Do you want more allies? Chasing away reluctant ones seems counterproductive to me TBH.

You know, I had one simple request

Glam doll! I haven’t been there in ages. I should pop over there this weekend.

I think I know the pizza shop you mentioned. I don’t remember its name, but it’s a little hole-in-the-wall place near the MIA.

The prevalence of loans makes me question that standard. Lots of people have big mortgages and big car payments, but then it all comes crashing down with one layoff.

To me, the line is more like, enough saved to never need to work again. Even that comes with levels, though.

Keep the same housing?

Move to rural Mississippi?

Be able to upgrade to the nicest house in your city?

You can have the savings to “retire” to the sticks without being anywhere near “rich” IMO. Unless - did all middle class kids in the late 1900s qualify as rich?

Seward neighborhood? I used to work at Franklin & 22nd - near the Pizza Luce. That was before you lived here, though.

Now I live near Minnehaha Falls.

Same. I don’t use GPS to figure out how to get to my buddy’s house for game night, I use GPS to figure out which way traffic fucks me over the least amount today.

Yeah, probably. It’s a little tempting to say that if you can’t afford a yacht, you’re not actually rich. That might be too rigid as a divider, IDK.

Wait. Kitkat is Nestle?!

Nooooo!

🎵 I’m a Java girl in a Java world…

Sadly, JavaScript breaks the cadence :(

I might have problems there when I do get to retirement. Normal budgeting is one thing, but health insurance throws all my numbers out the window!

Did you live in Minneapolis or a suburb?

Winter of 2013-2014 was pretty brutal. I’m not sure about 16-17 though.

Eh, there are levels.

1. Rich enough that you can fill your cart at the grocery store without agonizing over whether you can pay for it.
2. Rich enough to afford a mortgage.
3. Rich enough to have a yacht.
4. Rich enough to buy your own island.

Some people wouldn’t call the first two “rich”.

I’m 50/50 on this.

I strive to live well under my means and keep a VERY healthy emergency fund (like a year’s worth of typical expenses). I have autopay set up for all my recurring bills. I don’t worry about the total at the grocery store (which is usually Aldi, so even splurging there isn’t actually spending a lot).

But…I’ve been laid off twice in the past two years. During the jobhunting phase, I pretty much constantly fret about being able to pay bills. “What if I can’t find something before unemployment runs out?” Etc…That part of my brain won’t stop until I can afford to retire.

Eh, Minneapolis gets cold, but it doesn’t quite get that cold. The record low was -34 degrees F (-37C). We do regularly hit -20F, but we haven’t hit -30 since 1996.

Nitpicking aside, I agree that the winters can get brutal.

life saving procedure

Not necessarily, there are a lot of procedures that improve one’s health without it being a life-threatening condition. Things like Lasik.

hospitals ask how you are paying before

Yes. The “system” we have is an utter travesty.

My wife and I invited around 200 to our reception. I guess you could call it mostly “tertiary characters” (ugh, just typing that makes me feel like I’m falling into Main Character Syndrome).

We probably had around 30 friends (quick tally), then immediate family accounted for a dozen more, then extended relatives pushed us over 200. My mother and my paternal grandfather both came from larger families, so you get lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins that way. +1s definitely inflate that figure, too.

Am I super close with them all? No, but I was still happy to have them there. I generally like my extended family (fortunate in this day and age, I know!).

Boozhoo.

Mii go anishinaabemong.

😂

Oh, come on. They can’t ALL be the worst code I’ve ever written!

I don’t have strong feelings about it either way. No real appeal for me