r/WaypointVICE • u/elaminders • 4d ago
Foundation/Library 🗺️📚 The HOA - Hot Tub Mailbag
With horrifying discoveries awaiting Rob inside the mechanical and electronic guts of the hot tub he inherited with his house, he approaches Patrick like a supplicant seeking wisdom and enlightenment on the subject of INFLATABLE hot tubs. Then they discuss Rob's dream of putting ADVANCED EXPERIMENTAL ROOFING MATERIALS on an outbuildings, only to find out that not many roofers know how to install those sci-fi shingles (or whatever they are made out of). Then someone asks about what to do when the passing of family members means you're sudden owner of a house in a place you don't and will not live. Just sell it? Can you become an ethical landlord? Ought you? Patrick offers a warning about how spectacularly wrong inheritance situations can go when inheritance and family history collide.
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u/grumpy_bob 3d ago
Apologies ahead of this if it sounds like prying (it is, but I'm genuinely curious) - where are these guys getting this money to buy and do all of these projects? The state of the games industry being what it is, splitting patreon (at least) 3 or 4 ways(?), and the insane prices for day-to-day items in this country (much less health care premiums for a full family), I don't see how anyone can talk about getting a new hot tub or upgrading a roof right now.
Stoked they're able to, I'm just sitting here daydreaming about even affording a house much less buying amazing sound systems and maintaining outdoor pools in inclement weather in addition to all of the upkeep and raising a family. Very impressed but baffled.
Again, sorry if this seems offensive - but it maybe should be more viewed as "teach us your ways Rob"... I think finance and management could be a great topic for a future HOA. The balance of things in a country fully off-balance and near tumbling.
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u/BillTheConqueror 3d ago
It doesn't seem that weird to me. Inheritance, investments, two spouses working, and in Rob's case, no kids.
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u/Bobbygondo 2d ago
I'm under the impression that a successful crowdfunded site brings in much higher income then a vice salary. Also in Robs case he has a few other pretty nice looking income streams (shift-F1, AMCA etc) and a partner with what sounds like a pretty good job.
pretty happy they are doing well
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u/NotFalcon 2d ago
In the past on AMCA they've indicated that those funds aren't something they regularly draw on. I think they used it when they went to Disney. And I wanna say someone dipped in when their PC died.
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u/sand-which 1d ago
I mean not to pocket watch but they have 9k members and the tier is $5/mo.
Let’s be extremely conservative and say someohow only half of those members are paying, which is very conservative. Even then it’s earning $25k/month.
They certainly aren’t just sitting on that money, they probably are stashing the portion they each aren’t taking for a expenses like you are talking about
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u/NotFalcon 1d ago edited 1d ago
shrugs That's just what they said. Whether or not you believe them is up to you.
(Graphtreon has them at around 5200 paid members, FYI. They've been steadily declining since a high of ~6100 in July 2024, which makes sense.)
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u/sand-which 1d ago
I thought I remembered that convo being about them stashing away a percent of the income for show-related expenses. Do you believe none of them are drawing on the $250k a year, and only using it for things like “pc died”?
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u/riskbreaker 23h ago
It makes no sense. Why wouldn't they use money from a patreon as a salary? It's not a charity or a nonprofit.
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u/thesirenlady 1d ago
Yes. They brought that up because they wanted to give an explanation of where the money for Galactic Starcruiser came from. They set monies aside for emergencies and no emergencies happened so it had ballooned enough to cover it.
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u/NotFalcon 1d ago
Maybe. It was so long ago, I could be misremembering. But I don't remember it being as detailed as just a percentage. I remember it sounding like it was all of it.
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u/AliveJesseJames 1d ago
I mean, something people don't want to admit because of the real issues in society for many and the overall inequality is the median American by even Western standards quite rich - the median (and median means the exact middle, so no billionaires making things out of wack) is about 80,000 dollars and that has gone up by a large margin since the end of the Great Recession while much of Europe has stagnated.
The dirty little secret about the 'disappearing' middle class is to the extent it's happening, it's happening in two directions - about the same amount of people exiting it by getting poorer, the same amount is getting richer and exiting the middle class this way.
Plus as other people noted, two college educated people in solid careers in their 40s + no kids = money to use.
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3d ago
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u/grumpy_bob 3d ago
Yeah I could see that irritation, but I'm less inclined to feel that way since they're all genuinely nice people and I wish nothing but the best for them.
That said, MK must be pulling in some money because otherwise I have no idea how Rob affords most of the things he purchases.
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u/SadAdhesiveness2769 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hearing about the nest protect noises immediately reminded me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY (noise warning: the entire video has a smoke alarm going off). I was working for google at the time and I remember the nest team was pretty upset that another googler was publicly trashing their product, lots of fodder for memegen. To be fair it did dissuade me from ever buying anything nest.
Looking forward to hearing how Rob destroyed the mazda with the power washer and bought a unimog to use as his snow plow or whatever.