Generally good advice. I would add that it is okay to be opportunistic. Moving to ETX I took a year lease to get acclimated to the area but mostly to be in "vulture mode" and be in a position to quickly snap up a property that might offer a significant return if purchased right. Buying right gets overlooked too much. Particularly in frothy markets.
exactly...my first response is "have you ever worked corporate before?"...if the answer is "no" then they are in for a very rude awakening.
Living in Texas now without a mortgage or rent (got to save up for for the property tax though). I own my truck, the house is paid for and the level of stress has dropped dramatically since we left California. My lady has decided landscaping is her new adventure, most times she'll start some project with no consideration of how much work it'll actually take and her hobby quickly becomes my problem. That's just life, our front yard has been nominated for "Front Yard of the Month" by the HOA. The lady that came by to take pictures was recruiting block captains. I guess whatever the crazy lady I live with does is attractive and they want her to join their ranks. I want no part of it, we went to a HOA BBQ not long after we arrived and we were not necessarily shunned but we weren't exactly welcomed either, maybe it was because my truck still had California plates on it. That plate issue was solved post haste, we paid less than half of what we'd paid for the annual registration to transfer our vehicles and going forward it'll be like $40/yr (California sent me a letter that they're not happy I left and they're going to fine me $14 if I want to reregister my truck in CA). I love California but unless you're super wealthy it just makes no sense to live there and I'm not wealthy enough to not give a •.
I haven't had a ticket for a moving violation for over 25 years, transferring my CA policy to a TX policy (there's a difference) was really just a phone call and a couple of emails, the cost is about the same. I have an appointment at the DMV to get a Texas license/ID later this month, they want a lot more stuff for a "Real ID" than they did in CA. They want your birth certificate and it can't be a copy, it has to have the embossed stamp on it (no problem, I still have my original birth certificate from the night I joined all of the rest of you), a Real ID from wherever you came from (again no issue), some sort of bill related to your current address (the aforementioned insurance policy covers that), and than some other nonsense but the one that stuck out was a pilots license (their words not mine). Well happy day I have one of those as well. It should go fairly smooth but you just never know.
• man, if there was a medevac job where the career stuff got to even half of airline flying (compensation package, union membership, seniority progression, schedule flexibility etc) I would hand in my badge tomorrow and never look back. Absolutely loved it, more than I’ve loved any other job. Doing night shift in my 60s would be a stretch tho.
I thank Richard Anderson every month for the last 15 years.
that's awesome...that case and other cases such as healthcare, divorces, college...those are the exceptions. We're not talking about those.
I've pondered your post a bit and realized that I'd made a big assumption regarding my old Gulfstream Captain friend, I didn't know him at all outside of work and had no accurate idea about his life, for all I know he may have had a cattle ranch in Montana or a brownstone in NYC and despite the large amount of money he was making it wouldn't make sense for him to buy property in SoCal. He and I got along very well professionally and other than a couple of lunches we did not associate outside of the workplace. Perhaps he wasn't the pirate I thought he was, now I realize I have no idea but I suspect he's probably still flying a large cabin Gulfstream around the globe as a hired gun for someone, somewhere. That's all I've ever seen him do.
There's a reason I don't own an apartment building. It sounds like a press that prints money but that's far from the truth. I used to rub elbows with an older black gentleman, I was probably 23 and he just seemed old to me, he might've been one of the strongest men I'd ever met. He worked for the company that sponsored and built the R-3350s we ran on our air racer. His name was Mac but I'm not sure of his given name. It'd take everything I had with both arms to lift up a cylinder to him when he was up on a ladder and he'd just grab it with one hand from me and say thanks. I got to know him a bit and found out he spent nearly every minute he wasn't working at the engine shop or helping us he was working on a couple of apartment buildings he'd bought over the years. Some of it was kicking out bad tenants (Mac was not a small man and like I said his strength seemed sort of God given) but the majority was just constant maintenance for clogged sinks and fixing toilets or roof leaks, the man was being run ragged. We never allowed any sort of alcohol in our little T-hangar at Van Nuys but we'd be there long after the sun went down and it was acceptable, once the work was done, to grab a lawn chair, go outside, grab a beer and look into the hangar at what we'd done under • fluorescent lights. That's when I got to hear more about Mac, I think he had 3 daughters, two were going to UCLA and the youngest was going to USC, and he was paying for all of it. I don't have any kids and I don't want an apartment building but I loved Mac for the man he was.
You’ve got that commercial real estate you inherited. You don’t need apartments.
…and aren’t lease agreements for a fixed term?