(no subject)

[which_chick]

If there are the tail ends of incense sticks all over your fucking apartment to where it looks like someone threw a tantrum while playing pickup sticks, I am not going to think that you are a hip, happening, in-tune-with-the-universe student of zen meditation. I'm going to think you smoke a fuckload of weed. I suppose it is possible that I could rent to a hip, happening, in-tune-with-the-universe student of zen meditation who burns a lot of incense, but as far as I can tell, the way to bet is stoner.

Also, my tenant, if you *eventually* come to the door and a haze of patchouli with a layer of weed on top rolls out overtop of me when you open the door, I am not going to say anything. At that point, you will think, in your blearily stoned mind, "Dude, I totally got away with it!" You will be wrong. I will think, in my razor sharp and totally steeltrappish mind, "Christ, no wonder he's late with the rent, he's spending all his money on weed." The fact that I don't call you out about your weed issues when I am there to find out why it's raining in the downstairs lady's apartment does not mean I haven't noticed. It means I don't care.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

But wait, aren't you everybody's parents?

[d-ubervillain.livejournal.com]

I'm laughing heartily at this. Please don't tell my mother.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

How can someone spend all their money on weed? Isn't marijuana the cheapest drug out there? (N.B. Everything I know about drugs comes from the warnings at the beginnings of 1980s arcade games* and from disinterested academic research.)

* WINNERS DON'T USE DRUGS --William S. Sessions, FBI Director

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

First, padawan, you must adjust your financial mindset to "lower income rural american" levels. A job at Sheetz (convenience store) pays $8.25/hr here. Your two-week take home should be just around five hundred dollars, assuming you just deduct yourself and you're able to swing forty hours every week. Call it a thousand dollars a month.

Now, we will rent you a 2 bedroom, heat/water/trash paid by landlord, craptastic apartment for $450 a month. It is not a pretty apartment but the faucets, tub, shower, and toilet work. The drains drain. There's hot water on demand. It stays toasty warm in the winter. The windows open and close and lock, both doors lock and unlock. So, y'know, you could live there if you had to. Now, with shelter out of the way, let's take a look at your expenses.

I don't know what other people spend on food, but it costs me about thirty, forty bucks a week for food these days and I don't eat much meat, drink much milk, or buy any pre-made food. My tenants eat a lot of meat, drink milk, and buy metric shitloads of things like frozen corndogs and frozen gourmet pizzas and so forth... so I'm betting they spend more on groceries than I do. (I know what my tenants eat because I clean out the fridges when they move or are evicted. I scoop up the pizza boxes off the floor. I clean up the Chinese take-out containers. I get to deal with the rotting packet of boneless skinless chicken breasts after it's been in the fridge for a week with the electric was shut off.) For the sake of argument, we'll say the average tenant drops fifty bucks a week on food... so $200 a month gone. You have $800 left.

The tenant probably has some sort of beater car to drive around in. (There is not any public transport where I live.) Probably this is a fairly fuel efficient beater, like my Cavalier, so it's a tank of gas a week to get around. That's $30 per week or $120 per month. You now have $680 left.

There's an electric bill and a cable bill (I don't have any tenants without cable or satellite DishNetwork TV. None. Every single tenant has pay-for TV.) Probably the electric and cable run, together, fifty bucks a month. The base cable package is like $25.00, I think, and the minimum electric bill for a one person household is approximately $17.00 per month (because that's what I pay in the summer). I'll call it fifty a month. Now there's $630 left.

Car insurance, paid monthly, is something like $70.00 per month. (SWAG. I have no real idea what it is on a monthly basis because I pay mine six months at a time and I'm insuring two vehicles. But I'd guess $70.00 per month.) That seems reasonable. Down to $560.

Tenants have either a cell phone or a land line telephone. I don't think that you can *get* a phone of any sort for less than twenty bucks a month. Most plans cost more than that and my tenants tend to have caller ID and unlimited long distance and shit like that. Let's say they spend fifty bucks a month on phone. That's a pretty basic cell plan or a fairly pimped-out land line. $510.

We've covered food, fuel, having car insurance, cable/dish, cell phone, and electric. These are the reasonable expenses for my tenants. So, they have discretionary spending of $510 per month.

Wait, what? Am I forgetting something? Oh, right. Yes, of course. The rent. Less the rent, you have left $60.00 in your budget for weed, alcohol, clothing, eating out, internet (more and more tenants have internet) and entertainment (outside of cable). That's also your budget for medical and dental care, car repairs, new furniture, books, CDs and DVDs, etc.

It does not take very much weed to destroy a budget when "incidentals" have to come in under sixty bucks a month and stuff like "medical care" and "clothing" are coming out of the incidental budget.

But anyway, all of this is a very nice sidestep of the question which is "How much does weed cost?" The answer to that question is I don't know. I don't buy the stuff. I have never, in my life, actually purchased weed in the United States. I don't know how one would go about doing so. I don't know anyone who deals weed. (I could, if I were interested, ask Lance to hook me up with someone in the trade.)

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

The only part of that I needed to learn was how much weed costs, since I did the whole live-independently-on-minimum-wage thing back when I was younger. :)