I'll give your smoking gun. Ready?
* 3 takeout meals per meal. 8 meals per day. That amounts to 24 dishes per day. Remember this man has 600-pounds. His minimal calorie intake only to maintain his own weight during rest is 15-20k calories, or 7 times more than an average adult. The whale cant even clean after himself, let alone cook. We're talking 300 Canadian dollars per day, minimum. That amounts to 9k only to maintain his food intake as meals.
* 5 chip bags per day as appetitizers and in-between food as meals dont arrive. $25 a day, minimum. Thats $750 a month.
* Drinks, drugs and general non-related expenses. He chugs soda like a mofo. Ill put $500. Again, conservative.
* I wont even list travelling expenses and say it is all paid by tardski.
We're up to $12k only in food. If he gambles $5k a month, im being extremely generous. Theres no saving here. This man cannot control what he stuffs in his mouth, he will never have financial discipline. Im more eager to believe he is borrowing money or defrauding social security to pad his finances. Gambling addicts may win big only until they lose big again.
Base cost of living in Toronto is estimated at 5K CAD/mon. This translates to app 3.5K/mon or 42K/yr USD. We did an extremely extensive assessment and I'm pretty confident they were averaging about 60-70K/yr (56K + gumroad + superchats) each USD from ALL sources EXCLUDING backdoor gifts from people like MM. This is PRIOR to tax, so yeah, I VASTLY overstated Ashton's income. Ashton's Tweet with Phil on the other hand suggests he might be closer to the 90K range, as saying "he gets taxed about 40%" would make the most sense if his income were about 120K-150K CAD (given national and provincial tax rates) or around 90K-110K USD (126K-154 CAD). This is all PRE TAX.
If Ashton is taken at his word about his tax rate in the Phil DMs, we are now at 54K-66K = around 5K/mon POST tax and, yeah, his monthly discretionary is WAY beyond 1.5K/mon and WAY above 18K/yr. The food and drugs alone make up for most of that, even if there was a jocular element to overstate his 300/day consumption habit (it is legitimately probably an average of 50 based on appetite and inability to prepare). Add gambling and traveling into the mix, yeah, he's not saving much (a month's funds MAXIMUM to endure the next hide session and this is the MOST generous possible outcome). Andy, Phil and Styx are ALL in the high 5/low 6, but no amount of money will ever go to future planning. Yeah, I'm getting more convinced. Jokes and exaggerations aside, his food budget IS no joke. DSP has a huge food budget with a much smaller appetite (even adjusted for feeding his wife).
Even if we run with the assumption that 5K mon CAD pre tax (which becomes 3.5K CAD or 2.45K USD post-tax) is sufficient to live decently in Toronto, 5K a month CAD is sufficient to push you from a 20% tax to about a 30% tax (there is a world of difference in taxation between the 50K mark and the 56K mark). We are now adjusting the base cost of living in Toronto to 2.45K USD/mon (let's call it 2.5) and freeing up 1K mon in discretionary. We both know that Ashton EASILY blows very close to, if not all or more than 2.5K a month in discretionary spending and this is a GENEROUS statement.
Ashton has a very specific claim in regards to contrasting his habits versus Phil's. "No money given to Phil IMPROVED THE QUALITY OF HIS LIFE" This implies that increases in income ONLY go to increased discretionary spending, as if he were also saving, he would have had two rhetorical points to use against Phil instead of one
Given the MOST GENEROUS ASSUMPTIONS, Ashton is possibly half base cost of living and half discretionary. But, yes, he is definitely living a lifestyle that consumes very close to 30K USD/yr. almost exactly 30K a year or more than 30K with credit. His tardrages while gambling as exposed by Raven yesterday imply he's either gambling nearly everything he has or, worse, gambling more than he can afford to settle.
Unfortunately, the MM X-factor is almost inestimable. It is already serving to explain the discrepancies between the projection of online earnings and his statement to Phil regarding his tax rate. There is NO WAY of estimating MM's contributions, as we know he dropped 25K in (less than) a week once. He can float em 10K on a whim with a lot of frequency.
Added in edit: A major error was made, as I was applying a 30% tax rate to the ENTIRETY of the 60K CAD analysis, rather than just the last 4K or so. This error ADDS to the amount of discretionary that Ashton would have, so I am keeping it in because it is in their favor. The analysis above contains an error in their favor and it is being kept in to steelman their position. My error means that I am underestimating the base cost of living and overestimating Ashton's discretionary income. If I corrected the error, he'd have a few hundred less USD per month in his discretionary. Once again, this error is in his FAVOR.
