I don't think illegal aliens are illegal enough. Hear me out here. Now, there's a lot of right wing speculation about how illegal aliens are criminals and rapists and all this shit. I don't buy any of it at all. Not one bit.
Have you ever been on the highway behind an illegal? They drive exactly the speed limit to 5mph under. They can't risk getting pulled over, because that could potentially lead to deportation, so they follow all the rules perfectly and stay under the radar. Meanwhile, I'm stuck behind them, late for work because I stopped to get my non-fat sugar-free venti latte and now I'm honking my horn and tailgating them hoping they'll speed up. But they won't. They're gonna be so fucking perfect. They're gonna play the role of the perfect model citizen. In my humble opinion, they don't break enough laws.
Literally, they will not go above the speed limit ever. Let me give you a case example.
In high school, a couple of my gal pals came up to me because was the only one in our friend group who had a car.
Friends: "Hey we need you to drive us after school so we can beat up our boyfriends and dump them."
Me: "Beat them up?"
Friends: "It's okay, they're illegals so they can't go to the cops about it. They're cheating on us so we're gonna beat them up." [Ed. note: this is a horrible and atrocious excuse to beat someone up. The being illegal part, not the cheating part anyway.]
Me: "I don't know..."
Friends: "We'll give you $15 for gas money."
Me: "...so when am I picking you up again?"
Hey, when you're a broke high school student, $15 can go a ways.
So I picked them up after school and we drove to where these couple guys worked hoping to catch them after work, when we saw their truck leaving the parking lot.
Friends: "That's them! After them!"
They headed to the interstate, and I dutifully followed.
Friends: "Pull up beside them!"
So I pulled up beside them. There we were, cruising down the interstate. My friends rolled the windows down and were leaning out screaming at them. They rolled their window down and were screaming things back. Birds were flipped.
And then the car behind me honked.
Because we were going 50mph in a 70mph zone.
These guys had a habit of staying well below the speed limit, and our provocations did not change that in the slightest.
I sped up to the speed limit and passed them. We got off at the next exit, waited for them to pass, then re-merged onto the highway. I caught up and pulled up beside them. Again, windows rolled down, screaming matches ensued....HONK!
Passed them, took the next exit, waited for them to catch up, back on the interstate, screaming match until traffic backs up again, lather rinse and repeat.
This went on for 30 miles. They made no attempt to speed or evade us at any point. They just kept driving like perfect little law-abiders.
The best part happened when we finally made it to their apartments and parked.
Friends: "We're gonna go fight them but don't worry, quiet hours here aren't until 10 PM and they can't call the cops on us until then."
(Note: That's not how it works; only in our naive teenage minds did we think that's how it worked.)
The "fight" fortunately didn't progress past verbal. I stayed in the car; I was only the wheelman after all. All around, neighbors poked their heads out their doors to witness the verbal smackdown. I kid you not,the tenant of the unit I was parked in front of walked outside and watched for a minute, then went back inside for five minutes...
...and returned with a giant bowl of popcorn and stood there munching away while my friends dumped their now-ex boyfriends. As dramatic and serious a fight as we thought it seemed at the time, apparently the neighbors perceived it differently.
The fight went on until 9:59 PM. True to their word, at 10 PM they shut up and got back in the car and we drove off, being the considerate teens we were.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Does anyone have real budget advice for when you're broke?
This month I am working on improving my finances by getting a second job. It's worked out for me in the past, except this time around it won't be a daily commitment. I don't really need it, as I'm not broke broke, but it will help me pay down debts and give me a little fun money. I'm in a weird stage where I have an actual living-wage-paying job, but am still reeling from the effects of being broke for so long and spending the last of my savings moving across the state in order to obtain said job. It's a transitional phase.
The last time I took a second job, I was living off ramen noodles struggling to keep a roof over my head. Payday was a treat where I would go to McD's and get a McDouble (back when it was still on the dollar menu) and a small coke. That was my twice-monthly treat. The rest of the time, it was ramen noodles. Sometimes I would afford veggies to supplement the noodles. Meat was out of the question. Between my ex and I, we made $1000 too much annually to qualify for food assistance so I got a job as a paper courier and got up at 3 AM every single day to deliver papers. 3 AM, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I kept that job for nine years, which was probably at least eight years two long. I was living in the cheapest apartment you could find in town
I always laugh at budget advice I read to help poor people be less poor. Buy less coffee and less avocado toast. When you are poor, you are not buying those things. You're buying the bare essentials and eating the cheapest food you can find. You're turning off the heat and bundling up. You're putting off things like car maintenance for another month, hoping that missing an oil change doesn't turn into a more costly repair down the road.
The thing that made me laugh most was an article I saw recently that had a breakdown of what a household budget could look like. "You should put 10% of your net income toward debts". I laughed. Even now that I'm not broke, I think between student debts, medical debts, credit cards, and my auto loan, my monthly minimums come out to more than 10% of my net income (and you always want to pay more than the minimums, as those same budget sites will always tell you). I am sure those lenders would love it if I told them sorry, can't make the minimum payments because only 10% of my income goes to debts.
I admit I am shit at budgeting. My method has always been pay whatever upcoming bills are due on payday and use whatever's leftover to attempt to afford food and gas until the next payday. Should there magically happen to be money leftover, that can go into savings, but for many years there wasn't money leftover. It was never about dedicating a certain percentage of your income toward budget categories. It was pay your bills and hope you can afford food after. I count myself lucky, since I was able to have enough to at least cover my bills on time; I've known plenty who didn't even have that luxury, and not because they were living beyond their means either.
I don't have the magic advice to help people who really need it. I just wish there was some real advice out there, instead of just telling people to stop eating avocado toast (I've never eaten avocado toast). My only advice is pay all the fixed bills come payday, and then try to survive off what's left. Also beans and rice are cheap and if you eat them together it's a complete protein. My doctor doesn't like it because she says I need a healthier and more diverse diet but fuck it, she can cut the avocado toast out of her diet and pass the savings to me so I can buy veggies. Until then, cope as best as you can.
The last time I took a second job, I was living off ramen noodles struggling to keep a roof over my head. Payday was a treat where I would go to McD's and get a McDouble (back when it was still on the dollar menu) and a small coke. That was my twice-monthly treat. The rest of the time, it was ramen noodles. Sometimes I would afford veggies to supplement the noodles. Meat was out of the question. Between my ex and I, we made $1000 too much annually to qualify for food assistance so I got a job as a paper courier and got up at 3 AM every single day to deliver papers. 3 AM, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I kept that job for nine years, which was probably at least eight years two long. I was living in the cheapest apartment you could find in town
I always laugh at budget advice I read to help poor people be less poor. Buy less coffee and less avocado toast. When you are poor, you are not buying those things. You're buying the bare essentials and eating the cheapest food you can find. You're turning off the heat and bundling up. You're putting off things like car maintenance for another month, hoping that missing an oil change doesn't turn into a more costly repair down the road.
The thing that made me laugh most was an article I saw recently that had a breakdown of what a household budget could look like. "You should put 10% of your net income toward debts". I laughed. Even now that I'm not broke, I think between student debts, medical debts, credit cards, and my auto loan, my monthly minimums come out to more than 10% of my net income (and you always want to pay more than the minimums, as those same budget sites will always tell you). I am sure those lenders would love it if I told them sorry, can't make the minimum payments because only 10% of my income goes to debts.
I admit I am shit at budgeting. My method has always been pay whatever upcoming bills are due on payday and use whatever's leftover to attempt to afford food and gas until the next payday. Should there magically happen to be money leftover, that can go into savings, but for many years there wasn't money leftover. It was never about dedicating a certain percentage of your income toward budget categories. It was pay your bills and hope you can afford food after. I count myself lucky, since I was able to have enough to at least cover my bills on time; I've known plenty who didn't even have that luxury, and not because they were living beyond their means either.
I don't have the magic advice to help people who really need it. I just wish there was some real advice out there, instead of just telling people to stop eating avocado toast (I've never eaten avocado toast). My only advice is pay all the fixed bills come payday, and then try to survive off what's left. Also beans and rice are cheap and if you eat them together it's a complete protein. My doctor doesn't like it because she says I need a healthier and more diverse diet but fuck it, she can cut the avocado toast out of her diet and pass the savings to me so I can buy veggies. Until then, cope as best as you can.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Here's a belated Happy New Year
I thought about writing a New Year post earlier, but was in a funk and didn't get around to it. I don't have a more clever excuse than that. Sue me.
2017 actually wasn't too bad a year for me. It wasn't too great, but it wasn't too bad. It was a neutral year. I had some losses, such as ending a big relationship and losing my Grandpa. I also had some big wins, like summiting Mailbox Peak, the hardest hike I've done so far.
I'm looking forward to accomplishing a few resolutions in 2018, so here goes.
1) Pay down my credit cards. This is something I need to do. After moving across the state, which I paid for out of pocket, and having some emergency expenses come up, including funeral travel, my credit card debt is...too much. I have paperwork being processed to take on a second job, the income from which will go primarily toward credit card debt. This ball has already been rolling.
2) Finish my novel. Like, five or six years ago for my first NaNoWriMo, I wrote a draft of a novel called "Warriors & Wizards vs. Aliens & Zombies", and I never really got around to working on it beyond the first draft. Every few months I would pick it up and poke at it a bit, but school and work always got in the way. This is the first year I feel like I've settled down enough to sit down and start working on it. In fact, I've already been working on it the past few weeks.
3) Journal daily. I picked up some amazing guided journals in Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last October. It took me until yesterday to start one of them though, so I'm already late on that one.
4) Do a few landmark hikes. Namely, Mount Si, Kendall Katwalk, and (assuming trail repair goes well) Tunnel Falls. Which means to be in shape by summer I need to start training on a stair stepper, like, now.
So that's it. That's my goals for 2018. Nothing super extravagant.
What goals do you have for the new year?
2017 actually wasn't too bad a year for me. It wasn't too great, but it wasn't too bad. It was a neutral year. I had some losses, such as ending a big relationship and losing my Grandpa. I also had some big wins, like summiting Mailbox Peak, the hardest hike I've done so far.
I'm looking forward to accomplishing a few resolutions in 2018, so here goes.
1) Pay down my credit cards. This is something I need to do. After moving across the state, which I paid for out of pocket, and having some emergency expenses come up, including funeral travel, my credit card debt is...too much. I have paperwork being processed to take on a second job, the income from which will go primarily toward credit card debt. This ball has already been rolling.
2) Finish my novel. Like, five or six years ago for my first NaNoWriMo, I wrote a draft of a novel called "Warriors & Wizards vs. Aliens & Zombies", and I never really got around to working on it beyond the first draft. Every few months I would pick it up and poke at it a bit, but school and work always got in the way. This is the first year I feel like I've settled down enough to sit down and start working on it. In fact, I've already been working on it the past few weeks.
3) Journal daily. I picked up some amazing guided journals in Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last October. It took me until yesterday to start one of them though, so I'm already late on that one.
4) Do a few landmark hikes. Namely, Mount Si, Kendall Katwalk, and (assuming trail repair goes well) Tunnel Falls. Which means to be in shape by summer I need to start training on a stair stepper, like, now.
So that's it. That's my goals for 2018. Nothing super extravagant.
What goals do you have for the new year?
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