The last roommate I had (when I first moved to Denver) was a nutter. Seemed normal when we talked and emailed before I moved in, but man, living with someone is another story.
I lucked out with a random roommate in college, we became good friends, but all of my other friends had strange, non-compatible people. One girl who wouldn't ever leave the room (I mean, she must have gone to the common bathroom, but not to shower ever). One girl who would sleep all day and be up all night, flunking her classes. I felt really lucky, my roommate and I lived together all through college (though we had our moments of disagreements) but that basically narrowed my list of people I could live with to her, my BFF growing up, and DH. And now... DH. And my ILs (lol)
This would work the same for me also except that I pay my rent through a website my landlord uses for all of her tenants and it takes a full week for it to be deposited into her account but is withdrawn from my account after a few business days. So, I can't use the paycheck from the 29th for rent that's due on April 1st if that makes sense. I should end up with extra in a few months I think though.
Ugh, that's kind of a crappy system. Booo.
Count me in as someone who never learned to budget growing up.
My parents', who I love, idea of a budget was trying to figure out what bill to skip that month so that no service was lost. Thankfully, they are both in MUCH MUCH better positions now and are doing very well for themselves, but there were many hushed conversations I remember hearing about "let's skip the cell phones until next month." For the record, I never went without and I don't mean to imply it.
I think that's part of why I'm here, though. Aside from my student loans, I don't have a lot of debt, but I never want to be in that kind of position - balancing missed payments. Honestly, most of my credit card debt is from law school applications and car repairs from undergrad. That stuff never disappears when you're paying the minimum - something I really regret doing now.
This could be my parents in many ways. Except perhaps less discussion, because my dad handled the finances. We never went without either, definitely had more than we needed. But looking back as an adult I'm just like
We were always 3 months behind on the cell phone bill. About every other month they'd get shut off, and my dad would make one month's payment to turn them back on. But even when they didn't get shut off, he'd only pay one month (plus late fee) instead of ever getting current. My grandma worked for the cable/internet company and would often step in and pay the bill when she saw our service was about to be turned off (only found that out a few years back). My grandparents supplemented a lot of things, other bills, more than I knew growing up. There was lots of eating out and shopping (retail therapy). And big spending on things to impress - not even so much as keeping up with the Jones', more like being better than the Jones' if that makes sense. That's something I started to notice in high school. I also think there was vehicle buying without discussion, and debt shuffling going on. I was encouraged to max out student and parent loans (unnecessary!). Max out grad school loans (I didn't do grad school at least). After graduation encouraged to beg my grandfather to pay off student loans. Encouraged to take out credit cards and not pay them off to make my credit better. Encouraged to buy a new SUV. But through most of this I thought my dad was smart financially overall because he projected himself to me that way. Really, my parents should have had an extremely comfortable middle class lifestyle on their income for our area (my mom even went part time for awhile) but I think were way up in debt due to spending).
I wish I could say there were changes, but as far as I'm aware there are not with my dad. My mom passed away a few years ago. My dad found my stepmom, who had an extremely high paying job at the time ($250k/yr) and lived very nicely - fancy home, fancy car, fancy vacations, fancy restaurants, fancy clothes... my dad was way more in to this than my mom, she was more semi-keeping up vs he was the one who had to look like he had the best of everything/super rich lifestyle (but at heart he was cheap - not frugal, but horribly cheap, like spend money on fancy car and go in debt but try to duct tape his tennis shoes together. So stepmom's lifestyle was basically everything he had always wanted and now what they do. Including new, bigger fancy house (which was "cheap" for what it is/when they bought it - market peak - because of the area,
@Dentam might recognize it... I think they may become radioactive).
I'm just like, I NEVER want to be like my parents. And I don't want my kids to have that kind of role model either.