February 21, 2022

Good Parking Spots Are Worth It


Good Parking Spots Are Worth It
We've all been so desperate for a good spot that we'd be willing to pay through the nose. The Russian Life files

Really need a place to park your car, or a spot to store your shoes, but can't quite make ends meet for it? Fortunately, VTB Bank has your back, as they're about to offer loans for customers looking specifically looking to take on parking spots and closets, the idea being that the convenience of a reserved spot and extra space in apartment buildings will be worth the cost to consumers.

Customers looking to get a loan will have to pay 20% of the space's or storage unit's value down and 10.7% interest, but if you just gotta have somewhere to put your Lada, here's your solution. Maximum loans reach 4 million rubles ($53,000) in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where parking is a premium, and 2 million ($27,000) elsewhere in the country (We'd love to see what a parking space valued at $53,000 looks like).

Loans can be laid out for as long as thirty years, although we hope we'll have flying cars by then.

We can't say Dave Ramsey didn't warn us. At least this seems a little more permanent than some other expenses.

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Some of our Books

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Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

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Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

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The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

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