably just watching what I would do when alone. I was still tripping acid, hard, and just felt like death was all around me. All I could do was cry.
Like I said, they released me to my mother. They obviously had no evidence against me, but one thing that they asked me during the investigation was why was my plugs girlfriend outside talking to the 3 robbers (juvenile girl, white guy, black guy, the juvenile girl ended up getting some lesser felonies but she didn't have a gun or shoot anyone, she just tried to block the exit at first). That was enough for me to put together that she was behind this, set him up to have him robbed. She probably just expected my plug to just give up his shit without a fight, but no, no he would never just do that. Obviously this whole situation fucked me up pretty bad mentally. For weeks I thought my plug was dead. Until one day he literally just called me out of the blue. Told me to come see him at his moms house. I'm telling you, this was my brother. Got in my car and went to go see him. When I got there I tried to hug him but he said he couldn't hug anyone, he lifted up his shirt and it was like a Frankenstein stitching all across his whole chest. If I recall it was 8 bullets that hit him in total. He had to use crutches and a wheelchair to move around the little bit he could. He only has one lung now, and will never move the same. It was a miracle, but no one died during that shooting, not even the white guy robber, who was shot in the chest and trampled over on the staircase. The white guy (I keep saying white guy and black guy just because I'm not trying to give out names, I hate all people equally) ended up pleading guilty and sentenced to 30 something years in jail. The black-guy robber took it to trial and WON. No fingerprints on his taped up shitty little .22 caliber pistol. Jury found him not guilty, and he is a free man to this day. Plug's girlfriend that set it up was never even charged as an accessory, but she did violate her adult probation by being there. As if that's all she deserved. This is a true story, google Fort Sanders shooting, It'll come up. The only reason my name wasn't in the articles was because I was 17 years old at the time. Not even an adult yet.
They subpoena'd me after the shooting to make sure I'd show up to court or to trial. It wasn't until 4-5 years later the black-guy robber had his trial. By this time I had moved up a lot in the selling game, my plug (same plug) had moved out to the west coast to step up his game as well. Had my own house I was renting in my hometown, Knoxville, TN. Nice car, shitty (but real) diamond ring, bunch of shoes and clothes, 2 shitty cars. Tons of memories, good times and bad, important memories in between then and the trial. I've had a lot of friends die that I went to school/smoked with, especially when Fentanyl started coming around. From what I've heard that's a problem a lot of people share, fuck Fentanyl. I have done most drugs, but luckily I was just smart enough to stay away from shit like heroine and meth. (not to say Knoxville powder wasn't dirty, because it was) I just really liked weed, it has always calmed down my bad emotions from my childhood and from the events I've been through, I don't get to smoke a lot anymore, mostly because I am poor again now. Its still Illegal as fuck in my state too, but that's another story.
I declined to testify at the trial of the black guy robber, and they never asked me to testify at the white guys trial because he didn't have one, he plead guilty. I decided not to testify because of multiple reasons, one- I hate cops, and law enforcement. I understand some are actually decent people. But go through a day in jail without food, because they CO thinks you're lying about not getting a tray, and ask me how you feel about cops after. Go through getting kicked out of your high school during your SENIOR YEAR because someone told some teacher you had weed in your car. I got pulled out of class by cops and arrested, and my car wasn't even on school grounds. Cops used to roll through the park I grew up in and would get out and do pat downs on whoever couldn't run away in time. These things and many more have made me hate cops, and yes, I still to this day hate cops. Is me not testifying the reason one of the robbers walked free? Maybe. But I certainly had no new information to tell the jury they didn't already know. Especially if the no fingerprints on the weapon they recovered was the reason they acquitted him. Who knows, maybe me going in there and crying like a bitch or something would've made it the jury see the truth. Either way it does weigh heavy on my heart but even my plug didn't blame me for not testifying.
During and before and after the trial, me and my plug were still at work. This is when I had moved into my house I rented, after living in a shitty apartment. I fully furnished it and everything. Washer, dryer, Ps4, Xbox 1, queen sized bed, the works. Even the little shower floor mat, I loved that home.
Fast forward to early covid 2020, my plug was starting to get annoyed with me. I was always asking him about the next pack coming in, always wanting as much of it as he could get to me, and I was always on him about the quality of it, even though it was always above average and most of the time it was top shelf. He ran into some legal trouble driving through Texas, that and along with a few other things happening in his personal life, work for me started slowing down. I never was good at saving money, I knew I should, I'd always beat myself up for not having money when I needed it, but I just never could change my spending habits. I'm still not sold on the whole "trying to be something you're not" argument because I've never had to fake anything. Most of the people I was around have heard from others what I've been through. At one point people were driving 2-3 hours just to pick up from me. I've been robbed plenty of times and I've robbed others. One things for sure, if karma is real, then I've definitely paid my dues. I haven't been selling now or have been in any legal trouble for the longest stretch of time since I started it all almost 8 years ago. And yes, I am proud of that.
Almost all of the friends I've ever had have either robbed me or wronged me in some way, or I've cut contact for my own issues or reasons. As of today, I have one friend that lives in Ireland, and he's a great friend, but he's got his own life to live. I got evicted for giving a bad check to my landlord, 3 weeks before they did the eviction halting for covid, which is still active today. Unlucky for sure, but my fault nonetheless. Finding somewhere to live has always been a challenge for me because of my lack of provable income. Today I have decent credit, a credit card, and a few thousand dollars I have invested in my Robinhood account that I seem to keep losing and gaining back. I stream on Twitch, but my last stream I just sat and cried for like 2 and a half hours, its still the latest stream on my channel. No one wants to follow me or give me a chance, which I understand, I probably could make it work if I grinded harder and harder at it, its just depressing as fuck to sit there and talk to yourself for hours at the beginning.
Todays' (1/28/2021) events in the stock market made me write this. Me and my mom keep fighting and its BEEN PAST the time I move back out again. No one will lease to me. She wont even stay here until I leave, as of this last week. I'm waiting on my new debit card to get here in the mail, and whether I have somewhere to go or not, I told her I'd leave when it got here, I have been homeless a few times, lived in my car, extended stay hotels, other peoples' couches. Its hard, but I know that I can make it fine. Today I woke up and had $20,000 in my investments, up from $1,100 I started with at the beginning of January 2021. I finally felt a little bit positive about my future at least a little bit, after a very depressing Christmas and January. Then Robinhood and other brokers today cut off buying GME, AMC, and others. I was heavy into GME, having gotten in @ $69 (lol) dollars a share. It was $450+ per share this morning, after a week of mainstream media attention from every social media website, major TV news stations, and billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, that Chamath guy (who seems awesome) and many more. Robinhood and a couple other brokers actually turned off the ability to buy the stock. Literally. All the stocks that were heavy volume "meme stocks" they cut off. I was in GME and AMC, but even Blackberry, Nokia, and others were cut off too. Needless to say, after the whole week of manufactured panic from all of these different sources, this straw broke the camels back. GME at this moment is trading @ 225, and I sold mine when I opened my app and saw it at 155, which was the lowest dip of the day. I came out in the green, I came out making a $1,500 or so dollars. But my portfolio by the time I cut AMC losses went from $20,000 this morning, down to $5,000 as I type this. I have never wanted to kill myself more than I do right now, mostly because this week it felt like I really earned this. I stayed diamond hands (held through the media pressure) through this whole week, only to give up at the end. It will hurt even more if GME recovers from this dip, but It's not because other people are making money without me, its because I could've used that money to move out, get some food to eat, get a new car that doesn't leak through the roof in case I'm living in it here in a couple days. And more importantly, I earned that money. I noticed the momentum before it even touched 40 a share. I've watch DFV's (roaring kitty on YouTube) 5-6 hour livestreams where he was going over the financials and spreadsheets of GameStop back in fucking 2019. I believed in this play and threw the money I had at it, and it should have worked out at least better than it did, I was planning to exit or at least hedge my earnings tomorrow, when shorts have to cover. But when I stepped away to eat lunch and take a shower because of how stressful this morning this morning was, I came back, opened my phone, and I was $15,000 down. So yes, my diamond hands failed. I sold. And while I still had a gain, its not at all what it should rightfully be. I can't even bitch and moan in the Wallstreetbets subreddit because apparently me being a lurker for a year isn't enough because of all of the newbies in there from all of the media attention.
So to finally wrap this up, I feel like I tried my best in this life. I haven't always been a good person, but not once have I thought to myself that I was evil. I'm too nice sometimes, and its gotten me fucked over, and I'd still go back and front friends weed or give them money/weed for free because I'm just not having fun unless people around me are too. Everyone's struggling in their own ways. I do not want to live on this earth any longer. I wrote this to at least explain to everyone what happened to me. And while I left out some very important parts in my life, this should give you a summary of what was going through my mind today. I really have been a good human being these last 2 years. Maybe I'm greedy for not selling earlier today. I was just so caught up in finally "sticking it to the man" and making the best play I've ever made I didn't want to feel like they would win by making us sell. I didn't even come out in the red, but goddamn it feels like I lost everything. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, just learn from my mistakes and take care of yourselves. You have to be stronger emotionally than I was. Move out of the U.S. if you can, its just greed and money that rule here. Maybe nowadays that's just everywhere.
Thank you to anyone that for some reason read all of this. To my dead friends Tad, Pmoney, Cierra, Raegan, Tina, I miss you guys and you better have a blunt for me when I see you all soon, I could really fucking use one about now. Much Love, - Bleezy
submitted by Bleezynation to u/Bleezynation [link] [comments]

How to Give Smart; or, How to not waste your money on a garbage charity you saw on a Wendy's cup once.

I see a LOT of people donating portions of their earnings to charity and first off let me say, GOOD FOR YOU. You're doing something a lot of people in this world don't bother to, and seeing all of the posts of people paying off homes, cars, student loans, and so on melt my heart.
Before the GMREEEEEEEEs that have infiltrated every financial sub on the planet start shrieking about me insinuating you should cash out, you make your own decisions on your own risk tolerance. You do what's best for you.
Now, when you do cash out of any position, give smart. I've been in the nonprofit world for a while and can tell you there's a lot of "charities" out there that do fuck all with the money you give them or just let it sit in their account for the duration of the disaster that people were donating to alleviate (looking at you, Red Cross).
It makes me physically ill to think of your giving going to waste. I'm not going to tell you to give to the arts, or to medicine, or to space exploration. Just be sure to investigate where you're giving and don't trust the "Top 10 charities for X" posts you see all over the interwebs. I have provided for your sleuthing pleasure a few websites to vet your giving. They will allow you to search by name, type, etc. Give them a look and see.
https://www.charitywatch.org - Will tell you how the charity compensates their executives, their cost-to-raise ratio, and the program to overhead ratio.
https://www.givewell.org - Another organization that researches top charities to provide transparent data.
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ - Probably the most in-depth of the bunch on the ones that they review. They go into detail on the impact, results, accountability, and culture of whatever organization you look up.
Also, there's a boat load of foundations out there that would love to take your money and watch it grow. Many of them already have securities and other assets. You can sometimes donate assets directly and the wealth keeps growing. **You can also bequeath another account to an organization.**This means you don't touch it but name your charity as a beneficiary. Let it grow, then when you die, Tendie Claus will drop it in their chimney. For more information:
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/07/donatestock.asp
Other points to consider: Cost-to-raise is not always a good measure, so do your DD on charities. For charities that have most or all of their capital and assets donated, the cost-to-raise should be exorbitantly low. Don't confuse PACs with charities. Here's an example: PACs donate to pro-X legislation and legislators. Charities donate their services, products, and education falling under the X rubric to people in need.
If you're more interested in activism and advocacy, you can find some great resources here:
https://www.opensecrets.org/527s/types.php - Watchdog for PACShttps://www.fec.gov/data/committees/?committee_type=O - List of Super-PACs
https://www.fec.gov/data/committees/ - List of hybrid PACs
My apologies to the Europoors. Can't help you because I'm a lowly American't.
Bless all you magnificent bastards who have already done God's work in sharing the wealth you've accumulated on your own volition.
Tl;dr: Use these resources to research companies before you consider donating.
Edit: There are some 3rd party services out there that help certain non-profit organizations (charities and companies alike) with what we call "passive investment" or "passive activism." Amazon Smile is a good example of this. A portion of your purchase goes to whatever 501c(3) company you select that's registered. But it's 🥜 compared to an actual gift.
Edit 2: Thank you u/onomoto81 for the link to a philanthropy podcast that discusses the considerations you should evaluate before giving ever and at all. I skimmed it and it seems on the up and up. Philosophical but at least worth the listen. https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/crucial-considerations-and-wise-philanthropy-nick-bostrom/
submitted by Farores_Favored to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

I'm in my late twenties and make $60,000 working as an architect in the northwestern US. Join me for a week in quarantine!

I am in my late twenties and make $60,000 working as an architect in the northwestern US. Not sharing exact details since the industry is a small world and I’d like to share candidly! I should also add that I mention my budgeting software a few times in this post - I’m not sponsored by them, I’m just a little obsessed with budgeting.
INTRO QUESTIONS
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
Absolutely. My parents both had to be on their own at a very young age, so they were focused on making sure I had solid footing for financial independence. College was a big part of that plan. (You can absolutely build a great career without a college education - this was just my parents' perspective.) Obviously you can no longer pay tuition by scooping ice cream during the summer like they did, but they were very against the idea of loans (to put it lightly) so I wouldn’t have been able to afford 90% of the schools I was accepted to. As a teenager that really bummed me out since I wanted to move away! I ended up going to an in-state university where my tuition was funded via a combo of scholarships from the school, my parents' college savings and state government scholarships. My parents paid my rent for the years I had to live off campus (I remember thinking $400 a month rent was so expensive.....lol) and I funded my spending money with a few different part time jobs, working two or three at any given time. Some of those jobs were at the university and related to my degree so it was good practical experience too!
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
My parents told me things but didn't necessarily explain in detail how everything worked. In hindsight I wish I'd started using something like YNAB much younger so I could understand the impact and potential of my money (whether I saved it or spent it). My parents talked a lot about avoiding consumer debt and warned me about interest as well as depreciation when it came to buying a car brand new or something like that. When I was a young adult they got me Bogle's book which was a good foundation for my knowledge about investing.
Did you worry about money growing up?
I wasn’t worried as much as I was confused. My parents’ advice and influence seemed so opposite of what I saw happening around me. For instance, they are generally against debt of any kind, whereas excessive spending and living on credit seemed to be the status quo for everyone else I knew. They invest money into their hobbies but don't buy flashy cars or new phones or anything like that, even now that they are empty nesters making good money.
There was also a gradual shift where I realized that when I grew up I wasn't going to be making as much money as my parents did, and that was an adjustment. In hindsight, perhaps I should have chosen a career where I would be better compensated, but you'd be hard pressed to convince my eighteen year old self of that. I find my job fulfilling and I think our work has a positive impact on our community, which is worth a lot to me, but good will doesn't pay the rent. If you know anyone planning to become an architect advise them to take any route that doesn’t end in crippling loans. Compensation in this industry is not proportional to the education and experience it takes to get here (more on this later).
Do you worry about money now?
Yes and no. Money is definitely much more of a concern because I don't have a lot of excess, but I do feel I have a good handle on my financial situation and am making progress toward my goals. In the big picture affecting myself and others, I really worry about wage stagnation and income inequality.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I became financially independent when I moved out of state after graduation. I definitely have a safety net in my parents, in the sense that I know I wouldn't end up on the street if things really went south - they've loaned me money when I've had to pay for expensive procedures and that sort of thing. I drive an old car that they transferred to me in exchange for doing all the work on their home renovation - perks of having an architect for a child! I marked the categories below where I had a leg up from my family with an asterisk and included those details. I like to be transparent because I feel like shit when I see people my age who own homes, go on vacation, and eat out at restaurants regularly while those things are not possible for me. It's all relative, so someone is probably looking at me the same way. I'm not living an extravagant lifestyle, but having a degree and a car debt-free is a big deal and I can confidently say I wouldn't be where I am today without my family's help.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
Yes. A few years ago I inherited money following the loss of a family member. The majority of it went into my retirement accounts. I used $300 of it to buy a locket in their memory - I wondered if I would regret that purchase since I've never owned nice jewelry before, but I love it and wear it all the time!
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ASSETS AND DEBT
*Retirement balance: ~$12,000 split between 401k and Roth IRA. I started contributing as soon as I could, and some of this was the money I inherited. My employer doesn't do a 401k match and that plan has a higher expense ratio, so I put most of my retirement savings in the Roth IRA. Right now I have $100 deducted pretax for the 401k just so I have a mix of tax deferred savings.
Checking account balance: $3,029. Money I will use to pay rent, bills, utilities, and pay off my credit card balance each month. I use YNAB to figure out if I have enough money to make a purchase, so I don't pay a lot of attention to the actual bank balance or let it fool me into thinking "Of course you can 'afford' to spend $200 at Sephora!" (Narrator: She could not.)
Savings account balance: $3,235 spread across several accounts. Here are the specifics, if anyone is interested:
FSA account balance: $1,200. This covers copays and prescriptions.
Credit card debt: $0. I'm proud of this! Before I started using YNAB I struggled with credit card float but I have a better handle on my expenses now. I am actually living within my means and auto-pay my card in full each month.
*Student loan debt: $0. See the question above about higher education.
Equity: $0, renting. Home ownership? In this economy?
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INCOME
Income progression: I'm skipping over all my minimum wage service industry jobs for the sake of brevity. TL;DR They all sucked. During college I had a few part time jobs during the school year and worked full time during the summer. These jobs ranged from $8-12/hr.
My starting salary after graduation was $43,000. This job was a mess and I got "laid off" AKA taken off the projects I was specifically hired for, replaced by a man, and then told they didn't have enough work to keep me. The boss apparently wanted someone who could be his "right hand man" and I "wasn't the right fit." That was definitely true! This job did a number on my self esteem, since I didn’t have enough experience to know that the things I experienced were very inappropriate (even before the layoff) and that the “problems” with my performance were actually just blatant mismanagement and poor communication. Anyway, onward and upwards....
I was hired by my second job at $48,000 with paid overtime (yay!) but the next year I got promoted to $51,000 WITHOUT overtime, so I actually made less money than the year before. I call that my Demotion Promotion. The next year I went up to $55,000, which basically broke even with the paid overtime year. Then a multiyear shit storm of cancelled projects, pandemic, and economic instability happened. Thankfully I stayed employed and at the end of 2020 I was bumped up to $60,000. This is the first time my take-home pay has changed significantly in at least three years. I wish the raise were more, but obviously I'm lucky to even have kept my job during the pandemic, much less gotten a raise. I also asked to be promoted to a role that I am already doing the work for, and I didn't get that promotion, which made me have second thoughts about my prospects at my current firm. I am also in the process of getting my architectural license, and although it doesn't necessarily mean a pay increase, it will theoretically help give me leverage for promotions and an increase in responsibility. Architects are underpaid in general, especially considering the amount of education and experience required to legally call yourself an architect. Historically it's been a "gentleman's profession" for white men who were already wealthy and wanted to be seen as great artists. The whole foundation of the industry is toxic, although it seems to be changing slowly.. Right now I'm focusing on developing skills and getting experience while also advocating for better and more equitable compensation as much as I can. I am definitely concerned about my long term earning potential, but that might just be a result of my limited experience and stifled opportunities for growth.
Monthly take home: ~$3,700
Gross pay is $5,000. Deductions:
This is my only income. I have thought about pursuing a second income source, but for now I am spending my time studying for licensure exams and focusing on learning and maximizing my earning potential in my industry.
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EXPENSES
Regular monthly expenses:
Savings:
I have various other categories in my budget that I put money toward each month like donations, gifts, clothing, dining at restaurants. I'm not listing them here since I don't necessarily spend in those areas each month.
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WEEKLY DIARY
FRIDAY Daily Total: $340.36 (starting off with a bang, apparently!)
7 am: I recently arrived home from traveling, so today is day 1 of the return quarantine. (Before you judge, I was helping a relative who had a big procedure.) I made an effort to use up everything in the fridge before I left, so it's nearly empty. I wake up ravenous and order a breakfast burrito, potatoes and coffee to be delivered: $18.22. I wore my mask door to door, and after a whole day of plane travel without food or water I'm essentially a raisin in human form. I chug water as fast as it'll come out of the tap, inhale my food and log on remotely for work. I have several meetings today. I'm thankful I only need to look presentable from the shoulders up.
11 am: I scheduled a grocery order with Instacart, which came to $202.90. While I'm waiting for the order to arrive and sorting through my inbox, I catch up on my podcasts and hear news of Instacart's recent union busting layoffs. Yikes. Not renewing this year! I hop back on the app and give the delivery person an even more generous tip than usual, and make sure the auto-renewal for Instacart Express is disabled.
1 pm: During lunch I do some online shopping. To thank my friend who house-sat (apartment-sat?) for me, I order a ceramic vase and I'm filling it with little presents and treats: $50. Another friend's birthday is coming up, so I order a few things from another local shop. Her gift comes to $40.46. Finally, I order some pillow inserts for my apartment: $28.78.
2 pm: After attending my meetings and responding to all time sensitive messages, I review consultant drawings and make some notes for what I need to tackle over the course of next week. I snack pretty much continuously. One of my favorite things about working from home is that I can eat freely without dealing with stupid commentary or diet talk. No, Sharon, I don't want to hear about how you're "so bad" for eating an entire cookie or how you're attempting keto for the millionth time. When we were in the office, some of my coworkers would make comments on how the lunch I packed was so healthy, as if it were some moral achievement. Bitch, I'm getting coffee and eating a piece of cake when I'm done with this salad! I have endocrine issues and have struggled with weight fluctuations my entire life. At this point I've done a lot of work to address my relationship with food and dieting, and I know that sort of talk is really not helpful for me. I'm sure my coworkers don't have bad intentions but I'm just over it.
6 pm: After work I sort through the mail and packages that arrived while I was away. I'm so tired. I stretch, do a face mask and eat half a THC gummy before bed. I sleep like the dead.
SATURDAY Daily total: $33.24
10 am: Nothing on my calendar this weekend! I devote the day to cleaning and doing projects around the apartment. I struggle with renting because I want to fix things up and make changes, especially since I do this sort of thing for a living! Even though I'm a really good tenant and have been here for years, my crappy landlord won't allow improvements even if I paid for the materials and/or labor myself. One of my windows has a crack in the glass that the property manager said isn't a problem because "it's not a hole." These windows are like ninety years old, so I'm pretty sure it's gonna become a hole any day now - I'm just hoping it's not winter when that happens. For my next apartment I'd really like to find an individual who owns and manages the property themselves so I have more flexibility and someone will actually appreciate my efforts to keep the place in good shape! Those landlords are few and far between these days.
12 pm: Even though it's cold AF, I open the windows to get some fresh air inside. Spring cleaning can be in January right? To complement my organizing efforts, I order some bins and refill tape for my label maker: $33.24.
3 pm: I lay on the floor, hoping to bask in the silence and lack of responsibilities. However, my neighbors are loud af. I wonder how much you have to spend on rent to get an apartment with any semblance of sound isolation?
7 pm: I mostly forget to eat today and end up feeling like crap as a result. This is not good for anyone but especially people with hormone issues. I end up eating a bunch of beef jerky and Starbursts for dinner instead of an actual meal (do as I say, not as I do, I guess.....)
SUNDAY Daily total: $0
9:30 am: Slept in late again. I had crazy night terrors the entire night - they get a lot worse for me during periods of stress and anxiety, and I’m sure my beef & candy dinner didn’t help. Weed helps, hence the gummies. I wear an Apple Watch and when I look at my sleep patterns it's really obvious which nights I used THC. Thank you, drugs!
I eat a big bowl of fruit and yogurt for breakfast - I splurged on berries when I got groceries! I left coffee grounds steeping overnight for cold brew, so I prep that too. I don't mind drinking iced coffee in the winter and it's so much easier than doing pour-over every day.
1 pm: I schedule a drive-through COVID test for later in the week. The weather is pretty godawful - it was supposed to snow but that quickly became freezing rain instead. I manage to sneak in a few short walks with my dog but otherwise we spend the day snuggled under a blanket eating snacks and watching Schitt's Creek.
MONDAY Daily total: $95
8 am: Very few meetings today, so I dig through the rest of the emails and messages I missed while traveling last week.
12 pm: During lunch I lay in my bed - one of the luxuries of remote work, second only to elastic waistbands. On the other hand, I have pandemic fatigue and it's being exacerbated by the shitty weather. Returning to isolation in my apartment is jarring. The space is small. My loud neighbors suck. I wish I could go on a long walk. I miss my family. I want a hug. I am tired of hearing people complain about how hard "isolation" is when they have a house, partner, backyard, cable, and a ten person "pod" to socialize with. The only human contact I had for nearly a year was with my dentist drilling out an old filling. When I traveled to see my family I quarantined upon arrival and got tested, but I still didn't feel comfortable snuggling and hugging them since we would need to be in and out of hospitals for the procedure and appointments. It was still wonderful to see them in person, despite the circumstances. My stress and loneliness is fuel for the fire of my rage at people who still don't take this shit seriously. I cope by snuggling my dog, who I am always thankful for but especially now. I'm really glad that we are able to spend so much time together.
1:30 pm: I spend the rest of the day cleaning up drawings and prepping for a meeting tomorrow.
7 pm: I got a surprise bill in the mail for one of the COVID tests I took when I was traveling. I have to pay $95 on top of the copay at the visit - this is the price WITH insurance. Our healthcare system is garbage.
12 am: I can’t sleep. I get a tickle in my throat. I think it’s a result of having the radiator on for several days straight - my nose, mouth and eyes are all very dry - but I get up and check my temperature (normal) and make sure I can still smell the detergent scent on my pajamas (I can). I put in some eye drops before going back to bed.
TUESDAY Daily total: $0 and some sanity
8:57 am: I stay in bed until the very last minute.
\a frenzy of anxiety that lasts the entire day**
5 pm: The focus of my anxiety runs the gamut from work to COVID to earthquakes to my dog’s health to increasing cost of living. I make it through work despite my rapidly crumbling mental state. I try to give myself a break and remind myself that it’s okay if I’m not doing my absolute best in the midst of all this. In any case, the meeting I prepared for yesterday got pushed to next week and nobody informed me. 🙄 I check my temperature. While I’m at it, I take my blood pressure and note that too.
P.S. Regarding anxiety disorders, I am prescribed medication and go to therapy. I highly recommend seeking therapy if you’re having trouble dealing with things on your own - you don't need to have a diagnosed disorder to benefit from it. Many providers do sliding scale.
6 pm: The weather is absolutely disgusting. I have very few opportunities for exercise between bad weather, no gyms, and living in an apartment above someone else. Even if I suit up in all my rain gear, my dog refuses to walk very far when it's wet. Maybe I should move my coffee table tomorrow so I can do some weights or yoga.
7 pm: I catch up on the WSB/GME mayhem and memes, then I play around with the forecasting tool on my 401k website. After my upcoming paycheck I might experiment with bumping my 401k contribution up. If my living expenses don't increase, I might be able to get closer to 10% over the course of this year without too much pain.
9 pm: I snuggle my dog and play games on my phone until bedtime.
WEDNESDAY Daily total: $37.50
7 am: My farm share box arrives today. Thank god - I dropped the ball and got very few veggies in my grocery order, plus I've been rationing the berries I spent so much money on.
9:30 am: I get my COVID swab. I had to drive half an hour to get there. I wonder what the bill will be for this one. Results could take up to a week. Why isn't this easier? On the way home I get gas: $37.50.
10 am: Since I got back earlier than expected and it's not raining (!!!!) I take the opportunity to go on a walk with my dog. It's really nice to sweat and get my heart rate up a bit.
11:30 am: My dog was snoring so loudly that I had to mute myself during a call. I guess the walk wore him out!
8 pm: I finish up work and join a zoom happy hour with some friends. I bust out a bottle of wine that I got for Christmas. The call is pretty fun, although by the end I definitely have screen fatigue. I go to bed pretty much immediately.
THURSDAY Daily total: $7.89
6 am: After about 5 am I couldn't get back to sleep, so I get up and take the dog for a walk. Until I get a negative test I've been wearing my mask even outdoors, and it leads to condensation from my breath forming droplets on my eyelashes. When it's cold enough, they freeze. Facial icicles - just another thrilling pandemic experience. After I get home I towel off my dog's muddy paws, rinse my face and get to work, since I have six hours straight of meetings today. (Ugh)
~a million years later~
6 pm: I order a new digital thermometer because mine consistently tells me my temperature is just above 96 degrees and that can't be true? Anyway, it's $7.89. I detach my butt from my desk chair and go make some pasta with pesto for dinner.
8 pm: I start getting my shit together to study for my next licensure exam. They've been looming over me. I got derailed by COVID - maybe I can pass the rest in 2021? If there were a guaranteed raise or promotion I'd probably be a lot more motivated to shell out $1400+ for these tests....
9 pm: I figure preparing to study is enough for today. I download a few library books on my kindle, take half a THC gummy and snuggle in bed to read.
12 am: Before I go to sleep I check my phone and see that I tested negative for COVID! I'm glad the results came back so fast, and it's a huge relief - I'm very thankful for all the measures I took to travel safely even though it was not at all fun or comfortable. Stoned and sleepy, I dream sweet dreams of the paycheck hitting my account tomorrow morning, and I can't fucking wait to budget it.
______________________________________________________
WEEKLY EXPENSES
GRAND TOTAL: $513.99
______________________________________________________
REFLECTION
This was definitely a higher spending week than usual, primarily due to the fact that I was just returning from out of town and had to put gas in the car, which doesn't happen often since I work from home right now and walk most places. I think my spending is typically pretty responsible. My main financial priority in 2020 was creating a realistic budget - I had been using YNAB for a while but kept underestimating how much money I needed in each category. I dialed that in, and now in 2021 I'd like to focus on minimizing expenses where possible (especially things that aren't important to me) as well as saving (both in my emergency fund and retirement) so I can get that sweet, sweet compound interest. In 2021 I'd also really like to improve my wardrobe and look a bit more professional, but I'm obviously not motivated to spend money on work clothes while we are still 100% remote. Long term I would really like to increase my income, especially since the cost of living is only going up. That means getting my license is high on the list of priorities.
Hope you enjoyed the diary, and let me know if there is anything unclear that I can elaborate on further!
(edited to fix a few grammar and math issues!)
submitted by fuckhowardroark to MoneyDiariesACTIVE [link] [comments]

I am a 52 year old making $116,000 a year, living in Northern Virginia and working as an analyst for a Federal agency

Happy New Year. I hope it is better than 2020. I am a 52 year old single female with no children who works for a US government agency as an analyst. I have been with the agency for over 15 years. Within those 15 years I have held two positions, one for three years and one for over 12 years. I wrote this diary to show the finances of someone who is older and seriously thinking about retirement. People in the sub want diversity, well here is some age diversity. My week was pretty normal for COVID times. I will also put out upfront, after the last NoVA diary, that my parents paid for my college and gave me $7,000 for my down payment and closing costs for my first home.
I was raised in a household where the only debt was a mortgage. My dad was a low level manager in a factory until late high school and my mom was a teacher who went back to teach full time when I was 10 after staying home for seven years. We never wanted for the essentials, but vacations were modest and extras were not expensive. We swam on the local swim team, did girl scouts, band and church activities. If you wanted something out of the norm you saved up your babysitting money or part-time job earnings. There was no new car for a 16th birthday present. They kept a car when a newer one was bought for our use. It was not our car. The keys could be taken away. We had to pay for the gas. I knew my parents gave to charity and to church. Money was not a taboo subject but it was not talked about extensively. My dad would be called frugal by many. My parents spending habits and lack of debt were how my older sister and I were able to go to college both without debt with my father unemployed for part of the time. Much of this rubbed off on me about debt, except I have only paid cash for a car once which my parents did for all their vehicles. Higher education was expected in my family. My dad has a BS and my mother had a Masters.
Most of the good and bad of my money journey has been on me with some significant help from my parents for life events like college and first home purchase. I also lived almost rent free for a few years in my childhood home while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life after college. I decided I did not want to teach. I did (and still do) have a lot of privilege.
Home ownership is very important to my father and this rubbed off on me. I think this was shaped by his age, he is the child of an immigrant and his parents lost their home when he was a young child during the Great Depression. Both my sister and I received assistance in purchasing our first homes.
I had one inheritance of $1,000 from my grandmother. I used the money to help fund travel to England and France when I was 24 with two of my best friends. I am glad I did travel then and did not save it. With one of my friends I always thought we would travel again after her children were older. Well the children are older, but she was diagnosed with early onset dementia at 51. I am glad I have a lot of good memories of our trip in Paris together.
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance $480,000 split between TSP, Traditional Rollover IRA and Roth IRA. I got there by saving from every paycheck. It should be higher. I didn't really get serious about saving for retirement until 35. In my late 20’s and early 30’s I did not even save up to the match. That is my biggest money regret. My retirement balance was around $35,000 when I joined the Federal government at 37.
Equity $177,000 I purchased my first property for $64,000 with $7,000 in help from my parents in 1996. I sold my first property with about a $90,000 profit in 2006. I rolled about $76,000 of this equity into my new condo. Within two years I had lost all of my equity in the 2007 -2009 RE market slide. I was never underwater and I just kept paying my mortgage. The value of my condo finally increased over my purchase price about a year ago. This took over 10+ years. I started paying significant extra principal payments about two years ago. I now pay an extra $400 towards principle each month and a lump sum of $1500 twice a year when I get my two extra paychecks. I have approximately $54,000 left on the mortgage and I will hopefully pay it off in 2024 about 7 years early. I get paid 26 times a year and consider part of two of those checks extra. I work the majority of my budget off of 24 checks.
Savings account balance of multiple accounts $50,000. This includes about $15,000 designated as my emergency fund. I also keep $4,000 liquid in my Roth that could be used for emergencies.
Checking account balance $2300
Credit card debt $0. I pay my accounts off every month
Student loan debt $0. My parents and some savings from a grandparent paid for all four years of school for me. My last year of college in total was less than $7,500 including living on campus. My father was unemployed most of my senior year in high school and most of my freshman year in college. My parents incurred no debt for college for either myself or my sister who was two years ahead of me. I received a BA in History and certified to teach high school. I worked for my spending money during summers and three of the four school years.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I've been working for my agency for 15 years. I left my previous career in real estate finance as I was tired of making money for other people, 9/11 and some personal things that had happened in my life. I made $33,000 in my last job before joining the government. My starting salary was $39,000. I am on the GS schedule so I get some regular increases. I am currently a GS 13. I have the opportunity potentially to be a non-supervisory GS-14. My agency has made this last jump very difficult and I am very unmotivated to even try after hearing what happened during this year’s promotion process. I personally think, if the rumors are correct, there will be future lawsuits over the recent changes that were implemented this year to the process. I will likely top out my salary at between $124,00 to $130,000. I have eight to 10 years until I plan on retiring.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $4749
Deductions:
Mandatory Pension Contribution $78 (.8%) Federal employees after 2013 I think have to contribute a mandatory 4.4% . Our pension is called FERS. It is based on the average of your highest three years of salary earnings x a multiplier (usually 1.0% or 1.1%) x your number of years of service. In order to get a full retirement with the health insurance benefit and a few other things you have to reach certain age and service requirements. I will receive around $30,000 from my pension a year with a COLA every year when I retire.
TSP and Catch Up $2187 (Half Roth and half Traditional. I recently switched to this mix) I max both for a total of $26,000. My agency matches 5%.
SS $586.86
Federal Taxes $1421.36
State Tax $459.81
Life Insurance in the amount of my salary $38.68 (I should probably get rid of this as I do not have any dependents who need my income)
Medicare $137.27
Health, Dental and Vision Insurance $197.77 I will have lifetime subsidized health insurance if I take a full retirement after reaching certain milestones and have had the insurance for five years before I retire. I am dropping vision insurance in 2021. I have a BC/BS PPO and I am fairly happy with my insurance.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent / Mortgage / HOA fees $1101 for mortgage that includes escrow for RE taxes, HOA $412. I am likely to get a large increase in my RE assessment in the spring so I anticipate my property tax escrow going up in 2021. I live in a large condo complex with amenities. HOA includes heating/cooling, gas for cooking, and electricity. Parking is free. My mortgage is a 20 yr fixed rate mortgage at 4.875%. That is high. I made the decision a few years ago to pay it down faster rather than pay the cost of a refinance. Now the balance is low enough it would be harder to find a lender who would lend such a low amount.
Renters / home insurance $385 per year. Since I own a condo, the master condo policy covers everything but the finishes, personal property, and personal liability for my unit
Retirement contribution $100 a month to my Roth IRA and I sometimes put extra money there from a refund or if I spend less than my budget for the month.
Savings contributions per month $300 for next car, $100 for vacations (plus tax refund), $100 for miscellaneous, $50 for 529 plan (I have one for each of the nieces/nephews) Saving $4,000 for each of them. All are fully funded but one. $60 for car repairs/maintenance, $320 for charity and $50 for medical expenses. When I pay off my mortgage my plan is to save up some larger cash or cash like reserves for retirement and maybe save for a specific travel goal I have when I retire.
Investment contribution $0 Retirement contributions are all of my investments right now
Debt payments $0 except mortgage
Donations $4,000 annually
Food I budget $200 for groceries and it varies but is usually lower and $250 for eating out. Eating out is one of my things
Clothing I budget $75 a month but some months I buy nothing and some I go over. This month I have spent about $150, but $75 of that is being returned. I do not like shopping online, but COVID has made that necessary. I have some flex in my budget so I am not going into any debt.
Household items I budget $75
Electric NA covered by HOA
Wifi/Cable/Landline $64 for internet
Cellphone $47
Subscriptions $30 Sling, $14.95 Audible, Kindle Unlimited $9.99, Amazon Prime $12.99. I use my sister’s Disney + and Netflix on a limited basis. I am going to shut down my Sling account when Discovery + starts up next week. It is supposed to be cheaper. Most of what I watch on Sling are shows that will be on Discovery +. I also need to pause my Audible account. I just don’t use it as much as I used to because so much spoken word media is free through podcasts.
Car insurance $775 I pay once a year
Gas $100-$125 a month. I commute about 55-60 miles a day by car. Public transportation is not a very good option. I also will be visiting my Dad more frequently which is a three hour drive each way.
Personal Property Taxes for Car (VA tax) $250 paid once a year
Extra principal payments for mortgage $7800 a year
Car registration state and local $75 a year
Hair. I spend $250 at least 4-5 times a year for my haircuts and highlights. In the DMV this is not super expensive and I could pay more. Spending on my hair is one of my things. I am not ready to go grey.
Day One
830 It is Christmas Eve and I don’t have to go to work due to the President giving us the day off. I sleep late and laze around in bed for a while looking at my phone. I finally get up and have a mug of tea. I wrap all of my gifts and bag them up for easy carrying tomorrow. I only spent about $300 this year on eight presents. My sister was always complaining about her Kindle so I got her a new one on Prime day. My brother in law gets microbrew beers from the Total Wine build your own six pack selection. The kids mostly get gift cards. My dad gets chocolates, Christmas cookies and a couple of jigsaw puzzles. I am not much in the Christmas spirit this year. I go and pick up my order from Best Buns of decorated Christmas cookies for my dad, a mozzarella and tomato sandwich and a container of their chicken salad. There is a bit of a traffic jam in front of the bakery. I love Best Buns ($36.24 with tip)
12 Noon I eat my tomato/mozzarella sandwich, grapes and some unsalted pretzels. I spend the afternoon reading, watching HGTV and YouTube videos. It is bleh outside so no motivation to go for a walk.
6 PM I eat the chicken salad for dinner and some more grapes. I ordered the Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from their streaming site. I am a big ballet fan. It is a wonderful modern take on the story. ($3.38) I watch the ballet and then read until bedtime around 10.
Total for the day $39.62
Day Two
Merry Christmas. This one is a hard one for me personally and COVID just adds to that. I wake up around 8. I shower and dress and eat a CLIF bar. Around 1015 I leave to go see my dad in my hometown about three hours away. I pick up a breakfast biscuit and a drink at the only thing open, McDonald's as I will not be eating lunch with my family. ($5.38) It starts to flurry. When I am about an hour away the grass is covered. We are sort of having a white Christmas. I get to my hometown and stop by my sister’s house to drop off their presents in a socially distanced way. I also pick up brownies for me and my dad that my niece made and a pie for my dad. You can tell a theme here. He loves his sweets. My dad lives in an assisted living facility and my visit can only be 45 minutes with my dad and I both masked and sitting apart. I check in and get my temperature taken. We open gifts on Zoom with my sister and her family. I do a couple of things for my dad around his apartment and it is time for me to leave. I am very sad to leave. I drive back home. On the way home I hit a snow squall. I cannot see 200 ft in front of me, but it is not sticking. I get home around 530 and I throw a frozen pizza in the oven. I have no desire to cook. I binge on some HGTV shows I have never watched and go to bed early.
I wanted to comment on the decision to visit my dad. The facility is following all the regulations the state has laid out. They are under a lot of scrutiny as they had an outbreak in their nursing center back in the spring. My dad has suffered a lot of cognitive decline during lock down. We feel the risk is worth trying to help some to slow down more decline. We could not visit until July except for window visits. We can only visit once a week for 45 minutes. This is not an easy decision, but one we feel is the best for him. It is only my sister or I visiting. I try to visit every two or three weeks. He is scheduled to get the vaccine in January.
Total for the day $5.38
Day Three
745 AM Wake up before my alarm and doze and think for a while. Finally get up around 9 and clean my bathroom. I find that I get things like that done more often if I do them at the beginning of the day. I look in the fridge to see if there is anything I want for breakfast. Nothing but several things that need to be thrown away. A CLIF bar and a mug of tea will have to do. I need to go to the grocery store.
1230 PM I went to the dry cleaners (masked) to pick up my quilt and a few other items which were prepaid when I dropped them off. $31.50 prepaid so not included in totals. I stop for a takeout chicken sandwich and a drink. ($6.87) I head home, eat my lunch and log on to my bank account to move money around since I got paid today. There is more in this check than normal. I will have to figure out why when I can get on my work site to pull up my paycheck stubs. I am having technical two factor authentication issues and someone at work has to reset my “factors.” I pay my credit card bills. I like to pay each pay period right before I get my next check. I think this helps me keep better control on my un-budgeted spending. I text a little bit with one of my roommates from college.
7 PM I just got the AMEX Platinum card and it has some unique benefits. They give you $50 credit at Saks 5th Avenue twice a year. I log on to the Saks website and I can hardly afford anything or I am not willing to pay their prices. I found a pair of panties and a pair of socks for $45.59 with tax. I never pay $28 for a pair of socks but since I will get a credit I will order them. As another perk they refund $200 of airline fees like for baggage each year. I will likely not be flying until late next year or 2022. There are some tricks to get the refund. I put $200 in my United Airline travel bank and I will get the $200 refunded. After owning the Platinum card for 12 month between two calendar years I will have $400 in the travel bank to use on United. It is the airline I usually have to fly for work because they are the contract carrier for many routes out of the DC area for the US government. This card has a huge annual fee of $550. I will likely only keep it for only one year. I am working on a sign up bonus. I am saving Amex MR points to try to fly business class to Asia sometime in the future.
8 PM I call my Dad to chat for a few minutes, eat some leftover chili and then read until I go to bed around 1000.
Total for the day $252.46
Day 4
Wake up around 745. Eat my CLIF bar and tea. I think about going to the grocery store. I decide to go after work tomorrow. I have to do laundry. I hate doing laundry as I do not have my own washedryer. They are not allowed in individual units in my building as the pipes (which are older) cannot handle everyone having a washedryer.This was one of the things I compromised on to get a better location when I bought my condo. $4.00 for two loads wash and dry.
1230 PM Eat a salad. I have a dull headache and lay down to take a nap.
230 PM I take a long walk around my neighborhood. Good to get out in the fresh air.
4 PM I have a credit on Uber and order a grilled cheese sandwich and fries from Bus Boys & Poets. I also get their hummus platter and will keep that for part of lunch or dinner tomorrow. $27.56 with fees and tip. I had a $35 credit on my Uber app. I waste time going down some rabbit holes on YouTube. Have you seen any of the music reaction videos from TwinstheNewTrend? Love their reactions to old school music.
Total for the day $31.56
Day 5
700 Alarm goes off and I read on my phone for a few minutes. I shower and dry my hair and I am out the door for work. I listen to FrequentMiler on the Air podcast during my commute. Best thing about COVID (if there is anything positive) is that my commute to the office is much better. I cannot work from home. I catch up on a few things left over from last week. I eat my CLIF bar and drink a mug of tea made with one of the tea bags I got for Christmas from my sister. It is very quiet around the office. I touch base with a coworker who will be working from one of our other offices away from DC for two months to check if she can help out with a small project while she is in the other office. I get lunch around 1130. Salad, fruit and a bottled iced tea for $14.34. The afternoon drags on. I leave an hour early. I will take annual leave. My bosses are very flexible on days like today. They are not clock watchers.
430 PM Home and dinner is left over chili and hummus and carrots from my Uber Eats order last night. I work on some paperwork that needs to be filled out for my dad pertaining to finances. Dealing with aging parents is not easy and it is not easy for them. I search on Etsy to try to make up my mind on a new leather handbag. I am tired of the handles on cheaper purses fraying. I am looking to buy a handmade leather bag. Of course the one I really want is out of my price range of what I want to spend at almost $300. I am trying to keep the price as close to $200 as I can, but get what I want. I think I know which one I will order but I will sleep on it.
Total for the day $14.34
Day Six
0700 Repeat wake up and read on my phone. Shower and dry my hair. Off to work. I have to stop and get gas.($20.10) I listen to the Real Crime Profile podcast on my commute. Not much going on at work. It is actually more quiet today than it was yesterday. I do some research that I need to give to the person completing a project that I want my input taken into consideration. Tea and another CLIF bar. I spend 40 minutes on hold with the payroll people trying to get my 2 factor authentication reset. Turns out my agency has to put in the request for security reasons. I call HR and put in a ticket. I review a product I am a collaborator on. The graphic is all wrong for my piece of the project. My boss asks me to review something for clarity. Off to lunch where I pick up a chicken wrap sandwich, fruit and soda for $11.42. I work on my slides for a presentation in January, but I find out I need to change the slide template to a new one my division has just approved so I will finish it tomorrow. A friend stops by and we chat too long.
I am out the door at five. Leftover hummus and carrots along with soup I took out of the freezer for dinner when I get home. I go down more rabbit holes on Etsy to find my new purse. I thought I had made a decision, but I found a few more I like. I also finish up my charitable giving for the year. I donate the final $620 to a food bank in my hometown that my family was involved in for many years and a charity that assists with natural disaster relief. I talk to my dad about the paperwork I am helping him with. We have a three way call with my sister regarding some of his new health issues that have developed. My sister tends to deal with the immediate things as she is near by and I help with things like doctor’s visits that are planned. I try to spit duties with my sister so she is not overwhelmed, but it is difficult.
Total for the day $651.52
Day 7
My weekday routine is basically the same during the week. My arrival time at work is flexible as long as we put in our eight hours and we are there during “core” hours 10-2. Some people have gotten permission for unique schedules during COVID due to child care, schooling or other needs. I try to get out the door before 8 AM. I listen to the Afford Anything podcast on the drive to work. Tea and a CLIF bar again. I am very much a creature of habit. I decide to take two hours of leave this afternoon. I have a coworker review my slides for my future presentation and she makes some good suggestions. I make changes and move them to the new template. I don’t like the new template. Too much white space.
12 PM I work through lunch and grab a snack from the snack shop in our breakroom. $.50 for a bag of crackers and $.50 for a Diet Coke. I stop by a friend’s desk and during our chat it comes out that I am interested in getting involved with a project in another division at some point in the future. It is the type of project that people get picked for because someone recommends you. My friend has a lot of contacts in that division and offers to call people and tell them I am interested. I greatly appreciate it. Now is not the right time for me to try to get involved as my team will be down a person for a few months, but maybe in the spring or summer. When I mentor young employees I always stress how it is important to build your network of people within the organization. You never know when you will need something or you can help someone else out. This friend, who is going to help me out, and I have worked on and off together for over six years.
3 PM I head home. Late lunch/early dinner is soup and hummus and carrots. I get sucked back into the Etsy hole again. Finally I have made my decision. It is the bag I thought I had decided two days ago to buy for $197.17 with tax. It is a splurge. I have had a very difficult time personally since mid-November. I don’t like to get into the I deserve it mentality as I believe that is a dangerous mind set, but I deserve it. The money will come out of my miscellaneous savings.
730 PM I call to check on my dad. He is back on lock down at his assisted living facility due to a positive staff member who came to work when they were asymptomatic and did not know they were positive. I am finally able to log on to my payroll site. I figured out that I had extra in my paycheck because I made a mistake earlier in the year and had more deducted for my TSP than I should have one pay period. I basically maxed everything out a little early this year. I took the entire day off tomorrow so I think I will stay up and start the Bridgerton series on Netflix.
Total for the day $198. 17
Total for the week $1193.05
Food + Drink $102.81
Fun 3.38
Home + Health $4.00
Clothes + Beauty $242.76
Transport 20.10
Other $820
Spending was a little strange this week. $23 of the Uber Eats costs were taken from a $35 credit on my Uber account since I tied the account to my AMEX Platinum card. Also $45.59 in the clothing category and the $200 in travel will be refunded by my AMEX card due to card benefits. Also I don’t spend $700 in charitable donations all the time. I tend to usually donate mid year and at the end of the year. I never made it to the grocery store. I will probably do it tomorrow.
Link to the bag I bought in black https://www.etsy.com/listing/235685969/handbag-small-leather-tote-bag-leather
submitted by Iamnotme24 to MoneyDiariesACTIVE [link] [comments]

NYT article on scammers.

Not really about Kitboga. The author talks to Jim Browning. Very interesting. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html
[Edit: adding the text of the article which was sent to me by a friend from a call center]
Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?
One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, Tenn., got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.
He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.
After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.
Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.
After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.
A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.
Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.
“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.
Minutes later, her phone rang again. This caller introduced himself as Jim Browning. “The guy who is trying to convince you to sign into your online banking is after one thing alone, and that is he wants to steal your money,” he said.
Langer was mystified that this new caller, who had what seemed to be a strong Irish accent, knew about the conversations she had just had. “Are you sure you are not with this group?” she asked.
He replied that the same scammers had targeted him, too. But when they were trying to connect remotely to his computer, as they had done with hers, he had managed to secure access to theirs. For weeks, that remote connection had allowed him to eavesdrop on and record calls like those with Langer, in addition to capturing a visual record of the activity on a scammer’s computer screen.
“I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said. “If you type 4-5-2-1, you’ll unlock it.”
Langer keyed in the digits.
“OK! It came back on!” she said, relieved.
For most people, calls like the one Langer received are a source of annoyance or anxiety. According to the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the total losses reported to it by scam victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017. Last year, the app Truecaller commissioned the Harris Poll to survey roughly 2,000 American adults and found that 22 percent of the respondents said they had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months; Truecaller projects that as many as 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.
The person who rescued Langer that afternoon delights in getting these calls, however. “I’m fascinated by scams,” he told me. “I like to know how they work.” A software engineer based in the United Kingdom, he runs a YouTube channel under the pseudonym Jim Browning, where he regularly posts videos about his fraud-fighting efforts, identifying call centers and those involved in the crimes. He began talking to me over Skype in the fall of 2019 — and then sharing recordings like the episode with Langer — on the condition that I not reveal his identity, which he said was necessary to protect himself against the ire of the bad guys and to continue what he characterizes as his activism. Maintaining anonymity, it turns out, is key to scam-busting and scamming alike. I’ll refer to him by his middle initial, L.
The goal of L.’s efforts and those of others like him is to raise the costs and risks for perpetrators, who hide behind the veil of anonymity afforded by the internet and typically do not face punishment. The work is a hobby for L. — he has a job at an I.T. company — although it seems more like an obsession. Tracking scammers has consumed much of L.’s free time in the evenings over the past few years, he says, except for several weeks in March and April last year, when the start of the coronavirus pandemic forced strict lockdowns in many parts of the world, causing call centers from which much of this activity emanates to temporarily suspend operations. Ten months later, scamming has “gone right back to the way it was before the pandemic,” L. told me earlier this month.
Like L., I was curious to learn more about phone scammers, having received dozens of their calls over the years. They have offered me low interest rates on my credit-card balances, promised to write off my federal student loans and congratulated me on having just won a big lottery. I’ve answered fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service who threaten to send the police to my doorstep unless I agree to pay back taxes that I didn’t know I owed — preferably in the form of iTunes gift cards or by way of a Western Union money transfer. Barring a few exceptions, the individuals calling me have had South Asian accents, leading me to suspect that they are calling from India. On several occasions, I’ve tested this theory by letting the voice on the other end go on for a few minutes before I suddenly interrupt with a torrent of Hindi curses that I retain full mastery of even after living in the United States for the past two decades. I haven’t yet failed to elicit a retaliatory offensive in Hindi. Confirming that these scammers are operating from India hasn’t given me any joy. Instead, as an Indian expatriate living in the United States, I’ve felt a certain shame.
L. started going after scammers when a relative of his lost money to a tech-support swindle, a common scheme with many variants. Often, it starts when the mark gets a call from someone offering unsolicited help in ridding a computer’s hard drive of malware or the like. Other times, computer users looking for help stumble upon a website masquerading as Microsoft or Dell or some other computer maker and end up dialing a listed number that connects them to a fraudulent call center. In other instances, victims are tricked by a pop-up warning that their computer is at risk and that they need to call the number flashing on the screen. Once someone is on the phone, the scammers talk the caller into opening up TeamViewer or another remote-access application on his or her computer, after which they get the victim to read back unique identifying information that allows them to establish control over the computer.
L. flips the script. He starts by playing an unsuspecting target. Speaking in a polite and even tone, with a cadence that conveys naïveté, he follows instructions and allows the scammer to connect to his device. This doesn’t have any of his actual data, however. It is a “virtual machine,” or a program that simulates a functioning desktop on his computer, including false files, like documents with a fake home address. It looks like a real computer that belongs to someone. “I’ve got a whole lot of identities set up,” L. told me. He uses dummy credit-card numbers that can pass a cursory validation check.
The scammer’s connection to L.’s virtual machine is effectively a two-way street that allows L. to connect to the scammer’s computer and infect it with his own software. Once he has done this, he can monitor the scammer’s activities long after the call has ended; sometimes for months, or as long as the software goes undetected. Thus, sitting in his home office, L. is able to listen in on calls between scammer and targets — because these calls are made over the internet, from the scammer’s computer — and watch as the scammer takes control of a victim’s computer. L. acknowledged to me that his access to the scammer’s computer puts him at legal risk; without the scammer’s permission, establishing that access is unlawful. But that doesn’t worry him. “If it came down to someone wanting to prosecute me for accessing a scammer’s computer illegally, I can demonstrate in every single case that the only reason I gained access is because the scammer was trying to steal money from me,” he says.
On occasion, L. succeeds in turning on the scammer’s webcam and is able to record video of the scammer and others at the call center, who can usually be heard on phones in the background. From the I.P. address of the scammer’s computer and other clues, L. frequently manages to identify the neighborhood — and, in some cases, the actual building — where the call center is.
When he encounters a scam in progress while monitoring a scammer’s computer, L. tries to both document and disrupt it, at times using his real-time access to undo the scammer’s manipulations of the victim’s computer. He tries to contact victims to warn them before they lose any money — as he did in the case of Kathleen Langer.
L.’s videos of such episodes have garnered millions of views, making him a faceless YouTube star. He says he hopes his exploits will educate the public and deter scammers. He claims he has emailed the law-enforcement authorities in India offering to share the evidence he has collected against specific call centers. Except for one instance, his inquiries have elicited only form responses, although last year, the police raided a call center that L. had identified in Gurugram, outside Delhi, after it was featured in an investigation aired by the BBC.
Now and then during our Skype conversations, L. would begin monitoring a call between a scammer and a mark and let me listen in. In some instances, I would also hear other call-center employees in the background — some of them making similar calls, others talking among themselves. The chatter evoked a busy workplace, reminding me of my late nights in a Kolkata newsroom, where I began my journalism career 25 years ago, except that these were young men and women working through the night to con people many time zones away. When scammers called me in the past, I tried cajoling them into telling me about their enterprise but never succeeded. Now, with L.’s help, I thought, I might have better luck.
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India.
I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of I.P. addresses — ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection — isn’t an exact science, I wasn’t certain that they would yield any scammers.
But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.
Image Murlidhar Sharma, a senior police official, whose team raided two call centers in Kolkata in October 2019 based on a complaint from Microsoft. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
Although individuals like this particular scammer are the ones responsible for manipulating victims on the phone, they represent only the outward face of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. “Call centers that run scams employ all sorts of subcontractors,” Puneet Singh, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the bureau’s legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, told me. These include sellers of phone numbers; programmers who develop malware and pop-ups; and money mules. From the constantly evolving nature of scams — lately I’ve been receiving calls from the “law-enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System” about an outstanding arrest warrant instead of the fake Social Security Administration calls I was getting a year ago — it’s evident that the industry has its share of innovators.
The reasons this activity seems to have flourished in India are much the same as those behind the growth of the country’s legitimate information-technology-services industry after the early 2000s, when many American companies like Microsoft and Dell began outsourcing customer support to workers in India. The industry expanded rapidly as more companies in developed countries saw the same economic advantage in relocating various services there that could be performed remotely — from airline ticketing to banking. India’s large population of English speakers kept labor costs down.
Because the overwhelming majority of call centers in the country are engaged in legitimate business, the ones that aren’t can hide in plain sight. Amid the mazes of gleaming steel-and-glass high-rises in a place like Cyber City, near Delhi, or Sector V in Salt Lake, near Kolkata — two of the numerous commercial districts that have sprung up across the country to nurture I.T. businesses — it’s impossible to distinguish a call center that handles inquiries from air travelers in the United States from one that targets hundreds of Americans every day with fraudulent offers to lower their credit-card interest rates.
The police do periodically crack down on operations that appear to be illegitimate. Shortly after I got to Kolkata, the police raided five call centers in Salt Lake that officials said had been running a tech-support scam. The employees of the call centers were accused of impersonating Microsoft representatives. The police raid followed a complaint by the tech company, which in recent years has increasingly pressed Indian law enforcement to act against scammers abusing the company’s name. I learned from Murlidhar Sharma, a senior official in the city police, that his team had raided two other call centers in Kolkata a couple of months earlier in response to a similar complaint.
“Microsoft had done extensive work before coming to us,” Sharma, who is in his 40s and speaks with quiet authority, told me. The company lent its help to the police in connection with the raids, which Sharma seemed particularly grateful for. Often the police lack the resources to pursue these sorts of cases. “These people are very smart, and they know how to hide data,” Sharma said, referring to the scammers. It was in large part because of Microsoft’s help, he said, that investigators had been able to file charges in court within a month after the raid. A trial has begun but could drag on for years. The call centers have been shut down, at least for now.
Sharma pointed out that pre-emptive raids do not yield the desired results. “Our problem,” he said, “is that we can act only when there’s a complaint of cheating.” In 2017, he and his colleagues raided a call center on their own initiative, without a complaint, and arrested several people. “But then the court was like, ‘Why did the police raid these places?’” Sharma said. The judge wanted statements from victims, which the police were unable to get, despite contacting authorities in the U.S. and U.K. The case fell apart.
The slim chances of detection, and the even slimmer chances of facing prosecution, have seemed to make scamming a career option, especially among those who lack the qualifications to find legitimate employment in India’s slowing economy. Indian educational institutions churn out more than 1.5 million engineers every year, but according to one survey fewer than 20 percent are equipped to land positions related to their training, leaving a vast pool of college graduates — not to mention an even larger population of less-educated young men and women — struggling to earn a living. That would partly explain why call centers run by small groups are popping up in residential neighborhoods. “The worst thing about this crime is that it’s becoming trendy,” Aparajita Rai, a deputy commissioner in the Kolkata Police, told me. “More and more youngsters are investing the crucial years of their adolescence into this. Everybody wants fast money.”
In Kolkata, I met Aniruddha Nath, then 23, who said he spent a week working at a call center that he quickly realized was engaged in fraud. Nath has a pensive air and a shy smile that intermittently cut through his solemnness as he spoke. While finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering from a local college — he took a loan to study there — Nath got a job offer after a campus interview. The company insisted he join immediately, for a monthly salary of about $200. Nath asked me not to name the company out of fear that he would be exposing himself legally.
His jubilation turned into skepticism on his very first day, when he and other fresh recruits were told to simply memorize the contents of the company’s website, which claimed his employer was based in Australia. On a whim, he Googled the address of the Australian office listed on the site and discovered that only a parking garage was located there. He said he learned a couple of days later what he was to do: Call Indian students in Australia whose visas were about to expire and offer to place them in a job in Australia if they paid $800 to take a training course.
Image The Garden Reach area in Kolkata. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
On his seventh day at work, Nath said, he received evidence from a student in Australia that the company’s promise to help with job placements was simply a ruse to steal $800; the training the company offered was apparently little more than a farce. “She sent me screenshots of complaints from individuals who had been defrauded,” Nath said. He stopped going in to work the next day. His parents were unhappy, and, he said, told him: “What does it matter to you what the company is doing? You’ll be getting your salary.” Nath answered, “If there’s a raid there, I’ll be charged with fraud.”
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.
Parking my car in the vicinity of the address L. had given me, I walked through a narrow lane where children were playing cricket, past a pharmacy and a tiny store selling cookies and snacks. The apartment I sought was on the second floor of a building at the end of an alley, a few hundred yards from a mosque. It was locked, but a woman next door said that the building belonged to Shahbaz’s extended family and that he lived in one of the apartments with his parents.
Then I saw an elderly couple seated on the steps in the front — his parents, it turned out. The father summoned Shahbaz’s brother, a lanky, longhaired man who appeared to be in his 20s. He said Shahbaz had woken up a short while earlier and gone out on his motorbike. “I don’t know when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up,” his father said, with what sounded like exasperation.
They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.
I got a call from Shahbaz a few hours later. He denied that he’d ever worked at a call center. “There are a lot of young guys who are involved in the scamming business, but I’m not one of them,” he said. I persisted, but he kept brushing me off until I asked him to confirm that his birthday was a few days later in December. “Look, you are telling me my exact birth date — that makes me nervous,” he said. He wanted to know what I knew about him and how I knew it. I said I would tell him if he met with me. I volunteered to protect his identity if he answered my questions truthfully.
Two days later, we met for lunch at the Taj Bengal, one of Kolkata’s five-star hotels. I’d chosen that as the venue out of concern for my safety. When he showed up in the hotel lobby, however, I felt a little silly. Physically, Shahbaz is hardly intimidating. He is short and skinny, with a face that would seem babyish but for his thin mustache and beard, which are still a work in progress. He was in his late 20s but had brought along an older cousin for his own safety.
We found a secluded table in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and sat down. I took out my phone and played a video that L. had posted on YouTube. (Only those that L. shared the link with knew of its existence.) The video was a recording of the call from November 2019 in which Shahbaz was trying to defraud the woman in Ottawa with a trick that scammers often use to arm-twist their victims: editing the HTML coding of the victim’s bank-account webpage to alter the balances. Because the woman was pushing back, Shahbaz zeroed out her balance to make it look as if he had the ability to drain her account. On the call, he can be heard threatening her: “You don’t want to lose all your money, right?”
I watched him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
Image Aniruddha Nath spent a week on the job at a call center when he realized that it was engaged in fraud. A lack of other opportunities can make such call centers an appealing enterprise. Credit...Prarthna Singh for The New York Times
He nodded in shocked silence. I took my phone back and suggested he drink some water. He took a few sips, gathering himself before I began questioning him. When he mumbled in response to my first couple of questions, I jokingly asked him to summon the bold, confident voice we’d just heard in the recording of his call. He gave me a wan smile.
Pointing to my voice recorder on the table, he asked, meekly, “Is this necessary?”
When his scam calls were already on YouTube, I countered, how did it matter that I was recording our conversation?
“It just makes me nervous,” he said.
Shahbaz told me his parents sent him to one of the city’s better schools but that he flunked out in eighth grade and had to move to a neighborhood school. When his father lost his job, Shahbaz found work riding around town on his bicycle to deliver medicines and other pharmaceutical supplies from a wholesaler to retail pharmacies; he earned $25 a month. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, he told me, a friend took him to a call center in Salt Lake, where he got his first job in scamming, though he didn’t realize right away that that was what he was doing. At first, he said, the job seemed like legitimate telemarketing for tech-support services. By 2015, working in his third job, at a call center in the heart of Kolkata, Shahbaz had learned how to coax victims into filling out a Western Union transfer in order to process a refund for terminated tech-support services. “They would expect a refund but instead get charged,” he told me.
Shahbaz earned a modest salary in these first few jobs — he told me that that first call center, in Salt Lake, paid him less than $100 a month. His lengthy commute every night was exhausting. In 2016 or 2017, he began working with a group of scammers in Garden Reach, earning a share of the profits. There were at least five others who worked with him, he said. All of them were local residents, some more experienced than others. One associate at the call center was his wife’s brother.
He was cagey about naming the others or describing the organization’s structure, but it was evident that he wasn’t in charge. He told me that a supervisor had taught him how to intimidate victims by editing their bank balances. “We started doing that about a year ago,” he said, adding that their group was somewhat behind the curve when it came to adopting the latest tricks of the trade. When those on the cutting edge of the business develop something new, he said, the idea gradually spreads to other scammers.
It was hard to ascertain how much this group was stealing from victims every day, but Shahbaz confessed that he was able to defraud one or two people every night, extracting anywhere from $200 to $300 per victim. He was paid about a quarter of the stolen amount. He told me that he and his associates would ask victims to drive to a store and buy gift cards, while staying on the phone for the entire duration. Sometimes, he said, all that effort was ruined if suspicious store clerks declined to sell gift cards to the victim. “It’s becoming tough these days, because customers aren’t as gullible as they used to be,” he told me. I could see from his point of view why scammers, like practitioners in any field, felt pressure to come up with new methods and scams in response to increasing public awareness of their schemes.
The more we spoke, the more I recognized that Shahbaz was a small figure in this gigantic criminal ecosystem that constitutes the phone-scam industry, the equivalent of a pickpocket on a Kolkata bus who is unlucky enough to get caught in the act. He had never thought of running his own call center, he told me, because that required knowing people who could provide leads — names and numbers of targets to call — as well as others who could help move stolen money through illicit channels. “I don’t have such contacts,” he said. There were many in Kolkata, according to Shahbaz, who ran operations significantly bigger than the one he was a part of. “I know of people who had nothing earlier but are now very rich,” he said. Shahbaz implied that his own ill-gotten earnings were paltry in comparison. He hadn’t bought a car or a house, but he admitted that he had been able to afford to go on overseas vacations with friends. On Facebook, I saw a photo of him posing in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and other pictures from a visit to Thailand.
I asked if he ever felt guilty. He didn’t answer directly but said there had been times when he had let victims go after learning that they were struggling to pay bills or needed the money for medical expenses. But for most victims, his rationale seemed to be that they could afford to part with the few hundred dollars he was stealing.
Shahbaz was a reluctant interviewee, giving me brief, guarded answers that were less than candid or directly contradicted evidence that L. had collected. He was vague about the highest amount he’d ever stolen from a victim, at one point saying $800, then later admitting to $1,500. I found it hard to trust either figure, because on one of his November calls I heard him bullying someone to pay him $5,000. He told me that my visit to his house had left him shaken, causing him to realize how wrong he was to be defrauding people. His parents and his wife were worried about him. And so, he had quit scamming, he told me.
“What did you do last night?” I asked him.
“I went to sleep,” he said.
I knew he was not telling the truth about his claim to have stopped scamming, however. Two days earlier, hours after our phone conversation following my visit to Garden Reach, Shahbaz had been at it again. It was on that night, in fact, that he tried to swindle Kathleen Langer in Crossville, Tenn. Before I came to see him for lunch, I had already heard a recording of that call, which L. shared with me.
When I mentioned that to him, he looked at me pleadingly, in visible agony, as if I’d poked at a wound. It was clear to me that he was only going to admit to wrongdoing that I already had evidence of.
L. told me that the remote access he had to Shahbaz’s computer went cold after I met with him on Dec. 14, 2019. But it buzzed back to life about 10 weeks later. The I.P. address was the same as before, which suggested that it was operating in the same location I visited. L. set up a livestream on YouTube so I could see what L. was observing. The microphone was on, and L. and I could clearly hear people making scam calls in the background. The computer itself didn’t seem to be engaged in anything nefarious while we were eavesdropping on it, but L. could see that Shahbaz’s phone was connected to it. It appeared that Shahbaz had turned the computer on to download music. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that he was taking a moment to chill in the middle of another long night at work.
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Moving Out From an Abusive Parent: A Crash Course For Minors

https://furiousgoldfish.tumblr.com/post/634336581549981696/moving-out-from-an-abusive-parent-a-crash-course COPY PASTE FROM FURIOUS GOLDFISH I DIDN'T WRITE THIS I JUST WANT TO SHARE IT.

Disclaimer: this can be very dangerous. Please make sure you are going to enter safe situations where people are not going to harm you if you follow this advice.

Moving Out From an Abusive Parent: A Crash Course For Minors

\*The legal information provided in this only applies to minors living in the United States. I am not a legal professional, and any legal information should be researched independently by the reader.***
**Each state has their own laws about when a minor can move out of their parent’s. Research these laws. I’m not promoting minors breaking the law.**

Money

Moving out is a lot more expensive then it seems. Even if you have a place to stay (a friend, shelter, relative), there will be bumps in the road that will take a good chunk of your savings. Luckily, I had managed to save a few hundred dollars before I myself moved out

Documents

The worst mistake I made when I moved out was not getting my birth certificate or social security card before leaving.

Living Arrangements

Since I’ve moved out, I’ve been couch surfing from place to place. Luckily, I’d already planned on it being this way, and have family and friends glad to help me

College

Being homeless can be a royal pain when it comes to going to college. Trust me, I’m doing it right now. However, most students aren’t aware how far they can go without their parents’ help.

Welfare

Once you’re 18, you can apply for welfare of your own as long as you’re not living with your parents. However, your parents may still be claiming you, which can prevent you from receiving welfare.

Communication

Successfully becoming independent from an abusive parent is difficult, even more so when you’re scraping for every penny. However, independent means being responsible for your own communication (between work, school, and whatever else you’re doing, you’l need it).

Transportation

Doing the Dirty- the Move

Mental Health and Self Care

Moving out can take a toll on you, emotionally and physically. I know it did for me, at least.

Keep Your Nose Clean

Consider Contacting CPS

Breathe

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best money earning websites for students video

Clicksor is a best cpm ads network.Its provide best CPM and revenue for all of the websites. Clicksor one of the best way to earn money online. Clicksor now close so alternatively use SuccessBux. Register from SuccessBux & start your earnings. 4. Swagbucks. This is one of the best way to earn gift cards from online. Making money online is entirely practicable for students. You just need to make sure that whatever job you want to do, or service you want to offer, you are good at that. By earning money online doing an online job or more, students can pay down their student loans, pay bills, save for buying an expensive gift, and achieve any other financial goal. 10 Best & Trusted Online Money Making Sites. The following are some of the most trusted online money earning websites. Join them and put in the right effort to start making money online. 1. Ysense. Ysense is one of the well known online money making sites that accept participants all around the world. The high paying genuine online trusted money earning websites students and real making sites. It will help out to make $1000 some extra cash. We have published here the best and the top ten sites which work perfectly without any fraud. Earning money online is the most easier and quicker way to make money. Trusted websites like Adsense and others ... problem can u please how can i earn 5000 rs per month based on my key skills,pls send a mail to me pls,which one is best for me to get the money without ... I could see many final year students creating blogs and earning money ... Among contending websites to make money, this platform gives you an even easier option of earning over $200 a week at home. As much as it sounds like a catch, it is true like gravity. You can do this effortlessly by becoming a Lime-S Juicer, Lime Charger or Lime-S Scooter Charger, and then collecting and charging these Lime-S Scooters overnight to be delivered in the morning for extra cash. Who Can Earn Money from Captcha Sites? Many Students, Housewives, Retired folks are earning through it. Even quite suitable for the working people as well, who can spend a couple of hours on it after their work. The Captcha Applications will send the Captcha’s and we have to enter the same in the respective field. Clixsense is another best site for earning money online which most people like to join without investment. There are many ways to earn money by working on this site. Some of them are completing surveys, attending tasks and offers, playing games, and referring others. 10 Best Online Money Earning Sites List. The 10 websites listed below are unarguably the best sites to make money online without any investment. I have made over $44,000+ from these websites and you can do that too. Read about all of the best-earning sites and decide which one will be perfect for you.

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best money earning websites for students

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