Not everyone that lives or comes from America is RICH!

I am American and not at all rich. I barely got by and I never wasted or had credits. I rented flats and saved what I could. Most of the middle class is either like me or strung out on credit.

Every weekend I go to the closest big city(Lublin or Warsaw) looking for work(umowa) and at just about every interview I have to end up admiting Im from the states becuase the interviewer notices and asks where Im from because of my poor(sh*tty polish accent and low vocabulary count)Polish. Then at that moment it turns into a debate into my "Amerikanskie zycie" It gets a bit...irritating..but I dont want to be mean and say its non of their buisness(after 5-15 interviews you would too;-) My question is should I maybe kindly suggest to move the interview along? or maybe not say anything reguarding where Im from? Problem is my CV is 99% America(past jobs,schooling,etc)

Polamerican27 wrote:


debate? what do you mean?

Poleamerican27,if it were me, I'd begin the interview with the fact that I moved to the USA when very young and lived there for twenty years. But, emphasize you are not a citizen of the USA, but of Poland. Let them know that your Polish is rusty. That should help.

I would not go into any other details unless asked.

Great advice! Show a good attitude no matter what they ask you about, people love to help but hate to feel inferior or looked down upon. So make it clear that you're there to work hard and will work on your Polish...

First off, I don't want a junk car. I don't even want to fiddle around with a junk car because I won't drive a junk car anymore. That's ok to haul firewood but I was no longer able to deliver paintings into really nice neighborhoods without getting odd looks. There's more to a vehicle than just the engine, right? I want to be happy with the finished product and be done when I'm done. So I picked up a nice SUV, an Envoy, with a great body and real smooth.. a 30K vehicle (looks super), I got it used for 7800 bucks since in this economy the past couple years, if you go in with cash you can negotiate some really good bargains. I thought to mess around with this kit (probably will wait till spring now), it does a hydrogen injection into the fuel/air mix, and then hopefully in a couple years, if technology allows, pull the entire engine and reseat something else in there. That's the plan anyway. The last truck I had, I kept it 18 years, did maintenance/minor work on it myself and only took it to it a mechanic for major stuff a couple times over that 18 years ( an old car mechanic friend gave me fix-it lessons many years ago). That was a junk vehicle by the time I was done with it, I was glad to get rid of it for a newer, safer, better looking model. It would have cost me close to 7800 bucks to really revamp that old truck. Maybe I'm dreaming, but it seems to me that so many people are working on this technology, within a few years time I will probably be able to just buy something I can more or less just drop in as a replacement engine for a couple thousand bucks maybe even less. if you hear of anything like that, something I could (more or less) just drop in, definitely let me know. I hear what you are saying but shaving the head etc is not my thing.


I have never owned a 'new' car. Why would I buy a new car when I can get a good used vehicle for half the price or less? A good used vehicle a few years old suits me just fine.

You can buy a house (or car or anything) without a good credit score. The car you should pay cash for. If you cannot cover the house fully with cash, you'll need about 20-25k in cash as a down payment and rarely will anyone turn you away with that much cash.

I cut the credit card up about 15 years ago now. It's the best thing I ever did. It took me a full 3-5 years to regain what felt like a 'balance' to me.. that is, to begin to have enough cash to start doing things again (work and save!) but once I was on the other side of that I have never looked back (and I did it as a single parent btw, with no handouts, no welfare.. there were a couple rough spots). I would not ever go back to the credit card lifestyle.. it's too expensive. I actually have quite a bit more now than I did back then and everything is paid for. When you use credit, by the time your stuff is paid for, you've paid at least twice for it and it's old already. This does not make sense to me. I owned a house in florida but sold that.. we moved up to the mountains here, we do rent (do not own this property) but right now, considering the foreclosure mess I am real glad about that too. We live here on a million dollar (at least) piece of property, I could never afford this even with great credit. So we rent. I haven't got any complaints. There are ways to invest money other than real estate, real estate is not a very good investment right now (my op anyway).

"Not everyone that lives or comes from America is RICH!!! "

Whaaat?!
There goes my boubble...

Not everyone from Germany can afford a helmet, richtig? ;)

cheehaw wrote:


uuhhmmm.....of course you can buy anything without a good credit score. it's called CASH.


not everyone's got that kinda dough lying around, bud. yeah, we should pay for EVERYTHING in cash....only......WE CAN'T.


dude, this entire sentence makes no sense. "if you cannot cover the house fully with cash....."??? who the hell has the money to pay for a house......in cash!!!! what are you talking about buying? a trailor? a lean-to? a teepee?

secondly, 20-25K in cash....you know how they turn you down? if it doesn't reach the required down payment percentage! some people have "First Time Buyer" rights and can put down as little as 5% on a new home (with penalties and additional charges, we'll get to that in a minute) but for most people, about 20% of the entire cost of the house is required to get a mortgage, which means that for a $250,000 home in America, you gotta pony up $50,000. Sure, some people get loans after putting down say 10%, but anything under 20% means you're going to get hammered with PMI, which for those of you that aren't familiar with PMI, it's basically a high risk tax that you get whacked with until you have paid enough into the loan to get to 20% of the total cost of the house. the additional PMI charge will be whacking you for several years till you hit 20% and will total thousands and thousands of extra dollars you wouldn't have spent if you had enough down payment.

banks typically love people who take these kinds of loans because not only are you paying their mortgage interest rate, your'e also paying the "I'm too impatient to wait to buy a house" tax. generally the banks win, occasionally the family goes bankrupt and they lose. it's loaning activity like this that has america in the pickle its in now.

I'd have to agree with cheehaw regarding credit. I took the wise step of messing up my credit early, and now my credit record hasn't had a thing on it for the last 8 years. Just a blank page :)

Which means I can't get access to credit as a consumer...which is great, because I have to pay cash for things. In order to consume, have to figure out how to make more money. Plus, without loans and mortgages holding you down, you have a lot more freedom to take risk.


That's ok. The investor loses, and the family who goes bankrupt also loses. On the flip side, housing prices drop dramatically as they are no longer put out of reach of the average buyer by the excess available credit. Therefore, they once again become affordable to the average working class family.

and that's true anyway. They teach kids to use credit and get them into the system with student loans. They get out of school.. I know one young woman with a 100K student loan debt, and she's not even a doctor, she's a music teacher. How she will ever pay that I have no idea. So she owes 100K in student loans and last year she even bought a house (good credit score). Now she owes 300K to the banks. 300K will actually require about 800-900K to repay. Think about that. I don't think she has. My bet is that she ends up in default and on the street within 5 years. And ARC, the poor flat tenant will have more than she does when all is said and done.

I lived on the lower east of Manhattan for 12 years myself. One apt I lived in for a few years even had a real tenement bathroom, a big bathtub right in the middle of the kitchen! To get myself into college, I won a scholarship (had to work for that when most other high schoolers were partying). I went to art school. After college I joined up with a few guy friends and we started renovating and painting lofts down in Soho, for people we knew. We were pretty social so we did get to know people. we made business cards and handed them out. we worked like dogs. By the time we parted ways in the late 80's we were doing real well, working mainly along Central Park South and the upper east side. I handled the painting. We only did business with wealthy clients who were not interested in cheap labor. Now these people are wealthy. Extreme even, some of the places I've seen. Maybe they were spending a lot of credit too, I have no idea but I was always paid in cash, great for me.

anyone can still do that and I'm sure even in Poland if you do good work you will find clients to support you and buy your stuff.

The queen of England controls 60%, maybe more, of the world's geographic area. England, and the brits, are actually the wealthiest people in the world in that respect. albeit, it is theft of the rest of the world but no one likes to discuss that. You could look there for rich people, that's where I would start, with the rothchilds and windsors..

Mexico has more millionaires (or is it billionaires) than the USA so maybe Mexico is another place to look.

America only has big mortgages and lots of people paying the bankers, many of whom have homes in Switzerland...

Good post that

lol
I'm completely debt free. When the economy took a dump and I was freaking out about loosing my job, I paid everything off; house, car, credit cards.. scaled down, have not taken a serious vacation trip in over two years. Still squirreling money away...

Then there is the school whose motto is: the one that dies with the most debt - wins.
Sometimes I wonder..

can you be my financial advisor, please? lol

Cheehaw is like my aunt, she is pissed off at the world while living pretty comfortable, safe and happy life. There is no pleasing people like this.

OMG they're going to x-ray people at the airport now!!!1! Do you fly a lot? No, not really.

OMG gas is so expensive now days!!!!1! Do you have to drive a lot? No, I’m retired, my family gets me everything I need from the store, I’m just chilling in my comfortable porch rocking chair and ***** at neighbors’ kids playing in the street.

blah blah blah, I’m so poor living on $1mill property. America sucks... Cheehaw, come on, put aside the Sliwowica and come to your senses.

I always thought that was Polish in me, hating to buy anything on credit. When I did, it was for the shortest term possible. I paid off my house by clearing out all my savings, just to stick it to the insurance companies. Since then, I'm saving close to 10 grand a year just on insurance alone. Added bonus is loads of excitement every hurricane season!

It's true, but i don't wanna work all my life.

I have my student loans and a mortgage. my debt to income ratio is in a plus, I pump money into 401k and in IRAs, The good news is that if nothing freaky happens to me or my wife, at 48 we're going to be free!

I won't have to work for any azzhole company again and just spend my money traveling, having fun and pissing people off in Poland.

you just never know what's going to happen.. I don't count on my 401K anymore.
I can't imagine what I would do if I didn't work. You got to do something! I think I'd be a stoned alcoholic within 3 months.

here is my list,

- Sailing
- golfing
- fishing
- hunting
-traveling
- socializing
- everyday feels like weekend

And this is just a tip of the iceberg

ha.. I see that list and look for bussiness opportunities ;)

For me it's the other way around, actually. I think my weekend has lasted long enough already, and I want to work until I'm seventy! And I'm probably going to end up with fifteen kids from five different women so I'll have to make a lot of cash!

xD

i don't think many people count on 401k or irs'a anymore...


i like when people have hobbies... it's so rare nowadays...

Did your parents talk to you about bees and flowers yet AJ?
I just wanna let you know that you can have lots of sex without having to worry about having kids, you know


it depends how you invest it, it's all about the research. I was scared about my 401k about 2 years ago, now it looks beautiful again.

Eh? Parents? You mean the Stork??

xD


Suuuuuure. (You obviously don't know Dutch girls very well!)

xD

yeah i love sailing, i like to travel to new places too.


well that sucks

even traveling loses its luster when you don't have a purpose. When I travel, I avoid the hotels and all the tourist traps. I rent a house and right away start scheeming about what would it take to live there and not be bored.

wow - is it?

I must be a wierdo then - I have loads of hobbies!

it seems pretty gloomy to me, I call that being a workaholic, it seems weird that you just can’t relax.

I've been to a lot of places, i love the tourist traps, hotel parties, swimming pools, talking to people, and not worrying about work the next day.

It's a matter of preference i guess. I definitely wanna retire ASAP

you seem pretty young, convinced that grass is greener... and all that.
I don't think I'm gloomy at all. It just takes more for me to be entertained. I like to be a bit more engaged than looking at pretty sights and picking out my next meal.

I've done sailing and fishing, empty beaches, tropical paradises, and believe me, there is a reason why most of the expats there drink themselves to sleep every day.

Partying gets old pretty quick. One needs a purpose.

Thread is wandering


lol
and the moral is, don't race to get rich and retire too fast. Every 'rich' person I ever asked, looked back at the stuggle to get there as the good times.

How is that?

you don't get it do you?

You don't have to be rich to live well. I own a car. Big deal. But I rent a king's view. Cheap. Anyone can do this, it's just a matter of where you want to live. If I had to survive in NYC, well, I don't make enough money anymore even to live squalor in the city.

Those really nice big homes in the suburbs, a lot of them are empty these days. They were built on promissory notes and speculation. Because americans in general aren't rich. They are foolish enough to think so though, like you.

Everytime I had a good job I reinvested a little bit back into myself and my work. Things accumulate over the years. Try it. Just don't borrow money to try get ahead, you have to do the footwork yourself.

After the Berlin wall came down, and Russia was going through major economic panic, I picked up thousands of dollars worth of artist's materials real cheap.. Russian distributors were dumping lots of stuff here. The colors are superb I am still using them.. you have to be there. I watch the markets, I don't own stock but i do know what to stock up on. And I take this stuff and I turn into a product I can sell downline for much more than the price of the materials. Truly I tell you anyone can do this utilizing whatever skills they've got. I started out with two $6 paint brushes and that is not a joke. Just don't borrow money!

nice garden too btw, the stores stink around here. that is a really big hard job the garden, but it saves me a couple thousand bucks, easily, in summer.

not rich, not by a long shot. It just looks that way. yes, reasonably happy. Sometimes there is no money coming in at all around here. It's always been like that, feast or famine. You complain too much yourself, Havok.