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By highjump on The U.N. Unpaid Internship is Not for Sale. Well.
@stuffisthings I've seen (and you have probably seen too) VP's whose negative value is well into the six figures. You take a risk when you hire someone. Too many places won't admit that internships are jobs, not educational opportunities or whatever (isn't everything an educational opportunity?). Pay to play is ridiculous. I know from the last thread that people would disagree, but I do think given the UN's mission they have a responsibility to pay their interns enough to allow people from poor countries to participate.
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By limenotapple on When Your Husband Is Rich And You Are Broke
@limenotapple Also we talked about how cash money wasn't our only currency! There's also the time that we take to do nice things for each other, household chores, etc. He gives more money, I give more time, and if he was stingy with money, I'd be stingy with my currency.
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By seaermine on When Your Husband Is Rich And You Are Broke
Ahhhh this sounds awful! Get rid of him! I don't understand this at all. I mean, I am very pro separate finances (because I am weird about my budgeting, and also in case I need to escape a bad situation) and would never have a shared bank account but if there is a big inequality in income, or one of you is having a harder time why wouldn't you want to help each other out? Also the allowance things is strange and infantilizing and a little creepy. I mean, right now my boyfriend is unemployed, with zero savings and while it has required some tricky planning to afford it it's been nice to help him out because I wouldn't want him to starve or be broke all of the time. And when he does get a job, even if it pays more than mine he'll probably have less money (because he has wayyy more student loans that I do) and I don't see why I can't just work out a plan where we pay expenses based on a percentage of our take home pay (after loans). He'd never agree to that, because he likes things 50/50 but I'd still treat him to dinner if that's where I wanted to go and knew he couldn't afford it. Because that's what you do! You help each other out!
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By probs on The Frills of Campus Living
I'd as soon dunk my nethers in a snake pit as a college dorm hot tub.
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By SarcasticFringehead on "Find What You Love And Let It Kill You"
@ellabella I feel like it's an example of the really weird Randian kind of self-interest, where you're super-proud of yourself for achieving something and lifesplain to everybody else about how they could only do it if they tried, while ignoring the (in this case, social) infrastructure that makes it possible for you to do it.
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By maddog on "Find What You Love And Let It Kill You"
@ellabella Yeah, the way parenting was represented in this (and the fact that the whole thing was about following freaking BUKOWSKI'S advice) reallllly feel like this was dude-centric (or least, a specific-kind-of-dude-centric) advice. The kids thing only works if you have someone (read: a woman) watching and raising your kids, either because you are paying her to or because you are married to her and she is sacrificing her suicidal creativity to care for your family.
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By cryptolect on Waste Not, Want Not
@sheistolerable Very true! But I will say this: my sister has friends who believe really strongly in reducing waste, to the point where they don't buy *anything* new. Everything they have is either secondhand or a gift from friends. They boke just about everywhere (this is VT, so I don't know about the winter). And both husband and wife have low-key jobs (maybe part-time, or maybe they switch off, I don't know the details) as a part of their de-emphasis on consumption. But they aren't blogging about it and they don't have a book deal; it's just their lifestyle. And of course their house is not nearly as magazine-ready as the one in this article. So maybe it appears to us to be a movement of bored, overeducated, wealthy women, simply because they are the ones who get articles written about them, because they are photogenically seeking attention for it.
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By lalaland on Waste Not, Want Not
@amyfrances It reminds me of a Vogue? article I read about a woman who was "minimalist" - she only had 5 jackets, 5 purses, and a few pairs of jeans and tshirts. Except all of it was made by Chanel, Hermes, Balenciaga, etc. While I may have more than my fair share of Forever 21 goods, I can still guarantee my entire closet costs less than her minimalist wardrobe. That is to say, it takes a lot of money to be bare and minimal, but more importantly, to have people look up to you for it. Because if you don't have that money and you have few things...then you're just poor.
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By amirite on A Conversation with Helaine Olen About the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industrial Complex
@highjump I went to high school in Alberta and we had to take a Career and Life Management class in grade 11. Here's what I remember learning: -buying a TV or whatever on store credit is a bad idea -groceries cost more if you get them at the 7-11 (they made us do price comparison by going to a convenience store and a grocery store) -credit cards: not great (not as bad as store credit though) -how fill out a cheque Did it work? I still have credit card debt. I understood what I was getting into, but not how that would feel or what it would mean for my life. Same with making a budget: they gave us an exercise with a hypothetical income, rent, etc, and we had to create a budget around it. It's one thing to say "well, there's only this much for groceries," and write that number down, it's another to actually try and live off that much. And that was my problem with budgeting for a long time, I'd make up a number that seemed reasonable, not be able to achieve it, and then stop even trying to stay in budget because why bother? It took me years to get to the point where I could track my expenses and accurately predict what expenses were upcoming and figure out how much that left over for the fun stuff. So it probably helped a little bit, but I still had to live those experiences to understand the impact they would have on my life and the choices available to me.
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By emmycantbemeeko on Not All of Us Are Wasteful
@ellabella Yes, this! Yoga helped me get off several pricey medications and greatly improved my quality of life and while yes, I could do it alone, I value both the routine and community of attending classes, and the heat/quiet/space of the yoga studio and my instructor's experience and training, which are real costs for which they deserve compensation. Maybe he's coming from some belief that all yoga studios are run by gurus fleecing their followers or that most yogis are flying to international retreats, but most of us just go to a class at our gym or a local storefront studio that gets by on a few bucks per student per class. None of the yoga instructors I know are living extravagant high-profit lifestyles, and I'm happy to pay them to provide me with their assistance and support in my practice and also with, you know, an actual space to practice in. I could do this in my living room, yes, but I'd have to crank the heat up to 105 and run a couple of humidifiers, find a place to send my dog and boyfriend, and hope I didn't hurt myself learning new asanas without a mirror or an instructor to correct my posture. So... Yeah. $7 a class seems reasonable to me. As hobbies go, most yoga practices are very cheap, very low-accessory, and very high-return in terms of health and happiness. How is this so different from biking?