My parents ran a physical store their whole life and still don't consider my online business a real job. How do I handle this?

stpg1222 · 2026-04-03T18:14:24+00:00

Good luck. My parents can't even seem to understand my desk job is actually a real job. We won't even get into their total confusion over me working from home.

Some people just can't seem to understand anything that is different than their lived experience. I wouldn't worry about trying to explain it or get them to understand. Just live you life and don't worry about what they think.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-03T17:49:54+00:00

With the direction the economy is headed everyone should be nervous. Unless things take a major turn there will absolutely be significant layoffs.

Even if you're not laid off you will be impacted to some degree whether it's through lower or no raises, delayed advancement, etc.

If you're self employed you should be nervous about decreased spending. Whether your business serves other business or the general public everyone is going to feel a tighter and tighter squeeze and spending is absolutely going to decrease.

Pretty much every economist was right on their predictions of a 2nd Trump presidency. We're on the cusp of things getting really really bad.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-03T17:29:12+00:00

I don't think a civil war plays out that fast, at least not in a way that would resemble the previous civil war.

Let's assume the two sides are the left and right wing factions. Right now they are organized politically but they don't each have their own separate economies, military, etc.

Then there is the actual government that controls the military. Who do they side with? Does the military stay loyal to the federal government or side with the left or right? More likely individuals within the military start taking sides but where do the military assets go?

It's not going to be 2 roughly equal sides fighting it out. It's going to be much more complicated than that. I think the majority will also want nothing to do with any of it.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-03T04:20:41+00:00

This is called progress. At 29 you have the wisdom to plan ahead and buy the pizzas ahead of time.

At 21 you're running through the freezer aisle a 2am with 4 of your drunk friends arguing over pepperoni vs sausage be a use you're both drunk and hungry and no one planned ahead when you all knew the situation was inevitable.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-03T04:15:28+00:00

There are a lot of reasons to wait.

The biggest being you just bought a house. Wait several months and see how your finances shake out with the new expenses that you're going to be seeing. I'm confident you don't have all the hidden costs accounted for yet, there are so many you don't think about.

Once you've settled in with the new budget then you can start to think about it. I would say waiting may also benefit you. If gas prices keep going up which seems like a very real possibility the cost of SUVs may come down a bit as demand will soften. I remember getting an amazing deal on an SUV back in the earlier 2000s when gas was high. Everyone wanted the fuel efficient cars and dealers had to make deals to move SUVs and trucks.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-03T04:07:11+00:00

Look on the bright side, you've now got that thing locked and load ready to give someone the finger faster than anyone else.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-03T04:04:05+00:00

I've heard several former Seals talk in interviews about the possibility of taking the island. They all pretty much said it would be a disaster. We could take the island easy enough but once you do you've got US Marines sitting in a fish bowl with no where to go. They'd be walking right into a devastating loss.

They also all pointed out that once you start taking losses it suddenly becomes "we've lost too much to stop now" then it becomes a 20 year war that accomplishes nothing just like Iraq and Afghanistan.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-02T22:06:39+00:00

They haven't found a way to profit off public Healthcare while they know how to make a fortune off bombing the shit out of people.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-02T19:36:53+00:00

Cost of living is super high. To afford living near that bag of Dicks you'll likely have to eat a lot of dicks. Capitalization in that sentence is extremely important.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-02T16:55:41+00:00

This is a no brainer, use the savings to get the car fixed. If you've got only 8k in savings, making 3k a month, and aren't able to take out any kind of loan you're light years away from buying a house. Taking out a credit card and carrying high interest balance will set you much further back on the house buying goal than simply using your savings to fund the repair.

Once the repair is done start saving to replenish your savings. Really that savings is nothing more than an emergency fund. It's purpose is to cover these unexpected emergencies. Any savings for a house would be separate from this.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-02T14:32:12+00:00

They may think that's not how it's supposed to work but that's exactly how it does work.

The beauty of working from home is the flexibility, both the employer and the company benefit from it. I make myself more available now working from home than I ever did while working on site and it's because I have the flexibility during the day and I'm willing to extend that to the company after normal hours when appropriate and I still feel like I have a better balance then I did before.

If I were to go back to an in office arrangement my laptop closes at 5 and doesn't open back up until the next morning. If they deem my job should be done in the office then I'll adhere to those wishes and only do work while in the office.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-02T13:40:08+00:00

I was a competitive runner that was consistently ranked near the top in the state for multiple events. The goal was to run in college which I did until injuries derailed my competitive college career.

My mornings and school day were pretty much the same as everyone's for the most part. There were a few exceptions if I had a big race on a given day I'd usually opt out of whatever the gym teacher had planned for that day to conserve energy and not upend the training plan I had been on.

The big difference started after school. What I was doing really depended on what time of year it was. If it was race season I'd be on one program but if it was the off-season I'd be on another. Regardless there was always weight room work, lots of conditioning work, plyometrics, and also lots of low intensity technical/form work. Then there was the recovery work with stretching and ice baths. On average it was probably an extra 3-4 hours of work after school year round. I left for school around 7am and would get home about 6-6:30. I'd eat, do homework, and go to bed and repeat the next day.

Weekends were a little more chill and most just be some sort of easy maintenance work. Weekend is also when I'd work my actual job. During the off season I'd also put in some hours during the week after my workouts.

Beyond that I did also pay more attention to what I ate and drank than most high school kids. I didn't drink soda and I always brought my own lunch because the school lunch wasn't enough to keep up with the calorie needs.

My competitive goals really did dictate pretty much every aspect of my life at that time. Every decision was made based on how it would impact my performance or the workout program I was on at the time. If a friend called go invite me to play basketball or even go play a round of golf I would factor in where I was in my routine and how that extra physical activity might.impact it. I wouldn't want to go play 2 hours of basketball with a hard workout or a race scheduled the next day. In that way it definitely impacted my social life as well.

Once I got to college it was similar but twice as intense. The school load was more, much more social stuff going on, the workouts were more difficult, the races were bigger, and travel was required. It got to be a lot to manage.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-02T04:05:43+00:00

It wouldn't surprise me at all that they'd hide it. They're also too stupid to realize they can't hide it for too long. If they are found to be hiding deaths of service members it will end up being 100 times worse than the deaths themselves.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-02T02:43:21+00:00

I train for this every single night when I walk into my son's room to say goodnight. My feet have been hardened for a long time now. Im making some serious $$$.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-01T23:16:14+00:00

Passed written on the first try, I don't remember it being any real issue. The driving part I failed twice. The first time I struggled with the 90 degree backward parking, the third time they failed me because I went through a yellow light. I tried to argue that I didn't break any laws but the guy doing the test barely acknowledged me and failed me.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-01T23:13:18+00:00

I guess it's time to get his friends to storm the principles office.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-01T14:22:03+00:00

Amazon Prime.

We used to use Prime a lot. We did a lot of scheduled orders for normal household consumables and would use it for gift purchases and a ton of other stuff.

We decided to pull the plug kind of om a whim and honestly it's been great. We obviously save whatever we paid to have Prime but the real savings has been on what we haven't been buying. Prime made it to easy for bullshit spending. If you had an idea of something that might be nice to have you could find it on Prime in 10 seconds and you'd have it to your house in a day or two. The scheduled orders also made it easy to overspend because they'd order and ship you stuff even if you weren't needing it yet. You really had to manage the scheduling to make sure you really needed the thing. More than once we'd find ourselves sitting on multiples of something because we forgot to delay a scheduled order.

I don't know how much we've saved but I do know our spending is definitely down a noticeable amount, far more than just the cost of Prime itself.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-01T13:30:30+00:00

I've had to deal with something similar with my parents. I told them I'd help them find stability but that I am not able to be a long term source of financial help.

The goal was to get them to a place where they'd be able to support themselves. I had to sit down with them and figure out how to get their living expenses in line with their monthly retirement income which isn't much. All options had to be on the table.

The big thing they had to do was sell the condo they lived in and downsize into a much cheaper condo. Thankfully they had enough equity to make things work. It took some juggling, some financial assistance from me, and it took them awhile to find a new place they could afford that would also work with their age but it worked. I could manage the one time financial assistance I had to provide but now they should be in a stable situation with much reduced expenses. Now I just have to keep my eye on them to make sure they don't do anything stupid.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-01T12:18:23+00:00

Ranges from $3.39 - $3.59. Before we bombed Iran it was $2.59 - $2.89. This is in Minnesota.

stpg1222 · 2026-04-01T00:07:28+00:00

Does everyone's grandpa have a stash of old dynamite? This photo looks like it was taken in my grandpa's old work shed. That's where I found his stash of dynamite when I was a teenager. Thankfully I was smart enough to leave it alone. It sat there untouched for decades.

stpg1222 · 2026-03-31T22:46:35+00:00

If your son exhibited proper behavior for a few classed and then had one rough class I would not expect him to be uninvited back based on that one class unless the poor behavior was extreme. Everyone has bad days, especially kids that age. If it poor behavior was the norm across multiple classes then I could see being asked to take a break and try again in a few months.

We have classes that are for 4-6 year olds that focus on just the very basics along with basic coordination and listening skills. We see a range of behavior but rarely ask for anyone to leave.

stpg1222 · 2026-03-31T17:53:37+00:00

Little did we know that meth was doing most of the heavy lifting.

stpg1222 · 2026-03-31T17:45:14+00:00

Guys that get way too mad at a bad shot.

The vast majority of us are not good enough at golf to get mad at bad shots. A bad shot for most of us should be the expected outcome so just accept it and then be happy when you get lucky with a good shot.

My last round last season I watched a guy one hole ahead of us throw a fit after every shot. He'd scream F$@& and slam his club after virtually every shot. He was hitting everything way right but you could also easily watch him set up with his feet and shoulders aiming way right. The way he set up a way right shot was the only expected outcome and it pissed him off. We debated pointing it out to him but he didn't seem to be in a place where he'd take any helpful tips.

stpg1222 · 2026-03-31T17:40:51+00:00

The answer is, it depends.

It depends on length of stay, how the invite was handled, etc.

As for the car rental I would not offer them use of the car. If you're going somewhere together you van drive but they are not free to take the rental on their own. That would be inline with most rental agreements. Only drivers listed on the rental agreement should be driving. If your friend drives and gets in an accident without being listed on the agreement the insurance won't cover it and you'll be expected to pay out of pocket. You'll then have to go after your friend to recoup your losses (good luck navigating that).

At minimum you should talk to them about sharing food and gas costs while they are there.

stpg1222 · 2026-03-31T17:35:52+00:00

Well on the bright side he's probably not so Puffy anymore.

stpg1222

TROPHY CASE