or lucky. people leaving casinos with big smiles aren't any good at it.

I met a guy that took out a loan from his bank at 16% in order to pay off his 25k in cc debt.

His APR was only 12%... And that's why the financial adviser profession will be around for another 200 years.

My parents make me RAGE so fucking hard. They have/had no retirement planning and let their money rot in a savings account (they refuse to invest). They are always 100% cash, even after the the market bottom they sat on the fucking cash. What money they did have they used it to start building an internet cafe in a foreign country then ended up not having enough to complete it.

I had a friend a few years back brag to me that his parents bought their $3MM house outright in cash. To him I replied why not get a $2MM+ loan at 5% or less and earn 10% or more in the market with all that unused cash?

this is pretty dumb right here.

But to have gotten in at the high prices we have today, you would have had to know with some very high probability that it would continue to rise. Now, if you had gotten in at $20/share 10 or 15 years ago, then it's not such a huge problem, cause Apple's worth something like $100 per share in cash alone.

One of my exes had insane debt. Not just "wow" type of stuff, I'm talking like eye-popping debt. The worst were 16k at 22% apr and 9k at 29% apr. total she had something like 50k at around an average of 27% apr. she would pay that shit each and every single month.

She called up the cc companies and asked for apr reduction - because Oprah said so :). She was shocked when the companies said no. I told her "of course they said no, you're a performing account, you are how they stay in business. Miss a few payments." she refused. She would pay that every month and then call up and go through the same thing every month and the cc companies always said no. Every time she would be shocked. I told her that she was crazy to expect help and i eventually left her.

This is not as rare as it seems. There are a ton of unambitious motherfuckers out there. A LOT of guys I went to high school with, all they wanted to do in life was get a union job with UPS and pay off a Honda Civic. If they could do that, man, they were set for the next 40 years! I remember my junior year one of the guys came by to say goodbye, he knocked up some girl and was dropping out of high school. As he was walking away, I told a group of his friends, "that poor bastard is fucked". All of them looked at me like I was crazy and one of them said, "he's got a job installing car stereos for $11 an hour. He's fucking set!" and they meant that shit too, no sarcasm whatsoever.

This is probably too much of IlliniProgrammer rubbing off on me, but I'm putting all my savings (except for enough 401k contributions to get full matching) into a savings account until I have 5-6 months rent/expenses saved up, just in case (almost there after starting in July). Am I totally crazy?

To the OPs point, these are called 'Goal Collar Workers'. They take whatever money they make and pour it into a depreciating asset or assets. Profitable for the people that lend to them though.

I think it was all the money I spent on beanie babies and pokemon cards when I was younger.

Never got a Charizard card :/

Here is your chance to justify your poor financial decisions...

I am willing to let my Charizard go for $5,000.

Did we go to the same high school?

1) I was saying that in past tense. Putting all your $$ into aapl would NOT be a smart move at this point.
2) AAPL is not a bubble dumbass

Exactly.

I am one of those people who HATES any kind of debt, to the point of stressing hardcore. I would be more then happy to pay cash for the house then risk the rest of the money. Only way I would feel comfortable having the debt (if I already had the $$ to pay it off) would be putting it into a very safe investment vehicle, but that still wouldn't be more then the loan interest...soooooo go with a sure thing imho.

I'm pretty sure we didn't and that's part of the problem. There are TONS of unambitious people out there. It's easy to forget that in college or reading boards like WSO where people want to genuinely improve themselves (in various ways). Tons of people out there just want that "brass ring" of $15/hour because with overtime they might eek out 35k for the year. When you start asking around its shocking how "small" some people think.

no, rpcas, you're the dumb one here. i was referring to the poster's own reasoning, not the subject of the poster's tale. and for you to confuse "your" with "you're" while calling someone dumb is just the most delicious irony.

Best answer yet, studiofan (though those are interesting majors if you actually plan and have the ability to go into that field, I know I wish I could learn more about anthro). Also, not sure how psych fits in there. Probably not the best undergrad choice for a lot of things, bit still respectable.

ph.d.s don't go into debt. they are almost without exception covered by teaching or research fellowships. the only cost is the opportunity cost of a real job while they are making 20K a year grading papers or slaving for their adviser.

no, doctoral students live like paupers, but they almost never go into debt unless they choose to live above their station. departments take it as their obligation to pay at least a living salary in stipends.

I got one somewhere, if I find it I'll mail it to you.

The only fourth tier graduate schools worth attending are low-ranked medical schools.

...in Little Rock, AR.

Regards

LMAO