I’m going to give you the best piece of Adult Life Is Hard advice I’ve ever learned:
Talk to people when things go to shit.
I don’t just mean get it off your chest, although that’s good. I mean: Something’s wrong with your paycheck/you lost your job/you had unexpected emergency car repairs and now you’re broke so your credit card payment is late. Like, not just 15 days late. We’re talking, shit got crazy and now you’re 90 days late with compounded interest and late fees and the Minimum Payment Due is, like, $390, and you’ve got about $3.90 in your bank account. Call the credit card company.
I know it’s scary. I know you feel like you’re going to get in trouble, like you’re gong to get yelled at or scolded for not having your life together. But the credit card company isn’t your parents; they’re just interested in getting money from you. And you can’t squeeze blood from a stone or money from someone who doesn’t have any. So what you do is you call them. You explain you’re experiencing temporary financial hardships, and you’re currently unable to bring your account up to date, but you don’t want to just let it get worse. Can you maybe talk to someone about a payment plan so you can work something out? Nine times out of ten you’ll be able to negotiate something so that at least it’s not just taking a constant, giant shit on your credit score.
– Can’t pay your power bill? Call the power company.
– Can’t pay your full rent? Talk to your landlord.
– Had to go to the hospital without insurance and have giant medical bills looming in your place? Call the hospital and ask if they have someone who helps people with financial hardships. Many do.
– Got super sick and missed half a semester of class because flu/pneumonia/auto-immune problems/depressive episode? Talk to your professor. If that doesn’t help, talk to your advisor.
You may not be able to fix everything, but you’ll likely be able to make improvements. At the very least, it’s possible that they have a list of people you can contact to help you with things. (Also, don’t be afraid to google things like, “I can’t pay my power bill [state you live in]” because you’d be surprised at what turns up on Google!) But the thing is, people in these positions gain nothing if you fail. There’s no emotional satisfaction for them if your attempts at having your life together completely bite the dust. In fact, they stand to benefit if things work out for you! And chances are, they’ll be completely happy to take $20 a month from you over getting $0 a month from you, your account will be considered current because you’ve talked to them and made an agreement, you won’t get reported to a collections agency, and your credit score won’t completely tank.
Here’s some helpful tips to keep in mind:
1. Be polite. Don’t demand things; request them. Let me tell you about how customer service people hold your life in their hands and how many extra miles they’ll go for someone who is nice to them.
2. Stick to the facts, and keep them minimal unless asked for them. Chances are they’re not really interested in the details. “We had several family emergencies in a row, and now I’m having trouble making the payments” is better than “Well, two months ago my husband wrecked his bike, and then he had a reaction to the muscle relaxer they gave him, and then our dog swallowed a shoestring and we had to take him to the emergency clinic, and just last week MY car broke down, and now my account’s in the negatives and I don’t know how I’m gonna get it back out.” The person you’re talking to is aware shit happens to everyone; they don’t need the details to prove you’re somehow “worthy” of being helped. They may ask you for details at a certain point if they have to fill out any kind of request form, but let them do that.
3. Ask questions. “Is there anything we can do about X?” “Would it be possible to move my payment date to Y day instead so it’s not coming out of the same paycheck as my rent?” The answer may be “no.” That’s not a failure on your part. But a good customer service person may have an alternate solution.
Anyway! I hope that helps! Don’t just assume the answer is “no” before you’ve even begun. There is more help out there than you ever imagined.
Update: The castle as of April 2015 is actually only around $1,300,000 USD now due to the currency exchange rates! 😀
this goes even further, some European countries will give you a castle for free if you submit a plan stating how you intend to restore or preserve it. Italy alone for example has somewhere between 100 and 300 castles they intend to give away to anyone with intent to be a caretaker, they literally cant keep track of how many discount castles are up for grabs
it doesn’t even have to be an ambitious plan, even if it says you just intend to keep it from becoming more shitty and will occasionally add a few bricks when you can afford it. given that most of them come with land you could convert the grounds to actually produce enough income to pay for the repairs- like setting up apple trees and brewing cider you sell with your castle name on the bottle, or raising some goats for cheese, a hobby farm could turn this into an actual income opportunity. hell, throwing parties at the castle could make it an income opportunity
they will literally –GIVE– you a castle to make sure someone is taking care of it rather then let them all sit empty
this guys videos are fucking incredible i really want everyone to watch them
this man is like midas but with knives instead of gold, he can make anything a knife, sicssor knives ,ice knives, cardboard knives, tiny knives if it can be made into a knife he will do it, and if he cant, he will do it anyway because fuck you
This doesn’t even have the best one. One time he made a knife out of ravioli then proceeded to use the knife made out of ravioli to cut up cheese and tomatoes and basil and shit then took the ravioli knife that he had used to cut up his other ingredients and cooked said knife with those ingredients and ate the fucking knife!
The empty fridge that only contains Jack Daniels Chocolate
That one time a bear figurine possessed with a demon would attack him if he didn’t pet it so he had to build a machine that constantly rolled the bear against brushes so he would be safe long enough to finish the knife
call me ignorant but i genuinely don’t understand why sports have to be split up by gender.
@ everyone in the notes talking about physical performance: if that were the case, then sports would be divided by physical performance. that’s a thing you can measure. that’s a thing that varies by individual. a weak man and a strong man would be an unfair fight in boxing/wrestling/MMA, which is why they divide those sports up into weight groups based on physical performance. but they also further segregate them based on gender. chess is segregated by gender for no reason but sexism. if it’s actually about skill and physical ability, then measure those and separate people by those metrics. don’t do some bullshit gender segregation and pretend like men and women are inherently on different levels no matter their individual abilities.
💅
Remember that time a teenage girl struck out Babe Ruth? That’s fucking why. Men are afraid of being beaten by women.
backup blog in case tumblr explodes 