One year ago today: December 14, 2018, passing through Clewiston.
Five years ago today: December 14, 2014, the equivalent of 19 years.
Nine years ago today: December 14, 2010, long before Ray-B.
Random years ago today: December 14, 2003, Arnold, precursor to Trump.
This is a picture of my new trellis. I’m placing it where I hope to plant more gladiolus bulbs soon, and to form a backdrop for a small flower garden where I plan to keep finding out what will grow in this yard. Formerly a headboard, it is shown here being glued into shape with a coating of exterior latex. I had tried for a series of these to make a neat little fence across the far back yard, but that’s when that guy at the Thrift started salvaging the very items I was repurposing. I heard a week ago they fired him. I don’t know, but the former lady is back and I’m shopping there again.
Worse, his equity in the house is zero. His only option is to sell the place, but the wording of his bail-out grant says he can’t, and even if he does, he will break even and have no place to live. I’ve done all I can, so when he said he needs a new vehicle, I advised him to get one he can live in. This could happen as soon as the end of March 2020. I’m busy with other commitments, but yes, it crossed my mind that he could sell it to me for the outstanding debt on the condition he lives there as a renter.
MicroSoft has send me an e-mail saying that unless I confirm my identity, they will lock me out of the underlying account for this blog as of January 20, 2020. This is not ownership of the account, which they have always disputed on one pretext or the other, but details of my identity, which appear nowhere in connection to this blog. I was born December 17, 1985 in Antarctica and my grandfather was a gravedigger. The account was set up in the greatest security possible in 2006 or so. Since then, Google took over the original company (BlogSpot) and has teamed up with MicroSoft to learn the identity of every user, the so-called “surveillance economy”.
They claim it is necessary due to the changing business practices. You no longer buy a chocolate bar, they say, because once you pay for it by credit card, you enter into a “business relationship” with the seller that allows him to track and predict your other activities. Watch China to see where this is heading. I am already on a watch list in America because I do not have a credit card and worse, pay for everything in cash. In China, suspicion already extends to such activities as not using social media and even leaving your house by the back door. Don’t be surprised if this blog suddenly disappears. Well over half of it has never been posted.
Watch Hong Kong for how people fight back. I find it amazing the military precision used by the demonstrators. This is the situation that easily escalates so the move to violence surprised few. The first echelon has umbrellas to block the view, the second wave disables the security cameras, the third wave deploys laser pointers to thwart police cameras. I’m more interested in what can’t be seen. The protesters wisely leave their smart phones across town. There is definite organization behind this and I say it cannot be lost to those organizers that so far they have achieved almost nothing. It won’t be long before they realize the most effective tactic is to block the economy, not the streets.
Mason-Dixon Line.
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Miss Ukraine has been stripped. Of her title that is. This blog has dubbed her Mrs. Ukraine, for it seems she’s been stripped at least once too often before. In a masterful piece of misdirection that brings tears to many a liberal eye, she has turned her lying into feminist issue, pretending it is a protest against inequality. The title was removed because she lied on the application form, but she is claiming discrimination against motherhood. Sneaky, but a move too blatantly designed to incite the millennial class. She has not yet gone as far as claiming people are “motherphobic”, but when her current CNN-friendly antics fade away, that’s ausually the next step.
It is not discriminatory for the simple reason that nobody is stopping married women with children from setting up their own contests. The problem is not equality. The true problem is akin to my potentially famous analogy about the kid brother and the bicycle. These married women don’t want their own beauty contests. They want yours.
TMOR, although the argument she is using looks as sounds like law as presented in the Hollywood movies, that is not the way equality works in America. That is the way greed works. If there was a law to prevent them from their own beauty contests, that is discrimination. It is only those who fantasize that the same law applies to individual opinions that are living in a parallel universe.
Next, I’m too lazy to write and I don’t do things just to have something to write about, so here is a joke. This guy’s doctor tells him he has ten to live. The guy asks, “Ten? Ten what? Ten weeks? Ten months?”
The doctor says, “Nine.”
Calling a meeting with Agt. R, we carefully went over his options. There is something that still could save his bacon. Corruption at the federal level. They are demanding environmental impact studies before new houses can be built. The intent and purpose of the law is not environmental, as usual, but to give power at the federal level over where you can live. These “studies” can add more than $20,000 to a vacant log. I’m monitoring the situation again, so the weekly deposits will likely pick up long enough for, and you are going to like this, an event around a mile south of Lake Wales.
The real estate developers are forced to seek out existing homes with large enough lots to build new subdivisions, avoiding the impact fees. Agt. R’s mother happens to own such a piece of property just outside of town, and guess what? Her and the four neighboring houses are sitting on eight acres. The value of the smallest end lot leapt from $230,000 to $750,000. Her lot, in the middle, is the largest and it has amenities such as a swimming pool and orchard trees. No promises, but she has been impressed by how things got back on track. That could be the miracle alluded to in recent posts. This led to a discussion of the chickens. Return tomorrow for specs.
ADDENDUM
Here is the more complicated issue brought up y’day. It concerns the firth decimal point, which seems obscure, but when it comes to mortgages, it is a real issue. This is about interest calculations and there are, you might pun, countless ways to calculate it. To bring reason to this mess, the government has decreed that loan documents state one figure that cannot be fudged. It is called the APR or annual percentage rate. It is chosen to be a point of comparison but most consumers (borrowers, that is) are not equipped to understand how it works. If you have a mortgage, this could be your lucky day, because I’ve noticed neither do most people who lend money. You could potentially save yourself a bundle.
APR is the interest rate which, at the end of one year, had you borrowed the money for exactly that long, determines the maximum interest the lender can charge you. We’ve talked about this before, that 2%+2% is NOT 4%. It is 4.04% and that is where those who don’t grasp this could and often do get royally screwed. I’d say do the math, but it isn’t even math, it is simple arithmetic. Thusforth, an APR of 12% is not the same as 1% compounded monthly, and don’t underestimate the effect of compounding. But short of instituting a class action, I don’t know what could be done. I’ll ask Trent.
What’s happened is whoever did the spreadsheet for Agt. R’s mortgage was a bit weak on this concept. They have been charging him the APR divided by 12 each month, meaning they are charging him too much interest. That interest is principal that is not being paid, and the error compounds itself each month. It seems like a lousy $3.82 per month now but over 30 years, is over $1,000 on a $50,000 mortgage, which is nothing to sneeze at. I’m going to try to provide you with a spreadsheet example that lets you do this analysis yourself. But the easiest way is to pretend you borrowed $1,000 for exactly one year.
If your APR is 6%, that means at the end of the year, you must back $1,060 IF YOU ONLY MAkE ONE PAYMENT AT THE END OF THE YEAR. Add up your payments to see if they come to that. If it is over, you’re being screwed by compounding. Just because your repayment period is monthly, does not mean your compounding period is monthly. You will need a spreadsheet for this kind of work. For those who know how to use goal seek, this is child’s play, but otherwise, you can play what-if by changing the interest rate and figuring things out on your own from there. While learning, presume the payments and interest are monthly.
The confusion arises because when you make monthly payments. At the end of each month you owe less than you did the month before. Each month has a different mix of payment and interest, so you want the inteerst part to be as low as possible. He is legally only allowed to charge you the RATE which would result in the full interest if there were no monthly payments. If he simply divides the APR by 12, that is overcharging you over the full year, and thus overcharging you by the month.
Because you are so nice, I’ll give you the spreadsheet formulas for a sample year. Pay attention if you’ve not done this before because it is tricky to see what is important. This is the spreadsheet THAT CONTAINS THE ERROR so you can more easily spot it.
At E2 is the APR, you type in your own rate, I chose 6% which is 0.06 in decimal. G2 is E2/12 THIS IS THE ERROR.
The next thing you should see is that the first line of the grid is different that the rest. Repeat after me:
"THE FIRST LINE of the grid IS ALWAYS DIFFERENT THAN THE REST."
I didn’t hear you. Say it again. It is different.
That’s because it contains the “salt” that determines the remainder of the calculations. Ignore the date field, the next column is BB for Beginning Balance of each period, it equals the EB for Ending Balance of the previous period which you see over in Column G. We are interested in what happens between these two numbers each payment period.
Look at PMT. You can change the first number to anything you want and play what-if but don’t change any of the formulas. The next column is the formula for interest, based on the BB of that period multiplied by G2. Don’t ignore those dollar signs in the Int formulas, for that is what locks you on to G2. The interest paid should go down a little each period because the BB gets lower each period. But one-twelfth of the APR, when compounded twelve times, does NOT equal the APR.
That Prin column is your payment minus your interest, this is the amount of principal you decrease the loan balance after each payment. This chart gives misleading results because as I pointed out, G2 is an error. The number that appears there is NOT the correct figure that would result in a 6% APR at the end of the year. That is a separate calculation and I leave that as an exercise for you. Hint, the monthly rate is not 0.00500, but 0.004868.
There, hope this gets you started. For the record, this blog went all through this back during the 2006 mortgage crisis. But this blog has no index, so good luck finding it.
