Calling Cards of Morons

[VincentGuerin]

On 16/03/2023 at 06:37, Dons_1988 said:

As a parent, I’m totally on board with this. I still don’t care about my work colleagues kids. 

In fact it’s worse at times because you get railroaded into it via your own child. 

Colleague - “how’s the wee one?”

“Yeah, she’s fine thanks”

”ah, it’s great at that age, I remember when….” 

Check mate. 

Easy way out. Next time someone asks, just say 'Dunno, we sold her'.

Unlikely to ask again, imo.

I worked with a guy in a previous job who hated discussing his personal life with colleagues, quite reasonably. Once he made a comment along the lines of 'She's with her mum this weekend' when asked about his daughter. He'd meant the mum and daughter were away for a weekend trip somewhere together, but the listener took it as they had split up and the mum had custody of the kid at weekends. Gary quickly realised that word had got round the office that he and his missus had split up and there was a custody battle over the kid!

He simply never corrected this as it meant nobody ever asked him about his family and it was of no consequence what his colleagues thought. I liked him.

Edited March 25 by VincentGuerin

[The Moonster]

1 hour ago, virginton said:

I think there's a wee bit of bringing in real world finance scenarios to Maths papers now, but that's a fundamental issue itself. If you don't have kids who are confident in their arithmetic skill, then you can't demonstrate financial management to them effectively using real world scenarios. You can lecture about it but that's going to work about as well as drug and sex education guidance. 

Can only speak from personal experience here but drug and sex guidance was utterly useless for me at school because it basically amounted to "drugs are bad" and "you should always wear a condom when having sex". I was taught sex education by our techy teacher who was basically just reading from a book, no idea if that's still the case but perhaps having someone who is a bit more dedicated to that specific field may have given better results. 

[coprolite]

Financial management is more to do with behaviour than knowledge imo. 

If you're impulsive and don't really conceive of or rate the importance of future consequences then consumption today > consumption tomorrow. It's not necessarily irrational in  principle (might get hit by a bus tomorrow) but people underestimate how much they'll value that spending power in the future. 

You don't need much financial knowledge to understand that payday loans or credit cards will cost way more than what you buy with it. 

[tamthebam]

We got a lecture on the evils of compound interest and credit cards at school.

I've never had a credit card and save up for things I want (cos I'm grippy).

My peers are probably up to their eyes in debt though.

It could be argued that easy credit hides poor pay and the gap between rich and poor. At least until you have to pay it back.

[Highland Capital]

I think a lot of it is about keeping up appearances.  Now obviously it's better buying once than buying twice but credit cards have allowed people to buy all kinds of expensive garbage and putting off paying for it.  

I remember Danny Denholm talking in a podcast once about this happening a lot in Scottish lower league football.  I remember him saying words to the effect of how Paul Pogba would be photographed with some high-end brand bag and all of a sudden players from Peterhead and Stenhousemuir would be turning up with the exact same bag.  Some of them wouldn't be earning much more than minimum wage but there was a feeling that they had to have it.

[strichener]

8 minutes ago, Highland Capital said:

I think a lot of it is about keeping up appearances.  Now obviously it's better buying once than buying twice but credit cards have allowed people to buy all kinds of expensive garbage and putting off paying for it.  

I remember Danny Denholm talking in a podcast once about this happening a lot in Scottish lower league football.  I remember him saying words to the effect of how Paul Pogba would be photographed with some high-end brand bag and all of a sudden players from Peterhead and Stenhousemuir would be turning up with the exact same bag.  Some of them wouldn't be earning much more than minimum wage but there was a feeling that they had to have it.

Peterhead players and fashion.  You're having a laugh.

[KirkieRR]

People who continue with voluble mobile conversations while dealing with a shop assistant or bank teller or paying the bus driver.

 

My theory. There's no one on the other end of the conversations. They have no friends. They're carrying on fake conversations to pretend that they do.

[mathematics]

4 hours ago, 19QOS19 said:

I still find it bizarre that 'financial management' isn't part of high school curriculum. It's a massive part of life and yet there's nothing given in school about how credit cards/interest rates work

There’s a new Higher in Application of Mathematics. One third of this is on “financial mathematics”. 
 

However, this isn’t yet taught at all schools (it’s not like the maths teachers didn’t have enough work to do) and not all kids will choose it.

There will be plenty of unassessed financial stuff taught though. Problem is that those that ready need to listen will be too busy plugging conducting wires into the electrical sockets.

[Miguel Sanchez]

42 minutes ago, KirkieRR said:

People who continue with voluble mobile conversations while dealing with a shop assistant or bank teller or paying the bus driver.

 

My theory. There's no one on the other end of the conversations. They have no friends. They're carrying on fake conversations to pretend that they do.

This has evolved over the years to people with earphones in having conversations, no phone in sight. Bonus points if it's a young girl with hair covering her ears.

[DA Baracus]

I never knew what a mortgage was until I was 19.

I knew my parents paid for their house, but didn't know the mechanism and had no idea what a mortgage entailed.

Took me getting a job in the HBOS call centre, in the mortgage department, to learn about it.

We had zero stuff about finances and managing them etc in school.

[Stellaboz]

I was a fucking idiot for years on spending what i couldn't afford. Used a credit card sometimes to take out cash (tenner, twenty sometimes) when I'd run out of money on a night out near end of the month. Absolute stupidity. 

Paid for our away game in Sweden in 2007 with a credit card ffs, never thought much about it at the time. 

Tried to save up with an ISA at ine point, started transferring it back so I could go out. Idiocy.

[Loonytoons]

1 hour ago, KirkieRR said:

People who continue with voluble mobile conversations while dealing with a shop assistant or bank teller or paying the bus driver.

 

My theory. There's no one on the other end of the conversations. They have no friends. They're carrying on fake conversations to pretend that they do.

When mobile phones were just starting to become a thing one of our shop supervisors would walk round the shop blethering on his.  One day it actually started ringing while he was talking on it.

[101]

Walking into a bar and asking for "a pint of lager" 

The taps are on show ask what brand of beer you want ffs.

[TxRover]

7 hours ago, 19QOS19 said:

I still find it bizarre that 'financial management' isn't part of high school curriculum. It's a massive part of life and yet there's nothing given in school about how credit cards/interest rates work. Sadly too many adults haven't a clue how it works (highlighted above) so kids have no chance and the debt cycle will undoubtedly continue - maybe that's why it's not taught in schools. 

At least here there is both a section of a class in Eighth Grade (Year Nine) on finances and such, and a required Semester Class that covers finances in High School. In the first they actually did a decent job, including a very solid section on budgeting where they assigned incomes and had the kids actually try to design a budget with real life prices. In the second class they actually cover topics including credit cards, debit cards, cheques, and loans. I’m not completely impressed by the class and materials, but it is significantly better than nothing.

In the end, nothing replaces the examples and education from a parent(s), which is where this so often goes wrong. The number of times I have read a credit agreement and found literal thievery or absolute scumsucking terms is mind blowing. For instance, a recent mortgage included the following:

You could designate any additional payment above required monthly to principal, interest or escrow, however…they would take whatever additional amount to paid and hold it in a non-interest bearing account until the amount equaled an extra complete monthly payment, and then (and only then) they would apply the monies as directed. So if you had a payment of $950 a month, and wanted to pay $1,000 a month with the extra $50 going to pay down principal, they would happily accept the money and wouldn’t make the payment to principal until, you had paid a full extra $950…or after 19 months of extra payments and them getting free interest from your money, and you not saving any interest.

[Empty It]

Calling everyone bro.

[vikingTON]

30 minutes ago, TxRover said:

At least here there is both a section of a class in Eighth Grade (Year Nine) on finances and such, and a required Semester Class that covers finances in High School. In the first they actually did a decent job, including a very solid section on budgeting where they assigned incomes and had the kids actually try to design a budget with real life prices. In the second class they actually cover topics including credit cards, debit cards, cheques, and loans. I’m not completely impressed by the class and materials, but it is significantly better than nothing.

In the end, nothing replaces the examples and education from a parent(s), which is where this so often goes wrong. 

Lol wut 

[TxRover]

7 minutes ago, virginton said:

Lol wut 

Exactly, now we understand where your dysfunction originated.

[vikingTON]

Colour me shocked that the biggest village idiot in all of Texas has added pop psychology and 1950s-style 'family values' rap lectures to the tedious repertoire. 

[Highland Capital]

48 minutes ago, Empty It said:

Calling everyone bro.

I agree dude. 

[Bairnardo]

2 hours ago, 101 said:

Walking into a bar and asking for "a pint of lager" 

The taps are on show ask what brand of beer you want ffs.

Can't get upset about this one. Asking for a pint of lager should be met with a pint of Tennents. If said establishment has to ask you what kind of lager, it probably means they don't have tennents and hence, you shouldn't be there.