Monday, April 30, 2012

What Were Erin's Mistakes

OK class, tell your Professor Cappy Cap what Erin's real mistakes were that led her to financial trouble.  Anyone, anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?

13 comments:

Chris said...

Bets on whether she read worthless? This woman is such a concentration of stupidity it makes my teeth ache. Her blathering about feelings, karma and how it's "her kids" regardless of reality prove that even if she manages to stave off disaster in the near term, she too stupid to figure it out long term.
Notice how hard she and the other single mom have hit the wall as well. There's no way another man is taking interest in her ever again. $3k a month requires about $20/hr in wages in order to make end meet. no way is this idiotic woman worth that much in the market. Lastly WTF is she doing going out, ever? she can't even make a her mortage payments and she's going out? Die in a fire lady

Anonymous said...

Buying a house she couldn't afford...

Getting a divorce....

Anonymous said...

After 1 minute:
-She is a "volunteer coordinator."
Whatever BS that means, I don't think it pays very well or is overly productive.
-She is divorced, yet has a nice house. Something tells me that she doesn't come from wealth and her salary as a "coordinator" wouldn't allow her to buy one.
-If that's the case, it seems as though she got some poor beta to buy her a house and give it to her in the divorce settlement, but wasn't able to force him to pay her enough alimony to keep up the mortgage payments.

Am I on the right track?

Anonymous said...

It would be shorter to list the things she did right.

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CD said...

Jesus. It's a SWPL trainwreck. 3000 a month mortgage? I wonder who the guy was that she (in all likelihood) left.

36,000 a year. That house must have cost close to a half a million dollars (notice I said cost not value...). I know I screwed up and bought a house, but I made sure I got one that I could afford on a 15yr mortgage instead of the 30yr.

I wouldn't even get near her. The debt/children/trainwreck might be contagious. I want to fool myself and thing that it's worth having kids someday, but I see things like this and it makes me wish I was sterile.

-GF

Ryan R said...

This is so easy its like shooting fish in a barrel.

1. She divorced her husband after having twins
2. She works as a "volunteer coordinator" which guarantees that she graduated with a liberal arts degree, if she graduated
3. She's past her prime looks-wise
4. She's a feminist, based on the comment "I like the title of 'working mom'
5. She has a fundamental misunderstanding of basic math, $5 an hour when you already bring home less than the $3000 required to run your household makes no sense, unless you bring home $2999.
6. She subscribes to such quackery as kharma and that somehow "mother gaia" and the "she-universe" will take care of her because she's selling her services under market value
7. She justifies what she's doing "for the chiiilllddrrreeeen!"

Hey Captain, in an unrelated note, announce as soon as you can the next time you'll be speaking in DFW. I missed you last time because I didn't catch the post immediately. I'd love to hear a lecture live and in person. Thanks!

Thane Eichenauer said...

I wasn't motivated to turn the audio on but I am guessing that getting pregnant might have something to do with her problem.

Anonymous said...

She had unprotected sex with multiple partners and get impregnated. Ex post facto, she is a woman.

Anonymous said...

She took a rather liberal view of her moral chastity I should think.

New Columbia Review said...

Hahaha I thought I was going to be watching a long time...then within the first 3 secs, I was like "Hey where's the dad?" then she said it with such joy on her face..."I'm a single-mom" and I went Bingo!

She's a Gurrrl Power chick.

David said...

My answer...
1) Volunteer Coordinator (36k/year average)..fluff job
2) Twins... no involved partner (hmmm 2 kids + mortgage w/ no dad) but hey got a single mother room-mate...sigh
3) Focus on self-actualization even when doomsday approaches
4) A emphasis on earning more money rather than controlling expenses AND earning more (by providing actual value)
5) A total lack of introspection as to the nature and cause of her problems
6) A passive outlook (did anyone get the impression that she realized this was her problem to fix rather than waiting for someone else to fix it for her, incl. her father)

Things I enjoyed... start an online business to earn more. Yeah that's a 6 to 18 month lead time before you earn any kind of appreciable income. So how is that going to fix being 3 months behind on the mortgage?

Also notice that know a financial adviser who wouldn't look at things like say budget, cash flow analysis or such? So why is her adviser only saying increase your income?

Mrs. N said...

1) Biggest mistake: SINGLE MOTHERHOOD
She has a very strong desire to stay home with her children full time (as in stay at home mother) but she either divorced her husband or had children out of wedlock. She will never be able to undo that choice.

2) Second Mistake: CONSUMER SPENDING
Looking at the surroundings of her home, I see a lot of consumer spending. New jewelry, new furniture, professionally styled and dyed hair, etc. Until she figures out how to make more money, she needs to stop spending. That means buying food in bulk and cooking, shopping for clothing at thrift stores, buying household items from craigslist instead of ikea.

3) Third mistake: THINKING HER JOB IS HER IDENTITY
She is working as a volunteer coordinator. What is that? How much does it pay?

She needs to stop feeling good about coordinating volunteers and devote her time to making as much money as possible in the shortest amount of hours she can. Trade the cushy 9 - 5 social and fun office job coordinating volunteers that pays poorly and waitress or clean houses. In my area servers make approx $13 - $20 before taxes and work about 25 - 30 hours a week. At least she could work a double shift at the diner every other Saturday when her children are at their Fathers home and make more than $5 an hour.

"Cleaning ladies" (aka scrubbing a richer woman's toilets) can make $80 cash for approx 3 hours of work. If you can't afford childcare, your children can come with you and do homework in the room while you scrub.

Babysitting is not a bad way to make money but she needs to stop feeling "nice" and getting "karma" and charge what the market will tolerate. Only babysit at times when she is not waiting tables and scrubbing toilets (maybe offer overnight care for third shift single moms for $5 an hour, the children will mostly be sleeping). Stop exclusively babysitting other single moms children and babysit married couples children for date night or when they have work schedule conflicts and both have to work - and charge them more money per hour. As suggested she can run errands for elderly people or two income working parents - her children can come with her and read books. A newspaper delivery route can bring in an additional $100 a day in some areas, you just have to wake up at 4 a.m. Maybe her roommate can be home then while her children are sleeping so Erin can do the paper delivery job without waking her children. There are many ways to make small amounts of side income. I could write a book.

I would caution against spending any money to formally "start" a home based business. Erin doesn't have the money to spare with foreclosure looming. If she can't save her house she faces moving her children to a bad neighborhood (bad credit not a lot of money isn't going to get her a good rental) and further handicap her fatherless children.

Additionally and frankly Erin doesn't have the business sense to run a formal business and pay fees for licencing and websites and such.

She should also consider an additional single mother roommate and run more of a boarding house. Even renting out the master bedroom with bath to a mom and child in one room for only $300 a month in rent plus a third of all utilities will help.

Finally she MUST stop "going out with friends" or any other activity that spends money on anything other than basic necessities, uses gas for anything other than making money, etc. No more cable t.v, no more evenings "out", switch to a cheaper cell phone plan, sell anything she isn't using in her house at a yard sale, etc.

I feel sorry for another jarring and unstable turn for the worse her children are going to suffer if she doesn't pull her head out of the sand.

Hot Sam said...

Don't even have to watch the video to know the answer. That's the saddest part.