Unemployed Albertans inundate Vancouver homeless shelters

[Fire of the Phoenix]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Massive coke habit.

No kidding. Some kind of vice anyway. If that was me, I would be too embarrassed to admit that.

Hell, if one of my single friends told me they made 100k and they live paycheck to paycheck I would tell him to shut the #### up.

[NuclearFart]

Yeah good point, I should have referenced rube/peter/flash's conversation.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by NuclearFart

It's been mentioned before but it bears repeating - some people are just plain bad with money regardless of income. Their spending habits and waste levels just scale with the money.

It's actually quite easy to have a really high cash burn rate in this city without resorting to vices, especially if you're surrounded by colleagues doing the same thing. I know a few high income earners who have a personal shopper at Holt, drink/eat out all the time, fancy car lease(s), fly first class, hotel suites instead of regular room, huge mortgages...etc. Some of them live hand to mouth with big debt, just as they did making 40-50k/year a decade ago.

Completely true. Very easy to burn through money in a big city. In fact, low impulse control a few days a month can really cause a spike in expenditures.

[Oling_Roachinen]

There are just people poor with handling money. It doesn't always take a vice. No budgeting, no saving, paying off credit card debt month after month.

I know guys who will easily spend ~15 bucks on lunch a day while at work, go out to a restaurant/fast food most nights (let's say 20 bucks a night) and then hit the bar on Friday (50 bucks). None of them, by themselves, are too extravagant that you'll have people openly question them.

250 lunches at 15 bucks
365 dinners at 20 bucks
50 bucks a week for Friday drinks.

That's nearly $14,000, after taxes, on something that they don't even bother to think much of.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by AltaGuy

I think we're speaking more of the guys who aren't obviously spending their money though: like Cliff said - the ones who live by themselves in crap apartments, have no car, and are "forgetting their wallet" when you go out with them.

Yeah, I'm talking guys who don't have expensive downtown lifestyles. One was a guy who hadn't paid any rent or bills in eight months (his brother, a friend of mine, was his landlord), lived like a bum, and yet despite having a decent 35-40k job, never had any money. Had to be hookers and casinos. Somebody keeps those businesses thriving.

[peter12]

Never mind the morality/danger of using a prostitute, I always have imagined that johns have the biggest buyer's remorse ever.

[Agamemnon]

Originally Posted by peter12

Never mind the morality/danger of using a prostitute, I always have imagined that johns have the biggest buyer's remorse ever.

And yet they are very likely to go for repeat business, so maybe not....

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

We joke, but I think a surprising number of people have secret vices that consume most of their money. I've known guys who have no wife or kids, a beater that's parked most of the time, who don't buy nice clothes or furniture or anything, don't travel, and who can't even consistently make rent in cheap one-bedroom apartments. They spend 2k or more a month in a manner that is not visible to any of their friends or family. Presumably some combination of drugs, hookers, and gambling.

Originally Posted by NuclearFart

It's been mentioned before but it bears repeating - some people are just plain bad with money regardless of income. Their spending habits and waste levels just scale with the money.

It's actually quite easy to have a really high cash burn rate in this city without resorting to vices, especially if you're surrounded by colleagues doing the same thing. I know a few high income earners who have a personal shopper at Holt, drink/eat out all the time, fancy car lease(s), fly first class, hotel suites instead of regular room, huge mortgages...etc. Some of them live hand to mouth with big debt, just as they did making 40-50k/year a decade ago.

Not that a crippling coke habit isn't possible but I've tended to notice it is more along the lines of what NuclearFart is saying.

It is shockingly easy for high income earners to be flat broke. The most popular vices we see and hear about, drugs/alcohol/gambling, are typically only a part of a much larger issue and often not present at all. Eating out constantly at fancy places, frequent expensive outings be it golf/theatre etc, frequent vacations, personal shopping habits, home furnishings, vehicles etc seem to be extremely common from what I've seen.

It is also scary deceiving. I know so many people that judge a person's wealth on what they own.

"oh jim and jane have a big house, a vacation property, a boat, two brand new luxury cars, their entire house was furnished at williams-sonoma and restoration hardware, I had no idea they made so much money!!"

When in reality it is more like "holy #### they are going to be serving us as walmart greeters when they are 70 because they are saving nothing for retirement and have based their entire life strategy on keeping up with the Jones".

[Galakanokis]

Film industry is begging for workers right now, it is absolutely ridiculous how much work is going on. If you have any sort of trades background or don't mind working with food you can easily get a job out here and take home $1500 a week. IASTE even put out an add targeted to Albertans basically saying come on over.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

We joke, but I think a surprising number of people have secret vices that consume most of their money. I've known guys who have no wife or kids, a beater that's parked most of the time, who don't buy nice clothes or furniture or anything, don't travel, and who can't even consistently make rent in cheap one-bedroom apartments. They spend 2k or more a month in a manner that is not visible to any of their friends or family. Presumably some combination of drugs, hookers, and gambling.

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Massive coke habit.

I mean, it if we a coke habit I would be right there with him blowing up his spot, so it can't be that.

I honestly think it is webcam models/online prostitusion.

When I try to add it up it just makes no goddamned sense. How do spend 3-4k a month and have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end of the month.

Like peter, my wife and I operate on about 40-50k income a year and iny personal opinion live quite lavishly, certainly more than I was accustomed to growing up and that includes expenses like car insurance, gas, maintenance, and a two person food bill with a dog and all the senseless money you throw at it as well.

I have a hard time believing someone could spend that much money on drugs and still live.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

I mean, it if we a coke habit I would be right there with him blowing up his spot, so it can't be that.

I honestly think it is webcam models/online prostitusion.

When I try to add it up it just makes no goddamned sense. How do spend 3-4k a month and have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end of the month.

Like peter, my wife and I operate on about 40-50k income a year and iny personal opinion live quite lavishly, certainly more than I was accustomed to growing up and that includes expenses like car insurance, gas, maintenance, and a two person food bill with a dog and all the senseless money you throw at it as well.

I have a hard time believing someone could spend that much money on drugs and still live.

I don't know. I've blown $500 on a weekend of drinking before and that would gut your bank account pretty quickly if you were doing it every weekend.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I don't know. I've blown $500 on a weekend of drinking before and that would gut your bank account pretty quickly if you were doing it every weekend.

But what if you haven't been to a bar in months or a nightclub in years.

Since he said it to me I can't stop thinking about it.

I have been young and dumb before too and made some terrible financial decisions without knowing better but the last time I lived paycheck to paycheck was when I was a university student and 70 % gross income went to the university in some form or another.

I read an article the other day about guys dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars in webcam models and it was pretty startling, made me wonder how common it is. What a great scam, most of the victims are likely far too embarrassed to speak out. Makes me wonder how rampant it is in the general population.

http://abc13.com/news/porn-site-user...igures/723079/

[peter12]

Wow, that is depressing.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by peter12

Wow, that is depressing.

Yes, how can they be so stupid? spend 90,000 on a decent drop top merc and you can get a real girl to take her clothes off right in your bedroom.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Yes, how can they be so stupid? spend 90,000 on a decent drop top merc and you can get a real girl to take her clothes off right in your bedroom.

What's the price of a top shelf escort? $2000 a night? There you go. 100 escort nights.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by peter12

What's the price of a top shelf escort? $2000 a night? There you go. 100 escort nights.

Yes but it feels less sleazy if the heavily silicone modified 35 year old legal secretary is shagging you because of the car you can afford at 55 rather than just because you gave her your credit card, trust me on this.......

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

But what if you haven't been to a bar in months or a nightclub in years.

Yeah, that's crazy. I don't think there's any way I could spend that amount on liquor and drugs over a weekend unless I was buying everyone else's as well.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Oh yeah? Well I make a third of that and live comfortably with a borderline alcohol problem! Well maybe not comfortably. I eat a lot of tuna.

Something I take for granted is that I don't actually pay for alcohol. I often wonder how bad my finances would be if my biggest vice wasn't totally comped... then I stop because it's depressing and drink more.