One year ago today: April 6, 2024, define “essential”.
Five years ago today: April 6, 2020, my cedar décor.
Nine years ago today: April 6, 2016, early GP calculations.
Random years ago today: April 6, 2007, it’s Johnny D.
Utter silence again, no I’m not going deaf. I heard the sound of the kitchen ceiling fan through the closed hallway door. Fifty years of city living have me conditioned to constant noise and it is a treat to have none. The loudest noise this year is the paid protesters who can’t answer basic questions of why they are present. Rumor is, Soros is paying $17 and hour for people. It’s amazing how he gets away with it, but I’ll not worry about such things when it is pancake time. Pancakes that in the near future will be made on these newly-wired outlets.
Nor is it the time to invest in real estate, although this could otherwise be the time to pounce. I’m not happy with WealthFront, I want facts, not sales hype.The company named Arrived is more intriguing, partly because WealthFront doesn’t like to give straightforward answers on-line. Arrived is crowdfunding, which we are familiar with due to Caltier. By the way, Caltier has missed the boat. It has been a year since the pause and they are not explaining it out at all, much less in plain English. See more in today’s addendum.
For the first time since I saw the University ship in Bridgetown harbor some forty years ago, I read a blog by a student on such a trip. The original (hand-written) account may not be published before I die. So the quick story is I was in Barbados when they kicked the Soviets out of Grenada. The island was quarantined so I was stuck there a couple months, One of those floating universities berthed and I happened to be in Cave Sheppard when several hundred of the teenage gals came into town for some shopping. And it was a Cunard liner, folks, not some repainted troopship.
I’ve only been on short boat trips and after a single day, boredom becomes a factor. I have been on a ship full of women, but even then you have to be very careful to avoid the bad ones, who can be very pushy. This oriental lady was studying finance out of San Diego and talks of long hours playing cards and shipboard games like backwards spelling bees. Anyway, she visited 64 countries and listed the ones she would not return to. That, I found entertaining. Hawaii, because the on-board Wifi was “terrible”. Spain was over-touristed. South Africa even smelled unsafe. But, I’m the archenemy of people who post travel blogs without stating the cost or where they got the money, so you’re on your own from here.
*this price is actually economical compared to other methods of touring these countries. It works out to plus or minus $250 per day. So if I make a killing any time soon, let’s stay open-minded about this. Remember Hersh was a teacher on one of these liners out of Murmansk and Reykjavic. He’s the only one I know who could get in a situation like that and not find the right gal. He wound up with a single mother, you know. But he’s happy.
Palm trees in Scotland.
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Here’s the last of the new kitchen wiring, after this I am splicing and replacing the ancient runs. I found another ungrounded unpolarized circuit. This pic is the first receptacle of the run, showing the GFCI plug being wired. This and the picture this morning makes the blog as the first time a set of outlets where the copper cable and that GFCI at $18 each, total $36, cost twenty times the price of the rest of the circuit. The 15A duplex plugs were 75 cents each because their color was a little off the standard light almond of the rest of the kitchen. I can live with that.
The outlets shown do not have power yet. That is the stage I’ve been avoiding, tapping into that mystery wire. The good news is I found it. It was double wired right at the breaker box meaning I was lucky and found both ends. If it had been a junction box, I was in for some work. This saved me a day, so I took up the floor boards and finally sorted out that mess of wires. Worst was the old hot water tank. I was able to reroute the wiring to cut out the bad portion. This was just to give service, it is old two-wire incompatible with anything modern.
I ripped out portions of the old system wherever it got in the way and later ran temp power to the outlets. As soon as I have hot water and a shower, I’m going to savor my first cup of java on the new system. It was a long time getting here. True, building fences and repairing sheds in Tennessee for months on end. Here’s a picture of the double connection. Don’t get me wrong, all of this wire was expertly installed and was no doubt to code at the time. I also found the likely spot where two hot wires were clashing, it was behind a wall.
Checking with the tow driver, he forgot. My job is a back-haul and he has nothing until tomorrow morning. That tow business is a good living if you don’t mind the crazy hours. Unlike my trade, when he’s busy he’s making money. He’s an alright dude but the first thing you notice is when talking, there is a somewhat slower rate of information transfer. Then again, I’m used to hyper speed information exchange.
To sum up the day, the tangle of wiring is mostly sorted out and the value of that new sub-panel in the hallway is now beyond measure. The runs are there for the new fridge, a dishwasher, and a big garbage disposal. I do not like those wimpy models that list what you can’t put down the throat. I need something a takes the work off emptying the garbage every day. You know, for when I get old. I’ve never suffered for lack of planning ahead and this discouraging month is not the time to start.
What’s this? Montana has canned nine Republican senators for repeatedly siding with Democrats. I didn’t know they could do that, but it is, afterall, their party. It is 3:35:34AM in Greenwich, so let’s find the Sun. Longitude 233°20’W 06°46’N. It’s in the ocean just off the east coast of Mindanao. The nearest town on the satellite map is Mati. Founded in 1861, it doesn’t have much history, but there is an island nearby called the Sleeping Dragon. The economy is based on fish and coconuts, but there are nearby copper deposits.
If you wish to confirm my calculations, I remind you that navigation is a compromise. The Almanacs are sexagesimal and the on-line locator is a mix of that and decimal. The decimals are to the tenths of a minute, which is too accurate, as the lines drawn on your plotting sheets are many times wider than that. So the decimal is rounded up or down to the nearest even number. You can get as precise as you want, I used to. But out on the ocean, you are really only looking for land and avoiding things like reefs.
ADDENDUM
Caltier did serve the purposed of clearing up a lot of questions about crowdfunding—although it is not exactly Caltier that gave any direct, meaningful answers. We know it is an SEC regulation, but what is the regulation and why are they unable to easily comply? The one thing I liked best about Caltier is that if they want to make money, they have to properly upkeep and manage the properties. This removes the two biggest headaches.
It also draws a line. I’ve invested in the properties first, the business second. I’d put that ratio at 75/25. This suits my investment temperament whereby I own a share of the property, which I consider reliable, not the business, which I do not. Caltier also answered many questions, but not because they were helpful, in fact, quite the opposite.
I listed some companies I looked at last day that are similar, that is, fractional ownership of properties where, unlike with Caltier, I pick and choose which buildings I want. And that brings me to Arrived, which tosses around the term VRBO as if we all know it by heart. We don’t, because it is easily confused with Airbnb, which I consider too risky. I’ll invest in the property, but not the business. It’s a major distinction. The Airbnb operations don’t give enough data to determine some key real estate factors. Caltier, for example, does not tell what they paid or sold properties for. Looking up the title does no good because you don’t know what portion of that price tag is Caltier.
So, are you with me? I have earmarked all the maturing CDs from the funeral account (except one), in case the bank will not renew them as new items. To remind you, the bank offer reads 4.55%, but the fine print reads that is introductory offer only. If you let it auto-renew, you get about half that. Sneaky. There are other issues like liquidity, but no worse than CDs with their cancellation fee. The average Arrived investor has only put up $355 and we can do better than that. Note, I may start spelling that word as ArriveD with a trailing capital D. The other word causes database problems with the titling system I’ve used for forty years.
Also, ArriveD has a secondary market in the works. This is not for everybody because it is much like a stock market, but you buy shares in rental properties. The lure is that it makes it easier to more your money around. Traditional real estate, believe it or not, is difficult to sell. ArriveD also has a private credit fund that caught my eye. This is where you invest at a fixed rate, currently 8.1%, but you don’t gain if the property sells at a profit. These investments are no different than traditional operations. The attraction is on-line you don’t have to deal with real estate people.
