|
|
This January I decided to take advantage of the horrible state of the real estate market in my neighborhood and I bought a 2,000 SF house in a short sale. The house was in decent condition but did need some work done to bring it up to my standards. I decided that I would do most of the work by myself and I want to share some of my experiences.
The first problem I needed to take care of was the color of the house, the majority of the interior was painted in extremely bright (I would say ugly) colors, mostly pumpkin orange. I’ve done some small paint jobs before but nothing as big as this. I thought it would be relatively easy and if I worked hard I could get it done in a weekend. Turns out it’s a lot harder than it looks, and more expensive than I thought. The first mistake I made is not spending enough time on the prep work. Taping off the ceiling and covering the floors did not go as smoothly as I thought so I started cutting corners. The hardest part of the job was painting the ceilings, I wanted all of the ceilings to be white which is way harder than painting the ceiling and walls the same color.
The painting ended up taking about 2 months, mostly b/c I was so frustrated with how hard it was that I didn’t work on it for days at a time. Because of my sloppy prep work I got the wall paint on the ceiling in some spots and dripped a lot of paint on the floors, even with a drop-cloth down. Another part of the job that was harder than I expected was cleaning the brushes and rollers, I ended up buying about 25 rollers and 15 brushes adding to the already expensive job. All told I spent about $1,500 which is at least 50% cheaper than a professional painter would have charged. If I had the chance again I would still do it myself, although I would go about it completely differently. Here is a list of rules that I would recommend following if you are going to do a large paint job by yourself:
- Take the time to completely prep the room, if you tape off the walls or ceiling make sure the tape line is straight, you will probably need to use multiple pieces of tape. Make sure the entire floor is covered by a thick drop-cloth, tape the floors around the walls.
- Use quality paint brushes and rollers, buy something to clean the brush with.
- Finish each room completely (including cleanup) before moving to the next room.
- Buy extras of everything, the store is always closed when you need more of something.
- Take your time, rushing only leads to mistakes which take more time to fix.
I will post next week about my attempt to refinish hardwood floors.
David
I just came across an Advertisment for the coolest chair ever, being the impulsive person that I am I clicked the link http://www.humantouch.com/ht-7450.html and now I have to buy it. Until I get this chair every day at work, sitting in my uncomfortable chair I will be dreaming of it, wasting lots of time. I think that in terms of lost productivity I will lose more in a month than the chair costs, thereby justifying the cost. I’m going to stop by a local dealer and test one out in the next day or two, I’ll let you all know how it goes.
My second to largest stock holding, Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD) reported earnings this afternoon. Unlike last week when I predicted that another stock I owned would beat earnings (I was right) and the stock would go up (I was wrong), I decided to keep my mouth shut. Seems like it worked out OK, BWLD beat earnings estimates and said they are on track to meet their goals of 25% growth, pretty amazing in this economy. Even more amazing the stock is up about 5% in after hours trading, I guess sometimes the stock goes up when there’s good news, who knew. My initial target price for this stock was $40 and it’s getting pretty close, maybe time to sell and pay some credit card bills.
One reason I was tempted and ultimately decided to go with the amex centurion black card, was the fact that they have a purchase protection plan. Basically they will cover in item in the event that its lost stolen damaged or you are unhappy with the item for any reason. This all sounds great, today I called member services to request a refund for a purchase I made for an item that I’m not happy with. American express notified me that the protection plan only will cover up to 300 dollars. This purchase was for $1,300, so again I’m starting to think this card is a waste of money. Please let me know what you think about the card.
So far I’ve had a great week in the stock market, my biggest holding, Deckers Outdoor (Deck), maker of UGGs is announcing earnings after the market closes. So far this week it is up about 10% and it has made me a profit for 2009 of over 50%. I believe they will beat earnings expectations (partly because I bought a pair of their slippers) and go up to my original target price of $100. All I need is a couple more weeks like this and I’ll be out of debt. Everyone go out and buy some UGGs, they are really comfortable.
A lot has been written about how amazing the American Express Centurion Black Card Concierge is. For example:
One cardholder wanted to locate and purchase the horse ridden by Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. The horse was located in a stud ranch in Mexico, purchased and delivered to Europe by the concierge (from http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/blackcard.asp)
I haven’t thought of much to ask my concierge for yet, I only called in twice but so far they haven’t done anything I couldn’t do. The first time I called them I asked them to find me a local store that carried Pantherella Cashmere Socks, or a store that could ship them to me. This is the response I received:
I was not able to locate anything local or any physical stores for that matter, near you or in the US. Below I have listed 2 links that do sell the socks and ship to addresses in the US. I was able to find some places in the UK that will ship to the US but they are not partnered with us, so I cannot recommend those for you. Please look over these links below.
http://www.customshirt1.com/Socks_Mens_Cashmere.htm
http://www.dann-online.com/pantherella_socks_from_dann.htm
I was expecting more, like an offer to order them and have them hand-delivered but I couldn’t find anything better myself so I’ll say they did OK on this.
Today I wanted to go to the Detroit Tigers game and sit behind the Tigers dugout, American Express is supposed to have access to the best tickets around. I told them I was willing to sit anywhere in the infield box behind the Tigers dugout or in the dugout itself if they were really good. They knew I was joking about sitting in the dugout but they did offer to call up and ask (I told them they should but I don’t think they did). They were unable to get me any tickets in the sections requested through the ticket department but they did offer to go to third party brokers for me, I declined. I was able to find the tickets I wanted on Stubhub for about $30, I’m sure they would have found those for me if I asked but the bottom line is that in this case it was easier and faster for me to look myself than to call the concierge.
In another case, Daniel asked his concierge to get him a limo on a saturday night at about 2AM (actually sunday morning) to take him to the Casino. The Concierge said there were none available and that they couldn’t call the Casino for us to ask them to send a car. It took me two phone calls to find a limo that was available. That was pretty disappointing.
I’m not saying that the Concierge is useless, I do still think there are things they can help with, especially when traveling. What I am saying is that if you think that when you get a Black Card you can get whatever you want with a single phone call, you are mistaken.
Quiting smoking is easy, I have done it many times, so i would know. OK so maybe it’s not so simple but I have come to the realazation that I have to do it now, before it’s too late. Putting aside all the obvious medical reasons, I did some number crunching to try to motivate myself, here is what I came up with,
In michigan a pack of cigs cost aprox. $7.00, if you smoke just one pack a day that’s 49.00 dollars a week and that’s more than $2500.00 a year. In my calculations if I quit today and put seven dollars away every day in a separate account. By the time I am 52, I should have accumalated $188,845.88. This calculation is based on a meager 5% return, that’s not a crazy return to expect. quiting smokin will put me $188,845.88 closer to being a millionaire.
I will countinue to post on here with updates on my quitting smoking progress , and where I invest this huge sum of money that I will be saving.
After getting almost no comments from cashiers about my AMEX Black Card (aka Centurion Card) on the first 20+ purchases, the last 5 or 6 salespeople have all commented. All of them said basically the same thing and I have no idea how to reply. What they said was, “this is a heavy card”, now the Card is made out of titanium and is quite a bit heavier than a normal credit card so it’s a logical response from them. My issue is that they don’t say it as statement, they ask it like a question and seem to expect me to say something back. Am I supposed to say, “yes, that is the Amex black card, one of the most exclusive cards in the world that only extremely wealthy people can get” or something stuck up like that? That is not my style, I don’t mind getting undeserved respect for having the card but I’m not a complete asshole (feel free to agree with me on this). Any ideas? (No, I will not say “Kiss my black AMEX”)
Four weeks ago, after a long day and evening of work, I was ready to go home. Little did I know that it would take me about two and a half hrs and several hundred dollars to actually get home. As I made the turn out of the parking lot lights and sirens turned on, I was being pulled over. What could I have possibly done, I thought to myself (actually screamed quite loudly to myself). The officer approached the car and I sped off , no that’s what I should have done, he approached the car and asked for my license then returned to his car. After several minutes in that wonderful blinding light the officer re approached and asked me to step out the vehicle.
Well I’ve watched cops and Reno 911 before so I was pretty sure this was not a good thing. When the officer asked me to turn around I was pretty sure that he wasn’t doing this to check me out. The officer then informed me that I was being arrested for driving while license suspended, (turns out if you fail to pay outstanding tickets ,they wont just disappear). So after an hour of finger printing and mug shots (I should post the mug shot here but I don’t have the ten dollars needed to get the arrest record from the police station),(too bad they don’t take amex) so we will do that another day. I was told that if I could post a 250.00 dollar bond I was free to walk the streets ,so I smiled and pulled out one of those plastic credit cards people have and gave it over to pay the bond, about five seconds later I was notified that my card was declined , embarrassing (but not nearly as embarrassing as a more recent transaction that I tried to post on my amex black card, king of all cards, that was declined) again it turns out if you max out your credit cards and don’t pay the bills , your credit card will not be there when you need it. Thank god I was granted my wish and was able to call a friend who gladly bailed me out, That’s why I have friends, strictly for emergencies. So please friend me on facebook ill be a great friend.
So it’s been a week since I got the AMEX Black Card http://watchusmakemoney.com/?p=18 and so far I’m not that impressed. Most of the benefits like airline, hotel and car rental elite status take weeks to set up. The personal and travel concierge was available almost immediately but so far they have been somewhat less than the miracle workers they are commonly thought to be. One of the much talked about benefits is access to personal shoppers and the ability to shop after hours at some stores, like Neiman Marcus. I was in the mall on Wednesday right before closing and I wanted to go to Neiman Marcus which is on the other side of the mall (a 15 minute walk) so I called the Concierge and asked them to keep the store open for me, they said that they weren’t able to get a hold of the store by phone so they couldn’t help. It turns out that the store actually closes an hour before the rest of the mall so it wasn’t all Amex’s fault. On Thursday I tried again a little earlier and was told that the personal shopper only worked until 6PM and that the Neiman Marcus I go to will not keep the store open late. I went anyways and got there as they were closing the doors, the sales lady stayed for almost an hour while I picked out what I wanted. The lights and cash register both shut off before they finished ringing up my transaction so they had to write down my credit card number to charge later. I was very impressed with Neiman Marcus but I can’t really say that American Express had anything to do with it. So far I used my card for about $400 at Nordstroms, $700 at Neiman Marcus, $450 at a custom clothes shop and $700 at a suit store and there was no noticeable benefit of paying with the Black Card. As I expected none of the sales people asked what the card was or gave any sign that they knew what it was, 2 people out of 15+ commented on the weight of the card. The best thing I can say about the card so far is that b/c it’s a charge card and not a credit card if I use it for all my purchases it may keep me from getting further in debt. Hopefully I will be able to test out the travel benefits in a few weeks, I’ll let you know how that goes.
|
|
