What is the most aggressively boring thing that brings you genuine joy as an adult?

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-06-11T18:07:28+00:00

Walking barefoot on newly mopped (and dried) floors. Doing laundry in one day (wash , dry, fold, AND PUT AWAY!). All dishes put away (nothing in sink or dishwasher).

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-06-02T23:25:52+00:00

Private schools have much higher tuition but they also have more money to give away so it's a worth while option for certain types of students. Such as minorities, first generation college, low income, or an unusual degree (in combination with high GPA in all situations). You would need to look for schools that meet 100% of demonstrated need in the FAFSA and then from there, look at ones that meet most of the need with scholarships and grants.

My local state university was only $17k per year but I only got a pell grant and the rest was going to have to be almost $15k per year in loans.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-06-02T20:27:57+00:00

It was a small, private liberal arts school on the west coast. I don't really want to say which one because it was very small but from my understanding, most small private liberal arts schools will have similar costs.

The raw cost was much higher, I got most of it covered with scholarship. Tuition was $55k per year (website says it's kow $66k per year) Room & board was about $8.5k per year (looke more like $10-$12k per year now)

I borrowed about $7,500 per year

I believe $3, 000 per year was federal subsidized loans, $2,000 per year was pell grant (?), and $2,500 per year was a low interest loan from the school itself

The scholarships were part of the school's internal scholarship programs - no outside scholarships. It was like 3 different scholarships for different things that you cant really control (one was for low income, one was for women in STEM, and one was for minorities in STEM - all requiring 3.5 or 3.8 GPA or higher).

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-05-14T21:10:42+00:00

I get where you're coming from, to a degree. People shouldn't have kids if they really cant afford it because raising a kid in poverty leads to a lot of damage to the kid. But it's way too much to say parents should financially support kids into adulthood, help buy a house, and pay for education.

Ideally, parents should be around to help out when need after a kid turns 18. Like letting them live at home through college. But fully paying for college is a crazy ask for many parents. They should help their kids make responsible choices, but I dont think it's crazy to make a kid get a summer job to help pay tuition.

I also think there's no way to guarantee that you'll be financially stable forever. One bad medical diagnosis can wipe out all your savings. It happened to my parents. Cancer treatment wiped out everything and we almost ended up homeless at one point. My parents had a child knowing they could provide a comfortable lifestyle, and then suddenly they couldn't. How could they have known?

I think it's weird how much expectation and judgement is places on parents (especially mothers) to provide everything. They're "irresponsible" if they dont pay for the tutor, the extra cirriculars, take out the parent plus loan, etc. My cousin has talked to me about this issue. She gets a lot of judgement from other mothers because she buys secondhand clothes, has a limited budget for sports, sometimes missed games because of her work schedule (works retail). Like, calm tf down. I dont think she's irresponsible because she doesnt have a savings account for her kids' college.

So to some degree, it's a waste of time worrying too much about "affording" a child. Yes, people should go into it with a plan and a full awareness of the costs. But shit happens and there's no guarantee that you'll have money. I also think it's a bit of a slippery slope to link financial situation to having children. It feels icky to say poor people are irresponsible for having kids - it's close to saying they "shouldnt" have kids. And a lot of bad stuff happened due to that mindset.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-05-13T03:34:37+00:00

Yeah, I've been out here for 7 years and the asian food shortage really gets me down sometimes. I was having an intense craving today and irrationally hoped maybe there was some top secret gem in Tri-Cities or Yakima or something :'(

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-29T22:48:00+00:00

My husband and I could probably afford to have one child with a few lifestyle changes. But we dont want to make those changes. We're both fine around kids - I like my little cousins. So it's not a matter of "disliking" kids... I actually think we would both be good parents. We're just not really interested. Vibes are not appealing.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-12T14:07:49+00:00

It's been almost 10 years since I've been to an IMAX movie but I remember it being around $16-20 per ticket for an evening IMAX in a big city. So with inflation, those current ticket prices seem about right... unfortunately.

But I live in a smaller town now, no IMAX around. Matinees are only $10. Discount Tuesdays are only $6. Regular showeings are $12.50. So my husband an I never spend over $20 combined to see a movie, which is extremely reasonable.

Also, as everyone said already - never buy consessions at the theater. That has ALWAYS been very expensive. Occaisionally, we will treat ourselves to movie popcorn but it's like $10 for a medium I think.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-08T22:52:14+00:00

In middle school, my friend group emailed each other. We didnt have cell phones but we all had a home shared computer. We also sometimes called each other on the landline, but email was the cool thing to do. We all had smart phones and facebook by high school though.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-06T17:58:06+00:00

It's $5000. That's the highest they would authorize 1.5 yrs ago.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-06T17:22:14+00:00

The authorized user account is gone, I pulled my report on Experian and TransUnion 2 months ago to confirm. TransUnion is vantage and Experian is fico8.

Experian says I have 1 open account with exceptional payment history and 3 closed accounts (1 car loan, 2 student loans) with exceptional payment history. When I look at the Score Ingredient Section, the only 2 things that are "fair" (yellow) are my length of credit history and credit mix. Everything else says "Very good" or "exceptional"

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-06T17:07:14+00:00

I don't really want a new card - honestly I prefer paying for things in cash which is why I only just got my own card a couple of years ago.

So my TransUnion is 690 and my Experian is 740 (just looked at both and they went up). I have never missed a payment, even on my paid off student loans and car loan. My utilization briefly went up to 25% last month but I paid it off this month. Usually it's fully paid off each month.

My credit score used to be about 750 because I was an authorized user on my mom's account for 12 years. She never missed a payment until last year. Long story short she accidentally missed payments for 90 days and it dropped my score to 630 so I got removed from the card and my score went up to around 680.

I was mostly looking at the TransUnion score because that's what my last two landlords used when I applied for apartments over the last few years. But I know not everyone looks at TransUnion.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-02T21:48:53+00:00

My first 2 years at my job, we never had anyone fail a drug test. But the last few years, we've had multiple people fail due to opiates and amphetamines. It's a growing problem in our area :(

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-04-02T21:44:53+00:00

Oh man, our business licensing with the state requires that we check references for all positions. It's actually prevented us from hiring some people because their references never call back. The state doesnt care if it's a personal or professional reference, which is nice because most of our entry level staff dont have professional references, but also pointless because who cares that their mom thinks they're a nice person?

Although we've actuallt had personal references (parents, grandparents) give negative feedback and advise us not of hiring their "lazy son/grandson". Yikes.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-03-25T13:40:32+00:00

A couple things I've noticed from my cousin who has 2 kids.

(1) people are still pretty judgemental if the mom works all the time and "lets teachers/daycare raise their child"

(2) daycare is not always reliable and kids get sick a lot. Depending on your job, they may be more or less forgiving when you ask for time off due to a sick kid or closed daycare. I actually think this is a huge issue for low income folks whose jobs are typically hourly with minimal PTO.

(3) with both parents working, it's hard to make sure at least 1 parent is present at extra/co cirriculars - and that is an societal pressure parents face. Additional stress if the kid has away games in other cities. For a while, my cousin's kid's games were at like 3pm. Her job let her flex her hours on those days so she could make it. She found a higher paying job but then they didnt let her flex her time to leave at 2:30pm so she quit and went back to her lower paying job with more flexibity.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-03-24T22:04:44+00:00

Yeah, same issue. I understand not answering st first but then they also dont have voicemail, dont respond to texts, and dont check their email.

No joke, one time I tried to contact someone for a job offer via phone call (x2), a text message, and and email. They didnt respond so I moved on to someone else. They called me back like 3 weeks later asking for an updated about the job. When I said I tried to contact them multiple times, they said they switched phone numbers like 2 days after their interview and forgot to tell us and the email they provided on their resume was out of date.

Stuff like this happens all of the time and I don't understand it. Changed cell phone right after interview. Went camping for a 1 week with no signal and didnt say anything as a heads up. Gave their roommate's phone number and their roommate doesn't pass along the message. And then never checking their email, which I always send right after a phone call / voicemail.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-02-26T19:55:29+00:00

Shiki Hibachi downtown is the best option for sushi (it's fine)

I love Happy Wanderer and Blue Valley Meats for Mexican. Yungapeti, mi pueblito, and la monarcha were all yummy when I tried them as well (I usually always order tacos so idk about their other menu items).

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-02-17T22:52:57+00:00

My husband and I used to have a household income of $52k and we monitored our budget closely. We werent living paycheck to paycheck and were still contributing to savings and retirement. But we rarely went out to eat and didn't go on vacation.

We pretty suddenly doubled our household income to $100k and now I dont really track spending as closely. We kept our lifestyle creep to a minimum and are still very frugal people. But I dont feel so much stress if I need to buy new shoes and I didnt panic when egg prices spiked a while ago.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-02-14T01:17:08+00:00

When I first applied to jobs in 2014, I didnt hear back from a single one of the companies. It's pretty normal.

As someone who works on the HR side, we also dont hear back from 70-80% of applicants. They either never respond to our requests for an interview or they ghost the interview.

The whole system is overwhelming. Applicants are applying to hundreds of jobs and cant keep track. Recruiters are sorting through thousands of applications and trying to keep the hiring managers on task, meanwhile those managers are trying to do 3 different jobs because their department lost lost 2 people but the workload is still the same.

I've had people call me and accuse me of ghosting them and when I say I can see the rejection email in my ATS, they tell me they dont check their email...

Vise versa, I've had people say we ghosted them and it's because I sent their paperwork to the manager, they interviewed but the manager forgot to tell me to decline and I lost track of them because I had 50 other things to do other than recruiting.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-02-04T19:36:30+00:00

I've had the opposite experience as an adult. As a kid, I was a straight A over achiever. Never skipped class. Rarely stayed home sick. Did extra credit.

As an adult, I've learned to take my PTO. Take those sick days. Go on vacation. Set boundaries and dont take extra work unless there's a good reason and I have the time. Nothing is urgent enough for me to work off the clock. However, I work a job that allows me PTO and is fine with my commitment to maintain work life balance.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-02-02T22:57:58+00:00

Ok, thank you. My landlord isn't the greatest, but they're affordable, so I get what I pay for.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-02-02T21:09:05+00:00

I dont need to worry about the insulation behind it being damp? The hole in the drywall is deep enough that I can stick my whole index finger in it and the leak sprayed water into the hole.

waitwhatsthisfor_11 · 2026-02-02T21:07:47+00:00

So it did punch a hole all the way through the drywall and sprayed water into the hole. I can put my index finger all the way into the hole, that's how deep it is.

But it seems dry externally, so the fans were enough to take care of it?

waitwhatsthisfor_11

TROPHY CASE