Hannah Nguyen3 said:Since this is a response to my post about "life ending after kids," let me clarify. After he was born, we moved thousands of miles away from everything. Now, we have absolutely no one nearby who can watch him for even five minutes. Someone mentioned nannies... but right now, that's an impossible goal, and paying $25 an hour for childcare is a stretch. Daycare is roughly $1,500 a month, which is also a lot. So, we're in a pretty unique situation. My husband works in an industry with erratic shifts; he usually takes the 2 PM to 10 PM slot just so he can spend as much time with us as possible. His commute is an hour each way.
Sure, I agree everything is doable with enough organization, but... well, some of us aren't that lucky. 🙂
P.S. Not sure why only this specific post was quoted for me.
Well, obviously you two have your own situation going on. The reason I brought up a nanny is because most of the time, it’s just gonna be me and the baby—plus, I’ll be living over a thousand miles away from basically everyone I know! So, I won't really have a choice... if I ever want to step foot outside my front door for anything at all, I'm gonna need help, even though man, I would love to save that cash if I could. And honestly? I'm crossing my fingers for some maternity leave benefits so I don't have to rely on a sitter full-time, since those costs are gonna hit just as hard as what you're looking at. But when it comes down to it and I've got no other options, I might as well make the best of it, right? We've got this crazy big plan we're working toward, sure, but it'll cost me way less to grab a few hours here and there to handle my own business than to totally lose my mind because I can't go anywhere... I don't want to turn into someone who forgets why they were even working this hard in the first place!...
Starting January 1, 2016, an EU Directive goes into effect—serving as the foundation for implementing the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) across the European Union, according to the American Bankers Association...
Basically, clients will be required to hand over whatever data banks and savings institutions ask for by filling out specific forms.
To meet these obligations, financial institutions will report account details and financial assets to the United States Department of the Treasury – Internal Revenue Service for any clients identified as residents of a country participating in the CRS.
That data then gets automatically swapped with authorized agencies in other countries on an annual basis...
The CRS was developed following the United States' move in March 2010 to pass the "Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act," better known as FATCA, to more effectively combat tax evasion and fraud. That act established which financial account information gets exchanged, which financial institutions are obligated to report, defined various types of accounts and taxpayers, and set the due diligence procedures that financial institutions must follow.
By applying the CRS, the goal is to improve cooperation with other nations regarding the exchange of tax data, enhance tax oversight, and bolster international tax collection efforts. Regarding these matters or for info on tax residency, citizens should look to the relevant national tax authorities. In the US, that would be the Department of the Treasury – Internal Revenue Service, whose website will host detailed info on the implementation of the CRS, per the American Bankers Association, reported by PBS.
I honestly don't get it because in the country where I’m living and working right now, I haven't handed over any of that kind of data. Just basic contact info and nothing else—okay, maybe my husband's name too, since the type of account I have here is one you'd normally share with a partner...
So, either they won't have this specific data, or they'll just find some other way to grab it—which, let's face it, can be done in a million ways. I'm being totally legal about everything, but man, they could definitely find better ways to go about it instead of basically hauling people into the bank like it's some big interrogation...
The next person who asks me what’s wrong for the 15th time—and then, after I give them my 14th "nothing"—only to hear that I'm actually exhausted (yeah, I'm pregnant, dealing with nausea and heartburn, working this "fantastic" American corporate schedule of nearly 10 hours a day, and then cleaning the entire apartment after work... I mean, it's Friday and 11 PM, give me a break!) and decides their best response is "Oh, so what? I'm tired too, like you're the only one who works"... honestly, they're gonna be the death of me, I swear. 🙂
Seriously though, why on earth would you ask me for the hundredth time if the first 99 times I said "it's nothing"? After that much repetition, I'm just done with the nonsense and everything else along with it...
Disclaimer: I know how this thread looks and that there are probably people here with tiny kids (major props to them, really), but my real-life crew has actual normal working hours and nobody else is pregnant. I have two little ones at home, but even they don't come at me with that aggressive attitude!
Sean Anderson8 said:A husband who simply cannot keep a clean house. Then there’s the cat—sometimes he just reeks, and I swear his fur is an inescapable part of the decor. And honestly? Other people and their endless "advice." It’s always the same crowd, constantly meddling in everything, acting like they have all the answers. They have these grand plans for our child, unsolicited opinions on how we should rearrange the bedroom, and so on... It’s exhausting. To make matters worse, there's this underlying assumption that we don't actually know what we're doing.
Especially when you're talking about parents. I mean, if they raised me to be this much of a mess, they really don't have any right to go complaining about the next generation, you know?
Total mom life. Honestly, given how things are going, I’m definitely gonna need some help—but looking at the people around me who claim they need it? It’s kind of wild... even after six months or a year, nobody has actually had a kid, let alone even stepped foot in a salon for a haircut! I mean, hey, that’s their business, obviously, but it doesn't give them much ground to complain about, you know? Like, if you actually have a little one, fine—leave them with a sitter for an hour or something. But if you don't? Then maybe just stop whining about everywhere you didn't get to go... seriously.
I’d probably tell you to just play dumb and ask them that exact thing—seriously!—but I’ve actually tried that before, and trust me... you really don't want to deal with the nonsense they'll throw back at you.
Look, the local bars totally won that fight over the smoking ban—it’s spreading everywhere now—and honestly? If they tried to push a cashless-only rule, I bet they'd jump on that bandwagon just as fast. We’d probably be sitting around waiting for some tiny developing nation halfway across the world to go fully digital before we even considered making the switch here in the States. Just look at how "great" the tax reporting is going... people around here will always find a way to dodge the system, no matter what.
Seriously, just try buying a coffee or even grabbing lunch at half the spots around here without using cash—then come back and tell me how that went. Most shops and big retailers let you swipe a credit card or use your debit card, no problem, but once you step outside that bubble... man, small businesses deal with so much hassle just trying to set it up. Plus, you’ve still got a massive crowd of retirees and folks who aren't exactly tech-savvy—people who find an ATM intimidating and would rather wait in line at a Chase branch just to withdraw $67 (I swear, I run into at least two people like that every single time I'm out in NYC), let alone trying to manage their whole lives through some plastic card and tracking digital statements...
hiddenviper13 said:They’re probably going to hit the brakes on the data harvesting for a little while. Their pathetic PR teams are likely sitting in boardrooms right now, panicking because they realized the public—basically just cattle to them, since bankers always view their clients as nothing more than livestock—is actually pushing back..
Once this quiet period passes, it's business as usual. They'll get right back to scraping data and running their shady operations, all thanks to the cozy little arrangements they have with corrupt judges and those career bureaucrats who couldn't care less about actually doing their jobs..
And then comes the endgame: phasing out cash entirely, following that classic New World Order playbook we've seen before:
Honestly? In America, they won't be able to pull that off for at least another 200 years... lol...
placidmaker6 said:I’ve been with my bank for over 25 years, and yet, they just had the nerve to ask me yesterday—during an actual meeting with my personal banker—what my most common transaction types are and what my typical maximum spending limit looks like. Isn't the first part a bit redundant since it’s all right there in their own system? Honestly, though, giving them a heads-up on expected high-value transactions actually makes sense; wouldn't that make spotting and proving fraud way faster?
Yeah... if they actually did anything about it, I mean. Back in the day, our monthly limit was only like a couple thousand bucks, but then we decided to fix up our apartment and suddenly dropped over $20k in a single day—just furniture and all that stuff, obviously! And honestly? Not a single soul blinked. None of those classic American banking security tropes kicked in, no "hey, why are you spending this much at once?" calls or suspicious activity alerts or any of that nonsense. So yeah, don't get your hopes up thinking limits will actually stop the bad guys... lol...
So, my first promotional email from JPMorgan Chase finally hit my inbox today. I mean, I can totally just unsubscribe from the list, but they sure took their sweet time—like, two whole weeks—to actually make it happen... The thing is, they’ve had my email address forever, and I already opted out of all those "special offers" ages ago (not that I have any actual proof, obviously!), but now suddenly it’s all starting up again. It’s almost like it perfectly coincided with those surveys they were sending out... what a coincidence, right?
Even better—they apparently just track when my ID expires somewhere in their system, and one time at JPMorgan Chase actually warned me that they might freeze my whole account just because I hadn't sent over the updated ID number yet! It’s honestly ridiculous because nothing fundamentally changed—I either lost my old ID or it just expired (I can't quite remember which, honestly...) so I went out and grabbed a new one—but apparently, that's enough reason for my debit card to just stop working entirely... even though nobody ever bothered to tell me I had to report it if everything else stayed the same.
Eric Newman4 said:I don't get why people still haven't realized that "privacy" basically died the second the internet arrived. You can't hide anything anymore, and there's nowhere left to run... if the banks aren't getting their hands on your data, some other federal agency definitely is, they just take the path of least resistance.
But look, my bank sends me statements to my house all the time, and they send those notifications to my address too... they call my cell phone (and I actually pick up!), but then I walk into the branch and they act like they have no clue who I am—asking me for my home address and my phone number like they haven't seen it a thousand times before! "Anne, what's your name again?" — seriously, how stupid can you get? 😵
Come on, seriously—there isn't even one single question out of ten whole pages about someone's favorite sock color or any other random nonsense that actually relates to managing money?
Laura Chavez93 said:The circus continues 🙂—my mail carrier just dropped off a certified letter from JPMorgan Chase. It’s the usual one-page nonsense regarding money laundering and terrorism prevention protocols, accompanied by a ten-page questionnaire 🙄 . They even went through the trouble of pre-filling the information they already have on file 🤣; apparently, I'm expected to complete the rest and return it by October 31st... which makes me wonder exactly what their next move will be once that deadline passes 🍿. Edit: Has that consumer protection law regarding telephone harassment actually passed yet? I'd love to give them a piece of my mind if they actually have the audacity to call .
I finally got it sorted! I needed some kind of official confirmation, so I had to swing by the Bank of America, but honestly—they ended up just asking for my contact info and all that stuff regarding my US citizenship... nothing too crazy! She was also super insistent about having a phone number on file, but I can't really help her there—we didn't bother getting a landline when we moved, you know? So she was getting all stressed out, practically begging me to just give her any mobile number at all... and then they actually called my cell once they started going through those questionnaires. 😵
Haha, I wish! Like, about six months ago I needed a statement confirming my account number, and since then they haven't even looked my way—not that I actually needed anything or did anything out of the ordinary, so they didn't have any reason to come knocking and ask questions. I’ve just got this tiny little payment going through on the account—only a few hundred bucks—and it all goes smoothly through my online banking app. They called me at the worst possible time, you know? And then I totally blanked on it, and now things have escalated to the point where they're sending me official notices. The notice basically says what they want... they want that questionnaire filled out.
Honestly, this whole ordeal is about as ridiculous as applying for an American visa. "Are you a spy?" Please. I'd have to be a seriously incompetent spy to admit to that right off the bat! And don't even get me started on this money laundering stuff—as if I'd ever hand over the account number I'm using for that! I mean, if I actually were doing that, I would've already managed to stay under the radar of the government and the big banks, so why on earth would I sign a paper saying I'm laundering money?
So they called me again, but I didn't bother swinging by Chase—I didn't really have anything to take care of there anyway, plus it wasn't even on my way through town... and now I just got this notice in the mail saying I need to call them back ASAP. It looks super official, almost like some kind of summons from a court or something!
Raymond Rivera6 said:I'm not sure how to put this delicately, but I think you're exaggerating. Chase does have KYC questionnaires, but there isn't a single word in there about who you live with or anything regarding children. They might ask about your income, where you work, or the amount of a specific transaction, etc. They could have been updating your basic info, but even then, they don't ask about a spouse or kids—just the standard stuff like address, SSN, etc. Nothing deeply personal. At most, they might ask the reason for closing the account. It feels like someone is just venting here and maybe embellishing the story to make it sound more dramatic. Given how much work they have and how much they want to wrap things up smoothly with customers, I highly doubt anyone behind that counter actually cares whether you have kids, if they're in school, or what you had for lunch today. They don't have nothing better to do.
Maybe you could’ve just said I got my wires crossed or something... you know, being polite? But whatever, I guess expecting anything better from JPMorgan Chase is just asking too much!
And for the record—they didn't freeze my account for three weeks without any explanation (it wasn't even because I owed them money!), and their employee didn't later admit there was a "misunderstanding" because not all the staff is trained properly (ugh, if only I'd remembered to record that convo!), and my personal banker definitely didn't mess up the math on my monthly payment and interest for a nice round number (my mom actually did the math right on the spot and made the lady correct herself)... nope, I'm just making all that up, right? Even the part where she didn't roll her eyes when I told her I wouldn't answer any more questions because I'm leaving the bank... totally made that up too.
Besides, even if they *had* asked about my job or income—I'm quitting the bank, so why do you even care? What kind of "client analysis" are you doing when I'm not even a client anymore?!
While I was busy closing out those last few accounts left over from my college days—like at Wells Fargo, for instance—they literally just asked why I was closing them and nothing else. Just simple!
swiftfalcon32 said:It’s actually kind of wild how I can't even stomach my coffee anymore... even that single cup I used to rely on every morning. And honestly, the sex has been incredible... my husband is absolutely obsessed with these new curves and everything 😁
haha, mine is pretty much feeling the exact same way! 🤣 The only thing that’s driving me crazy is being all worked up but feeling way too exhausted to actually do anything about it—so I just curl up, even when I'm not super comfortable, and end up having all these wild dreams only to wake up feeling totally frustrated...