Sometimes I make myself laugh...

Its amazing how a long needed day off fails to make my mind rest.  In fact, after today's exercise I  considered that I might be in need of a few glasses of wine.  A shot of something stronger perhaps....

Today I brought home a cool secondhand pair of tattered sneakers and a pair of speakers to add to my stereo system.  Stuff.  Coming in.  This is how it happens.  Did I need the speakers?  I already have two, but heck, four sounds much, much better.  After hooking them up I looked around at the spirals of wires now running across the floor where there had been neat hardwood mouldings.

Did I need the sneakers?  No.  I already have about 6 pairs of shoes.  Now compared with Imelda Marcos, I'm doing just peachy, but I've never had that many pairs of shoes.  I can't wear them all at once and granted, I need shoes for different occasions but I've never had three pairs of sneakers before.  I let out a slow sigh.

To make myself feel better, I took stock of my place.  First the bedroom.  Two laundry hampers.  Two hampers means I wait too long to do laundry.  One goes.  Armoire?  Surely I must be able to weed out a few shirts from the collection that I don't wear.  Four, in fact.  Only have a couple of jackets...good there.  I have, taking up a huge amount of space, two antique music boxes that would open up a lot of real estate if I got rid of them and their respective tables.  This is where I run into problems.  I have this appreciation for antique automata and I can't seem to get past telling myself  "Not now...we'll revisit this another time." This time is no exception.  Maybe I'll sell one.

Not much in the bathroom to get rid of unless I want to drip dry every time I get out of the shower and stop using deodorant.  Onward to the living room.  There's no question this room gets the most use and tends to accumulate things while I'm sleeping.  "Hmm...where'd that extra remote come from?  Wasn't there last night."  The underpants gnomes must be moonlighting in the electronics industry.

My desk is always a disaster.  I look at it and wonder how I've managed to keep a business afloat for 13 years without losing some critical piece of documentation under the mountain of scraps and notes.  Cleaning my desk and disposing of unused files and other paper detritis always makes me feel better.  I'll typically reward myself by going out for a meal, which isn't anything special since I'm a single guy living alone...I always go out for a meal.

Next...to the kitchen.  I take stock of knives and utensils.  I have  china for four and utensils for eight and just enough kitchen gadgetry to keep me cooking without having to improvise too much.  Flipping omelets using a fork because you don't have a spatula isn't my idea of a worthwhile minimalist trade-off.  Plus it doesn't help with plate presentation.  "Sorry folks, you have to eat your steak with a spoon because I only have one knife and its currently in the dishwasher."  No.  Not doing that.  I did however, take note of the fact that the drawer that holds my storage containers hath overfloweth. I dove in.  Several bottoms with no lids.  Three lids with no bottoms.  How the heck does that happen?  Damn gnomes.  Don't need six Chinese food containers.  All the orphans and the extra containers go into the recycle.

Well....I feel a little better.  Where shall I eat?

I should be glad it isn't this bad.  I can at least see the bottom of mine.

For Everything, Apparently There's Visa!

"That'll be $2.47," the cashier said.  The thirty-something woman who looked like she had just finished an aerobics class fumbled through her oversized shoulder bag and pulled out a credit card.  The cashier didn't even flinch as she processed the transaction.  I thought to myself..."Lady, you don't have three lousy bucks in that gargantuan bag?!"  Apparently nobody carries cash anymore.  Life does, in fact, take Visa.

Not so long ago, using plastic for a $2.47 transaction would have been looked upon with disdain.  Store managers would be summoned and fingers would wag.  Now its no big deal.  Cash is passe.

The folks at MC and Visa have achieved their goal of making card use so ubiquitous, so commonplace that nobody gives it a second thought.  Its a super deal for the card companies who double dip from consumers and retailers alike on the same transaction.  The whole idea is to make spending and purchases easy.  Ridiculously easy.

If we rewind a few years, we can see what happened when it became ridiculously easy to get a mortgage.  Buying a $650,000 home on a $20,000 income was no problem.  Through the process all the players took their cut and looked the other way.  We see where that got us.

Thankfully, consumers have been holding back on big purchases and reducing credit card debt...a little.  Personally, I despise credit cards but many aspects of American life don't function well without one.  If I had no credit card I couldn't rent a car, book a hotel, buy plane tickets, purchase anything online or over the phone, ....and the list goes on. So I have a credit card....ONE credit card.  I don't need another one.

The big problem I see with credit cards is that they're too easy to use and nobody warns you if you're spending too much.  No alarms, no sirens, no text messages...just swipe and be on your merry way...until its too late.  A non-credit card transaction goes like this...."Boy, I'd really like that new TV. The tag says it's $600. Hmm, I have a gum wrapper, half a movie ticket and $38 bucks in my wallet.  Guess I can't buy it."  End of story.  If you have a credit card..."I really DESERVE that TV.  I'm gonna go for it! I'll just put it on my card."  It isn't until three weeks later after you've been watching everything in glorious high def that the bill comes in.  "Aw, snap!  I don't get paid for two weeks.  I'll just pay the minimum for now."  Curtain rises....enter the accrued-interest-on-average-daily-balance fairy....

Although credit cards were around when I was young, society encouraged more of a cash-and-carry policy. If you didn't have the money, you didn't buy it.  Even if you did have the money, it wasn't uncommon to pull out your wad and count off the bills required to finalize the transaction.  If the proposed post-purchase cash wad was now too small, the potential purchase might be shelved.  The counting of the cash provided us a reminder...a reference point to truly measure the cost of a purchase.  Now, a purchase is just a card and a signature.  There's no reference point....no pile of currency to be handed over.  Be the purchase for $2 or $2,000, there's only the card.  Visa wants it that way.

When I go to restaurant with friends, I screw everything up.  The cash underneath the four credit cards is always mine.  I count it out and I'm done.  No paperwork or bills to contend with later.  My friends ask "Why are you paying cash?"  It's as if cash is now only used for special occasions....like trips to the strip club or playing three-card-monty on the street.  Wouldn't want to use it all up, would I?  I'd have none left for debauched activities.  Sophisticated grown-ups use credit cards...right?  I guess that's where we're headed.  Using cash makes me feel like a gangster anyway.  "Don worree'bout it yooz guys.  I got plenty a cash."  The only thing that would make that statement sound better is if I had a big fat Cohiba clenched between my teeth when I said it.  Seriously, though....cash isn't all that bad.

One recent client of ours had a Home Shopping Network addiction.  We estimated she'd spent nearly $50,000 on the stuff she saw on TV and she wasn't rich.  Let's change the scenario....Let's say she had the contents of her bank account neatly laid out on the coffee table in piles of currency and every time she decided to buy something that was on the TV she had to lean forward, count out the bills corresponding to the amount of the purchase and hand it over to someone.  What are the odds there'd be two full storage units of unopened HSN stuff and an empty bank account?

I rest my case.

Oops!  Maybe I DIDN'T need that _____ <--- Insert frivolous purchase here.

Paralysis

It's been one of those days.  A day where I get to see some of the harsh realities of people's lives.  Sadly, some of these realities are largely preventable.

We'll call her Lori.  I could hear the stress in her voice over the phone.  She freely admitted that she was calling me because I was her last hope to make some desperately needed money.

I've received these calls before and the consultation isn't always pleasant.

I pulled up to the smallish house...the lawn hadn't been tended to in some time.  The foreclosure notice on the door was wrinkled and faded, having been tacked to the door for months.  Underneath the body of the notice, the occupant scrawled "I still live here.  Please call me."

I'm a solutions kinda guy.  If there's a way to solve a problem in a way that works out economically for everyone, I can usually figure it out.  Today that wasn't going to happen.

Lori showed me the interior of her home.  It was neat and well cared for... in stark contrast to the exterior.  She was visibly rattled...fully aware that the sheriff could arrive at any moment to evict her.  She called me to remove some belongings and sell them at auction with the hope that I could solve two problems... money and an inability to move large items from the house.  Unfortunately, the items she showed me were of little value and were hardly worth moving.  Seems her mom had a different take on the value of these items and stressed that she "needed" to get a certain amount for them.  My response was, "Not on this planet."  It wasn't what she wanted to hear.  I explained the simple economics of demand and changing tastes and that I can't control what the general public desires or doesn't desire.

"But it MUST be worth more than that! I'll just keep it then because I just CAN'T tell my mother that all this isn't worth what she thinks it's worth.  I just CAN'T."  In fact, what she was presenting to me for sale was only a small portion of what was in the house.  The rest of the (much more salable) items all had a lot of sentimental value.  There was a trunk that belonged to her deceased husband, a chest that was her grandmother's...and so on.  She couldn't sell any of those items and refused to sell any of the "junk" if we couldn't get what her mother said she should get for it.  Upon making these statements, she broke down, curled up on the sofa and cried.  Some days, I don't like my job very much.

I took a deep breath and prepared to explain to her the true gravity of her situation.  I explained that I understood about sentimental value, but that she intended to tote around items that reminded her of her sad past.  "Do you want to look forwards, or back?" I asked her. "How are you going to move them?" Then I looked right at her and asked...."If you stood out on the lawn with your back to this house and in an instant it all disappeared, would you feel relief?"  She didn't hesitate to say "YES."

The reality was that she had no way to move any of the contents of the home.  She had no job and barely enough money to eat and at any moment she could be forcibly removed from her home which the bank had foreclosed upon some months earlier.  Odds were that she was going to lose everything when the bank changed the locks and the law escorted her from the property.  I knew that, but she didn't seem to understand that impending bit of reality.  Through the sobbing and the hard luck stories she continued to cling to and be paralyzed by the belongings that surrounded her.  If she couldn't accept reality, I couldn't help her.  Through her emotional breakdown I could hear her say that she "couldn't live like this anymore" and that "nobody would help her."

It was hard to witness and sadly, I enter into just such a scene or variations thereof on a regular basis now.  I see the ravaged lives that recession causes, but in my experience much of it is preventable.  If we could just get past the attachment to things...that desire for more and bigger.  I know my view is a jaded one and I couldn't help but think this poor girl was hanging onto things for comfort as everything around her fell apart.  I get it.  My last words to her were "Lori....they're just things....let them go.  You don't have a choice."

I realize those words could be interpreted as self-serving, but they weren't.  I really wanted her to see the world for just a moment through the eyes of someone who deals with this sort of thing almost daily.  Lori looked up at me, attempting to compose herself, and said...slowly..."This stuff is weighing me down.  It's keeping me from moving on and I don't know what to do about it."  She wasn't hearing me at all and I felt powerless to do anything about it.  She murmured something about going back to Spain and I told her that she should do just that.  I apologized for not being able to help her, wished her good luck and before I left, I heard her say "You were my last shot.  I thought for sure you could help me.  I got all this stuff together for you."

One of the things I learned quickly is that in business, you NEVER, EVER let emotions dictate business decisions.  Lori was paralyzed.  I couldn't help her.  Chances are that by the time she understood about letting things go, it would be too late.

Enjoy Spain, Lori.  Start again.  Don't get attached to things. That goes for everyone.

Are a few pieces of furniture worth this sort of anguish?

Economic Default

Nope.  Not talking about Greece's bond woes.  The term actually has another meaning....It's the process by which someone who comes into a lot of money blows it all and returns to the economic condition they started out at. They return to their "economic default," or the economic level they tend to gravitate towards.  It is often used to describe lottery winners, lawsuit winners and those who simply and luckily inherit a ton of money but have no idea how to manage it.

Why bring it up here?  Because part of the process that often brings people from rags to riches to rags has to do with folks not thinking about the costs of keeping large assets.  Its easy to think that if I end up with a million dollars on my doorstep, I could buy a $750,000 house for cash and still have a quarter mil lying around.  A lot of people think this way, especially since those at the lower end of the economic ladder tend to pay cash for things out of necessity. Here's the problem though....That $750,000 house with no mortgage still costs a ton to hold onto.  A house like that in a good neighborhood will be subject to some pretty hefty property taxes and will cost a fortune to insure.  Then comes the electric and other utilities required to heat and cool it.  There'll be yard maintenance and anything that breaks will cost an arm and a leg to replace.  The ongoing expenses will rapidly eat up the remaining chunk of change in the bank.  Multiply this scenario when there are cars, boats, and other expensive toys involved.  It's not the stuff that's the problem, its the cost to keep the stuff.

Once the maintenance costs exhaust the remaining money, a downward spiral begins whereby items need to be sold to satisfy the costs on the remaining items and so on until everything is gone and we're back to the "economic default."  Of course it doesn't always work that way.  Some people are savvy enough to handle large sums of money even if they have never seen more than $500 in one place, but many aren't.

So what's my point?  It's easy to get starry eyed about a boat or a larger home or perhaps a few personal watercraft...especially if there's a bunch of cash sitting around.  It just happened to me.  I had the opportunity to buy a great urban condo in a class A location.  I figured since it was a condo, I wouldn't have to mess with maintenance...but someone has to do it and it costs money.  Last I checked, that monthly cost was called "common area maintenance," and for condos downtown in historic buildings the charges can be steep and can increase without notice.  There are still property taxes involved and since there's no street parking, I'd have to buy or rent a spot in the nearby parking deck.   All fine and dandy until I come home with 10 bags of groceries in the pouring rain and need to walk a block and a half before I climb four flights of steps.  Even at a bargain price, the place will cost more than my very cool apartment when I add in all expenses.

So why would I buy the place?  Because somewhere in the recesses of my mind, it would be cool to own it.  That's it.  No numbers come into play.  Not until I was uttering expletives at my silliness as I'm writing checks adding up to more than I was paying for something that was more convenient, cared for at no expense to me and had free repair service if something broke.  Yup...I rained all over my own parade.  My very cool apartment will have to do.  And my advice to the lottery winners?  Invest the after tax winnings and live off the interest.   Go see the world and skip the big house and fancy car...Those things won't make you happy.   Nor will a cool downtown condo.

So tempting.  I want it.  I just want it.  I can afford it.  Waaaaah.

A week in the life....

Observations and rantings of a minimalist....

- While engaging in an afternoon of mindless cartoon viewing with my daughter, I noticed that toy companies are attempting to extol the virtues of tinier and tinier toys.  All these teeny weenie figures!  I often lose my full size truck in the mall....er...airport parking lot, so how can little kids be expected to keep track of vitamin sized toys? You can collect (hoard) all 590 of them!  Microscope not included.

- Went to my daughter's school talent show.  Saw 6 year olds dancing to "Material Girl" swinging around shopping bags on stage.  Ah....get 'em while they're young.

- Had lunch with some friends who admitted they enjoy Antiques Roadshow and Storage Wars.  I paused, thinking about how AR has managed to convince nearly everyone that the stuff in grandpa's attic is worth far more than it actually is.  Trust me folks, the odds are slim that the old parchment document you found is a lost copy of the Declaration of Independence.  It looks old because that's how it was manufactured to look.  As for that little word at the lower bottom?  It says "Copy."  Missed that one 'eh?  As for Storage Wars....it took some convincing but I think I've finally got them to understand that you don't typically find a Delorean behind some old computer monitors and a ratty 1960's sleeper sofa.  Oh...and a camera crew just happened to be there.

- Actually watched an episode of Hoarders - Buried Alive...just to see...  Now I understand why people slow down for an accident.  I ended up watching four episodes.  I'm so ashamed.  Truthfully though, watching it is a good way to entice anyone to get rid of stuff, plus it keeps the weight off.  I was nauseous just thinking about that much junk....and could you imagine the smell.....?  Not interested in eating for awhile.

- So Apple came out with an iPad 3....That pretty much makes the iPad 1 a boat anchor worth about 50 bucks.  Time elapsed from cutting edge to obsolescence:...about 18 months.  My grandmother was proud that she had her sewing machine since 1944.  Now nothing makes it through more than 6 seasons before its garbage.  Way back in the day...it was only junk when it stopped working...and that condition only occurred after multiple repair attempts with tape, screws, paper clips and odd pieces of metal.  "Junk" meant dead, unfixable, absolutely no hope for resurrection. Even then, it might be stashed or salvaged in case the remaining usable parts could be used on another item that needed repair.  Not anymore.  Even if it works fine, but is outdated, its junk.  Especially if it uses software that is "no longer supported." Operational ability has nothing to do with it.  The manufacturer decides when it needs to be pitched.  What's wrong with that plan?

- My daughter came to work with me and observed that I was using a (quite dependable) Okidata dot-matrix printer.  "What's THAT?!!!" she asked incredulously...as if she we're looking at a prehistoric dinosaur skeleton.  I had to explain to her that a dot-matrix printer was from before she was born!  "Wow...that's totally ancient!"  I rolled my eyes.

- An "A" for effort.....I had two people this past week attempt to sell me coins that are currently in circulation.  Yes, those gold dollars look cool and different, but....they aren't real gold AND you can currently trade them anywhere for exactly one dollar's worth of goods.  Why are you looking at me strangely when I tell you I won't give you $5 each for them?  Yes....you THOUGHT they might be worth something...and they are.  One dollar.  Same goes for state quarters.  They are absolutely worth something.  Twenty five cents. Gotta love the spirit of anyone who wants to profit off pocket change.

- The Gift of Prophecy.....I can predict with pretty good certainty that your house will have one of these:  A George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine or some variant of it....  If you like to fish, you will have a Big Mouth Billy Bass...that plastic mounted fish that sings when you press a button. It's in the garage or attic currently.  If you don't have one, you used to.  Am I right?

- My daughter is still playing Animal Jam.  She now owns an entire city but still hasn't achieved "Epic Den" status.  It is strangely, always, just beyond reach. Hmmm.

Ah...another week...just when I thought I had seen everything, another Monday looms around the corner with the promise of new, exciting things for me to write about.  Have a great week!

We are liiiiving in a Material World and I am a Material Girl!!!!

There's No Escape for the Young

My daughter has been ruined.  My words mean nothing.

I noticed she's been glued to her laptop for the last several weeks....

I'm fully aware that her tech acumen readily outstrips mine and she regularly makes me look like a buffoon when it comes to computer issues.  "Dad, you need to reboot, go into msconfig and edit your startup items...." she'd say as I stared blankly at an unusual error message on my screen.  I'd look up...reminding myself that she was still just ten years old.  This is to be expected since when I was her age, my exposure to technology was limited to ownership of a digital watch that only told the time and a sandwich sized calculator that could only add and subtract. The world was different back then.

Honestly, I had this great fear that she was perhaps hacking into the Bank of America computers....That perhaps any day now a pair of men in pressed suits, sunglasses and earpieces would knock on my door and ask to speak to my daughter for a few minutes about some internet irregularity that was traced back to our house.... I warily slunk over and asked..."So....whatcha doing?"

"I'm on Animal Jam...." she replied smugly.

I had not the foggiest idea of what it was...so I sat down and watched her gaudily clad unicorn-like fantasy creature galloping around a tropical island, magical pet frog in tow.

"This is my den...." she added as she proceeded to trot through what appeared to be a huge virtual multi-level expanse of a mansion.  It had amenities I could only dream of...A waterfall in the living room, an indoor pool, a fully stocked bar, 70 inch LCD TV...there was a banquet table complete with a royal feast, some huge glowing one-of-a-kind icon or shrine or something that she had surrounded with multicolored swiveling barstools....In another place there were what appeared to be hundreds of virtual stuffed animals...no less than 30 alligators of different colors all neatly lined up...panda's, horses, armadillos.  The walls were covered with tchochkes...flags, mirrors, sconces, paintings....everything.

I was horrified.  "You're a HOARDER?...You're Hoarding in cyberspace???!!!" I snorted while cupping my head in my hands.  My failure as a parent was complete.  I felt like sobbing...All those words about materialism and she does this???  If she couldn't have everything she wanted in the real world, I guess there was always cyberspace where she didn't have to worry about whether or not daddy would say yes...

As I sat there in shock, she showed me all of her acquisitions, large and small.  "I want to be on Epic Dens, but I need more stuff" she casually mentioned... There's a virtual stuff acquisition contest????!!!  Animal Jam, my ass!  This should be called "Keeping up with the Virtual Joneses."  or "Cyber Materialist Spoiled Princess.."  My mind was out of control.   Still horrified, I queried..."Why do you need 30 alligators?"

"I won them. Besides dad, it's just the internet."  She rolled her eyes in normal prepubescent female fashion.

I didn't know what to say.  She had a point, but the mere thought of an online game pitting kids against each other to see who acquire the most crap makes me shiver.  How can that not somehow translate into real life behavior?  I found myself asking the usual questions.... "What are you going to do with 30 alligators?"  "Why not 50, or 1,000 alligators?  When does it stop?"  My daughter wrinkled her face in disgust.  "Dad!  It's just a game!!!"  I laughed.  She was right.  But she lined up the alligators so nicely...like soldiers.  It was cute....but still horrifying.  At least she didn't approach me each morning asking for my credit card number so she could buy more virtual-currency with which she would gamble with the hopes of winning more alligators.  That would have put me into orbit.

As I'm typing, she has won more cyber-gem currency and is asking me what she should do with it?  She wants a full sized castle.  I agree, but note that maybe it would be better to save up, take a trip somewhere and move into a smaller castle that's easier to maintain.  Then I remembered...you don't have to maintain a virtual castle.  It just shows up when she clicks on the website.

In cyberspace, she can have all the alligators she wants and won't have to worry about where to store them.  I certainly won't be tripping over them in the living room.   I should be thankful.  I think.

If storage and practicality isn't an issue on the internet, should I worry?

What's Hiding in Your Drawers?

Not in THOSE drawers.  Besides that.

I hate drawers.  Its too easy to stash crap in them.  Knowing that, I've made a concerted effort to minimize the total amount of drawers in my place.  No big cabinets.  No dressers.  No place to hide anything except for two small filing cabinets... for business and important stuff.  As a result, if I end up with small items...like maybe a cool keychain, a roll of stamps, a couple of flash drives...I have to deal with them immediately.  I end up walking around, looking like a human bobblehead trying to figure out where to stash the little buggers.  I'm forced to deal with everything and make a decision about each item.  Usually.

There's one small drawer next to my desk and despite my best efforts, it manages to fill up with doo-dads in about a week.  USB cables, extra keys, a spare case for my phone, a checkbook cover...Darn it.  Drawers are evil.

Yesterday, I glanced into one of my file drawers...it was full to overflowing with gosh-knows-what so I got out the shredder and went to work.  Bills from 2004, account statements from accounts long ago closed, instruction manuals from items I no longer owned, passcodes to long-defunct websites.  Amazing.  I cleared out a full cubic foot of space....  That's a stack of paper a foot tall...not bad.  I felt much lighter despite having eaten lunch just a few minutes earlier.   New problem though.....I've got more drawer space to drop crap into!  The only solution might be to get rid of the whole cabinet.

Sometimes when I clear out houses I have to sort through the junk drawers.  Often the contents at the rear have physically merged with the wood of the drawer itself resulting in an odd conglomeration of materials typically held together by old disintegrated rubber bands.  Archaeologists 5,000 years from now will have a field day trying to decipher what the pencil-staple-paperclip-eraser-bottle of whiteout-ketchup packet-thumbtack-melted rubber band object was used for.

Cleaning it out isn't the solution.  Get rid of the whole cabinet. 

The Ongoing Urge to Complicate Things

I've been doing well keeping things simple...until an urge hit me.

For those who don't already know, I'm a recovering real estate junkie.  Give me a crappy looking house that smells terrible and some profit potential and I'm your bitch.

What I noticed is that with most projects I've tended to grow weary near the end.  I was always anxious to jettison the current property, take the profit and move on.  It rarely worked out as simply as that and I've been reminding myself about all the time /financial/ personal juggling that has to go on when I get involved with a property.  Over the last few days, I've been muddling over a potentially tres chic project that would test my limits in more ways than one.

The property is in a premier location but has a host of issues, not the least of which is a potentially monumental expense down the road (in the form of an assessment.)  The upside is ownership, future profit potential and possibly dwelling within a magnificent and historically significant space in a great spot.  The place is tugging at me and I've needed to make the pro / con list.

The biggest con was that I would not be simplifying my life, but just the opposite.  The place needs an enormous amount of work and there would be a constant outlay of money and opportunity costs.  On paper the project has all the hallmarks of a money pit and the logical side of me has pretty much dismissed the whole shebang.  But why is there such a desire to toss myself back into the grinder?  I live in a great spot at what I consider to be reasonable cost.  Am I bored....perhaps crazy?  What about human nature causes me to be restless and not satisfied with what I have?  These are things I must constantly grapple with and I suspect most people do the same in varying degrees.  I have to remind myself what the goal is and that if I'm bored, I should get on the bike or go to the museum or walk on the beach....not buy a money, time and sanity sucking property.

It's cute but....nothing I should be doing if I'm bored.