Question asked, Question Answered

I asked the question to myself after taking most of the month of December 'off' - monitoring for my needed daily intervention, pushing things ahead, but definitely off for a lot of the month - so the question was, will I be able to kickstart those rocket engines to kick it back into gear and breathe the fire necessary to keep this show running - well, the answer was not long in coming, the first hint of the answer was the 4:30am text to some subcontractors, and a 14 hr workday on January 2nd. So it's nice to have that important question answered.

But seriously, there were problems to solve everywhere, mostly weather related as the temps rose to 50 degrees and dropped to -5. I think I talked about this last post, but then it happened, and the 50 degree day I thought would be perfect to get a foundation poured turned out to be a total new year shit show of stuck cement trucks and inaccessible sites, since the warm weather and rain pulled the frost out of the ground and made for impassable soggy mess of driveways. So this foundation in Parksville I've be wrestling with will now have to wait another few weeks for a break in the weather since it appears to be cold the next few weeks.

I guess in some ways that's why it's important to go with a stable professional company that wasn't rushing things just for cash flow reasons and pouring the concrete in suspect temps. My eyes are on the ball, always. And as Dave Ramsey says, it's the not being invited over for Thanksgiving Dinner that's the test of a successful business, it's are you earning their hard-earned dollar? That's the test, the only test, and that test we have passed for 24 years.

Well, I wasn’t the only one contemplating the horror of speaker phone use.  The day I wrote my piece in this blog, the WSJ covers the same topic, in much the same way. I mean, the issue is a bit complicated since some times people are sharing a video and watching together, but in the end, listening without headphones should not be normalized, and should be no better than belching or farting in public. Parents take note.

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I’m down here in Florida, and it’s just busier, so maybe that’s why it stood out to me, but what is true is that is a lot of older people are working in Walmart, Lowes, Home Depots, etc…    And they are working nights, holidays.  Not that these aren’t good jobs that actually pay decent, but to see people 75+ manning the registers, stocking shelves, roaming the sales floor - that’s one bad event to homelessness or something else nasty.  We don’t have homeless in NE PA where I live, so it’s always shocking to see the extent of it in the USA, especially in some of the temperate climates like St Petes.  I remember a few years ago it’s the only thing I could talk about after visiting San Diego and Venice in CA.

I went down the 22nd and flew Lucas and 2 friends down on the 27th till New Years. They made the most of it, with a lot of late night roof top jacuzzi, swims, and workouts. (maybe I've written this)

The top floor Unit turned out great, but like I've said before, the process I'm experiencing makes it clear how good and attentive we are at we do at Catskill Farms, which only happens with the interest, attention and action of the Owner.

Note the pretty good bed making of the boys - I was pretty strict about keeping the place clean, and not stinky, sweaty and sticky.

We watched the Penn State - Boise game NYE at a restaurant/bar, got there before it was too crowded but as the night ticked on it started filling up with young revelers and I think that was eye-opening for the young pups as the sprightly young women in their New Year's get-ups started rubbing up close. I was tempted to ask a few of them to come over and flirt just to see the shock of the kids, but didn't get the chance. I did do a jello shot, which was good.

It’s always been clear that the insurance policy and rates and coverage would be the first shoe to drop to actually take seriously the changing planet’s weather, since they are about numbers - actuaries - not politics, and the numbers just weren’t going to work at some point with the increased frequency of disaster, and now on top of that, just how gosh dang expensive everything is to rebuild and replace.  I feel I delved into this a few weeks back, but it’s happening all over - insurance coverage is getting stingy, and lots of policies in lots of places just aren’t getting renewed, making the job of insurance broker unenviable and you constantly are breaking the bad news to people who really didn’t want to be focusing in on their insurances to begin with.

The Credit Score is so stupid.  And I wrote that before I just read an article about it today - I don't know why I'm so timely with my thoughts!! Seriously, what good is a metric that doesn’t include your income?  Or your cash in bank?  Or your net worth?  Just some silly debt analysis of how much you could borrow on your credit sources already secured vs how much you actually have borrowed.  I know loan underwriting then looks at this with income, etc…, but on it’s own, the score itself, has little relationship to ability to pay.  I mean, I’m pretty sure my 795 is a whole lot better than a lot of 795s, but why I’m not 850 I have no idea.  I mean, few have used credit as aggressive as I have over a long period of time, and few have the steller of literally never being late , and few have the income or accrued assets, but I’m pretty sure my 795 is right up there with people with mortgages, kids in college, credit card debt and living almost paycheck to paycheck (even among high earners.).  Not the same boat t’all. The article I read today was one man's attempt to get an 850 score, a perfect score and in order to do it he jiggered around with a bunch of non-important items like percent of credit used vs available (1.5% was his answer), when you pay the bill every month (he found the 15th), etc... and eventually, as an engineer, he played around with enough to inch it up. But the point is, it wasn't about his credit-worthiness at all.

My to do list next week -

1. Get my last Barn house listed next week with a real estate company.
2. Lower my price on mid-sized barn in Olivebridge
3. List my mini-ranch on the MLS.
4. Get the wall coverings up on a CR 24, a new Ranch with killer views.
5. Finish up a build contract for Large Barn in North Branch
6. Finish up a build contract for Ranch in New Paltz
7. Payroll
8. Hire a book-keeper for the office.
9. And a bunch of nickel and dime issues and projects that add up once all counted.

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