7 ms·

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even

by paxys 3y ago

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it's the government's fault"). This discussion is about subscriptions but the general idea applies to so much more – basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary. Ultimately it is your money and your problem. No one is looking out for you. You can either endlessly complain about it or build some good habits. 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world.

ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
People tend to act shocked when I tell them my finance app requires me to enter transactions manually and doesn't magically categorize everything. You spend a third of your life working for that money, surely you spend 5 minutes at most tracking how you spend it.
- drawnwren 3y ago
  which finance app do you recommend?
  - maleldil 3y ago
    YNAB is pretty good. I like their zero-based budget system.
- tunesmith 3y ago
  I'm guilty of being averse to this too, even though I intellectually know that if I accept manually entering transactions, then there are so many more options I can choose for tracking finances. As it is, I'm locked into a Banktivity subscription fee... I think part of it is that it is just so hard to centralize all finances through just one bank. The best bank for retirement doesn't support business credit cards; the best credit cards are with completely different companies, etc. Monthly finances are a huge hassle as it is.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > I think part of it is that it is just so hard to centralize all finances through just one bank. I always advice against single points of failure (whether software, security, or finance). Do the opposite, pick the best for each and intentionally avoid overlap. I have credit cards from every major bank but I don't have anything else at those banks. My accounts with money in them are in other institutions where I don't have cards or anything else. My mortgage is with a bank where I have nothing else with them, and so on. Decentralize, avoid too many eggs in any one basket.
- tdeck 3y ago
  I use an app like this as well. Was working great until I moved in with someone and it became more time consuming to look over line items and split all the restaurant / grocery bills rather than just entering the total. Now I have a bowl full of receipts to go through and the balance is usually not up to date :/.
- rockooooo 3y ago
  sure, but when there's a dozen apps that will do it automatically, why?
  - jjeaff 3y ago
    if the app automatically categorizes things, you don't ever have to look at it. doing it yourself requires that you review every transaction individually.
    - woobar 3y ago
      Categorization and review are two different processes. The app I use will download and categorize, but I still have to review/accept each transaction. What is the benefit of manual entry in this case?
      - gardenhedge 3y ago
        Why are both of you not naming the apps you use?
        rockooooo 3y ago
        I use Tiller, which ingests my transactions but doesn't categorize them for me (except by a rule set that I manually defined)
    - antisthenes 3y ago
      My credit card statement already automatically categorizes things. I don't know what's the point of using a 3rd party app for this, unless you feel very generous about providing your data for someone to sell. I also don't know what's the point of reviewing transactions individually. If I pay something monthly (e.g. internet/car insurance/utility bills), I'm not going to look at it every month. I might check it at the end of the year to see if there are any 10x anomalies, but that's it. I'm also not going to check transactions under $20, unless there are hundreds of them that are unexpected. Although I do feel sorry for buyers who spend $1000+ every month on impulse shopping, but those are also the kind of people to never check their financial health anyway.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  What value do you feel that you gain from all that categorization effort?
- petsfed 3y ago
  When I was very poor (~$22k/year), I had a google sheet that had a running tally of all my transactions, what category they came from, and was therefore able to forecast months in advance when I'd be able to afford to go to a movie with my partner. If I was going to have a shortfall (maybe because I'd been scheduled for less hours unexpectedly, or I had an unexpected health issue), I'd know weeks in advance if I was at risk of missing rent, and adjust my grocery spending accordingly. Being exposed to the crushing reality of my poverty, alongside the daily ritual of sending off job applications and reading rejection emails from last week's applications, took a heavy toll on my mental health. If I was running things that close to the bone again, I'm certain I could take that habit up again, but one of the ways I know I've come up is that my survival does not require me to categorize every transaction in real time and confirm adherence to the budget down to the penny.
SeanAnderson 3y ago
Is it really that shocking? People pay a lot for convenience. Not putting effort into managing money is another act of convenience that comes with a cost.
- paxys 3y ago
  Hiring a money manager would be the convenience here, but that's not what is happening.
grotorea 3y ago
It may be simply a case of the people who most need this stuff are the most likely to lack either or both mental energy or the requisite knowledge. And frankly, I don't see why the government shouldn't mandate making it easy to unsubscribe.
rectang 3y ago
The rapacious corporations agree with you — no matter how deceptive or even illegal their practices are, no matter how much R&D money is brought to bear in designing innovative user interfaces and bureaucratic frameworks which systematically exploit human weaknesses (particularly those of vulnerable populations such as less-tech-savvy elders) to bleed the populace dry... it's all the fault of the individual victims who are "allowing" themselves to be ripped off, one-by-one.
- gedy 3y ago
  I think you are misrepresenting OPs point. We all know many people who are extremely sloppy with their personal finances, and sign up for things they can't afford, debt they are unlikely to pay back, etc. Am I sad for companies who take in these people as customers? No, but let's not canonize people who are reckless with their spending, even when warned.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    > We all know many people who are extremely sloppy with their personal finances, and sign up for things they can't afford, debt they are unlikely to pay back, etc. You know I have heard this my entire life, and I have yet to actually meet any of these people. The people I have met though fall into one or more of a number of categories: - People uneducated in finance, usually lower class: You can say things like "well of course credit cards charge interest" but I was never taught that in school. I learned it from my mother, who is an accountant. She also taught me how to do things like a proper budget, balance a checkbook, diligent record-keeping on expenditures, and how to file my taxes. I was never offered this knowledge in schooling. The gap between how many, I believe well intention-ed and well educated people have between what is "common sense" financial knowledge and what is known by common people, can be the grand fucking canyon. - Despite the above, I have also never in my life met a person who believed a credit card was free money. Everyone knew they had to pay it back, even if they didn't understand interest and why interest was about to ruin their credit score. - Additionally, I have never met a person who signed up for things they couldn't afford for the hell of it. I met a few people who were sold mortgages they couldn't afford, by representatives of financial institutions. I've also met people who borrowed money from Payday loan stores because their cars were broken and they could not earn money until that was solved, and they lacked the money to accomplish that. - I've also met people who, before they were legally allowed to DRINK, were allowed to sign on the dotted line for six figures of educational funding, with no demonstration of understanding how the critical above concepts worked, so they could know what they would eventually pay, nor any demonstration of how they would earn enough of a living afterwards to pay it off, which is just odd to me? Like, a bank won't loan you $500k to buy a house that's only worth $100k, so why will they loan you $150k to get a degree in underwater basket weaving? - Lastly, I've also met people who struggle with things like depression, addiction, attention issues, all manner of ailments that either stem from or are made worse by a lack of dopamine in their brains, which makes them impulsive and possibly reckless depending on the day, and I have seen them interacting with products that are clearly, blatantly, preying on their inability to say no effectively so that they will say yes. And once they say yes enough times, their credit cards are maxed out, and they're in the poorhouse for no other reason than being vulnerable to manipulation. And like, all of that aside, even if you meet NONE of those categories, I still, frankly, believe it's not only possible but the only ethical response to all of this is: we should have a society that leaves enough room for people to fuck up occasionally without ruining their goddamn lives. I don't know exactly how we go about that, in finance especially this is a tricky thing, but at the same time, I simply don't believe that a lifetime of wage-slave-serfdom, or perhaps worse, freezing to death on the street, is an acceptable punishment for you making a bad financial decision at some point in your life. That does not make sense to me.
unglaublich 3y ago
> (especially the ones who can least afford it) There's a correlation between financial illiteracy and acquiring cripling debt.
darth_avocado 3y ago
Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons: > They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work. > You buy something, and they tag a "3-4 months free" of another service, which you can't opt out of even if you want to, and then suddenly charge you that extra money on the 5th month. You obviously cancel it, but you still overpaid for a month. > Services that charge you once a year. You forgot to cancel the Xbox subscription because you bought a PS5, got charged a year later. Now you cancel it, but you paid for the year. > Services that make you use or forgo credits that you already paid for if you cancel. (Audible) You want to cancel, but you put it off for another month because now, you need to figure out 5 ebooks to buy. Next month, you end up in the same situation and now you need to figure out 6 ebooks to buy. The point being, you could check all your statements weekly, and still end up spending money on something you forgot about.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm This is customer service. A written notice of termination works for any consumer contract. > but you paid for the year Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards.
  - rectang 3y ago
    > Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards. That's a facile answer. You're extremely well educated on this matter and know full well the downsides of "unpaying". EDIT: see sibling comment from "notaustinpowers" for an explanation of the downsides (thanks!). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060260
    - boredtofears 3y ago
      What are the downsides of disputing a charge?
Algemarin 3y ago
> This discussion is about subscriptions but the general idea applies to so much more – basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary. I think it's one of the major failures of the education system. Why is there no class in school which covers taxes, savings, budgeting, etc? People are seemingly just expected to know this on their own.
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  Most subjects taught in K-12 tend to be ancient: language, math, history, science, music, etc. with occasional modern electives. Obviously personal finance is also ancient on some level, but I wonder how long it's actually been so complicated and critical as to warrant consideration for being taught in school. I'm no expert, but I think the complexities like payment cards, insanely complex tax code, etc. are quite modern. On the other hand, the same could be said for driver's ed which is pretty common.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    When I was in grade school (a very long time ago), personal finance was a huge focus. It was the main thing you learned in Home Economics class. When my kids were in grade school, it was basically not taught at all. Home Ec was more about sewing and cooking than about, you know, economics. I don't know when that change happened, but it's to the detriment of everyone.
- dvdkon 3y ago
  Would the kinds of people who have trouble budgeting and managing their investments be any better at it if the technique was taught at school? Judging from my own experience, I'd say willpower is the bigger barrier. Thankfully I'm not in a situation where I'd need to carefully watch my daily expenses (being semi-concious of them works well for me), but if I had to, I'd have to force myself. Maybe that's too much for some.
  - 3y ago
tshaddox 3y ago
> Ultimately it is your money and your problem. No one is looking out for you. This is true, but it doesn't mean that collective solutions cannot exist or should not be desired.
vdaea 3y ago
>It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. I've seen it first-hand how those with the biggest financial problems earn as much money as anybody else, but they simply can't handle it. And the rest of us are supposed to bail them out of course.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  While that's true, there are multi-billion dollar industries built around exploiting financial ignorance. Payday loan companies and gambling are top of mind for me here. Who are we really bailing out, the financially unhealthy or the corporate parasites?
tehjoker 3y ago
Well that's a dismal way to look at it. Regulations should be in place to prevent these kinds of business practices. For example, if a user doesn't use a service, perhaps they should get a refund for those months.
- paxys 3y ago
  This is exactly the problem I am talking about. Why is the first instinct to always externalize blame? Why is big government the default solution to everything? How about – if you are not getting value out of a subscription (that you signed up for), go and cancel it. And if you choose not to, don't blame the rest of the world for your money problems.
  - dvdkon 3y ago
    Bluntly, we live with individuals who just suck at finance (this extends to other now-necessary skills too). I want to live in a world where they aren't constantly taken advantage of. Consider it a mental disorder if you need to; we don't have to punish people for being dumb. Besides, regulation of this kind (cancelling subscription) benefits everyone but certain companies. I don't want to waste my time due to someone's misguided free market ideology. Even if navigating endless bureaucracy does make me feel smart. That said, I hate the tendency of regulators to outright ban certain activities. Everyone should be free to throw their money away (by e.g. making risky investments), after signing a lot of very scary forms and showing that they really mean it.
    - paxys 3y ago
      If I watch 1 hour of Netflix a month and you watch 300 hundred hours a month, should the government mandate that Netflix charge you 300x more than me? If not, why should the person who watches 0 hours be treated any differently? Ultimately Netflix is creating the plan and publishing its details, and we are all opting into it willingly. Whether we get value from it or not is for us to decide, not the government.
      - 3y ago
jimt1234 3y ago
I interviewed a bunch of "financial hardship" people a few years back for an app my company was working on. The lack of financial knowledge was pretty disappointing to me, but the big thing I remember is that all the people I talked to were good people. They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was some of that: many people don't know how interest works on a credit card until it's too late, or other people are completely apathetic to their finances. But, honestly, the thing that stuck with me the most is that most of them were very trusting people, and ultimately that's what got them to where they are (broke). They trusted blindly: "[credit card company] wouldn't double my interest rate just because I missed one payment.", "The guy who sold me the car seemed nice. Why would he give me a 29% interest rate on my car loan?", and "The credit card companies can't do that; there's got to be laws that prohibit that." Lots of statements like that really stuck with me. I felt bad. It's like I wanted to give a TED Talk that would've lasted about 30 seconds: "The banks and credit card companies are not your friend, don't trust them. Once you fall into debt with them, you're never gonna get out. The law offers very little protection for you, if any at all." And, thankfully, the app was never released. It was basically just an app for pay-day loans.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  Yea, most people assume the best in others I think. They assume others will not break the law for personal gain. In real life, those folks get taken advantage of. I know because I used to be one but now I don’t trust anyone. The moral degradation of society isn’t in the extra drugs and sex we have, it’s in the way we accept merely to follow the letter of the law, and find as many loopholes as possible otherwise. You see that in VC funded startups constantly, in politics, and everywhere else.
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  It's sad but Usury/Interest is often exploiting two bifurcated groups of people -- those who are trusting and those who are desperate.
- sailfast 3y ago
  Worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for awhile. We encountered a lot of these cases and there are a ton of dark patterns as well as just straight-up not honoring the 300 page contracts that they had written. For the most part you come to understand that people are actually trying really hard to get it right most of the time. The lack of knowledge is quite startling (but understandable, given how complex some of these things often are and how much time it takes to figure them out that people just don't have) and the pace at which it is exploited is very disappointing but inevitable.
lwhi 3y ago
It's not bizarre when you consider the lengths companies go to, to try convince those who can least afford it to make a purchase. The most vulnerable are used a fodder for a vast capitalist system.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Industrialisation means that most consumer goods are mass produced. That means these companies need to make their money from wide sales instead of tall sales. Wide as in getting as many individual customers as possible, instead of tall as in selling bespoke products for an expensive price to few customers. Very few people need more than one washing machine. Well off people already own washing machines. So if you're selling washing machines, you need to make a way for as many poor people as possible to be able to buy them, hence credit and split payments.
  - lwhi 3y ago
    What's your point? That the system is just fine thank you Sir, move along?
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      My point is that is logical and not that bizarre that companies will do anything they can to broaden their customer base. Once you've sold your product to the rich and the middle class, you have to target the poor. Because your factory keeps spitting out product and you need customers.
      - lwhi 3y ago
        Some companies only sell to people who are financially struggling. And a great deal of these companies rely on people not being financially literate to make huge amounts of money. There's no inevitability to these systems. People make choices to run companies these ways. They don't have to sell because the factories can't stop making products.
xkfm 3y ago
A lot of it is genetic. Good luck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness You have a lot of it, and so do the type A personality people on this site.
xkfm 3y ago
Low conscientiousness is linked to anti-social behavior, blue-collared crimes, and crimes of passion,[3] as well as unemployment and homelessness.[19] Low conscientiousness and low agreeableness taken together are also associated with substance use disorders.[27] People low in conscientiousness have difficulty saving money and their risky borrowing practices make them fall prey to subprime and predatory lending more often than conscientious people. High conscientiousness is associated with more careful planning of shopping trips and less impulse buying of unneeded items.[19] Conscientiousness is positively correlated with business, white-collared, and premeditated criminal behavior.[28]
bjourne 3y ago
Same "advice" can be given to fatties too. Your health and your problem. I put advice in quotes because it doesn't work and isn't that easy in practice.
Modified3019 3y ago
That's a lovely and idealistic view of humans. Unfortunately bad actors have realized that what we actually are is just meat computers with unpatchable security vulnerabilities, so demanding that people just stop having problems and fit your nebulous definition of competence with unlimited and unwavering performance, has predictably not panned out. What is the more moral solution then? Recognizing and placing systematic limits on exploitation behaviors, or is it continuing to demand super-vigilance from the victims?
- sailfast 3y ago
  Just wanted to say that I found this phrasing to be fantastic.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    Agreed, this was a really well-put response.
  - Modified3019 3y ago
    Just came across a very terse version of this sentiment, which you might like: “You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.” ― Tristan Harris (Found on https://www.staygrounded.online/p/how-i-got-my-phone-screen-time-under-21-11-09 https://www.staygrounded.online/p/how-i-got-my-phone-screen-..., itself linked from a discussion of use of grayscale mode, which I also recommend for people like me that easily get sucked into a whirlpool of novel information seeking. History has relentlessly proven to me that the less "self control" I need to have, the more self control I actually have.)
- wharvle 3y ago
  You can have: 1) An “ethical” system in which a bunch of people are losing money and are surprised by this, unaware of it, or intend to stop it, haven’t yet, but absolutely would if it were as easy as thinking “stop that”. But they said yes somewhere along the line, so it’s all “ethical”. 2) A just-as-ethical system that… simply doesn’t do that bad stuff in 1, or at least does way less of it. It’s weird to me that people defend situations akin to 1 when 2 is totally achievable, on the grounds that “well 1 isn’t technically unethical (as I define it)”. Ok? So what? 2 is better and isn’t less ethical. What is going through someone’s head when they defend 1 and dismiss or put down the notion of 2? If you could flip a switch to toggle between the two, would you really leave it on 1? I do not get it. Why not pick the version with better outcomes? [edit] and, separately, I think it’s plainly unethical—to put it mildly—to add terms to a contract or steps to a process that you know with great certainty your counterparty will later regret or dislike, relying on their overlooking it or not having better options, purely for your own benefit at their expense. I don’t think their saying “yes” makes that ethically an ok thing to do—it’s straight-up predatory. But even if it does make it Ok, why prefer that over… not-that?
janalsncm 3y ago
> No one is looking out for you This is literally what law enforcement and consumer protection is for. Otherwise we could make the same argument about pickpocketing victims, which is frankly what this is more akin to.
- paxys 3y ago
  So willingly going to netflix.com, picking a plan, entering your credit card info, hitting subscribe and watching TV for the next month is the same as getting pickpocketed?
  - moshun 3y ago
    It is when systems are intentionally designed to be extremely low friction to initiate and extremely high friction to cancel. In a lot of cases that’s exactly what happens. To be fair, there should probably be a national consumer protection law that ties complexity of cancellation to complexity of sign up.
    - well_actulily 3y ago
      Some states in the US have laws on the books so that if you can sign up to a service online, you need to be able to cancel online—at least.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    I signed up for a service years ago - scent bird - and it was nearly impossible to cancel. They kept changing the app and I could never find the way to cancel (turns out it doesn’t exist). I would just eat the most monthly because I never wanted to spend the time to figure it out. One day I sat down to check their website. No way to cancel. So I went to the support page. It has a deep-link to the cancellation page. The link is broken. Reddit and others couldn’t find a valid link. Everyone said to DM them on social media. So I tried to contact support, but they don’t publish a valid email or phone number staffed conveniently in my time zone. So I blindly emailed “support@“ and asked to cancel. The response was another broken deep link. I replied no I wanted support staff to do it. They refused. So I told them I was a California resident and we have a law on the books requiring that online signups can be cancelled online and support staff is legally required to honor a cancellation request. No reply. I got an email a few days later cancelling my account for violating their arbitration clause in their TOS. This is basically pickpocketing.
m463 3y ago
I think it is human nature. If someone was hired to manage your life, and they did what you did, they would be fired with contempt.
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
Whenever I get a free trial of Prime, I immediately set a reminder on my phone to cancel it in a month. It's really not that hard.
- paxys 3y ago
  You can also immediately go to settings and choose not to renew. It'll still be active for the rest of the month.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    Gosh I've wasted so much time worrying about not cancelling on time
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It's even easier to reject all free trials of everything. That's what I do.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    I habitually reject subscriptions and automatic payments, too, as far as possible, so I can retain full control of the flow & timing of my expenses. (For services where it's not possible, I subscribe them to a single credit card, which I treat as though it were another utility bill.)
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    I'm already ordering stuff from Amazon, why would I refuse free shipping?
nunez 3y ago
I agree. It's absolutely crazy. I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that. However, it's not entirely the people's fault. Credit card providers make it really easy to sign up for their cards but make it really difficult to do things like "add an alert that texts me whenever a purchase above $0.01 is made" or "alert me when my 0% APR promotional period is ending" or "tell me when i'm about to pay a late fee". All of them will make you go through a labyrinthian exercise to turn these alerts on, if they make them available (LOOKING AT YOU, CITIBANK) and many will not alert you on anything less than $50, which is crazy given how many transactions are smaller than that! Also, in a world where everything is getting more expenses and incomes aren't keeping up, using a tool that reminds you how broke you are on a daily basis isn't fun. So I can understand why folks shy away from it. I certainly did when I was living at the edge for a few years after I graduated. (That said, having this data is essential for creating a plan to change that outcome, but thinking long-term is not fun.) Regardless, things are getting better. Most utilities and other services accept eChecks now with Bill Pay, which allows people to pay for their recurring expenses from one place. Many restaurants and shops use Toast, Stripe, Clover or newer NCR POS's which make it easy to email your receipts. (A pet peeve of mine is restaurants that use Stripe or something like that but don't accept Apple Pay or hand you a bill instead of a mobile POS. Like, come on; you're already paying for these features!)
- jjice 3y ago
  > All of them will make you go through a labyrinthian exercise to turn these alerts on, if they make them available (LOOKING AT YOU, CITIBANK) How long ago is your experience with this from? I ask because I just got my first card from Citi within the last three weeks and was able to turn these on really easily before my card arrived. I actually have a notification for $16 sitting on my lock screen from them as I type this.
  - nunez 3y ago
    A few months ago? I'm glad it's easier!
- jjav 3y ago
Buttons840 3y ago
You suggest that spending 30 minutes a month can improve someones financial situation. In those 30 minutes they could cancel unused subscriptions and maybe save $50 a month. $50 a month isn't bad, but it's not going to be the difference between retiring comfortably and not retiring. Or they could spend those 30 minutes updating their resume and applying to a job; if they apply for a better job every month they could easily find a better paying job that gives them an additional $20,000 a year, especially if they do this consistently. Overall, I agree people would benefit from more effort put into their personal finances, but people have limited mental energy and their time can be better spent on things other than cancelling subscriptions. Indeed, if someone is willing to put effort into improving their financial situation and the best option society offers them is for them to pinch pennies and cancel their subscriptions, that is a sad situation for them and reflects poorly on society.
- Unbefleckt 3y ago
  Luckily we have many waking hours in a month to do both.
  - Buttons840 3y ago
    If you do both, then you are spending at least some of your time sub-optimally. Education, applying to jobs, entrepreneurial ventures, etc, all of these have higher expected value than cancelling subscriptions.
    - dontupvoteme 3y ago
      people aren't thought experiments in ancap-economics textbooks. irrational behaviour is core to not only people but pretty much every lifeform on the planet.
    - bluetomcat 3y ago
      Not cancelling subscriptions has a high correlation with irresponsible spending habits. The same person will likely amass a large amount of stuff that stays unused. Instead of repairing, they will buy new. When they buy new, they don’t consider the longevity and durability of the item.
neilv 3y ago
> (especially the ones who can least afford it) > [...] basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary. These look like things that are generally unavailable to those who can least afford not doing those things. It's expensive to be poor.
wsatb 3y ago
Requiring someone to call to cancel your service is almost always a shady business practice to make it difficult enough that it's not worth their time. If it takes you less than 5 minutes to sign up, it should take you less than 5 minutes to cancel. If you can sign up without talking to someone, you should be able to cancel without talking to someone. That type of practice could use some sort of regulation.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  There could be a rule where should be able to cancel with the same mechanism that signed up. If signed up and use the service with app or site, then should be able to cancel with them.
dontupvoteme 3y ago
It's called nickel and diming and the term originated when they stopped being something you could buy a sandwich with. I'm not surprised at all, a few billions is paltry. I think i have a few subs that i've forgotten about for months or years. I have several bank accounts and several credit cards, things become complicated. At the time i liked what those people were making, or i wanted to watch a certain series, etc.
Loughla 3y ago
I'm with you on every point except >negotiating rents I have never, ever been in a situation where a rent negotiation would have done anything except ensure I didn't get the apartment. Is that real? Where?
- bluGill 3y ago
  With a small landlord it is sometimes possible. Even with the large ones if you let them know you are looking at moving you can sometimes get a discount for the year. Note that you need to be serious about moving to pull this off: you need to actively look at other places to live, and be ready/willing to follow through and move if they don't give you what you want. Apartments are competitive markets for new renters, but once someone is there the hassle of moving means people are often willing to pay more.
- jjulius 3y ago
  Anecdotally... I've lived throughout the US - Seattle, Atlanta, East Bay, Portland - and each time I've leased a place I've pushed back and asked for cheaper rent. Sometimes it's worked, sometimes it hasn't, but that's never ended a conversation or resulted in them walking away. The home I'm renting now, I asked my landlord to reduce their proposed rent increase by 75% if we committed to a two-year lease, and they were fine with that. Never been an issue for me, and if a potential landlord bristles at something like that, then it's a sign that things may not be so great after I've signed the lease.
civilized 3y ago
There is more than one way to feel about this situation! I watch my finances, but the hours I spend on it feel wasted, and I am resentful of the people whose parasitic attitudes towards my bank account make this necessary. It's as if, when I go to relax or exercise, my only option is hiking in a tick-infested field. I spend an extra 15 minutes prepping my clothes before going out, and an extra 15 minutes checking every inch of my body after I come back in. It's true that all this extra work is my responsibility. It's also true that ticks suck (literally) and it would be preferable if there were a way to prevent them from parasitizing me in the first place.
CivBase 3y ago
The line between reasonable responsibiliy and unreasonable responsibility is subjective and blurry. We can generally agree it's my responsibility to not waste my life savings on novelty mugs, but it's not my responsibility to keep my money in an armored vault at home in case a burgler breaks in and tries to steal it. Laws exist to protect people from bad actors so our time and efforts can be better spent on things that are valuable to us and society. Is 30 minutes a month an unreasonable responsibility to protect against companies taking advantage of people with unutilized subscriptions? Should the law be updated to enable people to save people that time and effort? Maybe. I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to at least consider.
toastercat 3y ago
I don't disagree with you, but lots of people do not take charge of their financial health simply because they do not know any better, or are too trusting to entities that will loan them money. And they are that way likely because their parents were that way too. A common thing I hear when talking about things like the student loan crisis and the housing market crash of the late 2000s is "well no one forced them to take out those loans" or "I took out a loan and I paid it off, why can't they?" But when it's as prevalent an issue that more than half of undergrad students in the U.S. are in debt, and the fact that poor people taking out subprime mortgages just so they can have somewhere to live can cause a global financial disaster, it starts making me think -- yeah maybe it is the "government's fault". Maybe us smart people on the top have to understand not everyone is as smart as us, and we have to build a system that works for all the truly clueless folk.
CogitoCogito 3y ago
> No one is looking out for you. You can either endlessly complain about it or build some good habits. 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world. I don’t disagree, but I’d point out that this applies to basically anything in life. Relationships, exercise, health, work, etc. The fact is people prioritize and many don’t prioritize their finances. All of us drop the ball on something.
wiseowise 3y ago
> 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world. Maybe for someone who already has good financial habits it is 30 minutes, but for people who never bother with this it will take far more time.
lacrimacida 3y ago
> It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. It’s designed to be complicated, confusing or easy to forget just so it traps people at least once. It’s borderline fraud sometimes, at least it feels like that to me. The recourse is to be super vigilant but when you let guard down you fall into a trap and it’s hard to beware all traps at all times especially when they’re being constantly evolving
alfalfasprout 3y ago
Honestly this is a very out of touch view. And you assume people don't do these things. Of course they do. Some don't. But you're making a broad generalization. People do check this stuff. Even then it's easy to forget about something for a few months. Or ask if your SO is using something. There are so many charges on a typical CC statement that spending time every day going through them isn't always worth it either.
jjulius 3y ago
>It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. But, see... >No one is looking out for you. ... that's just it, isn't it? Nobody's looking out for you. We send kids to public school from ages five to eighteen, but at a broad level, we do not have a requirement for any of that education to be about how to take charge, and stay on top of, your fiscal health. I'm not sure how you can look down on others like that when a large chunk of people are kicked into adulthood without ever having been taught how to look after themselves financially.
- sahila 3y ago
  But you can teach yourself, like how most everyone who is looking over themselves financially did. Learning doesn't end with schooling, and for most they know that, doing dance, art, and sport classes for example all on their own. It’s just that financial literacy isn’t a priority.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    If it's not a priority for people, and we understand that there is an incredibly wide range of circumstances that everyone is in, much of which don't allow for easy fiscal education, access to it, or time for it, it should be pretty darn obvious that it should be a part of our basic education system. Am I to take your response as a suggestion that we shouldn't bother introducing this subject matter as a requirement at the public school level?
    - sahila 3y ago
      Let's add it as a class, I'm not against it. I do have doubts about its efficacy introduced to students in high school before they have their first credit card and their counselors continuing to push the college at all costs view, but it won't hurt. I'm not sure what the solution is. Frankly I just don't think people are that interested in it - even if you do know about it, looking at your cc bill or budgeting just isn't a thing people want to do. If you know your mortgage jumps up in 5 years, most people will think they'll be able to afford it then. We vote in policies that help the wealthy because everyone assumes that's who they'll be soon enough! That all being said, I'm not sure how much we should protect people against themselves. I don't mean to take a libertarian view and we can improve the current situation (like making subscription cancelling easier and online), but I don't think solving finances is a tenable one. I'm digressing, but we all like to kick the can down the road, including our national debt or pension obligations.
jchw 3y ago
Note that you are currently making excuses for blatant dark patterns for some reason. I dunno why we're doing that. People should definitely push harder to not waste money, but entities should not abuse their position to try to push them into passively allowing it. There's so many things you need to take care of in life that I don't imagine most people ever really get to give as much attention to all of the facets of their lives as they need to, and finances are only one of them. The fact that someone is effectively stealing your money and forcing you to trade it for time and effort you could spend doing anything else is criminal. (I mean, literally, it should actually be criminal. If I don't want to be subscribed, fucking unsubscribe me. That means you Planet Fitness after I moved to California.)
sangnoir 3y ago
> It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. They may be too exhausted from their second job - or from the one job they have to be on their feet the whole work day - and may not have the mental energy to comb through financial statements. You have the luxury of time and energy, so real reasons sound like excuses to you. I would recommend you (re)read John Scalzi's essay on Being Poor[1]. Except: >> Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor. The link between stress and poor decision-making is well studied, and unfortunately poor financial health is self-reinforcing: being poor is very expensive! 1. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
petsfed 3y ago
Eh, there's a pretty big difference between "I'm too lazy to solve this" and "the only reason this requires so much effort is because the business would lose a ton of revenue if people could simply stop paying for things that they don't want to have". There really is no reason why cancelling a subscription at some predefined point in the future should require any kind of business-hours-only-must-talk-to-a-physical-person approach, and if your CSR handling your cancellation is not empowered to actually process your request (which is pretty common with e.g. cable and phone companies as well as gyms), then its abuse, pure and simple. I know what my hourly equivalent is, so if the cost to my employer (or myself, if I'm an independent contractor) while I sort this out when I should be working is more than the monthly bill itself, then it becomes not worth my time to sit on the phone and deal with it. I had a regular order with Chewy, until the dog food brand I was having drop shipped stopping selling that particular type of dog food to Chewy (but I could get it somewhere else). And I had to sit on hold for 30 fucking minutes, just so Chewy would stop charging me (considerably more) for, and shipping to me, dog food that I did not want, had never wanted, and was actually shopping elsewhere to avoid. And I didn't find out that they didn't carry that brand anymore until they shipped "what we believe is the closest match" to me. I honestly thought it was a mis-pick initially, so when I went to resolve it, I followed that customer service UI pattern, to no avail. They've changed it since then, but the fact still remains, that was not at all a scenario I should've needed to call in for. I certainly shouldn't have needed to sit on hold for it. When I finally spoke to the CSR, she was apologetic that I even had to talk to her about it.
YeBanKo 3y ago
It's bizarre to me that some people think that American's are somehow more stupid or gullible than other nations. Lots and lots of capital was spent to make sure that Americans are conditioned to spend as much and as frictionless as possible. And now they do and regulation cannot catch up. > retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary. Where else do people need to actively manage their pension accounts like in the US? If your employer does not provide a decent 401k they trying to create a solid retirement investment account is an uphill challenge. In most other places it's simply a tax into a pension fund. > not paying random fees There is very little price transparency. Random fees are typically not random, but hidden. You can't book a rental car online without being hit with some municipal tax or other surcharge at the counter. In SF a health surcharge often added to the bill on top tax. It makes no fucking sense that it is not a part of the price or part of the sales tax. Cellular carriers and ISPs know exactly how much you gonna be paying but will bend backwards to make sure you don't know it until very end. You are right that basic financial discipline is a personal responsibility, but removing the asymmetry in the relationship between large businesses and consumers is on the government and legal system.
bmitc 3y ago
That's passing the buck. All of those suggestions you have apply to these companies as well. It's just that when they are lazy, they get to leech off of everyone else and make money from it, where they hide behind the "complexity" of their systems. It's absurd that you place the blame on the victims of this. There's so much bullshit required a lot of the time in canceling things or even knowing that you were signed up for something in the first place. Just purchasing something these days will automatically sign up yourself up for endless emails from that and other companies, even if you unchecked the so-called newsletter option. There are so many dark patterns that sign people up for things that they didn't even they got signed up for. I have absolutely been signed up for something, either by accident or a dark pattern, that I didn't realize until latter. It wasn't due to laziness, me lamenting others, or some bad habit. It was due to being effectively tricked and legally scammed. Companies have used software-based services as a sort of trojan horse, and they absolutely take advantage of people who don't understand technology.

by paxys 3y ago

ApolloFortyNine 3y ago

People tend to act shocked when I tell them my finance app requires me to enter transactions manually and doesn't magically categorize everything. You spend a third of your life working for that money, surely you spend 5 minutes at most tracking how you spend it.

drawnwren 3y ago
which finance app do you recommend?
- maleldil 3y ago
  YNAB is pretty good. I like their zero-based budget system.
tunesmith 3y ago
I'm guilty of being averse to this too, even though I intellectually know that if I accept manually entering transactions, then there are so many more options I can choose for tracking finances. As it is, I'm locked into a Banktivity subscription fee... I think part of it is that it is just so hard to centralize all finances through just one bank. The best bank for retirement doesn't support business credit cards; the best credit cards are with completely different companies, etc. Monthly finances are a huge hassle as it is.
- jjav 3y ago
  > I think part of it is that it is just so hard to centralize all finances through just one bank. I always advice against single points of failure (whether software, security, or finance). Do the opposite, pick the best for each and intentionally avoid overlap. I have credit cards from every major bank but I don't have anything else at those banks. My accounts with money in them are in other institutions where I don't have cards or anything else. My mortgage is with a bank where I have nothing else with them, and so on. Decentralize, avoid too many eggs in any one basket.
tdeck 3y ago
I use an app like this as well. Was working great until I moved in with someone and it became more time consuming to look over line items and split all the restaurant / grocery bills rather than just entering the total. Now I have a bowl full of receipts to go through and the balance is usually not up to date :/.
rockooooo 3y ago
sure, but when there's a dozen apps that will do it automatically, why?
- jjeaff 3y ago
  if the app automatically categorizes things, you don't ever have to look at it. doing it yourself requires that you review every transaction individually.
  - woobar 3y ago
    Categorization and review are two different processes. The app I use will download and categorize, but I still have to review/accept each transaction. What is the benefit of manual entry in this case?
    - gardenhedge 3y ago
      Why are both of you not naming the apps you use?
      - rockooooo 3y ago
        I use Tiller, which ingests my transactions but doesn't categorize them for me (except by a rule set that I manually defined)
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    My credit card statement already automatically categorizes things. I don't know what's the point of using a 3rd party app for this, unless you feel very generous about providing your data for someone to sell. I also don't know what's the point of reviewing transactions individually. If I pay something monthly (e.g. internet/car insurance/utility bills), I'm not going to look at it every month. I might check it at the end of the year to see if there are any 10x anomalies, but that's it. I'm also not going to check transactions under $20, unless there are hundreds of them that are unexpected. Although I do feel sorry for buyers who spend $1000+ every month on impulse shopping, but those are also the kind of people to never check their financial health anyway.
marssaxman 3y ago
What value do you feel that you gain from all that categorization effort?
petsfed 3y ago
When I was very poor (~$22k/year), I had a google sheet that had a running tally of all my transactions, what category they came from, and was therefore able to forecast months in advance when I'd be able to afford to go to a movie with my partner. If I was going to have a shortfall (maybe because I'd been scheduled for less hours unexpectedly, or I had an unexpected health issue), I'd know weeks in advance if I was at risk of missing rent, and adjust my grocery spending accordingly. Being exposed to the crushing reality of my poverty, alongside the daily ritual of sending off job applications and reading rejection emails from last week's applications, took a heavy toll on my mental health. If I was running things that close to the bone again, I'm certain I could take that habit up again, but one of the ways I know I've come up is that my survival does not require me to categorize every transaction in real time and confirm adherence to the budget down to the penny.

SeanAnderson 3y ago

Is it really that shocking? People pay a lot for convenience. Not putting effort into managing money is another act of convenience that comes with a cost.

paxys 3y ago
Hiring a money manager would be the convenience here, but that's not what is happening.

grotorea 3y ago

It may be simply a case of the people who most need this stuff are the most likely to lack either or both mental energy or the requisite knowledge. And frankly, I don't see why the government shouldn't mandate making it easy to unsubscribe.

rectang 3y ago

The rapacious corporations agree with you — no matter how deceptive or even illegal their practices are, no matter how much R&D money is brought to bear in designing innovative user interfaces and bureaucratic frameworks which systematically exploit human weaknesses (particularly those of vulnerable populations such as less-tech-savvy elders) to bleed the populace dry... it's all the fault of the individual victims who are "allowing" themselves to be ripped off, one-by-one.

gedy 3y ago
I think you are misrepresenting OPs point. We all know many people who are extremely sloppy with their personal finances, and sign up for things they can't afford, debt they are unlikely to pay back, etc. Am I sad for companies who take in these people as customers? No, but let's not canonize people who are reckless with their spending, even when warned.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > We all know many people who are extremely sloppy with their personal finances, and sign up for things they can't afford, debt they are unlikely to pay back, etc. You know I have heard this my entire life, and I have yet to actually meet any of these people. The people I have met though fall into one or more of a number of categories: - People uneducated in finance, usually lower class: You can say things like "well of course credit cards charge interest" but I was never taught that in school. I learned it from my mother, who is an accountant. She also taught me how to do things like a proper budget, balance a checkbook, diligent record-keeping on expenditures, and how to file my taxes. I was never offered this knowledge in schooling. The gap between how many, I believe well intention-ed and well educated people have between what is "common sense" financial knowledge and what is known by common people, can be the grand fucking canyon. - Despite the above, I have also never in my life met a person who believed a credit card was free money. Everyone knew they had to pay it back, even if they didn't understand interest and why interest was about to ruin their credit score. - Additionally, I have never met a person who signed up for things they couldn't afford for the hell of it. I met a few people who were sold mortgages they couldn't afford, by representatives of financial institutions. I've also met people who borrowed money from Payday loan stores because their cars were broken and they could not earn money until that was solved, and they lacked the money to accomplish that. - I've also met people who, before they were legally allowed to DRINK, were allowed to sign on the dotted line for six figures of educational funding, with no demonstration of understanding how the critical above concepts worked, so they could know what they would eventually pay, nor any demonstration of how they would earn enough of a living afterwards to pay it off, which is just odd to me? Like, a bank won't loan you $500k to buy a house that's only worth $100k, so why will they loan you $150k to get a degree in underwater basket weaving? - Lastly, I've also met people who struggle with things like depression, addiction, attention issues, all manner of ailments that either stem from or are made worse by a lack of dopamine in their brains, which makes them impulsive and possibly reckless depending on the day, and I have seen them interacting with products that are clearly, blatantly, preying on their inability to say no effectively so that they will say yes. And once they say yes enough times, their credit cards are maxed out, and they're in the poorhouse for no other reason than being vulnerable to manipulation. And like, all of that aside, even if you meet NONE of those categories, I still, frankly, believe it's not only possible but the only ethical response to all of this is: we should have a society that leaves enough room for people to fuck up occasionally without ruining their goddamn lives. I don't know exactly how we go about that, in finance especially this is a tricky thing, but at the same time, I simply don't believe that a lifetime of wage-slave-serfdom, or perhaps worse, freezing to death on the street, is an acceptable punishment for you making a bad financial decision at some point in your life. That does not make sense to me.

unglaublich 3y ago

> (especially the ones who can least afford it) There's a correlation between financial illiteracy and acquiring cripling debt.

darth_avocado 3y ago

Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons: > They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work. > You buy something, and they tag a "3-4 months free" of another service, which you can't opt out of even if you want to, and then suddenly charge you that extra money on the 5th month. You obviously cancel it, but you still overpaid for a month. > Services that charge you once a year. You forgot to cancel the Xbox subscription because you bought a PS5, got charged a year later. Now you cancel it, but you paid for the year. > Services that make you use or forgo credits that you already paid for if you cancel. (Audible) You want to cancel, but you put it off for another month because now, you need to figure out 5 ebooks to buy. Next month, you end up in the same situation and now you need to figure out 6 ebooks to buy. The point being, you could check all your statements weekly, and still end up spending money on something you forgot about.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm This is customer service. A written notice of termination works for any consumer contract. > but you paid for the year Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards.
- rectang 3y ago
  > Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards. That's a facile answer. You're extremely well educated on this matter and know full well the downsides of "unpaying". EDIT: see sibling comment from "notaustinpowers" for an explanation of the downsides (thanks!). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060260
  - boredtofears 3y ago
    What are the downsides of disputing a charge?

Algemarin 3y ago

> This discussion is about subscriptions but the general idea applies to so much more – basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary. I think it's one of the major failures of the education system. Why is there no class in school which covers taxes, savings, budgeting, etc? People are seemingly just expected to know this on their own.

hunter2_ 3y ago
Most subjects taught in K-12 tend to be ancient: language, math, history, science, music, etc. with occasional modern electives. Obviously personal finance is also ancient on some level, but I wonder how long it's actually been so complicated and critical as to warrant consideration for being taught in school. I'm no expert, but I think the complexities like payment cards, insanely complex tax code, etc. are quite modern. On the other hand, the same could be said for driver's ed which is pretty common.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  When I was in grade school (a very long time ago), personal finance was a huge focus. It was the main thing you learned in Home Economics class. When my kids were in grade school, it was basically not taught at all. Home Ec was more about sewing and cooking than about, you know, economics. I don't know when that change happened, but it's to the detriment of everyone.
dvdkon 3y ago
Would the kinds of people who have trouble budgeting and managing their investments be any better at it if the technique was taught at school? Judging from my own experience, I'd say willpower is the bigger barrier. Thankfully I'm not in a situation where I'd need to carefully watch my daily expenses (being semi-concious of them works well for me), but if I had to, I'd have to force myself. Maybe that's too much for some.
- 3y ago

tshaddox 3y ago

> Ultimately it is your money and your problem. No one is looking out for you. This is true, but it doesn't mean that collective solutions cannot exist or should not be desired.

vdaea 3y ago

>It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. I've seen it first-hand how those with the biggest financial problems earn as much money as anybody else, but they simply can't handle it. And the rest of us are supposed to bail them out of course.

AlexandrB 3y ago
While that's true, there are multi-billion dollar industries built around exploiting financial ignorance. Payday loan companies and gambling are top of mind for me here. Who are we really bailing out, the financially unhealthy or the corporate parasites?

tehjoker 3y ago

Well that's a dismal way to look at it. Regulations should be in place to prevent these kinds of business practices. For example, if a user doesn't use a service, perhaps they should get a refund for those months.

paxys 3y ago
This is exactly the problem I am talking about. Why is the first instinct to always externalize blame? Why is big government the default solution to everything? How about – if you are not getting value out of a subscription (that you signed up for), go and cancel it. And if you choose not to, don't blame the rest of the world for your money problems.
- dvdkon 3y ago
  Bluntly, we live with individuals who just suck at finance (this extends to other now-necessary skills too). I want to live in a world where they aren't constantly taken advantage of. Consider it a mental disorder if you need to; we don't have to punish people for being dumb. Besides, regulation of this kind (cancelling subscription) benefits everyone but certain companies. I don't want to waste my time due to someone's misguided free market ideology. Even if navigating endless bureaucracy does make me feel smart. That said, I hate the tendency of regulators to outright ban certain activities. Everyone should be free to throw their money away (by e.g. making risky investments), after signing a lot of very scary forms and showing that they really mean it.
  - paxys 3y ago
    If I watch 1 hour of Netflix a month and you watch 300 hundred hours a month, should the government mandate that Netflix charge you 300x more than me? If not, why should the person who watches 0 hours be treated any differently? Ultimately Netflix is creating the plan and publishing its details, and we are all opting into it willingly. Whether we get value from it or not is for us to decide, not the government.
    - 3y ago

jimt1234 3y ago

I interviewed a bunch of "financial hardship" people a few years back for an app my company was working on. The lack of financial knowledge was pretty disappointing to me, but the big thing I remember is that all the people I talked to were good people. They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was some of that: many people don't know how interest works on a credit card until it's too late, or other people are completely apathetic to their finances. But, honestly, the thing that stuck with me the most is that most of them were very trusting people, and ultimately that's what got them to where they are (broke). They trusted blindly: "[credit card company] wouldn't double my interest rate just because I missed one payment.", "The guy who sold me the car seemed nice. Why would he give me a 29% interest rate on my car loan?", and "The credit card companies can't do that; there's got to be laws that prohibit that." Lots of statements like that really stuck with me. I felt bad. It's like I wanted to give a TED Talk that would've lasted about 30 seconds: "The banks and credit card companies are not your friend, don't trust them. Once you fall into debt with them, you're never gonna get out. The law offers very little protection for you, if any at all." And, thankfully, the app was never released. It was basically just an app for pay-day loans.

ok_dad 3y ago
Yea, most people assume the best in others I think. They assume others will not break the law for personal gain. In real life, those folks get taken advantage of. I know because I used to be one but now I don’t trust anyone. The moral degradation of society isn’t in the extra drugs and sex we have, it’s in the way we accept merely to follow the letter of the law, and find as many loopholes as possible otherwise. You see that in VC funded startups constantly, in politics, and everywhere else.
dontupvoteme 3y ago
It's sad but Usury/Interest is often exploiting two bifurcated groups of people -- those who are trusting and those who are desperate.
sailfast 3y ago
Worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for awhile. We encountered a lot of these cases and there are a ton of dark patterns as well as just straight-up not honoring the 300 page contracts that they had written. For the most part you come to understand that people are actually trying really hard to get it right most of the time. The lack of knowledge is quite startling (but understandable, given how complex some of these things often are and how much time it takes to figure them out that people just don't have) and the pace at which it is exploited is very disappointing but inevitable.

lwhi 3y ago

It's not bizarre when you consider the lengths companies go to, to try convince those who can least afford it to make a purchase. The most vulnerable are used a fodder for a vast capitalist system.

carlosjobim 3y ago
Industrialisation means that most consumer goods are mass produced. That means these companies need to make their money from wide sales instead of tall sales. Wide as in getting as many individual customers as possible, instead of tall as in selling bespoke products for an expensive price to few customers. Very few people need more than one washing machine. Well off people already own washing machines. So if you're selling washing machines, you need to make a way for as many poor people as possible to be able to buy them, hence credit and split payments.
- lwhi 3y ago
  What's your point? That the system is just fine thank you Sir, move along?
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    My point is that is logical and not that bizarre that companies will do anything they can to broaden their customer base. Once you've sold your product to the rich and the middle class, you have to target the poor. Because your factory keeps spitting out product and you need customers.
    - lwhi 3y ago
      Some companies only sell to people who are financially struggling. And a great deal of these companies rely on people not being financially literate to make huge amounts of money. There's no inevitability to these systems. People make choices to run companies these ways. They don't have to sell because the factories can't stop making products.

xkfm 3y ago

A lot of it is genetic. Good luck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness You have a lot of it, and so do the type A personality people on this site.

xkfm 3y ago

Low conscientiousness is linked to anti-social behavior, blue-collared crimes, and crimes of passion,[3] as well as unemployment and homelessness.[19] Low conscientiousness and low agreeableness taken together are also associated with substance use disorders.[27] People low in conscientiousness have difficulty saving money and their risky borrowing practices make them fall prey to subprime and predatory lending more often than conscientious people. High conscientiousness is associated with more careful planning of shopping trips and less impulse buying of unneeded items.[19] Conscientiousness is positively correlated with business, white-collared, and premeditated criminal behavior.[28]

bjourne 3y ago

Same "advice" can be given to fatties too. Your health and your problem. I put advice in quotes because it doesn't work and isn't that easy in practice.

Modified3019 3y ago

That's a lovely and idealistic view of humans. Unfortunately bad actors have realized that what we actually are is just meat computers with unpatchable security vulnerabilities, so demanding that people just stop having problems and fit your nebulous definition of competence with unlimited and unwavering performance, has predictably not panned out. What is the more moral solution then? Recognizing and placing systematic limits on exploitation behaviors, or is it continuing to demand super-vigilance from the victims?

sailfast 3y ago
Just wanted to say that I found this phrasing to be fantastic.
- jjulius 3y ago
  Agreed, this was a really well-put response.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  Just came across a very terse version of this sentiment, which you might like: “You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.” ― Tristan Harris (Found on https://www.staygrounded.online/p/how-i-got-my-phone-screen-time-under-21-11-09 https://www.staygrounded.online/p/how-i-got-my-phone-screen-..., itself linked from a discussion of use of grayscale mode, which I also recommend for people like me that easily get sucked into a whirlpool of novel information seeking. History has relentlessly proven to me that the less "self control" I need to have, the more self control I actually have.)
wharvle 3y ago
You can have: 1) An “ethical” system in which a bunch of people are losing money and are surprised by this, unaware of it, or intend to stop it, haven’t yet, but absolutely would if it were as easy as thinking “stop that”. But they said yes somewhere along the line, so it’s all “ethical”. 2) A just-as-ethical system that… simply doesn’t do that bad stuff in 1, or at least does way less of it. It’s weird to me that people defend situations akin to 1 when 2 is totally achievable, on the grounds that “well 1 isn’t technically unethical (as I define it)”. Ok? So what? 2 is better and isn’t less ethical. What is going through someone’s head when they defend 1 and dismiss or put down the notion of 2? If you could flip a switch to toggle between the two, would you really leave it on 1? I do not get it. Why not pick the version with better outcomes? [edit] and, separately, I think it’s plainly unethical—to put it mildly—to add terms to a contract or steps to a process that you know with great certainty your counterparty will later regret or dislike, relying on their overlooking it or not having better options, purely for your own benefit at their expense. I don’t think their saying “yes” makes that ethically an ok thing to do—it’s straight-up predatory. But even if it does make it Ok, why prefer that over… not-that?

janalsncm 3y ago

> No one is looking out for you This is literally what law enforcement and consumer protection is for. Otherwise we could make the same argument about pickpocketing victims, which is frankly what this is more akin to.

paxys 3y ago
So willingly going to netflix.com, picking a plan, entering your credit card info, hitting subscribe and watching TV for the next month is the same as getting pickpocketed?
- moshun 3y ago
  It is when systems are intentionally designed to be extremely low friction to initiate and extremely high friction to cancel. In a lot of cases that’s exactly what happens. To be fair, there should probably be a national consumer protection law that ties complexity of cancellation to complexity of sign up.
  - well_actulily 3y ago
    Some states in the US have laws on the books so that if you can sign up to a service online, you need to be able to cancel online—at least.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  I signed up for a service years ago - scent bird - and it was nearly impossible to cancel. They kept changing the app and I could never find the way to cancel (turns out it doesn’t exist). I would just eat the most monthly because I never wanted to spend the time to figure it out. One day I sat down to check their website. No way to cancel. So I went to the support page. It has a deep-link to the cancellation page. The link is broken. Reddit and others couldn’t find a valid link. Everyone said to DM them on social media. So I tried to contact support, but they don’t publish a valid email or phone number staffed conveniently in my time zone. So I blindly emailed “support@“ and asked to cancel. The response was another broken deep link. I replied no I wanted support staff to do it. They refused. So I told them I was a California resident and we have a law on the books requiring that online signups can be cancelled online and support staff is legally required to honor a cancellation request. No reply. I got an email a few days later cancelling my account for violating their arbitration clause in their TOS. This is basically pickpocketing.

m463 3y ago

I think it is human nature. If someone was hired to manage your life, and they did what you did, they would be fired with contempt.

ThrowawayTestr 3y ago

Whenever I get a free trial of Prime, I immediately set a reminder on my phone to cancel it in a month. It's really not that hard.

paxys 3y ago
You can also immediately go to settings and choose not to renew. It'll still be active for the rest of the month.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  Gosh I've wasted so much time worrying about not cancelling on time
JohnFen 3y ago
It's even easier to reject all free trials of everything. That's what I do.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  I habitually reject subscriptions and automatic payments, too, as far as possible, so I can retain full control of the flow & timing of my expenses. (For services where it's not possible, I subscribe them to a single credit card, which I treat as though it were another utility bill.)
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  I'm already ordering stuff from Amazon, why would I refuse free shipping?

nunez 3y ago

I agree. It's absolutely crazy. I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that. However, it's not entirely the people's fault. Credit card providers make it really easy to sign up for their cards but make it really difficult to do things like "add an alert that texts me whenever a purchase above $0.01 is made" or "alert me when my 0% APR promotional period is ending" or "tell me when i'm about to pay a late fee". All of them will make you go through a labyrinthian exercise to turn these alerts on, if they make them available (LOOKING AT YOU, CITIBANK) and many will not alert you on anything less than $50, which is crazy given how many transactions are smaller than that! Also, in a world where everything is getting more expenses and incomes aren't keeping up, using a tool that reminds you how broke you are on a daily basis isn't fun. So I can understand why folks shy away from it. I certainly did when I was living at the edge for a few years after I graduated. (That said, having this data is essential for creating a plan to change that outcome, but thinking long-term is not fun.) Regardless, things are getting better. Most utilities and other services accept eChecks now with Bill Pay, which allows people to pay for their recurring expenses from one place. Many restaurants and shops use Toast, Stripe, Clover or newer NCR POS's which make it easy to email your receipts. (A pet peeve of mine is restaurants that use Stripe or something like that but don't accept Apple Pay or hand you a bill instead of a mobile POS. Like, come on; you're already paying for these features!)

jjice 3y ago
> All of them will make you go through a labyrinthian exercise to turn these alerts on, if they make them available (LOOKING AT YOU, CITIBANK) How long ago is your experience with this from? I ask because I just got my first card from Citi within the last three weeks and was able to turn these on really easily before my card arrived. I actually have a notification for $16 sitting on my lock screen from them as I type this.
- nunez 3y ago
  A few months ago? I'm glad it's easier!
jjav 3y ago

Buttons840 3y ago

You suggest that spending 30 minutes a month can improve someones financial situation. In those 30 minutes they could cancel unused subscriptions and maybe save $50 a month. $50 a month isn't bad, but it's not going to be the difference between retiring comfortably and not retiring. Or they could spend those 30 minutes updating their resume and applying to a job; if they apply for a better job every month they could easily find a better paying job that gives them an additional $20,000 a year, especially if they do this consistently. Overall, I agree people would benefit from more effort put into their personal finances, but people have limited mental energy and their time can be better spent on things other than cancelling subscriptions. Indeed, if someone is willing to put effort into improving their financial situation and the best option society offers them is for them to pinch pennies and cancel their subscriptions, that is a sad situation for them and reflects poorly on society.

Unbefleckt 3y ago
Luckily we have many waking hours in a month to do both.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  If you do both, then you are spending at least some of your time sub-optimally. Education, applying to jobs, entrepreneurial ventures, etc, all of these have higher expected value than cancelling subscriptions.
  - dontupvoteme 3y ago
    people aren't thought experiments in ancap-economics textbooks. irrational behaviour is core to not only people but pretty much every lifeform on the planet.
  - bluetomcat 3y ago
    Not cancelling subscriptions has a high correlation with irresponsible spending habits. The same person will likely amass a large amount of stuff that stays unused. Instead of repairing, they will buy new. When they buy new, they don’t consider the longevity and durability of the item.

neilv 3y ago

> (especially the ones who can least afford it) > [...] basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary. These look like things that are generally unavailable to those who can least afford not doing those things. It's expensive to be poor.

wsatb 3y ago

Requiring someone to call to cancel your service is almost always a shady business practice to make it difficult enough that it's not worth their time. If it takes you less than 5 minutes to sign up, it should take you less than 5 minutes to cancel. If you can sign up without talking to someone, you should be able to cancel without talking to someone. That type of practice could use some sort of regulation.

ianburrell 3y ago
There could be a rule where should be able to cancel with the same mechanism that signed up. If signed up and use the service with app or site, then should be able to cancel with them.

dontupvoteme 3y ago

It's called nickel and diming and the term originated when they stopped being something you could buy a sandwich with. I'm not surprised at all, a few billions is paltry. I think i have a few subs that i've forgotten about for months or years. I have several bank accounts and several credit cards, things become complicated. At the time i liked what those people were making, or i wanted to watch a certain series, etc.

Loughla 3y ago

I'm with you on every point except >negotiating rents I have never, ever been in a situation where a rent negotiation would have done anything except ensure I didn't get the apartment. Is that real? Where?

bluGill 3y ago
With a small landlord it is sometimes possible. Even with the large ones if you let them know you are looking at moving you can sometimes get a discount for the year. Note that you need to be serious about moving to pull this off: you need to actively look at other places to live, and be ready/willing to follow through and move if they don't give you what you want. Apartments are competitive markets for new renters, but once someone is there the hassle of moving means people are often willing to pay more.
jjulius 3y ago
Anecdotally... I've lived throughout the US - Seattle, Atlanta, East Bay, Portland - and each time I've leased a place I've pushed back and asked for cheaper rent. Sometimes it's worked, sometimes it hasn't, but that's never ended a conversation or resulted in them walking away. The home I'm renting now, I asked my landlord to reduce their proposed rent increase by 75% if we committed to a two-year lease, and they were fine with that. Never been an issue for me, and if a potential landlord bristles at something like that, then it's a sign that things may not be so great after I've signed the lease.

civilized 3y ago

There is more than one way to feel about this situation! I watch my finances, but the hours I spend on it feel wasted, and I am resentful of the people whose parasitic attitudes towards my bank account make this necessary. It's as if, when I go to relax or exercise, my only option is hiking in a tick-infested field. I spend an extra 15 minutes prepping my clothes before going out, and an extra 15 minutes checking every inch of my body after I come back in. It's true that all this extra work is my responsibility. It's also true that ticks suck (literally) and it would be preferable if there were a way to prevent them from parasitizing me in the first place.

CivBase 3y ago

The line between reasonable responsibiliy and unreasonable responsibility is subjective and blurry. We can generally agree it's my responsibility to not waste my life savings on novelty mugs, but it's not my responsibility to keep my money in an armored vault at home in case a burgler breaks in and tries to steal it. Laws exist to protect people from bad actors so our time and efforts can be better spent on things that are valuable to us and society. Is 30 minutes a month an unreasonable responsibility to protect against companies taking advantage of people with unutilized subscriptions? Should the law be updated to enable people to save people that time and effort? Maybe. I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to at least consider.

toastercat 3y ago

I don't disagree with you, but lots of people do not take charge of their financial health simply because they do not know any better, or are too trusting to entities that will loan them money. And they are that way likely because their parents were that way too. A common thing I hear when talking about things like the student loan crisis and the housing market crash of the late 2000s is "well no one forced them to take out those loans" or "I took out a loan and I paid it off, why can't they?" But when it's as prevalent an issue that more than half of undergrad students in the U.S. are in debt, and the fact that poor people taking out subprime mortgages just so they can have somewhere to live can cause a global financial disaster, it starts making me think -- yeah maybe it is the "government's fault". Maybe us smart people on the top have to understand not everyone is as smart as us, and we have to build a system that works for all the truly clueless folk.

CogitoCogito 3y ago

> No one is looking out for you. You can either endlessly complain about it or build some good habits. 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world. I don’t disagree, but I’d point out that this applies to basically anything in life. Relationships, exercise, health, work, etc. The fact is people prioritize and many don’t prioritize their finances. All of us drop the ball on something.

wiseowise 3y ago

> 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world. Maybe for someone who already has good financial habits it is 30 minutes, but for people who never bother with this it will take far more time.

lacrimacida 3y ago

> It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. It’s designed to be complicated, confusing or easy to forget just so it traps people at least once. It’s borderline fraud sometimes, at least it feels like that to me. The recourse is to be super vigilant but when you let guard down you fall into a trap and it’s hard to beware all traps at all times especially when they’re being constantly evolving

alfalfasprout 3y ago

Honestly this is a very out of touch view. And you assume people don't do these things. Of course they do. Some don't. But you're making a broad generalization. People do check this stuff. Even then it's easy to forget about something for a few months. Or ask if your SO is using something. There are so many charges on a typical CC statement that spending time every day going through them isn't always worth it either.

jjulius 3y ago

>It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. But, see... >No one is looking out for you. ... that's just it, isn't it? Nobody's looking out for you. We send kids to public school from ages five to eighteen, but at a broad level, we do not have a requirement for any of that education to be about how to take charge, and stay on top of, your fiscal health. I'm not sure how you can look down on others like that when a large chunk of people are kicked into adulthood without ever having been taught how to look after themselves financially.

sahila 3y ago
But you can teach yourself, like how most everyone who is looking over themselves financially did. Learning doesn't end with schooling, and for most they know that, doing dance, art, and sport classes for example all on their own. It’s just that financial literacy isn’t a priority.
- jjulius 3y ago
  If it's not a priority for people, and we understand that there is an incredibly wide range of circumstances that everyone is in, much of which don't allow for easy fiscal education, access to it, or time for it, it should be pretty darn obvious that it should be a part of our basic education system. Am I to take your response as a suggestion that we shouldn't bother introducing this subject matter as a requirement at the public school level?
  - sahila 3y ago
    Let's add it as a class, I'm not against it. I do have doubts about its efficacy introduced to students in high school before they have their first credit card and their counselors continuing to push the college at all costs view, but it won't hurt. I'm not sure what the solution is. Frankly I just don't think people are that interested in it - even if you do know about it, looking at your cc bill or budgeting just isn't a thing people want to do. If you know your mortgage jumps up in 5 years, most people will think they'll be able to afford it then. We vote in policies that help the wealthy because everyone assumes that's who they'll be soon enough! That all being said, I'm not sure how much we should protect people against themselves. I don't mean to take a libertarian view and we can improve the current situation (like making subscription cancelling easier and online), but I don't think solving finances is a tenable one. I'm digressing, but we all like to kick the can down the road, including our national debt or pension obligations.

jchw 3y ago

Note that you are currently making excuses for blatant dark patterns for some reason. I dunno why we're doing that. People should definitely push harder to not waste money, but entities should not abuse their position to try to push them into passively allowing it. There's so many things you need to take care of in life that I don't imagine most people ever really get to give as much attention to all of the facets of their lives as they need to, and finances are only one of them. The fact that someone is effectively stealing your money and forcing you to trade it for time and effort you could spend doing anything else is criminal. (I mean, literally, it should actually be criminal. If I don't want to be subscribed, fucking unsubscribe me. That means you Planet Fitness after I moved to California.)

sangnoir 3y ago

> It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. They may be too exhausted from their second job - or from the one job they have to be on their feet the whole work day - and may not have the mental energy to comb through financial statements. You have the luxury of time and energy, so real reasons sound like excuses to you. I would recommend you (re)read John Scalzi's essay on Being Poor[1]. Except: >> Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor. The link between stress and poor decision-making is well studied, and unfortunately poor financial health is self-reinforcing: being poor is very expensive! 1. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

deleted 3y ago

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petsfed 3y ago

Eh, there's a pretty big difference between "I'm too lazy to solve this" and "the only reason this requires so much effort is because the business would lose a ton of revenue if people could simply stop paying for things that they don't want to have". There really is no reason why cancelling a subscription at some predefined point in the future should require any kind of business-hours-only-must-talk-to-a-physical-person approach, and if your CSR handling your cancellation is not empowered to actually process your request (which is pretty common with e.g. cable and phone companies as well as gyms), then its abuse, pure and simple. I know what my hourly equivalent is, so if the cost to my employer (or myself, if I'm an independent contractor) while I sort this out when I should be working is more than the monthly bill itself, then it becomes not worth my time to sit on the phone and deal with it. I had a regular order with Chewy, until the dog food brand I was having drop shipped stopping selling that particular type of dog food to Chewy (but I could get it somewhere else). And I had to sit on hold for 30 fucking minutes, just so Chewy would stop charging me (considerably more) for, and shipping to me, dog food that I did not want, had never wanted, and was actually shopping elsewhere to avoid. And I didn't find out that they didn't carry that brand anymore until they shipped "what we believe is the closest match" to me. I honestly thought it was a mis-pick initially, so when I went to resolve it, I followed that customer service UI pattern, to no avail. They've changed it since then, but the fact still remains, that was not at all a scenario I should've needed to call in for. I certainly shouldn't have needed to sit on hold for it. When I finally spoke to the CSR, she was apologetic that I even had to talk to her about it.

YeBanKo 3y ago

It's bizarre to me that some people think that American's are somehow more stupid or gullible than other nations. Lots and lots of capital was spent to make sure that Americans are conditioned to spend as much and as frictionless as possible. And now they do and regulation cannot catch up. > retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary. Where else do people need to actively manage their pension accounts like in the US? If your employer does not provide a decent 401k they trying to create a solid retirement investment account is an uphill challenge. In most other places it's simply a tax into a pension fund. > not paying random fees There is very little price transparency. Random fees are typically not random, but hidden. You can't book a rental car online without being hit with some municipal tax or other surcharge at the counter. In SF a health surcharge often added to the bill on top tax. It makes no fucking sense that it is not a part of the price or part of the sales tax. Cellular carriers and ISPs know exactly how much you gonna be paying but will bend backwards to make sure you don't know it until very end. You are right that basic financial discipline is a personal responsibility, but removing the asymmetry in the relationship between large businesses and consumers is on the government and legal system.

bmitc 3y ago

That's passing the buck. All of those suggestions you have apply to these companies as well. It's just that when they are lazy, they get to leech off of everyone else and make money from it, where they hide behind the "complexity" of their systems. It's absurd that you place the blame on the victims of this. There's so much bullshit required a lot of the time in canceling things or even knowing that you were signed up for something in the first place. Just purchasing something these days will automatically sign up yourself up for endless emails from that and other companies, even if you unchecked the so-called newsletter option. There are so many dark patterns that sign people up for things that they didn't even they got signed up for. I have absolutely been signed up for something, either by accident or a dark pattern, that I didn't realize until latter. It wasn't due to laziness, me lamenting others, or some bad habit. It was due to being effectively tricked and legally scammed. Companies have used software-based services as a sort of trojan horse, and they absolutely take advantage of people who don't understand technology.