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Wellness Wednesday for April 26, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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So we've decided that we're going to vacate our lease. There are no penalties to be incurred because we already outstayed our original commitment and have been payining month to month since. Two leading options are a place that's much bigger and ostensibly nicer but in a worse neighborhood and a place that's either equivalent to what we have now or slightly worse than what we have now but in a nicer neighborhood and more expensive. I'm leaning towards the latter but better-half is arguing the former by appealing to my reflexive frugality and she might be winning.

Big question: What makes it a "worse neighborhood"?

I'd personally pay a lot of money to avoid running into petty crime, petty theft, etc.

If its things like 'people are rednecks and a little trashy' by leaving beater cars on blocks, trailers on the street having crappy lawn decorations, no HOA etc. I'd say sign me up.

I'd personally pay a lot of money to avoid running into petty crime, petty theft, etc.

as would I and the thing that set off my "spidey sense" was the bars on neighbors' windows and the prevalence of padlocks and chains on fences and anything left in the driveway. She says I'm being paranoid but I'm not so sure.

It's funny how bars on windows are such a red flag in Western countries, that's the default in India, pretty much every house has them regardless of locale. And we don't have all that much burglary or petty crime to warrant it either.

It's funny how bars on windows are such a red flag in Western countries, that's the default in India

Do you guys also have the spikes on the top of walls (e.g. often made cheap with broken bottles like so)? In my (African) country it felt like every house had them.

And we don't have all that much burglary or petty crime to warrant it either.

I was thinking the same thing - and we're poorer than India. I can't recall it being a big problem.

Though the consequences that befall thieves explains it. The one time I saw someone accused of being a smash-and-grab thief everything almost immediately collapsed into mob justice (the woman of the house screaming about a strange man coming in certainly didn't help)

You really don't want to try to explain yourself trespassing in a strange neighborhood.

Yup, the wall spikes are pretty common, and if not broken glass, then iron spikes.

I agree that a willingness to engage in mob justice has some perks, especially when the police usually turn a blind eye as that means their work has been mostly done for them. It's quite similar in India, thieves get regularly lynched depending on the circumstances.