"100% of people who do not save money do not have any!"--Dave Ramsey

[Xist]

I think that I found something locally, but do I want to spend less than two hours in a class in-person or do it on-line and then spend over an hour in-person?

They bill through PayPal and PeePee and I hate each other. It defaulted to Azerbaijan and when I put in my address it cleared everything and reset to Azerbaijan. After a couple of times it asked if I was a robot. I was afraid that it was going to give me one of those stupid quizzes of picking out sidewalks from terrible pictures, but after ten minutes it finally allegedly shut up and took my money.

What a day! You know, as bad as any other, but as always I had all kinds of schemes planned:
1. Mow the back lawn.
2. Mow the lawn of the vacant house.
3. Insulate my office with the 1/4" fanfold insulation that I bought a few years ago to make a bike-track boat-tail.
4. Finally put my Civic together again.
5. Work with my brother.

It rained and Mom sent me to the store to buy some bandages for my brother and over-the-counter medications. Unfortunately, I needed to go to three stores to find everything.

I just ran to Wal-Mart yesterday and will go grocery shopping tomorrow. I should have made her wait, but she might have gone, and visited with every senior citizen that she saw. Between that and trying to find CPR, I did not have time for anything.

[redpoint5]

Should I share my excuse reason for not running today? Most of it is that I'm reasonably sure tomorrow is coming. I'll let you know tomorrow what my excuse for not running is.

[Xist]

Boss:

Ok, lemme see what [Office Lady] wants to do about it. We won't hold your pay though man. I know it's tough times right now with all this going on.

So, this is a bad time to rage-quit?

Well, this allows me to honestly earn my pay instead of freeloading three times as much unemployment.

I had planned on starting PostMates once school got out, but I may have been exposed to coronavirus, so I am waiting two weeks.

I searched for PostMates. but Ecomodder denies that anyone has used that name here, although I found it 108 posts ago. Uber Eats, GrubHub, and DoorDash don't permit Show Low, but allegedly PostMates does. I saw a vehicle with a PostMates decal today, so that is looking more likely.

PostMates guarantees $1,025 in 30 days as long as you make some heretofore-unspecified number of trips, which people say is usually 30 - 60.

$1,025 a month is terrible! That is less than I currently earn doing teletherapy! However, one of my clients will be out-of-town for a month, and she insists that she will be unable to do therapy, although she refused to say why.

The thing is, they only guarantee the first $1,025. Not counting downtime(!) it would work out to $25 an hour for 41 hours.

They offer a $100 bonus and Chase offers $300, so in theory I could earn $1,425 in 41 hours, which works out to $34.75 an hour, but there are so many conditions there.

How much will I need to wait between orders?

It looks like the average pay is $12 hourly, so while my client is out-of-town I would need to deliver for 33 hours a week to break even with unemployment.

Curses.

Well, I am not a deliveryboy, I am a speech therapist. Any monkey can deliver food and that is why it pays poorly. I can do speech therapy and someone on Facebook named an agency that hires teletherapist. I do not have any idea if they have any openings or how many clients they might be able to give me, but it pays significantly better than PostMates, even with guarantees and bonuses--if I can get hired and obtain a caseload.

I did not want to pursue this because my contract prohibits me from working for a competitor, but they aren't getting me clients, so it is worth reaching out.

[Fat Charlie]

I think "competitor" is the key word. That other company also doesn't get you clients. If you sign with them, they may start getting you clients, which will remove them from the highly competitive pool of companies that don't. And your current company's position will then be safe as the leading source of no work for you. Problem solved!

[Xist]

Oh no! There are dozens, if not hundreds of agencies across the state not getting me clients! How can I live with myself!

That teletherapy job is only a possibility, but in theory, if they have an opening, I could reach out to all support coordinators in all remote parts of Arizona and ask if they had any clients that would benefit from speech teletherapy. There must be dozens.

Dozens!

The thing is, my credit card starts charging interest in the First, and I will need to save up a bit more in order to pay off my credit card and pay my taxes, so all of this money that I have saved up really isn't mine. If I found a house I would also find a credit card with zero transfer fees and kick that down the road. Getting out of debt is great, but it really doesn't open any opportunities.

I found a lady who sold 167 houses. I do not see how all of those could have been hers. The friend said that she must have a team. So, she counts everyone's sales, while they only count their own?

I mentioned to my one friend that I was trying to find a realtor and asked what criteria was the most important.

Do you have a 20% down payment saved up for the type of house you're looking for? Or if you're interested in investing, you should have 100%...

I see that you follow the Dave Ramsey School of Getting Nowhere Fast.

It seems he took that personally:

I dunno... Which of us makes 6 figures, has a PhD and lives in Europe?

Six figures is great. My sister earned that as an RN. He has made it clear that he still has tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. He also has nine dependents and his wife is probably too busy homeschooling to have her own career.

Is any of that relevant? What is his net worth? He didn't mention that. He has two old vehicles, so we are even. He rents. He refuses to save up for his kids' college.

I reached out to ten realtors in my area and asked if there were any site-built homes under $200,000 that would qualify for a VA loan. A VA loan would be great, but again, I do not know how many homes would qualify. I shared a picture of a house that seemed to have dry rot on all of the roof fascia boards, damaged drywall in every picture of the interior, and the kitchen cabinets were missing drawers and doors.

They want $177 a square foot, but since it is only 979 square feet it is worth more like $78,320--less than half.

Homes under $125,000 sold for between $60 and $103 a square foot. Hopefully the drywall could be patched, textured, and repainted easily enough. I do not know how easily you can replace drawers and doors. As long as the dry rot is limited to the fascia it would not be too much work to replace. It isn't as bad as the $60 houses, but is nowhere near as nice as the $103 ones.

I wanted someone to explain why they were asking 40% more than the house would be worth if everything were fixed. I showed a few pictures of another house on the same street. Everything was great, but it was missing some wall plates, and I have heard of VA inspectors failing houses for missing those.

Kevin responded:

haha let them call out the wall plate then - if they feel they have to call something out, leave something for em lol

Did the realtor not understand? The idea is that the inspector says "Oh! You are missing a wall plate! This house failed! Call me back [and pay again] when you fixed that!"

[Xist]

Two agents already responded. One wrote "I have a home coming on the market in a week that will be 179,777 and will go VA."

I asked for more information.

Before I reached out to these ten realtors I went through Zillow's list of agents and looked at how many houses everyone sold in the past 12 months, their reviews, and how well they wrote their summary.

Which of those is the most important?

[oil pan 4]

How do you make 6 figures and still have 5 figure student loans?
Seems like one would be better off with mid 5 figure and no student debt.
To me it appears the education system is more about making money and creating deters to fund lavish and selfish benefits packages.

[redpoint5]

I'm well ahead having entered the workforce at around $38,000 and no student debt and no car payment (paid $2k cash for my first car). That's after taking a year "break" in prison. I've got friends who came out of school with a quarter million in student loans (vet and pharmacist) who make just into 6 figures. They are catching up.

I did nearly obtain an associates degree (2 classes short), but I paid as I went back when credit hours were only ~$35/credit.

[Xist]

How am I supposed to choose a realtor? I found 123 on Zillow. 87 sold 1+ houses in the past 12 months, 40 sold 10+, and 1 sold well over 100. 78 have reviews and 77 are rated 4.6+. 35 have 10+ reviews and 3 have 99+. 47 have well-written summaries.

Since nothing hit the market like a week ago I do not need to worry about anything selling in two days. Four realtors have now responded. One said they had that VA home coming onto the market in a week. I swear they gave me a little more information, but I cannot find it now.

It was a voice mail! It is a modified A-frame, 3 bedrooms, but one doesn't have a closet. It has a carport, three decks, and one is covered.

Another realtor linked a home search and one referred to their website, but it does not have the option to eliminate mobile homes, and I did not care to go through 84 homes.

The MLS search showed this home, which I had not seen anywhere: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...47654414_zpid/

If you click on the link you will notice immediately that there are not any pictures and it says "Off-market," but it shows up in the MLS site, although the address does not. I needed to look up the address on the county accessor's site.

Here are the pictures from the MLS site:


Got wood?








I like the bathroom!

Not the sink, though. Why do they do that?! One of my clients had a bathroom sink like that and I forget the mom's complaint, but she hated it.

I love the picture with a wood stove and wood paneling on five surfaces. Is all of that wood a sixties thing?

It says that it has wall heat and there is one heater on the wall.

How well does that work?

There is not any air conditioning, a garage, or even a carport. It sure looks like there is space to add a garage and if you are adding onto the home throwing in a second bathroom would be great, but they are asking $149 per square foot when it is worth at most $125, which would put it around $146,750, but $30,000 for a garage would put it back to $150 per square foot.

I just wonder for how long it is on the market. If home search sites do not show it and MLS sites do not show the address you might be able to get a good deal on it.

[redpoint5]

That's a lot of wood. I'd probably keep it.

The key to a good deal is to not get attached to anything before you have it. You don't "miss" a house sale, you have opportunity for the next one. The key thing I like to convey to everyone is that I do not need their house (or car, or anything else).