How thin is a dollar bill

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. A sequel centered around Sturgis & Sons that also maintains a Dina’s Fulfillment Center plot line. So say Glenn, Mateo, Cheyenne and Dina be lead bill. Including the employees that would also give us back Sandra, Justine and Marcus.
It was unclear where Jonah and Amy ended up so I’ll say he moved back to Cali with her. Jonah gets the city council job but is ousted by some kind of scandal that he really had nothing to do with, but it was pinned on him. So they move back to St. Louis, maybe Amy takes a demotion to DM so she’s Dina’s direct supervisor now. Newly downtrodden Jonah applies to S&S.
Right there you have a good chunk of the principal cast without stretching the story too thin.
You could even start the first episode through Jonah’s eyes all over again, and how he would manage to still not do any work his first day at his new job lol that said, I personally think Cheyenne should be the new main character. You’d have to tame some of Bo’s traits or remove his character entirely but it would work.

For most of the dentists I have worked with, they all have billing problems. Wrong numbers/Did not file insurance claim correctly/Wrong item on the billing. Some of the financial ppl they hire don’t even take these numbers seriously. Last week I was asked to talk to this financial ppl for treatment plan after getting aligned with the doctor. However the financial plan and the numbers are so sketchy that the young man don’t have answer to most of my questions. He guessed around and corrected his own words all time. He also had to correct a few items when I asked about them. I trust the doctor but how could I trust his team who would handle my personal information like ssn/insurance/credit cards if they are not serious or detail oriented. I just don’t understand. And what was even worse is that this guy did not feel sorry at all. I emailed the doctor and he just explained to the doctor and not to me. I get it ppl make mistakes. What is unacceptable is the attitude. It usually takes thousands of dollars for dental treatment. Is that too little to be treated seriously? But I guess when it comes to business, reputation and trust does matter?

The US and Israel are like two intimate brothers. The US is a big brother who can do anything to please his small brother(Israel). Interestingly, The US was the first country that recognized Israel eleven minutes after its creation in 1948(under the Harry Truman regime).
From the beginning, Israel has got favor from world powers. Resultantly, it(an illegal state) got membership in the UN within a year due to its diplomatic support from world powers. Big Brother not only supported Israel economically and diplomatically but also protected its sovereignty in all wars with the arab world,
The US provided Israel with whatever it needed to become a nuclear power and tiger of the Middle East. With the assistance of world powers, Israel was able to build an iron dome. Despite military support, it also got financial aid to cope with inflation and economic crises.
In the past, Even the US fought with its arab allies for Israel with its military might. World power(US ) helped israel a lot to form its diplomatic relations with other states(especially arab, European, African, and South American states),
Israel is the only country for which the USA can even slaughter its thousands of troops for the survival of Israel state. In the current war, USA are fighting with innocent people along with Israel in gaza.
Till now, it has received 300 billion dollars in the form of military and humanitarian aid from the US. Israel is the biggest aid receiver of the US. (http://US.In) Their relationship has completed 75 years in which the USA has not gotten anything.
Why does the USA support Israel?
USA foreign policy makers think that they need israel to control all Middle East. I don’t agree with this phenomenon. Because they have been controlling the Middle East with the assistance of Saudia Arabia(leader of the arab world) for decades.
Moreover, Israeli lobbies have gripped all systems of the US. Most US senators got seats from the financial support of zionist lobbies. Anti-Semitic acts(anti-zionist acts) were passed by these lobbies. Many celebrities, media houses, government officials, politicians and businessman supports zionist organizations.
Zionist(Israeli) lobbies pour billions of dollars into US elections each year. Political Parties cannot come into power without the help of these lobbies. Current US president Joe Biden declared himself many times a zionist(so you can imagine from this example how powerful zionist lobbies are in the USA). Resultantly, the Republican and Democratic parties unanimously approve bills relating to Israel. The number of Israeli aid bills was proven quickly(during the current Gaza war).
However, the American nation has been opposing the US-supported Israel's genocide since the Gaza war. But the US keeps going against its people's wills just to protect the state(which has not given anything to the USA in return despite wars and hate).

I’m 20 years old about to turn 21 in less than a month. I make around 4,000 a month after tax and around 5,000 a month pre tax, a couple months ago i decided to apply for a cc with a really high APR (33%)but also 0% for the first 17 months. As months went by im now sitting at around 4,500 dollars of debt. It might not be much for others but this is my first time applying for a credit card, i’m also scared of the 17 month period ending soon which is in November of this year. What do yall recommend me doing ? should i apply for a balance transfer card ? close it ? i’m not sure what would be the best decision. i’ll list my expenses below so yall can have an idea of how much i can pay.
Monthly Payments
Car payment - 602 Bills - 320 Personal loans - 135 Student Loan- 109
I’m not including Gas in here but around 80- 100 a month.

Short story long my MIL lost her 3rd job since Covid, her BF that was paying her bills for a combined 18ish months between the last two job losses left her and now she’s about to lose her house. My wife wants to help her out and I get that, problem is we can’t afford her mortgage and our rent. My wife wants to move in with MIL to pay her bills. I’m conflicted here… on one hand I would do the same for my mom and would expect my wife to do it with me, I want that house one day in the future when she passes that’s a cool couple hundred grand in our pockets for retirement or we can eventually just buy it off of her before then. On the other hand she’s over 50 with no higher education and won’t take a job that doesn’t pay less than 60k, so she’s got a limited job pool and she’s already been fired from 3 of those companies. She’s not easy to get along with and that’s why she got fired from the company I work for after I got her a job and also why I leave Christmas dinner as soon as possible.
How do I go about this discussion with her and my wife, how do I get through this without ruining my mental health or even my marriage? I need a plan of attack and maybe even a contract. I want to write up some type of contract that states that every dollar I put into the mortgage is either paid back to me when she sells the house to someone else or gets deducted from the price that she sells the house to us for. Thank you all for reading and I’ll give any more info if y’all need it.
TL:DR mother in law needs help with mortgage so I might have to live with a lady who can’t pay her bills or keep a job

You're gonna lurk this page let's be real so let's get acquainted. the back of you're mind wonders what those galaxies and roses really go towards but you send them anyway cause you see a needy boy. The thing is you don't see a needy boy, you see a thirty something year old MAN that one point had a family. You see a thirty something year old MAN with his second account because he gave tossing44 to a hacker. You see a thirty something year old MAN that abandoned his job for no real reason and masked it under the thin veil of "for the adventure" when tik toks before that just prove its a cycle we've fallen trap for. You see a MAN who is an expert at making you feel sorry for him.
You see trolls such as myself in the chat yes, you've probably blocked me once or twice even but you guys ever notice how some of the trolls talk about the same thing and ask the same questions.. basic questions at that? Why did you leave the job in Edmonton? What happened to the camp job you talked about the entire way to Toronto? What happened to the music grants that supposedly sent him to Edmonton in the first place? Why are you walking okay sometimes but you're ribs hurt when you need money? Why did the original supports that got him to Toronto leave him or the chat? Why has he been so "sleepy" lately? All legitimate questions you guys should ask him as mods or his "friends" since he ignores everyone else.
He just talked about how this subreddit is here to talk about his days in Vancouver, and I personally can not give a shit about it. Boohoo I did coke, Im more pissed about how you lie about saying you physically cant take drugs but lie about it like tonight. But take a step back and think why would he think that is the issue when the issue is multiple things from multiple people? This subreddit DOESN'T ONLY post from the Vancouver days. The first Tik Tok I posted was from him in Saskatchewan. Bro shouldve stayed in Vancouver for all I care, wouldn't have hit my algorithm.
Joshy, ik you're gonna read this. You have time to go live for money, so you have the time to read this, especially with that 30 hour train ride you got paid for. hope the hangover isn't that bad, and you make the train, but the live tonight pretty much confirmed you lurk. I can't speak for others here, but I personally don't wish harm upon you. No matter what you do I hope you survive it lol. I liked you and was a fan, was able to see us getting a beer or something but now I hate you lmao. It pisses me off seeing people send their money to you when YOU know YOU LIE. It pisses me off seeing you play gullible people into thinking you are so hurt when, in reality, you're just waiting for the cheque to drop. YOU know YOU won't do anything to help anyone with that 50k mr mental health guy, prove me wrong. Treaty 6 is getting that cow and plow soon (you've talked about your rez before also on tik tok). Don't drink it all up like you did with your PCDs. I want you to tell the truth and stop masking mental illness as an excuse anytime the going gets tough or someone hurts your feelings. If you're man enough to have a kid, you are man enough to take the heat from your lies... But I guess you know nothing about either, right, bud?
You aren’t an advocate for mental health if anything, you're the DO NOT DO book. And if it is actually mental health I'll retract everything I said if you get the fucking help you need and get better man. "baddie battles" isn't a good substitute for prozac. 70 dollars for a blanket is a slap in the face for mental health. You say "indigenous people gotta stick together" but you wouldn't listen to an elder if he came to battle you on tik tok. Being a good dad is being an indigenous role model, not a C- tik tok streamer. Now All That there was someone attacking you, don't get that confused between that and constructive criticism like "maybe you should play guitar more for money"
Tiny seen it tonight, D seen it earlier, you have beef with Jordan L now but not before you got the cash. Glen Park played you tonight but he didn't on the way there. These are just of the few people that helped you and what happened? You said youre side about Jordan but youre out here deleting comments about D. People are seeing it everyday and you wonder why more and more trolls are coming. Soon I hope you see it. You raised enough to get back to Winnipeg in an alley. Congratulations on that you lil bitch, good thing you got ur mod to fall back on over there. When they have a job for you fucking take it. Hopefully they don't kick you out when they see the slip up but im not gonna be surprised if its "Rasing money for a ticket to Edmonton" soon enough. The trolls are coming in hotter, you're slipping up more trying to avoid the spiral and it's becoming harder to sell yourself. Sooner or later another bridge or 2 will burn. You've started a cycle Joshy and it's worked but people are catching on.
P.S was totally ready for that call lil bro, twice you threatened to call and twice I was ready. I'm ready to stand on everything I just said and some hope you keep that same energy if we do talk. when I got time I got time ;)
TLDR: Fuck Love Fighter, don't forget he is a man and not a teenager on the run away from home. and those who fund, support or enable him along with mods/friends should ask themselves the same questions we've been asking. Support a creator that is honest with its audience. Maybe send that galaxy to someone who won't burn you.

Short story long my MIL lost her 3rd job since Covid, her BF that was paying her bills for a combined 18ish months between the last two job losses left her and now she’s about to lose her house. My wife wants to help her out and I get that, problem is we can’t afford her mortgage and our rent. My wife wants to move in with MIL to pay her bills. I’m conflicted here… on one hand I would do the same for my mom and would expect my wife to do it with me, I want that house one day in the future when she passes that’s a cool couple hundred grand in our pockets for retirement or we can eventually just buy it off of her before then. On the other hand she’s over 50 with no higher education and won’t take a job that doesn’t pay less than 60k, so she’s got a limited job pool and she’s already been fired from 3 of those companies. She’s not easy to get along with and that’s why she got fired from the company I work for after I got her a job and also why I leave Christmas dinner as soon as possible.
How do I go about this discussion with her and my wife, how do I get through this without ruining my mental health or even my marriage? I need a plan of attack and maybe even a contract. I want to write up some type of contract that states that every dollar I put into the mortgage is either paid back to me when she sells the house to someone else or gets deducted from the price that she sells the house to us for. Thank you all for reading and I’ll give any more info if y’all need it.
TL:DR mother in law needs help with mortgage so I might have to live with a lady who can’t pay her bills or keep a job

Reposting here for posterity
Summary: Greens hits out at policies tailored for the wealthy, not the people; saying they are devoid of care and evidence. They said if they were delivering this year's budget, they would deliver the following by taxing wealth:

• An income guarantee for everyone
• Lift every family out of poverty
• More support for students or people out of work
• Extra help if you're sick or disabled
• Payments for families so kids can thrive
• More resourcing for the public service
• Free dental care
• Cheaper power bills
• Solar panels and batteries for homes
• Climate pollution reduction

Mā te oranga o te taiao, ka ora ai te iwi. Mō te takitini, kāore mo te torutoru anake. Ki te mana whenua o tēnei rohe, tū mai rā Ngāti Whātua, tēnā koutou. Ki a tātou e huihui mai nei, ko ngā moemoeā o te Pāti Kākāriki te take, nau mai, haere mai, whakatau mai.
Tenā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.
Sixteen million dollars.
That’s how much the coalition parties raised to win last year’s election.
Ten million for National.
Four million for Act.
Just under two million for New Zealand First.
Sixteen million dollars.
From property developers and business tycoons who have built their wealth by exploiting our natural environment.
To companies who profit from digging up our whenua and overfishing our oceans - activities that cause significant harm to our precious ecosystems.
Sixteen million dollars helped to put this government into power.
And in a little less than two weeks, the coalition government will unveil its first budget.
It has clearly been difficult for them to put it together.
To the right, Act is trying to fire all the people who make our public services work, while in their own cooker corner New Zealand First hoards 1.2 billion dollars for hand-chosen pet projects.
The Coalition has found half a billion dollars for new defence spending, but cancelled projects to improve buses and trains in Auckland and Wellington.
They’re borrowing billions to cover the cost of cutting taxes for wealthy property investors, because they’ve realised that the promises they made during the election campaign were slapdash and expensive.
Meanwhile, people with the least face ever higher costs.
Bus fares have already gone up.
Rents continue to rise, while the government is giving tax breaks to landlords instead of investing in more public housing.
So on Budget Day, when we see what the coalition has been able to cobble together, I want you to remember: sixteen million dollars.
What’s in the Budget for the people who paid for National’s election campaign?
And what could have been in the budget instead if Aotearoa had a Government that prioritised people and planet?
Because I am not here for the relative few who donated those sixteen million dollars.
I am here for the many, including the 330,000 people who trusted the Green Party with their votes last year.
And I want to thank you all once again.
Your voices will continue to be heard.
You told us you wanted us to fight for an Aotearoa where everyone can get by, where our native wildlife and oceans thrive, where we take bold climate action, and where we honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
That is what we are doing. And we will be loud. And we will be staunch as always.
I am here for those who cannot sit by while the government tries to take the country backwards on the issues that matter most.
While the goal of a smoke-free generation goes up in smoke.
While new coal mines are dug into our precious conservation land, even as the Prime Minister claims to want to achieve climate change targets.
While the few with extraordinary wealth get what they want, at the expense of everyone else.
The Greens have always been, and will always be, the voice for a different kind of politics.
A politics centred in justice through honouring te Tiriti o Waitangi, not using it to drive a wedge in our communities.
A politics that celebrates the potential our country could live up to if it was grounded in manaakitanga and equity.
That acknowledges the richness of generations of tangata whenua and tangata tiriti working together to care for our whenua and collectively enjoying the fruits of mahitahi.
Where we protect Papatūānuku out of aroha for her, and respect that her wellbeing is also what keeps us alive.
Where we share what we have so everyone in Aotearoa can live a good life.
Everything the Greens won over the last two terms in government with Labour was hard fought. Governments must make tradeoffs. But Governments are defined by their choices.
And right now, the coalition is making theirs clear.
If the Greens were delivering this year’s budget, I’ll tell you what would be in it.
An income guarantee, so no matter what, everyone has what they need to live a decent life.
We could lift every family in Aotearoa out of poverty, and give people the peace of mind that they’ll be supported if they fall on tough times.
More support for students and people out of work, extra help if you’re sick or disabled, and simple payments for families so all kids can thrive.
Free dental care.
Successive governments have let basic dental healthcare get so expensive, that forty percent - forty percent! - of people avoid going to the dentist.
It’s just too expensive.
In Aotearoa, we could choose to resource our public health services - funded by taxes on wealth, so that everyone can be looked after when they need it.
And if the Greens were putting together the Budget, it would fund our plan to make your homes warmer while cutting down your power bills AND climate pollution.
Solar panels and batteries for homes to store the sun’s free energy, taking pressure off the power grid.
But this year, with the help of sixteen million dollars from some of the wealthiest people in Aotearoa, National, Act, and New Zealand First have the privilege of making those decisions.
And I say to them, what are you going to do with it?
You have the choice to end poverty.
Or to give tax breaks to landlords.
To give back more to people who earn their living, instead of tax breaks for people who own more houses than they need, and who already get untaxed capital gains.
You have the choice to invest in solar power, or open up new coal mines.
The choices people make when they have power show us what they are motivated by. These choices define the world they want to create.
So today I want to talk with you about what motivates the Green Party.
Ko te mana o Te Tiriti.
Ko te oranga o te Taiao.
Ko ngā tūmanako mō ngā tamariki.
We are motivated by generations of movements and leaders who have pushed for the sovereignty of tangata whenua guaranteed by te Tiriti o Waitangi.
A partnership on which this country was built, despite the continuous breaches by the Crown partner.
The Green Party is a Tiriti party.
Our leadership is a partnership between tangata whenua and tangata tiriti.
Our work seeks to honour the commitments made generations ago, to prosper together.
Our commitment to Tiriti justice is absolutely integral to everything the Greens do - just as it is integral to the future of Aotearoa.
Tino rangatiratanga is at the heart of healing relationships across communities and reconnecting all of us with our seas, our rivers, our bush, our mountains, and our whenua.
And central to our vision for a Tiriti-based future, is our commitment to restoring and protecting nature.
Because nature is in crisis.
Just out these doors, and below our feet, in the Hauraki Gulf, the impacts of commercial overfishing and the pollution washing into the water from the land, has brought the ecosystem to the brink.
North and west of here, great kauri are critically threatened.
To the south, unique animals found in no other country, are at risk from the bulldozers of mining companies, unless we protect them.
Four thousand different native species are at risk of extinction in Aotearoa.
Four thousand.
We can turn that around, but it takes commitment. It takes effort. It takes mahitahi. And it takes choices. Choices that put people and planet first, instead of a cynical politics that serves the short-term interests of wealthy donors.
If the government chooses not to prioritise restoring the health of the natural world in its first budget, that shows what they are motivated by, and it shows what kind of world they are prepared to leave to our tamariki.
It is our tamariki and mokopuna that motivate the Greens.
Not just the ones born tomorrow, but those after that, for seven generations down the line.
Sustainability doesn’t just mean sustainability for nature, but for people too. This planet is our home. We need it to thrive.
The Greens have always been deeply motivated by care for other people, for communities, for those with us today and for those who will come after us.
We are motivated by every single child who goes to bed hungry tonight.
We are motivated by every single adult who isn’t sure how they’ll pay the rent or mortgage next week.
As winter hits, we are motivated by every person who sits in the cold, staring at the heater, knowing they can’t afford to turn it on.
Our challenge to the coalition government is to prove that you are motivated by this too.
Choose to do something about it.
The solutions to many of the problems we face in Aotearoa are clear. This week I had the privilege of meeting with rangatahi, and hearing about the solutions they want to see in their communities. They are THE experts in their own experience - and they know they need to be empowered and given better opportunities; not marginalised, patronised, ignored, and punished.
But the coalition government doesn’t like those solutions, because they don’t fit its agenda. They prefer catch phrases like “social investment”, to real data and lived experience.
A Government which says it is motivated by evidence-based solutions has cut funding to the world class Growing up in New Zealand study, and continues to ignore the evidence it provides. Like the evidence that 40% of children live in the most deprived areas.
If this government was truly invested in improving social outcomes, it would affirm and resource the experts who know best and have proven the most.
And that includes empowering the people with the lived experience of the systems failing them and their whānau. It requires removing all the barriers to wellbeing such as poverty and homelessness. We need to support whole whānau, instead of focusing on ‘fixing’ an individual after they’ve already been broken by poverty and neglect, and expecting them to rise above circumstances of deprivation that we should have all worked together to prevent in the first place. We need the solutions to be grounded in community knowledge and care. I hope this government is open to sitting with kai rangahau Māori and families to learn more about what really needs to change.
When the Crown has repeatedly failed to be accountable for the harm it has caused to whānau Māori, it is clear that we need an authentic transfer of power and resources - with a partnership of a strong public and social services sector working together, with communities, hapū and iwi, and whānau.
I have seen what works to support people off a destructive path in life. To instead become the best of themselves. There is a mountain of evidence about approaches that work where all other attempts have failed - particularly where there is deep trauma.
These approaches, like Kaupapa Māori interventions, build the strength of whānau and community.
Now for far too long, successive governments have been stuck on catch phrase politics, devoid of evidence or genuine care.
Policies like bootcamps for the young, benefit sanctions for the already struggling, higher criminal penalties - a punitive, petty politics that makes life harder for those already
excluded, and does nothing to keep communities safe and well. This is divisive, stale, cruel and ineffective.
When I have met and listened to the very people at the forefront of this cruelty, the impact has been clear.
Such punitive and dehumanising measures have instead caused even further disconnection and hopelessness. The Greens know that meeting trauma with punishment isn’t going to work. I want rangatahi to hear us loud and clear. You matter. Your whānau matters. You deserve dignity, a community and a country that sees your strength.
At a basic level, I think we all agree that identifying the causes of persistent hardship, and supporting people to get out of those situations, is a good idea.
And we all agree that the measure of a government’s success is whether it achieves outcomes, not how much money it spends on trying.
But the Government isn’t actually doing this.
Two weeks ago the Minister of Finance said her government will “use hard evidence to invest in what works.”
On that same day, the Minister of Social Development announced that people on a benefit will face financial sanctions if they don’t attend work seminars.
Let me be clear, work seminars don’t help people find jobs they’re suited for - let alone create meaningful work with decent pay and conditions. The Ministry of Social Development has told the Minister there is no evidence for the government’s cruel approach. Sanctions do not make a difference for the number of people moving into paid work.
And the evidence against sanctions is extremely clear.
Financial sanctions for beneficiaries, who already don’t have enough income to pay for life’s essentials, simply push people into further hardship.
That affects their children, their whānau, and their whole communities.
Instead, people need tailored support into work that matches their skills and interests, with a guaranteed income while retraining.
At the same time, the Government needs to invest in creating sustainable jobs that transition our economy away from fossil fuels.
Jobs with decent pay, secure hours and support for people to balance caregiving responsibilities. Jobs that support wellbeing for whānau, instead of seeing workers as just a cog in a labour machine.
When the Government rolls out policies like benefit sanctions, they are making a choice to ignore the evidence about the effect of their actions.
And it is our job to expose that.
I cannot say it enough: we have everything we need in Aotearoa for everyone to live a decent life.
We know what people need to rise up out of persistent hardship.
A warm, dry, affordable, and accessible home.
Healthy kai on the table.
The freedom to go to the doctor or the dentist when they need to, without having to worry about the cost.
And next week, the Government has a choice whether to put people at the heart of the budget - or not. If they don’t, they are holding back the potential of our people and our communities to thrive.
And we will ask, exactly who are they governing for?
The Greens are here for the many, not just the few.
We carry decades of political leadership with us, starting from the late Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald, through to our newest co-leader Chloe Swarbrick.
We are here thanks to the thousands upon thousands of volunteers over the last three decades.
The many grassroots-led movements who we are honoured to have worked with for the kaupapa.
We draw our strength from knowing we are powered by the many. This gives us the strength to oppose a government whose sixteen million dollars of political donations got them where they are today.
Thanks to our people-powered campaign, we have our largest Caucus ever.
And it represents Aotearoa more than it ever has before.
Green politics is the alternative to this cynical, cruel coalition government.
And we are only just getting started.

DISCLAIMER: I am a homeowner and consider myself a very capable person, but I am no financial master who understands all the ins and outs of how equity, and selling homes, and profit, and closing costs, etc etc, so if I miscalculate something in my very rough numbers below, feel free to let me know, but be cool.
I (28) own a house independently of my girlfriend (25). We’re DINKs (double income, no kids) with two 2 dogs and two cats. We will not be having children. I purchased my home for $206,500 and currently have around $170,000 left on my mortgage. My home is valued between $280-300k, so I currently have between $110-130k in equity. My mortgage (with insurance and taxes included) is $1250 a month.
A little about me, my number one goal in life is to retire as soon as possible, and live a moderate, comfortable life. I don’t enjoy my job and only do it because they pay me better than anyone else would and it pays my bills. I’d also be happy to live right where I am, in this home I bought for $200k, for the rest of my life, and don’t feel the urge to upgrade my living situation in many ways.
Long story short, I’m toying with the idea of selling my house, and downgrading to a home in the $100-150k range to either completely eliminate my mortgage, or reduce it greatly to only a few hundred dollars. For the sake of this hypothetical, I’m going to be assuming that I will have no mortgage after this move, but also did not profit on the sale. An even swap from my current house to the downgrade house. Now I have an additional $1250 in disposable income per month. Realistically I would funnel that money into any debts I currently have (mostly renovations to the home I would have just sold to purchase this one). So theoretically, in under a year, I’d be pocketing that extra $1250 a month.
So question 1: would you downgrade your home to eliminate your mortgage?
See below for question 2, or feel free to just answer question 1!
Say, after a year of using the extra $1250 per month to pay down bills and rebuild our emergency fund, we start funneling that money directly into a savings we intend to use to purchase additional properties. My girlfriend and I have always considered the idea of purchasing rental properties to create some passive income, with the hopes that we could eventually replace our salaries with the money we’re brining in from the rentals every month. This would allow us to retire (hopefully significantly) early.
Within 15 months of beginning to save, we theoretically would have nearly $20,000 saved up for the down payment on a new $100k house in the area. In my area, the mortgage would be approximately $650 per month. Say we rent it for $1000 per month, for a profit $450 per month. Now we’re up to $1,700 a month in profit ($1250 disposable income from having no mortgage, and the $450 in rent we’re collecting) from selling my original home. Now if I funnel all of that money into the savings, it’s only going to take 12 months to save up enough for another down payment on a $100,000 house. Rinse and repeat until we’re profiting enough to retire in x amount of years.
So question 2: if you WOULD downgrade your home to eliminate your mortgage, would you consider investing in real estate like I described above to work towards an early retirement?

So after months of job hunting, I finally got a job offer! I'm super excited, but also a bit nervous. The pay isn't amazing, but it's better than nothing and it's a step up from where I've been. I don't want to mess this up, so I could use some advice from you all.
The job is in retail, which isn't my dream job, but hey, beggars can't be choosers, right? The offer is for part-time work, around 20-25 hours a week, and the pay is minimum wage. The thing is, I'm worried that it won't be enough to cover all my bills and expenses. I've been struggling for so long, and I'm scared that this job might not be enough to pull me out of the hole I'm in.
I'm currently behind on rent, utilities, and I have some debt that's been piling up. I was hoping to find a full-time job, but this is the only offer I've had in months. I'm considering taking it and continuing to look for something better, but I'm worried about how to juggle that and make sure I don't burn out.
Has anyone else been in a similar situation? How did you handle it? Did you take a part-time job while looking for something better? Any tips on how to manage my finances while working part-time and still job hunting would be greatly appreciated. I'm trying to stay positive, but it's tough when you're constantly worried about money.
Also, if anyone has tips on budgeting or any resources that could help me stretch my dollars further, please share. I'm open to any and all advice. Thanks in advance for your help!

TL:DR I (17M) want to live with my dad and I'm not sure if the court will rule in my favor. my mom is a bad person and a bad influence on me and I live at my psycho grandmas house (because my mom didn't pay the bills and the bank took my old house ) she wont let me do simple things and is slowly ruining my life. and i don't have a room I sleep in the basement with my dad and brother with no privacy. I really want to live with my dad especially since the summer is coming and I cant live here everyday for the summer and I'm really worried about everything. So tell me if I'm screwed or not. if you have any info on how the courts decide custody in CT please let me know and if there is anyway to have my father get full custody over me or just let me live with him full time until either my mom gets her own house or just for the summer. everyday my mental health decreases so its only a matter of time until I break
So I'm going to try to keep this as short as possible but a few months ago with my moms terrible money management lost our family's house and we moved in to my grandmas house on my moms side. Me my dad and mom and my brother all moved in and we all though everything would be fine and in a few months we would move out. But after moving there I found out that my grandma was a bi polar psycho who wont let me do most things. Using the kitchen, taking showers, doing the laundry, playing games, going out with friends, pretty much she was being a complete asshole about everything. I know that we moved to HER house but its too extreme. my Parents said they would pay for any extra bills that would rise because we are there but nope she remained weird its gotten a little better over time but is still unmanageable. And my life from when I lived at my house compared to this is drastically different. Im always worried and im pretty sure im devolving depression or something like that. Im 17 and I'm trying to figure out everything and start making some important decisions and if I stay here for the summer idk how I'm going to turn out. Im misarable here and I would rather be doing anything else then keep living here. I also live in the basement with my dad and brother and don't have any privacy like I used to. that's just the living situation and there's a lot more Its just to much to say. but after we moved 1 month later my mom decided to divorce my dad completely throwing everything off. so my dad started panicking to get a lawyer and find somewhere else to live by the end of june and by the looks of it he should be good but now I want to live with my dad full time I absolutely hate it here and want to move out so bad but with the divorce there is custody so idk where im going to end up IDK what im gonna do if I have to live here till im 18 (my birthday will be next year) I might just lose all drive to do anything anymore. so me and my dad made plans to say in the court to hopeful get me to live with him atleast till the end of the summer. because I know the courts favor the mother so im really scared and worried. also just in general I have always disliked my mother she has 0 money management and lost the house I lived in for 16 years and never has done anything to try and keep it while my dad did everything he could to save it. Selling all his nice cars, quitting addictions, selling things he enjoys and making countless sacrifices and it turned out to be for nothing while my mom bought her a brand new 50000 dollar car and just keep spending money not paying bills and she acted normal like nothing is wrong. But my mother is a lying manipulating piece of shit that I don't like. and if im forced to live with her and my grandma idk what im gonna do. they don't listen to me or any of my dreams and only care about me for the status and money. with my dad he cares for me listens to me we have same interests we think the same and always encourages me to follow my heart. so I need some advice so I know if my dad will win the coustudy. Right now my mom will get full custody over me and if she does I will freak-out and make her life misrable until she gets her own house but she wont because she cant handle money. so can someone give me more info on how courts work I cant find a definite answer. also my dad will get his place before the divorce is final so could I move in there before the divorce is final? or will the court not let me. all of this is stressing me out way to much and im trying to finish my junior year on a good note. so please if anyone knows anything or has anytips on how my dad canfull custody over me or just get me to atleast live with him full time till my mom either gets her own place or just till the summer. and I know the custody will go 50 50 just because thats how the state court works in (CT) but I would rather not have to move all my stuff around every other week or how ever they decide it. I have things to say to the court to hopefully live with my dad but I'm just so unsure and I'm really starting to panic. so please tell me if I'm screwed or I'm gonna be fine. I've heard that at 17 I get the choice to live where I want but I cant find a definite answer proving that

Dude if they all disappear and there's no change in mass then it's probably a blessing that souls go to the one they love not that one that slays them. So don't ever think me an unjust god because some bitch forced a Shapeshifter that was just born into a trap which is why all on the CW are dead to me for constantly trying to aquire psychics to bleed and gut each with stolen organ, but once again it there I'd no change in mass am I actually stealing or does the organ I've been hunting down go to the person in NY blood that you keep manipulation dats traffic from ever know what credit or those dollar bills ever mean? Too bad you didn't specifically that all the footage you have of my life is cross the Multiverse. But all that fucking Gorilla calculations I'd how much time he has to be in publicl to seem like he's not bleeding Aladdin.🦊♟️🌱

My dad, after a consistent and very slow decline, finally had a pretty good memory day today. He has what I guess is a "run of the mill" vascular dementia. I'm far from an expert.
A bit more than 2 years ago his wife passed away in early 2022. I didn't know, at that time, that he had any unusual health problems. They didn't tell me about any mobility issues, they didn't tell me about some of the conditions he had developed, and they didn't tell me about the dementia diagnosis. When she passed my dad just stopped taking care of himself, and he spiraled pretty fast. He spent a couple of weeks in the hospital while we got him sorted out and I was finally clued in to how far he had declined in the previous couple of years. I was able to get POA for his health and finances to help make decisions. A couple of weeks later the doctors said that he was OK to go home on his own with help from some occupational therapy, and a nurse visiting a couple of times a week. This was in mid to late April of 2022. By early June he was getting some pretty serious notices from utilities, credit card companies, and others wanting to be paid. Dad thought everything was paid automatically (said his late wife had set that up), and had been ignoring every bill that came his way. This was when I really found out how bad things had become. There hadn't been a bill paid in months, his wife had been using HIS credit cards for HER purchases, and as I recall it there was about $11,500 in credit card debts that she had left for him. On HER OWN cards she had about $19,000 in credit card debt (I never paid that, my dad was not a guarantor on her accounts). My dad's credit score tanked, and was flirting with dipping into the 500s. So I stepped in and took over. I'd never had to take over someone else's finances before, and thus began a whole lot of change in both our lives. There were mysterious bills that were getting paid from his accounts, his cell phone bill was in the hundreds, there were debts she had created; some he knew about and some he didn't. I had to do some very basic financial forensics to figure out what was happening. The list of her dumb-fuckeries is sadly extensive, she was just a financial-fucking-idiot. He had a few thousand dollars remaining in his accounts, but he had a consistent pension and Social Security coming in. I started prioritizing the debt into utilities versus credit, and started getting him set right. It took about a year or year and a half, but my dad became debt free, and developed a substantial savings. His credit score is in the mid / high 700s again.
He is good enough to live mostly on his own still. I call most nights to check up on him, run through the list. "Did you eat enough? Did you take your medicine? Did you get any exercise? Did you visit with any friends? How you showered recently?" And on Saturdays I go over to his house to refill his medications, take him shopping, take a rudimentary inventory of his physical and mental condition, and I take him to lunch, usually with my wife and daughter. I take his blood pressure, and report it to his GP via an online portal. I do a bit of picking up in his house, maybe clean some things. Remind him about upcoming appointments. This takes up most of my Saturdays. I also get him to most of his medical and dental appointments, work with his doctors and nurses, and manage most of his life. But I also have a house, a demanding career (where I have a full team to manage and lead), a wife, a four year old, and pets. Everyone and everything deserves attention, of course, but these days I feel like I am constantly trying to pour from an empty container. I'm always exhausted, and I wake up nearly every night afraid that I missed something. Did dad take his pills? Did we miss any bills? Is my daughter OK? Did I hear her coughing? Did I miss something at work? Did I miss a page out? I have to get up and check my work phone. I'm just exhausted, and burnt out on all of it.
But today... He remembered my daughter's name, my brother's name, my wife's name, and even the names of cousins. He remembered his friends' names, he remembered his bills, and where he put them. He was even a bit spry when I took him shopping. He cracked jokes. He was in the best mood that I've seen him in in.... hell, maybe years? He understood everything that I was telling him, and HE TOLD ME about an upcoming appointment that he remembered. And man... I needed it. I needed an easier day. It is like a little bit of the weight lifted. I know that it is just one day, and he might be having these good days on the days when I am not over there to manage his home, but I usually see more difficult days. It isn't a whole lot, but tonight it feels like the vessel I am trying to pour from finally has a bit of something in it, it doesn't feel so empty.

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

• Total budget (in local currency) and country of purchase. Please do not use USD unless purchasing in the US:

1500 Canadian dollars

• Are you open to refurbs/used?

No

• How would you prioritize form factor (ultrabook, 2-in-1, etc.), build quality, performance, and battery life?
  Battery life and form factor
  
• How important is weight and thinness to you?
  Needs to be pretty light, I’ll be carrying it to school everyday
  
• Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.
  N/A
  
• Are you doing any CAD/video editing/photo editing/gaming? List which programs/games you desire to run.
  No
  
• If you're gaming, do you have certain games you want to play? At what settings and FPS do you want?
  

Not gaming

• Any specific requirements such as good keyboard, reliable build quality, touch-screen, finger-print reader, optical drive or good input devices (keyboard/touchpad)?
  It can’t be MacBook, I need to be able to open exe files, and I don’t like macOS. Also, I like a good touchpad.
  
• Leave any finishing thoughts here that you may feel are necessary and beneficial to the discussion.
  I don’t know if it matters but I’ll be taking computer science in university. So I’ll be doing a lot of programming.
  

Original Prompt

Limited Time Offer
"Well, well, well, Mister Luck. How lucky are you feeling?" Mr. Pays caressed the back of Frederick Luck's neck with the flat edge of a long knife. They were alone in the antechamber of his hideout. Behind them was Pays's escape route and in front of them was a door that led to a bevy of police and news reporters.
The young man choked back a quiet sob but otherwise said nothing. He trembled on his knees which brought a smile to the haggard and scarred man's face. Mr. Pays removed the knife and slid it into the sheath sewn into his suit pocket. Then he pulled a metal band out and wrapped it around the son of the billionaire's neck.
"I hope you like this, fashionista that you are," Mr. Pays said in as soft a tone as his deep bass could manage. "Call it your own personal Luck detector. Do you hear that beeping?"
Beep...Beep...Beep...
"Uh...uh-huh..."
"Good. That beeping means it's armed. Do you know how much this little bomb cost me to make?"
The boy shook his head slowly.
Beep...Beep...Beep...
"Of course not. You've never known the value of a dollar, have you? This little piece of jewelry," he tapped the metal band with his knife, "cost me seven hundred dollars. But your ransom is far more than that. And if your father paid it, you'll be safe."
"I-I will?" Hope. It filled the young man's limp shoulders and bolstered his voice.
Mr. Pays knelt next to Frederick and pointed with his knife. "There are thirty steps from here to that door, Freddy." He patted the boy on the cheek and stood up, grabbing Freddy's arm to pull him up as well. "And if the police followed my instructions - which they have - there will be twenty more from the door to the car your father should have sent. Fifty steps. Does that number sound familiar?"
Beep...Beep...Beep...
"N-no?" Uncertainty. Worry creased the boy's face.
"Your ransom is fifty million dollars." Mr. Pays grinned. "This bomb," he tapped the knife to the collar again, "is tied to the account they were to send the money to. For each million dollars, you can safely take a step. If they didn't deposit it all, well...how much do you think your father loves you?"
Fear played across Freddy's face. Then resolve.
"Fifty million's n-nothing to my dad," he said, tripping over his own emotions for a moment.
"Okay then. Start walking."
Beep...Beep...Beep...
Mr. Pays stepped back and put his knife away. He crossed his arms and waited. Freddy took one slow step. Then another. Each successive step was faster than the previous until he all but slammed into the door in his rush to escape.
The door opened, and Freddy took two more steps.
Beep...Beep... BOOM!
Turning to the camera, Mr. Pays smiled.
"Hi! Killie Pays here, with a special TV offer!
"Are you tired of your victims surrendering to despair and giving up? Have you lied to them enough times that they just assume they will die? Well, have I the product for you!"
He pulled a metal band out of his jacket pocket and held it up in front of him.
"For just six hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents - or finance for six easy payments over six months at six percent interest -, you can get your very own customizable Killar. It's wireless, Bluetooth, and infrared-ready, allowing you to configure it to your heart's content.
"Sync it up with a bank account," a graphic of a bank appeared to his left, "or use its built-in pedometer and geolocator to set your own safe zones. It can be voice-activated, remote, proximity-based, or triggered off a code word. Do whatever you think it'll take to get that spark of hope back in their eye before the end!"
Mr. Pays extracted a thin booklet out of his other pocket and held it up next to the collar. "Call now and receive not only the instruction booklet but the Advanced Techniques guide at no additional charge."
Reaching out of camera, he pulled a man in a nice suit into frame and stabbed him in the chest with his knife.
"Remember, I'm Killie Pays," he said as he pulled the knife with a sharp jerk. Reaching into the screaming man's chest wound, he pulled out a thick stack of blood-covered cash. "And I make killing pay!"

Over the course of my 4 year marriage to my partner, I have arrived at the position that I was abused, manipulated, and functionally enslaved to a mentally ill partner.
In simplest form, the progression is apparently observable. She was diagnosed with cancer in October of 2019 while we were engaged. Due to the diagnosis, we moved up our actual marriage date (our wedding was still set for mid-April) to December 1, 2019. Her surgery was December 13, 2019. In my compassion for her, I agreed to move our wedding date up to offset her anxiety around who would be responsible for her if things went south with her surgical treatment.
Our first month of marriage was straightforward; she was on pain meds recovering from surgery, so the main engagement that occurred was me walking her up and down the hospital hallway as she recovered and trying to meet her base physical needs of hygiene, food, and presence. We stayed in the hospital for 2-3 weeks (with recurring hospital visits for complications).
Quickly after we figured out our marital living situation in her small 3-bed apartment with 2 roommates, our relationship devolved. Specifically, she was irritable because of the pain she was in, causing her to lash out at me with regular frequency for small things. If I didn’t put clothes away in the right place, didn’t anticipate her needs (without her communicating them), or ate the wrong food in front of her she would shout at me and decry me for my thoughtlessness.
These small, critical engagements were wounding and created a distance between us – and there was no upside. She was never kind, never paid mind to needs I might have, and started down a path of cultivating a root of bitterness in her soul. She quickly revealed herself to be venomous, hateful, and vindictive when she felt like she was wronged — and any observation of concern about our marriage resulted me in being accused of being mean or insensitive, even if I spent hours or days calculating the best way to share my concern (and I have a master’s degree in communication where I focused in studying disagreement — I know how to carefully package concerns).
During this time, I worked hard to provide for us, foreseeing a significant time period where I would have to be primary financial provider and caregiver. I increased my income each year we were married by around 25%, finishing our marriage at >$80,000 in yearly income, compared to starting our marriage at a modest $42,000 salary (including dramatically improving our healthcare). Frankly, I increased my income to provide for us in spite of the lack of support at home.
But to be clear: I don’t think it would have been particularly difficult to provide financially if I had an ounce of support at home.
However, the relentless criticism and expectation of mind-reading continued through the years. I rationalized this abuse for the first year of our marriage because of all the excuses to be cruel, she had a good one – she had cancer. I hung onto a hope that it would stop. Contrary to my hope, as the years went on – and our expenses climbed – and I continued to work myself to the bone – she continued to relentlessly critique and even started being more emotionally demanding, expecting me to take responsibility for her inability to cope with her emotions – I was drowning. She was asking too much of me. There was no deliverance from her abuse.
I was exhausted. In the peak of the abuse I endured at her hand, I was working multiple jobs, sleeping 10+ hours a night and napping frequently during the day around meetings and work, then coping with alcohol to numb myself to the abusive dynamic and fall asleep with no support from her. The only time I could approach her sexually was when I was intoxicated, with inhibitions lowered. The only time I could have a conversation with her was with a counselor in the room. Without something to mitigate opportunity for her to be cruel to me, either a mediator or self-medication, I was scared.
I lived at home in a constant state of alert and cognitive fatigue. No matter how I tried to make sense of my home life, I couldn’t. When she looked at or touched me, I would recoil in fear, anticipating some sort of incisive critique or demand expressed. Then she would criticize me for not responding warmly to her, exacerbating the cycle.
I couldn’t meet her needs – I was utterly exhausted. When I would tell her of the exhaustion I experienced in marital counseling, her responses were typically something along the lines of not believing me, denying what I was saying was true, or calling my exhaustion an ‘excuse’. I could interact happily with my friends… why not her?
I did not deny her demands were legitimate; rather, I expressed my inability to meet them because of how fatigued I was. I said ‘I can’t’ so many times. I realize her demands were small; affection, saying ‘i love you’, complimenting her. But it’s disorienting to be consistently berated and belittled by a person and then asked to compliment them and tell them you love them.
The push and pull of abuse is exhausting to a person who is not mentally because it does not make sense.
Further, in counseling I realized that I have forgotten that I have needs. I have lost the tools to even evaluate what my needs might be because, implicitly and explicitly in my marriage, I was told my needs don’t matter.
My marriage made no sense; I was obviously drowning, exhausted with the demands our life imposed on me. I was doing everything I could to get straight. I was in individual therapy, marital counseling, pastoral counseling, trying different antidepressants (4 in total – all with no effect), changing eating habits, trying to reduce my drinking, getting medical tests to see if I had health issues causing my fatigue, and being vulnerable in my friendships in an attempt to invite others in to process and move forward and figure out my marriage. I desperately shared everything I could about my marriage, hoping someone else would crack the code where I couldn’t.
None of my efforts worked. I could not get out of the exhausted state I was in. It’s worth noting here that within weeks of separating I almost completely cut out alcohol, got into a regular sleep schedule, was waking up at 6-7am every day and reading multiple hours (which I couldn’t do in marriage due to cognitive fatigue/distraction), and experienced a resurgence of energy. I have felt the duress I was under lift and lift and lift and the weeks and months have went on.
In retrospect, I was experiencing cognitive fatigue because I was taking the demands my wife was placing on me seriously, but no matter what I did I could not make sense of them. How could she not see that I was doing everything I could to make ends meet – the ends which she was imposing on me? I did not have additional energy left. She would ask me ‘Do you love me?’ and I didn’t know how to respond. How is my work not at least some symbol of love? My dream was to be a poor professor, which she knew – instead I was grinding myself to the bone, working in digital marketing with multiple freelance projects, picking up a bartending gig and a teaching gig on top of full-time employment.
The last straw was when she accused me of abuse. I took that accusation seriously, and weighed it against my experience. ‘Am I an abuser?’ I asked myself. I sorted through my behavior and how I treated her. I came to the conclusion that I may be a poor husband in serious ways; but I am not an abuser. And the abuse question opened the door to the question… ‘I may not be an abuser… but is there abuse in our marriage?’ And the answer quickly became ‘Yes.’
When we were married, I understood that she wasn’t going to work much for a while. However, she worked the bare minimum she could for 4 years, earning at most in a single year $18,000. As the years went on and my income climbed, our debt continued to climb as well. She was still contributing the same, yet spending frivolously on useless knick knacks for our home and a cat. As I packed up our home to sell, the majority of items were dozens of boxes of useless junk she’d accumulated.
She lived a life of mania around finances. We would go to marital counseling and she would regularly express, ‘I would rather be poor and happy than rich and sad’. We were poor and sad. Sure, my income was the highest it’d ever been – but we were still drowning, with debts climbing. At the end of our marriage, we’d accumulated about $20,000 in consumer debt between credit cards and personal loans.
It was traumatizing (and abusive) to go to counseling and be told by my partner she would ‘rather be poor and happy and than rich and sad’ when the factual scenario we were living was neither. She actively denied reality – both my lived experience and the reality of our finances – at my expense. It was killing me, trying to make sense of what we were going through but being unable to make sense of what I was being told and what I was experiencing.
Throughout this time, it is worth adding that she also leveraged my spiritual leadership to ‘set me straight’. I was in a conservative Evangelical space, believing that men are the ultimate provider in a family unit and primarily responsible for the status of the marriage. Because I was not doing what she wanted me to (lavishing her with affection), I was muscled into multiple groups and meetings where pastoral care intervened to restore our marriage. In the moment, I submitted to my pastoral care because of my trust for them and my faith in God. Now, I believe this dynamic was abusive; my pastoral care did not care in any sense for my soul; they only cared about fixing my marriage. No questions around ‘why’ my marriage was so bad were asked; only what was going on and how it could be fixed. I relish the thought of my pastoral care being held accountable for the abuse they exercised upon me during this time on judgment day, albeit through a shaken faith in a God that would enable this dynamic.
With my spiritual community, I shared that I felt like she was my tormentor; that she it felt as if I were on the ground due to exhaustion, and she was standing on my throat, telling me to ‘get up’ and ‘tell me you love me’; that our metaphorical life was a boat, sinking, and I was desperately bailing out water. All the while, she stood at the other end of the boat, desperately bailing water in and looking at me like I was a maniac.
And yet, because there was no adultery, there was no category for divorce. We had sworn an oath before God and were required to fix this.
As I reflect upon my marriage (and the ongoing divorce proceedings), a few things are clear.
She is an abuser. I don’t think she intends to be, but impact matters. She is mentally ill and unable to reckon with basic reality.
She is a manipulator. She manipulated my spiritual community against me. I was viewed as someone to be corrected while begging for help from my trusted friends and pastoral care, whom I now regret being vulnerable with due to their abuse and denial of my reality because I didn’t fit neatly into their thin theological categories.
She is an enslaver. In divorce proceedings, she is doing everything she can to get every dollar from me, leveraging student loans I did not co-sign, my continually increasing income due to my hard work, and denying every claim of dissipated assets she can.
It is truly a mind-breaking experience to see your compassion leveraged against you for money. I had to sit under an attorney proclaiming to a judge that, since I consented to move up our marriage date before her cancer surgery, ‘I knew what I was getting into’. That she is entitled to large sums of money (that do not exist; we never had more than $3000 in our bank account during marriage) due to that decision.
Even apart from the abuse, I did not know what I was getting into. Including the abuse, I am full of remorse for having invited such an evil, hateful person into my life.
This experience has been the most challenging to my faith. As I endured abuse from her, I trusted God in a few ways. That the compassion I showed would maybe be rewarded – or, at least not punished. That my spiritual community wanted what was best for me. That God was not a punitive, hateful God (like my partner). I do not believe this trust was well placed, but am open to shortcomings in my views here.
I struggle to consent to a God that allowed my experience to occur. I’m open and processing in some kind of faith, but I really don’t know what it looks like to find a place to put this pain and betrayal that I’m experiencing.
I am a survivor of abuse, and the abuse I endured was mind-shattering. I sacrificed everything to support a partner diagnosed with serious bodily illness, which drove her to hate me and deny my lived experience because she could not reconcile it with the hatefulness she cultivated over our marriage, choosing bitterness over any positivity for four years, poisoning my well-being in the process.
What I envisioned to be the most compassionate moment of my life — marrying a person with cancer and promising to support and love them — has become nothing but a symbol of pain and remorse. I envisioned a life where my partner and I would fight against the terror of cancer; instead she hopped to the other side, choosing her ongoing health issues as the ally and myself as the enemy.
It took me 4 years to realize it. And as she drags me through court to leverage every dollar out of me I can, my only regret is that I didn’t leave my abuser to her own devices sooner; self-pity, hatefulness, and a sheer disregard toward taking responsibility for anything.
I am grateful but drowning. As we are negotiating settlement, the end is near, and my abuser will soon be unable to execute any influence in my life.

First of all, I would like to say THANK YOU to all of you that showed so much love to my first post ever in Reddit!
Since my girl Millie got too much hate for wearing white and ruining the best photo of the wedding, I decided to write her sad story and share it with all of you. It's a LONG tale, full of ups and mostly downs (TLDR at the end of the post). Sooo, grab some cookies and popcorn while I spill the tea ;)
******WARNING******** The story features what I believe to be unsettling content (pregnancy loss) for some. It's hidden as spoiler, so please don't click it if it's a sensitive issue for you. <3
Our story starts with poor young adult who shall not be named (because I don't remember her name). God (me) had big plans and challenges for her, as she started with 0 simoleons in an off the grid island, with hopes of her becoming a millionaire. She moved in the big island without money, a place to sleep, a toilet, nothing. The challenge goes like this: raise money from beachcombing, buy a towel to sleep on, buy a bush to pee in, snorkel, plant and build a life from zero. And, under no circumstances communicate with another sim.
This challenge was too difficult. The loneliness and hardships, the struggle to just survive and find food, led this young girl to her death by drowning in the middle of the ocean. It was too soon, so God decided to try this challenge again, giving the new sim a head start.
That leads us to the protagonist of the story, Millie Carson.
Millie Carson is a young adult who moved in the same island, like a castaway. All she found on that island was a towel, some planted trees, a toilet bush and a grave.
The ghost from the grave came often to haunt and tease her and finally became her enemy.
At first, young Millie tried to stay away from other sims but, since they kept coming and visiting, God decided that it was ok for her to have some friends.
Millie's neighbors were Miki and Ali, a happy couple with two babies. They kept visiting and bringing food to their poor young neighbor, since she was struggling so much. Millie grew close with Ali, who came swimming to her island sometimes.
Meanwhile, Millie learned some skills that earned her some money and food. She became really good at fitness, gardening and fishing. Little by little, she earned enough money to buy diving supplies and took up some diving photography and treasure hunting. All those helped her build a tiny wood home which finally had a toilet and a shower and even a fridge. Life was getting better for Millie, until she started having feelings for her married neighbor...
Millie was attracted to Ali: his long blond hair, his green eyes and dark skin. To her surprise, Ali was interested in her as well. She tried to fight it but it was over her own power to resist. They made sweet woohoo and became a couple, while he was still married with two kids.
Love makes you do stupid things and that's what happened to Millie. She fell in love with a married man and, surprise surprise, she got pregnant with his kid.
While on her 1st trimester, she visited her neighbolover's home to tell him the news. His wife, Miki, opened the door and the sight was unbelievable: She was pregnant as well, on her 3rd trimester. Millie chatted with Miki as nothing was wrong and even socialized with her kids for a bit. But it was now time for Ali to learn the truth. Millie pulled him aside and told him everything.
To her surprise, Ali was content with being a parent to their child. Millie felt his support and fell even harder for him, causing her to do the unthinkable: Woohoo with him all over his tiny house while his wife and two kids were inside! They woohood EVERYWHERE: The small single bed, the kitchen sink, the counters, standing... They almost got caught by Miki, but hopefully she was so pregnant that it took her an eternity to reach the woohoo spot.
Millie started thinking about their future. Tormented by her jealousy, she asked Ali about Miki. Miki's super pregnant belly was an indicator that Ali still loves and woohoos with his wife, two-timing both women. To her dismay, Ali confessed his love about Miki, but he was willing to keep his relationship with Millie. But that wasn't enough for Millie...
Without hesitation, Millie served Ali an ultimatum: It's her or Miki. No love triangles, no hiding. Her kid needed a father and she needed support as a poor young woman. All those pregnancy hormones made her unreasonable - she came between a happy couple and now she felt that her lover's wife stole him from her, even though they were already together! The irony!
Millie couldn't get over her feelings, so she invited Miki over and told her EVERYTHING. That she was pregnant. That the father was poor Miki's husband. Miki got even yelled at for sleeping with her own husband. Millie was out of control.
Like a tsunami, a force that couldn't be stopped, Millie called over Ali and told him to break it off with his wife. It was now or never. Ali did as told and suddenly Miki broke down crying, hating life and those two who ruined it.
Eventually, Miki left and the.. happy couple were finally alone. Millie asked Ali to move in and he gladly accepted. He even proposed and they stayed engaged until after their baby girl, Angelique, was born.
Meanwhile, even though Miki was hating them, she still came over with extra food like a good neighbor. But her relations with the couple never improved much.
The happy couple decided to get married. Millie wore a pretty but simple boho white dress, hair down and golden jewelry. But her joyful smile was the prettiest jewel she could wear. It was a lovely, quiet wedding on the seashore, during sunset.
Soon after, Millie got pregnant again but wasn't ready or happy for it. Unfortunately, there were some complications with the pregnancy and baby Donovan was born dead. They buried him under a lemon tree and cried for many seasons about him.
Ali started helping Millie with gardening, fishing and diving. But his dream was to finally earn his degree in Communications. He still had 3 classes to pass and then he could enter the PR world. He soon earned his degree with a low to medium score and was ready to start working. There was a huge problem, though...
The island was off the grid and he could not apply for the job, not use the very much needed internet. A decision had to be made: Should they live on this island forever, living off the land, or they should move somewhere else and follow Millie's dream to become millionaires?
The choice was easy. The couple moved to Finchwick, in a big cottage house with a big garden, front and back. They brought with them the plants they had gardened with so much love and also bought some chickens. Life was good for a while, baby Angelique was growing but woohoo life was... fine.
Ali found a job in PR and had to work all day, even from home. He had to polish his charisma and writing skills and meet new people. So, that made Millie a stay at home mom, a gardener, a housekeeper. But there was no time for her lifestyle needs: outdoor living and working out. She became frustrated and was always in a bad and uncomfortable mood. She had gained a lot of weight from her pregnancy, she hardly recognized herself in the mirror...All this bad mood made her cranky. Everytime Ali tried to woohoo with her, she had no drive. So, their love life went down the drain...
Meanwhile, Ali was doing great at work, earning at least 2000 simoleons per day. He had met many people, and one of them became a really good friend of his. His name was Gabriel and he was thin, with black short hair, dark skin and modern makeup.
Ali was tormented by his feelings when he hang out with Gabriel. He couldn't understand how a man can be attracted to another guy like that. He was open to the idea, but had never acted upon it. It wasn't the looks - Gabriel was pretty basic. But there was something about the both of them that made him feel... amazing. The attention he got from Gabriel, the friendship.. It was like they knew each other from another lifetime.
Every time Gabriel came over, Ali got excited. He was interested in his words and inner world, not only his appearance. One night, he couldn't take it anymore. While they were talking the backyard table, Ali started flirting with Gabriel. Things got heated fast and they shared the most beautiful first kiss. That was exactly what he always wanted to feel, but was missing from his other relationships. He proposed to have woohoo in the home office, while Millie and Angelique were sleeping unaware upstairs...
They woohood hard and many times. It was a total WoohooFest. Morning came and Ali, having not slept at all, got ready to go to work. He didn't forget to kiss his wife goodbye, but he spent the entire day thinking about Gabriel. By night, he had decided to ask Gabriel to become his boyfriend.
Millie on the other side, was getting better. She bought a walking machine and she often went swimming in the river. Her woohoo drive was coming back strong and that meant more time with her beloved husband. They started woohooing more often, but Ali was also missing Gabriel...
God suddenly had an idea! Ali should ask Millie to have expanded woohoo with someone else, and that someone else couldn't be other than (yes, you guessed it) Gabriel. Ali went on and asked his wife and God told her that yes, it would be fun! So, unaware of God and her husband's plans, she happily accepted to engage in multiple sim woohoo...
Ali was so excited! He couldn't believe his ears! He immediately called over Gabriel and explained the situation. Gabriel accepted as well and it was time for Gabriel to meet with Millie. Millie tried to get to know him but for some reason he was distant. She tried to flirt with him but he didn't reciprocate. Millie got embarrassed and locked herself in her room for some time, to recollect herself. It shouldn't be so hard, right?
At the same time, Ali made his move on Gabriel and they woohood. Gabriel was more than excited to get together with Ali. So, why not Millie?
After Millie got over her embarrassment, she came out the room. Ali proposed having multiple woohoo and they did it. Everyone had a pleasant time.
After that, they got together two more times. But, the last time, at Gabriel's house, was the final blow.
Millie kept trying to flirt alone with Gabriel, not getting the message but, DUDE. He was NOT into her. It was heartbreaking. She tried so hard for her husband, her self esteem and again, she was turned down. A second choice. She didn't deserve it. And then, she though about it. The flirt between Ali and Gabriel. How they would have woohoo, the three of them, but Gabriel was rejecting her. It was time for answers...
Millie first told Ali to end the expanded woohoo agreement. It was too much for her. He wasn't happy about it, but he agreed. And then, she asked the million dollar question: "What's going on between you two?". Ali tried to hide it, told her they were only friends. But God was starting to feel bad about poor Millie, so had her ask again: "WHAT'S GOING ON BETWEEN YOU TWO?"
The answer was like a knife, going through her heart. Ali loved Gabriel and that's all she needed to know. Their woohoo life was non existent before and now had found someone who made him feel better, more... alive! That's all Millie needed to know. She went over to Gabriel and try to make a last, desperate woohoo pass at him. Once more, he rejected her. It was all so clear. She was the third wheel.
Her ego and her heart were stomped on the ground, like a cockroach. A beautiful, kind, hard working sim shouldn't go through all that. She headed back home, to the privacy of her bedroom and cried her eyeballs out. Ali didn't come home that night and went straight to work.
The next day, Millie invited Gabriel over. Oooh no, she wouldn't let him have Ali so easily. She would humiliate him first. He came over and she started yelling at him. Her face was red and hot, she was fueled by rage. She ending up giving him the beating of his life. When Ali came home from work, both his lovers were black and blue from fighting.
Baby Angelique started crying. She had woken up. Millie rushed upstairs to help her toddler with her needs, but Ali and Gabriel stayed downstairs. Ali tried to comfort Gabriel, asking him to stay. He didn't care about his marriage anymore. God led them to the hall upstairs, outside the bedrooms. They started woohooing again, right there, like animals!
Poor Millie, as she opened her daughter's bedroom's door, she caught her cheater husband in the act! THE AUDACITY!!! And if it that wasn't enough, when she went over to slap him, he acted like she wasn't there and went to woohoo in the shower with his boyfriend - AGAIN! WTH!!!
At this point, Millie knew it was time to give Ali the boot and kick him the hell out of their home, and so she did. After Ali's lover left, the married couple had a long, heated conversation that only had one outcome - Ali had to move out immediately.
So, he left and rented a one-bedroom apartment in the city. He also decided to ask Gabriel to live with him, and Gabriel happily accepted. A new chapter started for Ali but unresolved things were left in the middle with his wife that needed to be dealt with.
While all these took place, Millie had gotten close with celebrity Rahul Chopra. They became good friends and she was invited to his wedding. It was a one of a kind event because Rahul had a shotgun wedding with his wife when they were teenagers due to unwanted pregnancy. After many kids later, Rahul's eldest daughter, with the villainous valentine aspiration (long story) decided to break her eternally faithful parents up for fun. So they did break up, but they were so made for each other, like puzzle pieces, that it was impossible to not end up together again.
Rahul fell back in love with his wife and they decided to do it right this time. They planned the perfect wedding event in San Myshuno's park, during sunset. The whole family was there and their 2nd child, Philip (YA) would take the professional pictures of the wedding.
The ceremony started, everyone (almost) was seated and the photographer (and me) were preoccupied with taking the happy couples pictures. As the ceremony ended, the couple was ready to share their first kiss as husband and wife. The air was filled with confetti that floated playfully around them, the fireworks were set off behing them and the sun was showering them with the warmest rays. It was a one time opportunity to get the perfect picture. Philip got ready to press click. And then, she appeared.
Millie, clearly bothered and heartbroken by other people's love, made a run for the exit and ruined Philip's perfect photograph. The angry look on her face would forever haunt Philip's mind. Why would that woman ruin this happy moment and why the hell would she wear white at someone's wedding? I mean, you wouldn't mistake her for the bride, who wore an expensive wedding gown, but still... Something was wrong with this girl and Philip had to find out...
After the wedding, Millie went back home. The days passed and the divorce was not finalized. She asked her kid who she wanted to stay with, but without reply. She called Ali over, but he texted back he didn't want to come over. Millie had her -now child- daughter call over her dad. This time, Ali responded positively and soon after he arrived. Millie took him straight to the lawyers to see who will get custody of Angelique.
This time, God had no plans, God left it all to luck. So, unfortunately, Ali won custody of Angelique, who immediately went to live with him. Now, Millie was alone. Only her and her money and her baby son's grave in the front yard. Now she was angry, NOW HE WOULD PAY.
Millie grabbed Ali and went once again to the lawyers. It was now time to split the estate. At least 100k simoleons in the bank, plus whatever the house is worth. Millie wants to get everything, but once again, God won't interfere. She comes back home, head down, beaten - she lost 80k.
She turns to her new friend, Philip. He is basic, but he's a good guy. He lives alone in an apartment in San Myshuno, studies Fine Arts in university, comes from a good family. He also has a girlfriend that lives across the hall from him, but Millie doesn't know. And God tells her to come onto him. Now Philip has two girlfriends and God must interfere.
God and luck are playing games with Millie's life.
As I'm writing her story, there's only one thing I feel: Sad.
This girl started out with hopes and dreams. So I think that we should forgive her for attending a friend's wedding wearing white. Some God forgot to change her formal outfit and it was all she had to wear. She's going through a lot!
Her story ends for now, but if you guys like it I might write more about her life's adventures.
Also, what should she do with Philip? Let me know in the comments!
If you read this whole essay / story , you are amazing! And thanks! Hope you liked it! :)
TLDR: YA woman starts with 0 money in off the grid island. Wants to earn a million. Gets pregnant by married neighbor with kids. Marries him and they buy new home. They get pregnant second time, lose the baby.He gets a good job, meets new people, gets new guy friend, has woohoo with that friend. The 3 of them have expanded woohoo. Woman breaks it off. Woman confronts husband about loving other man, he confesses he loves him. Woman kicks him out and he lives alone in flat. The other guy moves in with him. Woman heartbroken, goes to friends wedding wearing white, is angry at happy couple's love, ruins the married couple kiss photo. Photo becomes famous on Reddit. Woman loses custody of only child. Woman loses 80k simoleons after splitting estate. Woman becomes girlfriend of the photographer from the friend's wedding. Photographer already has another girlfriend.
*****EDIT*********** I can't believe I forgot to write this, but Millie also drowned in the ocean while being fatigued from diving for treasures. I decided to not save and give her a second chance. Her life is dramatic, UUUUUUGH!!!!

I worked at a marketing company for 4 years that was massively successful at first but is now facing bankruptcy thanks to the 2 co-founders making a series of horrible business decisions
These egotistical douchebags cared more about hyping themselves up than actually improving their product
When times were good, they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into courses, masterminds (so they could get selfies with ppl like Russell Brunson and Dan Kennedy), company retreats, hiring a bunch of new employees so they could get on the INC 5000 fastest growing companies list…
And they even dropped over 100k making a documentary about their company, and the doc did NOT generate ONE SALE.
It’s like they were high off all the schmoozing and marketing assets that propped them up as “industry leaders”
The team would be scrambling trying to finish one project at bare minimum quality, and then the bosses would be like “hey we’re gonna start another podcast” and it’s like BRO let us work on actually IMPROVING the service rather than feed your narcissistic shiny object syndrome!!
And then when the economy took a dive all the shortcomings in their business came to light and clients started dropping like flies.
The bosses blamed it all on the recession, but the truth is, they were so shortsighted they thought their business was recession proof
Turns out a lot of their initial success was due to luck and confidence, not actually providing a valuable service to clients.
So the layoffs started. I survived round 1. They actually gave me a raise shortly after, and then did temporary pay reductions 2 months after my raise lol. (They basically gave me a raise and then took it away.)
I worked my ass off trying to do my part to keep the company afloat but it was a sinking ship. There were several more layoffs after that, so I wasn’t surprised when my time was up. But get this:
During the call, I asked them “Ok, what do I need to know for off boarding?”
And they had no answer. They’d laid off dozens of people at this point and didn’t have the decency to write some bullet points on a google doc to go over next steps. Fucking unprofessional losers.
They literally said, “We hadn’t really thought about it, but what would be very helpful for US is if you could send over any information you have that could help us take over your assignments”
I responded, “No. I need to put my energy into finding a job, not teaching you how to replace me”
So yeah, these two narcissistic douche bags who ran their company into the ground and kept bragging about how they landed on the INC 5000 fastest growing companies list are now facing bankruptcy, and had to layoff their entire US team, except for two or three people.
Here are some more grievances I want to rant about:
They once threw a company retreat with the sole intention of making a documentary and use us as props to hype themselves up. They hired a videographer to record us for their documentary and got everyone on the team to give testimonial interviews talking about how amazing our bosses are. It was incredibly emotionally manipulative. The video is still on YouTube and they ended up laying off all but 2 employees in that video.
they would always say “we’re like a family here” and I begged them to stop saying that bc it’s a massive red flag to new hires but of course they didn’t listen or care.
One of my bosses thought he was a sales Psychology god and charged $500 an hour for his consulting.
(he always bragged about how he was once so poor he had to sell plasma to pay the light bill. He portrayed himself as a self-made man. Well turns out his dad actually wrote him a big check so he could start his first business lol.)
This douche nozzle used to always say: “Money is like a good woman. If you don’t treat her right, she will leave you and find someone else who will.” well, guess what his girlfriend left him and now he’s facing bankruptcy lol.
About a year into my employment, I lost a lot of weight and it was noticeable on a zoom call and my other boss said I had gotten a lot “sexier.” Fucking creep
That same creep once moved into a penthouse apartment in Chicago, and gave the team a virtual tour bragging about how he had “made it” Meanwhile, nobody on that call was making enough money to afford basic expenses.
Anyways, I’m just excited to be out of that industry. The whole “grindset marketing podcast bro” phenomenon needs to fucking die once and for all
EDIT: I’m not going to individually DM every last person who comments asking about the company it’s just too much I’m sorry guys

Back in 2016, I was working at a roadside diner west of St. Cloud, Minnesota. Neat little place, had a bit of a 60’s vibe to it, but without the hairdo. On the slow hours of the day, or whenever we just had locals around, I’d be humming along with the chefs playing radio out of the kitchen. It wasn’t an exciting time, but it was nice to have a workplace that felt like a second home.
A couple of weekends a month, we had an all-night crew to serve passing truckers. You usually never had to do more than one shift though, and we got to make own schedules. Our boss was pretty hands-off. It was during one of those shifts, at the first week of early summer, that my life took a turn for the worse – and I didn’t even realize it.

We were used to having the occasional odd customer during those hours of the day. When this guy walked in, I didn’t know what to think. He was about 6’2, bald, and pale as chalk. He wore this worn-out t-shirt that looked like it’d been on fire. With every step, he dragged his feet, and collapsed in one of our booths, seemingly exhausted.
I looked back at the chef, and he just shrugged. Guy wasn’t hurting anyone, but he didn’t look like he was all there. But a job’s a job, so I went up to him.
“You alright there?” I asked.
He looked up at me like I was speaking a foreign language, then sunk his head back down, gently shaking it.
“Nah,” he said. “I, uh… I don’t think I am.”
He had this voice on the knife’s edge between a hysterical laugh and a howling cry. He was trembling.
“You need me to call someone?”
“Call?”
“Yeah, call someone.”
“How?”

I didn’t understand the question. I figured he was coming down from some kind of binge, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. I asked the chef to get me a side of bacon to keep the guy calm while I called the police.
As I slid the plate over to him, he sunk his face into his hands, sobbing.
“T-thank you,” he cried. “I-I’m… please…”
I sat down across from him, instinctively reaching out to grab his hand. He let me. Even at a light touch, I could feel the scars on his palm and fingertips. Whatever’d happened to him, it must’ve been awful.
“I can’t go back,” he sniffled. “Don’t make me go back. I can’t. Please, I can’t.”
“You’re not going anywhere. It’s okay,” I smiled. “You’re safe here.”
“Can you help me?” he asked. “Can you keep him out?”
“I’m sure we can figure it out,” I nodded. “Just eat up. It’s okay.”

His fingers trembled as he tentatively bit off a piece of bacon. His teeth were black, and he flinched.
“I need time,” he said. “I need time to run.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “We’ve called for help.”
“I just… I just need time.”
We just sat there for a while. He calmed his breathing but kept staring out the window. I could tell he was looking for something – or someone. All I could see was a road and a handful of moths. We sat there for some time, in silence, as he carefully nibbled on the slices of maple bacon.
As two police officers entered the diner, he got up from his seat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bundle of scrunched-up trash. A couple of singles, a plastic card, dirt, and something resembling animal bones. He tried to straighten out the bills, pushing them into my hands along with the laminated card.
“Just… I need time. I’ll come back. Please.”
I didn’t understand. I just nodded and accepted it. Seconds later, the officers asked him to step outside and explain the situation. I got busy taking orders from a couple of passing truckers, watching glimpses of the scene through the window. A couple of minutes later, the strange man was taken away.

My shift ended at sunrise. I dragged myself to my car with a yawn, shuffling around my pockets for the keys. I hadn’t thought much about the items he’d handed me, but I took a closer look. I’d thrown away the animal bones and dirt, but there were a couple of dollar bills and that laminated card left. I checked the card first.
It looked like some kind of bookmark. On one side it was completely white, and on the other side there were dried blue flower petals arranged in a spiral. Kinda reminded me of a sunflower. And finally, there were the dollar bills.
I didn’t pay much attention to these at first. Just a couple of singles. But after a closer look, I noticed something unusual. There was a man on the bill that I didn’t recognize. It took me a couple of google searches to realize that this man was Walter Mondale – the man who’d lost to Ronald Reagan’s second run for president back in ’84. Why was this man on a one-dollar bill?

Before heading to bed, I put the items down on my nightstand. In a moment of silent wonder, I looked out the window. What had that man been looking for? What’d he been running from?
There was nothing out there.
Just a couple of moths.

Waking up the next morning, I had a full day off. I spent it cleaning my apartment, watching movies, having dinner with a couple of friends, and ending the night with a couple of drinks at the pub down on the corner. No binge or anything, just got a bit boozy. I was still gonna be in bed by midnight.
I took the scenic route home; a long walk. All the way down main street, past the lake. I took a shortcut through the park by the final stretch, speeding up a bit. That place was trouble.
As I hurried by the fountain, I spotted someone in the distance. A shrouded figure at the edge of the streetlights. I stopped to observe for a second, but as I did, the lights flickered. Coming back on, the figure was gone.
I chalked it up to imagination. I was a bit drunk, after all. Besides – it was small, like a child. What the hell would a kid be doing out at this hour?

A couple of days passed. I didn’t notice anything unusual, but I kept coming back to that distressing feeling of missing something important. Looking back at it now, I just feel dumb. He was there all along. Outside the supermarket. In the parking lot. Off the highway. Hell, he was outside my window at night sometimes, but just too short for me to spot.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
It wasn’t until one morning when I was driving to work that I got a clear view of him. I was crossing a four-way street, taking a sharp left turn, when I had to throw myself on the breaks. There was a kid in the middle of the street.
I hadn’t seen him that clearly before. He was probably around 6, maybe 7 years old. Wearing a plain black shirt and a pair of light blue canvas pants. Short black hair, dark eyes, and no shoes. That particular detail stuck with me. No shoes? Why?
I almost lost control, but I was lucky. There wasn’t much traffic, and I managed to stop further down the road. There were black lines in the pavement from my screeching tires swerving back and forth. Regaining my composure, I looked in the rear-view mirror.
The kid was gone.

But that was just the start.
I’d spot him every now and then. Looking out the window at work. At the gas station. A passing face in the crowd when shopping for groceries. Every now and then, something would pull on my attention, forcing me to whip my head around, looking for the source of that ill feeling crawling up my spine. Sometimes I saw him. And even worse – sometimes I didn’t.
I remember lying awake at night, hearing moths tap against my window. There was nothing else. Nothing outside. I patrolled my apartment six times, checking every window. I’d looked everywhere, and there was no reason for me to feel the way I did. I was growing paranoid.
And yet, in the morning, my front door was unlocked, and slightly open.

It all came to a head one afternoon when I was out on my smoke break. I’d barely slept for the past three nights, and you could kinda tell I was having a bad day. As I stood there, leaning against the side door of the diner, I see the kid again. This time just across the road, maybe 50 feet or so away. I’d had enough. This had to end.
I was furious. I stormed forward, calling him out with every slur and curse I could think of. I was psyching myself up. I was in the right, and I refused to be harassed anymore – kid or not. Didn’t matter. I crossed the road, barely dodging a speeding jeep, and met him face-to-face.
“What the hell do you want?!” I’d yell. “Why are you following me?!”
He was completely expressionless. He didn’t even flinch, no matter how much I pointed or screamed. I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes, and he didn’t even blink. He just stared at me, like a porcelain doll head on a swivel.

I wasn’t thinking about the bystanders though. A couple of middle-aged men stepped up, asking in no kind terms what the hell was wrong with me. I was held back and restrained. Someone called the police. Someone else called my manager – I’d forgotten to take off my apron, so they could see the diner logo. A couple of people filmed it. One of the videos got like 120k views in a day before it fell off the map. I still see it as a react gif sometimes.
It was a disaster. After a couple of officers came by to talk to me, he’d just disappeared into thin air. The officers took me down to the station – not to detain me, but to get me away from the heated crowd. That car ride downtown sobered me up to what the hell was going on. I was being stalked by this kid, but there wasn’t a living soul out there that would believe me.
Well, maybe one.
Maybe.

I was asked a couple of questions and released within about half an hour. They told me to go home and sleep this whole thing off. That wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t have a job to go back to anyway, according to the (many) texts I’d gotten. I had all the goddamn time in the world.
I was just about to leave when something came to mind. The two officers who’d picked me up were still waiting by their car when I turned back to them.
“Sorry, you picked up the guy I called in about at the diner, right?” I asked.
“Sure did.”
“You got any idea what happened to him?”
The two looked at one another for a moment, shrugged, and turned to me.
“Didn’t have any ID and gave a fake name. I think they took him to psych.”
“Psych?”
“Well, he was saying some, uh… strange things. There were interviews with a, uh…”
The two quieted down and flashed me a smile.
“There’s not that much we can say.”

Coming home, I decided to get to the root of this. It didn’t take me that long to find the place where the guy’d been taken; there aren’t a lot of mental health facilities in this part of the country. Especially facilities that accept involuntary subjects.
But my eyes kept drifting back to the strange dollar bills he’d given me, resting neatly on my nightstand. They were so detailed. A bit old, sure, but that only made them seem more genuine. What the hell was he doing with a handful of clearly fake dollar bills? Like, what’s the purpose? There had to be a purpose.
That unnerved me.

I managed to arrange a meeting. It wasn’t easy, and I think a lot of it boiled down to the police having no idea what could make this guy talk. For some reason, he kept providing them with false information. Maybe a familiar face, for one reason or another, might make him talk.
Just a couple of days later, I was putting my items in a metal bowl on the second floor at a mental health institute in the next town over. I asked one of the nurses if I could keep one of my dollar bills. Apparently, that was okay.
I was shuffled through a couple of locked doors and escorted to an off-white side-room. No décor, no locks. The guy was already there.

He’d been dressed down into these neutral eggshell-white garbs. It was strange seeing him in a lit-up room like this. I didn’t know what to expect.
Getting a closer look at him, he was probably in his 50’s. It’d been hard to tell earlier. I couldn’t get over just how pale he was; it was almost a complete lack of pigment. It looked sickly. His thin arms didn’t help – he looked malnourished. And yet, he was smiling.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello to you too,” I smiled. “You doing okay?”
“I’m… I’m pretty good,” he nodded. “Thank you.”
I sat down across from him and took out the dollar bill he’d given me.
“I wanted to ask you about this.”
“For the bacon,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, was that not enough?”
“No, it’s…”
I took a moment to compose myself. I had too many questions.

He sighed, took the bill, and looked it over. Looking back at me, I could tell there was something painful stirring in his mind. His smile slowly faded.
“Sorry,” he said. “I try to forget sometimes. It’s easier than making sense of it.”
“Let’s start with something simple,” I nodded. “Like… your name. Where you’re from.”
“Those things are pretty far from simple.”
He was looking straight through me; his eyes sinking back to deeper, more uncomfortable thoughts.

His name was Samuel, and he was born around these parts in back in the 1970’s. He’d worked as a telecommunications specialist out of St. Cloud back in the 90's. He had a wife, three children, and a four-bedroom house.
“But it… that was all before, see?” he explained. “Then it all just…”
“Just what?” I asked. “What happened?”
He looked at me, opening and closing his mouth, looking for the right words to come out. Nothing happened. He shook his head, trying again.
“It started with the street preachers,” he said. “Hundreds of them, marching on every city. All saying the same doomsday shit as always. World was dying. All coming to an end.”
“I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“Then there were storms,” he continued without skipping a beat. “Some would last for weeks. Others longer. Entire cities would be flooded or torn apart. Earthquakes causing monster waves along the east coast, sending shockwaves all the way to mainland Europe. Then, Yellowstone.”
“Yellowstone?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Lights out.”

Samuel was painting this apocalyptic vision of a world undone. Catastrophe after catastrophe. Hooded people marching the streets, screaming for the mercy of a mad god. But there was more to it.
“Then things stopped making sense. It’s as if the rules changed,” he continued. “Roads would stop leading home. Trees would change color. People turned twisted and corrupted. Like… one of our neighbors couldn’t eat anything but gunpowder. There was a woman just down the street who tried to kill anyone wearing glasses. It was… pandemonium.”
I didn’t say anything. What he was saying didn’t make any sense, but he was trying his best to keep his rambling coherent.
“The plants died. Trees too. The only thing that could grow in that environment were these twisted blue things that popped up out of nowhere. But people… people are what got twisted the most.”
He told me of these towering 7-foot-tall humanoid creatures that roamed the forests. Black as night – not even reflecting light. Arms reaching all the way to their knees. Elongated, inhuman things that all used to be someone he knew.

“The doomsayers all said the same thing,” he continued. “That God was a scared little boy, and that he was dying. Everything that was happening was just an expression of that ceaseless, bottomless, existential grief.”
Samuel looked back and forth, finally burying his face in his hands.
“It all broke down. Roads stopped leading anywhere. No power. No water. Julie changed. Ollie changed. Tobie made himself a mask and wandered off into the woods. Ira just… disappeared. And for… years? Has it been years? It’s just been me.”
“But you’re here, now,” I said. “And what you’re describing, it… it didn’t happen.”
“It happened,” he insisted. “Just not… here. But here.”
He tapped his finger on the single dollar bill.
“Somewhere, somehow, I must’ve taken a wrong turn. I slipped through something broken, and now I’m here. And… and he’s coming to bring me back. He doesn’t want anyone to leave.”
“Who?”
“Just! Just…” he chuckled. “Just a sad little boy who’s been told he’s going to die.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just sat with him for a while, holding his hand.

Before I left, Samuel got up from his chair. He looked at me, forcing himself to smile.
“If I go back, I’ll try not to… to be like them. I’ll try. And… and I’ll be the one to say something.”
He let out a painful little laugh, shaking his head.
“Maybe just a… hello.”

I left that day with more questions than answers. I couldn’t picture the world he’d lived through. Then again, how could it be true? None of it had happened. But what was he gaining from lying about it?
That was the last time I saw Samuel. A few days later, he went missing, as if he’d disappeared into thin air. I didn’t know what to think of it. There was nothing on the cameras – no one entering or leaving the building. No quick escapes, no clever plans. He’d just walked into his room and disappeared. Nothing left but a couple of moths fluttering about.
And for a while, that was it. That was the end of the story. I got busy looking for a new job, and all the little items given to me by Samuel was put away into a little box in my glove compartment. Life soldiered on, and no matter how many questions I had, there was no one around to answer them. Even the strange kid that’d been following me was, seemingly, gone.

A couple of months later, I was driving home from a friend’s place. I stopped at a four-way street, waiting for a couple of trucks to pass, when there was a knock on the passenger side window. I almost choked on my own spit. Scared me half to death.
Looking out, I could see that kid again. I hadn’t seen him for some time, and I quickly bounced between curiosity and downright anger.
“What do you want?” I yelled out.
There was no response. Instead, the door just opened. It’d been locked. As he opened the door, he pointed to the glove box.
“You want his things?” I asked. “Is that it?”
He nodded. I wanted to lash out, but there was something telling me I shouldn’t. Instead, I reached over, opened the glove compartment, and pointed to the box.
“Just take it and leave me alone,” I said. “Get it over with.”

He reached in and grabbed the box. So much effort for a couple of mementos. I turned my head back to face the road. The kid backed out. But of course, I had to get the last word in.
“Not even a thank you, huh?”
That made him pause. He looked at me, tilting his head. As he opened his mouth to speak, a moth fluttered out. Then another. And another.
Then – darkness.

What happened next is hard to describe. My memory of it is fragmented. It’s like trying to watch a buffering video, where long stretches of it are just nothing – but you know something was supposed to happen in-between.
Blink. I was sitting in my car. There was a dark blue sky. No clouds, no stars. Figures in the distance. An open field with blue flowers bending to a howling wind. A powerful stench of ammonia stinging my nostrils. Something to my immediate left, ripping the car door straight off the hinges.
Blink. Running. Ruins of a town. It seemed familiar, but there was barely anything left. My leg was bleeding. I was being followed. No matter where I turned, or where I ran, I seemed to end up at the same intersection.
Blink. A three-story building, brimming with life. Glimpses of arm-long antennae through the broken windows. Clickety-clack of bursting wings tapping against crumbling concrete. A loud warning shriek as something rubs its legs together; a call for prey.
Blink. Hiding in a tipped-over trash container. The rain has stopped in mid-air. Raindrops held in indefinite suspension. I suck water drops out of the air to quench my thirst. My hands are shaking from the blood loss.

Countless little images. Some in order, some not. I have no idea how much time passed. In the moment, it must’ve been much longer than I can remember. Days. Weeks, even. There’s no way to tell.
Blink. Walking through a barren field. It feels like walking through a dead forest, but there are no trees. Only those willingly impaled and wailing.
Blink. An abandoned booth by a broken highway. A sign offers phone calls, in exchange for “real teeth”. There are six sizes of pliers hanging on a wall within. All are bloodied – even the small ones.
Blink. The church that had burned down the night before had reappeared. The people inside, too. They couldn’t leave. Tonight, they would burn again.

Somewhere in this nightmarish puzzle-pieced fragment of nothing, there was a constant drive in me to get away. To get out. I knew that if I’d gotten there, I could get back home again. I just had no idea how. Maybe finding the kid. Asking. Begging. Something.
The last fragment of memory from that space was being cornered in a cellar. They were banging on the door. I’d tipped over a wardrobe to keep them out, but they weren’t going to stop. They were never going to stop. I couldn’t let them kill me again – not like that.
One of the Changed ones were coming. I don’t know what that means, or how I know the name, but I knew of it. There was a mirror, and I could see the signs. It stepped out. Seven feet tall, black as night. Elongated arms and neck. Barely a body at all – just a void space vaguely shaped like the remnants of a person.
Except this one felt… familiar. It was the first one to speak.
“H E L L O.”

Blink. Running. A cold hand. If I squeezed too hard, my fingers went straight through it. I had to keep up. He was showing me something.
Blink. They were flooding over the school bus, tipping it by their sheer numbers. Eruptions from the sewer grates. They were famished.
Blink. An open field. Sunflowers facing me, no matter where I turn. It’s not far.
Blink. I look back, as I’m pushed over the edge. He looks just like the rest of them. They aren’t angered by his betrayal.
They feel nothing, as I fall.

In February of 2017, I was found by the side of the road. I’d been gone for months. My car was too. I came back with nothing but the clothes on my back and countless scars. I’ve been told that I didn’t make any sense at first; I was just rambling nonsense. Or maybe it just sounded like nonsense to these people.
Over time, I forgot more and more of these fragmented images. And the less I remember, the more I can move on. Still, I’ve written them down over time, and they paint an ugly, insane picture of what I’d been going through. Some of which I, myself, have a hard time believing. Then again, I know myself well enough to see that there’s no point in lying.

I haven’t seen Samuel, or that strange kid ever since. I think this is all over, for now. There’s nothing left for me to give.
But even now, years later, I still wake up to that feeling at night. That there’s something wrong, or that I’m forgetting something. That there’s something near that I’m looking straight through, or past.
And every now and then, I hear the flutter of a moth’s wing, tapping against my bedroom window.
And I think I know what it wants.
It wants me to go back.

My boyfriend and I have been planning a roadtrip to Canada for a few months now. We’re set to spend 5 days there and leave this Thursday for the long weekend. I’ve been saving up a bit of money so I decided to book and pay for our hotels in Quebec City and Montreal. I normally try to book hotels with free cancellation when traveling because you just never know- but this time I wanted us to be in a comfortable place that was within walking distance of places we wanted to see or visit so, I caved and booked them. Thursday morning my boyfriend gives me a call around 4am, which is when he normally goes into work (we don’t live together yet btw, but we’ve been together almost 4 years now) he’s in a panic saying that he thinks somebody stole his car! Of course, this woke me up instantly and I was in total disbelief but as he’s talking he goes on to mention that he missed 1 or two monthly payments and maybe they took his car… I thought 1-2 months behind was too little for the bank to repossess your car and he says oh well maybe it was more like 3-4 months behind and he kept stressing and worrying about where he was going to get the money to pay. He was a bit shaken up so I didn’t want to question him about any savings, tried to help him calm down and advised him to just wait, call his lender as soon as they opened & let me know what they said he could do to get his car back. At first Santander demanded that he pay the full 21k loan for his car outright if he wanted it back, then they decided to work with him and asked him to pay $3,500 to get the car back. His monthly payment is something around $600 so that would mean he probably owed somewhere around 4/5 months. Since he didn’t have the money, I gave it to him & I’m not expecting that money back. I’m now worried about the fact that we’ve never actually had a conversation about our finances and we were planning on moving together this year. He always seemed to be doing fine- sometimes he needed a little help to get by and I’d send him $100 to keep him afloat through the week until payday but, this is a bigger problem than what 100 little dollars can fix. I’m starting to wonder where his money is going and I don’t know how to approach that conversation. Especially because he makes more than I do and we both have around the same bills, from what I know. I also now have to reconsider this trip, I’m very excited about it since we’ve been planning for a while now but I’m worried about having to spend all of my savings over there.. Any advice on how I can talk to my boyfriend about all this without making him feel uncomfortable :/ and what should I do about Canada? The hotels are paid for so I’d be losing about $1000 if I don’t go, but can I afford a trip for two with around $2000? I’d have to factor in gas, activities and food, and we love food :( any thoughts/ideas would help greatly! I just don’t know what to do.