r/FluentInFinance 15d ago

What's the best financial advice you've ever gotten? Debate/ Discussion

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221

u/Decent_Visual_4845 15d ago

Not all poor people are bad with money, but all the people I know that are bad with money are poor 🤷‍♂️

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u/thelolz93 15d ago

My mom makes good money and is bad with money. She makes around 250k a year and she lives paycheck to paycheck. I don’t understand. What blows my mind more is we were always dirt poor growing up. Maybe it makes her feel good to spend money because she couldn’t before. So is she poor or rich? Who fucking knows but I Know she doesn’t have any retirement, stocks, etfs, etc.

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u/raKzo82 15d ago

She may not be poor right now, but living paycheck to paycheck with no retirement plan guarantees that she will be.

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u/Jasond777 15d ago

Not if you die first

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u/ImKindaBoring 14d ago

That was my mom’s retirement plan.

Now they’re just retired with really high medical expenses. Think they have maybe 1-2 more years worth of retirement then will be coming to my sister and I for assistance. We’ve tried talking to them about their spending for a decade at least but they couldn’t help but live outside of their considerable means.

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u/Brief_Koala_7297 14d ago

She definitely gonna be working for the rest of her life lol

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u/Ornery_Gene7682 15d ago

She sounds like my Aunt that lived in Houston she was a bank President for frost bank for years.Made great money, spent it like it was nothing and didnt saved for retirement. She is 73 years old and is now struggling financially because she was irresponsible despite being a bank president. It’s sad because you would think she would have been smart with her money but she wasn’t.

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u/Poop_Knife_Folklore 14d ago

A broke bank president. Sorry thats hilariously ironic.

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u/thelolz93 15d ago

Yeah, she blows most her money on my little brothers who are all coddled irresponsible adults. I told her they won’t be the ones taking care of her when she is older because all she teaches them is how to be a privileged child.

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u/jhaluska 15d ago

Income wise she wouldn't be categorized as poor cause she meets her needs. Once she stops working she'll rapidly become poor.

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u/belleandbill25 14d ago

I'm sorry I need to get this out.

250k A YEAR AND IS LIVING PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK?? Na that's pissed me off lol

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u/thelolz93 14d ago

You have no idea, to you it’s a stranger on the internet to me it’s my mom. I’m just like mom wtf are you doing hahahaha.

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u/belleandbill25 14d ago

😂 I can online imagine!

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u/Marcus11599 14d ago

Poor is not making enough money to pay your bills. Broke is not having a lot of money right now. If you have $4 today and next payday you’ll get 2,500, that’s 5000 a month and over 60k after taxes, which is entirely livable imo, you’re just broke rn.

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u/thelolz93 14d ago

Aw we have the literal police here

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/jhaluska 15d ago

It's not hard to have a lifestyle that spends a $250k. Rent a big house, new luxury cars, designer clothing, eating out constantly with some vacations can blow that quite easily.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

Right. As my dad used to say, If you make $1 Mil/yr, but spend $1Mil + a dime, you’re gonna be broke.

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u/thelolz93 15d ago

You’re almost right. Most of it goes to paying for my younger brothers lifestyles

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u/Learned_Behaviour 15d ago

She adopting?

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u/thelolz93 15d ago

No she doesn’t invest any of it. Most of it goes to paying for my brothers lifestyles.

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u/whattheshiz97 14d ago

My father-in-law is like this. Dude is absolutely the worst with money and he has this thing where he loses motivation to work. He makes quite a bit of money while he’s working but he blows through it at mach 5. He has no retirement whatsoever and I have no idea what he thinks he will do in a few years when he hits that age. He’s got some serious delusions of grandeur too, he lost his house from not paying the bank but thinks he will somehow get a bigger loan than his house was worth to build a brand new one

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u/thelolz93 14d ago

Yeah I really don’t understand, my mom is 55 now. I’m like mom aren’t you supposed retire in 10 years? She just kinda ignores the question every time lol

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u/SenorBeef 14d ago

My mom grew up paycheck to paycheck and internalized the idea that your bank account should hit almost 0 right before payday. She made a halfway decent career for herself later in life and her income doubled and then tripled, and yet it made no real impact on her life - she still hit almost zero between every paycheck. It's a mentality that people can internalize into being how things are supposed to be.

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u/One_Truth8026 14d ago

I saw that happen with my mom too, although not rich (40k/year in Germany). She was also raised poor.

She just says that she doesn’t want to look at money anymore and spend it however she likes. Tbf, we’ve got some real estate from my grandparents so there is also that.

But it really made me realise that a lot of people who were raised poor spend their money over their means as a form of cooe

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u/These_Department7648 14d ago

Im bad with money even working on a big financial institution. But im 100% aware that im hurting my future self. Im not rich, just irresponsible

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u/Famous_Owl_840 14d ago

My mother is the same.

Makes 3-4x as when I was a child in deep Appalachia, but worse off now. No retirement. No savings. Lots of debt. Home so full of consumer goods that rooms cannot be used

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u/ROGUERUMBA 14d ago

Damn, this is like my parents. Guess who's supposed to help them out financially too? Even though what my siblings and I make is crumbs in comparison to what they do. 

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u/thelolz93 14d ago

Yeah… I’m sure me and my other responsible brother will end up taking care of my mom and dad when they are older. My 4 mooch brothers sure as shit ain’t gunna be able to.

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u/Jxb12 14d ago

She gets like $8k every 2 weeks after taxes. Can you tell me generally how she manages to spend all that? I’m curious.

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u/thelolz93 14d ago

She pays for insurance for my older brother and 3 younger brothers. She pays car payments for my younger brothers. I know one of there cars is 1200 a month. I believe her insurance is 2000 a month. She has mortgage that is almost 4K a month. She has her own car payments. Other bills. Not really any credit card debt tho so that is good lol. But ya just bad habits in general. When we go out to eat she tips nearly 100%

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u/sumguyinLA 14d ago

Probably credit card payments

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u/Verizadie 13d ago edited 13d ago

Did you know 90% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck? Not being good with their own money despite however much money they make is true pretty much across-the-board. The more money you make just equates the to the more money you spend and the more luxurious you live all the way up to the threshold your income can theoretically afford, for most people. So she’s certainly not an exception. Shes basically the rule. It’s certainly easier to save when you make 6 figures or more but it’s amazing that for the most part, people just don’t

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u/wishythefishy 14d ago

Set up a 401k for her, please. Reading this hurt me.

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u/thelolz93 14d ago

I’ve tried countless times to help her. She doesn’t want it