I know the more I make, more people expect me to just pay for everything because 'I make so much'.
Ive had people demand I pay for their vacation (flight and hotel)...just because.
Oh they have a car issue "Can I pay you back later?" (They never pay back)
"Im a little short for groceries, I need food!" (Proceed to buy junk food and high quality produce they never get with their money) (And again Im an ass if I ask to be paid back, cause what I expect them to STARVE!!)
Oh shit, they dont have money for rent, how many times Ive gotten this one. Just 50, 100,150,200,250...and keep slowly creeping up. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WONT PAY IT,ILL BE HOMELESS BECAUSE OF YOU!!!
Even had my neighbor demand (not ask, demand!) I pay for their car cause theyre 3 months behind and its about to be repo'd, and itll be MY FAULT! (with them yelling at me on my porch).
I know I had to stop being nice about lending, cause everyone else never wanted to stop 'asking'. So yeah, I cant give an inch or people will just go for the full mile.
I find it to be the opposite, I make enough that I haven't checked my bank account while making a purchase in a long time.
My friends are almost offended when I offer to cover dinners and nights out. I'm not trying to show off with my buddies, I just know $400-500 isn't a lot to me and for them it's a week's pay but I really like hanging out with them.
So I try to compromise in that I'll cover dinner if they cover bowling or something like that.
That's a good point. It's the eternal struggle over who pays for dinner. If you're good friends, everyone wants to pay, the only difference is capacity.
I wonder, did you come up from a poor family?
I did, and my outlook now (from a secure financial position) is very similar to yours. Although I view my generosity as a kind of twisted love language haha
Yes, I was raised food and home insecure in my childhood and was pretty poor in my twenties.
It's funny because I'm very generous with my friends, but won't give my family a dime because they usually just want my money and don't have time for me.
How the hell do these people know how much you make?
Fuck's sake, I don't make $450k but my neighbor doesn't ask me for shit because he has no idea what kind of money I make in the first place.
Either you live in the wrong neighborhood or maybe you need to keep your mouth shut? idfk lol
All my friends know how much I make, because I believe in pay transparency and all that. None of them ask me for money because they aren't assholes.
The more I make... Well nothing changes.
We have helped friends out on various occasions to varying degrees.
Nobody demands shit from us let alone asks. Ok well, asking to donate to a school thing maybe.
Idk what kind of weirdos surround you but that sucks. Do you live in a gold plated house in the suburbs or something? Or are the matching Bentleys in the garage tipping them off? :)
I had a Vietnamese coworker who was the first in his family to get an engineering degree as a second generation family member. They absolutely treated him like that. He was making $75k compared to his parent's combined $50k.
Oh hell yeah, this is what people don't know about generational wealth. If you don't have it, and somehow you make it, you will be subsidizing your poor family.
It's like the opposite of the magnetic property of capital. It's like, it's so hard to get out from under the boot of rents. You'd think someone earning 50k is about 1/2 as worse of as someone earning 100k, but they may as well be in different countries, their situations are so dissimilar.
Anyway, I'm not saying don't help out family. But I recognise how hard it can be.
That makes perfect sense. That scenario had not occurred to me so I appreciate your mentioning it!
They don't expect you to pay for everything. Everyone who knows people like that also knows that they'll easily get the money they need elsewhere.
It's honestly kinda sad that people like you, who seem to be generally generous and willing to help out, get driven towards this mindset.
I'm pretty sure more than half of the money I give to beggars occasionally will be spent on booze and drugs, but I don't really care. But when I do it I am the one who makes the decision to basically throw away my money. Plus if I lend someone money I consider it gone forever. But I never let someone guilt trip me into lending them money and I will aggressively call anyone out who tries. You seem to have a ton of really shitty people around you. Take care.
When I have had money, I made loans to people, with the knowledge that I might not get paid back, and if I wasn't, well, generally the amounts were little enough that that one time cost of letting someone test themselves on repayment wasn't that high. If it had been a constant thing, like you seem to be having, I don't know that I could have kept that up. At the very least, I've been cutting out a lot of people over time. Sucks that you've been having to deal with that.
Yeah I worked a call centre when I was renting a flat with five other folks in the kind of bohemian part of town, and having even a shitty full time job put me in the position of being "the guy with money" and yeah if I had it to give I'd give, or at least share my peanut butter.
Anyway that's all to say that what you're talking about is real: if you're in the money (even by a bit) and you start tracking everyone who owes you and ringing them up, you'll make yourself crazy.
My dad had some great advice on this: if you lend money to a friend, never expect it back. That is, don't give more than you can afford as a gift. If they get it back to you (which they usually will), well that's a nice surprise. And if they don't, well that's a small price to pay to learn where you stack up in someone else's priorities.
Your situation sounds exceptional though. I honestly have a hard time believing it. Are you just walking around with a diamond came and cash bulging out of your cargo pants? Wtf, why are so many people (acquaintances even??) hitting you up?
It sounds unreal.
In any case I bet you wouldn't expect an actual friend to keep a back and forth ledger of petty expenses with you.
Setup:
Result: Plenty of savings and investments
When people in a poor area who litterally dont have $50 in their bank account see you with 2 vehicles in the driveway (nothing fancy, just a car and truck) and do various projects to improve on your home, its not hard to put 2+2 together.
And when youve helped out friends in the past, they like to talk about how much you helped them.
And now youre a target.
You should never have spoken about your income or shown ostentatious purchases. Your problem is of own doing and is also related to the people you consort with.
Dude came in and showed off to us just like he did to the people around him. It's no wonder that he gets asked for money.
Whatβs a better way for a wealthy user here to vent so they donβt seem like theyβre bragging?
This I can agree with. Started when I found out a friends wife needed surgery (not life threatening, but would remove a cronic pain from her life and she could start working again, big QoL improvement). They couldnt afford the upfront payments, so they were going to not going to do it. So I forwarded him the money so she could have it done, hes been good about paying me back, it is very very slow, but hes working at it so no worries. Wife mentioned to her/our friends how I helped, and it just went from there.
I should have known better and just let her suffer.
For some people at least, they get into the habit of being poor and it's a hard habit to break. Just because you have a lot of money doesn't change your mindset.
Honestly I think paying for other people's stuff is the mentality of being poor. People without money help each other out because we know that our support network is other people, not our income.
Absolutely, they can't afford to insulate themselves behind a wall of money. And recognise community will there for them even when the paycheques dry up or the rents go up.
Money is a way to get someone else to do something for you that they wouldn't normally do for you, without really having to think of their needs or real reciprocation.
Got an uncle like that, my father had to go work around where he lives for two weeks so he stayed at his place and he sent him a bill for the difference in his electric bill for that period compared to usual. The man is a retired engineer that used to own his own firm that is a major player around here...
Your choice of friends is a continuous choice.
Thinking your friend group is an encapsulation of society as a whole is your ignorance on display.
I'm in an industry where pay bands are public and everyone knows who makes what.
The easiest way to find out who's a cheap fuck is to offer up and buy a round of coffee. Nine times out of ten, you'll get a coffee back next time they're swinging by. Happy days.
Even for the one in ten, it's not a deal-breaker. If my round comes round again, then yeah everyone gets offered. Nine times out of ten, you'll get one offered back.
If someone either doesn't collar me privately and say "hey thanks for the coffee but don't expect one back" or "sorry man, I don't feel comfortable doing rounds" then that's absolutely cool, I qint here to judge reasons - but if you take two coffees and offer fuck all, then that's a cheap and easy way of finding out who's not the giving kind. Even if someone was brave enough to say "dude I can't afford a round" then I'd happily say "pipe down, these are on me then".
I don't judge them. I just don't offer a coffee in future.
You need to stop buying 9 or 10 rounds of coffee. That's hundreds of dollars. Buy better beans once and make 10 pots instead. Or get an espresso machine if you need to. It's super easy, and more fun.
Honestly I'd love to have some logical, economic, or entertaining argument to debate you but I don't have one - you're right.
Problem is, we need to make 24/7 coverage of this task and honestly some people are just minging - we've come in to coffee pots with mould on the surface, and as much as I'm willing to become one with nature, that ain't tickling my fancy.
We are however lucky enough to have an indie coffee shop in our local town so at least our pennies are going to a decent pocket, and in fairness the owner is a lovely bloke so I'm quite happy to plan my mortgage payments around him.
Point taken though, I appreciate it π
There's a very simple solution to this problem, but you may not like it. Tell everyone the coffee pot needs to be washed every day and put up a sheet assigning the task to people. When that person washes the pot, they sign the sheet. If you have a camera in the break room, it's even more effective.
Then you can see on the sheet who was supposed to wash the pot but didn't (or did it poorly). It will not work with people who say it's "not their job", but at least the problem is clearly visible.
I started a new job in a secure building (I thought).
Coffee was crap so i brought in my Chemex pour over coffee maker. Made a pot and shared with my team often.
3 weeks in someone stole my Chemex off of my desk (I left it there).
No one offered anything to me even tho I've made them hundreds of dollars worth of coffee. And i didnt ask or hold it against them.
I was being nice. I didn't have an agenda or test people. I lost my chemex. Shit happens. I bought a new one and kept it in my desk. Still kept making coffee for the fellas.
You'll judge people for not wanting to drop a bunch of money on coffee for everyone? Just your own quiet expectations? Honestly kinda fucked up. You say you don't judge but you literally do
Baristas are making $20/hr now? Shit, I may have to go back to slinging lattes. I was making a little over minimum when I was working at coffee shops 20 years ago.
In some places $20 is just over minimum wage these days. But you couldn't afford to live in those places on $20/hr.
Wait what? $20 for minimum wage? In what universe? Am I being gaslit? What's going on here?
Seattle minimum wage is $19.97 and it goes up every year. Though it's $17.25 for small businesses if you get tips or they pay for medical benefits.
https://www.seattle.gov/laborstandards/ordinances/minimum-wage
I'm curious if businesses actually get health insurance for the employees for $275 a month (difference / hour with 40 hour work weeks) and how the quality of the package they get compared to what the employees could get themselves for $275/month.
I'm not familiar with the various healthcare types in America though.
I don't think they were saying it was a lot, just that they're not familiar with anywhere where $20/hr is anywhere approaching minimum wage. Brought to you by the federal $7.25 minimum.
$20/hr is 40k/year assuming 40 hour weeks, 50 weeks/year. Average rent is 1750/month which is $21,000/year. The rule of thumb for affordable rent is 30% of gross income, at $20/hr the average apartment is actually going to cost you over 50% of your gross income. It's hard out there for a pimp.
California. But only quick-service employees. It's fuckin' weird that it wasn't a global minimum wage. We have two now, basically, depending on the job.
In PA we've had two minimum wages for as long as I can remember, based on whether the position is traditionally a tipped one or not.
I live in a pretty LCOL area and I feel like 20 dollars an hour is the least you have to make to rent a studio apartment and live on your own. I make about that and barely afford rent on a townhouse with 2 other people. It feels like 20 dollars an hour, nowadays, is somewhat equivalent to 8 dollars an hour, twenty years ago. Its sad, but it doesn't feel like a good wage anymore.
In my part of the US $20/hr is enough to rent a one bedroom apartment and subsist on lentils
Denver has a minimum wage of $15/hr now, and you're def not living comfortably on that.
$450k is pretty far from an average salary for a software engineer, too.
FAANG + Bay Area + L5 and up is likely to get you there.
That's a very small portion of software engineers, but under these conditions it's no longer exceptional.
what exactly are they coding to get paid that much?
asking for a friend for me. im asking for me.
They probably only code a little bit. They review and guide at that point. Essentially leading the team's coding efforts, ensuring the product is of quality.
Full stack, split discipline, niche solution architects, specialty languages (old, science), principals, founders. It's the minority
this is not as specific as i expected... what sets these apart and what are they working on?
I'm high end SRE, but work isn't my pursuit in life so I'm still on the support teams, collecting a decent paycheck.
Likely very little, they're paid for knowledge of their codebase and higher level stuff. It's cheaper to then pay someone lower level to do the grunt work.
The startup game is basically dead for getting rich. First to be employed is just first to get screwed over. Either found a startup yourself or aim for big tech imo, but that's also pretty hard given current market conditions. Get ready to surf the next ZIRP-wave though!
Yeah normal companies don't pay anything like that in Colorado (or if they do wtf am I still doing in cybersec lol). Cali, FAANG for sure.
It's amazing how much you can spend on small things when you don't make enough to afford rent so you don't have rent to pay.
I'm not sure what you mean by this? Are you implying they live with their parents or couch surf or something?
I mean, when i was broke money questions were a lot simpler because it was never "do I pick food, electricity or rent?", it was "once I pay rent, do I eat ramen in the dark or do I go to bed hungry in the dark?"
I have a friend like that. He'll invite me out for a coffee date "my treat" he says, then at the end when I thank him for the treat he'll be like "no problem, now I only owe you 5.35." He'll pull the same kind of thing when I owe him.
It's like, bud, you think I'm keeping track of these pennies?? We've known each other before we had body hair. I love this man, he's my best friend, and he's got this involuntary ledger going rofl.
Some people just can't switch it off. It's exhausting. Just let it flow back and forth, you know?
A bit silly comparing hourly wage to yearly wage. The barista just needs to work 22500 hours a year to earn the same... that's not even three times the amount of hours in a year.
Nothing wrong with keeping an eye on your spendings, but stinginess is a trait of character I absolutely despise. And I say that as someone who's had little money for most of their adult life.
