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I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
41–50 of 135 posts
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#42It's certainly an interesting attitude. But what if he had decided to change the banner, and give the money away to a charity instead? Money is a tool you can use for good. If you are blessed with the kind of extra money he was suddenly given, you can use it to do good with. Obviously it's all his choice, but making a big show of "freedom of speech" feels a little disingenuous. No government is trying to censor him;…
> making a big show of "freedom of speech" feels a little disingenuous
Maybe not disingenuous (which implies some degree of pretense), but certainly inaccurate. People like to use the phrase "freedom of speech" because it has propaganda value in most Western cultures. To paraphrase one legal scholar, the first lawyer to yell "freedom of speech!" in a crowded courtroom wins.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your simile doesn't work. One needs a driver's license to drive. One does not need a credit card to make purchases. And getting card actually can be a bad financial decision as too many cards can negatively affect a credit score.
One does not need a drivers license to drive. One merely needs a vehicle. The fact that not having a credit card damages your credit score should be enough to make even semi-intelligent people realize that credit score is not a fair and equitable measure of one's ability to pay on time.
Who cares if it's fair if that's what's used? Sounds like you're a bit hung up on how things should be rather than how things are.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#44Awesome article. Kudos for sticking to your guns, and I hope your revenues skyrocket, even though credit cards are the worst financial decision anyone could ever make. I'd rather YOU make money on their bad decisions than Chase or Citi.
Credit cards are amazing. I pay my balance in full every month and American Express pays me money. It's bloody fantastic.
Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention that the law is on my side with charge backs and I'm not liable for fraud.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#45Since when did $4,000 a month become "FU Money." Is that serious? If you make $4K a month after taxes, I'd say you have a pretty small salary to just be honest with you. The article, I suppose, was about more than this but much of it spent so much time talking about how much money this is. I don't want any of the younger HNers around here to get the wrong idea, as I didn't really know when I was younger, this is not,…
It's highly dependent on local costs of living. And if it doesn't require full-time maintenance, allowing one to work (or not) on whatever one chooses while still collecting a comfortable income, that is absolutely FU money.
The point of his blog is to demonstrate how to make the realm of FU money easier to achieve. His major claim is that, since he owns his house and has chosen a relatively low-cost region to live in, his yearly expenses for his entire family are around $27,000. So agreed, for him $4k/month of free money would definitely qualify.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#46Awesome article. Kudos for sticking to your guns, and I hope your revenues skyrocket, even though credit cards are the worst financial decision anyone could ever make. I'd rather YOU make money on their bad decisions than Chase or Citi.
Credit cards are amazing. I pay my balance in full every month and American Express pays me money. It's bloody fantastic. Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention that the law is on my side with charge backs and I'm not liable for fraud.
Yes, and AMEX is just creating money out of thin air in order to pay it to you? No, they just charge the merchant 5% of the transaction, one of the highest in the industry. Guess who raises their prices by 5% everywhere, before you pay by AMEX?
The real problem is that everyone pays this price, and it leads to price inflation even if you pay cash (yes, dealing with cash transactions has a price for the merchant as well, but that one's already built into their costs). The laws should be changed so that merchants are allowed to charge more for CC transactions. I don't understand why the government has allowed the CC industry to forbid that (seems to work for gas stations).
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#47Site seems to be really slow, here is the cached version: http://tinyurl.com/c94nnmy Long url: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&biw=1...
Offtopic: What's the point of using tinyurl outside of twitter? I would understand if you had your own vanity shortener (it would be obnoxius, but at least it would make some kind of sense).
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#48Not being familiar with this guy's work, what's so honest about getting in bed with credit card companies and feeding them more signups? Selling lead generation for credit cards seems a little dishonest to begin with.
It's a blog about how to make (and save) money. I think he was picking out cards that offered $100 to sign up, and were free for the first year kinda thing. With the expectation that the type of people that read his blog would game that to their advantage. Perfectly honest in my view.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#49Well, I am happy that $4000 is so inconsequential to Mr. Money Mustache that he can just say 'fuck you' to it. Not everyone is so lucky. I am sure there are plenty of families or individuals who would sacrificed their 'integrity' or 'freedom of speech' on their blog for that kind money to feed their families, pay for their home or get a medical procedure done. It doesn't sound like any of these issues are a concern to him as he can just whimsically reject that kind of money.
Also, is this really an issue of freedom of speech? Seems a little melodramatic to me.
Re: I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Credit cards are amazing. I pay my balance in full every month and American Express pays me money. It's bloody fantastic. Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention that the law is on my side with charge backs and I'm not liable for fraud.
Yes, and AMEX is just creating money out of thin air in order to pay it to you? No, they just charge the merchant 5% of the transaction, one of the highest in the industry. Guess who raises their prices by 5% everywhere, before you pay by AMEX? The real problem is that everyone pays this price, and it leads to price inflation even if you pay cash (yes, dealing with cash transactions has a price for the merchant as we…
It's a tragedy of the commons no doubt, but I'll be dammed if I'm gonna pay the full 5% increase by paying cash, instead of using my card, getting 1% back, and only paying the 4% increase. C'est la vie.