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Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

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Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#91

Post by Vaslo »

allenu wrote: post #9

I'm not a particularly outdoorsy person, but being a frugal person, I have noticed that a lot of outdoors activities really do "require" an investment. Equipment can be expensive, as can ski passes or trips. Once you hang out in those circles (as the article states), you don't want to have cheap gear. It's as with anything, I suppose, but with gear, there's always more and better things, which never interested me. I…

I feel like sports are like this too. I see friends spending thousands of dollars on going to sporting events, sports paraphernalia, etc. Just seems like so much when you can watch free at home. I know I know, it’s the experience - but just hard to understand.

I guess they probably look at me spending hundreds on pc stuff and think the same thing.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#92

Post by emerged »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #80
allenu wrote: post #9

I'm not a particularly outdoorsy person, but being a frugal person, I have noticed that a lot of outdoors activities really do "require" an investment. Equipment can be expensive, as can ski passes or trips. Once you hang out in those circles (as the article states), you don't want to have cheap gear. It's as with anything, I suppose, but with gear, there's always more and better things, which never interested me. I…

Particularly with cycling, I always wondered why people would say justify their love of cycling with statements including fitness, self challenge, enjoying the outdoors. I haven't heard any say they wanted to be regional champion. If you compete with yourself, then changing your gear makes it hard to measure if you are getting better. Sometimes I think we compete with others when we don't need to.

Fitness / goal oriented cyclists have objective means to measure progress, for example pedals or cranks which measure your actual power output. This combined with your body weight is a ubiquitous measure of progress.

More expensive bikes are more comfortable and may boost your speed a bit depending on circumstance. To assume that people who decide to invest a bit in a healthy, fun activity are ignorant of such basic metrics seems pretty cynical.

I would urge you to dig deeper because there is an enormous amount of value in this type of investment.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#93

Post by TameAntelope »

munk-a wrote: post #41
TameAntelope wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it. You usually aren’t born needing to pay $100, and having $80, there are probably decisions you make that put you more or less likely to be in that situation, some obvious, some not. Sometimes you do get shit luck, but I think there are always ways to mitigate the negative consequences of bad luck, and maximize the consequences of good luck. We have a lot of control…

You are born (possibly) needing a car to commute to work, and needing a place to live, and needing to eat - and those costs have been going up. It is legitimately difficult and incredibly stressful to work in the service industry in San Fran unless you've lucked into being able to live in the downtown on the cheap. The suburbs that are affordable are hours away by car and more by public transit.

> in San Fran

That’s a choice, and exactly what I’m talking about. Everything is a trade-off and while you can’t control everything, you can control a lot of things.

One example I like to think of in this situation is a person I knew from my childhood, who struggled. If you asked him, he'd tell you how hard it is out there, and how many times life had giving him the short end of the stick. In many ways, he was right. However, when you start looking at his choices, you begin to see a pattern.

He had a hard time living on his own, and had to move back into his mom's house at one point. If you asked him, it'd be due to a roommate situation that fell through, sticking him with a lease on a 2BR apartment that bled him dry. But if you dug in, you'd find out he signed that lease after his potential roommate backed out, and he never tried to fill the second bedroom. He was paying for a 2BR on near-minimum wage salary. He could not afford this, he should have never made this decision, and yet if you ask him, it's the result of the bad hand he got dealt due to the roommate.

Was it tough, having a roommate back out? Yes. Did he need to sign that 2BR lease anyway? No. Did he need to leave the second BR empty for the duration of the lease? No.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#94

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

monetus wrote: post #58
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that that's a major point. Still, I'm consistently utterly surprised by friends/family/colleagues with similar income but a very different predicament. I was raised on welfare myself and started out my early twenties with minimum wage jobs including factory work. Yet I always had savings, the idea that I couldn't cover a $1000 emergency would be insane to me, especially structurally. Did that mean I had to li…

I think most people don't have anything resembling stability in their minds, and spend an inordinate amount of time in a "flight or fight" mood with heightened anxiety. Median household income is 64k - this isn't a per person number and responsibilty, the rat race, it compels spending. Having the willpower to stabilize your life can be difficult, when you need stability to find willpower.

> I think most people don't have anything resembling stability in their minds, and spend an inordinate amount of time in a "flight or fight" mood with heightened anxiety.

I suspect this becomes increasingly likely as one progresses.

I have become much better at important things. However, anxiety has increased - largely because I have shifted from blind confidence to educated awareness.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#95

Post by cletus »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #66
cletus wrote: post #12

I'm a firm believer that everyone should have a skill they can use to support themselves. It doesn't really matter what that is as long as you can't be replaced easily by unskilled labour. So take the author. She wants to be a ski bum while she's young. I respect that, actually. So the question such people should be asking is: what skill could I gain that is compatible with that? Example: being a qualified paramedic/…

> The people people live one paycheck away from being destitute varies ... generally because they've taken on long term expenses they can barely afford. Bare-minimun necessary expenses like a place to live, a way to get to work, sensible insurance, and the miscellaneous expenses of life like groceries and clothing approach or exceed minimum wage in many areas. I'd argue that the power dynamics of the employment marke…

While I grant you minimum wage isn't livable almost anywhere in the US (in case that was your point), that's not really what I was talking about.

So many people living paycheck-to-paycheck are living well beyond the minimum. Multiple cars, huge house, private schools, college savings plans, vacation homes, expensive hobbies and so on.

Part of this trap is people convincing themselves they need all these things.

In my experience, this often springs from their own childhoods, remembering what they didn't have and over-correcting for that by making sure their kids do not "go without". In doing so, they often rob themselves and their kids of quality time together, which (IMHO) trumps a lot of material things.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#96

Post by boring_twenties »

deregulateMed wrote: post #79
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #4

I am bad with money. I’m also not abnormal. A 2017 survey by CareerBuilder found that 78 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, while a 2019 survey by Bankrate found that 60 percent of us couldn’t cover a $1,000 emergency. For most in this predicament, it has nothing to do with being bad with money. It has everything to do with their income being 80% of their essential bills.

80% of their Essential bills leaves a lot to be invested or saved. I'd disagree, it's money management at that point. I'm more concerned about those who are unprofitable every paycheck and growing debt, no way to cut expenses further. Probably due to high COL and lack of education, but I can't blame someone for living where they have family .

I think you may have misread the comment you're responding to. They're saying income is 80% of expenses, not the other way around. In other words, expenses are 125% of income, leaving a negative number to be invested or saved.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#97

Post by corndoge »

exporectomy wrote: post #88
mcavoybn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was waiting for the point in this article where it became about "outdoorsy types" and not the author but it never happened. I'd be embarrassed too, mismanaging money and relying on my parents support at 34 years old. I guess the author was just so embarrassed that she published this article about it. Great job with the antagonizing, clickbait title though. I'm guessing "My Tone-deaf Autobiography about How Irr…

Why are people critical of being supported by your parents in your 30's? Because that's not "normal" or "proper" or unfair on those who don't have that support? Or for a real reason that's bad according to some fundamental moral standard? We're all supported by our parents to some extent. Why is it so wrong for late-support outliers to exist? That sounds like being a teenager when everyone is trying to make it look l…

It's more that it's just ridiculous to generalize this clearly fortunate situation to "outdoorsy types" instead of "the author"

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#98

Post by Vaslo »

monoideism wrote: post #40
kuhzaam wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people adopt

I had my first kid at age 34, and part of my deeply regrets not going sooner (wife is much younger). I had some serious health issues by 45, which impeded by ability to raise my kids the way I wanted. Adopting in 40s? Will the parent even still be alive when the kid graduates college? With good luck, genes, and good diet/exercise, yes. Otherwise, likely not.

They often don’t even let you adopt at that age. I knew some 40+ yo families that adopted overseas due to age restrictions. One family adopted from China and one from Eastern Europe.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#99

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #23
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #4

I am bad with money. I’m also not abnormal. A 2017 survey by CareerBuilder found that 78 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, while a 2019 survey by Bankrate found that 60 percent of us couldn’t cover a $1,000 emergency. For most in this predicament, it has nothing to do with being bad with money. It has everything to do with their income being 80% of their essential bills.

I agree that that's a major point. Still, I'm consistently utterly surprised by friends/family/colleagues with similar income but a very different predicament. I was raised on welfare myself and started out my early twenties with minimum wage jobs including factory work. Yet I always had savings, the idea that I couldn't cover a $1000 emergency would be insane to me, especially structurally. Did that mean I had to li…

> I mean let's be frank, median household income is $64k in the US. It's about the richest in the world [...]

This is a near meaningless way to compare things. I am not sure we even have an appropriate, widely used and widely computed/measured metric for this.

What matters is not the size of the median household income, but the ratio of this income to likely household expense.

If you need to put far more of your income into your self-managed retirement account(s), or to pay for healthcare that isn't covered by a national insurance scheme, or to pay for membership at a recreational facility that might otherwise have been free after local taxes, or to cover current, future or past educational costs that would be an order or magnitude or more less in another locale, or to cover day care that might have been provided by your government, your effective income is not well measured by its absolute magnitude.

Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money

#100

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

saalweachter wrote: post #72
wwweston wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This insight is hard to beat for explaining power. I've found it pretty easy to save money almost on accident with a six figure income, even without keeping too close an eye on expenditures. Helps if you skip buying the luxury auto, don't pick the most expensive living quarters you can, keep eating out under $10-15/day, and if you can be lucky+conscientious enough not to have catastrophic healthcare expenses, but you…

> And saving for that $1000 emergency will still be slow. And worse, when you inevitably need to tap it, it will be equally slow to refill.

... and worse still, probably not enough.
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