Overheard conversation!!!!

[Bird]

I met Tim once... he was as strange in person as you would imagine... did get a free Tiptoe through the Tulips Album ;-)

Was he as bad a Phyllis Diller? I reckon she was the worst I ever met.:laughing:

 

[smstonypoint]

I met Tim once... he was as strange in person as you would imagine... did get a free Tiptoe through the Tulips Album ;-)

I didn't meet Tiny Tim, but I was once just behind him in a checkout line at a supermarket in Clemson. This was in the early 1980s, well after his 15 minutes of fame, and he was giving a show that afternoon -- on July 4 at the Y-Beach if memory serves. I remember that he was overweight and his grocery purchases consisted of potato chips and other snacks.

Checking his bio at Tiny Tim (musician) - Wikipedia, he suffered from diabetes and heart disease. I'm guessing that his diet didn't help matters.

Steve

 

[ultrarunner]

I was a teen but Tim seemed to be stoned... and his voice is something I would never forget... strangest person I had ever met.

Phyllis Diller, a SF Bay Area original, through a combination of circumstance and quirky on stage personality had quite a life... 40 movies, radio, TV and could be quite normal in private...

I never met her but one of my Grandmother's friends knew her and said Phyllis could be quite a riot with an audience once they connected... she just wouldn't stop as long as the laughs kept coming and was very self deprecating...

Self-deprecating to a fault, a typical Diller joke had her running after a garbage truck pulling away from her curb. "Am I too late for the trash?" she'd yell. The driver's reply: "No, jump right in!"

Phyllis Diller - Wikipedia

 

[PJSprog]

Never met either of them, but always enjoyed Phyllis' humor. When I first started dating my Wife, she told me her Grandmother thought I looked like Tiny Tim. I told her I was going to buy a ukulele and an ugly jacket and sing the song for her ... which she talked me out of.

 

[RSKY]

One other story about 'financial consultants'. One of my sisters was thinking about going to this guy who had a very successful financial services company. I kinda knew the guy and he seemed okay BUT...... his wife taught school with my wife. She would run up huge credit card debts and somehow pay one card off with another each month and kept her debt supposedly interest free. Wife came in telling about ***** laughing about her $20,000+ of debt. I am sure her husband knew what she was doing and helped her. They were part of the local country club set, always drove new Cadillacs, and partied a LOT.

Would you want to trust your retirement future to somebody who handled their own family finances in this way?

I talked my sister out of letting him handle her money.

RSKY

 

[3930dave]

Needless to say it didn't work. They ended up with over $30,000 on credit cards besides the huge house payment on their McMansion. Then it was discovered that one or both also had other credit cards with balances on them that the other spouse did not know about.

Can you say d-i-v-o-r-c-e?

I don't know who got stuck with the bill from all their foolishness. And I always thought they were both fairly smart people. Professionals with good educations, but no common sense.

RSKY

Not uncommon. Know a couple with a similar dynamic - mostly was a competition to see who could spend the most money - he had to have a new 5 series BMW (2 y/o Maxima just wouldn't do....) so she had to blow even more money than that on a kitchen reno..... Divorced some time ago.

A lot of people succumb to the heavy and insidious Must Have Now marketing that our world has become. One of the best things my parents taught me was basic money responsibility.

Around tax season one year, the Globe and Mail had an article about "Going broke on 650k a year". The title came from a tax advisor in Vancouver - he had a couple that came in every year, both needing complete loans to max out their RRSP contributions (our 401k). Household income was $650k/yr, but they didn't have two cents in their pocket....

What you make matters, but what matters more is how you manage it.....

Rgds, D.

 

[ultrarunner]

The advisors would come in and make their presentations... however, whenever the markets went down "Assigned" advisor would be re-assigned... same with the Bank Investment Advisor.

I mentioned this to someone I know that is a compliance auditor and he said it is standard practice to re-shuffle the deck and nothing illegal about it.

Often thought it would level the field if the client/investor/employee knew as much about the Advisor as the Advisor knows about them.

One meeting a year is mandatory... they often ask me questions and I give them my story... not that I know anything about equity markets, Wall Street, etc... but how at a young age working a regular job managed to have paid for Real Estate and Rental Income in Commercial, Residential and Institutional Sectors.

Realize SF Bay Area real estate may vary from other areas but few "Advisors" own their homes let alone free and clear.

I tend to see them as Sales people just like someone selling a car or insurance... neither bad or good.

 

[ultrarunner]

Not uncommon. Know a couple with a similar dynamic - mostly was a competition to see who could spend the most money - he had to have a new 5 series BMW (2 y/o Maxima just wouldn't do....) so she had to blow even more money than that on a kitchen reno..... Divorced some time ago.

A lot of people succumb to the heavy and insidious Must Have Now marketing that our world has become. One of the best things my parents taught me was basic money responsibility.

Around tax season one year, the Globe and Mail had an article about "Going broke on 650k a year". The title came from a tax advisor in Vancouver - he had a couple that came in every year, both needing complete loans to max out their RRSP contributions (our 401k). Household income was $650k/yr, but they didn't have two cents in their pocket....

What you make matters, but what matters more is how you manage it.....

Rgds, D.

Growing up we had what we needed but the wants were a different story... hand me downs were a way of life and making do was standard operating practice... however, when the decision was to go ahead with a major purchase the emphasis was on buying once so quality/value counted..

Having frugal parents Dad did not skimp on materials... best shingles, quality paint regular oil changes and Mom often drove a car where a new set of tires equaled the value of the car because the car was old... but not worn out.

I do think the current crop of young kids is more in tune with finance than kids have been for awhile... they experienced the Real Estate meltdown and know people that lost their homes... had cars picked up... makes it real when you know people having gone through it.

 

[RSKY]

Worked with a young lady who went thru a divorce right after I started at that place. About a year and a half later we were talking and she mentioned that she and her ex still owned a lake house together. Of course having been thru about a hundred divorces (none my own) over more than thirty years as a supervisor I knew that the first rule was to separate ALL finances. Gosh I could tell disaster stories. Anyway, they were underwater on the loan and holding on to the house together until the housing market came back and they could sell it for a big price. I advised her that even though it wasn't my business she better get her name off the title.

Yep, the secretary that the ex-husband had been fooling around with to cause the divorce was embezzling money from him. The first he know about it was when checks started bouncing. He had to declare bankruptcy, secretary arrested, and the creditors that owned the loan for the lake house came to the factory and picked the girls car up while she was at work.

Life is tough, it is even tougher when you are stupid.

The girl couldn't even purchase another car without it being seized. She had to have a vehicle to drive to work so she sold/pawned everything she had and got a junker and put it in her mother's name.

She has since moved out of the area, remarried, and is doing well. But she is fifteen years behind what others her age are in getting financially secure to plan for retirement.

RSKY

 

[dmccarty]

...

What you make matters, but what matters more is how you manage it.....

Rgds, D.

Recently, I read a quote from a character in a Charles Dickens story. The quote uses English money, and it is from a couple of centuries ago, but it is still the truth/reality.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

Later,
Dan