Imagine your whole career like that. Lol! It’s awesome until it’s not.

A boss once said "yes, you'll be flying 3 weeks per month",
"how will I keep a family"
"we all make sacrifices... " * not a single person in the leadership team was married cause 90% of them were divorced... go figure.

and carsncars said it right... I used to skip Cactus club 80 buck meals and go eat Pho and ice coffee for $15 (yes it was 11.99 for large) and you're giving me crap cause chinese no name mom and pop shops... hand written receipt... they think i was shady... for a loudsy $15.. really? My manager opens a bottle of wine that's $300 and you're not questioning nothing.

Cue malicious compliance you'd think shit this person could easily just eat $80 but he went out of his way to submit a $15 fake receipt, yea must be a liar, denied. Fine I'll be spending to the limit every single time then can't win with these folks.

Friend works in sales for a big American company

Basically has free reign over expenses when he’s travelling for work as it’s almost always for clients, he doesn’t even have to submit itemized receipts just the transaction lol stick it in an app, automatically approved, carry on lol

I used to be able to claim per diem of $50/day back in the mid 2000s. No receipts. $50 whether you had McCormicks or McDonalds. Oh and breakfast was included in your hotel of course. Just ate cheap and pocketed the difference every day.

Tell the Viet mom/pop to write you a bill for $80.00 and pay her that much for a bowl. Make the owner's day ... since company don't want the money.

I’m sure it has more to do with procedure and covering their ass than thinking you’re scamming them

For tax purposes a printed receipt with a ID number from cactus is much easier to deal with than a hand written bill that could be from anywhere. Not to say you couldn’t easily scam a more legit looking one but at that point it’s like where are we going with this lol

The thing is, as a big company you're still better off if someones spending their $80 food budget on a $10 six pack of Kokanee and renting big wet asses #24 for $19.95 in their hotel room than spending $80 on pink angeltinis and chicken fingies at cactus club, so leave it be in the name of profits lol.

:pokerface:

You were fucking up their budgets lol. They had a good thing going and didn't want you to screw it up.

It doesn’t need to be a huge enterprise. It’s really about the industry one’s in.

I was in consulting/legal/corporate merger sector and used to have a company card for my trips as I often need to make sure my clients are happy :ifyouknow: so that they would sign a fat contract. Never had any issues and it was a “whatever it takes” basis.

A client’s wife birthday is coming? I buy a 12k Hermès handbag and my boss wouldn’t blink an eye. And that wouldn’t even come close to top the list. I’ve had several 5 figure dinners with clients. But really I don’t remember much as they were just part of work.

Oh, except one thing!

There’s this chick in charge of dealing with all my expenses (she’d come over to bring the paperwork to sign once she put everything in a neat form.) That’s the one thing I looked forward to when I was back at office. She was smoking hot:sweetjesus::megusta:

Sadly that perk ended when we moved the whole system digital.

Sometimes I wonder if subconsciously, that made me hate the job. :fuckthatshit:

BoC holds rates whew

A lot of vegas trips for CES, computer stuff all gets written off back in the day. Getting a handbag is another level. Try explaining that to your wife. I swear i bought it for my client's wife LOL. it's for Jenny I swear....

Even gov't are the same... People found ways to fund vacation trips via other means. It's just 'cost of doing business'; even buying client tickets to vegas etc.

Until I moved back to BC, I still used the very same accounting firm that does my old company's taxes after I left my company. They are so good at writing things off it's crazy. I remember in the early days when I got the card from my company. I was always careful about where I use that card as I didn't want to run to a case where I spent the money and finance wouldn't approve it.

Until one day, my boss, who's the head of sales called me into his office and gave me a lesson. "Hehe, your company card's expense is the lowest in our department." At first, I thought that was a compliment. Then he said "but from experience, we see expenses in correlation with performance in our industry. Even though your ratio is not bad, do you think you can do better?" :fuckthatshit:

He then went on to teach me a whole lesson explaining that expenses=investment, blah blah blah... ending it with "you need to do whatever it takes to secure the contracts". :accepted:

Then my expenses on trip to visit clients were never the same. I probably increased my expenses by 10x+... but was doing like 30x the business in $$$ amount.

Derailing this back to Personal finance. Talked about income with a couple of newer friends for the first time this week.

We got on the topic as to how we noticed that 90% people in our social circles seem to be in the top 10%+ of earnings. Then we compared it to this random drop-in co-ed volleyball group we go to and there's still around 80% of them that are top 10% plus of earnings. One thing that was common is that that 99% of them graduated with a degree or red seal.

I'm starting to notice a odd bias in me that everyone I meet or am around makes great money when the census Canada shows that this is clearly not the case. Do you guys think this is because everyone who are professionals and/or high earners tend to stick around their own because that's who they meet through work and social circles? I don't know how to say this without sounding delusional but where are the folks that are in that bottom 50% percentile? Other than folks from highschool + friends siblings, I don't know any.

I'm thinking maybe this is because we live in Vancouver? There's not many younger poor folks here because the barrier to entry is that $1.6-2.6K/month rent/roommate?

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-r...A41geKCLa_9raA

The last few posts about "writing it off" makes me think of this scene:

People don't like to advertise they're struggling to get by?

You seem to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what your peers and total strangers make. Seems like a recipe for poor mental health. But that's just me.

Which is really just a re-hash of this. But credit to Schitt's Creek for explaining it.:

There's some confirmation bias there.

Only those that are making a good income in this city would be able to afford to do drop in sports. So you are surrounding yourself with those people to begin with.

There's also truth in the fact that like minded people are more likely to hang out and their reinforce each other's good or bad decisions. If 2/10 of the group got nice cars, it's more likely that the rest would follow save for the outlier who either doesn't drive or doesn't care.

To further the point above. My wife and I looked at our friend circles, everyone has a property or co-owns with their spouse/partner. There are no stay at home moms. Even the most worse to do people own a 1bd condo. That's just our circle of friends. The ones that, for a lack of better term, do not conform, ends up drifting away and doing their own thing.

To take it away from finances and towards personal relationships. We found that cheaters (there's always some one you know who is one or in a relationship with one) tends to hang out with friends who think it's no big deal. The ones that get divorced are the same. It is a broad brush but it seems to roughly line up with our observations.

Also I think to expand on that point is that eventually if you are in a drastically different economic situation you naturally drift apart anyways.

I hang out less and less with people who are stretched by their finances because we aren’t really doing the same things, like the drop-in sports etc.

I also feel bad saying oh let’s go golfing etc to some people when I know it’s going to be easy $150-200 which they may not feel comfortable spending.

As childless adults I also feel like we’re actively drifting away from hanging out frequently with some friends with kids because, no offence, I ain’t feeling like having dinner with screaming kids around lol

Yes. I sometimes shop at Walmart (because they have cheap motor oil that is VW 502 and BMW-LL01 approved) and you definitely see a different side of the population whenever you walk in there.

The lower income people live in the far suburbs, rent basement suites, use food banks, and don't participate in drop-in sports. Lots of people are struggling these days. I know people under the age of 30 don't use Facebook, but any community group on that platform is filled with stories about the challenges around finding reasonably priced rental housing on a daily basis.

You roll within your circle of interests. Will you ever meet someone who works at Starbucks or retail check out Betty at Save On foods... most likely not. 1) they can't for the life hold a conversation, you probably won't stand their topics. 2) they just don't roll at the same places at you. You'll go to find dining and maybe meh.. go to "taste of Vancouver menu in Feb" cause you have been to it all.

They are just happy to netflix and chill and grab a cheap beer at a local brewhall.

You like cars, you meet people who can afford a car and afford to mod. You'll never meet someone or go to a group outing who are Tesla drivers. You also won't meet the Chinese family kid who has 3 Lambos while the dad drives 2 Ferrari. It's just not in the same circle.

Look at cycling, when you start wearing spandex and riding these 5-8k bikes, you start to realize an entire community of people with 4-5 bikes and they are easily 10-15k each. You start rolling within the group + hobbies whom you had no idea existed before.

A lot of my thinking is caused by this drift. A lot of old friends in the past year especially from highschool/uni, I don't really see much anymore. Maybe once a year for a bday otherwise it's a have a good life type of situation. Costs are so high now that some of them are trying to save money at all costs aka never do anything. I do host a cheap hotpot at home and cover all the costs to be able to see them every now and then. I find as you get older it gets harder to do things over $20-30 with certain groups because it requires a discussion about whether its worth it or not.

I picked up golf really hard last year and practice 2-5x a week and play about 1-3x a week this summer. If I'm not golfing, I'm doing a drop-in sport. This is farrrr more fun than spending $70-150+ partying on the weekend. I've dropped 30lbs since picking up sports for the first time in my life.

Ya! it's crazy, once you start a hobby you start to notice everoyne in it.

Ya, Grandville / Metro Walmart, weekday after 10 - 11PM is a crazy change.

Next to maybe hockey, golf is about as expensive as a sport as you can play

This idea goes back as far as the times... my parents regularly complain about how they used to have 2-3 other couples they were friends with and would get together for pizzas in the late 70's early 80's before I was born and that after I was born those couples would call to do the same thing and my parents couldn't go because of me and then they just dropped off. Same shit different era haha.

My dad is super loaded today although he doesn't live like he is... but his best friend from elementary school is kinda broke and they still hang out and go for walks together. Maybe because my dad lives a very humble life they can still get along... they both drive 2003 Toyota Highlanders... actually I think the broke guy drives a 2004 so his is technically newer lol... I'm sure if my dad was rolling around in a Lambo and designer clothes/sunglasses and 3 Rolex's on his wrist with a woman half his age or less on his other arm they wouldn't be friends anymore.