Bontragers/Bowers/Helferichs 10: Where In the World Is Allison Bon-Diego??

[JermajestyDuggar]

36 minutes ago, IsmeWeatherwax said:

The Bonts have posted that their tour starts shortly. Many many dates are available if you wish to book them... Not as popular as they used to be?

They only have 4 kids left and no Joe. I doubt they are as good as they used to be. 

[HereticHick]

On 11/25/2021 at 5:14 AM, JermajestyDuggar said:

They only have 4 kids left and no Joe. I doubt they are as good as they used to be. 

Exactly, and the youngest kid is what--13 or 14? Cute little photogenic performing kids is a draw the Bontragers no longer have--unless some of their married kids start teaching the grandkids to perform & rejoin the band in a few years.  

I see they also aren't to see their Anabaptist relatives in Mexico on this tour, even they are going to Texas & New Mexico--even though it looks like they can cross the border without being vaxxed, I'm not sure about the essential/nonessential travel requirements.

[Katzchen24]

I love this thread title so much. It makes me smile each time I scroll past it. 

[Ms. Brightside]

On 11/23/2021 at 5:05 AM, IsmeWeatherwax said:

Thank you @Themanda Duggar @Black Aliss once we have the next blood test we can re-evaluate the diet, I intend to have much beef stew and steak in this period, just in case lol Yes he has a glass of orange juice with his tablet and I hide spinach in everything!  We do have pernicious anaemia in the family and his neutrophils were just scraping thru at the high end of low. 

Im trying to remain positive while we wait.   

Once you’ve corrected the problem, as someone who has been a vegetarian for 15+ years, I’ve noticed my body now craves cereal when my iron levels need a boost… just check to make sure you’re getting one that is fortified with iron, but almost all cereals have around 90% of your daily iron needs in a serving. Sure, you don’t absorb all of that as readily as red meat, but when I’ve tracked what I eat while I’m on a cereal kick, I’ll often be hitting 120-250% of my RDA in iron, so it seems to even out in the end. So that might be something worth adding in, if you aren’t big cereal eaters. It doesn’t have to be for breakfast… I’ll use the sugary ones as dessert and it totally satisfies my sweet tooth!

[IsmeWeatherwax]

@Ms. Brightside he's not a huge fan of cereal but I'll see if he fancies any, and I eat cereal for any meal and snack! I'd had him on multi-vits with iron, so it was 100% of his daily iron and also extra B12 tablets, and he was still extremely anaemic, which is why he is being tested. He's had a full month of prescribed iron tablets and beef in his diet and he is still really fatigued, tho the stomach aches have reduced. Its such a worry

[anachronistic]

Does anyone else read this thread title to the tune of the song and then add ‘do do do do do DO do do do do do do’ mentally or out loud after it every time? Or is it just me?

[BigSandy]

Allison posted in her Instagram stories about her Young Living earnings. She said she has 200 people on her team! I can't believe that many people get sucked into these MLMs! Especially with so many sisters/relatives selling YL stuff, I'm surprised she can make as much as she does (she said she is "silver" level, which has an average monthly income of over $2,000)! 

[IsmeWeatherwax]

Do they really earn that much in MLMs? Thats more than the minimum wage here!

[fundiefan]

1 hour ago, IsmeWeatherwax said:

Do they really earn that much in MLMs? Thats more than the minimum wage here!

On paper, yes. But, they have to use the money to replenish their stock. Each MLM is different, but many have "requirements" for how much you need to have on hand, thus how much you have to spend. Plus, you're responsible for all your own taxes, so if she earned $2,000, she is taxed on that, then has to buy stock. Her wallet isn't really that much fuller.

[JermajestyDuggar]

I wonder how that makes her manly husband feel. 

I think a lot of these fundie women use their “fame” to sucker people into MLMs. I put fame in parentheses because they are only famous amongst fundies. I think Shoshanna Pearl did the same thing. Her parents are famous in those circles and she used that fame to make big bucks in plexus. I think it’s shitty to make money off of poor fundie groupies. While they are struggling. 

[Tangy Bee]

Is selling Plexus and essential oils a fundie thing? I honestly had never heard of Plexus until I read about it on FJ a few months ago.

[anachronistic]

Did anyone else watch the documentary, LulaRich, on Amazon? I binged it this weekend because it was so fascinating. It did a great job of explaining how MLMs literally target stay at home moms and how they suck them in by pretending to care about them and give them a good time at conventions, parties, etc. I imagine the LulaRoe story is similar to most MLMs, only that LulaRoe rose and fell much faster because of a confluence of factors like social media, the recession, etc. Anyway it’s great and I hope that some of the people we follow here will see it and take heed. (I hope - but I doubt it.)

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

46 minutes ago, Tangy Bee said:

Is selling Plexus and essential oils a fundie thing? I honestly had never heard of Plexus until I read about it on FJ a few months ago.

All MLMs Target stay at home moms. Mormons are huge into MLMs because it’s always been the ideal for Mormon women to be stay at home moms. Fundies idealize being stay at home moms too. Plus they tend to have a lot of children. They need that extra money because it’s hard to live off of one income when you have 5-8 kids. That’s why all fundies are into MLMs. I personally think they might make more money with an Etsy store. But maybe they don’t have any creative skills like we knitting or painting. 

[BigSandy]

I read the book "Cultish" this summer and it had a whole section on MLMs. I had never known that much about them and it was really interesting, and also very sad how they prey on people who can least afford that kind of thing. Now I want to watch LulaRich! Thanks for the recommendation!

[usedbicycle]

5 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

All MLMs Target stay at home moms. Mormons are huge into MLMs because it’s always been the ideal for Mormon women to be stay at home moms. Fundies idealize being stay at home moms too. Plus they tend to have a lot of children. They need that extra money because it’s hard to live off of one income when you have 5-8 kids. That’s why all fundies are into MLMs. I personally think they might make more money with an Etsy store. But maybe they don’t have any creative skills like we knitting or painting. 

Yes, more importantly, MLMs target RELIGIOUS stay-at-home moms because it's a sexist model that tells women they can work in short bursts in the few minutes when the men and children in their lives don't need them. Nowadays you can easily find flexible work online that pays upward of $25/hour if you have some marketable skills (like tutoring, personal assistant, content writing...). With the prohibitive cost of daycare in big cities, so many of my parent friends have one parent work from home and they usually make good money. So why are religious moms so attracted to MLMs instead of working a "real" remote job a few hours a day? Because MLMs promote this false idea that you work for yourself and have no boss (no competition for the husband's authority), which is bullcrap because working for an MLM is literally like like having a pimp that gets rich of your back. Allison's post makes it clear that a woman must be available to her man at all times and only work in the few spare minutes when neither her husband or children need her. 

[Ozlsn]

6 hours ago, usedbicycle said:

Yes, more importantly, MLMs target RELIGIOUS stay-at-home moms because it's a sexist model that tells women they can work in short bursts in the few minutes when the men and children in their lives don't need them.

Much easier to exploit people when you tell them it's more godly.

[Dominionatrix]

16 hours ago, IsmeWeatherwax said:

Do they really earn that much in MLMs? Thats more than the minimum wage here!

Even before expenses and tax, the overwhelming majority of people in MLMs are making almost no money whatsoever. You can see on the Young Living income disclosure that 87% are making an average of four dollars per year. What’s interesting to me is that the incomes listed here are much lower than the breakdowns I’ve recently seen shared by fundie YL distributors:

 

https://static.youngliving.com/en-AU/PDFS/IDSOnlineVersion_PDF_US_Page3.pdf

[ophelia]

17 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I personally think they might make more money with an Etsy store. But maybe they don’t have any creative skills like we knitting or painting. 

Since her sister Chelsy sewed her own wedding dress I always had the impression that Ma Bontrager taught her daughters skills like that and IIRC correctly, Allison has/had some sort of Etsy gig where she sold necklaces. But I guess this is too time consuming now.

[ifosterkittens]

5 hours ago, Dominionatrix said:

You can see on the Young Living income disclosure that 87% are making an average of four dollars per year. What’s interesting to me is that the incomes listed here are much lower than the breakdowns I’ve recently seen shared by fundie YL distributors:

 

https://static.youngliving.com/en-AU/PDFS/IDSOnlineVersion_PDF_US_Page3.pdf

Thank you for including the income disclosure statement. It blows my mind 87% make less than $1,825 a year, with an average of $4, and median of $0. Too bad they don't tell us how many people ended up in the negative. 

The annual income for silver ranges from $582-$235,654. That is quite the range! Average annual income in silver is $13,254 and the median is $9,702. 

[Bluebirdbluebell]

On 12/7/2021 at 2:50 PM, usedbicycle said:

Yes, more importantly, MLMs target RELIGIOUS stay-at-home moms because it's a sexist model that tells women they can work in short bursts in the few minutes when the men and children in their lives don't need them. Nowadays you can easily find flexible work online that pays upward of $25/hour if you have some marketable skills (like tutoring, personal assistant, content writing...). With the prohibitive cost of daycare in big cities, so many of my parent friends have one parent work from home and they usually make good money. So why are religious moms so attracted to MLMs instead of working a "real" remote job a few hours a day? Because MLMs promote this false idea that you work for yourself and have no boss (no competition for the husband's authority), which is bullcrap because working for an MLM is literally like like having a pimp that gets rich of your back. Allison's post makes it clear that a woman must be available to her man at all times and only work in the few spare minutes when neither her husband or children need her. 

A lot of MLMS like Plexus also have religious owners, who believe in the gospel of prosperity. 

MLMs also target military spouses, since it can be to take a job when you need to move a lot. 

[JanasTattooParlor]

13 hours ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

MLMs also target military spouses, since it can be to take a job when you need to move a lot. 

This is what I was gonna say. I have several friends who are military spouses and they all sell Young Living or Scentsy because they can do it from anywhere in the world since it’s hard to keep a job when you move every few years. I’ve found that the people who sell Scentsy aren’t as pushy as the YL group, but I’m also seeing a lot of religious women I went to college with show off their “oil organizers” and talk about what to diffuse to help their themselves destress or help their newborns sleep. These are women with degrees and jobs that still buy into the “oils solve everything” hype. Drives me crazy. 

[BigSandy]

Okay so now Allison is selling necklaces on her Instagram. I think in and of itself, that is totally fine and a great thing to do! But after bragging about how much she makes with YL and that work is not her focus, it makes me wonder if they really are hard up for money right now? 

[LanaBanana]

1 hour ago, BigSandy said:

Okay so now Allison is selling necklaces on her Instagram. I think in and of itself, that is totally fine and a great thing to do! But after bragging about how much she makes with YL and that work is not her focus, it makes me wonder if they really are hard up for money right now? 

Wait, everyone isn't poor this time of year?? 囧 

In all seriousness, I wouldn't be surprised if they were. The area they moved to isn't exactly an economic powerhouse. Didn't Jeremiah work in his family's construction business? Not a lot of demand in that part of the state, no one is moving there and there isn't a tourism industry.

[ophelia]

Where do they live now? I think I remember that they moved to Missouri, but I don‘t recall which part of the state.

[petrushka]

8 hours ago, ophelia said:

Where do they live now? I think I remember that they moved to Missouri, but I don‘t recall which part of the state.

Pretty sure they are in the south central part of the state.  At least part of the family business has relocated to Wright County.