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• 2 months ago

  Is being gay a choice?

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• 2 months ago

  The strap on my purse broke. How do I fix it?

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• 2 months ago

  How do blind individuals handle cash?

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• 2 months ago

  I'm fogging the house to get rid of fleas. Anyone know where I could spend three hours with my cats while I wait?

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• 3 months ago

  I want to have a really different wedding, what should I do?

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Answers

• 1 month ago

  "Radical Honesty": What do you think?

  Complete honesty isn’t realistic in our society. I think we’d be better off if we were incapable of lying, but since we can lie, this is what we’re stuck with. What we have isn’t perfect, but it will do for now. If we all grew up in a world where lying didn’t exist, I think everyone would be a little more well adjusted than we are now. No false friends, we’d all know our own flaws and be better equipped to better ourselves or come to terms with it, etc. It wouldn’t be so much work to be an informed consumer. The court system would change dramatically. Its my favorite hypothetical situation. Unfortunately, that’s all it’ll be: a hypothetical situation. We’re adjusted to the little lies, and expect them (you’re going to assume the teller will ask you how you are, and respond by saying she/he is doing well, regardless of whether she/he really cares how you’re doing or if she/he is really doing well). Inserting that kind of complete honesty in our society would not be a good thing, nor is it possible.
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• 1 month ago

  What should I do about a job that's making me physically and emotionally sick?

  I would tell you to find another job, but I can’t really be confident in that answer without knowing the whole situation. I’m sorry your boyfriend doesn’t understand, the most I can suggest is to sit down with him and tell him exactly what you told us, heck do it in a form where you’re asking him for suggestions to show him you don’t want to just live off him. Some guys like to be asked for help. Makes them feel needed or something. I was having a hard time being unemployed, and on top of that I had a night schedule because my husband works nights. It was unbearably boring. I’ve found someone that I can just sit down and talk to for hours, and we just go back and forth with how our day has been, etc, and I’ve found that helps (I’ve also added stuff to my schedule so I actually have some things to do). If your boyfriend isn’t be supportive, or flat out wont and wants you to suck it up (big difference between ‘we’ll get through it, suck it up’ (which is supportive so long as he uses better words than suck it up) and ‘i don’t care, suck it up’), I think you might want to think about what you’re really getting out of that relationship. You can care about someone to the ends of the earth, but that doesn’t justify staying with them if they treat you badly (the best example of someone in that situation is a mother who constantly taken for granted by their adult child). I’d like to say the same is true with a job, but the job pays you money, and life requires money. If you’re financially stable enough, go ahead an quit, or at least ask your supervisor if you can make changes to make yourself feel better.
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• 1 month ago

  What's the best way to keep a checkbook?

  This is long, so I’m putting the topic of each paragraph right before it. Hope this helps! Please note, I’m not a financial advisor, just a 20 year old who got paid to play with money for two years (I was a teller). I have a strange interest in this stuff, and like to share my thoughts. General reminder systems 1) I use Google calendar. I have it send me a text/email/pop-up message with a description when I need to do something. If I make an appointment and I’m away from my computer, I send a text to my email account to remind me to put the appointment on my calendar. If you have internet on your phone, you could do it right then an there. 2) Having a routine. Can be difficult to maintain if your schedule fluctuates and over weekends. I recommend waking up a half hour early to grab breakfast and doing the boring crap then. 3) Dry-erase marker on the bathroom mirror, notepad by bedside, etc. There are lots of things. Google calendar works for me, and routines are probably the most reliable. Transaction tracking/recording methods: 1) Use a regular old-fashioned checkbook register. Your bank should be able to give them to you for free, and you can just write down the date, description (place and what for), and price. At the end of the day, you can update your running total, and balance it with the bank. I like it because I’m not reliant on someone else (if a service goes down, I still know what is in my account). 2) Keep your receipts in your wallet, and at the end of the day record it all so you know how much you have for the next. You can use Excel, the site @lefteh suggested (thank you, btw! I’m liking it so far), or the old fashioned checkbook (or maybe there is an app somewhere. @lefteh‘s site seems to have a mobile application). 3) I’ve heard good things about mint.com, but you have to give them your bank usernames and passwords. Reputable sources seem to trust them, but mint.com also seems like a likely target for hackers. Benefit of recording transactions There are three major benefits. 1) You always know how much is supposed to be in your account. 2) You can write down what the purchase was for, which helps you budget accurately. 3) When you go to balance your checkbook with what the bank says, you’ll be able to easily spot transactions that aren’t supposed to be there. Having a buffer (next paragraph) is a good idea for back-up in case that happens. Tip to prevent overdrafts Its good to have your own ‘minimum balance’. For instance, when I was single, I wouldn’t let my account drop below $100 (I could if I needed to though, it wasn’t the bank’s idea, it was mine). I worked at a bank, and so I just wrote down everything as I spent it in my checkbook register, and when I went to work in the morning, I would balance it with my account. I always knew how much money I had available, and if I forgot something I had that $100 cushion. Now, I bank with Navy Federal, and should we ever spend too much, they just pull from the savings account, so my savings is my cushion now. Sometimes the bank balance is wrong The problem with just looking online or checking your balance at an ATM is that it isn’t always correct. A few things to keep in mind: – Restaurants run your card and then you put the tip on the receipt. Because of this, when the transaction is pending, you only see the check total, not the total + tip. Your available balance* won’t reflect the tip. – When buying gas, most stations put a pending amount of $1 until the transaction posts. This means you’re available balance* won’t reflect the rest of the gas purchase. – This might not happen to everyone, and I don’t know whether its dependent upon the merchant or the bank, but sometimes transactions that have been pending for a day or so will disappear the day before they post. While they’re disappeared, your available balance* won’t reflect those disappeared transactions. Keep in mind that just because it disappears doesn’t mean it won’t post. *available balance according to the bank Bills If you’re old enough to have bills to pay, I recommend opening another checking account for them. Sometimes they take a while to go though (especially if you use checks) and often they’re for a large amount, so you don’t want to forget to record them and be screwed over. Every time you get paid, put money for the bills in there, so you never spend money that is meant for your bills (and thus you are always able to pay bills). My husband gets paid on the 15th and the 30th of each month, so half the total for our monthly bills goes into that account each time he gets paid, and I pay all of them on the 1st of the month. All I have to remember is one date to pay bills, and the online transfer each time he is paid (or you can make it an automatic transfer, but I don’t recommend it unless you’re financially stable. I never recommend having bills paid automatically). Its good to have a cushion (or personal ‘minimum balance’) for this account too. Using cash If you’re bad at keeping track of things, using cash might help you, and can help you with budgeting too. You can’t go negative if you only pay with cash, but keep in mind that the only record of that transaction will be your receipt. If you want to keep track of where you money is going (to help you budget), you can put those little bank envelopes in your wallet with your budgeted amount of cash and label them ‘fast food,’ ‘dining out,’ etc. When you spend that money, you can put the receipt in that envelope, so you can see how much cash is being used and where its going to. Doing things like this can help you budget realistically, and help you realize just how much money you’re spending on coffee or whatnot. The link @lefteh provided would also help you budget if you use it. Having a stash of cash for dining out is a good idea anyway because when you hand your card to a server, you’re basically giving your server your card number and the code on the back. That means he can write it down (restaurants are the only place I can think of where they take your card out of your view) and use it to purchase things online or whatnot. Joint accounts I’ve found the hardest situation to keep track of your money in is when you’re sharing an account with someone. With my husband, I’ve been making him give me his receipts when he gets home, or send me a text when he makes a purchase (with the total and merchant name). I recommend you have only one person keeping track of your accounts, paying the bills, etc. If the other person wants to be in on the action, just keep them informed. My husband doesn’t give a shit, so I just tell him what money he has to spend). It might be easier to have the person that doesn’t keep track of the money to use cash. My husband likes that because then I’m not hounding him with, “Why did you spend $13 at the gas station?!” I like it because it keeps him down to earth because he can look in his wallet and realize he only has, for example, $12 out of the $50 budgeted for this pay period. He’s also really bad about giving me receipts or whatnot. You asked. :P
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• 1 month ago

  How important is age difference?

  The older you get, the less of a difference it makes. When you’re teenagers, it makes a big difference though. We go through a lot of changes from 0 – our late 20s, and those changes can be harmful to relationships (I’m not saying people can’t change once they hit 30, but I’d say the amount of changes is lower). She might like him now, but she and/or he might change and they don’t quite click anymore. Immaturity can hurt relationships too. Not to mention all the crap they’d get if they do start dating, and the ‘I told you so’ shit when/if they break up. And it could be legally dangerous for the guy. Bad idea, all the way around. Doesn’t mean they can’t hang out with each other, but the should hold off on the parts that make it a romantic relationship for a few years.
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• 1 month ago

  Do energy drinks like 5-Hour Energy have long lasting medical problems or wear off?

  I’ve never used them, but if we’re travelling by car or my husband hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep and he has to work, he’ll grab one of them. I think its important to note that the 5 hour energy shots are different from a Red Bull, etc. There is no sugar in the 5 hour energy shots. Your brother should change his life style if he thinks he needs one every day. I have no data to back this up, but I’d say once in a while is fine, but every day is excessive. Not to mention that his habit must be getting expensive. Caffeine has a lot of nasty side effects too, such as hurting your metabolism and screwing with your sleep.
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