"You gonna get another job?"...

Oerdin

Active Member
Inflation is just unbelievable. Part of it is California is a one party state and the Democraps keep pushing absurd garbage like minimum wages which automatically go up every year no matter how it effects the economy (Now at $16.30 and goes up automatically every January). Part of it is also that the Fed literally quadrupled the total supply of U.S. dollars in just three years resulting in ever more dollars chasing the same amount of goods. Part of it is Democraps are still giving people tons of money to not work (check out how many are now on SSIDI often for frivolous stuff because Dems made it easy for everyone to get a free check).

Prices definitely went up. Tonight my wife and I went out to eat at a local seafood chain restaurant (Brigantine Seafood) and it was nice enough, it is a sit down restaurant, five years ago it probably would have been $25-$40 per person depending on what you ordered. Today after tax and a 15% tip it was $165. I went for the daily special (crab stuffed seabass with veggies and rice pilaf and a cup of clam chowder), wife went for blackened salmon (similar sort of soup and sides offered) plus we opted for an appetizer of six oysters (three baked, three on half shell). I drank iced tea and my wife ordered lemonade.

Does that sound like a $165 meal for two at a chain restaurant? I swear to God before COVID this would have been $50-$70 tops but now it is more than double that.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
I confess I did fuck up on one thing. If you order the oysters at their "oyster bar" during happy hour than they are only $1.50 per oyster. We were there during happy hour but if you sit at a table and not in their bar than magically the same oysters become $4 each. Not sure how that works.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
Put in the offer. There are wrinkles. Not flat-out dealbreaking wrinkles, but enough to make me even more nervous. Seller is selling because she's behind on payments and out of money. She can move, but she needs the money from the sale to do the move. There are legal documents that can be used to cover this case, but how much weight do they carry if the other party has no valuable assets?

Then there's carrying costs. Since part of this will be financed by my HELOC, I'll pay a couple hundred dollars of interest for a house I can't do anything with for a couple weeks.

And finally (and I hesitate to say this out loud), there's the recent insurance claim on my home for storm damage. Technically, the HELOC is a mortgage. So technically, the bank is an "interested party" that needs to be involved in the claim. BUT, because I have a $0 balance on it, it simplified things and they aren't an interested party. Before I found out just how dire the seller's straits were, she wanted to close in 45 days, to give time to move everything. Which made sense. But on learning she has no money to move until after she gets the close money, it is clear that it was just dragging heels to avoid the unpleasant.

And this is the big challenge in real estate investing: People don't want to act when a problem they have is still manageable. They want to wait until it is too late. And when it is too late, I can't make a deal work. The other house. Made an offer and their counter was too high--and they wouldn't budge on it--so we couldn't do a deal. Eventually (after sitting as "Pending" for 2 months, I saw the place was in preforeclosure. Now it lists as "Pending" again--but for a $10,000 higher asking price, so who knows what's going on with it.

On a semi-related note, every house I've looked at that is being sold because the seller is in financial trouble has evidence of an above ground pool. The Pending place, the pool was put in in 2018 (apparently) and less than 4 years later it was ruined and unusable. People make bad decisions and get into financial problems. And then they need to start making good decisions to get out of them and expecting that to happen is just crazy.

Remember that any short sale has to be approved by the lender. Also with all the risks you mentioned I would demand a 20% discount and see what the bank says. If the bank forecloses then it is looking at a 33% to 50% lose so they might just accept a deal where they take a 20% lose.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
I like to pay my utilities as soon as they post though I guess they aren't officially due until the end of the month. The fucking water bill was $250 on a regular suburban house, Democraps recently raised water rates "because we are in a drought and need to force people to conserve", we than got two years worth of rain in three months. The drought is magically gone but higher rates remain forever. My SDG&E (gas and electric) bill was $400 because Democraps don't want to build any power stations plus they ordered utilities in the state not to have the usual storage of natural gas because "we are phasing out fossil fuels for green energy". The result? Shortages of both electricity and natural gas with prices up 300%.

Democraps are like retarded incompetent children but no matter how badly they fuck everything up their loyal zombie mail in voters make sure none of them ever loses an election.

I recently paid $20,000 to have solar installed to try to lower the sky high electric bills (still have one payment of $4000 due when the system is installed and working). It turns out Democraps lied about giving a shit about "green energy" because if this system isn't installed and operating by April 15th then instead of Netmetering 2.0 it will fall under netmetering 3.0. What is the difference? Utilities will give homeowners with solar systems just 15% of what they would get under 2.0. That is right, the Democraps reduced the amount homeowners get for investing tens of thousands of dollars in solar panels by 85% yet still lie and pretend they care.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I loved Oregon when I moved there in 2002. Didn't completely hate SoCal when I was living there in the early 2000s. Or San Francisco or Seattle when I visited them around then. But you couldn't get me to live on the West Coast for any amount of money today. When I was considering Kentucky I had a hangup because of the reputation of being backwards and redneck. But then I realized I didn't like or respect the opinions of the sources that were calling it backwards and redneck and I've been largely happy here. Got a house twice as large as my Oregon one for half the price and closer to downtown. Taxes on a 3br house are $600-800 a year. If I think I'll need it, I'm free to tuck a .45 into the small of my back and throw on a jacket. No permits or paperwork. Only thing I really miss is the McMenamin's chain from Portland, where they'd buy some old church or something and turn it into a pub with a movie theater and show classic movies. There's really nothing like that around here.

OK. Mundane little reason I popped on here: I try not to get tied to things. And I try not to dwell on things I wish I'd done. My parents had those "FLOUR" "SUGAR" "COFFEE" etc canisters for the kitchen counter and they were stainless with black lids. I favor a clean countertop, but with all my stainless appliances with black accents, they'd look really neat in my kitchen. But I won't ask my brother for them. Because I'm stubborn about those sort of things.

Now I should go try to get my cat In. He's Out and it's getting late. I'd rather he didn't spend the night Out.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Everything about this car accident claim has been a dumpster fire. Upon having an appointment to drop the car off, I tried to call Enterprise to set up my pickup time and location. After failing repeatedly to get through by phone, I decided to just drive to their office. That's when I found out there was another Enterprise a couple miles up the road. The one I was at didn't have an cars for the next day but that one did--only they might not be willing to drive all the way down to this body shop. So I drove up there and got everything confirmed. Next day I dropped the car off and Enterprise showed up to take me to the office. They took me to the office that told me the day before that they didn't have any cars. In trying to sort that out, it turned out they did, in fact have a car for me and my reservation was now through their office. OK. Fine. Whatever. Got the paperwork e-mailed to me.

Well today I'm going through e-mails and it turns out I was supposed to return the car Friday?! WTF? USAA really thinks the body shop is going to fix the car in 3 days? Shit, they won't even have all the parts in 3 days. So now I've got to figure out if I'm driving a "stolen" car or if the paperwork is just screwed up on this too. :/ What a shit-show.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
Went to a breakfast place with my wife and youngest (eldest whined about not wanting to get out of bed "early". It was 10am.). The restaurant was "Snooze, an A.M. Eatery". Waited, no shit, 1.5 hours in line for a table; originally it was supposed to be 25-30 minutes so we took a walk around Hillcrest (the gay part of town), and bought smoothies at Whole Foods then walked back to be just on time for our 30 minute wait. The restaurant had my wife's phone number and said they would text when it was our turn.

A full fucking hour later (1.5 hours after we put our name on the list) we got a table. I got their "Snooze Classic" (three sausage links, three eggs, hash browns, and toast), wife got their Italian eggs benidicts (just one poached egg on half a slice of toast with a tiny slice of prosciutto ham and hash browns with a side of toast) while the sixth grader got the same order as me plus a single "banana creme brulee pancake). Drinks were 1 bloody Mary (served in a pint glass mostly filled with ice), 1 margarita (maybe half a pint in size), and orange juice and a pineapple juice.

Total damage with tax and 15% tip was $98! Fuck that.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
One bright spot is on the way home we stopped at a new location of the chain "Earl of Sandwich" and it was their first day opening where they were doing a promotion giving away a free small sandwich to every person. That was nice.

Originally we were only getting a sandwich for the eldest because he didn't go with us to breakfast or to Balboa Park/the museums.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
WRT our after breakfast trip to a museum at Balboa Park...

Later went to Balboa Park, walked around, went to the "Museum of US" which cost $58 for 1 vet, 1 adult, and 1 child but buying a ticket means you get free entry for an entire year. Now, until 2020 it was called "The Museum of Man" but radical leftists claimed that was a sexist name and it was changed to "Museum of us" to follow D.E.I. requirements by the state according to a display at the entry. At the same time they changed the name of the museum of man they also opened a "Museum of women" which is somehow not sexist. Make this shit make sense.

Back in the day it was all about cultural and artistic creations as well as displays about different cultures in different time periods. Now it was literally over run with racist woke garbage and political phrases. One section declared "right wing racism to be rooted in white supremacist racialism". Another was supposedly about "our border region" which dealt exclusively on drumming up sympathy for illegal aliens criminals while a third was about beer which claimed primitive south Americans chewing dried corn in their mouth then spitting the chewed up corn and their spit into a bowl made of lightly fired mud was "an advanced brewing process from an advanced civilization. To compare European beer brewing was called "barbaric and backwards" and an ancient SE Asian practice of putting moldy rice into a container of water was "the Hallmark of a higher civilization". I shit you no
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
We're fucking doomed. That said, when I moved to Kentucky, the first time I went to the supermarket, a guy was open-carrying a .45 Colt (relax, it wasn't Alec Baldwin), the grocery bill was 1/2 what it would be in Oregon, and the bagger said "have blessed day." I almost cried, explaining how different it was from Portland, and the checker smiled and said "you're in a red state now."
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Apparently I have something called "eosiniphilic esophagitus." That means your immune system has decided something harmless--or even good--is a threat and creates a response to it. In my case this inflames the tube food goes down and makes me choke on my food if I don't chew thoroughly and drink lots of liquid with it. The gastroenter...gastro... The doc says the most common cause is dairy--with alcohol a close second. Great. I'm from Wisconsin. So that means I'm going to die. Seriously. The list looks like my diet: Wheat, eggs, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, nuts, seafood... Just take me out back and shoot me and get it over with.

I mention this because I'm 2-3 days into a prescription. This is how old I am. My exam was, like, a month ago. This week she called me to see if the medication was doing anything. To me, if a doc says "I'm giving you a prescription," they will then hand you a 4x6" sheet of paper with their letterhead and illegible scribbles that you take to a pharmacy. Apparently now they just do it all electronically. So tonight I had comfort food--pork chops and sauerkraut with mashed potatoes (with butter), wheat bread with butter, and a beer. Attempting to test my wellness, I managed to clog up my esophagus and spend a 15 minute sidebar trying to clear it with fluids, walking around, and retching. I've never had blood come out before so either that's a sign of progress or that it is getting worse (maybe it got clogged so bad because it got so much farther down than it could before medication). I want a robot body.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Well, my offer got accepted. So now I need to get the money moved where it needs to be to do the deal, get it renovated, and rented. That's always scary, so here I sit typing this to help psych myself up. I know what I'm doing--better than a lot of people. I know the deal makes sense as far as what the property will be worth when it's renovated and how much rent it will bring in. But I worry about if I missed anything important and the things that, as Rumsfeld said are "unknown unknowns." I don't know I don't know.

All-in, right now, I've got just about enough money to be safe. I'm in better shape than the first rental I bought. Of course know I know how much luck I had on that deal. And I know so many more fun and exciting ways things can go wrong. I'm realizing I really need a new roof on the place (although hell, I really needed a new roof on the first place and I was able to put that off a year and a half) and that I don't have as good a handle on what putting in LVP flooring is going to cost. I've got a car at the body shop and an insurance claim that is still working along for the tree that grazed my roof at the start of the month. I've got doctor bills and prescriptions coming up for my throat. What if my numbers are off? What if my numbers are on but I missed something? What if I didn't miss anything but there's some big Titanic iceberg out there, waiting to find me.

Eh, there's no point in worrying about what *could* go wrong. Take the precautions you can and do your best. It's a good deal. It makes sense. It should work.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
...Prices definitely went up. Tonight my wife and I went out to eat at a local seafood chain restaurant (Brigantine Seafood) and it was nice enough, it is a sit down restaurant, five years ago it probably would have been $25-$40 per person depending on what you ordered. Today after tax and a 15% tip it was $165. ... I swear to God before COVID this would have been $50-$70 tops but now it is more than double that.
I lived on the island of Oahu in 2007 & 2008. When I tell people about what that's like, one of the benchmarks is that a week of groceries for a single guy was almost always over $100. When I moved to Oregon a week of groceries for a single guy was about $65. When I moved to Kentucky in 2017 it was about that for a guy, a dog, and a cat. Of late, it is pretty common for groceries for a guy, a dog, and a cat to run around $150. Let's go, Brandon.
 

Loktar

Pinata Whacker
I lived on the island of Oahu in 2007 & 2008. When I tell people about what that's like, one of the benchmarks is that a week of groceries for a single guy was almost always over $100. When I moved to Oregon a week of groceries for a single guy was about $65. When I moved to Kentucky in 2017 it was about that for a guy, a dog, and a cat. Of late, it is pretty common for groceries for a guy, a dog, and a cat to run around $150. Let's go, Brandon.
I'm a single guy in living in Albany NY, no dog, no cat and a week of groceries costs me $100 a week.....sometimes a little under, sometimes a little over.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
The waiting is the hardest part. Well, that and the procrastinating on unpleasant tasks. Money is moving for the house. Lawyers are looking at the title. Car is being repaired (although the hood doesn't even ship until tomorrow so I'd better let them know what's going on, since they think they'll be done by the 31st.) I'm told the home insurance claim is progressing. I see an ear, nose, and throat doctor next Tuesday. There's really nothing I can do for the next 2 hours until it is time to make dinner.

Well that's not true. I've got some bookkeeping. And some dishes. And organizing the basement. I could possibly do some work on the storm damage, since the adjuster has already been out. I found a more accurate sun visor for the A-Team Van, but I've got to drill holes to mount the roof lights and take the old one off. All these things would be productive. Heck, I could even exercise a little bit. I'm more likely to take a nap I really don't need. Or play some MS Solitaire.

[Shit, I should be working on my storage lease template and my yard sign so I can get some of these empty shed spaces rented out.]
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Oh, another stream of thought: When my old Dog developed separation anxiety, I made it a goal to find a living where I wouldn't have to leave the house 9-10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Owning rental properties was on the short list. I also kind of liked the idea of retiring early. IIRC, my Dad retired at 55 (IIRC because he got married at something like 47). Bought 10 acres and the farm buildings from someone retiring from farming (the DNR got the rest of the land). Did his volunteer projects and home maintenance projects and side hustles like renting out storage space in our many sheds.

When I moved to Kentucky, looking at the amount of money I had, how much was invested, and projected income, without real estate it looked like I could probably retire at...63. Not ideal. So I did the real estate. Bought my first rental. Fixed it up and rented it out. Started looking for another, but by then the pandemic had hit and it was hard to find any houses that met my criteria. Then I happened on an old farmhouse on an acre with a few sheds that was in probate. It's funny, because it was almost totally not what my ideal house was since moving to Kentucky, but it was exactly my ideal house before moving (it's not brick, it doesn't have a fireplace, it does have a basement and a fully fenced yard). I could move in, fix it up, and rent out my existing house.

Up to this point, all my real estate since my the woodland in Wisconsin that I'd bought for a paintball business with a loan from my Mom had been cash deals--sold off most of my IRA to get my first house. Fixed it up and made a lot of money when it was time to sell it (I'd made some good money on the land in Wisconsin too when it came time to sell that). But for this last deal, I'm running out of money, so I had to finance part of it. If everything goes according to plan, it should be a nice buffer of income. I can just about live on the other properties, but this will help cover the unexpected and hedge against vacancy periods. And when they've appreciated in value and it is time to sell, I'll have my retirement money. But for now I'm looking at a loan that I want to pay off. So a decent chunk of the rent from the place I'm working on buying will go to the bank instead of me. And by the time it *might* be paid off I'll be...about 63. :/ Maybe I should've just stuck with investing in the stock market.

Oh, the reason I talked about my Dad is because I realized I'm kind of becoming my Dad with this place and being semiretired and renting out storage space.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
And there it is. The robotexts from the body shop have said my car remains on track to be ready by the 31st. But the aftermarket fiberglass hood I ordered still hasn't shipped. So I called this morning to touch base and found out there is apparently more damage than there appeared to be so the shop needs to get to my insurer and find out if they'll cover it or if they want to write it off as a loss. :( Tuesday I get to go to a doctor and maybe I can get more expensive news from him.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
So. I've been trained in the "Marine Corps Planning Process." I could bore you to death with everything that entails, but a big part of it is basically being a professional worrier: What are our options? What is the best one? What's the most dangerous one? What is the enemy most likely to do? What is the most dangerous thing he could do? How do we mitigate risks? What don't we know but need to know? What do we do if things go wrong? What do we do if things go well? You sit in meetings and process all this and write up a plan that factors in all the contingencies. So I wind up doing that informally in my head all the time.

On the good side, it can be kind of reassuring. But literally as I type this, also unsettling. "Well, if money gets tight, worst case, I should be able to 'flip' this new purchase for less than I paid for it." :) "...unless we're actually on the cusp of a banking/housing crisis." :(
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I should just keep a diary. But I do kind of like knowing at least 1 or 2 people read about what's on my mind.

So being a platoon commander for an infantry attack...you really don't ever shoot at anyone. You spend most of your time just running back and forth, trying to keep everyone on line and at a proper interval. You don't want people to bunch up (which is a human instinct that served well in caveman days, but in hand grenade days, not so much) but you don't want them spread out far enough that there's gaps. You don't want people to get ahead, lag back, or veer to one direction or another. Because when people in green clothes are trying to kill other people in green clothes and there's smoke and noise and chaos, it's real easy to shoot one of your own people. So all you do is run from squad to squad--even person to person, shouting and repositioning and reorienting people to keep the attack moving where it's supposed to go. I only did it once in training and I wasn't particularly good at it. So in their wisdom, the Marine Corps did NOT make me an infantry officer.

I mention this because that's what this week has been like. I can't even remember what I did Monday, but Monday night I found out my offer got accepted so I had to sell some stocks. Then Tuesday I had to stop by my bank to let them know a lot of money would be hitting my account soon and that I'd be using my HELOC. Next I had to run over to the realtor to drop off the earnest money check. I think there was other stuff too, but I forget what. That brings us to today. Since I keep getting these texts that my car repair is proceeding apace to be finished on the 31st but I know the hood they need still hasn't shipped, I decided I'd better call them to make sure they haven't ordered a hood and put it on. Turns out, as I said above, there's more damage. Possibly enough that the insurance will just write the car off. I don't want that and will fix the car regardless, but depending on what an adjuster says when they get around to saying something, it could be out my hands, creating new hurdles and headaches. While I was walking the dog I hit on a solution: Body shops also fix cars that aren't insurance claims. And my car is old enough that it has stuff that needs fixing. So what if it turned out some of the damage wasn't actually caused by the accident and therefore wasn't part of the claim? Since the car is in the shop and apart anyway, couldn't I have them open another job to repair some things that aren't related to the accident? That way I get what I want, they get what they want, and the insurance company gets what they want instead of no one getting what they want. The guy said that might work and he'd bring it up with his manager, so fingers crossed.

At that point I decided I needed to do something physical and immediate that I could see results on. Since "storm damage" is on my list, I got out the maul and wedges and chainsaw and finished cutting out the stump from the tree. Now I see I've run the clock down enough that I can go get dinner started.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Buzzed and waiting for my phone to recharge so I can go to bed. My dog hunts groundhogs to some success. So I Googled "is groundhog tasty?" And according to the "Mother Earth News," it is. :garamet: I don't know if the economy is quite bad enough or that I'm quite redneck enough to pop a woodchuck in the Crock Pot, but still...a useful thing to know.
 
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