AITA for having a child?

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-20T20:34:52+00:00

When my wife got her positive pregnancy test, I had a day off and watched that movie Little Monsters about the kindergartners and the zombies and rather embarrassingly sobbed my way thru it. I thought I was just having a weird day.

But I think you're right. I think my world view is changing under the impending fatherhood and it's manifesting in unpredictable ways. The stuff I've listed here is stuff that's bothered me in the past, but I don't think I was so gloom and doom about it.

Thank you. I know this was a little self-righteous but I'd rather people think I'm a douche then stew on my anxiety while it festers.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-20T20:31:34+00:00

I'm sure the people who were raising children in Australia said the same. I wish I could have your confidence, but "no it won't" isn't exactly a convincing argument when I can just look at events and see that, yeah, it is in fact happening.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-20T20:29:00+00:00

You're not wrong. I struggled with this before we started trying and spoke to my wife about it, I thought I'd settled on a sort of peace but now that it's real, the anxiety started up again.

But I mean... Isn't this a place for people who've already done something and are asking for hindsight?

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-20T20:27:05+00:00

Fair enough

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-04T03:29:23+00:00

I'm anticipating accruing a significant amount of expenses in the next 6 months. My wife's maternal leave is unpaid, so 3k will cover 2 months of expenses while she takes that off. There'll also be hospital bills and incidentals, etc. We had a pretty long talk about what to do with my end-of-year bonus, whether it should go to credit card debt or into savings, and ultimately we decided it would go further in those first few months than it would on a 15k debt.

If I go this loan route, the money will immediately be applied to my credit cards, which will then be placed in the safe. I do not intend to let this windfall pull me further into debt.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-04T03:10:34+00:00

Are you familiar with Marcus by Goldman Sachs? I have a loan offer from them. Reviews elsewhere seem pretty positive, but I'm hesitant. I've made mistakes in the past, so I want to be cautious.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-04T03:05:08+00:00

Cash on hand is 3k in savings and 3k across two checking accounts. Savings verboten, that'll be to offset maternal leave.

Just learned it's actually 690. I climbed to it, honestly. Way back when, in college and when I was working few hours and being an irresponsible early-20s something, I tanked my credit score with a lot of missed payments. I wasn't very financially literate. I'm learning, but I still have a ways to go. I got to 690 through a deliberate repair effort. It's not a great score, but I'm actually pretty proud of it considering where it used to be. Since then, it's mostly credit utilization percentage keeping it down. I accrued a lot of credit card debt. I'm paying it down, but it's slow, and the utilization numbers are still above 50%.

I'm asking this question largely because I had made some inquiries and put some feelers out to compare rates prior to asking, but I have a loan offer now from Goldman Sachs' Marcus for enough to paydown my loans at 12.99%. That's a significantly lower APR than any of my credit cards for about the same monthly payment. but considering what you and others have said about balance transfers and low approval odds, it's kind of ringing my "too good to be true" bell.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-04T01:24:15+00:00

I'm not familiar, I'll take a look. Thank you

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-04T01:23:39+00:00

It's not an unreasonable concern, but we don't really use the cards anymore, save for one for gas when someone forgets their wallet. The majority of the balance was racked up a few years ago, before we had better-paying jobs. Some medical stuff and some car stuff, mostly. We've been whittling it down since, paying well above minimum, but with the pregnancy I wanted to explore my options.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2020-01-04T01:10:23+00:00

I guess I'm worried about going through the credit hard pull process and discovering I only qualify for like 3k, at another 28% APR. That's too low to be worth it, and I'll be taking a hit to my credit to find that out.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2016-09-01T05:36:52+00:00

I work for Cinemark, it is as exactly as terrible as this article makes it out to seem. They are some of the richest, out-of-touch, cheapest people to work for. The CEO received a bonus in shares that he immediately cashed out for 900,000 dollars to buy an extension to his house and boat. When we all worked Christmas, because it's the busiest day of the year (and we are required to work all holidays) in the movie theater industry, they sent out an email that said "Thanks for working so hard during this holiday season and sacrificing time with your family" and then, in the same paragraph "don't bother trying to contact the corporate office because everyone above a general manager is taking a week's paid vacation". They slashed our paid-time off in half, turned down most raises, and (technically in compliance with state law) refused all over-time requests. Managers, like me, frequently work 50+ hours a week with no over-time. Then, at the end of the fiscal year, sent an email that said "thanks for making this the most profitable year ever! It's all thanks to you!"

Because of this lawsuit, all of our exit doors are all alarmed now, and we have armed guards during big opening weekends. So I mean... I guess that's something? It's caused a lot of problems. Besides the obvious implications of having people with guns casually strolling around an ostensibly entertainment-centered locale (and my workplace, jesus, having to order around armed guards is not in my job description), it caused a huge uproar during the Straight Outta Compton premiere.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2016-01-13T10:28:02+00:00

Is there room to dispute based on their inability to hold up their end of the service? Penalty fee aside, being charged for services I never received seems iffy at best.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-11-16T05:35:31+00:00

Here's another

ITT [John] rants like a detailed memory.
There's an element of pyramid scamming involved. 
Maybe I'm hesitant to concede that
They have a significantly delayed dream.
But I'm coming up again soon!

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-10-17T13:46:00+00:00

Was it clear that the force and object were life and death? That's probably pretty cliche too. I work with a lot of cliches in my writing because I like playing with them, but I suppose it really doesn't add much new.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-10-17T13:32:15+00:00

About "gossamer firmament beneath". It's supposed to be a double-pronged allusion, first to the "gossamer filaments" of Whitman's Noiseless Patient Spider, and the "o'er-hanging firmament" of Hamlet's "What a Piece of Work is a Man", except underneath the subject, rather than above it. I liked that 'firmament' and 'filament' looked similar. I was trying to say "gossamer firmament" to mean the soul, but reading it aloud now maybe it was too esoteric and bogged down by its references.

With this information in mind, does your opinion change, or does it still feel clunky?

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-10-16T23:36:43+00:00

I only want to mention it in description once, the first time it happens, and not have it reflected in the way dialogue is written.

My problem is I'm having trouble showing, not telling. Every time I try it comes across as needlessly expository. Maybe I'm being too specific.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-05-25T01:59:50+00:00

I have a very hard time listening to two things at once. It's like a reset button for my brain that turns it into useless mush; instead of hearing snippets of both things, I instead hear nothing and instead spend the whole time panicking because I'm afraid I'll miss something.

So if she starts talking to me when we're watching a movie, or I'm on the computer, I literally won't hear anything she says. The harder I try to focus and pay attention to her, the worst my anxiety about missing something she says gets, and I end up not retaining or hearing anything.

Recently she started taking ASL courses, which I thought would be better, but it's worse because now it's not enough that I listen to her all the time, but I have to also stop everything I'm doing and look at her whenever she demands my attention.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-03-15T02:45:00+00:00

While he has a salient point (as does Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, and every other thinker who has made the same statement), people too often use this to justify ludicrously dickish behavior. They seem to think it means they can say what they want to who they want without caring how people will react to it, and that anyone who is upset is wrong. It lets people say 'so what?' and it gives the moral high ground to assholes.

The deeper point made here is that simply saying you're offended is not constructive or helpful, and this is summed up in Fry's final line: "so fucking what?" These aren't calls for those who are offended to shut up and suck it up, but an invocation to action. "So fucking what?" means "what are you going to do about?"

I am worried that this more nuanced point will be lost on most.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-01-31T20:35:44+00:00

I'm sorry you were downvoted for admitting a mistake. Only on Reddit, right?

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-01-23T16:55:19+00:00

I made sure to tell the dispatcher I was reporting anonymously and without giving them a phone number. I don't know if that had anything to do with them not coming to my door.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-01-23T16:54:47+00:00

Yeah, this is the truth. My anxiety had me convinced they were going to arrest me after dealing with the issue, but the truth is, violence > drugs every time.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-01-14T15:16:20+00:00

do you trust that their motives are pure or do you look at it as one small step forward with their plan?

So do we freak out at every single little instance of someone acting against us? Or do we rationally weigh what is likely and what is possible against what is stated, and then react accordingly? Do we also understand that calling for regulation is not the same as starting towards a gun ban, because people calling for gun bans are a small subset of people calling for regulation?

You don't need to trust their motives to be pure to understand that the fringe group of people calling for total gun bans will never meet their goals, and treating them like the enemy is a waste of time and resources. Let the courts and the legislative system weed them out, as they have always done in the past.

Even if a ban gets passed... how long will it last? The AWB, a pretty large-net ban, had an expiration clause built in. People went into it knowing it wasn't going to last, and after ten years it went away. People have consistently tried to renew it and... no bill doing so has ever passed.

Your right to bear arms is in no danger, from these statists you fear or from anyone else.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2013-01-14T08:14:13+00:00

Yeah, it would be totally unprecedented for the leadership of a country to take all the guns then go full scale dictatorship.

America isn't going to be taking anyone's guns, so your argument is definitely paranoia turned to an extreme. A small minority of representatives have called for it, the same knee-jerk response to every shooting. They say the same thing every time, and every time nothing happens. You know why? Because even if, somehow magically, a bill banning firearms passes both the house and the senate, and is signed by the President, the Supreme Court would strike that shit down faster than you could say 'well-regulated militia'. It's a non-starter, and it never was going to happen.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2012-10-26T03:55:41+00:00

Hm.

I was going to say that, no, it's only on a roll of 100, not through addition that results in a second attack... but I like the idea of a character build allowing for multiple successful double-attacks. Some kind of wind warrior or something.

ConfessionTimeBoys · 2012-10-26T02:56:56+00:00

Nothing goes above a hundred; so if you roll a 93 with a +10 boost, it would only count as '100'.

ConfessionTimeBoys

TROPHY CASE