Chris and money

"I'd call a tow truck, but now I have less than $20 between the bank accounts and PayPal."

- Chris, after his car broke down on the way home from BronyCon.

"He's not good at math when it comes to managing money."

- Bob Chandler, understating it.

Chris has repeatedly shown though his actions and words that he has no idea how to handle money or manage his own finances. Between his impulse spending, his greed and selfishness, his unwillingness to save even the smallest amount of money, and his massive sense of entitlement, Chris manages to demonstrate complete incompetence and ineptitude in managing financial affairs. Chris has repeatedly amassed debt on credit cards, only to have his enabling parents bail him out multiple times. Too lazy to work, he refuses to make or follow any type of budget or financial plan, instead spending far beyond his means, and expecting others to pay off his accumulated debt for him. It is clear that Chris has no idea what financial responsibility is and that his enabling, delusional parents taught him nothing about how to handle finances while he was growing up. Irresponsible, careless, and thoughtless, Chris fails at just about every aspect of financial management that can be thought of.

But wait, Chris isn't employed!

 * Further reading: Chris and work

For the vast majority of Chris's "adult" life, his only source of income has been the "tugboat" that he received from the U.S. federal government every month. In 2009, the payout was $809 a month, placing his annual income at $9,708. After Bob's death, Chris was given a survivor's benefit – increasing the amount to $1,300 per month and making his annual income $15,600. Barb's income, from Social Security and a pension, is around $1,200 per month or $14,400 per year.

Chris's parents originally took $450 to pay for room and board; this payment was later increased to $565, and then to $580, after Bob paid off Chris's enormous credit card debt. The rest of the tugboat generally went towards video games, junk food, or other frivolous purchases. However, $229 per month (about $7.50 per day) was (and is) nowhere near enough to satisfy Chris's need for electronic entertainment, pornography, PlayStation Network downloads, a constant supply of Chicken McNuggets, gallons of Coke, and, since the summer of 2009, alcohol. As of January 2010, he owed roughly $3,500 in credit card debt, some on cards of his own and some on cards he stole from his parents. Indeed, according to one of his bank statements, at the end of one month he had fewer than $3 left in his account. Even more, just by straight spending and no other extra income, he put himself $452.57 in the red. How much he got to keep later on isn't known.

"My father helped me get my Social Security set up; I get more a month than I could at a job. Yet with my impuslive [sic] shoppiness [sic] (mostly controable [sic]), I end up spending my side-money after I get it."

- Chris, completely deluded and taking pride in being a lazy bastard.

Chris and impulse spending
It's obvious that Chris has no grasp on the real value of money, since he actively wastes as much of his monthly tugboat as possible on things like trading cards, sex toys, porn, video games, alcohol, make-up, toys, prostitutes and weekly lottery tickets.

Chris is a self-admitted impulse buyer. His PlayStation Network account shows that he's never played more than half of the games he's bought. And yet, astoundingly, he's still gone out of his way to buy all available downloadable content for every single PlayStation 3 game that he's ever purchased, and even for games he doesn't own, and he also further promoted his Sony fanboyism by later buying a Sony LCD HDTV for his bedroom which likely cost about $1,000-$1,500. All the while, Chris bought his clothes at second-hand discount thrift stores. Usually, children are taught the value of money at a very young age – not in Chris's case, apparently.

In September 2013, Chris complained about he and his mom going through "emotionally depressing, and Financial Downfall to the depths of Greatly Poor and Just Getting By", making it clear that the family income had dipped since Bob's passing. However, these supposedly lean times were apparently not enough to motivate Chris to get a job, or even to stop buying games, as evidenced by him racking up over $1,000 in game purchases on The Simpsons: Tapped Out.

Throughout the summer of 2014, Chris continued to spend thousands of dollars on Lego and other frivolities, all while whining and complaining on Facebook about his and his mother's poor finances. Chris financed this spending primarily with money from selling custom arts and crafts on his eBay account. Offering free shipping to customers, Chris would receive money from customers, and then pay for shipping out of his own pocket. However, Chris would immediately spend money as soon as it was deposited into his account, often leaving him unable to ship products to customers who had already paid him because of his own financial irresponsibility and negligence.

When several of Chris's eBay customers filed complaints against him because Chris failed to ship a order as promised and obligated, Chris responded by harassing and trolling the customers, posting their personal information in a public post on his Facebook account. In light of this, Chris's future money making prospects from eBay are dim, as most prospective future customers probably wouldn't want to risk being harassed or scammed by Chris.

All the while, even as Chris's credit card debt continued to spiral out of control, Chris continued to buy thousands of dollars of video games, Lego, and other frivolities. As if this were not bad enough, just days after putting his and Barb's cars up for sale (at exorbitant prices), Chris went out and bought a 2010 Ford Focus, stating on Facebook that he had been approved for a loan, probably at a high interest rate. He also stated that paying for insurance on his new car was "killing" him, implying that either the insurance payment was costly, that he was having trouble paying it, or both.

In January 2015, it was leaked that Chris had spent an absurd amount of money on Nintendo consoles and games, racking up 585 transactions in the last 4.5 years, a list which includes useless shovelware, hoards of 1st-party Nintendo software, Virtual Console games and both versions of a game he doesn't even like. 276 of these purchases are known to be handheld games, 8 are known to be video game consoles (buying 4 DSs and DSis), and 75 which are known to be console games. The grand total cost of all Chris's listed purchases is $7460.43 or $1657.87/year. Keep in mind 39% of purchases Chris has on his account are not yet specified, meaning that their cost is not included in this already insanely high number. This information comes on the heels of Chris begging people for money to fix his mother's cavities, as well as the financial worries that his trials will undoubtedly cause.

In July 2016, a field agent provided the following account of Chris, in a painfully awkward situation where he did not have enough cash to pay for his junk food at a gas station:

One dreads to imagine how his financial incompetence will affect him once Barb is dead - knowing Chris, and while it is quite tragic, he'll probably continue in his destructive spending patterns until he loses everything he has, and even then, he'll learn nothing.

Chris's parental enabling
Bob encouraged his son to remain unemployed, since he believed that Chris would earn more money from his monthly tugboat than he would have from getting a job. However, this assumption was and is inaccurate. Minimum wage in the state of Virginia is $7.25 an hour. If Chris were to somehow do a complete 180° on his life and begin working a full 40-hour week, his monthly payment before taxes and payment for room and board would be about $1,260: that's $15,100 annually. Subtracting the money he pays his mom every month to live, as well as the 5% tax his income range mandates in the state of Virginia, Chris could very likely be left with a ridiculous $8,000, which knowing Chris, would be spent on yet more frivolities. Contrast this with the $2,748 Chris pulled in annually from the government after paying off his parents, and it becomes clear that Bob's encouragement came from either thinking Chris would lose his social security if employed (which he wouldn't) or the more accurate notion that his son is a useless failure.

A very likely explanation for Chris's reckless spending is that his parents are at fault (to a degree at least). In addition to coddling him throughout his entire life, they managed to make sure that Chris has never felt the repercussions for his exorbitant spending (or for anything else) by taking over paying Chris's credit card debt, regularly giving him about "$6 a day for small things", buying him fast food on a daily basis, and continuing to let himself blow all his money on frivolities and useless stuff, as opposed to essentials like hygiene products, courses that could eventually help him onto the employment ladder or clothing that isn't unbelievably tacky. Whenever Chris manages to get himself into trouble, he knows that Barb will come running to his aid and defend him and dig him out of whatever mess he's managed to get himself into, even if it is clear that he is in the wrong. This enabling is the most likely explanation (in addition to his poor impulse control) for why Chris spends himself into debt as much as he does.

Chris's beliefs
Chris believes that by receiving and spending his tugboat on useless junk, he is aiding the economy and paying for other people's tugboats. This is a damningly moronic conviction, since sales tax goes to the state government and these "tugboats" are paid with federal payroll tax. Where Chris is hiding the printing press to afford this discretionary spending is unknown.

Interestingly enough, while he has no clue how to handle money, Chris has an unhealthy fixation on his material possessions. In Vivitheg's AIM chat, he stated that he did not want to sell any of his stuff, and in the Miyamoto Saga, he refused to sell anything to help raise money for the trip to Redmond. While Chris mocked Lars’s habit of buying and collecting model boats and addons for them after learning about it from Jackie, he failed to realise that Lars’s supposed habit was directly parodying his obsessive purchasing and hoarding of video games and DLC, even for games that he didn’t own. His mother has served as a bad influence regarding Chris’s beliefs in material goods, as she would frequently shop at Goodwill and compulsively hoard the purchases, which both wasted money and helped turn their house into a fire hazard.

On 16 May 2019, Chris tweeted a screenshot of an NBC story about how "Ex-EPA chief Scott Pruitt spent nearly $124,000 on 'excessive airfare'." Chris then showed off his complex views on the U.S. economy by saying...

After the house fire
On 10 January 2014, 14 Branchland Court caught fire. This would undoubtedly place the Chandlers in grim circumstances, due to the costs of rebuilding the home and replacing what was lost. Some of his fans pooled their funds to send him a care package, with a money order for $500.

Many, concerned about Chris due to his wasteful spending habits, hoped that this would be the moment in Chris's life where he finally woke up and realized the importance of saving when things like this happen. Unfortunately, not even that has broken Chris's thick skull; throughout 2014, he wasted $5,000 on Lego sets.

Barb's toxic influence
According to a troll with insider info, Chris was able to manage his own finances to a rudimentary degree, even after Bob passed away, although he still has an issue with not saving money for potential emergencies.

The troll also asserted that Chris's financial hardships are caused, in most part, by Barb helping herself to Chris's monetary accounts in order to attempt paying her out-of-control debts.

Information from Cousin Al revealed that Chris and Barb had an inheritance from Bob worth "tens of thousands of dollars". However, Barb spent all of it on hiring Rob Bell to defend herself (...and Chris) from legal charges incurred after the two of them hit Michael Snyder with a car. It should be noted that a state-provided attorney would have been free and yielded the same result (pleading guilty), for the case was so cut-and-dry that even a lawyer of Bell's caliber had no chance of winning it.

In November 2014, Chris revealed to Renee that Barb was borrowing money from his life insurance.

Although in a Kiwi Farms post, in the wake of the bombshell that Chris had been in a sexual relationship with Barb, Null revealed that Chris nonchalantly stated in their final conversation with each other that he had control of her bank account by then (which allowed him to swipe $750). That said, it's unknown whether or not Barb actually used to exploit his finances before the roles eventually switched at some point (not to mention, if so, when).

Bank lawsuits against Barb
In 2016, two banks, Discovery and Capital One, sued Barb for not paying over $20,000 total in debts, leaving the Chandlers even further in financial turmoil.

Barb herself appeared in multiple videos in 2016-17, trying to scam people into donating to her.


 * Donations Required, Serious. Please help
 * Donations Requested, Please
 * Donations Further Requested, Please
 * EMERGENCY HOME UPDATE

In the first two videos, Barb claimed not to have enough money for asthma medication, and in the third, she claimed to need money for dental work.

If Barb actually needed money for an emergency, she could simply have instructed Chris to sell some of their possessions. In the videos, Chris's toys and Barb's hoard are clearly visible behind them.

Wheeling and Dealing
Also known as. Chris has a habit of buying a product from one store for a lower cost, then exchanging it for a higher amount of store credit at another store.

Lottery
Chris considers the lottery to be an investment, and not a form of gambling in reality. In September 2010, he told Jackie the following:

Cash4Life and Mega Millions currently costs $2 per play (as of 29 March 2021), meaning that if Chris stopped playing the lottery, he would save around $416 per year.

Craigslist


In late October 2011, Chris posted a Craigslist ad for a 12-year-old 32" CRT television and expected a non-negotiable $250 for it; in reality, this is about the price of a new flatscreen HDTV of that size, and he would be lucky to get a tenth of his asking price.

Chris placed two cars for sale on Craigslist in September 2014. One was a dilapidated, rusty 1997 Cadillac with a cracked engine block that hadn't run in over a year. Despite having a market value (as scrap) of approximately $150, Chris demanded $5,000 for the automobile, insisting that the cracked engine block made the car a great "fixer upper." Chris also placed his mother's BMW z3 for sale. The 1999 BMW z3 is currently listed on the Roanoke Craigslist for $10,000 OBO. Kelley Blue Book estimates the car with 70,000 miles and in a fair condition is worth $4,318. Chris describes the car as "Mint condition Z3 model. Like a go-cart with rocket power. Seriously fun to drive 5 speed and pure joy with the top down. Color is jet black."

Pawn shops
Chris occasionally visits pawn shops or similar businesses, among them Snooky's Pawn Shop, GameStop and Plan 9 Music, to sell his old toys so that he can afford new ones.

eBay
Chris has long used eBay to sell bits of his toy hoard. He doesn’t put much effort into researching prices, and often lists items at vastly inflated prices. In August 2016, he listed a used VHS of Aladdin with a 'Buy it Now' price of $3,000. There were no (legitimate) takers, probably because one can buy the same edition on Amazon for one penny (plus shipping, but still).

In June 2019, Chris’s account was restricted, and all of the active listings were removed. Two reasons for the restriction against Chris are possible: either his seller approval rating was abysmal (84.7% on 21 June 2019), or that his PayPal account was in the red.

CWCville Shopping
From 2014-2016, Chris sold custom arts and crafts, finally monetizing Sonichu, through eBay, Etsy and Lulu, before losing his business due to stress.

Kickstarter
On 23 September 2014, Chris opened a Kickstarter project, asking for $5,000 to build the CWCville shopping mall out of LEGO. At the end of the campaign, Chris raised $150 from 27 backers, causing the campaign to fail and Chris never seeing the money.

YouTube monetization
Chris has monetized most of the videos which appear on his YouTube channel, as another way of profiting from his internet infamy. As further proof of Chris's entitlement issues, Arthur Spatchcock discovered that at one point around March 2016, Chris received $80 and was "pissed" that he hadn't gotten more.

Social Blade estimates that as of 12 December 2019, Chris could earn between $245 and $3,900 per year, but there are many factors, such as Content ID claims, that make it very difficult to estimate the true value of any YouTube channel.

Let’s Plays
In March 2016, Arthur Spatchcock introduced Chris to the idea of doing Let's Plays to boost his online activity and help him gain some money through YouTube's monetization program. The plan fell apart after Let's Plays of Destiny and Uncharted, since by that point, Chris was too lazy to play video games for money, and he simply wanted to beg from his audience instead.

YouTube Support button
On 23 May 2016, Chris announced the debut of a Support button on his YouTube channel to replace the Etsy donation listing (which was forcibly removed due to it violating Etsy's TOS). He apparently got this idea from William Elliott Waterman.

Paypal.me
Announced on 11 May 2017.

Prostitution
On 19 June 2016, aka Father’s Day, Chris decided to become a prostitute.

He has yet to receive any takers.

Begging
One of the earliest instances of Chris e-begging for money was in December of 2009. Chris exhorted his alleged European fanbase to donate €1,000 in order to remove troll ads from the CWCipedia.

In 2014, after his house caught fire, Chris again resorted to e-begging for money, placing extra emphasis on "My mother and I really need the money," despite dropping more than $5,000 on expensive Lego sets to feed his worsening addiction. One would think that Chris would have wised up to the fact that his wanton spending and lack of gainful employment are contributing to his woes, but one glance at his May 2014 Facebook Posts could easily tell you that he's seeing his situation as an avenue to get stuff from people, the most ridiculous of which being a "$300 Sea Cow" on his wish list, which would not benefit anybody but himself in the slightest.

In 2016, Chris's e-begging drastically increased, as a result of the Chandlers' stubborn refusal to live within their means. That year saw Chris spend over $1,000 on toys, while both Chris and Barb had court cases resolved which penalized them with steep costs. In addition, Barb joined in to the begging, appearing in three videos so far.

He asked for donations, or at least mentioned them, in many of the posts and videos he made in 2015 through 2016. At first, this was supposedly to fund his production of Sonichu merchandise, but he later shifted to saying that he and Barb needed help with paying the bills and buying groceries. While it's entirely possible that Chris was simply lying to get more money for useless crap, this indicates that the financial hardships, which many people have warned him about, have finally arrived. Only time will tell how his financial situation ultimately plays out, but given his attitude and inaction, the future definitely doesn't seem bright.

Theft
On 30 July 2021, after Chris was served an Emergency Protective Order temporarily forbidding him from his home, he stole $750 from Barb's bank account. Some of this money was spent immediately - Chris' bank account was 200 dollars in debt. Much of what remained was spent on lodging in a Regency Inn in Richmond, and the leftover money was swiftly spent on what can be assumed to be assorted frivolities and food. Two days after this money was withdrawn, Null - who at that point could still view the emails from Chris's bank - posted an image of a low balance notice from Chris's Bank of America account on the Kiwi Farms, confirming that Chris had $1.03 remaining in his account.

In a letter he relayed to Null a couple of months later, he claims to have sent his $150 Patreon payout back to Barb, as compensation for stealing the money.

This is predictably a lie since not only did Chris's Patreon get shut down very quickly after the leaks were made but even if it wasn't Chris would be forced to wait until the next Monday due to their pay-out waiting period of 1-3 business days (something that Chris himself acknowledges in the same letter).

In the comic


"What the? What the fuck is a C-quarter? What the fuck is a W-quarter? Nobody explained any of this to me!"

- Brendaniel upon discovering CWCville's weird currency

In the comic it is clear Chris has no idea how money works. Sonichu, Rosechu, Patti-Chan, and most likely all of the other characters live off welfare, just like Chris in real life. He seems to have no concept of tax, or that it's the American populace who pay for his bullshit. Sonichu and Rosechu are living in a two-story house with an attic offered by the city and they are "paid" in average of US$3,500 a month just to hang around. And maybe for the occasional city defense or errand.

While legislating as mayor of CWCville, he equated 10 years in prison to a US$1,500 fine. He also equated fifty hours of to $500 (for any sexual violations).

In Episode 19, it's shown that CWCVille actually issues its own currency, in the form of C-Quarters and W-Quarters. Ten C-Quarters make up a W-Quarter - don't bother asking how that makes sense in any way, considering what the word "quarter" means. (Our best guess: C-Quarters = US$0.25, W-Quarters = US$2.50) Nor does it explain why fines are levied in U.S. dollars: perhaps to bolster the dictatorship's foreign currency reserves, à la.

This makes even less sense considering CWCVille is part of the United States. States, let alone cities, cannot print their own money, despite holding considerable power over their own affairs. The Constitution expressly forbids anyone else other than the federal government from issuing currency. However, it has been somewhat common for companies, communities and local governments to issue localized currency known as 'scrip', a depression era practice still seen from time to time. Chris being Chris, and likely reading Goosebumps instead of paying attention in class likely is wholly unaware of this information.

On the CWCipedia article on Sonichu, Chris wrote that Rosechu is usually the one who cooks for her family, but when Sonichu cooks for his wife and kids he "will go as HIGH in portions as a Banquet", even though he only cooks for five individuals. This suggest that Sonichu is just as frivolous with money as his father.

Soup hotels
Chris shows us his complete misunderstanding of the stress his ideas would put on the American system if he was left in charge of it in a text called "A Sonichu and Rosechu Christmas Story." This is where the idea of "Soup Hotels" came from.

"Even the homeless have a place to stay in the ten Soup Kitchens/Hotels."

- Chris with a very bad idea.

Chris depicts "Soup Hotels" as buildings ten stories tall with between ten and twenty rooms per floor, equipped with single bathrooms, beds, lighting and cable television. Of course, the homeless stay there for free. So, instead of building homeless shelters with dormitories, common rooms, and shared TV sets, Chris thinks the homeless should be treated to all the comforts of a bona fide hotel. This means that, in CWCville, there are around 1,500 homeless people left outside. This might be the result of the local industry, choked by heavy taxes needed to pay those social expenses, being unable to make a profit there and thus moving away.

In Sonichu #10, Ultra Sonichu and a bevy of Rosechus stop at a soup hotel. The building is labeled Soup Hotel 17, implying that CWCville has had to open at least seven new homeless shelters in the span of a month, or they're just bad at numbering the things. Or more tellingly, that the economy of CWCville is crashing to the ground, fast.

In other works
In Mumble 6, Chris discussed making a TV show called The Chris Chandler Show. One of his demands was the show should not have any commercial breaks, either showing a distinct lack of understanding as to how a TV station makes money, or perhaps he plans to sell the advertising fees to a single company so that they can play a long ad in the beginning of the air time and leave the rest of the show uninterrupted, à-la the season premieres of. We cannot know for sure, but he has probably seen at least one show that has done this, and gathered the idea from there.

In Mailbag 29 he stated that $10 an hour is a reasonable price to pay for sex with a prostitute. To show his further ignorance of simple economics, Chris proposed a chain of state-run brothels where this shockingly inexpensive fee would not only pay women for sex, pay the salary of a pimp, pay for STD testing for the prostitutes, but would also pay for free Sex Ed classes for virgins.

In real life, according to Chris, he tried to scam his way out of paying for sex with a Craigslist prostitute who was charging $100 per hour by telling her about the trolls, his life story, and his many personal problems. He said the prostitute then hung up on him.

Chris also proves us that, in the possibility of being part of a family, he wouldn't be the main purveyor. In the PlayingHouse video, his sweetheart of the moment is portrayed as a successful journalist with high ambitions while he's a stay at home Dad. Even then, he portrays himself doing "hard work" like changing diapers and watching over the kids. In this last role, he's so incompetent that he needs to recruit his preschool daughter to watch over his son while he's shopping. This is paralleled by his real life situation - with Bob gone, one would assume that he'd be the "man of the house" and assume some responsibility for once. Unfortunately, as evidenced by his admission in court, Barb is still pulling his ass out of any such concept by paying his court fees. Keep in mind that, by extension, Chris is being minded by an ailing woman's retirement money which was used to bail him out of a mess that he started, while he wastes his own money on meaningless frivolities.

Conclusion
Given Chris's longtime, carefree abandon when it comes to his spending habits, many are actually concerned as to what will happen to Chris when Barb passes on and he has to fend for himself - especially following his arrest for incest, which will likely make those fears a reality. If Chris is somehow let out of jail and let back into the world, with past experiences in mind, it's sadly more than likely he will continue on his path of not saving his money (if he has any at this point), and will end up broke and in severe debt. A past conversation with Clyde Cash revealed that he doesn't even know the basic expenses that go into running a household, and his plan of marrying a sweetheart to dump all of the financial responsibilities on her would have never worked to begin with.

Long story short, if Chris doesn't start saving for his future now, he won't have one to look forward to. And he'll have nobody to blame but himself. (Not that he won't try, of course.)