Slys dating site advice help thread.

Post Reply New Topic

Um yeah that’s what I did. Any car under 10,000 is a money pit. Even 10,000 cars can be money pits but less likely.

Totoya Corollas are super reliable, I do believe their the number one car on the road. There’s so many of them from various years, many of the 80s ones are still driving around today. But they still money pits. Any car around 2,000will be around 200,000 miles and will have loads of issues just waiting to happen. The engine will keep going, but shocks, struts,brakes, springs,transmissions, electronics, etc don’t. Thuenall break eventually, they all need replaced at certain miles. And most people don’t do it. So any used care is a freaking land mind field. No way of knowing my car would have electrical problems. Shop couldn’t even figure out what’s wrong. It’s intermittent. Meaning unless you’re scanning it while it’s doing it yiu can’t figure it out.

New tires$400, all new brakes$750ish, new stsrter$250, new wiring, ne alternator, new seat belts, new Distributort etc,all for it to a month later randomly die. So about 1500 in repairs and I’m forgetting some. 2,000 for it when I bought it. So 3,500 in it and I got 150 for it. Soooooo money pit. Don’t get me started on the van.

My sisters car also a Corolla. Needed new tires, ne brakes, new gas tank, new alternator, hew starterm new battery,etc. and it’s leaking gas again probably from the hose or pump. It has a leaking power steering, faulty real window warmer, oh I forgot both cars the pasnger window motor went out. My car had a cracked window which would cost $300 to replace so I never did. Her heater never worked great. Her car was 1,700.

Cars around here are high priced for 80s cars with 300,000 plus miles on them. All with multiple known problems hence why their being sold. And then there’s the problems they aren’t telling you about and the ones yet to happen.
Just having a transmission cleaned is expansive and needs to be done at certain miles.

Fairly recent yes, I still have non friends who I talk to in the mechanic world time to time on Facebook.
Germans over engineer their cars.

My civics each died with approx half a million kms on them - so ~300,000 miles. Some old beaters with 200,000 miles on them still have another 100,000 miles or so left in them to be squeezed out for a pretty low cost.

Toyota Corollas are so reliable that they make up 90% of the cars on the road in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the ONLY thing that matters is bulletproof reliability as cheap as possible. Now that's a testament to Corollas!

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 04637.html

But the question is, why is it easier to get a used Corolla than a used Camry? Dealers have a wealth of used Corollas...why are people trading them in?

You've also demonstrated it's possible for people without cars to get girlfriends.

If they have the right personality and social skills, and the right dating pool. My alpha friend is the type of person who 1. hates being alone, 2. is personable, 3. must talk to a girl he likes, 4. is good at conversations, 5. sees opportunities in life where others don't, and pursues them. This is just naturally how he is.

The relationship with the girl in question did end, however, and he has had a number of girlfriends since then. But my friend isn't on the spectrum.

Last edited by Chronos on 27 Jan 2018, 6:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

I also know a guy I work with who currently has TWO girlfriends, he also doesn't drive.

I think people on this forum just look for anything they can hold against single people because they can't admit that some of us are just not compatible with women.

Maybe for a newer model, but likely for a more expensive car whether another Toyota or something else. A lot of people buy them because they're inexpensive and reliable, so they allow them to save money/use their time to work up to a higher income, then once they can afford a "better," car by whatever metric then they trade them in and upgrade.. maybe for size, looks, performance etc. Corollas are reliable and inexpensive, but they're not exactly status symbols or p**** magnets. They're a temporary transportation appliance for a lot of people until they can afford to go buy the truck or whatever kind of car they want.

For those of us on the spectrum, our social struggles are internal. However those with short comings often need to find a way to compensate. If a person lacks in one area, it helps to make up for it elsewhere. My friend was a teenager when he met that girlfriend before he had a car, and she was in her early 20s. Now he is almost 40 and I think if he didn't have a car, that would prove a hindrance to his ability to date...only my friend wouldn't look at it like "Women don't want to date me because I don't have a car", he would look at it like "I don't have a car so I can't get to women...so I must get a car!" And he would go out and get one whether that meant financing one at a dealer or buying a junk car and fixing it himself like he did with the first.

I should say, he isn't the epitome of confidence when it comes to women. He has his insecurities. His success with them is more a matter of the fact that he is just so compelled to talk to them, and in the moment, I don't think the thought of rejection crosses his mind.

I agree with Sabreclaw on compatibility. For some people, and I count these people as exceptional. Rare outliers. Some people purely SHOULD not partner up, and there are excellent reasons they shouldn’t. There are no fitness tests for relationships, but we should all evaluate ourselves to decide whether maybe relationships just aren’t our thing. If true, make peace with it and live the other elements of your life to the fullest.

You run into the problem of having to admit this describes you, which is less often the case. How do you know you have no future with a partner? I have no easy answer for that, certainly not an answer anyone wants to hear, and not one anyone would really find helpful.

All you can do is your best, and Chronos’s friend with the car is a good example of that.

Sly’s main issue is lack of freedom. I’m in that boat, too. I don’t have quite the anxiety that Sly does, which makes a difference in how I handle situations. When that proverbial excrement hit the fan, I freaked out. For a day. Then I started exploring options. I paid my student debt as long as I had the money. Eventually I was tapped out and had to come up with a new arrangement. I do income-based repayment. Haven’t paid a dime in YEARS, and if I never get a break in 20 years the loans will be forgiven.

I got nuthin on credit. If you get sold out to collectors, best you can do is settle it. You have to talk tough and negotiate, but they will always back down. Bankruptcy is a valid option and doesn’t come with the shame it used to, but it will clear your unsecured debt and give you a fresh start. As long as you don’t hold any real property, Chapter 7 the hell out of ‘em.

Utility bills: as long as we are ahead, we prepay EVERYTHING. Cell/data, electric, water. Basically, things we can’t function without. We have no central heat/air and just deal with cold with extra blankets. Cable/internet is a waste of money when you can just buy an antenna. Phones work just fine for internet. Paying for streaming movies seems a waste when you can just buy whatever you want in the $5 bin at Walmart, and you get tons of stuff at consignment and retail shops. Set aside an extra $100 a month for half a year and hit a wholesale warehouse buying staples like rice, beans, flour, frozen veggies, meats, and so on. That will keep you from going to the grocery too much and thus lower your food bills. And never set foot in a restaurant unless you work there.

Because we live this way, we haven’t paid a single bill in nearly a year. And with the exception of dealing with seasonal extremes in heat and cold, we live otherwise normal lives. We are dirt poor and better off than friends of ours who are breaking their necks trying to maintain their current lifestyle.

We are FREE.

I don’t have any decent advice on housing. We took an inheritance to use as a down payment on a 5-bedroom, 2-story McMansion in an affluent subdivision. BIG MISTAKE. Between $1k+ payments, high taxes, and a teacher’s salary, it was the perfect recipe for FAIL. We ended up on the street with what was left of our equity. Compared to how other people did who actually went through foreclosure, we were lucky to unload an upside-down house when we did, although having the only house on our block WITHOUT flood damage worked in our favor.

We bought one acre and a double-wide out in the country. We couldn’t afford upkeep on my leaky car, so we went to one vehicle. We couldn’t afford health insurance, so we switched to a sharing program. We can’t afford school tuition, so we set aside tax refund money and beg for whatever help we can get to pay it all up front at the beginning of the year. I have two part time jobs and gigs are drying up, so I’m looking to expand what I do. I’ve had a good run with one pt gig for over a decade, but with new leadership things aren’t looking good. My boss is doing some intense butt-kissing right now—which means he’s either scared of me or he’s setting me up, or maybe a little bit of both. So, yeah, it’s exit-strategy time. Meanwhile, I’m getting pressure from my other employer to go full-time. I might just do it.

I lost my teaching creds and got them back during all this. I gave up on a career that I eventually came back to. I realize that once the money starts coming in again I’ll have to give it all back to the bank for student loans and that the tax refund money will actually be less than it is. But with more money coming in it won’t matter.

Instead of $100+ cable bill, I pay half that and work out at the Y 3-4 times a week. I can’t afford much food, so I’m not overeating. My cardio is way up, I’m lifting free weights. Not much, but it’s a start. I’m running a half marathon in two weeks. And all that work in my excess free personal time is paying off in other areas of my life.

My point is money and freedom need not be an issue. If you can’t work full-time, you just can’t, and I get that. But there are things you can do to ease the pain of living poor long-term. Our lives seem to be looking up at the moment. Since I can legally teach again, I’m not stuck here. I can go anywhere. It took a looooooong time to get here. But we’re more disciplined than we used to be. We’ve made mistakes and dug ourselves out of so many messes and know more about what NOT to do that we never have to go back to the way things used to be. When we thought we were rich and acted like it, we had more stress, more fights, and one bad day after another wondering how we were going to make it.

As a single person you have a LOT more options than we do as a family. Taking a few steps like beater cars, cutting cable, buying in bulk every few months, will give you much more freedom for going out on dates and having some disposable income. My first apartment here was a $250 loft. Good for bachelor and girlfriend, bad for having kids. Next was a $400 townhouse. Then it was a $750 mortgage that spiked to some $1250+taxes, then it was a motel room, and now it’s paid-for in cash. Living in squalor may not “look good.” But getting rent down into the $500 range is reasonable in a lot of places. Maybe not, y’know, NYC non-rent-control, and it’s different everywhere, but people can relocate where living is more attuned to their personal resources.

Life is hard. From the film “Hanna”: “Adapt or die.”

People leased them. So they get the car for 3 years and can only drive like 10,000 miles a year. Then they give it back and lease a current year model. You basically rent a car for $300ish a month for 3 years. I dont know why people do it, probably because it’s slightly cheaper. My sister wanted to actually own her car.
Then there’s a,so the people who treat cars the same as phones and upgrade every year.

Dude, that's what mechanics do, look s**t up they don't understand. That's what any profession does. You're not always going to know the answer to every question, degree or not. Look in the office of a mechanic, they've got Chilton and Haynes repair manuals just like a home mechanic. I still say your main problem is one of self esteem, in all phases of your life it seems to pop up as an issue, at least when I read your posts it's the first thing that comes to mind.

FYI your loans won’t be forgiven, they just turn into tax debt. And from what I understand the irs is horrible they can even take a percents if disability benifits, even credit collectors can’t do thst. It gov gotta get its money I guess. Even if it’s its money it’s using and causes disabled person to start or become homeless. So in 20 years I’ll owe taxes on 13,000. I dont know how much you have but your be taxed for it. It’s treats loan forgiveness as taxable earned income. So to them it’ll look like I earned 20,000 that year if I’m still working. It’ll ruin me. I hear the irs can even put you in prison:/ it’s been in the news. There’s no escape from student loans.

I dont know how to do bankruptcy but I really should, I learned from my mistake I made as a kid with credit. But I can’t pay them back. And they keep stacking interest on what I owe. It was just 8,000 now it’s around 15-20,000 plus their legal fees were added to it.
Just glad they can’t call me anymore. They use to try to get me to get student loans and stuff and just drop out and use it to pay them some money. They tried to get me to scam the government basically.
What’s real property. When I looked into it there was $10,000 in Times yiu could have is that right? I have a few guns and they limit you to two. But if the 10k is right I could protect them under thst yes? They’d not get much for them but I certainly couldn’t ever rebuy them then there’s my tv and PS4 which again they wouldn’t get more then $200 for. They’d probably get $1200 for all my guns. Barely a dent in what I owe
I also don’t want the police in my room searching for anything valuable. And my minor savings they’d prob take thst too no? or my Shave or coin collection:( they’d get so little compared to what it cost me

A true mechanic. Can walk over listin to the engine and tell you what’s wrong.
Or watch a wave form and know what’s wrong. I’m just like sounds ok. And I get totally confused by diagnosing wave forms.
I thought maybe I’d get away with just being a brake specialist. But I’m too slow. Anyways thst work gave me lots of panic attacks and anxiety’s and people always yell which makes me scared. And they’d get mad at me for their mistakes.

Nope they actually have computers now. Mitchell’s ondemand it’s called. They use those for specs. Cause no one can re,ember bunch of .00012453” measurements and it changes car to car. But diagnosing is a talent, you either have it or you don’t.

I’m more of a office Inddor clean environment worker type. Not a physical labor dirty worker type. I wish I had a skill that could employ me in a office, some job where you sit at a desk working in a computer dealing with few people perhaps. Or food packaging or quality control I’m good at noticing slight details. But such things don’t exist here and I don’t have degree or skills for office jobs.

Bankruptcy will not forgive your student loan debt, unless you can prove "extreme hardship."

Student loan debt is not covered in bankruptcy protection, unless you can prove "extreme hardship."

If you can, somehow, prove "extreme hardship," bankruptcy would be less of a bad option----but still a bad option.

You would, basically, have to live on a cash (and crappy debit card) basis for 7 years.

It's only a bad option if he can see a not too distant future where he can pay his debts off.

I know it's extremely difficult-to-impossible to get student loan debt wiped out in bankruptcy in the USA. I wonder what they consider "extreme hardship," - being on ssxx may qualify?

Sly's other consumer debt keeps rising.. now to $15-20k. If sly has no plans of ever getting himself healthy enough to work full time, it may be worth bankruptcy to relieve himself of the stress and free up a bit of extra money. I'm completely unfamiliar with American bankruptcy rules, so his best bet is to go speak to someone who can advise him. Here that's called a Bankruptcy Trustee and meeting with them is free - they get paid a fee when you file, and a % of what you have to pay in monthly payments during a 9 or 18 month insolvency period depending on the situation.

It may be an option sly should at least seek info about, do the math, and consider. It's not like he has any credit now and isn't likely to be taking out a car loan or mortgage in the next 7 years.

Sly: I don't know about registered guns, but I've never heard of any bankruptcy where anyone comes to seize and sell simple personal possessions like a tv/ps4 or small coin collection. When I filed mine years ago and had to list assets it was a few dollars and some sporting goods I own - they're not interested in taking anyones several hundred or few thousand dollars worth of stuff. It would be different if I had a house, investment accounts flush with cash, a paid for car in the driveway worth more than a few grand etc. All the small stuff they couldn't care less about.