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Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

And yet it's not at all simple.

If you want to avoid sugar and corn syrup, you'll be paying 3x as much on food. You have to remember to cancel all of those superfluous monthly charges. If you get parking tickets, you're set back. If you don't check your physical mail for too long, you'll discover you accidentally ran a toll road and now they're billing you $150. Whenever you get a phone or internet plan, they never tell you what the final bill is, so you have to remember to add +50% to whatever price they're saying. If you live with someone, you have to get them interested in managing finances too, or else you'll discover you're hemorrhaging money. The list goes on and on.

If you live in the US, it costs ~$400/mo to have health insurance under the ACA. If you can't afford that and go to the ER for any reason, your credit is screwed.

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Sorry, what's your point? People do have many unpredictable expenses. But managing the ones you can (like food costs, and bills, and housing costs) does a lot to reduce your monthly spending, which is half of the equation.

Just that it's easy to fall into a spiral. Also, if you can't move and don't eat out, your food and housing costs are mostly immutable.

There is no doubt that managing expenses is very difficult on a minimum-wage or close to it job in most cities in the U.S. But when you start getting closer to the median income in the U.S. (and engineer salaries), expense management and lifestyle inflation become very important IMO.

Increasing earnings gives you more money today.

Decreasing spending gives you more money today, and more money every time that you act on that same habit. Cutting your rent doesn't just put cash into your wallet now, it also decreases the amount you need to save to live (or retire) at your current lifestyle.

You are listing problems that are easily avoided by doing normal life activities (i.e. responsible, adult things).

- Don't park illegally (or if you prefer: "stop breaking the law")

- Check your mail regularly

- Track monthly expenses (so you can change things if needed)

- Check the price of something before you buy it.

- Don't entangle yourself with financially irresponsible people (this is good life advice, but difficult to always get right)

- Good point on insurance: medical coverage in the US is broken. However, you should still make sure you are covered.

Your comment can be summed up as "Just have money." If you can't afford health insurance, you can't make sure you're covered. The only option is to not have it and to go to the ER whenever there are problems.

Cities find ways of ticketing you. They make $20M/yr from parking violations. If that revenue drops, they'll change the rules until it goes up again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto

For example, there are tow traps that don't look anything like tow zones. I've seen at least five cars fall into it, myself included. The city won't change it, and you can't fight it.

Another example: Street cleaning. It's a euphemism for "Move your car or we'll ticket you." No one shows up to clean the streets, ever, but they're there at 8AM to write you a ticket. When you're forced to park on the street, you can't get away from this. And the notifications for street cleaning often appear between midnight at 8AM, meaning you can end up late to work or with a $150 ticket if you don't pay rapt attention every day.

John Oliver (comedian/entertainer) is your "source of truth"?

* What is this world coming to? *

> Your comment can be summed up as "Just have money."

Not at all! None of the 6 points I made are solved by "Just have money". They are solved by making responsible choices. Just be responsible.

I certainly recognize that government policy can be ridiculous and is certainly abused, but what really got the people in John Olivers video in trouble was not taking care of their responsibilities in the first place. Yes, there are people out there who prey on irresponsible people. Don't be one of those people. Be responsible.

>When you're forced to park on the street, you can't get away from this. And the notifications for street cleaning often appear between midnight at 8AM, meaning you can end up late to work or with a $150 ticket if you don't pay rapt attention every day.

I will have to admit that this is not a problem I have to deal with, and am completely unfamiliar with the concept. I imagine it has to do with poor urban planning. I can certainly imagine a situation where you could end up in this situation through no fault of your own. However, the phrase, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me" would seem to apply.

Unfortunately, they do it on purpose to ticket you. The planning consists of "How can we extract the maximum number of tickets out of people?"

Between midnight and 8AM, they put up a sign saying there will be street cleaning today. Every day, when you wake up for work, you must check your car. If there's no open spot on the same street, it can sometimes take up to an hour to locate a valid spot elsewhere in the city. (Most streets require a city sticker zoned to your location, meaning you can't just park anywhere.)

After a few years of this treatment, you'll stop feeling like it's possible to just obey the law. They're out to extract money from you, and the proof is that no one shows up to sweep the streets. Only to write you tickets.

I think it's interesting that you replied to this comment, but not my other comment (the one referencing John Oliver).

I'm sure the situation you are describing is difficult to deal with.

What city does this happen in? Every place I lived either had a set schedule for street cleaning with clearly posted permanent signs or, for low density irregular cleaning towns, did not ticket the few cars left on the street during the day. What you are describing seems to call for 2nd amendment style reconstitution of the local government by the populous.

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