/r/FluentInFinanance is becoming one of my favorite subs. The point, apparently is to share stock tips and tricks but in reality, it's a dumping ground of epic xitter clapbacks and Funko Pop collector seethe. A breeding ground of peakpoors.

A new New Pill for you to drop…

Casey, 27, Beaver OK

Career:

• Works at a grocery store

  • $20.75 an hour. 40-43

  • Around $43000 yearly

• Doordash/Walmart Spark on the side

  • Is setting some money aside

  • around $500 a week

  • 30-40 hours a week

• Dad lives with him, on SSI, the father pays utilities

• Does not speak with dad much, "not a great relationship"

• "I'm content working for the store forever"

Financials:

• Pulled some credit timestamp

  • $2000

  • $400

• "I don't keep track of much other than debt payments"

• "I just keep track of the minimums nothing else"

• Ex-girlfriend stories

  • Section 1 timestamp

    • Threatened self-harm frequently

    • "I kind of played into it for a while maxed out 4 or 5 cards, took out loans to pay them off and then built them back up again"

    • Married 6 months after meeting, separated in April 2022

    • Got everything back in the divorce

    • Has not sold the car he bought her yet

  • Section 2 timestamp

    • No kids - "We have to do things to make kids that never happened"

  • Section 3 timestamp

    • Value of things from wife

      • iPhone, Apple Watch, Car, main things. Charger is the only thing he still has.

• Self-rated 0/10

• Credit Card 1 (Capital One) ($302/$300) timestamp

  • Spent 55 on it

  • Paid 25 minimum onto it

  • $6.86 interest accrued

  • Thought he would pay it off last month but just "didn't get to that" because he didn't have money left over?

  • Transactions include 2 car washes

• Credit Card 2 (Destiny) ($646) timestamp

  • Charges a monthly fee $12.50

  • Did not realize he could close a card with a balance on it

  • $45 minimum payment

  • $19.64 interest accrued

  • 35.9% interest rate

  • Spent a year after the divorce not caring

    • Running cards up

    • Affirming everything

    • Lots of energy drinks at convenience stores

• Credit Card 3 (Milestone) ($646) timestamp

  • 35.9% interest rate

  • 45 minimum payment

  • $22 monthly fee

• OneMaiden Financial ($14107, actually $7000 but includes interest) timestamp

  • Loan to pay off another loan that had a 108% loan and the line of credit he pulled $400?

  • 31.5%

  • "pre-computed loan"

  • Brand new, only made 1 payment

• Upstart timestamp

  • From paying off cards with his ex, 2021

  • 27% interest

  • Didn't catch a balance or payment on this one

• Upstart ($914) timestamp

  • 31.2% interest

  • $46 minimum payment

• Car Loan (Carvana) timestamp

  • 2019 Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid

  • Got it because it was available with no down-payments

  • Got this in January

  • 72 month term

  • 22% interest rate, he's not sure

• Credit Card 4 (First National) (568/600) timestamp

  • $30 minimum payment

  • 30% interest rate

• Credit Card 5 (Credit One) ($814/$800) timestamp

  • $70 minimum payment

  • Missed a payment twice on this one

  • Fell asleep and missed 5pm payment deadline?

  • $16 interest accrued

  • $75 fees

  • Annual fee on this one

• Loan (19'000) (Dodge Charger) timestamp

  • $513 minimum payment

  • His ex cajoled him into getting this one

  • Host rants about Chargers

  • Broken down in his driveway

  • Oil filter assembly on top of the assembly broke

    • he tried fixing it himself and broke more things

• Credit Card 6 ($510) timestamp

  • $46 minimum

  • $12.85 interest

  • 25 fees (missed payment)

  • 30% interest

• Car (2016 Hyundai Sonata) timestamp

  • 5 year loan

  • got in 2018

  • Didn't catch a number on this

  • refinanced from 19% to 9.6%, "that's one of the best [rates] I've got"

  • Broken down, car port got a wall sitting on it? He shows a picture

  • Mystery engine issues

  • Worth maybe 2'000

• Home ($47'000) timestamp

  • Escrow Balance $1'307

  • 4.5% interest rate

  • "Fixer upper but quite a lot of land to it"

  • Thinks it's worth 100'000

• Affirm (450)

• Spending timestamp

  • Tons of fast food and convenience store purchases

• Investing timestamp

  • $4'700 in an IRA

Debts:

• $113'000 total debt

Pie Chart of current spending/debts timestamp

Another more pathetic view

https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1d1ws7p/wa_spent_5b_over_past_decade_on_homelessness/

B-word dressed like a chinese menu

Someone wanna translate?

Be honest would you?

bottom text

!nooticers

More seethe:

https://old.reddit.com/r/FluentInFinance/comments/1ci4fw0/welcome_to_the_whitecollar_recession/

https://old.reddit.com/r/business/comments/1ci4g1k/welcome_to_the_whitecollar_recession/

https://old.reddit.com/r/NorthCarolina/comments/1cthg2d/are_any_fellow_whitecollar_graduates_in_this/

Over the past year or so, pretty much everyone who's looked for a job has told me the same thing: The job market is brutal right now. They've applied to dozens if not hundreds of openings, only to get one or two callbacks. No one's hiring, they tell me. I've never seen it this bad.

Listening to them, you'd think we were in the middle of a recession. But the confusing thing is we're nowhere close to one. Unemployment is near a five-decade low. The economy is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. Wages are growing faster than inflation. By all the standard measures, the job market is doing just fine. So why am I hearing such a different story from people on the ground?

The dissonance finally started to make sense to me when Vanguard, the investment-management company, released its latest report on hiring. By looking at the enrollment and contribution rates of its 401(k) retirement plans, Vanguard is able to calculate a national hiring rate broken down by income level. And what the numbers show is a two-tier job market --- one divided between a blue-collar boom and a white-collar recession.

Among Vanguard's lowest earners --- those who make less than $55,000 --- the hiring rate has held up well. At 1.5%, it's still above pre-pandemic levels. But among those who make more than $96,000? It's pretty depressing. Hiring has slowed to a dismal 0.5%, less than half the peak it reached in mid-2022. Excluding the dip in the early months of the pandemic, that's the worst it's been since 2014. If you make a six-figure salary, it really is a bad time to be looking for a job.

The question here is why. Why are companies hiring so few white-collar workers right now? Several possible explanations come to mind. It might be that fewer people in corporate jobs are quitting right now, which would mean companies have fewer openings they need to fill. It might be that the industries that are struggling the most --- tech and finance --- are the ones that employ a lot of high-earning professionals. Or it might be that CEOs are making good on their threats to cut back on what they see as corporate bloat --- what Mark Zuckerberg has called "managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work."

But there could be a bigger, more worrisome explanation for the downturn in white-collar hiring. Maybe companies are anticipating tough times ahead and trimming their budgets accordingly. "If you need to pull back on costs," says Fiona Greig, the global head of investor research and policy at Vanguard, "pulling back on expensive workers will reduce costs to a greater extent than pulling back on your lower-income workers." Translation: The more you earn when budgets are tight, the less an employer wants to hire you.

Now, you could argue that a slowdown in white-collar hiring doesn't really matter in the current economy, even for white-collar workers. Sure, Vanguard's data show that things are tough for professionals who are looking for a job. But there aren't that many people who actually need a new job right now: The unemployment rate for people with a college degree is 2.1%, and the national layoff rate is below what it was pre-pandemic. When the vast majority of professionals already have a job --- and are able to keep their jobs --- maybe it's OK that companies aren't hiring.

But that argument doesn't take into account one important factor: What if the job you have is one you hate? I have several friends who are unhappy in their current jobs, but they can't quit because no one is hiring. Some observers have called this combination of lower hiring and less quitting "the Big Stay," suggesting a kind of equilibrium after the chaos of the Great Resignation. But my colleague Emily Stewart has a better name for it: the "trapped in place" economy. I think professionals feel this trapped-in-placeness particularly acutely. After all, it wasn't that long ago that they were enjoying a "take this job and shove it" swagger, which was fun to watch. During the Great Resignation, they knew it'd be easy to find a new job, which meant it'd be easy to walk away from their current one. Even if they weren't planning to leave, the job market gave them a sense of freedom --- the feeling that they no longer had to put up with a bad boss, or a brutal workload, or an arbitrary return-to-office mandate.

This, I think, is what explains what people are calling the "vibecession": the weird state of feeling like we're in a recession even though all the standard metrics show we're not. What we're experiencing is actually a slowdown in *white-collar *hiring --- and white-collar professionals (me and my angsty friends) are the people who shape the public discourse about the economy. "People feel that things are moving in the wrong direction," says Guy Berger, the director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, which analyzes the labor market.

And for the most elite professionals, things could get worse before they get better. Berger tells me he doesn't expect a full-on recession anytime soon. But he's keeping an eye on the unemployment rate for people with advanced degrees. Pretty much everyone else is doing OK, job-wise --- but there's been a slight uptick for all the smarty-pants with master's degrees and doctorates. They aren't exactly struggling right now. "We're still talking about the people that have the highest pay in the job market and the lowest unemployment rate," Berger says. But for them, hiring is headed in the wrong direction. And as AI cowtools increasingly encroach on professionals' tasks --- writing, coding, coordination, analysis --- we'll likely see a lot more weakness at the higher end of the income scale than at the lower end.

This isn't the story we're used to hearing about employment. For decades the economy has been leaving workers with lower incomes and less education behind while professionals have reaped all the gains. But now those roles are reversed, and it's the high earners who are taking the hit. No wonder everyone is confused about how the economy is doing. "We're having some trouble collectively digesting that," Berger says. And the longer the white-collar hiring lull continues, he warns, the more the resentment will build.

"Even if there's no big surge in layoffs, people are just going to get grumpier and more dissatisfied," Berger says. "If it continues for three or four more years, it's going to cause a lot of discontent and low morale in corporate America."

Madison, 24, Austin TX

Personal Life/Career:

• Fashion/lifestyle brand, part of "philanthropy" team

  • "Philanthropy Specialist" - "Corporate CRS"

  • 57'000

  • Thinks her income level is pretty okay

  • "I have a little debt but it's fine it's not that deep, to me"

• "Why did you come on the show?" timestamp

  • She read comments saying they wanted someone normal and she decided she could be that person

  • "I feel like I'm one of the best you've had on the show"

• "What are you looking to get out of the conversation" timestamp

  • Going on a few trips in the future, wants advice on budgeting around those and her other debts

• Doing some sidegigs? Never actually explained so I don't think she's actually started any

Financials

• 68'183 total debt

• "Why do you have all this debt?" timestamp

  • College expenses

• Self-scores a 7/10

• Credit Card 1 (Discover) ($3'600) timestamp

  • $99 minimum payment

  • $78 interest accrued, she didn't know that this was a thing

  • She's been throwing just a little above her minimum payment at all her debts?

  • Tries to explain how interest works to her with a graph timestamp

  • College card, had it paid off last year, then racked up a balance again "shopping issue"

• Credit Card 2 (Amco) (6'486) timestamp

  • 2500 credit remaining

  • 233 minimum payment

  • Last payment was less than her minimum? "Oh, I might have forgot about that"

  • How'd that get up to nearly 7'000 dollars? timestamp

    • Thinks she balance transferred it from the Discover card?

    • Mostly spendthrift behaviors

    • How much does she think she spends in a month total? timestamp

      • Thinks around 2'000 spent out a month total - actually it was $8'742

• Credit Card 3 (Care Credit) (1'647) timestamp

  • "I've almost paid it off though I feel like timestamp

  • Was 2600 last year

  • "I think that's really good"

  • Brings up dying dog spending to deflect

• Medical bill $124

  • Forgot to pay it after they sent her the bill in the mail

• He forgets her age and calls her 26 while she's defending calling herself above average timestamp

• Car (2023 Rav4) () timestamp

  • 9% rate

  • Didn't catch a total or a minimum payment for this but it started $40'000

    • Around a 700 minimum payment?

  • August 2023

  • Used to have a Buick Encore, got into a wreck so she needed a new car

    • Had gap insurance

  • She "wanted a new one"

  • "Mental math is not my strongest"

  • $193 insurance payment

• Student Loans timestamp

  • Studied Marketing at Texas A&M

  • Most around 4.5%

  • "I haven't paid really any of it, I think I've kind just paid 30 bucks maybe 60 bucks on two of them"

  • Doesn't think she's on deferment, she just isn't paying them

  • 10 year repayment plan

    • Actually she might be on income driven repayment

  • $50 minimum payment? She's past due

  • Still hoping Biden forgives it

  • Pushback on why she deserves debt forgiveness timestamp

    • Extremely wishful thinking

    • Dreams of marrying into wealth

    • Got a D in finance, Barely passed Accounting

• Personal Loan $183 timestamp

  • Took this out "a really long time ago"

    • July 2022

  • Claims not to remember what it was for

• 545 credit score

• Spending timestamp

  • lots of shopping

  • lots of eating out

  • Few Venmos out, "a lot of bacholorette trips"

  • Amazon

  • Mother and brother are broke she zelles them sometimes and they zelle her back?

  • Screen recording of her Amazon purchases timestamp

  • Venmo Transactions timestamp

• Travel plans timestamp

  • Going to Europe

  • To see Taylor Swift in London

  • around $800 on just the plane ticket

  • "Already paid for the concert so that's kinda free in my head"

• Spending Chart timestamp

  • 6% of spending went to debt

  • 21% to medical, she's not sure what this is

    • $1725 to an eye doctor timestamp

  • Mysterious 1600 expense timestamp

• Budget Chart timestamp

  • 887 rent

  • 1071 minimum payments

• Refuses to sell the car because she likes it timestamp

• "Hammer financial score, frick her"

Have to steal @Gibberish thunder here, because this video is absolutely nuts.

• Woman, by her behavior and demeanour, is LITERALLY r-slurred

• Blamed a lot of her spending on ADHD, unmedicated at time of video

• Makes $25k a year at Tesla

• 25% or her money goes to 401k match and Tesla stock buys (to her credit she is actually trying to somewhat pay for retirement and her children's future through this.)

• 3 kids at 24, all with same dude, one kid is 2 and other is a set of twins.

• Got $10k in child tax credits, used $4k to pay some debt to baby daddy's mom and blew the rest on a vacation to Dallas and a Post Malone concert. Why? "I never get to do anything and it was fun." !foidmoment

• $1600 spent at Target.

• Second children were "planned" even though they were/are in debt and live with baby daddy's parents. Used to live with her parents until they divorced and Dad kicked them out.

• Tons of shit in collections.

• Didn't work for awhile after twins.

• Baby daddy "hurt his hand" and hasn't been working, just started a job at Papa John's and makes $380 a week.

• Dude has spent hundreds of dollars on vapes, PSN purchases, and onlyfans during his time off . !moidmoment

• Buys tons of snacks at work vending machines.

• Has a scion, underwater on it of course, hasn't been using it for the past seven months because the key fob got run over .

• Instead of getting that replaced, she went and got a Mazda CX9 with an insane payment of $600+ a month for 72 months. Reasoning being she need more room for the kids and their car seats.

• Caleb tries to talk some sense into her, says she could have gotten a 3 kid car seat setup instead of that. Caleb even offers to buy her one near the end.

• Near the end of the video, she lets it slip that CarMax has a 30 day return policy. Caleb is, of course, overjoyed, tells her to return it immediately, and doesn't take that debt into account for her budget.

- A video edited in shows that she did not, in fact, return the car, supposedly because everyone around "forced her not to."

• Caleb says he will give her $250 to get the Scion checked out, has to explain to her she needs to get it towed or get a locksmith to make her a key to get it to the mechanic to get it looked at.

• Caleb's budget for her leaves her with $12 in the bank at the end of the month.

I went over to the Caleb Hammer subreddit to check out what they were saying about her, and she shows up in the comments:

Hey guys, this is me! Thank you for all the tough love comments. I honestly think they'll help. I just wanted to address some of the more common things people are pointing out/getting wrong. 1) The whole car situation didn't just happen because the key broke. I did need a bigger vehicle since all 3 car seats wouldn't fit into my scion. Could I have gotten a cheaper car? Yes. 2) I looked dead inside because that's how I feel most days 😂 I wake up at 3 am every morning M-F to get ready for work, get home at about 4 pm and then stay up until 10-11 pm looking after my kids. 3 under 3 is tough, especially with the hours that I have. 3) $6000 was spent but it wasn't entirely on the trip. A lot of the spending I did at target was stuff for my kids, granted that it wasn't stuff they necessarily needed. The only thing I really did for myself was going to the concert. I took the kids to the aquarium, got an air bnb with a pool so they could swim, took them to a Mickey Mouse event (it's my 2 yr olds favorite character) 4) I know I seriously need some discipline. I wasn't trying to use the adhd as an excuse, I just wanted to highlight why it was so difficult for me to control my impulses. I have set up an appointment to be seen by a professional so I can get the help I need. 5) I know I'm a mouth breather 😭 it's very hard for me to feel like I'm getting enough oxygen by breathing only through my nose. I've just always been that way. I tried getting braces but they said my overbite can only be fixed via surgery and I didn't want that. 6) I'm not on food stamps, wic, Medicaid, etc…my 2 youngest kids are on Medicaid but my oldest is on my health insurance I get at work. I'm not using any government programs

And I just want to end this by saying I extremely care about my kids. I may not be the most financially responsible and that is something I'm trying to work on. My son is speech delayed and has been put into speech therapy. He's being seen by the school district for special education services and I'm very much involved in everything going on with him. I'm the one that schedules all doctor appointments for my kids, I'm the one that plans the meals, plans their activities… I'm the default parent. I just wanted a little break from reality but I now realize I went overboard and I honest to god do regret taking the trip. Only thing I can do now is get that second job and just hustle until I clear my debt.

A further perusal of her history shows her boyfriend and her fight a lot, she wanted to leave him, he cheated on her, the usual.

So how's it feel folks? While you were probably doing the right/white thing, Idiocracy was happening right under your nose. At least we'll have at least one new friend here for the 20th birthgay

Oklahoma = poor dont overthink it

I hope Kyle finds anything at all

Jaundic eyes

let's do it!

Meth filter

Step one is don't be single fatty

Celibacy

Facebook is so darn good

Wyatt, 23, Kansas City Missouri

Career:

• "So I do Private Security, basically people pay me to fight for 'em" timestamp

• "I just fight hobos or I just watch people and call the cops"

• 40 to 45 hours a week depending, $20.60 an hour

  • "So I make about 70 to 80 thousand a year" timestamp

    • VA bucks from a medical thing - $3'758 a month

    • Doesn't want to give deets on what these are

• Works overnights

• Served in the military timestamp

• Job deets timestamp

  • Bring your own equipment policies?

  • Didn't know what the median income was, thought he was making big bucks

Financials/Personal Life

• Does not like to cook, something about his schedule

  • Why does he not just wake up and get groceries timestamp

    • "I don't really want to do it, sleep's important to me. I'd rather sleep."

• Self-scored 7/10 financial score

• Owns a house and car

  • VA home loan thing

• So how'd you get into so much debt in the first place timestamp

  • Got addicted to strippers, was blowing 80%-90% of his income on them while enlisted?

    • Refuses to admit if he had s*x with them doesn't want to catch a felony

    • Claims he stopped 3 or 4 years ago. Story time on why - timestamp

      • He lost his military id and "starved for 2 weeks" because he'd blown all his money on strippers and had none

  • Caleb claims not to be a virgin

  • Way easier to pay for fake attention than to approach real women

  • Went into debt "Yeah so I had a credit card"

    • $8'000

  • Paid off this stripper debt at some point

• Credit Card 1 (Navy Federal) ($7'092/$7'500) timestamp

  • $380 new purchases last month

  • $105 interest

  • 175 minimum payment

  • "So I don't really know what I purchase on that"

  • Thinking about leveraging on his home to pay off credit card debts?

  • "So usually I take the approach of stockpiling my cash, I really don't want to pay off my debts"

    • Tries to explain why he's spending so much timestamp

  • He's paypigging to twitchs timestamp

    • $120 in Twitch subs

    • $250 in Twitch donos

    • Claims to be a Sigma Male because he can just go to a strip club

    • "Three separate instances" "Crashes a streamer's UI with memberships"

      • Total $1500

      • Host attempts to understand what he is talking about timestamp

    • Meant to do this out of his checking account?

• Credit Card 2 (Amazon Chase) (3'756) timestamp

  • Computer parts, books,

  • "6600 Motherboard", some RAM,

    • Thinks he could get $800 for selling components

  • $16.11 new purchases

  • 112 paid off

  • 79.10 interest accrued

  • 116 minimum payments

• Car timestamp

  • 2018 Dodge Durango

  • $33'677 balance

  • 11% interest rate

  • $884 minimum payment

  • car is worth maybe 14'000

  • Purchased a BRZ, then wrecked it while closing the house and decided to purchase the house instead of fixing the car?

    • Got rear-ended, engine "self-destructed" after he got it back from the mechanic, he'd never changed the oil?

  • "Only vehicle that would hold that amount of negative equity on it so that was my only choice"

  • $2'000 of 'basic maintenance' last month timestamp

    • Brakes, tires

• Why did he want to buy the house timestamp

  • G*rmans brought bedbugs into his apartment

  • He was sleeping on the floor they were crawling on him

• Student Loan timestamp

  • "LentKey"

  • Went to college before getting the VA benefits?

  • Used GI Bill to help pay for living expenses

  • Quit going to college after 2 years

  • Studied Business Administration

  • 5'500 initially

  • $25 minimum payment

  • 6'700 owed

  • 10.39% interest

• Mortgage timestamp

  • 100'000 appraisal on the house

    • Thought it would be around 165'000

  • Would not be able to get a loan on it large enough to pay off debts

  • Put $1'000 of materials into it

    • Leaking roof, fire damage on the exterior, redid the sidewalk

  • Was getting fliers in the mail about leveraging his house reminds me of a thing

• What's your credit score? timestamp

  • Thinks it's 700

  • "So I can't take any more debt because I've reached my limit"

• Gets told to go through his own transaction history to mark all the stupid bullshit timestamp

  • It's all bullshit

  • He has never budgeted

  • holy shit he's paypigging so much

  • Crunchy roll

  • Steam games

  • Lots of vending machines, so much money to the vending machine

  • Pays for Quora

  • Pays for Grammarly

  • Pays to Groomercord, $100

  • Mobile games "tech tree"

    • Other mobile games ton of them

  • Paying for AI assistants because he likes to write in free time

    • AI helps with editing?

  • Plays EVE Online, $20 subscription

  • "VoiceMod" "I don't know what that is"

  • What does his daily routine look like timestamp

    • Beyond bleak.

• "So a friend of a friend I pay 300 for his number just to troll" timestamp

  • He calls up people to pretend to be tech support? I really didn't understand this. Don't people just use throwaway number services for this stuff for free?

Shots across the bow at Reddit

• Timestamp