Questions about college expenses

[rlogan 2,036]

Not sure why. It has a very happy ending. We've had two wonderful years now because of it, with a beautiful son and not one problem with the family since the law was laid down.

I've learned from reading a number of books that the main technique they use is called the "double bind" - they put you in a situation where you lose no matter what you do: if you don't give them the money then you are made to feel bad. But if you give them the money, you are a victim of extortion and that feels bad even though you gave them money to pay the bill. You'll be miserable if you allow them to continually engineer double-binds.

One way to defeat the double-bind is to shine the white heat of attention on their motives. With the electric bill for example, they'll say they were "too shy" to bring it to your attention until the electricity was about to be shut off. Then it's an "emergency", so it's OK to spring it on you.

Call them on it. For a whole month they hid that bill from you, knowing full well that they had no plan for paying it, and with instead the intentions of creating an "emergency" to extort it from you. So it is an outright lie to say they were "too shy" to ask for the money. They proven it's a lie because in the end they asked you for it like they intended all along. They just need some plausible deniability, and the emergency they created is how they attempt to cover their tracks.

It's cruelty, not "shyness". This is a hard thing to say frankly to your wife about her family. But if you don't then you'll face the same thing over and over and over again. This is an elementary technique that children use on their parents, and parents who allow it end up with problem children.

In the long run people have no respect for themselves nor dignity because they know exactly what they are doing more than anyone else. Our family has that self-respect and dignity now because they're working.

[Filipinawife0210 15]

Our overall plan is to start the pig farm now, and within 3 years, we will be retiring to the PI anyways, so at that point, we will oversee the farm. To be honest, my in-laws have never really asked for anything. My wife's one sister is the only one who has really taken advantage of us. Now she has taken advantage of my mother-in-law as well, so I wonder what is going through her head sometimes....

[piglett 16]

Only if you let the family, run you over like a steamroller?

it's a fine line between being a cheep @ss & never sending a dime to your wife family & getting taken advantage of when they start to "invent" emergency's every couple of months.

piglett

[piglett 16]

woops double post

Edited July 1, 2010 by piglett

[piglett 16]

Not sure why. It has a very happy ending. We've had two wonderful years now because of it, with a beautiful son and not one problem with the family since the law was laid down.

I've learned from reading a number of books that the main technique they use is called the "double bind" - they put you in a situation where you lose no matter what you do: if you don't give them the money then you are made to feel bad. But if you give them the money, you are a victim of extortion and that feels bad even though you gave them money to pay the bill. You'll be miserable if you allow them to continually engineer double-binds.

One way to defeat the double-bind is to shine the white heat of attention on their motives. With the electric bill for example, they'll say they were "too shy" to bring it to your attention until the electricity was about to be shut off. Then it's an "emergency", so it's OK to spring it on you.

Call them on it. For a whole month they hid that bill from you, knowing full well that they had no plan for paying it, and with instead the intentions of creating an "emergency" to extort it from you. So it is an outright lie to say they were "too shy" to ask for the money. They proven it's a lie because in the end they asked you for it like they intended all along. They just need some plausible deniability, and the emergency they created is how they attempt to cover their tracks.

It's cruelty, not "shyness". This is a hard thing to say frankly to your wife about her family. But if you don't then you'll face the same thing over and over and over again. This is an elementary technique that children use on their parents, and parents who allow it end up with problem children.

In the long run people have no respect for themselves nor dignity because they know exactly what they are doing more than anyone else. Our family has that self-respect and dignity now because they're working.

Do you feel it's a good idea for my wife & I to buy her farther a new fishing boat once my wife gets here & is working as an RN ? The boat her dad has now is tiny & it's engine is only about 4hp. i figured a boat in the $5000 range with a small 3 cylinder kabota diesel engine.

good plan?, bad plan? what say you?

piglett

[sjr09 155]

it's a fine line between being a cheep @ss & never sending a dime to your wife family & getting taken advantage of when they start to "invent" emergency's every couple of months.

piglett

Hence, the term, steamroller

[piglett 16]

i think i'll try to teach them to fish instead of handing them fish.

if at that point they wish to sit on their @sses then that's on them.

piglett

[sjr09 155]

i think i'll try to teach them to fish instead of handing them fish.

if at that point they wish to sit on their @sses then that's on them.

piglett

[rlogan 2,036]

I can't know your situation and people well enough to answer piglett.

But I've commercial fished - traveling over a thousand miles by boat down the Tanana and Yukon out to the Bering sea and catching up to a hundred salmon in a drift there. I looked into commercial fishing in the Philippines too and know enough to judge for myself how best to approach it for either my father in law or myself there.

As with any business, maximizing profit requires minimizing cost per unit product landed. In a large number of situations what the fishermen are doing with the tiny boats and no motor at all, let alone a small one, is the most rational business decision. Adding more footage or horsepower increases capital costs, operating expenses, and maintenance in an amount that does not bring sufficient increases in catch to justify the expense. I worked a little 20 foot boat with two twenty-five horse mercs on it because anything bigger than that was wasted money. If we went bigger we would have to be seining instead of drift gillnet and that would have required an extremely expensive entry permit instead of the $10 K for a drift gillnet.

So to answer your question with the information you need to make the decision, ask what the $5k earns you in an alternative investment. Just for easy numbers lets say you can make 5% in the market, so the return per year on $5K us $250 a year, and you don't have to do a thing other than invest the money and there is almost zero risk of losing the capital.

If you spend $5K on the boat and motor, it also means more gas, more oil, more maintenance, possibly more hands, etc. You have to go observe boats with the bigger motors and hulls to see how much more they are catching and then calculate the new expected profit per year along with the larger loss if the ship goes down. (Commercial fishing is the most dangerous common occupation there is.)

Is it better than just parking money in an essentially riskless investment with a small return?

The answer might be yes, but it might be no. In Iligan I would not buy a bigger boat. I wouldn't buy a boat at all, in fact. I would avoid fishing like the plague. But on Palawan I could see the merit in a power motor and a ship with more hands over the typical village one or two-man outrigger. Getting out past the paddlers in that case will indeed bring enough fish to justify it and you don't have to jump up to a monster ship in order to reach fishing banks out in the boonies. A modest addition to capital will do the job just fine.

[piglett 16]

I can't know your situation and people well enough to answer piglett.

But I've commercial fished - traveling over a thousand miles by boat down the Tanana and Yukon out to the Bering sea and catching up to a hundred salmon in a drift there. I looked into commercial fishing in the Philippines too and know enough to judge for myself how best to approach it for either my father in law or myself there.

As with any business, maximizing profit requires minimizing cost per unit product landed. In a large number of situations what the fishermen are doing with the tiny boats and no motor at all, let alone a small one, is the most rational business decision. Adding more footage or horsepower increases capital costs, operating expenses, and maintenance in an amount that does not bring sufficient increases in catch to justify the expense. I worked a little 20 foot boat with two twenty-five horse mercs on it because anything bigger than that was wasted money. If we went bigger we would have to be seining instead of drift gillnet and that would have required an extremely expensive entry permit instead of the $10 K for a drift gillnet.

So to answer your question with the information you need to make the decision, ask what the $5k earns you in an alternative investment. Just for easy numbers lets say you can make 5% in the market, so the return per year on $5K us $250 a year, and you don't have to do a thing other than invest the money and there is almost zero risk of losing the capital.

If you spend $5K on the boat and motor, it also means more gas, more oil, more maintenance, possibly more hands, etc. You have to go observe boats with the bigger motors and hulls to see how much more they are catching and then calculate the new expected profit per year along with the larger loss if the ship goes down. (Commercial fishing is the most dangerous common occupation there is.)

Is it better than just parking money in an essentially riskless investment with a small return?

The answer might be yes, but it might be no. In Iligan I would not buy a bigger boat. I wouldn't buy a boat at all, in fact. I would avoid fishing like the plague. But on Palawan I could see the merit in a power motor and a ship with more hands over the typical village one or two-man outrigger. Getting out past the paddlers in that case will indeed bring enough fish to justify it and you don't have to jump up to a monster ship in order to reach fishing banks out in the boonies. A modest addition to capital will do the job just fine.

My farther-inlaw has been fishing for more than 30 years , it's all he knows.

he was forced to quit school as a young man because his farther got sick & wasn't unable to work. So he is the only child from that family that didn't have the chance to go to collage.

he has high blood pressure & mite drop dead in 5 or 10 years for all i know.

At one point this man was the captain of a HUGE fishing boat i'm talking 100 feet long +/-.

this is how he put his oldest 3 children through collage. the boat was damaged in a typhoon about 4 years ago & the owner was too cheep to want to pay to have it fixed. I know the boat was making good money because my farther-inlaw got paid on percentage after the boat fuel.

so here is the deal i am not really looking at "investing" money into a fishing boat.

i know what ever is spent on the boat is gone forever, never to be seen again.

Also i am not looking at buying some huge ship that sucks up fuel like a pig.

i am looking at a somewhat larger boat powered by something like this http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Kubota-2-cyl-Engine-great-generators-APU-/270600106567?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f0105f247#ht_2282wt_930

this little baby only uses 2 to 3 tenths of a gallon per hour.

I think once my wife gets here i will talk to her farther & get his input.

if he thinks it will work & he can catch more fish then i may just go for it.

I figured on setting aside between 5% & 10% of my wifes wages & use that money not to give to her family but to invest it into something like a slightly larger fishing boat or a ice maker or maybe a coke cooler for her moms store that she owns.

thanks for everyones input

piglett

[sjr09 155]

Don’t for get to add a boat transmission to the shiny new Kubota. Reverse and especially neutral may be handy ya?

[piglett 16]

Don’t for get to add a boat transmission to the shiny new Kubota. Reverse and especially neutral may be handy ya?

i am not sure that the smaller boats use a trans.

i will have to ask my farther-inlaw if one is needed on that size boat. but yes it would be nice to have.

piglett