Its very sad how Finance never really transitioned from the FattWallet

You say error, I say intentional.

I did have the police called on me in a walmart, doing exactly this. State trooper walks up behind me while Iā€™m buying MOs @ the machine and says he needs to talk to me. I ask if I can finish the transaction Iā€™m in them middle of and he says ok.

Normally Iā€™m a ā€˜Donā€™t talk to the police, everā€™ type, but the best-case logical conclusion of that would be getting a no trespass order from the walmart, and worst-case conclusion was getting arrested and having to defend the >50k in MOs I had on me at the time. I opted to have a chat with the troopers in the walmart.

I explained how I could buy gift cards with my Hilton card and get 6 pts/$ and buy MOs with the gift cards then get rooms for <$20/night. Showed some receipts to back it up. Let them run my license to verify my clean record. They said someone called saying I had bought $50k in MOs there in the last few days. I told them it was well over $100k.

They told me to be careful leaving because it wasnā€™t a very safe neighborhood and were on their way. I owned that walmart from that point forward. They let me do anything.

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Iā€™ve found the same. Nothing gives you (in this case, it was me) more credibility than a half-hour in the Walmart security office with Treasury Agents, then walking out and going right back to what you (I) had been doing.

My attitude has always been, if Iā€™m not willing to explain what Iā€™m doing, I probably shouldnt be doing it in the first place. If the conversation progresses beyond an explanation, it becomes a different story.

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Hah, thanks, but I am a small fish. There are whales out thereā€¦

I miss FWF, I would go there everyday. This site is nice but honestly I hate the forum design. I like the old FWF design. I kinda forgot this place existed for a year or so and now Iā€™m starting to read a little bit of posts but canā€™t stand the format.

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Thank you all for speaking to this.

I was not thinking from a deal centric aspect, but more of the collective conscience that was brought to posts and the random gems I had gleaned from all of you over time

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I got used to the format. To me, reddit is much worse but tons of people lives in Reddit. Discourse is actually a quite popular format.

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I hate Redditā€™s format. It is so difficult to ever pick up where you left off on a thread. I would take this any day over Reddit!!

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FWF taught me about CC rewards. Itā€™s where I learned to live below my means, which 15 years later has really paid off. It helped me get through my divorce.

A year ago I was helping a friend who received a collection letter from a hospital. I sent one ā€œI dispute. Please validate.ā€ certified letter and they dropped it.

At the time I was thinking to myself: ā€œPaging Codename47ā€¦ā€

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Seeing this thread made my day. Good memories, and love the idea that thereā€™s still some sentiment for somehow turbocharging what we have here.

Between pandemic-induced business struggles and a previously amicable divorce which has gone south, Iā€™ve not been nearly as present as I would like. But am ready to change that in a flash as circumstances warrant.

LOL on boomers of internet financeā€¦something to that. And I confess I donā€™t even know what ā€œDiscordsā€ are, and am barely Instagram literate tooā€¦gotta get my daughterā€™s help to figure that out. :slight_smile:

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Love it l33tsauce,

I fondly recall those days. I would do a $9,xxx billpay (max was $10K) and use the four maximum swipes to drain 3x$500 prepaid debit cards and then do one $8k+ Suntrust debit payment. Didnā€™t even have to mess with MOs that way. :slight_smile:

A few years later I applied for a Suntrust credit card to get a $200 bonus and I got rejected stating that I had a ā€œpreviously unfavorable relationship with the bankā€. I had to laugh and took that to mean they figured out what had happened and how much it costs them :rofl:

Thatā€™s a bummer! I know several others in your boat.

Even though I earned 1 million + skymiles, I never had them AA me; I have a bank account with them to this day.

I guess the big challenge is finding the private groups that share such info.

I remember when DoC used to spam their links in FWFā€¦now itā€™s like the only place I really check consistently.

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I apologize if this has been discussed or is obvious to others, but how is this site monetized?

I donā€™t see any ads (although this may be my ad-blocking software).

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The owner operator loses a little bit on each post we make. But they make up for it on volume.

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Anyone remember that FWF guy with the never ending inheritance / estate problem involving distant overseas relatives and foreign jurisdictions? Do you remember if he ever got it resolved, or did the problems outlive the FW site?

I was reminded of this from this Bogleheads thread where people chimed in with lots of inheritance woes. 10 pages and countingā€¦

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=270449

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I do not recall that one

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Iā€™m pretty sure it was unresolved as of the last update. And if I remember correctly, at that point the poster was pretty resigned to it remaining unresolved until there was nothing left to fight over.

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I recall that as well.

It was a hilarious thread by cga about kinship proceedings. Upon Fatwalletā€™s imminent demise, he registered a domain (kinship-proceedings.com) to provide updates. He never published the domain, so I presume nothing has changed ā€¦ or he received a trumpillion dollars and started buying models. :slight_smile:

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