patrick.net

"It’s when you feed someone, you become bound by hospitality rules are not longer permitted to kill them for the duration of their visit."

Damn you Greek hospitality system!

Couple that with the Tibetan custom of always offering food to visitors and this means you can't stop or kill those bloody freeloaders from coming in and cleaning out your pantry.

No wonder Odysseus got pissed.

Nah, Odysseus was busy being a freeloader all over the Aegean.

It was Pandora who had to entertain the in-laws eternally.....;-)

SQT Says:

The only reason I say the “feminist cause” was more or less championed by bored housewives is because mom’s like your and mine didn’t have the time to be out marching and burning bras. My mom had to raise four kids, she didn’t have time to worry about what Gloria Steinem or Betty Freidan were writing about. I think this was probably the case for many hardworking women who worked because they needed the income.

True, but one could argue that by doing what they did, these leisure-class bra-burners have made life better (or worse, depending on perspective) for the rest of us.

All men should know how to:

(1) cook ramen
(2) cook spagetti and heat spagetti sauce
(3) make tuna salad

The rest is really optional. Chinet plates are microwavable and quite sturdy. Most males will eventually do laundry once they ran out of all clean underware or socks (reason not to buy them too many pairs)

My biggest difficulty is with my boyfriend's paper piles. He covers all the surfaces with opened bills, college newspapers, ads, credit card offers, etc. He refuses to shred or dispose of them ontime and gets pissed if I shift them (so I'd have space to chop vegetables). Anyone have house training experience with such problems?

It was Pandora who had to entertain the in-laws eternally.....;-)

Or...dammit..maybe it was Penelope?

(1) cook ramen
(2) cook spagetti and heat spagetti sauce
(3) make tuna salad

I can cook risotto.

What kind of tuna salad are you talking about? Canned tuna salad or seared ahi tuna salad with edamame beans and ponzu vinaigrette?

The former. I don't trust my boyfriend with raw seafood. Too much danger of botulism.

requiem Says:

> “As Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi note in their book,
> The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers
> Are Going Broke, having a child is now “the single best
> predictor” of bankruptcy. “

This was one of the worst books I’ve ever read. The main point of the authors (a mother and daughter who seemed to have some ax to grind) was that we need to make it easier to declare bankruptcy. They seemed to ignore that fact that having kids without any savings, a stable job or a stable relationship might be a bad idea… They also go on and on that over consumption has “nothing to do with bankruptcy” and blame it on job loss, divorce and illness (forgetting that if people were saving and investing rather than blowing money for years a job loss or divorce would not force them in to BK and insurance can cover you for most health related problems)….

He refuses to shred or dispose of them ontime and gets pissed if I shift them (so I’d have space to chop vegetables). Anyone have house training experience with such problems?

The passive aggressive approach: The freshly opened credit card offers are likely clean enough, so just chop veggies on them. (Or plop down a cutting board over them.)

The confrontational approach: keep a spray bottle of water handy for when he's about to clutter a space. Oh, wait... that's for cats.

The former. I don’t trust my boyfriend with raw seafood. Too much danger of botulism.

You can chop up the fresh tuna and sautee it in oil and tomato though. That can be the spaghetti sauce you were talking about?

Oh, I hear you Astrid

Add to piles of paper that 'might come in useful later' - CDs, vinyl, books, graphic novels, comics, cassette tapes, video games from all consoles post 1985 (and the consoles themselves), electrical wire/cables/leads/plugs and boxes full of inidentified @rap. I can see the aneurism beggining to blow as soon as I mention storage/cleaning/chucking some or all of it.

I was always under the impression that women were supposed to be packrats. Sadly, it seems that is mostly men who become emotionally attached to 10 year old Postit notes...
However, I feel overburdened with material goods if I need more than one trip with a station wagon, to move from A to B....

..still, they say that there's always one thing about your significant other that will drive you insane. No matter how sympatico you are in all other ways, sometimes you just feel like getting the sledghammer out...

New thread: How does one regulate “well” ?

Face reality, welcome back.

There’s another important reason for the need for both partners to work these days. Jobs have become very unstable. Worse, entire career directions can become obsolete and not viable pretty quickly. In addition, pensions are mostly gone and other benefits have been cut. The upshot of all of this is that it is simply too risky for many families to bet everything on one person.

Ironically, the very thing that drove many families into the two-earner model (desire for less income volatility/greater income/more security) has actually resulted in the exact OPPOSITE result. Hence, the "Two-Income Trap", where it now takes two incomes to provide a comfortable middle-class lifestyle vs. one income 40 years ago.

FAB:

I haven't read the book, but did notice in the interview the author made the claim that the idea that overconsumption was to blame was a myth. This I was curious about, because while they cited lower spending on things like clothes, the interview didn't specify where the savings went to. OTOH, it also faulted easy access to credit at high interest rates, which I take to encourage overconsumption.

Peter P,

You are greatly underestimating my challenge. To add to his laziness (like unwillingness to learn to cut up a pineapple, even though that's his favorite fruit - which means going months without pineapples), he also does not like fresh tomatoes. In fact, he seems adversed to every vegetable I like and vice versa.

I think the shorthand version of FAB's point is that you shouldn't have kids unless you're extremely rich or have an ironclad tenure.

They also go on and on that over consumption has “nothing to do with bankruptcy” and blame it on job loss, divorce and illness (forgetting that if people were saving and investing rather than blowing money for years a job loss or divorce would not force them in to BK and insurance can cover you for most health related problems)…

If you go by the reports that were cited during the Bankruptcy "Reform" bill debate last year, the primary cause of most personal bankruptcies were healthcare costs for the un(or under)-insured and small business failure. However, given the current negative savings rate, the American consumer's all-time high household/mortgage debt-to-income ratios, and anecdotal stories about people like SQTs' parents, I have to wonder how much of that is really overconsumption, poor risk-management and "I want it now" Boomer-esque unwillingness to defer gratification.

You are greatly underestimating my challenge. To add to his laziness (like unwillingness to learn to cut up a pineapple, even though that’s his favorite fruit - which means going months without pineapples), he also does not like fresh tomatoes. In fact, he seems adversed to every vegetable I like and vice versa.

I do not know how to cut up a pineapple either.

Try chopped cherry tomatoes. Just put them in a chopper for a while and cook them for a moment.

Astrid, very few people are lazier than me. I work very hard to find shortcuts.

My biggest difficulty is with my boyfriend’s paper piles. He covers all the surfaces with opened bills, college newspapers, ads, credit card offers, etc. He refuses to shred or dispose of them ontime and gets pissed if I shift them (so I’d have space to chop vegetables). Anyone have house training experience with such problems?

This is the situation with me & my wife in reverse. I am "Mr. Tidy" who HATES to see loose paper lying around, while her desk looks like the one from the comic strip Shoe. I don't have a solution to offer. I think it may be genetic. :-)

I'm not a fan of cherry tomatoes, the skin is usually too tough. Actually, I don't like tomatoes unless they're large and vine ripen. So I don't eat many tomatoes between October and May.

"I work very hard to find shortcuts."

LOL! He's not lazy per se, just extremely adversed to housework and highly tolerant of physical messiness.

As is always the case, there are many factors that affect bankruptcy. To say X is the single best predictor of Y is flawed both logically and statistically.

Why?

Because there is a tremendous amount of inter-correlation.

Job loss, number of children, alcoholism, marital status, socioeconomic status, education level: these things are NOT INDEPENDENT VARIABLES.

But we love to find that one, magic reason why things aren't they way we think they should be.

And, I'm sure glad my parents didn't listen to those who would have advised them that they shouldn't have children. You know, being financially unstable and all that. For crying out loud, let's just go ahead and bring back feudal monarchs, guilds and indentured servitude.

Astrid & Speedingpullet:

I'm guessing both of them are engineers or similar?

@ requiem

Mine's a computer games programmer and closet DJ.

Maybe there's a correlation between nerdiness and 'stuff'...

@requiem,

Hee! Yup.

I agree with face reality's point, though chosing between 1 income and 2 income working families is pretty much a no win decision - thus it's hard for me to justify having kids. The health insurance coverage alone makes a second working spouse worthwhile.

On the other hand, it did not cause things like low job security, rapid career obsolescence, benefit erosion, globalization, etc.

I agree. Low job security and wage arbitrage are an inevitable result of globalization and the U.S. economy evolving into its post-industrial phase, similar to what happened in the U.K, 100 years ago.

Again, even if a family has a high-enough single income to live well, this is unlikely to last long-enough, so the family still needs the second income for security (preferably coming from a different industry for risk diversification…)

Perhaps, but the problem is that most 2-income families tend to ratchet up their consumption/lifestyles to the maximum level their incomes/credit can bear, saving nothing for contingencies (prolonged illness/bad luck/recession/layoffs). This perversely produces the exact opposite result = less security.

It's also good insurance policy for the wife to keep an updated skillset, in case she needs to escape a bad marriage or gets blindsighted by divorce.

SQT,

That's what I do right now. I tell him to pick through to retrieve the really important documents and then I dump everything else in 20 gallon rubbermaid bins. But he has a small apartment with little storage space, so he has got to start throwing stuff away.

DinOR,

In business, networking is the path to Nirvana (I thought I'd throw in a Seattle term since you are PacNW and I just left there.....LOL)

I spent 15 years in McD's as a franchisee and it was the key to getting more stores.....when a store became available, they awarded it to who they know and felt most comfortable with. Insert any other business into the formula......

The attorney is a "user" and a "prick"....and I know you aren't surprised. The only problem I see in your relationship with him is you have character and he can't spell it. I would take the high road and be gracious to him; never mentioning your displeasure in how he's used you. Why?????

First, it doesn't cost anything and you will only build YOUR reputation with everyone you deal with....trust me, you aren't the only one he's stiffed.
Second, at some point down the road he's going to want something. THEN, I'd have a professional talk with him about what you expect, terms, and such. He just might come around.....never know.
Third, while he may always be a prick, he might be your bridge to a gold mine.

I burned very few bridges in my 30 years in business and I've never regretted taking the high road. Along the way I can count on the fingers of one hand, the assholes I've burned.....but those I did.....were crispy critters.

I wasn't the best father in the world but I did teach my kids how to network, brown nose, and butt kiss with the best of them; without compromising their integrity....and so far I'm damn proud of what they've accomplished.

The economy is headed for a downturn/recession and those of character and fully connected with be the ones to reap the benefits and rewards.

I don't know if anything I said makes sense but it's worked for me.

Doug H,

Thanks for sharing your experience. I agree that one shouldn't pick fights with these freeloadering types, but in your experience, is it better to blackball the guy amongst friends or just stay completely mum? I tend to think the former would be doing a favor to other people, but maybe the latter is better since no one is antagonized.

Doug H,

Thanks for your input! I'd actually reminded him of his "obligation" but where attorneys are involved where there's no "contract" a verbal agreement means less than nothing. I traded a few pointed e-mails with the guy but I got the distinct impression he was done w/ me and on to his next "mark".

Well for better or for worse I let him know he won't have any more "marks" if I have anything to say about it. We both clear through the same custodial bank and we have an established charter to use one another's services when ever possible. I get the feeling he felt that he had tapped me out for all he was worth and was just creating obstacles or imaginary slights to justify his actions. I let him know that too. When people don't even think enough of you to strenuously object to your accusations it's a pretty safe bet they've already moved on. IMHO.

DinOR,

The Bard said it best in Henry VI, Act IV, Scene 2

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." LOL

.....and there's an old saying down south that says "The sun don't shine on the same dog's butt every day". His butt may be warm in the sunshine now but things have a way of working out.

DinOR,

Unless this guy moves out of the state, I think his reputation will eventually catch up with him. Oregon is a pretty small state and I assume the financial services circle is pretty small, that guy is an idiot if he thinks he can afford to burn many bridges.

Astrid asked,

"in your experience, is it better to blackball the guy amongst friends or just stay completely mum?"

You will never elevate yourself on the backs of other people. Saying anything negative MIGHT come across as being whiney and petty.....and remember, perception is reality.

The best way to "black ball" anyone is to let their actions do it for you......and they will. If someone gossiped or tried to bait me into such a conversation I just politly told them I really can't comment on XXXX; it's not worth talking about. I didn't say anything....but then again, I believe I said it all.

When it comes down to building a business....which in fact is building a reputation; your word and personal integrity are everything. Slimebags will win a few battles but will always self destruct along the way. Look at the true real estate professionals.....they've been through all markets and when a tough market comes along, they are the ones whose phones are ringing; not the greasy self promoters. Who do the banks call when they gotta get something done......the guys who's "yes" is more valuable than a 100 page contract.

In your circle, if business associates know your word is good even if PETA takes over Pioneer Courthouse Square and shuts down the Rose City, they will seek you out.

THAT is how opportunities come your way and fortunes are made......

Just my two cents worth.......

http://www.myebid.com/cgi-bin/auction/view?cmd=view&listingID=2113

"The house needed so much more then we could have ever imagined and it cost so much money to fix everything that we will not be able to make any profit and now we are losing money every day the house sits on the market on top of that I have quit my job (big mistake) and I am having trouble finding a new one.

We are so poor now that we cant even afford to auction the house on eBay but we need to auction off the house before the bank does, so if someone can please help a young newlywed couple out and buy our house that would be great!"

Not sure what I can add to this right now

Doug H and SQT,

Thanks for your thoughts. I'll do my best to keep my mouth shut. :- )

Yeah, one sob story and a brief appearance on a lesser cable network, and all of a sudden your POS house (which you stupidly purchased without inspection) is worth $1M. This just sickens me.