Day 88: Donkeys

"Donkey released after being jailed for three days in Mexico" ~ Yesterday's Yahoo News headline

I just added to my Vanguard Roth account. Another $1000 or so to go and it's fully funded. Then I have to open one for the PIL.

I really need to get the 401k loans paid off asap so that contributions can start. My goal date for fully funded Roths and 401ks paid off is January 1st 2009. That's 7 short months away and may be too ambitious.

My crashed car is in the repair shop for at least a week and I'm driving around in a rental. I am thankful that my car wasn't totalled and that none of us were injured.

I haven't heard anything back from the mortgage company re: the mortgage loan on the apartment building. The problem building right next door to me had a swamp cooler leak on the roof, which ran down into the courtyards both on that side of the chainlink fence and into my courtyard, filling it up with a large deepish puddle of water. The tenants on the other side of the fence complained for a week to the bozo who owns this dump. Finally, a week after initial complaints about the leak, one of the tenants slips, falls, injures his neck/back and is taken away by fire department paramedics two days ago. I hope the tenant sues and I hope Bozo loses the property. I am sick of the whole thing. Luckily, no one on my side of the fence fell. One of my tenants had to keep going out into the courtyard to sweep the water out of the gate and into the street - ridiculous. Never NEVER buy a property with an arrangement such as the one I have, in which both buildings were built to be one complex but were built on separate parcel numbers. The end result is that the buildings will end up getting sold off to two separate owners, as is the case with me, and, as a separate owner of two buildings that were meant to be one complex, I am at the mercy of the fool who owns the other side. I'm a fool too for not completely researching the ramifications of this purchase 3 years ago, but 3 years ago I was still on my lifetime collision course and didn't think anything through whatsoever.

Right now, all of my units are fully rented but I will have two 1-bedroom units coming vacant around the end of June, I believe. It is just a constant revolving door. One of the units reeks of cat pee. I allowed the tenant to keep a cat but she leaves the poor animal by itself most of the week and it stress-pees on the carpet. Such is the life of a landlord. I can handle it. I can't handle the high interest mortgage payment, however.

No signs yet of the economic stimulus checks. I haven't received mine neither has anyone else in the household who filed a tax return for 2007. Maybe we aren't on the list. If and when I receive the check, it's going towards PIL's Roth. I'm not buying any more stuff.

Day 87: Good Day

sean
Hey Will, I don´t know a lot. You see this? All this shit? It´s not your fault.
will
Yeah, I know that.
sean
Look at me, son. It´s not your fault.
will
I know.
sean
No, it´s not your fault.
will
I know.
sean
No, no, you don´t. It´s not your fault. hmm?
will
I know
sean
It´s not your fault.
will
All right.
sean
It´s not your fault. It´s not your fault.
will
Don´t fuck with me.
sean
It´s not your fault.
will
Don´t fuck with me, all right?! Don´t fuck with me, Sean, not you.
sean
It´s not your fault. It´s not your fault.
will
My God. My God, I´m so sorry. My God.
sean
Fuck them, okay? ~ Screenplay, Good Will Hunting

Yesterday was a good day.

Filled with pointless trepidation, I forced myself to leave the house and go to my counseling appointment at the college. When I got there, I found an extremely likable, professional and intelligent woman who took one look at me, laughed, and basically said, "We're going to get this done!" We sat, laughed, and had some good conversation for almost an hour, which flew by. At the end, I came away feeling more positive than I have in months with the knowledge that I can get this Bachelors in 3 years or less. My first class starts in a couple of weeks and I'm registered and paid up. Thanks, JE, I appreciate your interest and energy more than you know at this point.

I am also thankful for this blog. It is helping me to sort out my self destructiveness in ways I never realized. As I sit here and put my thoughts down on e-paper, I am finding that I have less random, jumbled, chaotic nonsense rattling around in my head. If I need to go back through my posts, for example, to remember what a bastard my father was/is, then I can do that. I don't need to carry it around with me like the proverbial monkey. For me, that's a huge relief. I realize that I have made some significant mental progress in the space of one year's time, since I had the falling out with the parents. For the time being, I have written them out of my life. My attitude is slowly getting better and that's no coincidence. I no longer "have" to call my mother, although I didn't mind it and I enjoyed talking to her. The problem was that she would always put my father on the other end and I would always think, "I called to speak to ma, not you." And he would ramble on about his life like we were buddies. I would wonder if he had some sort of amnesia. He's such an asshole.

I am finding clarity. Along with this clarity has come an acceptance of the things that have made me what I am and a newly discovered determination to get off the chaotic path I have been on for as long as I can remember.

When I was 17, I almost died of alcohol poisoning. I drank a huge bottle of Concorde Whisky, a special brand at the time available only to pilots of the Concorde. I was unable to stand up for 3 weeks. I told everyone, including my mother, that I had the flu but the fact is, I almost died.

I remember riding a galloping horse across a field with my arms outstretched like Kevin Costner in "Dances with Wolves". Only I did it first! I rode horses that weren't broke. I was covered in bruises.

I remember driving drunk, too drunk to control the vehicle. On one occasion, I nearly killed a man walking his dog and ended up in a field, hitting my head. On another, I took out half of a neighbor's garden when I took the corner too tight. I remember my father commenting the next day that some idiot had chewed up the neighbor's lawn and flower beds overnight with their car.

I realize what these reckless acts say about me now that I'm older and wiser. I know I was suicidal without ever realizing it at the time.

Is it any wonder I want to find peace.

Day 86: College?

For the first time in my life, I made a big pot of beans yesterday. My cooking skills are pathetic. However, said beans turned out perfectly and taste great. Today, we make burritos in bulk for the freezer.

So, I have an appointment at 9am with the Bachelor program counselor at the college. I am filled with mixed feelings here. I know that I am going to have to work my butt off over the next 2 years minimum in order to stay the course and work at the same time. This is just another case of me having to make change and being stubborn about it. As Ann Landers used to say: "You will be two years older with or without the degree" (or something like that). I'm apprehensive about being back on a college campus again especially as a "mature" student. I'm not worried about the classes - for the most part, I'm an A student in anything I undertake if I apply myself. I guess I'll go and find out how much this is going to cost me and if I believe it's worth it to me. It would be nice to have that diploma but even nicer to believe I'll actually get a job at the end of it all. I already have half the credits needed from classes taken here and there in the past so it's not as much of a stretch for me. I think a big part of it is knowing that I'm going to have to come home from work and then go out to classes until 10pm at night when I'd rather be on the internets or sitting with the PIL drinking a beer ... After being self employed for so many years, why the heck am I thinking about getting a job? Something different, perhaps? I don't really know the answer to these questions and it's perplexing.

Re: The apartment building, I was able to get the gangbanger bum and his useless girlfriend out of one of my units in the space of a couple of hours. How? Promised to give them back all of their security deposit if they got out NOW. They bit. The gangbanger bum and his useless GF are targets of some street gang or other and, several days ago, the street gang came to my building to "take them out". Bullets were flying everywhere, even though young children were playing outside. It truly is miraculous that no one was struck. Anyway, the gangbanger bum and his useless GF have two children under the age of 2 with a third on the way. Neither one of them can speak or write a literate sentence. I don't think I've seen a sight more hopeless than the two of them sitting on a large TV on the side of the road waiting for their ride, with a baby screaming in the gangbanger's arms, the 2 year old playing in the gutter, and the GF's pregnant gut hanging out of her low slung jeans and midriff baring top, a la Britney Spears. On top of that, I was fortunate to meet both of their mothers, both toothless from years of drug use. If ever I wanted to see what happened to crack babies when they grew up, I saw it yesterday. And this scene repeats itself on thousands of streets in thousands of cities across this nation.

The damage these two leaches did to my apartment unit was extensive considering they moved in about 6 months ago. Why did I rent to them? Because they had 1 baby with another on the way at that time - now they have 2 babies with another on the way. I wanted to give them a chance at building a stable life for their children and I told them that. Of course, hustlers that they are, they promised that they wanted to live a quiet life with their children in a stable environment, too. Instead, when they moved out yesterday they had been living without power, gas or phone for 2 months due to not paying the utility bills. They moved out because others like them want to kill them. And I wanted them out before they caused someone else to get killed or maimed. And all the while, they're arguing unintelligibly with each other and the multitude who came to the apartment to help them haul their trash out - they filled both large trash containers in the back of the building so that now the residents have nowhere to dump their trash. Regrettably, this is the only life these people know: Drama, instability, waging war with each other. And the cycle continues.

Gangbanger: I'll get another spot when I get my paycheck.
Me: Oh, you got a job?
Gangbanger: No. I meant the welfare.
Me: Oh. OK. Good luck then. Please don't come back otherwise you'll be arrested.

With this apartment building around my neck, it's no wonder I can't seem to focus on anything else.

GROCERIES

I'm waiting for the Claims Adjuster to show up to evaluate the damage to my car after it was hit by a semi tractor trailer.......the "appointment window" is anywhere between 10am and 3pm which effectively knocks work on the head for today.

After reading another blog in which the writer spends $250 a month on food for a family of five, I am mulling my favorite obsession du jour: How to drastically cut our food bill and actually make it work.

What is reasonably doable? I am ashamed to admit that May's food bill is already $707.14 - and it's only the 20th. My reasoning is this: If one person claims to be able to feed a family of 5 on $250 a month, we should be able to manage on $300. This roughly equates to $10/day for a family of 6. Is it impossible? Probably. But what we're wasting on food each month would fund a Roth account for the year.

So, my next task is to find menus for each day of the week for which the ingredients for each day total less than 10 bucks. I've tried this before and failed, but I'm committed to trying harder this time to see if it really can be done. The food bill is by far and away our biggest, most wasteful and most uncontrolled expense. Given what we already have in the pantry, I am allotting $100 for the remainder of the month. The meals will be far from gourmet but, I hope, they will be palatable and nutritious - what more can one hope for?

For the first time ever, I will be cooking a pot of beans this afternoon. 4 pounds of beans are soaking on the counter right now. (Pathetic that I've never learned how to do this before now.) The beans will be used to make burritos in bulk, which will then be frozen and eaten as needed. With our schedules all being so varied, this should provide a cost effective way for people to get something to eat without having to go out to a fast food joint to buy it. I read a really good article about cooking beans over at The Simple Dollar, a blog which has to be in my personal top three favorite personal finance blogs. We intend to taste-test every one of those delicious sounding recipes!

I'm also going to make a big batch of spaghetti sauce and freeze it in jars for the rest of May and June.

I figure, if I keep plugging away it has to get easier.

Day 85: Rental Property Mortgage

Received a phone call from the mortgage company that my proposal for a lower interest rate, and thus lower payment, is under consideration. I should know by the end of the week.

Bearing in mind that I am taking my life into my hands every time I go over to the property, we will all need to be on the same page on this one. I am looking for a $2000 a month cash flow from this property. Right now, I need it for maintenance and vacancy factor purposes. The cash flow will also serve as justification to not dump this place.

Apparently, the gangbanger element suspects that I am the catalyst behind the recent police busts and arrests on the street, which I am. I am guessing that there is a possibility that I am a marked human.

This situation is destined to either work itself out easily or not. I'm not going to fight it either way.

Day 84: 25 Cost Cutters

I read an excellent post over at The Good Human - how I would love an earthship!

The fact that our city does not have a recycling program of even the most basic sort cheeses me off no end. I actually feel guilt at putting plastic bottles (which are supposedly unrecyclable) in the trash. Our family of 6 generates little more than one Hefty bag of trash a week so, hey, we're making an effort!

The earthships got me thinking about the efforts we've made in our household recently in being less wasteful:

1. Line drying all laundry all the time.
2. "Pre-cycling" when buying groceries.
3. Cancelling our home trash bins and pickup so that we are "forced" to ferry our one bag of trash to our apartment building for disposal each week.
4. Planning trips and car pooling to save gas.
5. Junk mail prevention.
6. Putting off a major garden remodel and rethinking the plans and plants to really save water.
7. Sharing college books with each other and other people outside the family. This has been a real money saver for us.
8. Washing clothes in cold water. This is a new tactic and the jury's still out on this one.
9. Handwashing dishes. Our dishwasher runs for an hour on even the most basic wash cycle.
10. Turning down the thermostat on the water heater now that summer is here.
11. Using a Brita water filter pitcher instead of buying bottled water or having it delivered.
12. Installing a new swamp cooler unit instead of running the electric A/C.
13. Making sure we have full wash loads before washing clothes.
14. Getting rid of the phone company and opening a $15 a month flat rate account with Vonage.
15. Instead of buying two new cars this year, which we had planned to do, we intend to keep the cars we have for another 2 years minimum.
16. Doubling recipes and freezing one half of the goods for another meal the following week. Not only a time saver but a money and energy saver too.
17. Waiting until things actually break beyond repair before replacing.
18. Staying out of Target. We love the merchandise and, at one time, I was spending $100 a day at this place. For shame.
19. Monitoring every cent we spend and trying to figure out each month how to cut back. At least now we know where our money goes - for the longest time we didn't have a clue. And, as an added bonus, the PIL and I are actually discussing finances and goals.
20. Getting into the savings habit. Less wasted money means more retirement savings.
21. Learning to say NO to the kids and not feeling the slightest bit guilty.
22. Encouraging everyone in the household to turn off their computers, ceiling fans, etc., when not in use. Previously, the computers would stay on all day even though we were not home.
23. Making our own ice. We go through a HECK of a lot of ice at a probable cost of $10 a week to buy it bagged at the store. I hunted through the garage, found the ice cube trays in a box which was ready to go to the thrift shop, and gave 'em a new lease on life. I should point out here that I have owned two GE Profile Arcticas within a 5 year time frame. Both of them went on the fritz with ice makers that leaked and froze the inner workings of the appliance. One of the Arcticas just broke entirely. The other is currently in use sans ice maker, but I'm sure it won't be long before it follows suit. Just the WORST appliance ever.
24. We have been adopted by 5 cats and the cost of premium cat litter was out of control. I used to buy Arm & Hammer baking soda litter for about $13 a box. Our solution was to buy the cheapest clay cat litter we could find (a big bag of Special Kitty for $2.54) and boxes of generic baking soda (30 cents each). Each litter box change is considerably cheaper now - just pour in some Special Kitty and a generous amount of odor absorbing baking soda and voila! The $25 or so we were spending a week for cat litter just dropped to less than $5 over the same time frame and we really see savings with this approach.
25. Encouraging the kids to apply for scholarships and jobs. It is becoming apparent that the PIL and I cannot fund college beyond the 4 year mark. We will be able to help out later in life, especially with grandchildren, at a time when it will probably be more appreciated.

The end result of these cut backs has been lower energy bills, more money in the bank, more breathing room and less stress.

Our mortgages are still too high, of course, but I am making headway towards eliminating or reducing the payments. If the payments cannot be reduced, the apartment building will go back to the bank. I will lose the $250K I put into the place but I have learned a hard and painful lesson from all of this which is this:

We must live within our means and all financial decisions from this point onward must be joint decisions that both of us agree on 100%.

Day 83: Sunday

It has been just about three months since I decided to turn my life around and really mean it.

Life is good today - no-one in our family (or circle) is sick and no-one has died. We all made it through another week. This is the yardstick by which I measure.

Received a proposition from our besties this week that we should all go in on a cabin in the mountains and share ownership and use. Hmmmm. Something to think about. Despite the fact that the PIL and I have no money for a downpayment at this time, we are still entertaining the idea if only in fantasy. It has the potential of being a blast.

Finally bought a new flat screen monitor yesterday to replace the 6-7 year old dinosaur with the blurry band across the middle. It's cool and has freed up a ton of workspace on my desk.

I have a meeting with the college counsellor next week and already I am trying to talk myself out of it. The little voice in the back of my head says, "You're too old!" "What's the point?" and my favorite, "No-one will hire you!"

I am thinking about my life in about 2 years time when the kids are all gone and pursuing their own dreams and ambitions. I think that NOW is a very good time to finish what I started but still I have some pretty big doubts and insecurities to overcome. Part of me thinks that I'm going to enjoy the classes but a bigger part of the lazyme thinks that I'm wasting my time. It's going to be expensive. Can I afford FIVE college educations all at once?

I am doing laundry right now. I've taken the frugal thing a step further and, for the first time ever, I'm actually washing clothes in cold water!! Yay. I bought a bottle of detergent formulated for cold water and I'm going to give it a shot. It's going to be hard NOT washing the clothes in at least warm water but I want to see if there's any discernable difference between firing up the water heater as opposed to not. Then, I'm going to hang everything out on the washing line in back ;)

When I first moved into my new construction 5 years ago, the neighbors to the west of me were living in a mobile home plonked in the middle of a square 2.5 acre lot. They talked a lot about the dream home they were planning to build. In the meantime, I had to look at their washing line full of drying laundry every day while I dried all our stuff in the gas clothes dryer in the laundry room. Fast forward 5 years, and the dream home has been built, the washing line is gone, and the neighbors dry everything indoors from what I can see. Me? I've unplugged the dryer. I have adopted their previously frugal habits while they are now presenting some sort of "front". I know they are frugally inclined so my bet is they miss the washing line. Maybe the presence of mine will encourage them to get over themselves and break it out again.

Yesterday, I accomplished quite a lot with the PIL. We were on our way to the apartment building when I received a phone call from one of the tenants that the building had been "shot up" the evening before by gangbangers looking to kill somebody in MY building. Judging by the number of bullet holes in the wall, windows and gutters of the building next door, there were more than a few bullets flying around. Why do people choose to live like this? It IS a choice. The only people who don't have a choice in all of this are the children - they are the true victims. We will make a decision in the coming week regarding whether or not to keep this property or let it go. As I cleaned the courtyard, I could hear gunshots from some other corner of the slum and decided that it really wasn't worth getting shot for. If we decide to keep the building, the newly elected city council are going to know us on a first name basis.

The new cooling A/C unit is in. It's supposed to be cheaper to run and will enable us to not have to turn on the main house A/C which is a huge power and money drain. We have two large A/C units to cool the entire house, which sit outside the house on concrete pads and duct into the house by way of several thick duct pipes. When those things get switched on, you can hear them humming down the street. Sort of like Clark Griswold's christmas lights on "Christmas Vacation", draining the power grid....