A few leftover pictures from our trip to the Bay Area for the wedding, Mystery Spot and San Francisco. A nice shot of David giving his speech/toast at the wedding and one of David and Daniel with one of their cousins and also Daniel's groomsman. Also one of Daniel in his new car which is a two year old Honda Insight as they leave the reception. Daniel realized that he could trade in the Explorer we gave him and actually pay for his car payment with the money he saves on gas. He is in commute traffic about 3 hours a day. Also a picture of the brothers in San Francisco.
Randy has invited me out to Dallas or Graford or whatever his town is named. I was ready to buy tickets, but Darla and I are taking a class at church called Financial Peace University and I'm working on getting my financial house in order. Randy, I think I'll take a rain check on your offer until the Spring. Darla and I will plan a long weekend with you in April or May.
I'm enjoying the class so far. It is based on the ministry of Dave Ramsay, who is a man that was very successful early in life (He had a $4,000,000 real estate portfolio by the time he was 26). He lost it all and realized that his entire life was based on the use of credit and he spent the next 10 years studying the Biblical approach to money. He believes that credit is the single worst thing that has happened to Americans in the last 100 years. Believe it or not, people used to wait and save up to buy things like furniture and cars and even homes. A high percentage of Americans still spend more money annually than they make. Darla and I are working on putting together a 3-6 month Emergency Fund and then we will begin working on paying off our debt. The idea is to have money in the bank to pay for unexpected emergencies like car repairs, appliance repairs, health issues, etc. I expect to retire in 8 years and my goal is to be debt free by the time I do retire. I will pay off my rental in two years and really start doubling up on payments for this house. I need to pay off some credit cards and I'm working on getting our finances in good shape.
I just got our financials for August at work and we had another month with over $100,000 in profits. We are just shy of $1,000,000 profit for 8 months, which is outstanding. My biggest issue is space in the office. My real estate department is in a dispute with our landlord on the terms of our lease addendum. The specifics are that we were given $85,000 credit for the build out. It was bid by the contractor for $71,000 but they missed our spec sheet which lists all of our finishes and requirements that are standard in all of our offices and contained in our current office. We balked on the contract, asked for changes to the bid specs which came out to $14,000. (Do the math). We agreed on everything, they started the construction and then sent us a bill for $14,000 for the "changes". We balked, they stopped construction and we are in a heated dispute now. The landlord said that we agreed to the original bid specs which include finishes different from those that we have in the office now. The last I heard, our attorneys were sending them a letter demanding that they honor the $85,000 credit and start construction immediately. If not, we will litigate. It's all noise to me. I have two new employees starting on Monday (we were supposed to move into the expansion space last Friday). They will be in training and will work from my conference room.
One of the Real Estate people asked me WHY I hired someone when the space isn't completed. I calmly told her that it takes about two months to hire an employee with our company and about 6 weeks to do the build out. I started the hiring process about a week before the construction was supposed to commence and handled my part flawlessly. I told her that if there is any problem with my hiring, it was a lack of follow through by my Real Estate department. She had nothing to say to that. Hopefully, we get things going soon. In the meantime, I'm getting some sideways glances from our lessors.
I got out to play golf on Saturday. I tried to get some of the retired guys to join me. They are all annual pass holders and can't tee off for free until after noon on the weekends. I got crickets from most of the guys. Paul, who is still working, but has an annual pass, agreed to come out and play. I would have set up an earlier tee time, but it gave me a chance to sleep in. Paul and I teed off at noon and were done by 3:20PM. It was like a country club out there, there wasn't another group on the course until the seventh hole. I was a little rusty after taking last week off and shot 43+43=86. I did play on Thursday night and shot a 44.
Our twilight league finally ends on this coming Thursday night. Neil and I are in 6th place and will play for the fifth position. They pay the top 6 spots. We have $114 coming back to us based on sixth place and we have skins Thursday night with another $120 in the pot and we can make an extra $10 if we beat the 5th place team. We paid $120 to get in the league and we'd like to get over $120 back. It's been a good year, but a LONG year. We've been playing since May.
The Cowboys continue to self destruct and I can only hope that Jerry takes a hard look in the mirror and hires a General Manager. Bring in someone like Mike Holmgren and get out of the way. Jerry has already said that would never happen. They basically gave the game to the Niners. My takeaway from the game is how easy it would have been to beat SF. They scored on our turnovers, but had no sustained drives and did not score in the second half against arguably the worst defense in the league. Tony Romo had one of his worst games, yet still threw for 358 yards and DeMarco Murray rushed for 118 yards. If Niner fans are happy with this game, they were watching it through rose colored glasses.
Darla and I went to church today and it was the first day that our new senior pastor, Tommy Politz was giving the message. He called Rick up and they ceremonially passed the baton. Rick took our church from a card table in front of the Roseville Wal-Mart handing our pamphlets on "How to Drug Proof your Kids" to a huge church on the hill in Rocklin. He has been our pastor for 20 years. Tommy has hired Rick back on staff and he has also given him a one year paid sabbatical with a travel stipend. I was a little shocked, but look at everything that Rick has done for our church and he needs and deserves this time off. He will rest and come back refreshed and ready to serve the church.
Well, that it for this week. I hope you are all doing well. Thank you again to Darryl, Cheryl, Randy Cake, Samantha, McKenny and Jennifer for such a fun week last week. Ciao.
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