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Warren Shea

Archive for the ‘Money’ Category

‘MURRICA + credit cards

Sunday, April 28th, 2013 at 6:47 pm

‘MURRICA’s an interesting place. I know I only went to Buffalo/Niagara Falls, NY but it’s interesting. It’s significantly cheaper there, compared to Canada. I guess people are poorer so things need to be more affordable. Which means Canada is more expensive because, comparably, we have a “surplus” of income? Screw you….all retailers! Taking advantage of us cuz you can (but I know that’s life…)

When I was walking around shopping, I heard a group of teenagers say “Yo, which one of you has the best credit rating? Cuz I can give you my cash and blah blah…”. I thought the statement/question was interesting. I’d never heard it before. I’ve never been with people who ask about credit ratings, esp teens.

I’m not sure if it’s the canadian, or the asian in me, but credit was always something that was never really a problem. We purchase things with our credit cards but pay them off ASAP. We only do things like pay the minimum payment consistently when we’re in a tight situation (for example, the term right after school, and before I had started full time working, I spent 2-3 months paying off my growing credit card debt). Even that behaviour of mine was poor, but I gather I only did something so reckless because I knew I was going to be working full time and that I could pay it back. But the nature of always paying things off immediately is something I was raised with. It also makes logical sense. People are even surprised when I say I have an $1X,000 limit. “Why so high? That’s bad.” Well, it’s only bad if I ever used that much. But I’m always paying off my credit card immediately so I never have more than a $1000 credit card debt, despite my limit.

But a lot of people aren’t like that. They have multiple credit cards and buy buy by and pay off the minimum payment. That’s how they live. They don’t look at a TV and ask: can I afford it? They look at it and say: I want it, can I afford paying the minimum amount per month to have it? So they end up buying things, increasing their credit card debt without paying it off and their money goes into their interest payback, not principal payback. They’re baller for a bit, makin it rain…but only temporarily. In the long run, it’s hurting them. Credit cards are like, a huge “devilish” thing! They prey on the weak minded and illogical. On the poor. Not cool.

It’s weird, the US has a lot of things that lead to more monetary success than Canada: lower taxes, cheaper things. If used properly, you can gain an advantage in life. Assuming you never get into any health related issues – I don’t envy the US’ lack of healthcare compared to Canada. In Canada, if you get randomly screwed by life (by that, I mean – you get a disease or get in an accident), healthcare will hook you up. And that’s what you’ve been paying taxes for your whole life. In the US, if you get screwed, you’re SCREWED cuz healthcare is so $$. I mean, in theory, they should be saving more money than us given the lower taxes and cheaper things. But it’s hard to save. For anyone. You have “spare money”, you spend it frivolously. It’s like they’re set up for success, but given the pitfalls of humanity, it’s easier to fail. Which is what the majority of them do I guess?

I don’t envy being raised in the US. Every time I go to the US, I see a difference in obesity. The men and women are, in general, heavier than Canada. I find they’re more rude and reckless. It may have only been buffalo, but it’s more run-down. Abandoned/closed property. Oddly placed traffic lights, compared to Canada (seriously, having the traffic lights in the middle of the road makes it harder to see, and not being able to see the perpendicular driver’s set of lights makes it harder to read and anticipate things).

So all in all – we pay for healthcare and our taxes are higher. But I think it helps when life screws you. If you never get screwed in life, then perhaps you’ve lost out a bit on average money wise. But that’s also a good thing (cuz you never got screwed in the first place). So I wouldn’t say that’s really a bad thing….

Also – guns and violence. Personally, if I were in MURRICA, I’d be holding a gun too cuz everyone’s got one. For defence. I think that place is scarier. Canada’s so nice and peaceful :)

Anyways, just wanted to talk about the noticeable cultural difference from Buffalo to here in Toronto. I’m obviously totally biased, having lived in Canada my entire life and not travelled like, anywhere else. But I love it here. I think it’s boring for some but I’d take safe and boring, especially for future generations, over anything else any day.

Money + /rant

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 5:50 pm

Some good and bad news regarding my financial situation. I won’t go into either tho…the point is that I’ve been thinking about money and its importance in my life. And its importance to other people’s lives.

For me, money is all well and good if you have enough to do what you want, when you want. That’s always been my way of the ninja in life. I don’t need a lot but I’d prefer more than “just enough”. I want to live a comfortable life.

While money is great and all, it doesn’t really affect my work or my need to strive for better things. Regarding career goals and job aspirations, I don’t really have either. Though I don’t think that would be really easy to tell. I’m not really ambitious but I’m also not one to just do his day’s work and leave. I like/strive for doing a good job, the best job I can without sacrificing the rest of my life (too much). But it’s not like I work really hard to get to Job A or Money B. It’s just my own personal standard that I follow everyday…which is a good thing because my standard for myself (and others…) is pretty high. If it were low and I weren’t going for Job A or Money B, I highly doubt I’d ever get anywhere.

I don’t know, I think other people have other goals. They want Job A or Money B. That’s most important to them. Am I the odd one out again?

Note: Regarding the again from above, I was at a townhall meeting a couple of weeks ago, around 80 people were there…and everyone was asked to write down their childhood dream. 79 people wrote down what they wanted to be as a child. A doctor, actor, astronaut, Batman, etc. I was the only one, out of 80 people, that interpreted the dream differently. My dream was to have an epic toy room, glass shelves, comics, all my toys in display cases, manga shelves, etc. I know I’ve always been a bit odd, an outsider…but this situation really stood out to me. Out of 80 people, I was the only one to interpret a question differently. I’m not really an out of the box thinker, I do it occasionally but I imagine my thought process is fairly linear and logical. Anyways…sometimes I really feel like the odd one out….

Anyways…there’s someone I know who comes from a rich background. Her husband is rich, she’s rich…they purchased a million dollar house on a whim, not even really considering the financial cost. But she works. She has the money that she doesn’t need to work…but she still works. How many people would work if they don’t have to? Though I can understand it, I can understand working even if you don’t have to because you need to challenge yourself. You’re not working for the money, you’re working for other reason. I get that.

What I don’t get is people that don’t work and aren’t rich. There are a few people in my life that don’t work and let their significant other pay for everything: mortgage, expenses, food, everything. And that’s okay with them. I can (slightly) understand when someone doesn’t work because they take care of kids during the day. But in an instance I’ve seen, this couple (who didn’t have kids at the time) had one person working and the other didn’t. She looked for a job but her attitude was so sh!tty, she didn’t want to do anything. There were a million reasons not to do something, “this is too hard”, “no one is hiring, I’ll try in a few months”. And this is what I don’t understand…none of these reasons factored in that she HAD to work to support herself and family.

I don’t understand not pulling your financial weight around in life. There are few that LIKE to work. I would say the majority of people do it because they have to to survive, to make ends me, to live their life well. But again, they’re working because they HAVE TO. I don’t understand being financially carried in life. To me, I find it exactly like being a bum.

Bums don’t contribute anything and leech off other hard workers. It’s the same as people who copy assignments, skip class and get notes from someone else, lie on resumes saying they’ve done stuff when they haven’t. It’s all they same…getting something out of doing nothing.

In what fantasy life does one think it’s okay to do this? Where’s the self-respect, where’s the independence, where’s the pride? I’ve thought about this a number of times but if Z had chosen not to work, to be lazy about life, to expect that I pay for everything…I would have ended it. I’m not one to be leeched off of. Just the same, I would feel bad getting a free ride in life. Again, it’s different if I were rich and we didn’t really need to make ends meet. Then Z could do whatever she wanted. Vice versa, if Z were rich then I *might* not feel bad about not working. But we’re not rich, either of us. We need to work to make ends meet, like most people.

Again, people take shortcuts sometimes, if my boss offers me a day off, even if I don’t know if I deserved it, I’m going to take it. I don’t know how much of that statement makes the rest of the post hypocrisy…but I felt I should mention that I don’t believe you have to work hard for EVERYTHING you do.

I wish life were so easy that we could do whatever we wanted. But it’s not. People that delude themselves and their significant other that they can do whatever they want when they shouldn’t…that pisses me off. Who am I to judge you ask? I’ll judge whoever the hell I want cuz I’m up here *hold hand at head level* and you’re down there *points to ground*. Yikes, this goes back to another topic I had about judging people and their right to judge people…I’ll save that rant for another time. For now, just think of me as an arrogant prick. Don’t worry, you can think that cuz it’s true.

/passionate post = long post = real post = /satisified warren