We’ve been in our house more than a dozen years now. When we first built the house, we had a list of ‘extras’ we wanted to add that stretched out a few years. We expanded our lower level, added a bar, covered & screened in our porch, and worked with our wonderful cabinet-maker on a number of built-ins. At the same time, we bought new … Continue reading Furnishing A Life …
Well, I blew it. I crashed my drone into a tree last week. It fell about 30 feet after shaking loose from the tree and the camera gimbal got damaged. It still flies, but you can’t really take pictures with it anymore. It was the second time I crashed it. The first time, it landed in soft snow and still worked fine. It’s a pretty … Continue reading Down & Out Drone
We had quite the “to-do” list when we got back to Minnesota from our Winter Summerland adventures in Florida last month. We don’t usually keep a list, but we had an unusual number of important things to get done. We got our bills paid (a few a bit late), helped our son move into the new townhouse, helped my father-in-law with estate documents, decluttered/organized a … Continue reading To-Do’s and Taxes
I have to shake my head when I see politicians promoting “free college” and “student loan forgiveness”. College grads are supposed to be smart & responsible, aren’t they? In my view, college students are adults and they voluntarily entered into these loans with the help of the friendly folks in the university admissions department (who try hard to disguise their job as anything but what … Continue reading Driving Away From Debt …
I’ve been worrying about periods of high inflation since I started writing these posts over seven years ago. It wasn’t until these last 12 months that my worries were matched by reality. It doesn’t help that the politicians & media pundits keep trying to put a positive spin on things. The headlines have been ridiculous: Part of the challenge is I don’t know if the … Continue reading How Fast Is Inflation Really Rising?
It’s hard for folks to decide when to make the jump into retirement, so I was intrigued by a recent question on earlyretirement.org asking folks if they wish they would have retired earlier or worked a bit longer? About 65 people answered the question and I tallied the results below (taking out a few responses of people who weren’t retired yet) … – 36% said … Continue reading Earlier, Longer, Just Right?
We got back from Florida last week and instead of watching March Madness NCAA Basketball, we are up to our eyeballs in March Madness … Paperwork. It turns out that bills, taxes, and legal work doesn’t go away when you are goofing off in the Sunshine State. All of that paperwork is waiting for you when you get home! We had a large – 24” … Continue reading March Madness … Paperwork
I am learning a lot about being a landlord right now. We bought a townhome in our neighborhood last month as a place to rent to our son. He’s moving into it this weekend and I am trying to quickly figure out what we need to do. Owning a rental townhouse is a lot different than just owning a house. Even in the same neighborhood. … Continue reading Slowly Learning The Landlord Game
Gas prices have gone up more than a $1 a gallon since last June, when I wrote this article about rising gas prices. Prices are up almost $2.25 in the last 18 months (+107%), according to GasBuddy.com tracking. Yikes. Last June, I estimated that each $1/gallon fuel rise was costing me an additional $1.7k/year, so now I guess we are more than double that … … Continue reading What To Do About Gas Prices?
Everywhere you go in Florida, everyone is talking about real estate. It’s really engaging, even when you are just trying to enjoy your vacation. Yesterday we made a few stops on the Parade of Homes near red-hot Sarasota. Even the so-called custom builders are too busy to customize anything right now. They are just building spec homes and then auctioning them off to buyers in … Continue reading Scarce Inventory Boosts Real Estate
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