5 ms·

Well, yeah I do think spending 30k on a car when you make 120k is insane. The house price was almost reasonable given their income though.

Jtsummers 12y ago
He owned it outright, from before they even met.
- exstudent 12y ago
  The whole point is that somewhere along the way of being rich enough to buy it (if that was ever truly the case) to being poor enough to need food stamps, they should have sold it. Being "hard" to sell isn't an excuse. Real poor people sell any asset they can get their hands on.
  - Jtsummers 12y ago
    I didn't make the hard to sell argument, so don't put that on me. I'm making the "it was a reliable asset, and apparently a valuable one as it turned out, so why sell it" argument.
    - exstudent 12y ago
      You sell it to buy food so you don't need food stamps. Poor people don't own luxury cars. Period.
      - Jtsummers 12y ago
        I'm guessing in your world they don't own houses or microvaves or refrigerators either. They should sell everything for food before they go on the dole. If they have a single resource other than their physical body, then fuck them.
        exstudent 12y ago
        I fully expect they should own microwaves, refrigerators, tvs... just not cars prefaced with "luxury". Even middle class people have no business owning such things. Even the lowest of the low end Mercedes is 30k. That's way too much to pay for a car unless you're independently wealthy. I don't care how many commercials someone's watched that tell them otherwise.
        true_religion 12y ago
        $30k new.... $5k used.
nilkn 12y ago
Honestly, the extra $10k they might have spent on the car pales in comparison to the $100k they lost on the house due to the market crash. So it's a bit absurd to even focus on the car so much when it clearly was not the main culprit. As for the house, if they lived in any sort of metropolitan area, $250k is not extravagant. In fact, while their income was comfortably over double the median US household income, their house price was right at the median. The average American household leverages their income twice as much as this couple was.

Jtsummers 12y ago

He owned it outright, from before they even met.

exstudent 12y ago
The whole point is that somewhere along the way of being rich enough to buy it (if that was ever truly the case) to being poor enough to need food stamps, they should have sold it. Being "hard" to sell isn't an excuse. Real poor people sell any asset they can get their hands on.
- Jtsummers 12y ago
  I didn't make the hard to sell argument, so don't put that on me. I'm making the "it was a reliable asset, and apparently a valuable one as it turned out, so why sell it" argument.
  - exstudent 12y ago
    You sell it to buy food so you don't need food stamps. Poor people don't own luxury cars. Period.
    - Jtsummers 12y ago
      I'm guessing in your world they don't own houses or microvaves or refrigerators either. They should sell everything for food before they go on the dole. If they have a single resource other than their physical body, then fuck them.
      - exstudent 12y ago
        I fully expect they should own microwaves, refrigerators, tvs... just not cars prefaced with "luxury". Even middle class people have no business owning such things. Even the lowest of the low end Mercedes is 30k. That's way too much to pay for a car unless you're independently wealthy. I don't care how many commercials someone's watched that tell them otherwise.
        true_religion 12y ago
        $30k new.... $5k used.

nilkn 12y ago

Honestly, the extra $10k they might have spent on the car pales in comparison to the $100k they lost on the house due to the market crash. So it's a bit absurd to even focus on the car so much when it clearly was not the main culprit. As for the house, if they lived in any sort of metropolitan area, $250k is not extravagant. In fact, while their income was comfortably over double the median US household income, their house price was right at the median. The average American household leverages their income twice as much as this couple was.