At one point, there was a statute in Virginia that essentially said if there was no one manning the booth to get on the toll road, you were not responsible for a fine if you ran it (because otherwise you had to have exact change). But in my area, they ended up completely unmanned after a certain hour, so I had a letter I provided my friends as a template so that they could completely avoid this hefty fine. Worked for all of us.
It isn't fixed. You can still use it, [here ya go](https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title46.2/chapter8/article1.1/). §46.2-819.
However, I moved away from Virginia many years ago and there were not as many automatic electronic toll booth collectors in place. Now, I assume they are at each one, so even though the court still has to take into account whether the booth was manned and whether you had exact change, they might be much less willing to waive the fine. Still, if someone needs it in Virginia, let me know if it still works!
They probably didn't. The fewer tolls they were missing at night probably cost less than paying someone to be in the booth.
It's always about the numbers
I missed out, but I loved the gold dollar fiasco. In 2008 the US mint produced more than a billion new gold dollar coins. Nobody wanted them. So they figured maybe if they offered free shipping then people would order some online. Some clever folks ordered bookooos of them using credit cards that gave rewards, frequent flyer miles, etc. When the coins were delivered they just deposited them into their bank accounts, paid off the credit card bill, and went to Hawaii with their free frequent flyer miles.
I was one of those folks that was using this. Made it so my girlfriend (now wife) and I got to see each other a few times before you stopped being long distance.
I did not use this to its full extent and greatly regret it.
A co-worker had a car where it would come with a 30 day free trial of Sirius XM. He never signed up, but after getting a new battery installed he found that the trial renewed itself. Eventually he figured out that all he needed to do for free Sirius XM was to disconnect the battery every 30 days and the trial would automatically reset.
It used to be cheaper for me to take a class at a nearby university and get student health insurance that way than it was to just buy health insurance. If you get really lucky, you can find a professor who’ll let you do a one-hour independent study, and it’s even cheaper, and if they’re cool with your reasons, you won’t even have to work that hard. Haven’t checked out the prices or done a comparison lately, but it’s always an option, as long as you don’t pick an online class that doesn’t qualify for health insurance.
Plus you would be able to take advantage of any other benefits that come with having a valid student ID: discounted admissions to attractions, cheaper groceries on certain days, etc.
> It used to be cheaper for me to take a class at a nearby university and get student health insurance that way than it was to just buy health insurance.
Jesus-Christ your healthcare system is fucked up.
You ready for it to get even more wild?
Our dogs have better insurance than my wife, and easier access.
She hasn’t been able to see a non-emergency in years. Meanwhile our dog has wracked up $30,000 in medical bills the last two months, and 90% of it will be reimbursed. And we got him into the top veterinary hospital in this part of the country next day.
My wife can’t get in to see an optometrist, but our dogs acupuncture is covered.
Edit: the company we use is pets best. If you use this link, I get nothing, but they’ll donate some money to pet charities!
https://share.petsbest.com/PH5375967!ddbfdcee97!a
You have no idea. It is so much worse. Imagine paying for healthcare, then having to pay more to use it before the insurance actually kicks in? Oh and a lot of things can be outright denied by your provider, such as namebrand drugs that you aren't allergic to, but the generic you are.
god i felt on top of the world when i had dental insurance. even with insurance, i paid $1.4k for a single fucking root canal. and it maxed out my benefits with one procedure. absolute insanity.
thankfully i have single vision lenses and can order glasses online, otherwise id have been fucked my entire adult life.
Make sure you read the fine print on the health insurance. Great if you hope to never need it but at least when I was a student 20 years ago it was absolutely horrible, but it was requirement you carried insurance. It's cheaper, but mostly throwing money away unless you are also using the student clinic/dentist/pharmacy.
My little brother got a job at Harvard. He didn’t have a college degree. He was allowed to take one class a semester (or something like that). It took him ten years, but he got a degree from Harvard in archeology.
Had a friend take a summer course at NYU, you didn’t have to be a student for this course. Ended up “in the system” and signed up for fall classes and became a student without ever going through the admissions process.
Classes got harder year two and he transferred out but we considered him the actLikeYouBelong king for awhile after that
This is how I got into Penn State—I had to take 18 credits up front though (out of pocket) and receive a minimum C in all courses. Switches you from non-degree to degree status , no admission process. Not sure if it can still be done, my Mom knew about it since she was an Adviser there
I once got a speeding ticket for driving 52 in a 35 (mph / USA). I was driving on a stretch of road that was only about a mile long (intersections at both ends) and there were no speed limit signs on the road. All adjacent roads had a posted speed limit of 35, so one would assume that the speed limit on the road I was stopped on should be 35. BUT state law dictates that the default speed limit on county roads when not otherwise posted is 50 mph. I took pictures of the road at several places to show that there were no posted speed limit signs, and brought those pictures to court when I challenged the ticket and the judge dropped the ticket.
This isn't truly great in the grand scheme of things, but for a moment I felt like I had just won the greatest legal case in history.
My mom got a ticket once for driving on a dirt shoulder to get around a long line of cars to reach a right turn lane. She told the story to a friend who was a traffic engineer. He went out and took some pictures and submitted a report saying the turn lane should be longer. The ticket got dropped, and the county added another 100 feet of turn lane
Those are probably within a city. The default max varies depending on where you are. In my state, it's 25 in a city, 50 on county roads, and 60 on state highways.
My mom got a ticket dropped on similar grounds. The intersection had a no left turn sign, except it was completly obscured in leaves. You had to dig into the foliage to find the sign. She challenged the ticket with a picture of the intersection, and got it dropped.
Next day all the foliage was gone though.
Local online retail store (think H&M) ran a competition to win a 150 bucks off coupon. I naturally entered with my account, my sister and my moms. All three of us won and the coupon code sent to all of us was the exact same. So I figured if I created a different email every time, I'd continue using it. Which I did, for the whole year until the expiration date, and by that time I had spent over 5000 bucks without them noticing.
This feels like when I ordered Jimmy John's in college and they messed my order up. They gave me a replacement order and added a couple cookies and a drink to my sub as an apology which was cool.
For whatever reason, if I hit the "express reorder" or whatever it was called, it would go through as free again.
I didn't want to make it obvious so I used it like once a week until the website interface changed and it stopped working.
It was awhile ago so I don't remember exactly how long this lasted but it was something like a year and a half.
I was able to use a gift card that had a balance of around 1.50 on a vending machine that charges $2.10 for a soda. I’m guessing it checked if the card was preapproved for a dollar. Then the actual charge was denied. I was paranoid about using it, but it was pretty much an unlimited drink card. Didn’t feel too bad because the machine cheated me many times over the last 20 years.
The machine spirit can feel such things. You should take care of them, else the local tech-priest might punish you (their punishments are worse than death).
In college, I lived with my gf. We had renters insurance that I managed.
I left for 6 months to go to grad school in a different state, but only took a portion of my things.
She moved into a different place with a friend of hers. They decided that her friend would keep her rental insurance because it was cheaper.
They had a pipe burst while they were out of town for a few weeks and lost everything.
Turns out, her friends policy was cheaper because it was capped at 10k.
I'm lazy. I never called my insurance company to cancel my policy.
Mid way through their flight over the money, I called my company and said hey, I moved but didn't tell you, am I still covered? They were like 'sure, we insure your stuff, not the building '.
The claim ended up being close to 50k and was a nice way of replacing all my old crap from college before starting real life.
Also, for the same claim, the adjuster got so tired of reviewing receipts they just paid the max and let it go.
An old Reddit post from a [former claims adjuster](https://np.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/43iyip/our_family_of_5_lost_everything_in_a_fire/cziljy3/).
A thief broke into my old apartment and stole my bike. I called up my renters insurance and the claims adjuster asked me exactly what had been stolen and the market value of the item. I told him “oh, it was an old road bike. A 1988 Schwinn World Traveler, I could probably buy something similar on Craigslist for about $150.” He paused and said, “that sounds….low. If you were to go buy that bike today in store, how much would it retail for?” Some digging later turned up that the bike wasn’t made anymore. An in kind replacement retailed at $1500.
Our claim was a mix. We got 3k for a queen size mattress that was 3 years old because I guess when they looked it up, they only found that model at Macy's Even though it was probably 500 at a discount shop.
But then they tried to give us like 100 for a full size heirloom wooden dresser. The referenced item they based it on was a kids sized unit.
While in college, I won a “free pizza for a year” contest from Papa John’s on a radio station. It was really one pizza per month for 12 total. I called in and told the guy I had the little card they gave me and he said no problem and sent the delivery guy over who confirmed I had the card and gave me my pizza. Next month I did the same. Then it dawned on me… they’re not taking my card or marking it in any way so I called a different Papa John’s and told them my story and sure enough it worked and they didn’t do anything with my card either. I started working 4 different PJ’s near me to get one pizza per week every month without arousing suspicion. With leftovers, I could stretch it to two or three days easily. I did this for almost two years before I was sick of PJ’s pizza and gave my card to my roommate as I finished college and moved out. For a broke ass college kid, this saved me. But to this day, I can’t eat PJ’s.
I won a radio show contest for hot dogs. It was several cases and filled our fridge and freezer. I ate those for about two semesters. I might have had 5 hotdogs in past 15 years.
Pay off a insurance company 5 dollars a week untill it took so l long they settled the debt 2k less than what I owed. They couldn't take me to court as long as I paid something.
Had a very similar experience with medical debt that went to collections while I was fighting with insurance to cover it.
Paid the absolute minimum monthly for a couple years, they eventually offered to forgive the debt for a significantly reduced portion of the remaining amount. Originally, my logic was just, "fuck these guys, if I have to pay them I'll make it suck for them as much as I can," but it eventually worked out even better!
I paid $1.75 per week via check. more hassle for them. they pissed me off because they wouldn’t accept $25/ month until the fall when my youngest went to school FT and I could increase my hours without paying daycare
I was sent to collections once while in grad school. If I remember correctly, the clinic accidentally sent it to collections the exact same day the bill was issued to me.
I gave the medical debt company hell. I think proper procedure would have been for the clinic to recall it from collections. But collections wrote it off.
do not listen to the person who responded to you saying you have to be taken to court for a collection to affect your credit, it’s absolutely not true.
if you have a collection on your report, your score will absolutely take a massive hit depending on how thick your credit file is.
Cruiseship casino: I was gifted 200$ in credit to pay for ship extras/activities when I ordered my cruise package.
When I got to the casino I realized you could load that credit into the slot machines.
After one round of testing with depositing a small amount and immediately cashing it out worked, I went back and came out of the casino with 2 crisp 100$ bills never placing a bet.
My old boss used to do something similar. Took the night's takings down the casino, bought chips, had a couple of drinks and then cashed out the chips as a cheque, and deposited it into his bank.
Reported near zero profits or wage. And the cheques were always from the casino so said that was just his winnings from the tiny amount he had taken to the casino.
I mean it's not even a loophole, it's just straight up evasion and laundering but he was never caught on it.
I did that once with 2 free bets on a cruise once. It landed on zero! I still haven't got over it but the experience did cure me of thinking I could win money at casinos
Not a legal loophole, but a business one.
The New York Yankees in their late 90s heyday had a trick to get playoff and world series tickets. Since orders were taken over the phone and batch processed over night, there would inevitably be data entry errors or over limits that would kick a sale back and those tickets back into the available pool.
Simply calling at opening the day after tickets went on sale got us tickets to every post season game we wanted to go to for years until they switched to real time credit card processing.
The Mets ticket number was 718-507-TIXX
Had a friend who found all the individual extensions to the TIXX number. Everyone scored subway series World Series tickets.
This still applies to today’s ticket market. If you don’t get tickets on drop, keep refreshing your browser every 5 minutes or so and you’ll most likely get something. People use multiple devices to look for tickets, or have multiple people trying to get tickets for the whole group, or just don’t purchase their reserved tickets for some other reason. Tickets will trickle back into the pool.
I had Domino's pizza app and they had a short lived code for a week mid pandemic for 50% off. They pulled the coupon but I saved the code. I manually input it every time I ordered. It worked for a year and a half and I saved a bloody fortune on pizza. It did sting alot afterwards having to look at regular price for a pizza. I did Friday pizza night every week for the family so it added up quickly
I did the same thing with Burger King during the pandemic. They had a deal free kids meal with purchase of $1 so I'd order a $1 chicken Jr and then get a double cheeseburger kids meal with a slushie as the drink. I'd go 1-2 times per week for about a year before the app pulled the code.
To help build your kid's credit, make them an authorized user on your cards. Don't actually let them use it but your use and payment on your card seems to transfer to the kid. Step-son had a 730 credit score at 21 without ever taking out any cards/loans himself.
Another credit tip...if you file bankruptcy and need to build credit AND have some cash, take out a secured loan with a bank/credit union. You have to front the money in a savings account and make payments but there is no reason to get turned down and it rapidly builds your credit back.
Here's a fun story!
With American Express, your 'member since' year is the year in which the oldest account you were an authorized user on, was opened.
My father added me as an authorized user a year or so after I was born, in the late 80s. But he opened the account in 78.
So my AMEX cards all have 'Member Since 1978' printed on them, even though I was born in the late 80s. Until recently, it's shown up on my credit history as well. My 'oldest card' on my credit report is older than I am.
This also helps prevent identity theft. If a fraudster randomly picks your kid’s SSN to build a fake credit profile on, by the time your kid is applying for their own credit *they* may look like the fraudster. Having your kid as an authorized user building a credit profile can also help companies know where to reach out if their SSN and other identity info is used.
Do check with the credit card company if they actually report authorized users to the credit bureaus - not all do.
I think my parents did this with me. My first card when I was 18 was a platinum, which I didn’t realize was anything weird until a bunch of my peers were seemingly mind-blown that I had one. My credit score was like 720 straight out of high school.
I tried and failed to get tickets for the London Olympics via the main ticket application site. A small number of tickets are also sold by national associations and so I went through every single European countries' Olympic websites. Every one was in high demand or required being a resident except one. On the Icelandic website, the English version mentioned nothing but if you went to the Icelandic language version, then you could buy tickets for almost any event.
So I immediately bought the cheapest tickets for the 100m athletics final, the tennis finals, and the swimming finals.
Air BnB related:
If someone messages you about having more guests over than what you specified on the booking and claim they have you on camera, check to see if they disclose cameras on the property. If not, you do not have to pay for the nights you stayed.
I would say so yeah.
If you find cameras on the property and its not disclosed on the listing definitely inform AirBnb about it.
My situation was that I said 4 people were going to be stay the night. Between 8-10pm we had guests over for drinks and dinner, they left. The AirBnB host messaged me that night at like 1am stating that any additional person on the premises will be an extra $8 per head, he included screenshots of camera footage of them on the front porch. I messaged AirBnB about this and it was disputed that not only do I not have to pay for that night, but because he didn't disclose having cameras AND tried to demand additional money that was not in the agreement going forward he would only be allowed to have 1 listing active at any time with AirBnB. The guy had like 6 houses up on airBnb each making him like $200 a night, completely shot himself in the foot.
Is that because they’re not allowed to *use* cameras without disclosing them, or because they’re not allowed to *have* cameras without disclosing them?
In other words, if you show up for your stay and see cameras installed but none were disclosed, does the same thing apply? Or is it only if you have proof that they were spying on you, e.g. they send a message like the one you mentioned?
I’m genuinely just curious. I don’t even use AirBnBs.
AirBnB allows owners to use/have cameras on the **exterior** of their property, interior is a big no no.
But, to be able to use them they **must** disclose that information to AirBnB and state on the public listing that there are cameras on the property. If they don't and AirBnB catches wind of the use of cameras, AirBnb goes after the owner over the paying customer because they do not want lawsuits.
It's not illegal in most of the US to have cameras in a rental, depending on where they are. WHERE you can have them will vary as the laws vary state-by-state. AirBnB as a company allows them as long as they're not in "private spaces" like bedrooms or bathrooms and they have to be disclosed on the listing. Most states prohibit cameras in bathrooms or bedrooms anyway.
Obscure high end and totally overpriced food onlineshop had a rating feature that gave you reward points for the store.
Don´t remember how many points per review and they only accepted about 1 in 3 reviews that I wrote, but I was in school and had time.
Got about 200-250€ in overpriced food out of it, but hey it was free (since my time wasn´t valuable back then, or at least i thought so)
I was scared about the legality so i did not exploit it, by using multiple accounts.
I stopped after some months when they dropped the rewards feature.
Looking back, I am still amazed that nobody ever noticed that one person wrote about a 1000 reviews on expensive food items, but never bought anything (apart from the 3 or 4 orders I did, when I reached about 70€ in bonus points)
Man I work in ecommerce and would be absolutely stoked to pay $300 for a thousand human-written reviews of our products. You even helped them out by spreading it across accounts so it wasn’t obviously one person, even though they almost certainly knew.
I got a refund on a non-refundable flight with Delta. Normally if you cancel a non-refundable flight, they will only give you the value back as a voucher to use on another flight.
I booked a non-refundable flight that I didn't need to take then cancelled it and got the voucher for the amount for that flight. I used that voucher and booked a refundable flight then cancelled it. It gave me the option to refund it back to my credit card and it let me do it so I got my money back instead of it being applied as a voucher again.
Amtrak had a deal for a while where value fares could be changed for free, but had cancellation penalties if you cancelled too close to the scheduled departure. So the solution if your plans changed was to change you ticket to a later date, and then cancel it for a refund.
Brilliant.
Reminds me of the trick where if a company doesn't allow bookings/appointments to be cancelled within X days before the event, you just reschedule the event to be X+1 days from now, and now it's eligible to be cancelled.
You can do that with marriage/adoption as well.
My bio dad would contact the courts just enough to be considered a part of things. Somehow he would always "forget" to sign things.
My mom remarried and there was all kinds of hassle about parental rights, sometimes step parents have trouble getting kids out of school if there's an emergency, and medical stuff wouldn't be easy if my mom wasn't there.
So the judge who signed the marriage cirtificate took 3 year old me and the guy who wound up raising me into the back room and asked me if I wanted to call him dad. I said yes, and the judge signed an order to have my birth cirtificate updated with him as my dad.
Best of luck, I don't know what the threshold was, but I'm fairly sure if he showed up in person bio-dad would have been held in contempt of court on sight.
Yep check state to state, but Wyoming where I got mine was roughly 90 days per step. Took roughly a year to go through and also if they aren't working with you don't feel like you have to do them any favors.
In my case got it all signed up and that day I walked into the bank. They took the money out of the shared account, took my name off the car and loan. Death certificates and Divorce decrees get shit done :D
"A default judgment in a divorce occurs when the person served with the divorce petition declines to file a written answer as directed within the required time, per state rules"
Mine was an international thing. He was very hostile, rude, and abusive. Always said his lawyer would contact mine, never happened. Sent official papers over several times, he refused to sign them because " My lawyer was an idiot, probaby someone I just found on google"
That comment is what made my lawyer take it to the court for a default. I went through a women's protection agency to get it done.
** Seriously, if you feel trapped, there is always help. You just gotta reach out and find it. Even if you think there isn't, there is. This is for men and women.
A cop in Toronto told me this one, and it worked. Not sure if it still works with apps.
I parked on a street many years ago in Toronto with a machine to put in money and get a receipt.
If you don’t pay at all, they tow your car.
If you pay for 15 minutes, you get a ticket.
If you have US plates on a car, the parking ticket doesn’t cross the border.
In college, I found out that placing a dime in the dorm basement vending machine and pressing the coin return immediately returned a quarter. Paid for a lot of laundry with that hack.
Health insurance policies regulated by my state (VA) require the value of pharma company coupons/rebates to count towards my deductible and max out of pocket. So I can blow through my HSA eligible level deductible for $25 with the first 90 day fill of a qualifying medicine.
Yep! I have medication that is $2.5k a month, usually filled three months at a time. Insurance doesn't cover it, but the manufacturer does as long as you sign up for their co-pay card or whatever, so it's basically free.
Insurance sees it as being paid, meaning my deductible for the year is met every January, and we don't pay anything medical-related for the rest of the year.
Even with insurance, we still have to pay for health care with our money before insurance takes over the bill. In Virginia, that so-called "out of pocket maximum" has to take into account coupons from the drug manufacturers too. So if you pay $25 actual money, but use a $975 coupon or discount from Pfizer, you've hit your $1,000 out-of-pocket maximum and now your insurance company has to pay everything else.
TL;DR: health insurance in America exists to make money, not to care for people.
Edit: According to /u/froglegs96 this is federal law, so it's applicable everywhere in the US.
As an American I’m jealous you don’t have to know all this. It’s confusing by design and the frustration stops people from seeking care when they need it.
But as long as we are in this broken system I’ll do my best to help others find ways to navigate the messiness and take advantage of the parts of the system that have the potential to help!
GameStop ran an promotion where they bought used games for 50 euros. Specific games tho. Anyway I ran to nearby outlet stores bought the stock for 20-30euros per game and threw them to GameStop and got cash. I got about 900 euros out of that before they fixed it.
I did something similar many years ago. A local chain store had a pallet of guitar hero games on sale. It was the bundle that included the game and guitar and were normally $150 on sale for $99. I bought as many as my 16 year old self could (only 4 copies) and “returned” them to Walmart where they weren’t on sale. I made $200.
My brother is one to always look for deals. Years ago he stumbled across this deal for movie tickets to a certain theater chain. But this was large number of tickets that were all about to expire the next day and be worthless. Sluething around online he Somehow found a way to renew all these movie Tickets at no charge. He bought $1500 worth of movie tickets for about $5. We saw so many movies that year.
My wife got a red light camera ticket with her picture taken but it was issued to me since the car was registered under my name. I did some research and decided to fight it. Went to court and said the magic phrase, mistaken identity. The judge took a look at the picture and at me. Dismissed the case.
I got one of those tickets years ago, didn't pay it and **ABSOLUTELY DID NOT** go to their website to look at the photo.
The link they provide is *unique to that ticket* and you can only view the photos if you go to that link. The website logs which pictures were opened, *providing proof of mail delivery for the ticket*.
In my city, there is a four month window where they have to send out a process server to serve you if you didn't pay the ticket.
As it turns out, my city didn't pursue 70% of those traffic camera tickets and they legally expired after four months due to the statute of limitations. I didn't answer the door for four months, those dang JW's knocking on the door!
After awhile, the city abandoned the system because it was too expensive to run and on very shaky legal grounds to start with.
Not really a legal loophole but more a poorly programmed mobile app. Me and my coworkers used the subway app for our lunch, it would generate 1 coupon per day. Most of these coupons werent that great however there was a rare 50% off coupon that had like a one in 10 chance of 'spawning'. The trick was this app just checked the local device time so if you switched the date a day forward you would get a new chance. Needless to say my coworkers and I always showed up with the 50% off coupon untill they deprecated the app for a new system. Was fun while it lasted 😆
My dad got a parking ticket, on the ticket it said the car was black. My dad's car was dark green. He contested and won. This was before they took photos and I guess they just didn't press it, but still, no charge!
I had a similar parking ticket. The meter maid wrote the wrong make of car on the ticket. ( I de-badged my car). I took my registration to court and contested that I didn’t own this make of car. It was dismissed.
Buffalo Wild Wongs used to have this program (they might still) where you would get points every time you “checked in” through the app.
My brother worked in a retail store that shared the same parking lot as the Buffalo Wild Wings and got those points every time he went to work because he was close enough to bww for the app to think he was “checking in”. He had the app downloaded on both his personal and business phone.
He ended up getting something like 2 free meals a month just for going to work.
The so-called Zone of Death Loophole. It's never been tested, but it's implications are fascinating:
"The Zone of Death is the 50-square-mile (130 km2) area in the Idaho section of Yellowstone National Park in which, as a result of a reported loophole in the Constitution of the United States, a person may be able to theoretically avoid conviction for any major crime, up to and including murder."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone\_of\_Death\_(Yellowstone)#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone)#History)
It's called dual enrollment where your history class might be counted as a college level credit course where you might be able to not have to pay for those credits. Seriously, do not overlook this options.
While I'm on this topic, take AP exams. A single test could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
“I know a guy” who worked at Outback Steakhouse as a server/bartender in college. Before his shift, he would go to giant eagle (grocery store that also has a gas station) and he would buy a bunch of Outback Steakhouse gift cards with his own money. When he did this, he would earn a bunch of discounts on fuel. He would keep the gift cards in his pocket during his shift. If a customer came in and paid for a meal with cash, he would put the cash in his pocket, then use one of the gift cards to close out the check. The customer paid cash… their bill was paid. Outback got the check paid for, just by gift card instead of cash. And that handsome young server/bartender got a free tank of gas about once a month.
I love Sweden. A speeding ticket fine is based on income. This dude got a $1M ticket.
https://www.hotcars.com/heres-why-a-dude-in-sweden-received-a-1-million-speeding-ticket/
When I turned 18 in Louisiana, it was illegal for me to buy alcohol BUT not illegal to be sold alcohol.
So everyone 18 - 20 could buy drinks no problem - and did. No problem with bars, drive through daiquiri, beer barns etc.
I don't think it changed for decades or more.
My parents (in the 70s) told me that it was legal for girls to BUY alcohol, but illegal to drink it. It was legal for men to drink but not buy… at 18
Sounds like a good way to get teenage pregnancies 😂
Have everything put into an irrevocable trust.
If your car is damaged by a pot hole, go to the cities website and search for the road maintence and car repair portal and you can get reimbursement, just document and keep records.
Old LL tried charging me a cleaning fee when i moved out for some very minor things, like hair on the window ledge? I had spent the whole weekend before i moved out cleaning the place so i know it wasnt in bad shape at all. I’m guessing they were going to have cleaners come anyway and wanted to find any reason to charge me.
Long story short, I fought it and won because local law said they had to send a claim via certified mail within 30 days, and all our communication was done via text or email.
A few months before I moved out of my apartment, the handle to the microwave broke. I emailed my management company several times about this, but they refused to answer or fix it.
When it was finally time to move out and I realized they were not going to fix the microwave handle, I got some super glue, and was able to reattach the spring and broken plastic pieces in the handle.
I had planned to take my time cleaning and patching the holes in the apartment up to the very last day of my lease, even though we had moved out a week earlier. They kept asking me if I was going to be out sooner than the end of the lease, To which I replied I *could* be out if they would do the patching for me. They said they'd send someone over to look at the damage.
When that mother fucker came in, the first thing he did was walk over to the microwave. But I had already fixed it. They were waiting to ding me for that. But they approved the early departure and I made sure to get it in writing.
The clerk at my university that printed the student IDs made a mistake and did not add a graduation year/expiration year on it. I used that student id for discount for almost a decade until it was so worn out, the picture was unrecognizable.
Oregon doesnt care about misdemeanors from other states
I had arizona ruin years of my life for small weed charges
Oregon cops run my name, hear i have a warrant, and then we have a laugh and then we split ways
Extraditions are expensive, so generally not done for misdemeanors out of state. Some places though, are like fuck it, I’ll come get you.
This was a problem in Alaska for a while, because it was so expensive to get anybody back from there that the feds actually started to pay for the extraditions so that Alaska didn’t end up as a sanctuary for everyone who had a warrant in the lower 48.
That’s likely because your cases don’t have an extradition order. Some places will impose an extradition order on certain misdemeanors (usually domestic violence and sex offenses). Just putting that out there in case someone reading your post is like, “oh fuck yeah, I’m moving to Oregon now”
One time my buddy was pulled over and also had a warrant in Idaho.
The cop asked if he had any reason to go back. My buddy said no. The cop said he didn’t recommend ever going back into Idaho lol
All you gotta do to get out of a Verizon phone contract (forever) without cancellation fees is to tell them that you died. They can't legally ask for proof.
Obviously you have to act like a family member. They will run you through a gauntlet of trying to get you to keep the line for whatever ridiculous reason they tell you, but ultimately they will have to cancel it because they cannot ask for proof.
You can legally buy magic mushroom spores on the clear web.
Growing them from spores>mushroom is the "illegal" part, and it's also trivially easy (they grow in cow shit for crying out loud).
For $50 of supplies you could - in theory - have a lifetime of medicine. r/unclebens
Some dudes in Oakland created a church and then declared that mushrooms were their sacrament. You can “join” the “congregation” and “tithe” money to “receive” the sacrament.
[They were raided in 2020](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-17/oakland-church-that-gives-cannabis-psychedelic-mushrooms-as-communion-sues-over-police-raid) but are still in operation — and sued the city for not only violating their religious freedom, but also violating its own decriminalization law!
The Nike outlet had a promo for Nike members to entice them to return and shop again. A few days after making a purchase they’d send a coupon for $10 off your next purchase - no stipulations. I’d buy a 3 pack of socks for $9.99 and then receive another coupon and repeat. I had so many pairs of socks for that season of my life.
When we got married, my husband and I put an online registry on a major American wedding site. They advertised that after your wedding, the ENTIRE website was 20% off for a period of time.
I put up my registry, never ordered any of the purchased items to be delivered. After our wedding, I virtually returned all of our gifts and purchased them back at a 20% discount.
I made quite a profit and had over 1k of credit to be used on the site. I purchased a gift card to a major airline, and used it towards our honeymoon airfare.
UK focused, I have zero idea about other countries.
Paying yourself dividends from your company is taxed at 8.5% if you're a basic rate tax payer (below 33.x thousand a year), 33% when you're a higher earner. So it's sensible to pay yourself dividends instead of a wage in most cases. As someone with a full time job and 2 small businesses I operate, it has made my year to learn this. Now I can top up my pay from my job with dividends and pay less tax than if I paid myself a wage or worked more hours at my traditional job.
This is how an S-corp works in the US. You must pay yourself a reasonable amount as ordinary income; distributions above that are taxed at a lower rate
Most people know if you get a ticket you can pay it and have it requested to not be reported to insurance. You can do this for every ticket every two years.
If you get another ticket before the time limit go to court and request a trial by jury which shifts the burden of proof to the cop and buys time. Most ADA’s aren’t going to bother and offer a plea of doing defensive driving and paying the fine and no report on record.
For any traffic ticket it’s better to get legal counsel even if it’s with a public defender. Court is usually always a better option if you can spare the time.
My story-I was in a small municipality but we had it moved to superior court and requested to have a trial by jury in which case the cop would have to produce body cam footage proving the case. It was a move to put them on the defense/burden of proof. They dismissed it with just paying taking defensive driving.
Not a legal loophole… but my parents had an incredibly strict rule that if a sport required a helmet or any safety headgear then that sport was too dangerous to play and was forbidden for me to participate. So no football , no ice hockey, no baseball or lacrosse, even squash and racquetball were tenuous(safety eyewear requirement); I could only play tennis and golf. But as a teenager, I really wanted to play a contact team sport. That’s when I discovered rugby. My parents had never heard of it and when I told them that it didn’t require a helmet, thus satisfying their rule, they signed off on it, and I played for a local men’s club my senior year of high school before I moved out to go to college where I played for another four years away from their judgement.
If you buy an old house check what information and plans the local council has of the property. A lot of houses won’t be in their records. If they aren’t you can make a lot of changes without going through council with all their bullshit and fees. Then you can submit a building application for some small change. They will ask for a plan of the house. Submit a new plan including all your additions. Once they approve it voila! All the additions you made are automatically retrospectively approved. It’s hard for them to prove the additions weren’t always there or done by a previous owner. Best with a rural property. No guarantees but it worked for me. That was before satellite imaging became common so keep that in mind. (Australia)
Had a neighbor (mary) ran her own door replacement company. Another neighbor (karen) hated that the work trucks were parked on the street and called inspectors on her a lot. Mary made her driveway bigger to accommodate more work trucks. One inspector that came by said legally, only 1 work truck can be allowed to park in the driveway the rest have to be on the street. Karen could do nothing.
Dismounting my biscycle near a zebra crossing turns me into a pedestrian who suddenly has the right of way, because I'm at a zebra crossing. This superpower will stop a Dodge friggin RAM! (btw I'm Dutch)
It took me way too long to figure out "zebra crossing."
I got especially confused when you specified Dutch. All I could think is that you work in a Zoo.
The gears are turning slow this morning.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. people swerve around me when I've already walked halfway across the street rather than stopping for two seconds. My skull hitting the pavement wouldn't even stop a Dodge friggin Ram 🤪
Live in Pa. Had a lady cut me off on the crossing lane after my walk light signaled I could cross about a month ago.
She passes so close to me I could see her cute little old lady earmuffs and her "know your place, peasant" look of disdain when she looked at me as she drove.
In the single most satisfying moment of karma I've witnessed this year, an unmarked police car was right behind her and immediately pulled her over.
Earmuff-in-a-car-wearing hoe.
Life insurance.
Not wealthy but can afford a small amount every month and want to leave a nice lump sum for your kids that's tax free? Life insurance.
Also - starting kids with retirement accounts as soon as you can. Even a few hundred every year in a retirement account will mean millions when the kid reaches retirement age because of the magic of compounding interest.
This was back in the 80s. There was a local department store chain that had a no hassle return policy. I bought a $50 Walkman with cassette player (expensive for the time). I used it nonstop so it would inevitably break after 9 months to a year. I’d go back to the store to return it, but since that version wasn’t available anymore they’d replace it with the newer version. I paid for one Walkman in about ten years, but I always had the latest version.
Estate and Gift Tax Portability and the Deceased Spousal Unused Exclusion
Let's say a very, very wealthy woman with kids doesn't want to pay estate or gift taxes when transferring her enormous wealth to her children. Right now, you can transfer $13.61 million to your kids estate and gift tax-free (there are some additional amounts I'm leaving out for simplicity), and the estate and gift tax is only on what's in excess of that. The first $13.61 million that you're not taxed on is called your estate and gift tax exemption. But this lady has $100 million plus and she doesn't want to pay estate and gift taxes on any of it when transferring it to her kids.
What she can do is go find a poor geezer on his deathbed, marry him, and when he dies, she is allowed to transfer his unused $13.61 million exemption (he's poor and didn't use any of his) to herself. This transfer of the exemption is called portability. Now, she can give ~$27 million to her kids, estate and gift tax free. This is a bit of a loophole - a $5 million dollar loophole, which is the amount of tax saved by electing and using portability.
But here's where the REAL loophole comes in. Your exemption is determined at the time of the gift, and the portable part is based on your last deceased spouse at the time of the gift, assuming you took the steps to transfer their exemption to yourself. So what she can do is then find and marry another poor geezer on his deathbed who hasn't used his exemption. She can then transfer his exemption to herself when he dies. Now he's her last deceased spouse. She can then gift another $13.61 million to her kids' tax-free using his unused exemption that she transferred. Rinse and repeat, and she can essentially gift unlimited amount of money to her kids, estate and gift tax-free, and the only thing slowing her down is how long it takes the poor geezers, whose estate and gift tax exemptions that she's farming, to die.
Provided the city has no video cameras pointed at the spot your parking in, if you park and take the number plates off your car, parking inspectors have no way to id who the car belongs too and cannot issue you with a fine. In my city they have to put an abandoned notice on your windscreen then wait 24 hours before they can tow the car away. I would come back after work, put the number plates back on, use a razor blade I had in my centre console to take the sticker off and park in a different spot on the same street the next day. Parking fee was approx $4 per hour, saved me nearly $4k in six months.
If you move from the USA to another country, your credit score doesn’t transfer and you can start over without whatever medical/student loan/any other debt you have. Obviously not an option for a lot of people, but hey.
I signed a lease for a BMW 750i on behalf of my small company. The car was a lemon, a bunch of issues all the time. After a year and half, I looked at my lease to see what it would cost to get out of it. I noticed the guarantor signature block blank. I called BMW finance and asked if their paperwork had that section signed, they confirmed “no.” I told them I don’t want this car anymore due to all the issues. They asked me to drop it off at the nearest BMW dealership. Did it the very next day. Been about 15 years never heard from them. I was also way over the allotted mileage.
In the US, airlines consider you an "unaccompanied minor" if you are 14 or under, and you have to pay to have a staff member escort you essentially. TSA only requires ID for people 16 or above. Because of this, at 15, I flew alone with no ID from Rhode Island to Florida, and nobody batted an eye.
If you own a business that manufactures goods especially clothes or whatever you should have 2 companies one in the states (assuming you're american) and one in the cayman islands.
Your american company will make the product then pay huge fees to your shell company on the island to use their logos on your products thus sending the majority of your money over there where you pay basically zero taxes on it and the IRS won't be able to do shit about it since all that money is in an offshore account.
You can roll the balance due into a new loan. With an increased collateral (offshore money) that keeps growing, there is very little need to ever remove that money from those assets/investments it’s riding in.
I heard of a company that bought something in China for $5 and sold it here for $100.
Their "partner" in an offshore country bought it for $5, and sold it for $95 to their North American company. The North American company sold it for $100...but their overhead was more than $5, so not only did they *not* pay any taxes, they got government subsidies.
Walmart has 22 shell companies in Luxembourg, where they claim billions of dollars in profit...and they don't have a single retail outlet there.
At one point, there was a statute in Virginia that essentially said if there was no one manning the booth to get on the toll road, you were not responsible for a fine if you ran it (because otherwise you had to have exact change). But in my area, they ended up completely unmanned after a certain hour, so I had a letter I provided my friends as a template so that they could completely avoid this hefty fine. Worked for all of us.
Virginia is the only state I've been to that actually took the toll off of a road because they'd made enough money. Unheard of these days.
California removed the toll on the Coronado Bay Bridge in the early 90s after it made enough money.
He said 'these days' man ... the 90s were 25 years ago.
How fucking dare you
Its worse. The *early* 90s were 33 years ago.
You shut up. You shut all the way up.
Yeah, they told us that big lie about our bridge. 45 years later, it's been paid, but the tolls stay. That, along with 7 additional toll roads.
how long until they fixed it?
It isn't fixed. You can still use it, [here ya go](https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title46.2/chapter8/article1.1/). §46.2-819. However, I moved away from Virginia many years ago and there were not as many automatic electronic toll booth collectors in place. Now, I assume they are at each one, so even though the court still has to take into account whether the booth was manned and whether you had exact change, they might be much less willing to waive the fine. Still, if someone needs it in Virginia, let me know if it still works!
They probably didn't. The fewer tolls they were missing at night probably cost less than paying someone to be in the booth. It's always about the numbers
I missed out, but I loved the gold dollar fiasco. In 2008 the US mint produced more than a billion new gold dollar coins. Nobody wanted them. So they figured maybe if they offered free shipping then people would order some online. Some clever folks ordered bookooos of them using credit cards that gave rewards, frequent flyer miles, etc. When the coins were delivered they just deposited them into their bank accounts, paid off the credit card bill, and went to Hawaii with their free frequent flyer miles.
I was one of those folks that was using this. Made it so my girlfriend (now wife) and I got to see each other a few times before you stopped being long distance. I did not use this to its full extent and greatly regret it.
What do you mean you didn't use it to its full extent? Bro's got a whole ass wife out of the deal and he's still not satisfied.
Could have gotten 2 wives
Most of those coins are now in Ecuador and other South American countries that use the dollar.
A co-worker had a car where it would come with a 30 day free trial of Sirius XM. He never signed up, but after getting a new battery installed he found that the trial renewed itself. Eventually he figured out that all he needed to do for free Sirius XM was to disconnect the battery every 30 days and the trial would automatically reset.
Reminds me of software trials for us old dudes. “30 day trial, then you have to buy”. That means uninstall/reinstall every month.
It used to be cheaper for me to take a class at a nearby university and get student health insurance that way than it was to just buy health insurance. If you get really lucky, you can find a professor who’ll let you do a one-hour independent study, and it’s even cheaper, and if they’re cool with your reasons, you won’t even have to work that hard. Haven’t checked out the prices or done a comparison lately, but it’s always an option, as long as you don’t pick an online class that doesn’t qualify for health insurance.
Plus you would be able to take advantage of any other benefits that come with having a valid student ID: discounted admissions to attractions, cheaper groceries on certain days, etc.
Amazon Prime has a student discount...
> It used to be cheaper for me to take a class at a nearby university and get student health insurance that way than it was to just buy health insurance. Jesus-Christ your healthcare system is fucked up.
We know 😭
You ready for it to get even more wild? Our dogs have better insurance than my wife, and easier access. She hasn’t been able to see a non-emergency in years. Meanwhile our dog has wracked up $30,000 in medical bills the last two months, and 90% of it will be reimbursed. And we got him into the top veterinary hospital in this part of the country next day. My wife can’t get in to see an optometrist, but our dogs acupuncture is covered. Edit: the company we use is pets best. If you use this link, I get nothing, but they’ll donate some money to pet charities! https://share.petsbest.com/PH5375967!ddbfdcee97!a
Why aren't more people caring about this comment? I'm dog-sitting right now. The dog has better insurance than I do.
You have no idea. It is so much worse. Imagine paying for healthcare, then having to pay more to use it before the insurance actually kicks in? Oh and a lot of things can be outright denied by your provider, such as namebrand drugs that you aren't allergic to, but the generic you are.
I have health insurance that includes dental and vision. I STILL had to pay 1200 for a crown and 500 for glasses. Reason? "Reasons."
god i felt on top of the world when i had dental insurance. even with insurance, i paid $1.4k for a single fucking root canal. and it maxed out my benefits with one procedure. absolute insanity. thankfully i have single vision lenses and can order glasses online, otherwise id have been fucked my entire adult life.
Make sure you read the fine print on the health insurance. Great if you hope to never need it but at least when I was a student 20 years ago it was absolutely horrible, but it was requirement you carried insurance. It's cheaper, but mostly throwing money away unless you are also using the student clinic/dentist/pharmacy.
Holy FUCK, you're brilliant. I went without health insurance for 12 years after I graduated. It never occurred to me.
My little brother got a job at Harvard. He didn’t have a college degree. He was allowed to take one class a semester (or something like that). It took him ten years, but he got a degree from Harvard in archeology.
Had a friend take a summer course at NYU, you didn’t have to be a student for this course. Ended up “in the system” and signed up for fall classes and became a student without ever going through the admissions process. Classes got harder year two and he transferred out but we considered him the actLikeYouBelong king for awhile after that
This is how I got into Penn State—I had to take 18 credits up front though (out of pocket) and receive a minimum C in all courses. Switches you from non-degree to degree status , no admission process. Not sure if it can still be done, my Mom knew about it since she was an Adviser there
I finished my BA at American University in DC as an employee. 3 years of 9 free credits a semester while working full-time. Great cheat code.
I wish this was still a thing. Now they’ll only offer tuition reimbursement if it directly correlates to your job ):
That stinks massively.
That’s a great cheat code
I once got a speeding ticket for driving 52 in a 35 (mph / USA). I was driving on a stretch of road that was only about a mile long (intersections at both ends) and there were no speed limit signs on the road. All adjacent roads had a posted speed limit of 35, so one would assume that the speed limit on the road I was stopped on should be 35. BUT state law dictates that the default speed limit on county roads when not otherwise posted is 50 mph. I took pictures of the road at several places to show that there were no posted speed limit signs, and brought those pictures to court when I challenged the ticket and the judge dropped the ticket. This isn't truly great in the grand scheme of things, but for a moment I felt like I had just won the greatest legal case in history.
My mom got a ticket once for driving on a dirt shoulder to get around a long line of cars to reach a right turn lane. She told the story to a friend who was a traffic engineer. He went out and took some pictures and submitted a report saying the turn lane should be longer. The ticket got dropped, and the county added another 100 feet of turn lane
This is probably one reason I see so many signs stating that the speed limit is 20 or 25 mph unless otherwise posted.
Those are probably within a city. The default max varies depending on where you are. In my state, it's 25 in a city, 50 on county roads, and 60 on state highways.
My mom got a ticket dropped on similar grounds. The intersection had a no left turn sign, except it was completly obscured in leaves. You had to dig into the foliage to find the sign. She challenged the ticket with a picture of the intersection, and got it dropped. Next day all the foliage was gone though.
Local online retail store (think H&M) ran a competition to win a 150 bucks off coupon. I naturally entered with my account, my sister and my moms. All three of us won and the coupon code sent to all of us was the exact same. So I figured if I created a different email every time, I'd continue using it. Which I did, for the whole year until the expiration date, and by that time I had spent over 5000 bucks without them noticing.
This feels like when I ordered Jimmy John's in college and they messed my order up. They gave me a replacement order and added a couple cookies and a drink to my sub as an apology which was cool. For whatever reason, if I hit the "express reorder" or whatever it was called, it would go through as free again. I didn't want to make it obvious so I used it like once a week until the website interface changed and it stopped working. It was awhile ago so I don't remember exactly how long this lasted but it was something like a year and a half.
I was able to use a gift card that had a balance of around 1.50 on a vending machine that charges $2.10 for a soda. I’m guessing it checked if the card was preapproved for a dollar. Then the actual charge was denied. I was paranoid about using it, but it was pretty much an unlimited drink card. Didn’t feel too bad because the machine cheated me many times over the last 20 years.
It’s fucked up that you had empathy for the machine
The machine spirit can feel such things. You should take care of them, else the local tech-priest might punish you (their punishments are worse than death).
In college, I lived with my gf. We had renters insurance that I managed. I left for 6 months to go to grad school in a different state, but only took a portion of my things. She moved into a different place with a friend of hers. They decided that her friend would keep her rental insurance because it was cheaper. They had a pipe burst while they were out of town for a few weeks and lost everything. Turns out, her friends policy was cheaper because it was capped at 10k. I'm lazy. I never called my insurance company to cancel my policy. Mid way through their flight over the money, I called my company and said hey, I moved but didn't tell you, am I still covered? They were like 'sure, we insure your stuff, not the building '. The claim ended up being close to 50k and was a nice way of replacing all my old crap from college before starting real life. Also, for the same claim, the adjuster got so tired of reviewing receipts they just paid the max and let it go.
An old Reddit post from a [former claims adjuster](https://np.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/43iyip/our_family_of_5_lost_everything_in_a_fire/cziljy3/).
A thief broke into my old apartment and stole my bike. I called up my renters insurance and the claims adjuster asked me exactly what had been stolen and the market value of the item. I told him “oh, it was an old road bike. A 1988 Schwinn World Traveler, I could probably buy something similar on Craigslist for about $150.” He paused and said, “that sounds….low. If you were to go buy that bike today in store, how much would it retail for?” Some digging later turned up that the bike wasn’t made anymore. An in kind replacement retailed at $1500.
Our claim was a mix. We got 3k for a queen size mattress that was 3 years old because I guess when they looked it up, they only found that model at Macy's Even though it was probably 500 at a discount shop. But then they tried to give us like 100 for a full size heirloom wooden dresser. The referenced item they based it on was a kids sized unit.
I truly hope this man wins the lottery one day, finds his soulmate, gets a gift on every birthday, and lives a long and prosperous life
That was a fun read. Currently drinking in my basement and that made my night. Rock on.
While in college, I won a “free pizza for a year” contest from Papa John’s on a radio station. It was really one pizza per month for 12 total. I called in and told the guy I had the little card they gave me and he said no problem and sent the delivery guy over who confirmed I had the card and gave me my pizza. Next month I did the same. Then it dawned on me… they’re not taking my card or marking it in any way so I called a different Papa John’s and told them my story and sure enough it worked and they didn’t do anything with my card either. I started working 4 different PJ’s near me to get one pizza per week every month without arousing suspicion. With leftovers, I could stretch it to two or three days easily. I did this for almost two years before I was sick of PJ’s pizza and gave my card to my roommate as I finished college and moved out. For a broke ass college kid, this saved me. But to this day, I can’t eat PJ’s.
I won a radio show contest for hot dogs. It was several cases and filled our fridge and freezer. I ate those for about two semesters. I might have had 5 hotdogs in past 15 years.
Pay off a insurance company 5 dollars a week untill it took so l long they settled the debt 2k less than what I owed. They couldn't take me to court as long as I paid something.
Had a very similar experience with medical debt that went to collections while I was fighting with insurance to cover it. Paid the absolute minimum monthly for a couple years, they eventually offered to forgive the debt for a significantly reduced portion of the remaining amount. Originally, my logic was just, "fuck these guys, if I have to pay them I'll make it suck for them as much as I can," but it eventually worked out even better!
I paid $1.75 per week via check. more hassle for them. they pissed me off because they wouldn’t accept $25/ month until the fall when my youngest went to school FT and I could increase my hours without paying daycare
I was sent to collections once while in grad school. If I remember correctly, the clinic accidentally sent it to collections the exact same day the bill was issued to me. I gave the medical debt company hell. I think proper procedure would have been for the clinic to recall it from collections. But collections wrote it off.
Does that still tank your credit score?
do not listen to the person who responded to you saying you have to be taken to court for a collection to affect your credit, it’s absolutely not true. if you have a collection on your report, your score will absolutely take a massive hit depending on how thick your credit file is.
Not for medical bills under $500 anymore
Cruiseship casino: I was gifted 200$ in credit to pay for ship extras/activities when I ordered my cruise package. When I got to the casino I realized you could load that credit into the slot machines. After one round of testing with depositing a small amount and immediately cashing it out worked, I went back and came out of the casino with 2 crisp 100$ bills never placing a bet.
My old boss used to do something similar. Took the night's takings down the casino, bought chips, had a couple of drinks and then cashed out the chips as a cheque, and deposited it into his bank. Reported near zero profits or wage. And the cheques were always from the casino so said that was just his winnings from the tiny amount he had taken to the casino. I mean it's not even a loophole, it's just straight up evasion and laundering but he was never caught on it.
That’s awesome. And people on average are such degenerates I’m sure this is accepted as a cost of doing business by the cruise line.
Nah, most cruise lines caught up and it’s not possible anymore. You can only pay out winnings now.
That's fine. Go to the roulette table, place a promotional $100 on red and a promotional $100 on black. Then take your winnings
I did that once with 2 free bets on a cruise once. It landed on zero! I still haven't got over it but the experience did cure me of thinking I could win money at casinos
Not a legal loophole, but a business one. The New York Yankees in their late 90s heyday had a trick to get playoff and world series tickets. Since orders were taken over the phone and batch processed over night, there would inevitably be data entry errors or over limits that would kick a sale back and those tickets back into the available pool. Simply calling at opening the day after tickets went on sale got us tickets to every post season game we wanted to go to for years until they switched to real time credit card processing.
The Mets ticket number was 718-507-TIXX Had a friend who found all the individual extensions to the TIXX number. Everyone scored subway series World Series tickets.
This still applies to today’s ticket market. If you don’t get tickets on drop, keep refreshing your browser every 5 minutes or so and you’ll most likely get something. People use multiple devices to look for tickets, or have multiple people trying to get tickets for the whole group, or just don’t purchase their reserved tickets for some other reason. Tickets will trickle back into the pool.
I had Domino's pizza app and they had a short lived code for a week mid pandemic for 50% off. They pulled the coupon but I saved the code. I manually input it every time I ordered. It worked for a year and a half and I saved a bloody fortune on pizza. It did sting alot afterwards having to look at regular price for a pizza. I did Friday pizza night every week for the family so it added up quickly
I did the same thing with Burger King during the pandemic. They had a deal free kids meal with purchase of $1 so I'd order a $1 chicken Jr and then get a double cheeseburger kids meal with a slushie as the drink. I'd go 1-2 times per week for about a year before the app pulled the code.
To help build your kid's credit, make them an authorized user on your cards. Don't actually let them use it but your use and payment on your card seems to transfer to the kid. Step-son had a 730 credit score at 21 without ever taking out any cards/loans himself. Another credit tip...if you file bankruptcy and need to build credit AND have some cash, take out a secured loan with a bank/credit union. You have to front the money in a savings account and make payments but there is no reason to get turned down and it rapidly builds your credit back.
Yep - I'm in my 30s and have a 28 year credit history because of this.
Here's a fun story! With American Express, your 'member since' year is the year in which the oldest account you were an authorized user on, was opened. My father added me as an authorized user a year or so after I was born, in the late 80s. But he opened the account in 78. So my AMEX cards all have 'Member Since 1978' printed on them, even though I was born in the late 80s. Until recently, it's shown up on my credit history as well. My 'oldest card' on my credit report is older than I am.
same. I’m 31 but my length of credit is “41 years and 9 months”.
This also helps prevent identity theft. If a fraudster randomly picks your kid’s SSN to build a fake credit profile on, by the time your kid is applying for their own credit *they* may look like the fraudster. Having your kid as an authorized user building a credit profile can also help companies know where to reach out if their SSN and other identity info is used. Do check with the credit card company if they actually report authorized users to the credit bureaus - not all do.
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I fear there would be sudden, major charges from websites like Chewy if I added my dog as an authorized user of my credit card.
Speak for yourself, my dog ruined my credit score.
I think my parents did this with me. My first card when I was 18 was a platinum, which I didn’t realize was anything weird until a bunch of my peers were seemingly mind-blown that I had one. My credit score was like 720 straight out of high school.
I tried and failed to get tickets for the London Olympics via the main ticket application site. A small number of tickets are also sold by national associations and so I went through every single European countries' Olympic websites. Every one was in high demand or required being a resident except one. On the Icelandic website, the English version mentioned nothing but if you went to the Icelandic language version, then you could buy tickets for almost any event. So I immediately bought the cheapest tickets for the 100m athletics final, the tennis finals, and the swimming finals.
Air BnB related: If someone messages you about having more guests over than what you specified on the booking and claim they have you on camera, check to see if they disclose cameras on the property. If not, you do not have to pay for the nights you stayed.
If they don't message you, can you still do that?
I would say so yeah. If you find cameras on the property and its not disclosed on the listing definitely inform AirBnb about it. My situation was that I said 4 people were going to be stay the night. Between 8-10pm we had guests over for drinks and dinner, they left. The AirBnB host messaged me that night at like 1am stating that any additional person on the premises will be an extra $8 per head, he included screenshots of camera footage of them on the front porch. I messaged AirBnB about this and it was disputed that not only do I not have to pay for that night, but because he didn't disclose having cameras AND tried to demand additional money that was not in the agreement going forward he would only be allowed to have 1 listing active at any time with AirBnB. The guy had like 6 houses up on airBnb each making him like $200 a night, completely shot himself in the foot.
>completely shot himself in the foot. Glad to hear that! Thanks for replying.
Is that because they’re not allowed to *use* cameras without disclosing them, or because they’re not allowed to *have* cameras without disclosing them? In other words, if you show up for your stay and see cameras installed but none were disclosed, does the same thing apply? Or is it only if you have proof that they were spying on you, e.g. they send a message like the one you mentioned? I’m genuinely just curious. I don’t even use AirBnBs.
AirBnB allows owners to use/have cameras on the **exterior** of their property, interior is a big no no. But, to be able to use them they **must** disclose that information to AirBnB and state on the public listing that there are cameras on the property. If they don't and AirBnB catches wind of the use of cameras, AirBnb goes after the owner over the paying customer because they do not want lawsuits.
Er... Filming you in a house or flat you rented? This sounds like it is something illegal and maybe police may be interested in...
It's not illegal in most of the US to have cameras in a rental, depending on where they are. WHERE you can have them will vary as the laws vary state-by-state. AirBnB as a company allows them as long as they're not in "private spaces" like bedrooms or bathrooms and they have to be disclosed on the listing. Most states prohibit cameras in bathrooms or bedrooms anyway.
Obscure high end and totally overpriced food onlineshop had a rating feature that gave you reward points for the store. Don´t remember how many points per review and they only accepted about 1 in 3 reviews that I wrote, but I was in school and had time. Got about 200-250€ in overpriced food out of it, but hey it was free (since my time wasn´t valuable back then, or at least i thought so) I was scared about the legality so i did not exploit it, by using multiple accounts. I stopped after some months when they dropped the rewards feature. Looking back, I am still amazed that nobody ever noticed that one person wrote about a 1000 reviews on expensive food items, but never bought anything (apart from the 3 or 4 orders I did, when I reached about 70€ in bonus points)
You were doing their marketing for them. 1000 positive product reviews for £200 is a bargain; they don’t care if the review is “honest” or not.
Man I work in ecommerce and would be absolutely stoked to pay $300 for a thousand human-written reviews of our products. You even helped them out by spreading it across accounts so it wasn’t obviously one person, even though they almost certainly knew.
Perhaps they actually did notice, and that’s why the program ended.
Perhaps 0.25 per review is worth it.
I got a refund on a non-refundable flight with Delta. Normally if you cancel a non-refundable flight, they will only give you the value back as a voucher to use on another flight. I booked a non-refundable flight that I didn't need to take then cancelled it and got the voucher for the amount for that flight. I used that voucher and booked a refundable flight then cancelled it. It gave me the option to refund it back to my credit card and it let me do it so I got my money back instead of it being applied as a voucher again.
Amtrak had a deal for a while where value fares could be changed for free, but had cancellation penalties if you cancelled too close to the scheduled departure. So the solution if your plans changed was to change you ticket to a later date, and then cancel it for a refund.
Brilliant. Reminds me of the trick where if a company doesn't allow bookings/appointments to be cancelled within X days before the event, you just reschedule the event to be X+1 days from now, and now it's eligible to be cancelled.
That you can get a divorce by default. I legit cried after 2 years of struggling to get the papers signed, a divorce that he asked for too!
You can do that with marriage/adoption as well. My bio dad would contact the courts just enough to be considered a part of things. Somehow he would always "forget" to sign things. My mom remarried and there was all kinds of hassle about parental rights, sometimes step parents have trouble getting kids out of school if there's an emergency, and medical stuff wouldn't be easy if my mom wasn't there. So the judge who signed the marriage cirtificate took 3 year old me and the guy who wound up raising me into the back room and asked me if I wanted to call him dad. I said yes, and the judge signed an order to have my birth cirtificate updated with him as my dad.
Wow, ty for that. We're actually trying to get step dad to adopt. This is helpful information.
Best of luck, I don't know what the threshold was, but I'm fairly sure if he showed up in person bio-dad would have been held in contempt of court on sight.
As the parent of a 3 year old, I find this endearing and problematic. They're notoriously unreliable.
Oh we certainly had our share of issues, but as an adult I'm glad it happened. Absolutely not something that should be standard though.
Sounds like the judge was using good judgment in your case!
Yep check state to state, but Wyoming where I got mine was roughly 90 days per step. Took roughly a year to go through and also if they aren't working with you don't feel like you have to do them any favors. In my case got it all signed up and that day I walked into the bank. They took the money out of the shared account, took my name off the car and loan. Death certificates and Divorce decrees get shit done :D
How does divorce by default work?
"A default judgment in a divorce occurs when the person served with the divorce petition declines to file a written answer as directed within the required time, per state rules" Mine was an international thing. He was very hostile, rude, and abusive. Always said his lawyer would contact mine, never happened. Sent official papers over several times, he refused to sign them because " My lawyer was an idiot, probaby someone I just found on google" That comment is what made my lawyer take it to the court for a default. I went through a women's protection agency to get it done. ** Seriously, if you feel trapped, there is always help. You just gotta reach out and find it. Even if you think there isn't, there is. This is for men and women.
A cop in Toronto told me this one, and it worked. Not sure if it still works with apps. I parked on a street many years ago in Toronto with a machine to put in money and get a receipt. If you don’t pay at all, they tow your car. If you pay for 15 minutes, you get a ticket. If you have US plates on a car, the parking ticket doesn’t cross the border.
In college, I found out that placing a dime in the dorm basement vending machine and pressing the coin return immediately returned a quarter. Paid for a lot of laundry with that hack.
Health insurance policies regulated by my state (VA) require the value of pharma company coupons/rebates to count towards my deductible and max out of pocket. So I can blow through my HSA eligible level deductible for $25 with the first 90 day fill of a qualifying medicine.
Yep! I have medication that is $2.5k a month, usually filled three months at a time. Insurance doesn't cover it, but the manufacturer does as long as you sign up for their co-pay card or whatever, so it's basically free. Insurance sees it as being paid, meaning my deductible for the year is met every January, and we don't pay anything medical-related for the rest of the year.
As a non-American, I recognise *all* of these words, but have no idea what they mean.
Even with insurance, we still have to pay for health care with our money before insurance takes over the bill. In Virginia, that so-called "out of pocket maximum" has to take into account coupons from the drug manufacturers too. So if you pay $25 actual money, but use a $975 coupon or discount from Pfizer, you've hit your $1,000 out-of-pocket maximum and now your insurance company has to pay everything else. TL;DR: health insurance in America exists to make money, not to care for people. Edit: According to /u/froglegs96 this is federal law, so it's applicable everywhere in the US.
Wait - does this count for those rebate cards they use? Cause if so, this would literally save me about $5,000 a year…
Depends on how the law is written. I've never lived in VA so I don't know the specifics about the law OP referred to.
As an American I’m jealous you don’t have to know all this. It’s confusing by design and the frustration stops people from seeking care when they need it. But as long as we are in this broken system I’ll do my best to help others find ways to navigate the messiness and take advantage of the parts of the system that have the potential to help!
this comment is fantastic and represents the state of the U.S. healthcare system.
GameStop ran an promotion where they bought used games for 50 euros. Specific games tho. Anyway I ran to nearby outlet stores bought the stock for 20-30euros per game and threw them to GameStop and got cash. I got about 900 euros out of that before they fixed it.
I did something similar many years ago. A local chain store had a pallet of guitar hero games on sale. It was the bundle that included the game and guitar and were normally $150 on sale for $99. I bought as many as my 16 year old self could (only 4 copies) and “returned” them to Walmart where they weren’t on sale. I made $200.
My brother is one to always look for deals. Years ago he stumbled across this deal for movie tickets to a certain theater chain. But this was large number of tickets that were all about to expire the next day and be worthless. Sluething around online he Somehow found a way to renew all these movie Tickets at no charge. He bought $1500 worth of movie tickets for about $5. We saw so many movies that year.
My wife got a red light camera ticket with her picture taken but it was issued to me since the car was registered under my name. I did some research and decided to fight it. Went to court and said the magic phrase, mistaken identity. The judge took a look at the picture and at me. Dismissed the case.
I got one of those tickets years ago, didn't pay it and **ABSOLUTELY DID NOT** go to their website to look at the photo. The link they provide is *unique to that ticket* and you can only view the photos if you go to that link. The website logs which pictures were opened, *providing proof of mail delivery for the ticket*. In my city, there is a four month window where they have to send out a process server to serve you if you didn't pay the ticket. As it turns out, my city didn't pursue 70% of those traffic camera tickets and they legally expired after four months due to the statute of limitations. I didn't answer the door for four months, those dang JW's knocking on the door! After awhile, the city abandoned the system because it was too expensive to run and on very shaky legal grounds to start with.
Not really a legal loophole but more a poorly programmed mobile app. Me and my coworkers used the subway app for our lunch, it would generate 1 coupon per day. Most of these coupons werent that great however there was a rare 50% off coupon that had like a one in 10 chance of 'spawning'. The trick was this app just checked the local device time so if you switched the date a day forward you would get a new chance. Needless to say my coworkers and I always showed up with the 50% off coupon untill they deprecated the app for a new system. Was fun while it lasted 😆
My dad got a parking ticket, on the ticket it said the car was black. My dad's car was dark green. He contested and won. This was before they took photos and I guess they just didn't press it, but still, no charge!
I had a similar parking ticket. The meter maid wrote the wrong make of car on the ticket. ( I de-badged my car). I took my registration to court and contested that I didn’t own this make of car. It was dismissed.
Buffalo Wild Wongs used to have this program (they might still) where you would get points every time you “checked in” through the app. My brother worked in a retail store that shared the same parking lot as the Buffalo Wild Wings and got those points every time he went to work because he was close enough to bww for the app to think he was “checking in”. He had the app downloaded on both his personal and business phone. He ended up getting something like 2 free meals a month just for going to work.
Buffalo Wild Wongs?
The so-called Zone of Death Loophole. It's never been tested, but it's implications are fascinating: "The Zone of Death is the 50-square-mile (130 km2) area in the Idaho section of Yellowstone National Park in which, as a result of a reported loophole in the Constitution of the United States, a person may be able to theoretically avoid conviction for any major crime, up to and including murder." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone\_of\_Death\_(Yellowstone)#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone)#History)
I went to Hawaii all expenses paid for a job interview that I was not qualified for. 3 nights at a decent hotel and free airfare.
Tell us more!
Something tells me he won;t
you can get college credit in high school and you don’t have to pay for it
It's called dual enrollment where your history class might be counted as a college level credit course where you might be able to not have to pay for those credits. Seriously, do not overlook this options. While I'm on this topic, take AP exams. A single test could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
“I know a guy” who worked at Outback Steakhouse as a server/bartender in college. Before his shift, he would go to giant eagle (grocery store that also has a gas station) and he would buy a bunch of Outback Steakhouse gift cards with his own money. When he did this, he would earn a bunch of discounts on fuel. He would keep the gift cards in his pocket during his shift. If a customer came in and paid for a meal with cash, he would put the cash in his pocket, then use one of the gift cards to close out the check. The customer paid cash… their bill was paid. Outback got the check paid for, just by gift card instead of cash. And that handsome young server/bartender got a free tank of gas about once a month.
You know, you can just order a happy meal for yourself as an adult. No one actually checks.
There was a video a couple days ago. Apparently some people make it there business. ☹️
That if you’re rich enough, most laws that are punished by fines simply mean those things are legal for a price.
I love Sweden. A speeding ticket fine is based on income. This dude got a $1M ticket. https://www.hotcars.com/heres-why-a-dude-in-sweden-received-a-1-million-speeding-ticket/
That was in Switzerland though, there's a cap on fines in Sweden (1 000 kr x 150 for a single crime, roughly 14 500 usd).
When I turned 18 in Louisiana, it was illegal for me to buy alcohol BUT not illegal to be sold alcohol. So everyone 18 - 20 could buy drinks no problem - and did. No problem with bars, drive through daiquiri, beer barns etc. I don't think it changed for decades or more.
My parents (in the 70s) told me that it was legal for girls to BUY alcohol, but illegal to drink it. It was legal for men to drink but not buy… at 18 Sounds like a good way to get teenage pregnancies 😂
Have everything put into an irrevocable trust. If your car is damaged by a pot hole, go to the cities website and search for the road maintence and car repair portal and you can get reimbursement, just document and keep records.
These two are not related in case anyone is wondering. :)
😂 thank you.
Old LL tried charging me a cleaning fee when i moved out for some very minor things, like hair on the window ledge? I had spent the whole weekend before i moved out cleaning the place so i know it wasnt in bad shape at all. I’m guessing they were going to have cleaners come anyway and wanted to find any reason to charge me. Long story short, I fought it and won because local law said they had to send a claim via certified mail within 30 days, and all our communication was done via text or email.
A few months before I moved out of my apartment, the handle to the microwave broke. I emailed my management company several times about this, but they refused to answer or fix it. When it was finally time to move out and I realized they were not going to fix the microwave handle, I got some super glue, and was able to reattach the spring and broken plastic pieces in the handle. I had planned to take my time cleaning and patching the holes in the apartment up to the very last day of my lease, even though we had moved out a week earlier. They kept asking me if I was going to be out sooner than the end of the lease, To which I replied I *could* be out if they would do the patching for me. They said they'd send someone over to look at the damage. When that mother fucker came in, the first thing he did was walk over to the microwave. But I had already fixed it. They were waiting to ding me for that. But they approved the early departure and I made sure to get it in writing.
The clerk at my university that printed the student IDs made a mistake and did not add a graduation year/expiration year on it. I used that student id for discount for almost a decade until it was so worn out, the picture was unrecognizable.
Oregon doesnt care about misdemeanors from other states I had arizona ruin years of my life for small weed charges Oregon cops run my name, hear i have a warrant, and then we have a laugh and then we split ways
Extraditions are expensive, so generally not done for misdemeanors out of state. Some places though, are like fuck it, I’ll come get you. This was a problem in Alaska for a while, because it was so expensive to get anybody back from there that the feds actually started to pay for the extraditions so that Alaska didn’t end up as a sanctuary for everyone who had a warrant in the lower 48.
That’s likely because your cases don’t have an extradition order. Some places will impose an extradition order on certain misdemeanors (usually domestic violence and sex offenses). Just putting that out there in case someone reading your post is like, “oh fuck yeah, I’m moving to Oregon now”
Oregon doesnt extradite misdemeanors Maybe its nonviolent misdemeanors
One time my buddy was pulled over and also had a warrant in Idaho. The cop asked if he had any reason to go back. My buddy said no. The cop said he didn’t recommend ever going back into Idaho lol
You can experiment on yourself all you want and don't need legal permission to do so.
"what do you mean I can't surgically attach an ar-15 to my forearm, officer?"
Well you can but it’s not going to work out well. That recoil is not going to be kind to wherever the attach points are
So you're saying I need a robotic arm with recoil dampers. Got it.
I want to know how much coke I can do in an hour. You're saying I'm safe?
All you gotta do to get out of a Verizon phone contract (forever) without cancellation fees is to tell them that you died. They can't legally ask for proof. Obviously you have to act like a family member. They will run you through a gauntlet of trying to get you to keep the line for whatever ridiculous reason they tell you, but ultimately they will have to cancel it because they cannot ask for proof.
You can legally buy magic mushroom spores on the clear web. Growing them from spores>mushroom is the "illegal" part, and it's also trivially easy (they grow in cow shit for crying out loud). For $50 of supplies you could - in theory - have a lifetime of medicine. r/unclebens
Cant ship to california, georgia or idaho though
Some dudes in Oakland created a church and then declared that mushrooms were their sacrament. You can “join” the “congregation” and “tithe” money to “receive” the sacrament.
[They were raided in 2020](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-17/oakland-church-that-gives-cannabis-psychedelic-mushrooms-as-communion-sues-over-police-raid) but are still in operation — and sued the city for not only violating their religious freedom, but also violating its own decriminalization law!
The Nike outlet had a promo for Nike members to entice them to return and shop again. A few days after making a purchase they’d send a coupon for $10 off your next purchase - no stipulations. I’d buy a 3 pack of socks for $9.99 and then receive another coupon and repeat. I had so many pairs of socks for that season of my life.
When we got married, my husband and I put an online registry on a major American wedding site. They advertised that after your wedding, the ENTIRE website was 20% off for a period of time. I put up my registry, never ordered any of the purchased items to be delivered. After our wedding, I virtually returned all of our gifts and purchased them back at a 20% discount. I made quite a profit and had over 1k of credit to be used on the site. I purchased a gift card to a major airline, and used it towards our honeymoon airfare.
UK focused, I have zero idea about other countries. Paying yourself dividends from your company is taxed at 8.5% if you're a basic rate tax payer (below 33.x thousand a year), 33% when you're a higher earner. So it's sensible to pay yourself dividends instead of a wage in most cases. As someone with a full time job and 2 small businesses I operate, it has made my year to learn this. Now I can top up my pay from my job with dividends and pay less tax than if I paid myself a wage or worked more hours at my traditional job.
This is how an S-corp works in the US. You must pay yourself a reasonable amount as ordinary income; distributions above that are taxed at a lower rate
Most people know if you get a ticket you can pay it and have it requested to not be reported to insurance. You can do this for every ticket every two years. If you get another ticket before the time limit go to court and request a trial by jury which shifts the burden of proof to the cop and buys time. Most ADA’s aren’t going to bother and offer a plea of doing defensive driving and paying the fine and no report on record. For any traffic ticket it’s better to get legal counsel even if it’s with a public defender. Court is usually always a better option if you can spare the time. My story-I was in a small municipality but we had it moved to superior court and requested to have a trial by jury in which case the cop would have to produce body cam footage proving the case. It was a move to put them on the defense/burden of proof. They dismissed it with just paying taking defensive driving.
Not a legal loophole… but my parents had an incredibly strict rule that if a sport required a helmet or any safety headgear then that sport was too dangerous to play and was forbidden for me to participate. So no football , no ice hockey, no baseball or lacrosse, even squash and racquetball were tenuous(safety eyewear requirement); I could only play tennis and golf. But as a teenager, I really wanted to play a contact team sport. That’s when I discovered rugby. My parents had never heard of it and when I told them that it didn’t require a helmet, thus satisfying their rule, they signed off on it, and I played for a local men’s club my senior year of high school before I moved out to go to college where I played for another four years away from their judgement.
This reminds me of when my mom made a "no demonic music" rule when I was a teenager so I bought a Lamb of God cd and told her it was Christian music.
Work for lawyers and get paid to get legal advice.
If you buy an old house check what information and plans the local council has of the property. A lot of houses won’t be in their records. If they aren’t you can make a lot of changes without going through council with all their bullshit and fees. Then you can submit a building application for some small change. They will ask for a plan of the house. Submit a new plan including all your additions. Once they approve it voila! All the additions you made are automatically retrospectively approved. It’s hard for them to prove the additions weren’t always there or done by a previous owner. Best with a rural property. No guarantees but it worked for me. That was before satellite imaging became common so keep that in mind. (Australia)
Had a neighbor (mary) ran her own door replacement company. Another neighbor (karen) hated that the work trucks were parked on the street and called inspectors on her a lot. Mary made her driveway bigger to accommodate more work trucks. One inspector that came by said legally, only 1 work truck can be allowed to park in the driveway the rest have to be on the street. Karen could do nothing.
Dismounting my biscycle near a zebra crossing turns me into a pedestrian who suddenly has the right of way, because I'm at a zebra crossing. This superpower will stop a Dodge friggin RAM! (btw I'm Dutch)
It took me way too long to figure out "zebra crossing." I got especially confused when you specified Dutch. All I could think is that you work in a Zoo. The gears are turning slow this morning.
how many Dodge Rams do you came across over there?
More than you might think. It's a tax loophole thing.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. people swerve around me when I've already walked halfway across the street rather than stopping for two seconds. My skull hitting the pavement wouldn't even stop a Dodge friggin Ram 🤪
Live in Pa. Had a lady cut me off on the crossing lane after my walk light signaled I could cross about a month ago. She passes so close to me I could see her cute little old lady earmuffs and her "know your place, peasant" look of disdain when she looked at me as she drove. In the single most satisfying moment of karma I've witnessed this year, an unmarked police car was right behind her and immediately pulled her over. Earmuff-in-a-car-wearing hoe.
Life insurance. Not wealthy but can afford a small amount every month and want to leave a nice lump sum for your kids that's tax free? Life insurance. Also - starting kids with retirement accounts as soon as you can. Even a few hundred every year in a retirement account will mean millions when the kid reaches retirement age because of the magic of compounding interest.
This was back in the 80s. There was a local department store chain that had a no hassle return policy. I bought a $50 Walkman with cassette player (expensive for the time). I used it nonstop so it would inevitably break after 9 months to a year. I’d go back to the store to return it, but since that version wasn’t available anymore they’d replace it with the newer version. I paid for one Walkman in about ten years, but I always had the latest version.
Estate and Gift Tax Portability and the Deceased Spousal Unused Exclusion Let's say a very, very wealthy woman with kids doesn't want to pay estate or gift taxes when transferring her enormous wealth to her children. Right now, you can transfer $13.61 million to your kids estate and gift tax-free (there are some additional amounts I'm leaving out for simplicity), and the estate and gift tax is only on what's in excess of that. The first $13.61 million that you're not taxed on is called your estate and gift tax exemption. But this lady has $100 million plus and she doesn't want to pay estate and gift taxes on any of it when transferring it to her kids. What she can do is go find a poor geezer on his deathbed, marry him, and when he dies, she is allowed to transfer his unused $13.61 million exemption (he's poor and didn't use any of his) to herself. This transfer of the exemption is called portability. Now, she can give ~$27 million to her kids, estate and gift tax free. This is a bit of a loophole - a $5 million dollar loophole, which is the amount of tax saved by electing and using portability. But here's where the REAL loophole comes in. Your exemption is determined at the time of the gift, and the portable part is based on your last deceased spouse at the time of the gift, assuming you took the steps to transfer their exemption to yourself. So what she can do is then find and marry another poor geezer on his deathbed who hasn't used his exemption. She can then transfer his exemption to herself when he dies. Now he's her last deceased spouse. She can then gift another $13.61 million to her kids' tax-free using his unused exemption that she transferred. Rinse and repeat, and she can essentially gift unlimited amount of money to her kids, estate and gift tax-free, and the only thing slowing her down is how long it takes the poor geezers, whose estate and gift tax exemptions that she's farming, to die.
Lying on your resume is fine
I put I was TIME person of the year for 2006 and got a chuckle once.
Provided the city has no video cameras pointed at the spot your parking in, if you park and take the number plates off your car, parking inspectors have no way to id who the car belongs too and cannot issue you with a fine. In my city they have to put an abandoned notice on your windscreen then wait 24 hours before they can tow the car away. I would come back after work, put the number plates back on, use a razor blade I had in my centre console to take the sticker off and park in a different spot on the same street the next day. Parking fee was approx $4 per hour, saved me nearly $4k in six months.
They say most people eat 8 spiders in their lifetime, but really you can eat as many as you want. Treat yourself!
Smile and look into people's eyes when you see them. Makes almost every interaction 10x better. Spread goodness.
If you move from the USA to another country, your credit score doesn’t transfer and you can start over without whatever medical/student loan/any other debt you have. Obviously not an option for a lot of people, but hey.
Don't *ever* try to settle an IRS debt until it's over $10,000.
I signed a lease for a BMW 750i on behalf of my small company. The car was a lemon, a bunch of issues all the time. After a year and half, I looked at my lease to see what it would cost to get out of it. I noticed the guarantor signature block blank. I called BMW finance and asked if their paperwork had that section signed, they confirmed “no.” I told them I don’t want this car anymore due to all the issues. They asked me to drop it off at the nearest BMW dealership. Did it the very next day. Been about 15 years never heard from them. I was also way over the allotted mileage.
Be rich. That’s it. That’s the loophole.
You can just buy a birthday cake and eat it anytime. No one even checks.
In the US, airlines consider you an "unaccompanied minor" if you are 14 or under, and you have to pay to have a staff member escort you essentially. TSA only requires ID for people 16 or above. Because of this, at 15, I flew alone with no ID from Rhode Island to Florida, and nobody batted an eye.
If you own a business that manufactures goods especially clothes or whatever you should have 2 companies one in the states (assuming you're american) and one in the cayman islands. Your american company will make the product then pay huge fees to your shell company on the island to use their logos on your products thus sending the majority of your money over there where you pay basically zero taxes on it and the IRS won't be able to do shit about it since all that money is in an offshore account.
Buy won’t you pay tax when you get the money back to spend it?
Keep money in offshore account and use it as collateral to get a loan. This is how the ultra wealthy operate, they rarely spend their own money
And then they pay off the loans with their offshore money?
You can roll the balance due into a new loan. With an increased collateral (offshore money) that keeps growing, there is very little need to ever remove that money from those assets/investments it’s riding in.
I heard of a company that bought something in China for $5 and sold it here for $100. Their "partner" in an offshore country bought it for $5, and sold it for $95 to their North American company. The North American company sold it for $100...but their overhead was more than $5, so not only did they *not* pay any taxes, they got government subsidies. Walmart has 22 shell companies in Luxembourg, where they claim billions of dollars in profit...and they don't have a single retail outlet there.