I’ve always been a hard worker throughout my entire life. Ever since I was a freshman in high school, I’ve had at least one job. Fast forward to college, I was interning in New York City three days a week, attending college full-time and waitressing at two restaurants to pay tuition and ensure I could graduate with a degree in the fields I was most passionate about. Long story short – I’ve always been a go-getter, someone who puts her work first and never, ever takes a handout. I started out interning at small, start-up companies in journalism and, worked my way up through several companies to be in a position I used to only dream about.
At the end of the day, my work and my passions will always come first. It’s one of the things I value most about myself – my work ethic. While it’s been the reason I’ve always succeeded in life, it’s also the reason I’ve had trouble in relationships. Throughout my life, every guy I’ve ever dated has had a “problem” with the amount of work I do. I never work one job, I’m always working over 40 hours a week and I usually make more money than my partner. Whatever the reason is, men have always given me sh*t for the way in which I choose to spend my time and conduct my life.
Growing up, things were never easy. Our household consisted of coupon cutting, sporadic family time, and a lot of rushed meals. My mother worked full-time, 6-days a week, and my sisters and I were all at different stages of our life, academically and socially. We were a tight-knit gang of 4—supporting each other every step of the way, but I’d be lying if I said things were easy.
There were times where I answered the phone and the bank was calling about money owed, times when I needed money for a school trip and the funds just weren’t there, times when I woke up in the middle of the night and heard my mom crying, quietly in her room. There were memories that I look back on and wonder if there were things I could have changed. But, there are traits and lessons I have learned, throughout the years, that made me realize that growing up with a single mother was the biggest blessing I could have been given.
How to manage my money.
My mother worked very hard to make sure that my sisters and I had everything we needed. But, working on a single income in New York City with three kids is not easy. In fact, my mom had to budget the sh*t out of her paycheck every single month to make sure she had enough to cover rent, food, electric, clothes, extracurricular funds, etc. Everyone in my family laughs and calls my mom the “bargain hunter,” but, she’s taught me the value of always looking for a less-expensive route in all that I do. Now, as an adult who has moved out on my own, I’m always looking for sales, looking at circular fliers, and trying to get everything for the lowest price possible. In the end, it only pays off—literally.
Most kids don’t know a ton about money. They do tend to know when their families don’t have it, but they don’t typically have a very good grasp of the difference between (upper) middle class and super wealthy.
Twitter user and makeup artist Samantha Ravndahl asked people to share what they thought “was the pinnacle of wealth” to them as kids. Her question got a lot of attention, with people coming through with all sorts of answers from brand name snacks to actual boats. Now that we’re adults, some of the ideas we had about “rich” as kids turned out to be less than accurate, but some of them still hold up (like that boat).
Those big refrigerators with the double doors and the ice maker and water dispenser on the outside. even though we didn’t have money like that, we actually got one somehow when I was a teenager. Youcouldn’t tell me that I wasn’t drinking water like a wealthy woman ? pic.twitter.com/9t7mcHjnqR
— Oh You Do MAKEUP makeup?! (@somuchsimone) March 23, 2019
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people who’s parents drove them to school instead of taking the bus or walking
More than one Barbie. Brand name food. One time I went food shopping with a family friend and I was looking at comic books in the checkout line and she just put one in the cart like it was nothing. For me!!
Designer jeans. Like, Jordache and Gloria Vanderbilt or anything with a “cool label.” I remember finding a pair of Lee jeans at a garage sale and begging my mom to buy them for $1 for me.
Working for a big corporation or organization can be a great gig, but it can open your eyes to a lot of atrocities that go down behind closed doors. Most companies like to present a clean, eco-friendly, pristine image to the world and its customers but, in reality, they couldn’t give two sh*ts about what actually happens. And, if you knew the truth, it would probably change the way you feel about a lot of industry big shots. Recently, users on Reddit who work for big industry names have been sharing the dirty secrets no one wants you to know—so prepare to be shook.
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Starbucks corporate makes us have those recycling bins in the lobby to present this green image, but most of the time all of the garbage ends up going to the dump anyway because the facility doesn’t have recycling.
Businesses offer rebates rather than cash discounts because they know the odds of you going to the trouble of mailing in a rebate coupon are minimal. Then they don’t pay the first time, because they know the odds of you complaining about it are infinitesimal. But they usually will pay off if you complain.
I work with kids at a daycare and we see babies take their first steps sometimes but we never tell the parents because we don’t want them to feel bad about missing it.
When renting a storage unit you do not need to get the insurance they offer. Even if they say it’s “mandatory”, it’s illegal to force you to get insurance. Also the rent will increase yearly, forever.
I used to work at a large national chain of bridal stores and the wedding dresses you’re trying on are never washed. We would try to spot clean if a bride got makeup or a build-up of deodorant inside, but they smelled like BO and dirt.
I worked for a very large lingerie company. When we would get returned underwear, you’d think they’d just get damaged out because nobody knows if they were really worn, but they don’t. We put them right back out on the floor.
Funeral homes are businesses, and funeral directors will absolutely take advantage of grieving people.
The most offensive to me are the cremation boxes. They’re literally just big cardboard boxes, and should cost less than a hundred dollars. But they also make really expensive boxes, and directors will say things like “grandma would be more comfortable in this”. No, she won’t, because she’s dead. Some of these boxes reach 1000 dollars, and of course are all just burned.
I don’t know that this is a secret but flight attendants and pilots don’t get paid while boarding, deplaning, and delays. So when you’re delayed and angry, so are we. We’re not making money and still have to be there.
Professional hair color at a salon costs the salon around $6 a tube. That $40 product actually costs $10 to anyone who had a license. Salons are huge cash cows because the products are actually so cheap.
At a hospital the straight cash price discount for many outpatient tests (MRI, CT, X-Ray, Ultrasound, Labs, etc.) can often be cheaper than using insurance and dealing with deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, and on and on.
I’ve seen test billed for thousands of dollars to insurance cost a cash paying patient less than $400.
Credit companies will raise your interest rate for no reason and wait for you to call and complain to get it lowered. Check your statements and review ALL notices that come with your bill.
Almost every register nurse has what is called a blacklist of doctors she or he would not want even remotely near them should they need emergency services.
People need to take better care and precaution of who they choose to accept as their doctor.
I worked at a sports bar and we would regularly find chicken heads or other weird parts of the chicken with the wings. Chicken wings are forever ruined for me because of the things I’ve found while working there.
In an auto shop, what your mechanic tells you may not be in your best interest, but instead what is most convenient, and what is the least amount of work to do.
The only really clean place in a hospital is the operating room, other than that the place is crawling with germs and whatever else has mutated on the floors and walls.
The clothes you find at an outlet (more often than not) are not “cast-offs” or overages from the regular store. There’s a whole separate entity that designs and produces clothes at a lesser quality for outlet prices.
Terrible and illegal things go on in every strip club. Owners only hire people for upper management who they have trusted for years because they all know this.
Most ‘subscription services’ will raise their prices over time because they expect you to just suck it up. Call up and politely complain about the price. Either you are speaking to someone who can reduce the price or they can put you through to a person authorized to reduce the price.
As you all know, it’s officially Girl Scout Cookie season—so no matter where you go, no matter how hard you try to diet, you can’t hide from those delicious Thin Mints. Every year, the scouts try to find new and exciting ways to make money—like, the one time a bunch of troop members sold cookies outside of a medical marijuana store…brilliant.
This year, one Girl Scout has found a dope way to spread the word that she’s trying to make her troop some money—by remixing Cardi B’s “Money” and having it go viral on social media. Kiki, a Girl Scout, was filmed doing a remix to the song, adding in some flavor with her favorite cookie flavors. Honestly, I like this version better than the original.
The organization shared that “Black Girl Magic” is important to them and their entire organization because it represents strength and determination.
#BlackGirlMagic is a rallying cry to celebrate the strength, resiliency, and accomplishments of black women and girls who triumphantly succeed in a society where discrimination and inequality remains pervasive.
“Selling Girl Scout Cookies has taught me to work as a team to set our troop goals for cookie season. With our cookie earnings, my troop and I plan activities year-round and do important things to help our community. With this year’s cookie earnings we will Troop activities and community service projects. Please support my sale so we can reach our goals. Thank you!”
Thanks to Kiki’s video, she has exceeded her goal in sales this season. We stan a real icon.
There are three stores in the world that are equivalent to walking into the seventh circle of hell – HomeGoods, Marshalls and T.J. Maxx. Surprisingly, yet not so surprisingly, these stores are all affiliated with each other and work side-by-side as a gang of evil geniuses to make us spend our hard-earned cash on things we don’t need now/will never need a day in any of our lives. We walk in for one simple little sale item and walk out with three shopping carts filled with dog toys (we don’t have a dog), inexpensive cooking supplies (we UberEats), books (who even reads?) and 67 candles that’ll probably burn our houses down. Why? Because everything is marked so *inexpensively* we always think we’re getting a great sale – and, let’s be real, who can pass up a really good sale?
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TJ Maxx cashier: “Did you find everything you were looking for?”
When it comes to Kendall Jenner and the entire Kardashian clan, they will do just about anything for a dollar. Let’s be realistic, the entire family is worth over a billion dollars. But, how did they get there? Aside from Kim Kardashian’s sex tape and their TV show, the family banks it with endorsement deals, club appearances, and brand deals. Kris Jenner knows how to milk that industry dollar tree and will make damn sure she gets that 10% on every. single. contract.
Need I say more? The Kardashians and Jenners usually will do anything to make some paper—even if they support products that are unhealthy/do not work. So, when Kendall Jenner stepped out supporting an acne medication we almost forgot about—our heads turned.
First of all, Kris Jenner and the entire business family made it out to be that Kendall had some “big announcement.” The video was morbid and weird AF.
Then, before you know it, Proactiv—yes, the acne medication from the 2000s that celebs like Justin Bieber were supporting—said that Kendall was the “new face” of the company.
Yeah, the new face of acne medication.
We know that Kendall has struggled with acne and skin conditions in the past, as people have made fun of her for globbing on the concealer on the red carpet. But, does she really use Proactiv? Absolutely not. In fact, Kendall has been outspoken about undergoing different kinds of treatment for her skin. The proof?
In a 2015 post on her now-defunct namesake app, Jenner described how acne had “completely ruined my self-esteem” until she began working with her “incredible dermatologist” and undergoing Laser Genesis treatments, which left her “acne-free for about three years now.” The same year, Kylie told The New York Times, “My sister Kendall had really bad acne when she was younger, and [Kidd] really cleared it up. I thought, ‘Well, if she cured Kendall, I should start to visit her.'” And just last year, Kidd spoke to W about the skincare regimen she’d prescribed for Jenner, consisting of several of her own CK Perfect Skin products, which aren’t available anywhere outside of her Beverly Hills office, let alone via infomercial.
Hello, Kendall, it’s me, honesty—pick up the damn phone.
Twitter, of course, is here—guns blazing—ready to call Kendall on her sh*t.
no offense but there is no way in hell someone who has as much money as kendall jenner is using something like proactiv. if u think she’s not using medical grade skincare ur a damn fool https://t.co/3ezALiQ9l3
26-year-old writer and journalist Dana Schwartz recently shared a brilliant idea on Twitter saying that for $50, she’ll come to your funeral and stand far away, holding a black umbrella and looking shady—so people will think that you have lived a secret life and died a mystery. Honestly…amazing.
If you pay me $50 I’ll show up to your funeral but stand really far away, holding a black umbrella regardless of the weather, so that people think you died with a dark and interesting secret.
She also provided her Venmo account information, you know, in case people actually wanted to cash in and have Schwartz attend their funeral—eventually. She also made some other hefty promises along with her funeral attendance.
my venmo is dana-schwartz-11 I will need the money deposited in advanced, and your obituary will need to be published in a newspaper so I can write a code on the back and leave it at your grave for someone to find. the code will be nonsense.
But, people on Twitter had a lot of other requests for Schwartz. Like, this guy who wanted a birthday mystery.
I will pay you $50 if you show up on my birthday but stand really far away, holding a bouquet of flowers and gifts ?, so that my wife?? think I am still in the race.
Ill give you $75 if when the casket is going down you walk over and place a small box on top and say only loud enough for a few people to hear “if they only knew”
How much for the spectral package? Weighted clothes that stay unmoving even in a stiff wind, vanishing abruptly through clever misdirection, heavy makeup to appear definitively dead, vague whispered warnings and/or sobbing softly,clearly audible even after you’ve disappeared, etc
I’m donating my body to science
$50 if you show up in a lab coat incredibly worried and asking “Did she ever mention having a wierd skeleton?”
Extra $200 if you put a fake skeleton in your car and mutter “Jesus christ she found me”
Ummmmm…. I’ll pay you $50 to do exactly this. Add this on top of slowly playing the music to a jack in the box the entire time my casket is closed and its gonna be one hell of a funeral ?
How much to walk up to a random funeral attendee, hand them a manilla envelope full of gibberish financial documents and say “He said you would understand these. Don’t contact me again. They could be watching.”
It’s great to see that everyone on Twitter wants to leave the Earth f*cking with their family and loved ones. I love me some shady folks. Thanks for making me look forward to death, y’all.
A woman who had been ignoring repeated texts from a man received one from him that said “wrong text” but it was pretty clear he’d done it on purpose. And it definitely belongs in the Fake Wrong Text Hall of Fame.
Mariah White of Arlington, TX, told BuzzFeed News that she’d been getting the texts from the dude since early November. The texts all mostly just said “hi” or “how are you?” but this last one, the “wrong text” one, is hilariously obvious in its thirst for the 22-year-old’s attention. It involved both the man’s mother and his money, and it was clearly designed to get a response from White.
HE REALLY THOUGHT HE COULD GET A REPLY OUT OF ME IF HE FLEXED SOME MONEY LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/cG9oqKunBX
The man sent a text to White that was supposedly meant for his mother. It read, “Hey mom… I just transferred $2800.00 to your account…. you should have told me sooner that you needed help… text me when you get it…love you!” the text read, followed by one that said simply, “Wrong text….my bad….”
Speaking to BuzzFeed, White said, “I knew right away that was messed up because how do you send a whole text with all those ellipses and not realize it’s going to the wrong person? What are the odds that M-Ariah and M-Om are right next to each other in the contact list? It just did not add up.”
White men the man, who is reportedly in his forties or fifties, when she was driving for a car company and he was a passenger. White said, “We had a really good polite conversation about my unique major, the university, being the only black people in our departments, stuff like that.
The two exchanged contact information and she sent him a text with her full name so the man could add her on LinkedIn. Instead, the man started texting her. She said she got “weird vibes” from him, and after answering his first few texts, she began to ignore him.
White said she didn’t block him or anything because his messages were “so infrequent” that she “didn’t even think about it.”
White tweeted a screenshot of the awkward “wrong text” message, where it quickly went viral.
White said that she’s gotten a lot of “nasty DMs” telling her that she should have stopped “wasting his time” and just told him she wasn’t interested. But to that she says, “This was a grown man who somewhat misled me into giving him my number the first place. You should know when to call it quits when someone is clearly uninterested.”
With all of the negativity currently inundating our newsfeeds, we figured Giving Tuesday was a good opportunity to shine a light on some more positive stories. Take this man, for example, who decided to sacrifice his personal vacation fund in order to help a student and their family. See? Not all hope is lost.
James, a devoted school teacher, and husband, recently sent the following text to his spouse saying he had a story to share.
