The News

First some research: You know the Google kind, pages of hits on the subject, newspapers, and some interesting options to the process of reading a newspaper. For one thing if you are really interested in finding out what the world newspapers think about a specific topic then starting online is a much better way to go. Besides, the economics of the situation may take the decision out of our hands. We may not be able to support our habit. Though I have to use that word habit advisedly. My wife never read the newspaper until we met. Our son, a 22 year old, only uses computers to find out what is going on. So maybe the habit will be a generational thing and just as fewer people read books so will fewer read papers. Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that the political arena will always need analysis from the underground.

Still, the idea I am trying to espouse is the necessity that we face as we try to harness our remaining resources and learn to live within our means not just as an individuals but as world wide society. Maybe that's what this Blog Day will presage?

This blog day thing

I've been thinking about this Blog Day for the environment and I am leaning towards writing a post about why and how we should give up our need for paper. For example, I read the LA Times most days but really from day to day the news isn't that new, and some days I just scan the sections before I move to the comic section which I always read. But we have here in Encinitas, five newspapers plus several weeklies that really are just vehicles for ads. I want to think about this more and I do know what a momentous thing this would be so I am going to look at transitional ways to ease into this.

I guess I really started thinking about this when I was reviewing "Deep Economy" and wondering about what happens to the recycled plastic bags and how do we form a habit of bringing a recyclable bag or two with us when we go shopping. I have a theory about habits and learning. Instead of trying to break old habits, I usually try to establish new ones and let the old ones fall by the wayside with disuse.

Anyway, I have to do some research on this idea. And at the same time, I'm wondering about the advisability of this whole idea in the light of how the politicians play.

Like clockwork . . .

they park their US Postal vans side by side, one pointed into the space, the other in the escape position pointed out. Ten minutes tops and they're out and walking, arms swinging, usually in shorts but as regular as clockwork except on Sundays and holidays. These two lady postmen. At first, I though it was just an occasion to talk. They were both in the same area and got finished the same time of day. But then I realized that every once in while a third person would join them so I knew that this was regular and organized. The way I see it they started out as letter carriers walking a route. Then as they got more experienced, they won or earned or just got promoted to the truck routes of businesses and apartment complexes and housing developments. But, and this is the part I like, they missed the exercise and the fresh air, plus who wants to get a big butt from sitting down all the time? So they got together or just happened to meet, and decided to keep up the legwork. Like clockwork, 45 minutes everyday, nothing's stopping these lady postmen from their decided rounds.

Politics . . .

Yesterday, admidst the various blogs I travelled I came upon a discussion of some merit that had to do with how one goes about judging a candidate's merits especially in regard to their stance on lowering taxes and I really enjoyed the intelligent tone of the discussion. But more than that, I found myself thinking about the real situation that our country has gotten into and how looking at the problems and needs through a personal finance perspective might just be what we need. Frugality first. Not by cutting taxes to please a rich and powerful minority but by actually starting out with the idea that we need to care for our money and our lives and our planet in equal amounts.

Changes . . .

I see him every morning as I drive my truck around the fairgrounds to our stand. In the mornings cool, he carries his wash bucket and towels from one Footsie Wootsie to another. His daily rock is to set themup bright and shiney for the new fair day. He looks up and grins as I motor past. His shoulders are slumped, his hair grey with years but his cheerful recognition is hard to ignore. Basil Rathbone face, like a street character in a Dicken's novel, Jim is his name.

Only, I see him in my mind's eye because this year as the fair opened we got the news that he'd passed away.

Tuesday, the 18th

Well, here’s a new idea. Since I don’t feel the same about writing to this blog in a crowded bookstore, why don’t I write it in my notepad and then just copy it in later? I know you’d think I would have thought of it before but I didn’t, so there.

Meanwhile, let’s get back on topic. It takes a certain kind of spirit to work as a vendor/carney on the fair circuit. Independence slathered with flexibility. Obstinance and durability and the ability to smile through the pain. And like many of the personal and financial choices you make in life, choosing to work as your own boss in this manner can reward and punish you in equal measure. You beat up your body for six months and then you’re on vacation until the circuit begins next year. But when you are up close and watching the turtle like intensity with which these men and women slog through each day so that they can answer the question, "Didja' make any money?" with a sure and sly smile its hard to see past the pain of sore backs, swollen joints, and sleepless nights. I know for myself it takes at least a week to get in shape. My hands ache and my shoulders are as tense as the cat lady's tail. But not many quit. They stick around and even though their children now run the show the old ones are there in the background ready to help or join in on the complaining with stories of their own.


Volumetrics: About that cottage cheese, I haven't gotten to the part in the book where it's explained how something that is 45% fat grams can be a low energy food but I am taking thier word about it until I find out different. It is fun though to do the math on so called health foods and diet drinks and see where they are really at.

Buying a Rental Property, pt.4

This story just gets better and better. One reason, maybe the main reason, that my partner and I haven't purchased a home is that the amount of interest that one pays over the life of a 30 year loan sticks in our combined craw. I am reminded of this as I look over the loan lock-in documents for our recent rental property purchase. For a loan of 103K at 6.875% we will be paying $143,131.82 in interest. Since it is a rental property and a tax deduction and the renter will be paying 100% of the mortgage, we can swallow this info fairly easy. But think about it if it is a home purchase. Yes, we get to write the interest off but we still have to pay the mortgage out of our pocket. And since home prices in our area, the beach in SoCal, are hovering at $550,000 to $780,000, the resulting interest we would pay for just the lower amount would be close to $700,000. Imagine the retirement fund we could have with $700,000 invested in an index fund over 30 years. Oh yeah, I should mention that our current rent for a large 2 bedroom, 2 bath, with office, and clubhouse and swimming pool is $1600 a month.

Insurance, assurance . . .

Today, I sat down to ruminate over our new whole and term life insurance policies. After much thought and some careful (we thought) research, we chose to buy $100K of whole life and $500K of convertible term. The whole life comes with a guaranteed annual premium and will be completely paid up in 22 years. We will have contributed at that point $49,261 and the benefit amount will be $105,479 guaranteed. This insurance is for my partner T. and assures her that when she dies she will be leaving an inheritance to her son. The term life is also for her son and in her mind guarantees that if anything happens to her before the 20 years is up, her son will receive that death benefit, too. Originally, the plan was for T. to convert the term insurance gradually over to whole life so that sometime before the 20 years ran out she would have $600K of whole life insurance to pass on.

They say you buy insurance for one of two reasons: you love someone or you owe someone. They also say love can make you blind. I love my partner so I worked with her to set this up. But all the way through the process I knew that there were other choices that would provide the same thing and still let us be in better control. Once the insurance company has our money, the only way we can access it is through borrowing against the current cash value. At 8%. Of course the money we contribute is guaranteed to, at the least, double while it is in their care. And that is worth something. But the same $300 a month place in a 4% savings account will reach $168K over the same time period and we could use it if the need arose without any penalty. And if we put it in a long term investment fund like the Vanguard 500, the return might be 10% which would mean its value would compound to $268K. But in order for us to choose either of those two options we would need to have the assurance that our continually growing net worth would be the legacy that she would pass on to her son. Because that's the real key to deciding about whether to buy insurance, isn't it? Do you trust yourself or some insurance company?

Blogging, the way its done

Today I'm sort of summing up the things I've learned about my blogs and blogging in general this week. This short and steep learning curve occurred when I realized that I was emailing subscriptions from blogger that were not carrying my comment option. When I went to the forum at blogger for help I was put off by the advice that wanted to refer me to adding beta code to my template. For those of you that don't know, beta means still in the testing mode. So I went to http://feedburner.com/ the location of my feed account and asked their forum for help. I was told first of all that (something I'd noticed in passing) that wordpress.com was currently the only hosting/publishing service that allowed that capability with email subscriptions. Apparently about 90% of the commentary received on blogs is spam. Consequently, comments are heavily monitored and difficult to transport. I am not quite sure why a comment that has been moderated is any further concern but this is still the situation.

So the dilemma. I like my blogger blogs; the templates, the ease of use, the familiarty I have developed with the process but I want to publish my blog as an email newsletter and if wordpress is the only way then I figured I would have to try it out.

Wordpress has taken this whole process to another level. Why this is I don't know but I think it probably has to do with starting well after blogger and wanting to be better and different. And it is different, right from the start. Tomorrow I'll spend some time telling you how.

Setting a goal

I've come to the conclusion that looking inward may be the best way to prepare a person to look forward. As a child, I developed into a loner. Whether it was caused by being a service brat who was in a new school every one of my first 7 years or because my parents were of different religious origins, she was Catholic, he Baptist; different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, she was a city bred Italian, he was farm bred Southerner; or because I discovered the world inside books when I started reading at the age of six, doesn't really matter. Whatever the cause, the effect has been to leave me very short sighted when it comes to goal setting. Ask me my goal at any time in my life and the answer would have been the same. To be alone with a good book.

The result is that I've always sought jobs, entertainments, and yes, even friends, that would leave me alone to organize my activities so I could hurry back to my reading. Hurry being the operative word here. I didn't so much plan the future as I did try to control it so I could go back to my books. The odd thing is that this shaped my eventually becoming a teacher of English and it foreshadowed my decision to retire early and go off on my own. The thing is that teaching was never my goal. An occupation that gave me a license to read was. Later, when I discovered how much I really liked teaching, I had already retired so that I could get back to my privacy and my reading.


The point here is that I never really set my goal. It set me. When I look back at the jobs I've had, truck driver, coach, teacher, concession manager, dance teacher, and now computerist, I see how they all were choices that fit my personality and that I gravitated to naturally. But I remember distinctly in every case I pursued or took the job because I wanted to be in control of my time so, you guessed it, I could have more time to read.

So I have this to say to those of you who are about to sit down and list your short term and long term goals, goal setting is a forward looking activity. But a look inside at who you are and what you do with your own time now may serve you very well as you plan for the future.

Part and Parcel, How to Grow a Partnership

To me the art of partnering is simple. First, anticipate the other person's actions and then help them along the way. Say they need to figure out how to finish a job. A partner looks for what needs to be done next and starts on that: The nurse who hands the doctor the correct instrument, the catcher that doesn't let the ball go through, the person who takes the other side of the box to help you lift, all are examples of what I mean. But how do you find that partner or become one yourself.

As I written earlier, my partner and I grew into our partnership. Common interests placed us together and we grew into it from there. But first lets ask ourselves this question. What is the value of a partnership? As a loner, I can tell you that I have wasted a lot of my energy trying to complete projects that didn't get done because being a loner I had no contacts, no connections, no person up the ladder that I could appeal to for help. Because I didn't "need anyone" I let myself believe that the failure of each project was the fault of others who just couldn't see what a great idea they were missing. As I began to think about this though, I realized that the failures were also mine. My individuality might lead to creativity but in order to spread a good idea I needed to change myself or add someone else to the mix.. So a partnership can bring you success.


When I started a side business, I began to look for ways to include someone else. As I look back, I can see that this first attempt was destined to fail. My small business had room for one employee so I decided to include my wife. Blithely, I assumed because we were married we were partners and that she would want to share in the creation of this business. But the contract of marriage didn't include her caring about what I was trying to create. She was glad to help on an hourly basis, or as an assistant but when she came home from her regular (part time job) she was quite content to relax and do her own things rather work with me to grow the business. Eventually, this difference of interests doomed the business and, yes, the marriage. I'd learned that wanting a partner or to be a partner didn't garuntee success.

I could see the value of having a partner but I couldn't see how to get one. I didn't have a boss who would one day walk into my office and say here's your new partner. I was on my own. Then I began to think back to a time when I did have partners. Back to the day when I played sports in college and after, and I remember what had always been the key to my team being successful. I helped everyone else be a better player. In football, I was a great blocker; in basketball, I led in assists; in volleyball, I was a setter; and in dance, I was a leader who learned to follow. In each of these activities, I was a partner.

The value of a partnership is that it can lead to success. To have a partnership, I finally learned, you have to be a partner.

Partnership: This time of year

as the summer fair season starts is when our partnership gets a real workout. Each of us is very strong individually. We make quick decisions and usually solve problems before they happen. But together, on the same job, well, sometimes we just clash. I, for one, am fairly compulsive about organization and keeping things straight. She is incredibly imaginative and sales oriented. I try to use my skills to put everything in the right place so I don't have to repeat myself. She really focuses on the end product. I delegate with the expectation that my idea will be realized. She will do everything herself if she has to, sometimes even if she doesn't. In the early years, this difference in personalities led us to some very loud and explosive interactions which we are lucky we survived.

Nowadays, we have learned to use our capabilities to work together. Each of us has a part. For example, I take the computer and the paperwork, she takes the menu and the presentation. I set up and close down. She works with the staff to develop our sales through care of the customer first. I do all the tasks I can that take only one person. She smoozes the fair execs, trains and schedules the workers, and maintains the production lines. I bring in the supplies, organize the jobs to be done and the check list that makes sure they get done on time. She finds new ways and new products to increase our company's bottom line. If you had to characterize us; I am a loner, she is the people person. But between us we have been able to come up with several creative ways to make a partnership like ours work.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you how.

To rent or Sell

that is the question? Whether it be wise to lose the cash flow or wait out the down turn, these are some options. On the rent side, we are up against an over supply of competition in the same price range. The neighborhood has taken on a slightly untended look. And there are already 8 places for rent within a couple of blocks. Doesn't look good. But we are willing to upgrade the ammenities, and polish the curb appeal for the renter that fits our model. Another plus is that we aren't feeling any pressure from this because we have a backup account for up to six months without a renter.

On the sale side, the market for these units could continue to slide especially since there are newer options built and being built for the buyer that may or not be now willing to buy. We will still have to prep the unit for a sale. At least, externally. T. really thinks we should try a Lease Option sale. She likes the idea of holding a note that is secured by the property and that increases the cash flow, too. I, on the other hand, worry about all the details that doing something different entails. Ah well.

The fair season starts . . .

Today, our summer fair season starts. We'll drive up to OC and meet with the fair manager to sign the contracts. We've been in the concession business now for 14 years. When we started out it was just us. Me and T. Eighteen hour days, sore bodies, doing it all. We can really say we built it piece by piece. At first, it was just work. Work hard and we will make some extra money. We rented one of the family's stands. Sold organic fruits and vegetables from the stand and from tables arranged in front so the people could walk through and pick what they wanted. We were a little farmer's market and a total alternative to the usual deep fried atmosphere. Then the second year, we commissioned T's brother to build a stand that represented the ideas we wanted to sell. An old fashioned store with a porch from which the customers could see an array of our mixed fruit bowls.

More Deep Economy

I haven't read McKibben's first book, The End of Nature, but it is clear that whatever thoughts he brought to the state of our world then have only intensified now. But I really liked the balance that he provided in his analysis of the issues. I had to envy the travelling he did, too. I think of China and the city streets used to be crowded with bicycles not SUVs. But as he points out, countries that have used our model of endlessly expanding economy and increased efficiency are not at fault for doing so. It's just that we haven't yet, and I point to the personal financial bloggers when I think of this, shown them what to do next with all their abundance. We have a chance to model through our own efforts at controlling and understanding our personal finances to be a part of the change that may still save "the cheerleader, Save the world."

What I Don't Know

is how my partner and I got where we are. We never signed anything. Never wrote out the parts each of us play. Never even thought about how we just one day found ourselves introducing ourselves as partners. I do know I purposely choose that term when I want to refer to her. I want to avoid the predjudice implied in calling her "my wife" and I know that I feel that being rigorous in this regard is a part of the equation. We share everything even when we don't. And we don't agree at first about many things. But somehow we have learned that in the end we will be together and that's why our partnership works.

Trust . . .

is hard to come by and we are lucky when we have it. Trust in yourself. Trust in others, and they in you, is the essence of a workable and a good partnership. My partner and I developed our trust over years. When we met, I had a small business and a daytime job. She had a small business, too. Separate but equal we came together because she needed the service I was selling, dance lessons. But soon after we met, I discovered she was doing something in her business that I had done as a boy and now as a man found I really missed. Truck farming and farmer's markets.

Gradually, over the first year or so of our knowing each other, we became involved. I asked her to compete with me as a dance partner. She asked if I'd help her by managing a concession at a rock concert. We worked with each other and over time it became clear that she and I were looking for similar things in a partner. I retired from my day job. She built a concession stand. We began to work the summer circuit of fairs together. Twenty hour days, for a month at a time. We still kept our businesses separate but they were definitely growing closer together.

But in those early years we came close many times to breaking up. One time she pulled over to the side of the freeway and demanded that I get out of the truck. We were on our way to Ventura and had been having a discussion about how to treat our employees. She began to insist that it be done her way. I told her I didn't work for her but with her. And at dance practice, when we were preparing for a dance contest, my demand that a step be done a certain way would often get in the way of us actually being able to dance together as a team.

So how did it happen that we developed a trust that became a partnership?

Partners, an over and under view . . .

So the other day, or was it a night, I decided to take some of that advice I've been reading about how to run a blog and put it to work. So in a sense you could say that this rather loose affiliation that I'm forming with other bloggers is a partnership. One of the mind and very contemporary. Meantime, I am in a very committed partnership with T. my long time business associate, companion, lover and best friend. We have formed a corporation together, invested in real estate, married in common law, and worked side by side, sometimes cheek by jowl, for many years. We are complimentaries. She is open and friendly and filled with a boundless sort enthusiasm to do good things well. I am certainly more closed and introverted, but still quite willing to get involved. Together we form a team that on the surface would not seem to be possible. And yet, it is.