Lines for a Variety of Situations Relating to Money
What to say when a friend offers to buy you a drink but you only have enough money to buy one drink over the course of the whole night:
LS: “OKAY.” (And then when you go to get another round, you just buy them a beer and you get some water because you’re trying to uh, stay hydrated.)
MD: “You can buy me a drink if you let me buy you a drink.” (And then nurse my drink a little bit, get some social time in and go home early to be in bed by 10.) READ MORE
Gates Back on Top
Bill Gates dethrones Carlos Slim as world’s richest man; check out the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for more | bloom.bg/19zUy8Z
— Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) May 16, 2013
The Business of Being Bluth
The major Bluth Cos. ventures are the Hussein homes, the series of “Boyfights” videos (with wacky side character Buster and his “Too Old to Breastfeed” and “I Don’t Want to Be on This Video” subplots), and the terrifying and dangerous Cornballer. George’s most successful side business, the Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana Stand, was stolen from Korean immigrants. It’s amazing that the Bluths compiled a fortune at all. Losing it is inevitable. Isn’t that the way it always goes? George stood in for the whole scam, and the rest of the clowns lined up behind him.
At Businessweek, Will Leitch examines the Bluth family business and gets us excited about seeing what kind of scheming the Bluths will be up to when Arrested Development returns on Netflix later this month.
The Annotated Wisdom of Amy Poehler
Amy Poehler has a pretty solid resume as both a comedian and a person. After spending time studying at Second City and iO in Chicago, Poehler moved to New York with friends Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Ian Roberts to found the Upright Citizens Brigade, which has since grown into the massive community of learners and performers of long-form improv and sketch that it is today. In more recent years, on her off time from her TV work on SNL and Parks and Recreation, Poehler and friends Meredith Walker and Amy Miles started Smart Girls at the Party, an online network to encourage and educate young women about being smart by being themselves. Along the way, Amy Poehler has proven in countless interviews, podcasts, and articles, that she is smart, kind, and funny, about every topic from feminism to Hell to old TV. Check it: READ MORE
The Triumphant Return of Do 1 Thing
Thursday is a great day to do that 1 thing you don’t want to do but also don’t want to continue thinking about doing.
It’s been … some weeks since we’ve last met in this space, this space being a blog post where I tell you that 1 thing I’m going to get done that I have to get done, and then you, if you play along, tell me the 1 thing you got done that you have to get done, and then we all feel satisfied and accomplished for a day, or a moment, or no time at all. This column’s (“column”) hiatus has been an exercise in … not caring about getting things done or wanting to get things done or getting things done. Even this blog post has been something I haven’t been able to get done. Do none things. But I’m back!
And here’s my 1 thing that has been 1 thing for ages: I got a second job. In a restaurant, on the weekends. I’ll get paid weekly and it’s the daytime shift and it’s hostessing so it won’t be crazy money, but it should be like, at least $500 a month that I don’t currently have. The first plan will be to not run out of money any more. The second plan will be to make bigger payments to the card I currently have in payoff mode. The third plan is to allow myself to go to dinner by myself once a month because it’s my favorite thing to do, and I miss it.
I’m just going to count this as my 1 thing for the past 3 weeks. Basking. What have you been up 2?
When Your Brain Chemistry Screws Up All Your Relationships (Even at Work)
The third in a series about money and depression (but mostly depression).
Martha Kaplan: So, tell me where you are, Logan.
Logan Sachon: Physically I am sitting on the couch in my living room. Mentally I am … sitting on the couch in my living room.
MK: Well, I am at my desk at work, but I brought up our respective locations because I’m supposed to be at your apartment later tonight, and I’m not sure if I can be.
LS: Can you explain why? Like, I know why, and I empathize, because I have been where you are. But other people do not know.
MK: When I am feeling, um, not great—I hate using the word “depressed” because it sounds both like a joke and way too serious—so when I am feeling really not great, like today—today was like, physically bad, I felt kind of underwater. Like under a lot of water, where you can feel the pressure on your body. And I didn’t feel like talking, really at all. Anyway, when I feel this way, it’s really hard for me to interact with people I’m close to. Co-workers, etc. are actually easier, because you can just front. But it’s hard to have real conversations with anyone who cares about you / who you care about, when all you’re thinking is “ow ow ow ow ow.” The other option is seeing someone who you really trust, and just being your grossest self around them. But then afterwards, you feel guilty for subjecting them to the crying or the moodiness or whatever. So that is why I am not sitting across from you while we chat. READ MORE
An Investigation of Installment Loans
Installment loans have been around for decades. While payday loans are usually due in a matter of weeks, installment loans get paid back in installments over time — a few months to a few years. Both types of loans are marketed to the same low-income consumers, and both can trap borrowers in a cycle of recurring, expensive loans.
Installment loans can be deceptively expensive. World and its competitors push customers to renew their loans over and over again, transforming what the industry touts as a safe, responsible way to pay down debt into a kind of credit card with sky-high annual rates, sometimes more than 200 percent.
ProPublica and Marketplace looked into the world of installment loans and investigated how lenders make money off of selling high-interest loans to low-income Americans.
BBQ, KFC, In-N-Out
Their eating took place over the past eight months. In all, they logged 33,168 miles and visited 658 places, the most ever in the history of our top fifty list. In case you can’t tell, we take this pretty seriously.
Every five years, Texas Monthly releases their list of Top 50 BBQ joints in Texas. BRB, flying to Texas to eat all of the BBQ.
In other food news, here is a story about smugglers bringing KFC into Gaza from Egypt:
The French fries arrive soggy, the chicken having long since lost its crunch. A 12-piece bucket goes for about $27 here — more than twice the $11.50 it costs just across the border in Egypt.
Which reminds me of this post in Serious Eats about someone who convinced his friend to ship him In-N-Out burgers from California overnight so he could try to replicate them in New York.
It’s lunchtime, and I’m hungry, can you tell?
Rob From The Rich So You Can Be Rich
Loving every word of A.O. Scott’s take on this year’s crop of materialistic films featuring “commodity fetishism:”
Fitzgerald’s Gatsby may be subject to analogous confusion, but Mr. Luhrmann’s “Gatsby” is something else altogether. The movie’s view (literally, its visual presentation) of American materialism is not moralistic, but pornographic. It traffics in the sheer libidinal pleasure of money and what it can buy. So does “Spring Breakers,” though this may be less obvious because of the proximity of its images to pornography of a more familiar kind.
Are Spring Breakers, The Great Gatsby, and the Bling Ring simply hedonistic? Or are they SUBVERSIVE? (“Like Daniel Lugo and his band of thugs, who kidnap a businessman and steal everything he owns, Ms. Coppola’s adolescent burglars are taking physical possession of what they feel already belongs to them.”)
How to Stop Going into Credit Card Debt for the Sake of “Points”
First you have to have this revelation: Spending money now to save money later does not make sense. It’s illogical. Points systems make you think that spending extra on your credit card, right now, is a responsible thing to do. It isn’t. It took me six years to figure out why.
Back in 2007, I got an Amtrak Guest Rewards credit card. I knew the interest rate was double that of my old card, but I wasn’t worried. I always paid my bills on time. Plus, I’d studied the card benefits and determined that this card was going to be a financial boon. If I used it for my regular purchases—stuff like groceries, Friday nights, and clothes—I’d be traveling on Amtrak for free about half of the time.
I’ve been East-Coast-city-hopping on Amtrak for over a decade now. I’ve lived in Washington, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. No matter which city I’m in, I go to one of the others at least once a month. There have been whole years in which I’ve ridden Amtrak six or even eight times per month. What could be more sensible than a credit card perfectly tailored to my bizarre lifestyle? READ MORE
