Personal Update - Lazy Coconut No More!

This weekend has been eventful and decisive! First of all, my mother hurt her foot. It appears to have been just a muscle spasm, and she's fine now. Thank goodness, because she doesn't have health insurance. She's waiting it out for Medicare, because the last private insurance quote she got was just ridiculous, as in $1000 a month.

I spent much of Saturday hanging around with my mother and a friend of hers. My father was also in town (he flew out yesterday). It was quite a change to have him visiting in a fully mobile state. We were used to the noise of his knee walker, a steady "whirrr ka-THUNK ka-THUNK whirrr" on the hardwood floor of our house. Now we can't hear him coming.

He's healed well from the ankle fusion and is still extremely active, although he made one concession: he's given up motorcycle riding. Your mid-sixties is probably a good age to give up motorcycle riding.

I bought a camcorder this weekend and I'm going to use it to make home movies and document our family history. I have a little background in film production... enough to know I'm a terrible director, worse actor but passable editor. We'll see how it goes.

The camcorder is going to be the last large purchase for a long time. My husband and I made a major financial decision: we're going to buy a house. The neighborhood around the corner from us is sort of depressed, but the houses are fantastic brick bungalows, much like ours, and we're located close enough to the center of the city that I'm not worried about a real estate crash. Prices there may drop in the short-term, but they won't get much lower.

I want to get a cheap house in that neighborhood, do basic renovations, rent it out and hold on to it as a long-term investment.

Where I think many landlords go wrong is in renting too much out of desperation and greed. Trying to squeeze the highest price in the shortest amount of time, they rent to sketchy people.

I remember a particularly nasty situation back in Miami. My friend and I were living together in a three-bedroom rental and needed another roommate ASAP. Our landlady recommended a guy. The guy moved in with us. It turned the guy was our landlady's ex-boyfriend. She had decided to get back together with her ex-husband, and couldn't kick out her ex-boyfriend until she found another place for him to stay, so she unloaded him on us! He turned out to be a thieving massive cokehead and there was a lot of stress getting him to leave after we figured that out.

My plan is to rent at a low price, and really look very carefully at rental applications, do credit checks and take time to choose the absolute most responsible and stable people. We will probably not make a profit off the rental for a while.

To get the down payment I've established a very ambitious six-month savings goal. I may need to get a part-time job. I'm looking into adjunct teaching in business or English. I hate the stress of teaching for money. I'd rather do some sort of food prep job, but although those jobs in themselves are less stressful, the social environment is risky... two out of three times you end up with Mussolini bosses and I can't deal with that anymore. Mini-anecdote: the last time I had a Mussolini boss I was working in an Atlanta cafe bussing tables. The manager picked up a crumb from the floor and flourished it in my face with an angry look. Later she apologized, but said her reaction to the crumb was unpreventable because she "came from fine dining".

Soon is the best time to buy real estate. It's turning into a buyer's market.

I need to plan for our future. I've been to a lot of interesting places already; I don't plan on sacrificing myself to the grind for the rest of my life, but at this stage I really need to create a secure base for my family, which includes my parents as well as my future children. The good job I have now has gotten us part of the way there and is as secure as corporate jobs get... which isn't all that secure. If I worked for the government or in a union job I wouldn't feel as apprehensive.

I'm also reducing the percentage of my charitable contributions. I'm going to make up for it by volunteering more. I'm excited about this plan and feel positive about making the savings goal by the end of February.