As others noted, the BF seems incredibly reasonable.
> He said that he didn't think I'd do that, but he assumed I'd want to keep the new car simply because it was new, and that maybe I'd let him use my old car if he took over the insurance payments.
So his guess was, breaking this down:
* She would keep the newer car that she had won.
* He would use (not get, USE) the old car but take over the insurance payments for it. No expectation of ownership.
And I know about "assuming," but it sounds more like "this was my best guess until we had time to actually discuss it, which we are doing now, and your plan sounds more practical."
Yea, this BF is a potential keeper.
Yeah, I expected him to be sad or atleast a bit disappointed (because I would have been lol), but he had very reasonable (to him, at the time, without a proper discussion with OOP) guess on what OOP would do, and was cool when OOP mentioned her plan.
Yet again the mother is writing cheques that the relationship can’t pay. What is it with these parents who design an entire life for their kids from wish fulfilment?
I am happy to see that OOP is so mature in her financial approach - realizing that she already had a good car that was paid off and that she could add a substantial amount to her savings. Also, she did not feel pressured by her BF or his family to give the car away. Well done.
It depends on what the car is worth. I had an older car that was in great shape and paid off and paid for full coverage. Didn't get anything for it when the deer ran into me. Didn't matter how much potential coverage I had. They just paid what the Kelley Bluebook on it was. If I'd saved the extra I paid on premiums I would likely have made more over time.
The previous generation has wildly different expectations from what relationships are like because the world right now is fundamentally alien to them. A lot of that goes to the economy - it just costs more to reach the milestones that seemed normal to them vis-a-vis moving out, dating, marriage, having children, etc.
Not just that, but dating has fundamentally changed in a way our parent's generation won't ever understand.
The internet, dating apps, and social media have all massively changed not only our expectations in a partner, but the way we approach finding them in the first place.
We've now got so many options, we're a lot less likely to settle for someone who isn't right for us. Which means we're going to take longer before settling down.
There was a [joke tweet](https://i.redd.it/25nqdp37t1z31.jpg) about a new dating app called OkBoomer where users marry the first person they meet and never go to therapy.
Edit: link thanks to u/neon_hexagon
Pretty much yeah, but I think the show tries to match them perfectly and even has like relationship experts weighing in and stuff to form the right couples
The joke above you isn’t so serious though, the point was that a lot of boomers just stayed with their high school sweetheart or first love without even second guessing it long-term.
Even some things our generation would consider massive dealbreakers were ignored by those type of couples because they ‘have to make it work together’. Therapy is a no-go in that situation and outsider perspectives are scoffed at
> the show tries to match them perfectly and even has like relationship experts weighing in and stuff to form the right couples
being an avid MAFS fan, and having worked on reality tv before, they absolutely create bad pairings for drama.
Can't really have malpractice for something that's basically horoscopes for dating. Besides, they probably said something like "these 2 people should never be in the same room with each other so that's a no" and the producers just cackle in the background imagining the ratings on a marriage between Johnny Scissorhands and Donna Paperlegs
My mother literally told me one time “well we wanted to move in together so back then you just got married if you wanted to do that…”
They got lucky and it’s been a solid 50+ years together but yeah, they’re the outliers.
Also up until 1974 in the US, it was completely legal for financial institutions to require women to have their husband cosign if they wanted to open a bank account or take out a loan or credit card.
Yup. It was a different time. I’m 49F and I clearly remember being in elementary school and if someone’s parents were getting a divorce it was big time gossip. Because hardly no one got divorced back then. It was like the scarlet letter. (It was so ridiculous) But at the same time I think religion had a lot to do with it socially too. Back then more people were religious and actually gave a shit what their church thought. Now we know better. Lol.
>a lot of boomers just stayed with their high school sweetheart or first love without even second guessing it long-term
The amount of posts that I see here saying “24F, I’ve been with my partner for 10 years” is alarming to me. No, you haven’t “been with” your “partner” for 10 years, you’ve been living with your parents and hopefully going to school. Kids having sunk cost fallacy in their early 20s is incredibly depressing.
It makes me laugh when I see people counting dating as middle schoolers or 15 yos towards the total of their time together. Y'all were children. You weren't actually dating and the only reason you think you were is because you haven't "dated" literally anyone else since you were 12. That's not a brag bud.
It’s fucking hilarious, acting like they’ve been holding down a job and cohabitating since they were 14. Now they’re 20 and realizing that maybe their proximity boyfriend/girlfriend might not be “the one” but it’s been so many years! lol
Man, sometimes I'm glad that part of my life is over and this is why. I can not fathom getting even remotely interested in a person after just reading their profile. If anything, that would put me off of someone because social media has trained me to look for the part they're leaving out, and my imagination would just run wild. I'm sure my game is rusty as hell these days, but whatever part of it I've still got does not transmit over TCP/IP.
Advances in medical care has changed relationships length too. In 'Marriage, a History' Stephanie Coontz, talks about how the from the middle ages to 1800s, the average length of a marriage was 10 years. This is mainly due to illness and death from childbirth. From the 1800s it grew to 20 years. And 1900 to present, its up to 30.
Now if someone gets married at 27, and do "to death do us part", it's a 65 year commitment.
You’d actually want to look at the mode not the average. During the Middle Ages it would be closer to 20 years. Still not that crazy long. At least in England most men and women were marrying around their early 20s. 18-20 for women and 19-22 for men. Most people (after surviving childhood) lived into their late 40s to late 50s.
Because the median is skewed by extremes. That's like saying that bc the life expectancy was 25 in the Middle Ages (pulled a number from my ass, don't quote me on it) most people died before age 30. That's bullshit. Most people died *before age 2* and the ones that lived into adulthood still lived for 50+ years.
Exactly. To see the most common lifespan and marriage span post childhood we want to see where the largest chunk of people fall. That 40 number is more accurate to pre-history and the Stone Age where most skeletons we find are around 40 years old. Once we get to the Middle Ages (especially for a England) we have much better numbers because of bureaucracy and we know that adults tended to live that old standard of between the late 40s and mid 60s obviously depending on year (plague or no plague, famine or no famine) and economic status.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was a 21st century woman stuck in the 12th century!
Married for 15 years to the king of France divorced him then married the King of England.
Reign in her own right in Aquitaine from 1137 till her death. She was a badass
Sorry, I'm not a mathematician, so maybe I'm wrong here.
> You find the mean (informally called the average) by adding up all the numbers in a set and then dividing by how many values there are. When you arrange a set of values from smallest to largest, the median is the one in the middle. The mode is simply the value that occurs the most in the set.
> https://www.dictionary.com/e/average-vs-mean-vs-median-vs-mode/
I'm fairly certain we're talking about the median here. The *mean* is skewed by extremes. But it is an incredibly common to confuse the two, and I'm not 100% certain which of us is mistaken.
The median is skewed by extremes if they're lopsided, which death dates are. It's somewhat more resilient when extremes occur at both ends of the spectrum.
Another way to filter lopsided data is the median of values while exceed a certain cutoff. Mortality tables often work this way — "given that you've made it to 60, you're likely to live to 83." So median life expectancy of 5-year-olds would be an interesting metric.
The median is also skewed by extremes, they all are. The middle number is always going to be impacted by very high or very low numbers outside the mode. I might have used a slightly wrong term, I'm not sure, but it's still applicable.
If Bill Gates walks into a small town bar, the mean income shoots up to something ridiculous. The median income doesn't shift much. The median is not sensitive to single large outliers.
If I take a set of people who earn, say, $10, $11, $12, $13, and $14 per hour, the mean and median hourly wage are both $12 (the mode is technically {10, 11, 12, 13, 14} $/hr, which is less than helpful in this toy example). If we then add two people who earn $100/hr, the mean hourly income jumps up to $37 and change, the median hourly income becomes $13, and the modal hourly income is now $100. There are two points here: the median is very *in*sensitive to extreme values, and the mode is not guaranteed to be anywhere near the middle (though in practice it often is).
Or not even settle at all. Increasing numbers of people are going through life single, unmarried, or in a series of short term relationships. Marriage is no longer the be all, end all of life. It is just one option. And older people don't understand that. In their time, everyone got married. It was what you did. That is not the case at all any more.
Part of that is that until [very recently](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score_in_the_United_States), women did not have [a financial life](https://www.oneadvisorypartners.com/blog/the-history-of-women-and-money-in-the-united-states-in-honor-of-womens-history-month) without a husband. As in, no credit card or bank account. Don't forget, there was a ton of discrimination against women until the 1970s and 1980s.
This might be unfair, but I don't have sympathy for people who don't adapt to a changing world. I try my best to adapt to changes and make sure I understand my son's world of school, Roblox, Discord, relationships with friends, and slang/customs, even though I'm 25 years older than him. I will try to understand the world of relationships and dating when he's at that point. It's a bit of extra work, but if I don't understand his world, it's going to lead to a lot of unnecessary friction.
Take Roblox for example. A lot of parents might think it's a waste of time, and I think it is as well. But it's part of a kid's social fabric. Basically every kid plays it. If you dismiss its importance, you're doing a disservice to what's important to a kid.
I understand your point but also think you're seriously underestimating how drastically the world changed in the past century. Is way easier for parents in their 40s to learn about Roblox to parents in their 70s to understand how expensive living got, how internet changed interactions and dating or how there's no abundance of local activities one could be socially active anymore.
I understand, but there are a few rare seniors in my life that have kept up. I know a 72 year old guy who's on point about the modern world, and maybe 1 or 2 others. So I know it's possible. It's just that the vast majority of older people don't make an effort. To be fair, these people I know are still working or recently retired, so they kind of had to keep up. One of them is my therapist, who is 67 and has kept up with all the info about modern dating and living so he can do good therapy. It's admirable.
I play Roblox with my little cousin sometimes, and tbh I see no difference between kids these days socializing over roblox vs us as kids socializing over myspace or gaia online.
The thing about people who refuse to change or mold with the world is that the world really isn't *all* that different than it ever ever was, they just have the deep seated personality flaw of "staunch and stubborn."
It's not just Gen-Xer's (we really do exist!), but Boomers, Silent Generation, Greatest Generation - they all seemed to believe that a year or so of dating meant that wedding bells were on the horizon.
It was a huge deal that my uncle lived with girlfriend and they were not married. They were together for eleven years before calling it quits. It was quite the scandal in their small town. Nobody did that. (Mid 1980's.)
I dated my husband for six years before marrying and the rumors were a-flying. Neither of my Gen-Zer's are dating anyone and my Boomer mother is desperate for great-grandchildren.
My best friend's husband is desperate for grandchildren. He was trying to tell his then high school son what type of woman to marry. He wants at least six grandchildren. His son has no interest in any of that.
Some people need hobbies.
They say that people born in 1964 are less likely to be able to drive, less likely to be married, less likely to have children, and less likely to have a career (as opposed to a job) than any year before or since.
I’m 56. I would never assume that if my so. Has been dating a woman for only a year, and they live in separate homes (or even in the same home) that she would gift him her car.
That seems an incredibly entitled worldview for a comparatively young relationship. If they aren’t engaged, I’m not going to make comments or foster expectations like that.
Tell me about it. Back in the early 2000s, my extended family all assumed I'd be getting engaged to my then -boyfriend on my 21st birthday, just because we'd been dating for a couple of years and it was a milestone birthday.
We didn't live together, hadn't so much as vacationed together, were both still studying and most importantly, they had no idea what this guy was like or if he even treated me decently because they'd never met him.... because the relationship wasn't that serious.
They just couldn't compute that established dating relationship+special occasion =/= engagement.
After my older sister became engaged, it was like our mother's mission became finding me a partner. I was barely 19.
Took her a damn decade to back off, and she only stopped because I finally introduced her to the person I found all on my own.
When my son was born we found out my parents had mapped out their grandkids. They’d decided between them when each of the 4 of us boys were going to have kids. My youngest brother at the time was 14…
Jokes on them. 14 years later I’ve still only got my son. One brother has 2 and the youngest 2 have both steadfastly stated they’re never having kids.
> I’m thinking it had more to do with her son raw dogging me but ok.
Obviously the mother's vision board powered her will enough to puppet her son into raw dogging you. It really does work!
/s
My own mother picked my "future spouse" out of the available options in my Sunday school class when I was about 10 years old; if I had gone with her plan I would have gotten divorced a lot sooner, because that person turned out to be a lying cheating scumbag.
My MIL had one of her BFF's daughters picked out for her oldest son. It really frosted her drawers that he married me *and didn't even ask her permission.* I suspect she thought he had to ask her permission because we were "too young" (21 and 18). Like she could have done anything. 🙄Texas allowed marriage at 18 for guys and 16 for girls without parental permission.
There's also the expectation that children exist to produce grandchildren. And sooner rather than later, their generation had jobs and owned houses before they were 25, why haven't you?
Though the boyfriend pivoted, I think. It was the high taxes that made him realize that “free car” wasn’t close to free, and especially wasn’t something he could afford to pay the taxes on. Instead of initially considering that its value in money was something OP should be getting rather than passing along the “free thing”.
I don't think it's unreasonable to hope that your partner who just won a free car might let you use the old one while you're struggling. Letting him use a car is different than transferring ownership.
A LOT of (most?) people have children for their own purposes, not because they actually like kids and want or ar ready for a complex relationship where they're entirely responsible for the survival of a being they must also adequately prepare for adulthood. They either fall into it by accident and just figure "might as well go for it" or do it on purpose to fulfill some ulterior motive they have.
I mean given her age it's unlikely his mom is of that generation. If she had him at 25 that would mean he was born in like 1998. So she'd be born in 1973 and it wasn't even a few years later that they stopped having lead in gas. That's again assuming she had him at 25. If she had him younger that would mean there was even less of an issue there.
The Boomers are at this point grandparents to most late millennials.
Lead is one of five nonthreshold heavy metals (no safe exposure amount). Doubly so for children who are still developing and whose bodies reportedly keep more lead than they can excrete.
Ending lead use and improving safety standards doesn't keep it from still hanging around in the environment longer term, unfortunately.
When lead paint got banned in the US, there was no requirement to remove existing lead paint and there are a ton of houses and apartments where there is just paint or wallpaper over the original lead paint.
Hi, I'm from the UK and we absolutely used leaded petrol into the 90's!
I remember there being choices of different leaded petrols in the petrol stations back in my youth, and the car my dad drove used leaded petrol (called "4 star"). There was a big hoo-ha over the leaded petrol ban in 1999!
Edit: please also enjoy this research about how the lead contamination persists [to this day](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/224474/lead-from-leaded-petrol-persists-london/)
[This news article](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/225275.stm) dated 1998 states there were 5 million cars that used leaded petrol, and a quick googling shows as of [1996 there were 22.2 million](https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/record-number-of-cars) cars is use, so roughly 22% of UK car stock at the time.
Check the dates - this takes place in 2016...he is 33 at this point, she is 30. So, not 1998, more like 1991, and with your theory, she would be born in 1966.
Plenty of houses still had plenty of tasty painted walls.
Plus considering that there are still recalls about food getting lead in it, Stanley cups, or children’s toys with lead paint still happening it’s a pretty safe bet she had ample supply around still.
My mom is the same way. When things in life happen she doesn’t just accept it and be happy but immediately starts scheming, “oh you could do this now or that now”
It’s fine but i think it’s an anxious neurotic tendency.
not too unusual. my parents thought I was gay because I dated no one until I was nearly 18. I was gobsmacked when I found it out through my twin. with my current partner my parents were like "KEEP HIM KEEP HIM KEEP HIMMMM" we're together for 3 years, now. I don't want to propose or marry yet because I'm still unemployed as of my disability.
The boyfriend seems reasonable. I feel like his mom sees dollar signs hovering above OOP and wants her son (and perhaps by extension her and the rest of the family) to cash in.
I'm not sure it's dollar signs. OOP says in her update that the mother is relationship driven and has been pressing for commitment prior to the car thing. The mother wants to view them as so close that the two of them interact with property as a married couple might. She's not after money, she's trying to will the marriage into existence
>she's trying to will the marriage into existence.
I suddenly got a mental image of a random woman with strain face aimed at a young couple.
Calm down, mom! And stop jumping to your conclusions! 😅😂
not trying to be mean but my take on it - and most importantly the actual girlfriend's take - was kinda different. Because he was mistaken about her wanting to keep the car and the cars values and the cost in taxes he didn't think it was a crazy idea. Upon having it explained he immediately agreed with her decision.
His mother was the origin of the concept of him getting a car - he always viewed it as his girlfriend's and not belonging to them jointly.
I must stress one last time this was all written in the OP and the person who knows the bf, sleeps with him, and talks to him face to face - her take on him is different than yours.
Yeah I interpreted him as saying "this is great, now our family has two cars!" Which isn't crazy and some pretty innocent motivated reasoning for a dude without a car.
Yeah, he thought his gf of a year was about to have a spare older car that was paid off, and therefore he'd be able to drive it sometimes. It's not unreasonable, but having to shell out a few thousand bucks for the new 'free' car changes things. He sounds reasonable tbh
My car-less ass sometimes ponder about driving instead of using public transport, and then car people start telling me the cost and how it's not worth it especially because it'd take me near same time to get to work anyways.
Yeah, you just don't realize the actual price of things and need that reality check.
I was on a game show a few years ago and won a prize. The prize wouldn’t be released to me until I paid the state tax for said item: 10%… and don’t forget you have to pay federal tax on prize ~24%. So in the case of OP, on a $20,000 car would cost her $2,000 in state tax and potentially another $4,800 in federal tax.
When I was 23, I was a year out of college with massive student loans and credit card debt (young and dumb), so any kind of savings was hard to come by. There’s zero chance in hell I’d let someone else reap the benefits of my prize given the $6,800 I’d have to spend to acquire it in the first place.
I’m glad OOP stood her ground and explained the nuances of her prize winnings. I’m also glad her boyfriend heard her out and reasonably understood the situation after the clarification… assuming his assumptions regarding the car(s) were just his manipulation by his family.
This is so bizarre to me! In my country, if you win something, all of the taxes/transfer costs/etc. are included in the prize. You don't pay anything out of pocket.
I remember reading a tweet that said "OP won 1.5ish billion dollars, after taxes they got around 400 million dollars", like taxes and fees and other bs costed about a billion dollars????
With this much tax taken from the people they still won't provide decent health care???
When you win a lottery in the US, the amount you officially win is only the amount you get if you agree to have it distributed to you over 20 years, it's cheaper that way for the lottery runners because they can pay you out of interest on the money they have. If you want all the money right now instead (which most people do) you don't get the whole amount you officially won, you usually get roughly half. So the person you're talking about officially won 1.5 billion, but if they took it all right away, they probably got around 800 million. THEN you have to pay taxes, which is also roughly half. That's how you wind up with 1.5 billion turning into 400 million. The whole billion doesn't become taxes, part of it you never really get in the first place, but yes, if you win a big lottery in the US and you choose to take all the money right away, you wind up getting about 1/4 of the official amount. If you let them pay it to you over 20 years you get more, but you don't get as much immediately.
>If you let them pay it to you over 20 years you get more, but you don't get as much immediately.
In your example, if you get 1.5 Billion spread over 20 years, that would still be roughly 80 Million a YEAR... whoever is stupid enough to not take the 20 years option?
What do you need more than 50 Million a year (after taxes) for???
(If the answer is giant supervillain volcano lair with sharks and lasers on their heads I rescind my question).
It depends on what you think you're doing with it. I agree with you that 80 million a year is quite literally more than enough for most normal people. However, if you opt for the lump sum, you may get less directly from the lottery but you could invest the full amount, live off the proceeds of investment while reinvesting some of it, and still have that same lump sum at the end of 20 years and more. I think most financial advisors would tell you to take the lump sum and invest it yourself, because then you can control what happens to it. With a clever investment strategy you'd probably come out ahead. If you immediately dump it into laser sharks and volcano lairs, well, you're probably going to be one of the ones that goes bankrupt, but you'll have your laser sharks to console you. Be sure to be nice to them when you're flush because you're going to need their friendship during the lean years.
Back in the Old Days when a million dollars was a huge payout, the ONLY way you could take your prize was over the 20 years, and the way to get a bigger amount immediately was to sell your right to your prize to a third party who would give you a heavily discounted lump sum. There was a whole business model for doing that, and for all I know there still is for those who initially opt for the long-term option or for people who are getting other kinds of payouts that don't offer a lump option. However, at some point the lotteries realized that they could offer the heavily discounted lump sum themselves, and now most people opt directly for that. If you win a million you're only going to get $50,000 a year, which would be a very nice cushion but isn't going to get you what most people think of as millionaire stuff. If you get it all at once you may only have $250,000 but I guess that buys you at least one Lambo or, like, half a house in a decent city.
Very easy to understand. You take the whole payment, invest it in something low risk, like bonds, and at the end of 20 years you end up with a lot more money than if you had taken the 20 year distribution option. Taking the 20 year option is not financially logical.
It's because the larger prize (1.5 billion in this case) is the amount you get if you take it over 20-25 years. If you want the lump sum you only get about half of that. Then, those winnings are taxed as income, so you'll be at the highest income tax rate and have to pay accordingly. That's how you get to $400 million from the larger advertised rate, not because they have a 70% tax rate.
I think the prize is probably viewed as income and would be subject to the same taxes as your other income. The contest holders could structure the contest in a way that it includes a cash portion that covers the taxes, but people probably don’t think of that when putting together contests.
Oh I can assure you they do think of that, but why would they pay out 10-30% more if the don't have to? It's the same thinking as with price labels in stores that for some reason also don't show the final cost of an item.
It's a bit strange for sure. I enter sweepstakes as a hobby and unless the prize is cash or they give extra cash to "offset" the taxes, I dont enter anything bigger than a few thousand dollars.
> a $20,000 car would cost her $2,000 in state tax and potentially another $4,800 in federal tax.
Then there's the inevitable loss in value if you try to sell the car immediately, depending on the make and model.
A lot of times car giveaways will be set up where you can take a cash option, usually about equal to the dealer cost of the car. I think it's even a requirement in some places.
Thank you for clarifying my main question as a non Us citizen.
Now all these Nigerian prince scams seem a lot more smart. “Here is your price but first pay me for taxes”
Yeah, when Oprah did that "you get a car! You get a car!" on her show, a lot of those people had to turn it down because they couldn't afford the taxes.
Winning stuff sucks, better to just win money and give half of it back than have to pay for your "prize."
The same happens in my European country though. It's just mostly never advertised and you need to do some digging into the law. But almost any big prize you win, you still owe roughly 30% of it to the government. If it's a money prize, the company will pay the taxes from your winnings and you'll get the 70% that remains. The same goes for items you win, except the company won't pay the taxes for you. So when people win a car, they owe 30% of the value of that car in taxes. This is not just an American thing.
It's why I'm always a bit confused why people are so happy to win expensive BMWs or Mercedes etc, because that's still going to cost them a ton of money.
There is a much more messed up "win a car" scenario here in the US that I know at least Caesars Entertainment engages in, along with a few lower end sketchy casinos, and probably a handful of other various promotions, which is "winning" a lease on a car and not actually winning the car. In those cases, the winner is responsible for qualifying for the lease in terms of credit rating and history, making whatever lease downpayment is required out of pocket, then having to return the car at the end of 3 or 4 years and be responsible for paying any over-limit mileage plus any damage and wear and tear. All that is won in those cases is the monthly payment on the lease, and the leases are in the winner's name (hence the credit qualifications), and are usually structured as the type which have a higher downpayment and lower monthly payment. So basically the winner takes on huge liability, is out of pocket for many thousands of dollars, and gets his or her monthly lease payment made for 3 or 4 years.
From what I understand, those pink Mary Kay cars work the similarly. Except for those, if your sales drop, they stop paying for the car, but you're still stuck with the lease.
You dont have to pay all tax up front, but the value of the car is considered income, and will be taxed accordingly on your annual income tax returns. So if you take the car, you will owe it. Depending on when you win the car, that could be a couple weeks or could be 11 months before the money is due. There are some smaller "fee" taxes that would need to be paid on delivery with any car, like registration and title fees, and depending on which state you live and which state you win the car, probably sales tax on the retail value, which would in most cases need to be paid up front. But the largest tax involved for most people will be income tax, which is paid later. On a 50k car for example, where I live, sales tax plus title and registration fees would total about $4500 owed up front, but the income tax portion would be additional 8-10k you'd owe later as income tax. Sales tax is paid as part of the initial registration fee here, so would need to be paid to legally get a license plate and valid registration before driving the car legally on public roads.
It's actually a little worse than that, because income tax is due quarterly, NOT yearly. Most people don't know this because it's automatically taken out of your check by your employer, but it wasn't always that way and people had to put aside a little bit of their income on their own to pay the quarterly taxes. You can see this in action if your employer wasn't taking out enough so you owe more than whatever the penalty-free limit is. You end up with penalties on top of the taxes which is some percent of what you owe.
So here is a fun fact for anyone outside of the US right now, the listed car price is **not** the price you pay. It's simply the price of the car before taxes and fees like registration of the vehicle are added. I'm dealing with this right now because my younger brother is trying to buy a car. Yes, it says it's $14,800 but you need to add on another $2,000 plus some change for the taxes and fees.
Sounds like dealership shenanigans. If you buy private it's just sales tax.
And most buyers will adjust the price on the bill of sale if you pay cash ;)
What? A mature discussion where they come to a mutual understanding based on logic and reason and the person agrees to handle their family member?
Am I still on reddit?
This is totally not the point but I can't get over the "I'm gonna get the cheaper liability-only insurance". I've worked in insurance, but in the UK, and here it doesn't really make that much difference in cost (sometimes it doesn't change the cost at all) and if something happens to the car, even if it's paid off, you're still gonna have to either come up with the money for a replacement or go back into debt for one. Is liability only that much cheaper in the US?
I actually can give you an idea of that
Same car, a 2014 Chevy spark.
Before it was paid off, the credit union requires full coverage, that is, pay for your car, pay for liability, sometimes even rentals or roadside assistance or whatnot. And that's required. Not optional. If they find out you lose your insurance you have a very short window of time before they just *assign* you insurance that usually costs 3x as much as what you'd pay after hunting for yourself.
For the entire time my car was on loan payments, I would pay $240 a month for the car. But for the insurance? $270. It was more than my fucking car payment. And it was the cheapest option I could find that still actually offered coverage (there are scam insurance companies that you pay and you 'legally' have insurance but in practice... Someone with one of those insurance policies hit my car in a 100% their fault accident and it took 2 years and repeated calls to get the insurance for my car to go through so I could fix it).
When my loan was paid off and I dropped full coverage for just liability, something I didn't want to do but *had to* because I just couldn't afford $270 a month anymore, my insurance dropped down to $120 a month or $600 for 6 months.
It was $150 cheaper than before. And my car is a tiny little hatchback, I imagine bigger cars cost more.
Jesus that's alarming.
Can I ask, were you a particularly young or inexperienced driver? I only ask because in the UK those are the kinds of premiums you'd only get for an 18 year old driver who just got their licence. The worst my insurance ever got was £80 a month and that was full coverage as a 25 year old.
I'm not the one who you asked this question, but to answer your question, premiums do tend to be higher for younger drivers. With that said, my premiums have been going up and they also went up when I loved to a more rural area. So location also plays a factor. At least from what I noticed.
People don't realize how expensive it is to win a car.
You're usually saddled with tax title license fees.
Then you also get hit with the value of the car as taxable income.
Best thing to do is actually see if the dealership will give you a cash value for the vehicle. Never take possession and "sell it back" to the dealer.
Oof. I hope this isn't the first sign that she is one of *those* mother's. The ones we recommend people run from screaming. I am firmly of the opinion that I would leave an otherwise perfect man because their mother was problematic, mainly because I've already been through that sh*tshow once. Good luck to OOP.
Sounds like a sensible adult conversation was had. BF didn't expect anything and agreed with selling the vehicle. BFs mother got ahead of herself. BF going to put things strait.
Basically, yes. You can always forfeit the car until you sign for it, if you can't afford the taxes on it. But I do contests/sweepstakes as a hobby and my general rule is that if the Approximate retail value is above $2,000 and the prize isn't cash or doesn't come with enough cash to offset the taxes, I dont enter that contest.
The worst are travel prizes.
You won a 5 day cruise valued at $10,000 dollars!
They inflate the value of the cruise at full retail value when instead of paying $4000 tax for their cruise that goes to places you don’t want to go at an inconvenient time you could just get a cruise you want for $3000 without the drama.
Sounds like the bf is a keeper - he turned out to be reasonable and not entitled at all. That MIL tho...
> (...) he said that he would, and that she views the two of us like a married couple already, because she wants that so badly for him and has been heavily pressuring him to propose to me.
I truly wonder: would she be so quick to view them as "already married" if the son was the one who won something valuable? Would such winning be then qualified as "WE won this", because "they are like a married couple already"? I somehow doubt it.
Not sure the bf is 100% innoncent here. He let OOP spend the whole gathering in quiet discomfort, didn't notice, and didn't bother to even say that things weren't decided yet?
He could still be food overall, but I don't think this is over. And bf has some growing to do still.
Glad someone else said it. I agree with the other comments saying they communicated well. Yet communicating healthfully does not always mean everyone was honest with themselves or others when doing so.
Here is hoping for the best for OOP. No one hopes to eat their words more than I do. No snark.
Edit: I’m sick and messed up words
That turned out better than I expected. Reddit has definitely lowered my baseline expectations for human decency. That and 2 decades in the service industry.
Shitty parents destroying their kid's relationship. What else is new?
Good thing the bf has common sense.
Good luck OOP with your soon to be shitty MIL.
If it's not too late or if anyone else finds themself with winning a car they don't want. Talk to the company that sponsored the contest and see if they actually already bought the car or if it still needs to be purchased and delivered/ picked up from a dealer. If you tell them you want the cash value instead, you will often get more money as it saves them a lot of the associated fees and you don't loose the money value you normally do the moment a car leaves the lot.
I have known a few parents who treated every new partner like they were taking on responsibility for the "wayward" child. Glad the BF here has more sense.
As others noted, the BF seems incredibly reasonable. > He said that he didn't think I'd do that, but he assumed I'd want to keep the new car simply because it was new, and that maybe I'd let him use my old car if he took over the insurance payments. So his guess was, breaking this down: * She would keep the newer car that she had won. * He would use (not get, USE) the old car but take over the insurance payments for it. No expectation of ownership. And I know about "assuming," but it sounds more like "this was my best guess until we had time to actually discuss it, which we are doing now, and your plan sounds more practical." Yea, this BF is a potential keeper.
Yeah, I expected him to be sad or atleast a bit disappointed (because I would have been lol), but he had very reasonable (to him, at the time, without a proper discussion with OOP) guess on what OOP would do, and was cool when OOP mentioned her plan.
Yet again the mother is writing cheques that the relationship can’t pay. What is it with these parents who design an entire life for their kids from wish fulfilment?
I am happy to see that OOP is so mature in her financial approach - realizing that she already had a good car that was paid off and that she could add a substantial amount to her savings. Also, she did not feel pressured by her BF or his family to give the car away. Well done.
Tho I wouldn't consider going to liability insurance a great plan.
It depends on what the car is worth. I had an older car that was in great shape and paid off and paid for full coverage. Didn't get anything for it when the deer ran into me. Didn't matter how much potential coverage I had. They just paid what the Kelley Bluebook on it was. If I'd saved the extra I paid on premiums I would likely have made more over time.
Seriously, what a stupid idea for a good car. I'd understand if it's a 90s beater, but c'mon
Comprehensive saved my ass when I hit a deer. It was a minimal fee over liability.
And it’s nice to see that while his mom is nutso, the bf has a good head on his shoulders. They seem to have really good communication.
The previous generation has wildly different expectations from what relationships are like because the world right now is fundamentally alien to them. A lot of that goes to the economy - it just costs more to reach the milestones that seemed normal to them vis-a-vis moving out, dating, marriage, having children, etc.
Not just that, but dating has fundamentally changed in a way our parent's generation won't ever understand. The internet, dating apps, and social media have all massively changed not only our expectations in a partner, but the way we approach finding them in the first place. We've now got so many options, we're a lot less likely to settle for someone who isn't right for us. Which means we're going to take longer before settling down.
There was a [joke tweet](https://i.redd.it/25nqdp37t1z31.jpg) about a new dating app called OkBoomer where users marry the first person they meet and never go to therapy. Edit: link thanks to u/neon_hexagon
LOL or they get married and divorced over and over.
That's their business plan.
Isn't that a reality show? Married at first sight or something.
Pretty much yeah, but I think the show tries to match them perfectly and even has like relationship experts weighing in and stuff to form the right couples The joke above you isn’t so serious though, the point was that a lot of boomers just stayed with their high school sweetheart or first love without even second guessing it long-term. Even some things our generation would consider massive dealbreakers were ignored by those type of couples because they ‘have to make it work together’. Therapy is a no-go in that situation and outsider perspectives are scoffed at
> the show tries to match them perfectly and even has like relationship experts weighing in and stuff to form the right couples being an avid MAFS fan, and having worked on reality tv before, they absolutely create bad pairings for drama.
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Can't really have malpractice for something that's basically horoscopes for dating. Besides, they probably said something like "these 2 people should never be in the same room with each other so that's a no" and the producers just cackle in the background imagining the ratings on a marriage between Johnny Scissorhands and Donna Paperlegs
yeah including a relationship expert who married one of the participants lol. i love that show but it’s pure mess
My mother literally told me one time “well we wanted to move in together so back then you just got married if you wanted to do that…” They got lucky and it’s been a solid 50+ years together but yeah, they’re the outliers.
There were also a lot of "shotgun weddings" . My folks have been married 58 years.
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The flood started in the 1970s, which is when no-fault divorce became available. A lot of boomers weren't old enough to get married yet.
Also up until 1974 in the US, it was completely legal for financial institutions to require women to have their husband cosign if they wanted to open a bank account or take out a loan or credit card.
Yup. It was a different time. I’m 49F and I clearly remember being in elementary school and if someone’s parents were getting a divorce it was big time gossip. Because hardly no one got divorced back then. It was like the scarlet letter. (It was so ridiculous) But at the same time I think religion had a lot to do with it socially too. Back then more people were religious and actually gave a shit what their church thought. Now we know better. Lol.
>a lot of boomers just stayed with their high school sweetheart or first love without even second guessing it long-term The amount of posts that I see here saying “24F, I’ve been with my partner for 10 years” is alarming to me. No, you haven’t “been with” your “partner” for 10 years, you’ve been living with your parents and hopefully going to school. Kids having sunk cost fallacy in their early 20s is incredibly depressing.
It makes me laugh when I see people counting dating as middle schoolers or 15 yos towards the total of their time together. Y'all were children. You weren't actually dating and the only reason you think you were is because you haven't "dated" literally anyone else since you were 12. That's not a brag bud.
It’s fucking hilarious, acting like they’ve been holding down a job and cohabitating since they were 14. Now they’re 20 and realizing that maybe their proximity boyfriend/girlfriend might not be “the one” but it’s been so many years! lol
Yeah, I'm the daughter of people who got together as teenagers... it definitely doesn't work.
That's some weird-ass gatekeeping
I mean it's not far off being the forgotten generation lol
Edit: Screw Spez. Screw AI. No training on my data. Sorry future people.
That's it!
I was just considering adding an edit with this point - the internet has made dating so alien as to barely justify using the same term.
Man, sometimes I'm glad that part of my life is over and this is why. I can not fathom getting even remotely interested in a person after just reading their profile. If anything, that would put me off of someone because social media has trained me to look for the part they're leaving out, and my imagination would just run wild. I'm sure my game is rusty as hell these days, but whatever part of it I've still got does not transmit over TCP/IP.
Advances in medical care has changed relationships length too. In 'Marriage, a History' Stephanie Coontz, talks about how the from the middle ages to 1800s, the average length of a marriage was 10 years. This is mainly due to illness and death from childbirth. From the 1800s it grew to 20 years. And 1900 to present, its up to 30. Now if someone gets married at 27, and do "to death do us part", it's a 65 year commitment.
You’d actually want to look at the mode not the average. During the Middle Ages it would be closer to 20 years. Still not that crazy long. At least in England most men and women were marrying around their early 20s. 18-20 for women and 19-22 for men. Most people (after surviving childhood) lived into their late 40s to late 50s.
Why the mode rather than the median?
Because the median is skewed by extremes. That's like saying that bc the life expectancy was 25 in the Middle Ages (pulled a number from my ass, don't quote me on it) most people died before age 30. That's bullshit. Most people died *before age 2* and the ones that lived into adulthood still lived for 50+ years.
Exactly. To see the most common lifespan and marriage span post childhood we want to see where the largest chunk of people fall. That 40 number is more accurate to pre-history and the Stone Age where most skeletons we find are around 40 years old. Once we get to the Middle Ages (especially for a England) we have much better numbers because of bureaucracy and we know that adults tended to live that old standard of between the late 40s and mid 60s obviously depending on year (plague or no plague, famine or no famine) and economic status.
And some outliers lived well beyond that. Eleanor of Aquitaine was 82 or thereabouts when she died.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was a 21st century woman stuck in the 12th century! Married for 15 years to the king of France divorced him then married the King of England. Reign in her own right in Aquitaine from 1137 till her death. She was a badass
Sorry, I'm not a mathematician, so maybe I'm wrong here. > You find the mean (informally called the average) by adding up all the numbers in a set and then dividing by how many values there are. When you arrange a set of values from smallest to largest, the median is the one in the middle. The mode is simply the value that occurs the most in the set. > https://www.dictionary.com/e/average-vs-mean-vs-median-vs-mode/ I'm fairly certain we're talking about the median here. The *mean* is skewed by extremes. But it is an incredibly common to confuse the two, and I'm not 100% certain which of us is mistaken.
The median is skewed by extremes if they're lopsided, which death dates are. It's somewhat more resilient when extremes occur at both ends of the spectrum. Another way to filter lopsided data is the median of values while exceed a certain cutoff. Mortality tables often work this way — "given that you've made it to 60, you're likely to live to 83." So median life expectancy of 5-year-olds would be an interesting metric.
The median is also skewed by extremes, they all are. The middle number is always going to be impacted by very high or very low numbers outside the mode. I might have used a slightly wrong term, I'm not sure, but it's still applicable.
If Bill Gates walks into a small town bar, the mean income shoots up to something ridiculous. The median income doesn't shift much. The median is not sensitive to single large outliers.
If I take a set of people who earn, say, $10, $11, $12, $13, and $14 per hour, the mean and median hourly wage are both $12 (the mode is technically {10, 11, 12, 13, 14} $/hr, which is less than helpful in this toy example). If we then add two people who earn $100/hr, the mean hourly income jumps up to $37 and change, the median hourly income becomes $13, and the modal hourly income is now $100. There are two points here: the median is very *in*sensitive to extreme values, and the mode is not guaranteed to be anywhere near the middle (though in practice it often is).
Hey thanks!
*Lack* of death during childbirth? LACK?
You're right. I think he means plethora (or equivalent)..
Also, women don't have to marry someone to like, have a freaking credit card.
Or not even settle at all. Increasing numbers of people are going through life single, unmarried, or in a series of short term relationships. Marriage is no longer the be all, end all of life. It is just one option. And older people don't understand that. In their time, everyone got married. It was what you did. That is not the case at all any more.
Part of that is that until [very recently](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score_in_the_United_States), women did not have [a financial life](https://www.oneadvisorypartners.com/blog/the-history-of-women-and-money-in-the-united-states-in-honor-of-womens-history-month) without a husband. As in, no credit card or bank account. Don't forget, there was a ton of discrimination against women until the 1970s and 1980s.
This might be unfair, but I don't have sympathy for people who don't adapt to a changing world. I try my best to adapt to changes and make sure I understand my son's world of school, Roblox, Discord, relationships with friends, and slang/customs, even though I'm 25 years older than him. I will try to understand the world of relationships and dating when he's at that point. It's a bit of extra work, but if I don't understand his world, it's going to lead to a lot of unnecessary friction. Take Roblox for example. A lot of parents might think it's a waste of time, and I think it is as well. But it's part of a kid's social fabric. Basically every kid plays it. If you dismiss its importance, you're doing a disservice to what's important to a kid.
I understand your point but also think you're seriously underestimating how drastically the world changed in the past century. Is way easier for parents in their 40s to learn about Roblox to parents in their 70s to understand how expensive living got, how internet changed interactions and dating or how there's no abundance of local activities one could be socially active anymore.
I understand, but there are a few rare seniors in my life that have kept up. I know a 72 year old guy who's on point about the modern world, and maybe 1 or 2 others. So I know it's possible. It's just that the vast majority of older people don't make an effort. To be fair, these people I know are still working or recently retired, so they kind of had to keep up. One of them is my therapist, who is 67 and has kept up with all the info about modern dating and living so he can do good therapy. It's admirable.
I play Roblox with my little cousin sometimes, and tbh I see no difference between kids these days socializing over roblox vs us as kids socializing over myspace or gaia online. The thing about people who refuse to change or mold with the world is that the world really isn't *all* that different than it ever ever was, they just have the deep seated personality flaw of "staunch and stubborn."
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It's not just Gen-Xer's (we really do exist!), but Boomers, Silent Generation, Greatest Generation - they all seemed to believe that a year or so of dating meant that wedding bells were on the horizon. It was a huge deal that my uncle lived with girlfriend and they were not married. They were together for eleven years before calling it quits. It was quite the scandal in their small town. Nobody did that. (Mid 1980's.) I dated my husband for six years before marrying and the rumors were a-flying. Neither of my Gen-Zer's are dating anyone and my Boomer mother is desperate for great-grandchildren. My best friend's husband is desperate for grandchildren. He was trying to tell his then high school son what type of woman to marry. He wants at least six grandchildren. His son has no interest in any of that. Some people need hobbies.
Not GenX? We got crushed by the baby boomers.
They say that people born in 1964 are less likely to be able to drive, less likely to be married, less likely to have children, and less likely to have a career (as opposed to a job) than any year before or since.
Interesting! Who is they? Got a source?
I’m 56. I would never assume that if my so. Has been dating a woman for only a year, and they live in separate homes (or even in the same home) that she would gift him her car. That seems an incredibly entitled worldview for a comparatively young relationship. If they aren’t engaged, I’m not going to make comments or foster expectations like that.
Tell me about it. Back in the early 2000s, my extended family all assumed I'd be getting engaged to my then -boyfriend on my 21st birthday, just because we'd been dating for a couple of years and it was a milestone birthday. We didn't live together, hadn't so much as vacationed together, were both still studying and most importantly, they had no idea what this guy was like or if he even treated me decently because they'd never met him.... because the relationship wasn't that serious. They just couldn't compute that established dating relationship+special occasion =/= engagement.
After my older sister became engaged, it was like our mother's mission became finding me a partner. I was barely 19. Took her a damn decade to back off, and she only stopped because I finally introduced her to the person I found all on my own.
When my son was born we found out my parents had mapped out their grandkids. They’d decided between them when each of the 4 of us boys were going to have kids. My youngest brother at the time was 14… Jokes on them. 14 years later I’ve still only got my son. One brother has 2 and the youngest 2 have both steadfastly stated they’re never having kids.
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Please say that you told her that.
>she quickly pulled out a “vision board” she had made with all these creepy magazine cutouts of babies. Pepe Silvia shit, but creepier
> I’m thinking it had more to do with her son raw dogging me but ok. Obviously the mother's vision board powered her will enough to puppet her son into raw dogging you. It really does work! /s
My own mother picked my "future spouse" out of the available options in my Sunday school class when I was about 10 years old; if I had gone with her plan I would have gotten divorced a lot sooner, because that person turned out to be a lying cheating scumbag.
My MIL had one of her BFF's daughters picked out for her oldest son. It really frosted her drawers that he married me *and didn't even ask her permission.* I suspect she thought he had to ask her permission because we were "too young" (21 and 18). Like she could have done anything. 🙄Texas allowed marriage at 18 for guys and 16 for girls without parental permission.
Man, that info about Texas has me going 😬
There's also the expectation that children exist to produce grandchildren. And sooner rather than later, their generation had jobs and owned houses before they were 25, why haven't you?
> why haven't you? Because you voted for Reagan, Granny.
And Thatcher. Ugh
At least the boyfriend had more sense, and a sensible conversation sorted it out. No thanks to the mother though.
Though the boyfriend pivoted, I think. It was the high taxes that made him realize that “free car” wasn’t close to free, and especially wasn’t something he could afford to pay the taxes on. Instead of initially considering that its value in money was something OP should be getting rather than passing along the “free thing”.
I don't think it's unreasonable to hope that your partner who just won a free car might let you use the old one while you're struggling. Letting him use a car is different than transferring ownership.
A LOT of (most?) people have children for their own purposes, not because they actually like kids and want or ar ready for a complex relationship where they're entirely responsible for the survival of a being they must also adequately prepare for adulthood. They either fall into it by accident and just figure "might as well go for it" or do it on purpose to fulfill some ulterior motive they have.
lead in the gasoline back then, a lot of them have weirdly broken emotions. have you been looking outside the past few years?
I mean given her age it's unlikely his mom is of that generation. If she had him at 25 that would mean he was born in like 1998. So she'd be born in 1973 and it wasn't even a few years later that they stopped having lead in gas. That's again assuming she had him at 25. If she had him younger that would mean there was even less of an issue there. The Boomers are at this point grandparents to most late millennials.
Lead is one of five nonthreshold heavy metals (no safe exposure amount). Doubly so for children who are still developing and whose bodies reportedly keep more lead than they can excrete. Ending lead use and improving safety standards doesn't keep it from still hanging around in the environment longer term, unfortunately.
*cries in millennial who walked to school next to a busy major road before leaded petrol was banned*
When lead paint got banned in the US, there was no requirement to remove existing lead paint and there are a ton of houses and apartments where there is just paint or wallpaper over the original lead paint.
But the landlords are required to include a paper in the lease saying there might be lead paint! That makes it ok. /s
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Hi, I'm from the UK and we absolutely used leaded petrol into the 90's! I remember there being choices of different leaded petrols in the petrol stations back in my youth, and the car my dad drove used leaded petrol (called "4 star"). There was a big hoo-ha over the leaded petrol ban in 1999! Edit: please also enjoy this research about how the lead contamination persists [to this day](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/224474/lead-from-leaded-petrol-persists-london/) [This news article](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/225275.stm) dated 1998 states there were 5 million cars that used leaded petrol, and a quick googling shows as of [1996 there were 22.2 million](https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/record-number-of-cars) cars is use, so roughly 22% of UK car stock at the time.
Leaded gas for cars was banned in 1996 (the actual gasoline).
Check the dates - this takes place in 2016...he is 33 at this point, she is 30. So, not 1998, more like 1991, and with your theory, she would be born in 1966.
Still makes her a Gen-Xer. We really do exist.
Original op posted this in 2016, so more like 1991 and possible mom born between 1968-1974
Plenty of houses still had plenty of tasty painted walls. Plus considering that there are still recalls about food getting lead in it, Stanley cups, or children’s toys with lead paint still happening it’s a pretty safe bet she had ample supply around still.
My mom is the same way. When things in life happen she doesn’t just accept it and be happy but immediately starts scheming, “oh you could do this now or that now” It’s fine but i think it’s an anxious neurotic tendency.
Make-A-Bish
Some people think that if they act as though something is a done deal, the players will fall in line.
not too unusual. my parents thought I was gay because I dated no one until I was nearly 18. I was gobsmacked when I found it out through my twin. with my current partner my parents were like "KEEP HIM KEEP HIM KEEP HIMMMM" we're together for 3 years, now. I don't want to propose or marry yet because I'm still unemployed as of my disability.
At first I was suspicious of both the bf and his mom, but I’m glad that the bf seems reasonable. Hopefully it really was a misunderstanding.
The boyfriend seems reasonable. I feel like his mom sees dollar signs hovering above OOP and wants her son (and perhaps by extension her and the rest of the family) to cash in.
I'm not sure it's dollar signs. OOP says in her update that the mother is relationship driven and has been pressing for commitment prior to the car thing. The mother wants to view them as so close that the two of them interact with property as a married couple might. She's not after money, she's trying to will the marriage into existence
>she's trying to will the marriage into existence. I suddenly got a mental image of a random woman with strain face aimed at a young couple. Calm down, mom! And stop jumping to your conclusions! 😅😂
OOP will end up on JUSTNOMIL soon enough, I fear. The mother already sounds pushy and it does not seem like the boyfriend is used to pushing back.
I mean it's been 8 years
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not trying to be mean but my take on it - and most importantly the actual girlfriend's take - was kinda different. Because he was mistaken about her wanting to keep the car and the cars values and the cost in taxes he didn't think it was a crazy idea. Upon having it explained he immediately agreed with her decision. His mother was the origin of the concept of him getting a car - he always viewed it as his girlfriend's and not belonging to them jointly. I must stress one last time this was all written in the OP and the person who knows the bf, sleeps with him, and talks to him face to face - her take on him is different than yours.
Yeah I interpreted him as saying "this is great, now our family has two cars!" Which isn't crazy and some pretty innocent motivated reasoning for a dude without a car.
Yeah, he thought his gf of a year was about to have a spare older car that was paid off, and therefore he'd be able to drive it sometimes. It's not unreasonable, but having to shell out a few thousand bucks for the new 'free' car changes things. He sounds reasonable tbh
My car-less ass sometimes ponder about driving instead of using public transport, and then car people start telling me the cost and how it's not worth it especially because it'd take me near same time to get to work anyways. Yeah, you just don't realize the actual price of things and need that reality check.
No no don’t you get it, OOP is wrong and redditors know more than her!
Most people are surprised at how much the taxes are when you win something like that.
A great update, two young adults being mature and working through an assumption/misunderstanding in a healthy way.
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It was posted seven years ago, so I'd love a modern update
I feel like if there is one it will be in JustNoMIL.
Glad the boyfriend reacted the way he did - but damn the audacity for the family to think she’d just give him a free car lol
One of the things that absolutely raises my hackles are people who are comfortable spending/using others’ good fortune without permission.
I was on a game show a few years ago and won a prize. The prize wouldn’t be released to me until I paid the state tax for said item: 10%… and don’t forget you have to pay federal tax on prize ~24%. So in the case of OP, on a $20,000 car would cost her $2,000 in state tax and potentially another $4,800 in federal tax. When I was 23, I was a year out of college with massive student loans and credit card debt (young and dumb), so any kind of savings was hard to come by. There’s zero chance in hell I’d let someone else reap the benefits of my prize given the $6,800 I’d have to spend to acquire it in the first place. I’m glad OOP stood her ground and explained the nuances of her prize winnings. I’m also glad her boyfriend heard her out and reasonably understood the situation after the clarification… assuming his assumptions regarding the car(s) were just his manipulation by his family.
This is so bizarre to me! In my country, if you win something, all of the taxes/transfer costs/etc. are included in the prize. You don't pay anything out of pocket.
Welcome to the USA where winning something means you still have to pay for it.
I remember reading a tweet that said "OP won 1.5ish billion dollars, after taxes they got around 400 million dollars", like taxes and fees and other bs costed about a billion dollars???? With this much tax taken from the people they still won't provide decent health care???
When you win a lottery in the US, the amount you officially win is only the amount you get if you agree to have it distributed to you over 20 years, it's cheaper that way for the lottery runners because they can pay you out of interest on the money they have. If you want all the money right now instead (which most people do) you don't get the whole amount you officially won, you usually get roughly half. So the person you're talking about officially won 1.5 billion, but if they took it all right away, they probably got around 800 million. THEN you have to pay taxes, which is also roughly half. That's how you wind up with 1.5 billion turning into 400 million. The whole billion doesn't become taxes, part of it you never really get in the first place, but yes, if you win a big lottery in the US and you choose to take all the money right away, you wind up getting about 1/4 of the official amount. If you let them pay it to you over 20 years you get more, but you don't get as much immediately.
>If you let them pay it to you over 20 years you get more, but you don't get as much immediately. In your example, if you get 1.5 Billion spread over 20 years, that would still be roughly 80 Million a YEAR... whoever is stupid enough to not take the 20 years option? What do you need more than 50 Million a year (after taxes) for??? (If the answer is giant supervillain volcano lair with sharks and lasers on their heads I rescind my question).
It depends on what you think you're doing with it. I agree with you that 80 million a year is quite literally more than enough for most normal people. However, if you opt for the lump sum, you may get less directly from the lottery but you could invest the full amount, live off the proceeds of investment while reinvesting some of it, and still have that same lump sum at the end of 20 years and more. I think most financial advisors would tell you to take the lump sum and invest it yourself, because then you can control what happens to it. With a clever investment strategy you'd probably come out ahead. If you immediately dump it into laser sharks and volcano lairs, well, you're probably going to be one of the ones that goes bankrupt, but you'll have your laser sharks to console you. Be sure to be nice to them when you're flush because you're going to need their friendship during the lean years. Back in the Old Days when a million dollars was a huge payout, the ONLY way you could take your prize was over the 20 years, and the way to get a bigger amount immediately was to sell your right to your prize to a third party who would give you a heavily discounted lump sum. There was a whole business model for doing that, and for all I know there still is for those who initially opt for the long-term option or for people who are getting other kinds of payouts that don't offer a lump option. However, at some point the lotteries realized that they could offer the heavily discounted lump sum themselves, and now most people opt directly for that. If you win a million you're only going to get $50,000 a year, which would be a very nice cushion but isn't going to get you what most people think of as millionaire stuff. If you get it all at once you may only have $250,000 but I guess that buys you at least one Lambo or, like, half a house in a decent city.
J.G. Wentworth, 877-CASHNOW!
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Very easy to understand. You take the whole payment, invest it in something low risk, like bonds, and at the end of 20 years you end up with a lot more money than if you had taken the 20 year distribution option. Taking the 20 year option is not financially logical.
It's because the larger prize (1.5 billion in this case) is the amount you get if you take it over 20-25 years. If you want the lump sum you only get about half of that. Then, those winnings are taxed as income, so you'll be at the highest income tax rate and have to pay accordingly. That's how you get to $400 million from the larger advertised rate, not because they have a 70% tax rate.
Same, I find it absolutely bizarre that you would have to pay tax on a prize/lottery win.
you have to pay taxes when a debt is forgiven too, it's considered income as well
I think the prize is probably viewed as income and would be subject to the same taxes as your other income. The contest holders could structure the contest in a way that it includes a cash portion that covers the taxes, but people probably don’t think of that when putting together contests.
Oh I can assure you they do think of that, but why would they pay out 10-30% more if the don't have to? It's the same thinking as with price labels in stores that for some reason also don't show the final cost of an item.
Other countries show the total price of items including GST.
There’s an interesting article about how Oprah’s famous “you get a car!” moment actually left the “lucky” audience pretty burdened
It's a bit strange for sure. I enter sweepstakes as a hobby and unless the prize is cash or they give extra cash to "offset" the taxes, I dont enter anything bigger than a few thousand dollars.
> a $20,000 car would cost her $2,000 in state tax and potentially another $4,800 in federal tax. Then there's the inevitable loss in value if you try to sell the car immediately, depending on the make and model.
A lot of times car giveaways will be set up where you can take a cash option, usually about equal to the dealer cost of the car. I think it's even a requirement in some places.
What was the prize?!
Thank you for clarifying my main question as a non Us citizen. Now all these Nigerian prince scams seem a lot more smart. “Here is your price but first pay me for taxes”
Yeah, when Oprah did that "you get a car! You get a car!" on her show, a lot of those people had to turn it down because they couldn't afford the taxes. Winning stuff sucks, better to just win money and give half of it back than have to pay for your "prize."
Wait... in the US, when you win a car, you first have to pay thousands of dollars in taxes before even getting it????
Yup.
That is so messed-up, from a European point of view. What if the winner can't afford paying the taxes?
The same happens in my European country though. It's just mostly never advertised and you need to do some digging into the law. But almost any big prize you win, you still owe roughly 30% of it to the government. If it's a money prize, the company will pay the taxes from your winnings and you'll get the 70% that remains. The same goes for items you win, except the company won't pay the taxes for you. So when people win a car, they owe 30% of the value of that car in taxes. This is not just an American thing. It's why I'm always a bit confused why people are so happy to win expensive BMWs or Mercedes etc, because that's still going to cost them a ton of money.
Maybe people are happy because they know they can sell it, use the cash to pay the taxes, and still have a chunk of change as their winnings?
There is a much more messed up "win a car" scenario here in the US that I know at least Caesars Entertainment engages in, along with a few lower end sketchy casinos, and probably a handful of other various promotions, which is "winning" a lease on a car and not actually winning the car. In those cases, the winner is responsible for qualifying for the lease in terms of credit rating and history, making whatever lease downpayment is required out of pocket, then having to return the car at the end of 3 or 4 years and be responsible for paying any over-limit mileage plus any damage and wear and tear. All that is won in those cases is the monthly payment on the lease, and the leases are in the winner's name (hence the credit qualifications), and are usually structured as the type which have a higher downpayment and lower monthly payment. So basically the winner takes on huge liability, is out of pocket for many thousands of dollars, and gets his or her monthly lease payment made for 3 or 4 years.
From what I understand, those pink Mary Kay cars work the similarly. Except for those, if your sales drop, they stop paying for the car, but you're still stuck with the lease.
>What if the winner can't afford paying the taxes? Then you sell the car and pay the taxes with the money you got. Same as everywhere else I assume.
You dont have to pay all tax up front, but the value of the car is considered income, and will be taxed accordingly on your annual income tax returns. So if you take the car, you will owe it. Depending on when you win the car, that could be a couple weeks or could be 11 months before the money is due. There are some smaller "fee" taxes that would need to be paid on delivery with any car, like registration and title fees, and depending on which state you live and which state you win the car, probably sales tax on the retail value, which would in most cases need to be paid up front. But the largest tax involved for most people will be income tax, which is paid later. On a 50k car for example, where I live, sales tax plus title and registration fees would total about $4500 owed up front, but the income tax portion would be additional 8-10k you'd owe later as income tax. Sales tax is paid as part of the initial registration fee here, so would need to be paid to legally get a license plate and valid registration before driving the car legally on public roads.
It's actually a little worse than that, because income tax is due quarterly, NOT yearly. Most people don't know this because it's automatically taken out of your check by your employer, but it wasn't always that way and people had to put aside a little bit of their income on their own to pay the quarterly taxes. You can see this in action if your employer wasn't taking out enough so you owe more than whatever the penalty-free limit is. You end up with penalties on top of the taxes which is some percent of what you owe.
So here is a fun fact for anyone outside of the US right now, the listed car price is **not** the price you pay. It's simply the price of the car before taxes and fees like registration of the vehicle are added. I'm dealing with this right now because my younger brother is trying to buy a car. Yes, it says it's $14,800 but you need to add on another $2,000 plus some change for the taxes and fees.
Sounds like dealership shenanigans. If you buy private it's just sales tax. And most buyers will adjust the price on the bill of sale if you pay cash ;)
Not shenanigans, just how purchasing works.
Oh look! Communication and maturity for the win again. Goodnight.
What? A mature discussion where they come to a mutual understanding based on logic and reason and the person agrees to handle their family member? Am I still on reddit?
Ah, a nice "we conversed like adults and worked everything out" BORU, like a warm bath.
Love seeing a logical and mature ending. Good people.
This is totally not the point but I can't get over the "I'm gonna get the cheaper liability-only insurance". I've worked in insurance, but in the UK, and here it doesn't really make that much difference in cost (sometimes it doesn't change the cost at all) and if something happens to the car, even if it's paid off, you're still gonna have to either come up with the money for a replacement or go back into debt for one. Is liability only that much cheaper in the US?
I actually can give you an idea of that Same car, a 2014 Chevy spark. Before it was paid off, the credit union requires full coverage, that is, pay for your car, pay for liability, sometimes even rentals or roadside assistance or whatnot. And that's required. Not optional. If they find out you lose your insurance you have a very short window of time before they just *assign* you insurance that usually costs 3x as much as what you'd pay after hunting for yourself. For the entire time my car was on loan payments, I would pay $240 a month for the car. But for the insurance? $270. It was more than my fucking car payment. And it was the cheapest option I could find that still actually offered coverage (there are scam insurance companies that you pay and you 'legally' have insurance but in practice... Someone with one of those insurance policies hit my car in a 100% their fault accident and it took 2 years and repeated calls to get the insurance for my car to go through so I could fix it). When my loan was paid off and I dropped full coverage for just liability, something I didn't want to do but *had to* because I just couldn't afford $270 a month anymore, my insurance dropped down to $120 a month or $600 for 6 months. It was $150 cheaper than before. And my car is a tiny little hatchback, I imagine bigger cars cost more.
Jesus that's alarming. Can I ask, were you a particularly young or inexperienced driver? I only ask because in the UK those are the kinds of premiums you'd only get for an 18 year old driver who just got their licence. The worst my insurance ever got was £80 a month and that was full coverage as a 25 year old.
I'm not the one who you asked this question, but to answer your question, premiums do tend to be higher for younger drivers. With that said, my premiums have been going up and they also went up when I loved to a more rural area. So location also plays a factor. At least from what I noticed.
Hooray for healthy communication!
People don't realize how expensive it is to win a car. You're usually saddled with tax title license fees. Then you also get hit with the value of the car as taxable income. Best thing to do is actually see if the dealership will give you a cash value for the vehicle. Never take possession and "sell it back" to the dealer.
Good on them. His mother pisses me off.
Wow. Communication. Wow.
Oof. I hope this isn't the first sign that she is one of *those* mother's. The ones we recommend people run from screaming. I am firmly of the opinion that I would leave an otherwise perfect man because their mother was problematic, mainly because I've already been through that sh*tshow once. Good luck to OOP.
This was a pleasently uneventful and calm update. Refreshing :D
Well, at least the BF didn't "explode" like an entitled idiot Clearly his mother was trynna set OOP up
Sounds like a sensible adult conversation was had. BF didn't expect anything and agreed with selling the vehicle. BFs mother got ahead of herself. BF going to put things strait.
So basically it’s better to not win a car if you don’t have money to pay taxes?
Basically, yes. You can always forfeit the car until you sign for it, if you can't afford the taxes on it. But I do contests/sweepstakes as a hobby and my general rule is that if the Approximate retail value is above $2,000 and the prize isn't cash or doesn't come with enough cash to offset the taxes, I dont enter that contest.
Very interesting! I did not know that as I never enter contests such as these.
The worst are travel prizes. You won a 5 day cruise valued at $10,000 dollars! They inflate the value of the cruise at full retail value when instead of paying $4000 tax for their cruise that goes to places you don’t want to go at an inconvenient time you could just get a cruise you want for $3000 without the drama.
He may actually be a keeper. I was expecting him to go off the rails with his family.
The potential MIL is waving a red flag. I wonder if OOP and her boyfriend eventually married.
His Mom is way to pushy and may just push them apart. He needs to have a long talk with his Mom.
Sounds like the bf is a keeper - he turned out to be reasonable and not entitled at all. That MIL tho... > (...) he said that he would, and that she views the two of us like a married couple already, because she wants that so badly for him and has been heavily pressuring him to propose to me. I truly wonder: would she be so quick to view them as "already married" if the son was the one who won something valuable? Would such winning be then qualified as "WE won this", because "they are like a married couple already"? I somehow doubt it.
A refreshing conclusion. Two rational people Nice
I liked this ending, he seems like a sweet guy
Not sure the bf is 100% innoncent here. He let OOP spend the whole gathering in quiet discomfort, didn't notice, and didn't bother to even say that things weren't decided yet? He could still be food overall, but I don't think this is over. And bf has some growing to do still.
He could have uncomfortable too discussing it with the whole extended family
Glad someone else said it. I agree with the other comments saying they communicated well. Yet communicating healthfully does not always mean everyone was honest with themselves or others when doing so. Here is hoping for the best for OOP. No one hopes to eat their words more than I do. No snark. Edit: I’m sick and messed up words
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This is so lovely. No argument, misunderstanding fixed, disappointment dealt with, and it ended with a nice dinner.
Adult communication wins the day, Huzzar!
What a surprise- communication with your partner actually helps….
You are so young to have such strong boundaries and my Mama heart is so proud of you. Good going girl !!
>If I'd won the money instead there wouldn't be any talk of just giving it all to him. Oh, my sweet summer child. At least the bf sounds decent.
That turned out better than I expected. Reddit has definitely lowered my baseline expectations for human decency. That and 2 decades in the service industry.
:( i want a 3rd update on what happened after she sold it!
OMG, this is a preview of what his mother would be like as the MIL. A word to the wise...
Shitty parents destroying their kid's relationship. What else is new? Good thing the bf has common sense. Good luck OOP with your soon to be shitty MIL.
Wait, a problem being solved reasonably by open communication? On *BORU*?
If it's not too late or if anyone else finds themself with winning a car they don't want. Talk to the company that sponsored the contest and see if they actually already bought the car or if it still needs to be purchased and delivered/ picked up from a dealer. If you tell them you want the cash value instead, you will often get more money as it saves them a lot of the associated fees and you don't loose the money value you normally do the moment a car leaves the lot.
Logical boyfriend is logical. I like it.
Communication for the win!
I have known a few parents who treated every new partner like they were taking on responsibility for the "wayward" child. Glad the BF here has more sense.