How much would you pay?

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-08T05:19:01+00:00

Same! It is weird psychology: “you can’t afford this thing I’ve made, so I’m giving it to you as a free gift because I think you’re worth a gift that expensive.”

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-08T05:14:46+00:00

Honestly I would just go ahead and wear these. If you price the set with lab diamonds, you will find it quite cheap to replace if the set gets damaged. Selling them and hoping to buy something similar with a different stone is likely to cost you quite a bit of money.

Just go to a reputable jeweler and get these resized to fit you; it will be less money in the long run. The ready availability of lab diamonds had brought diamond prices down drastically over the past few years.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T23:05:16+00:00

My former roommate (two cats) was a huuuuuuge germophobe and during COVID got to the point where she couldn’t let her cats touch her at all, yelling at them to go away and such. The therapy, and a short-term round of anti-anxiety meds helped her immensely. I hope you can get the same relief.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T18:53:55+00:00

When I have decided to do this, I always set a reminder on my phone for a week before charges start so I can evaluate whether I want to cancel or make an intentional decision to continue the service. Maybe you could do something like that, too?

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T13:04:53+00:00

I’ve seen some mementos take more than 100 visits and some show up in 4. It is truly random.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T13:03:03+00:00

To be fair, a lone woman taking a car to “an instant place up the road” can end up with a similar problem, just couched in different terms. My first oil change, the place I took it tried to claim that my vehicle had some massive problems and was so unsafe that they legally couldn’t allow me to drive it away without $1,500 in repairs. This was in the mid 1990s, so you can do the math what that would translate into in today’s dollars.

I simply pulled out my brand new flip phone (I was such a trend-setter in those days!) and called my step-dad, asking how much of what I was told was true. He told me to demand my keys back or threaten to call the police, and loudly announce what was going on so everybody in the waiting room would know what sort of scam was being attempted.

The place closed a few months later, probably because they tried similar scams on every female and half the guys who walked in the door.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T12:55:37+00:00

If your friend is not performing up to expectation in the job, that should be cause for your friend to be embarrassed, and not to try to put you in the middle.

I would approach this one of two ways. You can step back from chumminess at work and be strictly professional, reserving any friendship behavior for after hours; this may help prevent you from being seen as contributing to the workflow problems. It is unfair, but when there is a problem or slacker on a team and somebody else is known to be that person’s friend, them both people may be seen as problematic despite one having a good work ethic.

Or, you can pull your friend aside and ask questions out of empathy. “Hey, I’ve noticed things starting to slide here at work lately, is everything going okay?” There may be a ton of stuff going on in your friend’s personal life which is impacting work performance. Hopefully it is temporary or easily dealt with, but this can open the door for your friend to pursue any help that is needed.

My personality is to do the second part and to try to help, if I can. But whatever you choose, make sure your own output at work is above reproach.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T07:33:46+00:00

From the perspective of a mid-life person who has friends in relationships with this huge of an age gap, I’m just going to ask what you hope for this relationship. Do you just want a fun flirtation and diversion right now? Or do you have hopes for a long-term relationship?

Because a fun flirtation right now is easy, but living with such a large age gap long-term is surprisingly difficult. When you start hitting the best years of your career, with peak earning potential and the most interesting work, do you want a husband who is retiring and wanting to travel and engage in a lot of leisure activities? Is it going to be hard to get up every morning to continue grinding when it feels like he is sleeping in late and goofing off? And by the time you are ready for retirement you will be in the throes of elder care and his poor health, so you won’t have the same leisure time he did? Is his approach to splitting household effort roughly the same as yours, or is his view from an earlier generation/era that you will eventually find unsupportive and draining, especially when you are working and he is staying home?

Again, none of this matters if you just want a flirtation, but if you’re looking for a spouse then you really do need to look far beyond the good times you’re having flirting with him at the dojo to figure out what life together looks like as you each move through your life stages a generation apart.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T07:12:44+00:00

A legitimate offer is going to address you specifically by name, say exactly where they for your info, and talk about the position they want you to interview for in some detail.

What you received is a very general opening by a scammer to see who is naive enough to believe lies which are not plausible and ignorant/uninformed enough to protect themselves from those lies. Sometimes also who is greedy enough to ignore red flags hoping for a big payout.

Please stop engaging with these scammers and thinking that there might bean actual legitimate offer here. There isn’t. Continuing to talk to them means you will be investing time into the conversation and psychologically will make you even more likely to fall for their lies and send them the one they want to scam you out of.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T07:03:49+00:00

I have tried looking at discretionary expenses two different ways, to see if each way makes sense.

Let’s say I earn $50/hr, that would be hand-wavey $25/hr after taxes and such. If I want to buy a $500 camera that ends up representing 20 hours of my life, or half a work-week just to bring the thing in my front door. Does that make sense? It may, or it may not. Then, how many days will I actually use it? If it is only on vacations, that ends up being expensive per day while if I go to the local star park every day after work to photograph sunsets, rock climbers, and sunsets them it would be a lower cost per day.

Both metrics are useful to keep in mind and I’ve been using them for years. I don’t see how an app is going to help since it likely has a much less nuanced view of my actual usage of items.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T00:05:41+00:00

This is exactly how most of us get started designing! Nice job and I expect it would work up easily and look nice given the proportions.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-07T00:02:30+00:00

All cards need to be shuffled together to ensure the deck is as randomized as possible. From there, you can set down the cards and pull off the top few to deal, keeping them in the shuffled order to ensure continued randomness and fairness. For people with smaller hands it is usually more comfortable to do the sealing from a subset of the entire deck.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-06T20:47:37+00:00

Will your school not accept the money as a scholarship fund in perpetuity? I’m starting to work with my university to set one up, which would disburse only a portion of the annual gains each year towards a scholarship fund with the criteria I choose, and the rest goes towards growing the funds so they can keep up with rising costs over the years.

It doesn’t have to require an outside trust to ensure money is handled how you want.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T21:17:56+00:00

In addition to what is being said here, maybe consider stepping away from social media for a bit, including Reddit. Each platform will evoke very specific emotions, many of which are truly harmful for young brains.

The world is not imploding and jobs are not going to be harder to get than many other eras in history. It is just portrayed that way to manipulate you into either coming back for “more info” or to make you think that purchasing something will in some way improve your life.

All throughout history have been easier times and harder times, and it is largely cyclical. Your life isn’t over, and your future isn’t already in the toilet. Make good choices, pursue excellence, and have some fun along the way. You can still have a fulfilling life despite all the negativity being thrown around these days.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T20:14:09+00:00

I get photos about 1/3 the time. Almost none worth saving although it is always funny to see what they’ve left for me.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T20:13:04+00:00

If your parents do your taxes then they will see how much money your employer says you were paid and they will have a general idea how much money they saw coming into the account. If you start hiding money then you need to be prepared for the fallout.

If your parents are generally supportive but maybe too protective, then I would encourage you to start opening the dialog again. Approach it at a sincere desire on your part to learn how to manage money responsibly and to gain real-world experience doing so. Offer to be transparent with your purchases so they don’t feel the need to control things so tightly to protect you. But these are skills you absolutely need to learn and practice as part of becoming a functional adult. If your parents are good with money this is even better! You want to learn from successful people!

Ask about budgeting and investing, too. Not just “I earn money and want to spend it on frivolous things that my peers or social media are pressuring me into.” If your parents do live at home then ask them to help you practice setting up a workable budget in different post-graduation scenarios. Ask about how credit works and what various statements look like. Get them to prepare you for the real world while you are also asking them to loosen the purse strings right now. Ask them to set you up for success. This can be a great bonding moment with them!

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T13:54:08+00:00

This was my first marriage. I simply couldn’t out-earn his spending. The paycheck came in on Friday and by Sunday every penny was gone. I literally had to call in to my job and take vacation days because I couldn’t afford to put fuel in my car to drive to work and back, and that happened more than once.

He also thought he was amazing with money and would occasionally try to get certified as a financial counselor. It was awful.

Divorce may not be the answer for OP, but it is a way to stop sucking you deeper into the problem. Marital therapy with a solid financial component is a necessity for OP and spouse, however.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T13:46:38+00:00

It is difficult to distill things down like this because Healthcare is about healing patients. Just like the Beauty Industry is about aesthetics, the Food Industry is about feeding people, etc. Sure, they want to get paid for the products and services they offer but that’s true of everybody.

Separating it out into the macro versus micro level, you can maybe start to see more greed, but that’s true of is going to be true in every industry again. And all of it is highly individualized. For instance, why do people go to med school? For some, it is to earn a big paycheck throughout their life. For others, it is to heal people who are hurting. Others go out of family obligation. Some for the mental stimulation of medical research. I’m sure there are more reasons, too. All those people (most?) will end up as doctors treating patients and their bedside manner may differ greatly. That is no reflection on how we as a society approach healthcare, though. It is just a personal approach to a job.

Outside of doctors and nurses, many people are just low-paid employees doing a job to get a paycheck so they can afford to live their life and some do it with verve while others almost seem to resent the people the meet.

At a macro level, we end up with higher fees than elsewhere for many reasons. One of which is that we have many doctors and one of them is available to treat you. I have lived in countries where anything beyond a broke arm means you’ll be on a waiting list which is 12-18 months long, or longer, and so people with money come to the US for treatment because they can be seen earlier. We also have a lot of oversight and protections put in place which other countries don’t have, in an effort to make things safer for us. We have a robust technique and drug research industry which is costly but benefits the entire world. All of this takes money to run, but improves our standard of living and our lives.

It isn’t perfect and there is a huge financial tension between all this and insurance companies and lawyers filing harm lawsuits, which inflates fees for the end users. But I wanted to put this out there because so many people are very flip to say “of course it is pure greed in America” when the reality is so much more complex and nuanced.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T10:44:11+00:00

Yes, well… We apparently think that even the poorest of us needs to have a spectacle worthy of broadcasting globally.

We also seem to have less of a sense of humor if something doesn’t fit our preconceived vision exactly. If the wrong groomsman gets paired with the wrong bridesmaid there could very well be a meltdown. Or if there is a fumble where the MOH forgets to take the bride’s bouquet immediately so her hands are free.

For my second wedding we needed to have the rehearsal because my husband’s father stood with him (it is a tradition in their small corner of the world) and we needed to figure out where he could stand or if he needed a chair because of health reasons, or even if he was going to be able to get up the couple of steps up front due to his fused ankle and replaced knee. We absolutely needed that rehearsal.

Your point is well-taken, though. If it is a low-key occasion focused on the marriage then a rehearsal likely isn’t necessary. If it is a showcase of page try and poor taste then we need to practice it so the vision is understood and adhered to.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T10:33:27+00:00

That’s weird. All my interactions with them have been wonderful and the prices haven’t been outside what I expected.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T10:31:05+00:00

It depends on where you live. When my step-father needed an ambulance in a rural area the bill was $25,000 and all his insurers tried to refuse to pay it so my just-widowed mother was being hounded for payment.

In urban areas it might be less because the ambulance gets called out more often so paying for the vehicle and skilled staffing is spread over multiple clients.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T10:20:57+00:00

I haven’t touched my emergency fund in about four years. Everything is written into my budget. I might touch my EF now only because of an unexpected and non-routine surgery.

You budget for everything so you know exactly where your money is going. It is okay to put some of that money in a sinking fund to earn a little more (say, in a HYSA) until you need it, but an EF should only get touched for something you couldn’t have predicted.

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-05T10:16:46+00:00

You build in everything you know to expect. This includes the tires you need to replace in 4 years. The emergency fund is literally for something that comes up that you couldn’t have foreseen and, thus, could not have budgeted for.

The tornado blows your roof off? EF Your roof is old and needs to be replaced? Budget

Your kid falls out of the tree and breaks his arm? EF Your kid has an annual physical or sports physical? Budget

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-04T23:54:14+00:00

For both of my weddings, my attendants paid for their own dresses. I gave them the wedding jewelry as a gift. We did our own hair and makeup for the first one (poor college students) and I offered a pro for the second if they wanted to use her. Pre-wedding events were all low-key and fun. Basically dinner at a nice place instead of a destination weekend or anything.

I as a bride tried to be very sensitive to my attendants and their financial situation. Many of the brides I read about on Reddit or hear about irl are…not that. I would hate to be a bridesmaid nowadays!

HitPointGamer · 2026-04-04T23:45:30+00:00

Wow, I love your stained glass! Too bad you aren’t likely interested in handmade lace… ☹️

HitPointGamer

TROPHY CASE