As if dropping $100k+ on your first downpayment isn't stressful enough...

If you don't understand something, it's probably best to seek to gain an understanding of it before undertaking it or using it. This simple concept is a great way to approach all aspects of life—especially if the thing isn't yours. The problem is that people who are older or senior to you tend to think that just because of their position, they don't need to consult with subordinates or those who are lower or younger than them. Unfortunately, time spent on this earth doesn't mean time is used wi…

Some things really do sound like bad ideas on paper. If you have a gut feeling that you shouldn't go to something for whatever reason, you should not let go of that feeling. Here, we have a mother, who had her now six-year-old daughter from a one-night stand. Although she would occasionally give her daughter's father updates and schedule occasional visits, he was mostly an absent father. However, after six years, he suddenly decided to be more present, and it seemed too good to be true when he…

Having relatives stay with you is difficult for everyone; the person visiting is displaced, and the person hosting has their life and normal routines disrupted with someone else always suddenly present. And in a small home or an apartment you really begin to feel the effects of this. This is further complicated by the needs of any babies, children, or pets who live at home with you, adding another often less predictable element to the mix. The trade-off is that you get to spend a whole length o…

Stealing is stealing

Cosmetic items in games continue to reach new highs—when it comes to pricing—and lows in terms of the actual value you're getting for what you're paying for. Back when we were playing Nintendo 64s, the last thing any of us would have imagined was that one day, we'd be paying for unfinished games and senseless cosmetics. Now, thanks to the rise of updates and downloadable content, even our favorite and storied developers are shipping games that are missing content to be added later as “updates”…

When talking to new parents, one of the biggest changes they would mention about becoming a parent is how they are no longer only living for their own sake. Having a kid means that your existence and purpose in life do not revolve around you anymore, but it revolves around this completely separate human being. This creates a firm distinction between good and bad parents – Good parents see this change as beautiful and meaningful, and bad parents teach themselves to resent their kids for it. It s…

"They hand me all their work and leave the office at 2pm"

You won't find many people who would argue with you for wanting a child-free wedding—except, of course, those parents who think their little darlings are the exception to any and every rule. It can get a little harder to sell this idea, however, when you try and pass the “child-free” rule for one specific individual: your “bad apple” 9-year-old cousin. Let's consider here that in most cases, for a kid that young, the problem is actually the parents themselves… regardless of what “attempts” they…

Everyone likes free stuff, and what's not to like? It's free! However, some people really like free stuff—like, really, really like free stuff—and they'll go to great lengths to ensure they get it, even fighting dirty and using tools such as guilt and anger to do so. This is one of the reasons why it's, unfortunately, best not even to bother offering free stuff online; you're bound to be inundated with people who have too much time on their hands and are combing buy/sell pages trying to be the…

Money solves most problems in life, but it seems like there's just never enough of it. Even the richest people in the world just want more and more cash. You can never have too much! However, when you've been wealthy for a long time, you start to forget what it's like to be a “normal person." Most people can't just throw money at their problems.

We all have the idyllic When you grow up and realize that your kid's grandparents are also your in-laws, everything gains a new perspective. What's somehow even stranger, though, is coming to find that you're either “dad's side” or “mom's side” of the family for your sibling's kids. If a kid is telling you in earnest that they don't feel comfortable going to grandma's house, that alone is saying something.

As the saying goes, the punishment must fit the crime, and if the repercussions are too severe, no one is learning anything, and you're simply going to create a bad memory and lifelong resentment that will get brought up in 20 years at tense family dinners and when your kids attempt to talk to you about the trauma that you unintentionally caused them. Of course, as a parent, even if you have the best of intentions, you're not going to get everything right all of the time . And as teenagers, we'…

The holiday season might be just around the corner, but this family does not have much to celebrate these days. After the 17-year-old daughter of the family managed to convince her parents to let her go on a trip with some friends, her father mentioned that he would be on a “business trip” in the same city that weekend and could check in on her. Well, it turns out that she needed to be checking in on him because, on the final night of the trip, the Redditor went out to dinner with her friends,…

Memories are a funny thing in that each memory is shaped and reformed every time you recall it, making them easily susceptible to suggestion. Essentially, every time you recall a memory, you destabilize it and partially “destroy” it with your brain, then completing a process called reconsolidation to re-store it with your current thoughts and emotions added. As a brief tangent, this one one of the reasons why witness testimony is so problematic. This fluidity and fallibility of memory and abili…

This mom isn't 100% sure that she's doing the right thing here. After her son ate an inordinate amount of pizza, she turned to the internet to steer her in the right direction. After that, read about the ridiculous requests that hotel guests had, like one guest who “demanded a room upgrade because ‘their aura didn’t vibe' with the one they booked.”