Slys dating site advice help thread.

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Also, you posted a couple pages ago and reminded me now that it’s not your depression that constrains you from earning more money so much as it is your anxiety, and so to that I ask, what are you doing to treat your anxiety? What are your plans for getting it under control so that it doesn’t rule over your life the way it does?

I truly wish you’d take a giant first step and learn some very valuable stuff about depression and anxiety that will give you the foundation of knowledge to move forward with beginning to feel better. My very best recommendation would be to read a book that’s literally prescribed by doctors instead of antidepressants and antianxietals. They do so because the book has been proven in clinical studies to be just as, or more, effective than taking pharmaceutical meds. It was recommended to me by my GP and I ignored his advice for years until o was at my wits end and figured it couldn’t hurt to read it. It didn’t fix everything, but the things I learned are incredibly valuable and I’d recommend it to everyone dealing with depression and anxiety. It’s called “Feeling Good,” by Dr. Burns. My offer to buy it online & have it delivered to your door still stands. I truly think what’s in those pages would help you have a start to feeling good.

You’ve said you can’t read books. I googled, it’s available as an audiobook. Some sites say free download with trial membership etc. Not sure how true that is. Doesn’t really matter - if it’s limited access or some bs scam or waste of time, F it, if you’ll listen to the audiobook I will GLADLY pay for the download of an official copy from amazon or wherever. The information in those pages is truly valuable life changing knowledge for those suffering from depression and anxiety.

I don't just mean relationships. I for one am utterly incompatible with women. I can make some shallow friendships here and there, but nothing beyond that. Certainly nothing sexual. Women just are not interested in me, and they're never going to be.

Some of us are kinda like that for other reasons. Sure, I've been with a handful of women in my lifetime.. but as a gay man, it's just not really my thing. Women are sometimes interested in me, though, or there's been guys wanting to introduce me to their female friends/relatives but yeah, just not exactly compatible and we're never going to be - but obviously for totally different reasons.

Picked up a gortex camo coat for $16 it’s originally a $280 coat

Under American bankruptcy laws, student debt cannot be discharged. Bankruptcy is for protecting debtors when things get out of control. There’s no shame or stigma in it like there used to be 100 years ago. It’s there to help you.

Suppose all your debts are unsecured. File chapter 7 and it’s like it never happened.

If you are behind on real property payments and facing foreclosure or repossession, file chapter 13. It discharged MOST if not all your unsecured debt, saves your house and car, and puts you on a payment plan that keeps the bank from bullying you.

I’ve helped people do both. Lawyers like 13 best because it ties the client to them for up to 5 years, which means they make more money. Chapter 7 is in-and-out, quick and clean. Simple. 13 is freakin’ complicated and basically your lawyer owns you. What happens is the 13 keeps you in a house and a car to drive to work, but it doesn’t fix how you got in debt in the first place. So once the court discharges you, you can go right back to applying for credit cards to buy groceries you can’t afford, and then credit cards to pay for your credit cards, and then payday loans, rent-to-owns, etc., and you’re right back in the lawyer’s office. While you are in bankruptcy, you are forbidden to take on new debt without court permission or they may choose to dismiss your case or not protect you from new creditors.

Laws have changed since I did that work, so it’s tougher than it used to be. But that’s how it all works in a nutshell. When bankruptcy is abused, it forces you to become dependent on it. Your best bet is always to stay away from credit cards, payday loans, rent-to-owns. Pay what you can, settle what you can’t. If they don’t let you pay in cash, they aren’t worth your business. Debit cards are ok, but cash is more tangible and psychologically more difficult to part with. You KNOW what you have, whereas plastic is just a number in a machine somewhere.

Bankruptcy will utterly destroy your credit score...but if it’s that bad you’re not going to care. All a high FICA score means is you have a ton of bills that you’re current on. I’m working on crashing my score all the way down to 0 (zero). If I can’t pay for if, I can’t afford it. Buying in credit changes nothing. If I ever do need to mortgage a home, like if I have to move, I’m going with an underwriter so I can continue to pay cash and still get a loan without having a credit score. They assess risk more stringently than conventional banks do, so you need not worry about running into trouble. If you are denied, chances are they see trouble ahead and you are better off not buying a house. Buying a car—beaters are cheap, and if you save money while not making payments, you can always upgrade later. More transportation=more opportunity=higher income=greater freedom. PAY IN CASH. NO DEBT.

Personally, I refused to go bankruptcy back when I got in trouble. It didn’t solve the problem itself and I eventually managed to pay back everyone in full.

Student loans cannot be bankrupted. However, there ARE programs in place that deal with that. Loan securities are traded same as everybody else which means you could get a new owner every day. Some are easy to work with, some are real @$$wipes. Most everything is electronic now and you can’t even get people on the phone anymore. I took over my wife’s debt since she never could navigate the process and I had all her info anyway. One advantage of not dealing with actual humans is nobody can prove who YOU are. We got sold from Xerox to another company who gave the new people bad information. She supposedly owed $xx,xxx. We were well aware of that. But the new company reported the wrong name to the feds. So when I’d go from bank site to gov site, there was no evidence she actually owed anything. It was like the bank said “pay us cuz WE SAID SO.” I thought about it for a minute, had my wife’s name changed to PsYcH0b¡+¢h, and voila, the feds knew exactly who she was. I only had to click ONE BUTTON on the website after that and, bada bing, we get our next year’s ration of air el freebo.

It’s tricky, but you CAN get around student debt if your life sucks. If you already have a judgment, then I got nothing. But trust me, there are ways to get out of student loan payments outside bankruptcy. I prefer IBR, but there are other programs that are variations on IBR that might help you more depending on your exact situation. Personally, I would rather get a better job and pay off all $65k+ of it in one go and get rid of these people than just be poor for the next 20 years. But at least loan forgiveness IS a viable option if it doesn’t work out.

Right but they also lease Camrys. So why do so many Corollas show up back at the dealer and not Camrys?

Leasing cars is never a good deal. The smartphone upgrade program isn’t either. Even the argument “if my phone gets damaged” doesn’t hold up. They keep you in an overpriced contract. You end up paying much more than the phone actually costs. So why not set aside emergency cash to buy a new phone if it gets damaged?

If you are unable to come up with money to replace something like cars and phones, it might an indication that you can’t really afford the item, anyway.

I prefer to buy the newest thing that is current. I run the thing until either it dies or Apple stops supporting it, and even then those devices still have a few years of life left on them.

They lease and sell a lot more Corollas then camrys.
2018 prices
Corolla:18,550
Camry: 23,495
Is the extra foot of length worth $4,945 to most people probably not.

Most people can’t afford a car. That’s why leasing and loans are a thing. Besides the wealthy, people don’t habe 20k+ just sitting around. But they can make $500 payments.

Leasing does mean you avoid any maintenance cost. But you’re limited to 45,000 miles or less depending on the company. 12,000 miles is easy to hit in a year then yiu just park it til the next year. And the poor sap who buys the car for $1000 more then a new car gets stuck with the 60k maintenance and parts replacement. Leasing is a big scam
But for people who can afford $500 car rental then it works for them I guess. Now that means they paid 18,000 towards a $40,000 or so car. Would they been better buying? I think so. But if they can’t afford the thousands in maintenance then i dont know but they could got a 18,000 car instead and paid it off and own it. But the majority of people do it. Buy a car they can’t afford.

My uncle and aunt buy their cars out right. Day one they own it.
They upper middle class. Another upper middle class guy I knew would buy a new truck every 5 years paid in cash. He’d then sell th old one and put it towards the next one in 5 years. Lucky guy.
Personally I’d buy a car and keep it forever I get attached to things. If I’d won the lottery i would have fixed up and restored my car. Put new engine and tans in it, have all the parts replaced. Get it repainted. But wasn’t meant to be. Now if i were to win I’d buy a 4Runner and a Corolla. My mom couldn’t ride in a 4Runner. Dreams. I like to imagine I’d buy a porsch. But I’m a saver and I couldn’t ever spend 260,000 on a car. So ridiculous no matter how fun it’d be to drive.

Leasing isn’t always a scam. Sometimes it makes sense, especially for businesses here. If you buy a car you can only write off a % of it and related expenses, the % used for business, and it must be very strictly tracked and accounted for. If a business leases a car (here) then 100% of the lease expense is a tax write off. Not sure on the other related expenses. But leasing a new vehicle is WAY cheaper for a business here than buying. Tax law is written like this to stimulate the new car market I guess. But yeah, for business owners of any sort, leasing a car in the business’ name is best. Probably similar South of the border in the USA, too.

I said it made sense to people who want to avoid maintenance.

What do businesses use it for? Most busines here drive a lot over 12,000 miles a year. The might drive thst in a single month, so I don’t see how it’d be benifical for businesses. Most here buy their cars and employ mechanics to maintain them. They tend to buy hybrids as they get tax write off for them.

[quote=“sly279”]Most people can’t afford a car. That’s why leasing and loans are a thing. Besides the wealthy, people don’t habe 20k+ just sitting around. But they can make $500 payments.

Leasing does mean you avoid any maintenance cost. But you’re limited to 45,000 miles or less depending on the company. 12,000 miles is easy to hit in a year then yiu just park it til the next year. And the poor sap who buys the car for $1000 more then a new car gets stuck with the 60k maintenance and parts replacement. Leasing is a big scam
But for people who can afford $500 car rental then it works for them I guess. Now that means they paid 18,000 towards a $40,000 or so car. Would they been better buying? I think so. But if they can’t afford the thousands in maintenance then i dont know but they could got a 18,000 car instead and paid it off and own it. But the majority of people do it. Buy a car they can’t afford.[/quote]
I say if you want to be poor, do what poor people do. If you want to be rich, do what rich people do. Poor people ask, “How much down, how much per month?” Rich people make one single payment and buy it outright.

We aren’t rich at all by the American standard. But if it’s something we can’t afford to pay for in cash, we don’t buy it.

What is a poor person doing with a $20k car??? Why do you need that? We previously had an Impala we made payments on until we had our third child and literally outgrew the car. We got back enough in trade that we could upgrade to a minivan. We had enough money saved up we didn’t have to make payments. Save your money and buy it 100% up front. You avoid paying more bills, fees, and interest. Debts only work to keep people poor by draining any extra money they might have had. Rich people don’t make payments.

The more expensive cars...why? A rich person can afford a new Bentley every year and drive it off a cliff if he wants. When you buy a high priced vehicle for every day use, you destroy its value. Smart people with money don’t do that. They might have a sports car or luxury sedan for the weekends, but their work vehicles aren’t quite so nice.

The smart thing to do is come up with about $4000 for a beater. Reliable transportation will help you earn more money at a better job. Save up another $3k-$4k for something a little nicer that will last longer. Trade in. Save up another $3k to keep on hand for maintenance or trade in. Keep repeating. You avoid monthly bills because owning gives you more time to save money than making payments will, plus you don’t flush money down the toilet in fees and interest. All that’s left is cost of ownership, which you can afford since you aren’t making payments.

Buying a house is the same way. We bought “too much house” our first trip around. We squeaked by in mortgage payments. But the heat kept going out. A mistake someone made installing a new fridge damaged our pergo floor. We replaced with tile and hardwood, and the guy who installed the wood screwed THAT up. Add to that babies and hospital bills when we couldn’t afford insurance. And credit cards.

See why I have such a hatred of debt? My credit score used to be over 700 and I thought I was a king. I didn’t make it 2 years after leaving the apartment and we were drowning in $h¡+. You get real wise, real fast when you’ve been on top of the world only to wake up one day thankful for just the breadcrumbs. Don’t be like that.

If you just said you made payments to a car. So you broke your own rule. You should have walked, biked, bused, until you could afford a car outright.

19,000 is the cheapest reliable car. Cars have been and will be a upper middle class item. Henry ford failed in his dream of making car so affordable everyone could own one.
It’s cause they keep getting more expensive. Surely if they made a 1980s car today it’d cost 5-8,000. But then liberals wouldn’t have it as it’s not green. Example South America kept making the cheap and cheaper every year 1970s VW Beatle . Cars are half computer now. Everything is computerized in them. They are very very high tech, and so their cost even for a cheap one is expensive. Think how cheap a non computerized car would be? Just a simple. Fuel injected 80s design car. Sure. It won’t be as green as modern cars and it won’t get as great fuel mileage. It’d probably be 22-24 instead of 30-40 mpg. I think the only reason they don’t make them is cause of the epa and California.
Otherwise they’d gone in making the same engine and keeping cost low. They’d still make a profit and sell lots more cars. And they could still make the new ones for upper middle class people.

Humanity should had reached the electric cars - as the standard for all cars- long long time ago - however it won't happen anytime soon due to conflict of interests.

That's complete BS, sly, and symptomatic of your depressed thoughts making everything seem like a bigger more expensive deal than it really is. Some reliable cars can be had for a couple grand, others maybe even for only several hundred. Hell, I bought my car BRAND NEW (4 years old, never sold, had less than 100 miles on it from test drives only) for $12,000 CANADIAN (discounted from $18k sticker due to being 4 years old and still sitting on the lot) and I've driven it over 25,000kms problem free so far.

They don't produce old cars because they can make way more money selling new and improved ones. Also, fuel economy, and the other big one.. Safety.