by Michele | Jan 23, 2013 | Preparation Stage
How would you like to live here? Too bad, it’s already rented!
As of January 16, Dan and I are the proud owners of our first rental home and even in just a week we are starting to get a picture of the ups and downs involved. On the upside, we already have most of the repairs finished that we wanted done before having a tenant moved in. We were also pleasantly surprised by the great response we had to our Craigslist ad. Within 2 hours of first posting the ad, we already had people calling and filling out rental applications online. In fact, we had 10 showings in the first 3 days which was enough to find multiple candidates that we were fairly confident in renting to.
One of the candidates seemed like a great fit for us. She was an elderly retired woman (let’s call her Mary, not her real name of course) with two handicapped grandchildren that she cared for and received monthly payments from the government on their behalf, in addition to a decent pension. Mary also had lived in her last two locations for almost 10 years each, which sounded pretty darn good to us. Older woman with guaranteed income and longevity? Perfect! We let her know that pending a reference and credit check we would be interested in moving forward with her application.
During the course of our research into becoming landlords, multiple individuals recommended to us that previous landlord references were one of the crucial screening calls to make. With this in mind, we prepared to make a few phone calls. We noticed that Mary hadn’t written down her past landlord’s number, so we gave her a quick call to which she responded that she didn’t have it on her but she would call us right back with it. After waiting a couple of hours and not hearing back, Dan decided to try to find the number himself using her listed address. Luckily, he found a full listing provide by the city housing authority of all of the owner/property managers for each rental unit including name and phone number. However, we needed to call Mary back anyway to get a few more pieces of information and this time she gave us her landlord’s number herself.
We called the landlord with the number she provided and he gave her a raving review. Never late on payments, grandkids don’t cause any problems, just everything perfect. However, there were a couple of discrepancies that didn’t quite pass the stink test. First, Mary had written on her application that she paid $525/mth at her current address and the landlord said $1200. Second, she claimed that her reason for leaving was that the landlord was selling the property but the landlord was very emphatic that they didn’t know she was moving and how disappointed they were in losing her. Finally, the name and number of the landlord didn’t match what was on the city spreadsheet as the legal contact, and the number was only 1 digit different from her personal number (which also happened to be from a different area code then the local one). We had Dan’s brother double check the owner of the cell phone number – he works for a local cell distributor – and found that Mary was the owner of the account.
Now I’m usually a pretty relaxed person and don’t get angry too easily, but this situation really rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, seriously? You’re going to give me a fake phone number and have your family lie to a prospective landlord? We don’t know why she lied to us, whether she didn’t have the other landlord’s number or was intentionally hiding problems she was having, but to us it doesn’t matter. She will not be living in our house under any circumstances. Luckily, we had a second choice tenant whose credit check showed exactly what she told us it should and her landlord’s name and number matched the spreadsheet and also happened to be a former mayor. Somewhat more legit.
It is easy to see how people who own businesses can become cynical very quickly. Most people just want to do the right thing, but some really are trying to take advantage of you. The important thing is having a healthy balance of faith and skepticism about other people, so hopefully you can determine which is which. And remember, if it stinks…it’s probably fishy.
by Michele | Dec 21, 2012 | Preparation Stage
In any major venture in life, honest and objective evaluation must constantly be part of the planning. That is especially true for us as we try to make decisions regarding our finances and how best to provide for our dream of cruising. When we first started making plans for cruising, we estimated that we would require approximately $1000-$1500 per month for basic necessities and boat maintenance. Using this estimate, we calculated that we would like to have around $70,000 in hard savings in addition to whatever money we decided to use for a decent boat. That would give us a very comfortable 4-5 years of savings that gave us plenty of options for continuing just by adding small amounts of income from scuba diving and other odd jobs.
Then came the wait. Three to four years starts to feel extremely far away when you are constantly reading and learning about how amazing that life could be, and when the cruising experts all say to go cheap, simple, and as soon as possible. And so, we decided to move up our intended departure date to the fall of 2013. We would sell our house and use the equity to buy a boat, and hopefully save enough money to have only two years instead of five in reserves.
That brings us to today, when the honest evaluation comes in. Our house has sold and we are six months into this phase of saving. At closing, we will be receiving around $40,000 from the equity of our house. We have also saved just under $10,000 in additional cash for our kitty. It might sound like a lot to be sitting on, but we’re honestly a little less than excited about it. If you’ve ever been boat shopping, you will note that there aren’t many family friendly boats on the market for only $40,000, especially if we want to do more than coastal cruising.
After the long, hard look at our money, we’ve decided that we need to make our money work a little harder to be able to meet our goals. The way we plan to do that is by purchasing two houses immediately which we will rent out to increase our monthly income while cruising. We will live in one while saving our kitty and rent the other as soon as possible. If all goes well, we will add 2-3 more by the end of the year. The much lower mortgage payment will also allow us to save more every month towards our goals.
While our new plan may not get us on a boat in the next year, we are very confident that it will give us much a higher chance of success and that still within the original time frame. What do you think about our new plan? Let us know in the comments below!
by Michele | Nov 21, 2012 | Preparation Stage
At the risk of going along with the obvious theme for the week, I’m just going to go with the obvious theme for the week and say Happy Thanksgiving!
One year for Thanksgiving when Dan and I were dating, we rode with his parents and brothers to my mother-in-law’s (Shelly) family event at her mom’s house about half an hour from Dan’s parents’. On the way there, Shelly asked everyone to go around and say what they were thankful for. Being the adolescent boys that they were, Kyle and Alex (Dan’s younger brothers) immediately started complaining about how they were tired of having to do this every year, it was so overdone, and they just were not going to cooperate. And so, she didn’t make them say what they were thankful for, but I could tell that they had really hurt her feelings by not participating in her tradition.
I would guess that the majority of American families have their own little traditions that make the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays unique to themselves, and most families will have to face the day when those traditions are challenged. Sometimes this comes from challenging children, busy schedules, or adding new members to the family, but when it happens it is always a little disappointing for someone.
This year is the first year that we won’t be spending Thanksgiving with any of our grandparents due to family schedules and it is may also be the last Thanksgiving that we live within easy holiday travel. If our plans continue moving forward, Dan and I will be in Florida next year, preparing our new home for traversing ocean passages. Not exactly the tradition we are used to. Because of that, I’m trying to do a little extra savoring of the season this year. Being a little more gracious with our family differences, and a little more thankful for the time we have left.
by Michele | Nov 16, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Note the “multi-baffled” design with the vent through the middle. Keeps water out and lets the pressure release.
Okay, the pun is a little much I know. The important thing is, it’s true! You see, for some reason when I am scuba diving I have a very difficult time equalizing my ears while descending. For anyone who has ever felt that pressure squeeze, you’ll know it can be very painful and distracting when you are just trying to have a good time diving. There were multiple times even in our training pool dives that I just could not get my ears to equalize properly only going down to 12 feet! Not only was it a problem during the dive, my ears (especially my right ear) would hurt for a week or more and cause muffled hearing.
After looking up the problems I was having online, I discovered that the continuing pain was a good indicator that I was doing real damage to my eardrum, duh. I decided I needed to do something to protect myself from permanent hearing loss, but I didn’t know what. Dan uses a special mask that covers his ears because he has surgical tube implants in his right ear and can’t get his ears wet, but it’s a pretty expensive mask and I wasn’t entirely sure that would help my equalization problems. At this point though, I was starting to feel like I needed to find a solution or I wouldn’t be able to dive anymore.
Finally, when I was researching the problem I found what I thought might be a real solution. On a few of the scuba forums, people were discussing the use of vented ear plugs while diving. The idea was a little scary because one of the first lessons you learn about diving is how wearing normal earplugs actually creates a negative pressure zone between your eardrum and the plug and can cause worse damage than wearing no plug. However, the vented ear plugs have a vent to allow air to escape from that pocket. I wanted to try them out, but our local dive shop didn’t sell them and I was wary of buying some online without being able to see them first.
Then, on our trip to Bull Shoals (yes the one where I came home with staples in my head) the boat dock was selling JBL Hydro Seals. To quote the JBL website they “utilize an advanced multi-baffle polymer design providing exceptional protection against water entering the ear canal.” And they work! I used them for the first time on our advanced training deep dive, and I have never had an easier time equalizing my ears. To be perfectly honest, I’m still not entirely sure why they work, but I know that I won’t be diving without them again. Another bonus is that because of the vented design, you can still hear normally while wearing them, so you don’t have to worry about missing anything important or need to wait to put them in until you are getting in the water.
To recap: if your ears hurt from diving, buy some JBL Hydro Seals*. You won’t be sorry!
*Another popular brand of vented earplugs is Doc’s Proplugs, though I haven’t personally tried these they also get good reviews online.
by Michele | Nov 7, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Well Election Night has come and gone, and once again we all chose a president. The real question now is so what? While it’s nice to hear what a candidate is “planning” to do, what we really need to know is how their policies are going to affect our everyday lives. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to find good concrete information about how US policies affect our future plans. We have been trying to find better information about what our status will actually be once we move out of the country essentially as nomads.
Here are a few of our most pressing questions:
- Where is our legal “residence” once we no longer live anywhere specific?
- Would we have to pay state income taxes in addition to federal if we aren’t a state resident?
- Through which state/city do we do our absentee voting, and where do we have our ballots sent?
- How is the federal health insurance mandate going to affect us? Does it apply if we aren’t living in the country?
- How do we maximize our tax status to use the system to our advantage while we are living on interest only?
- Do we have to pay capital gains tax on the sale of our house if we don’t “reinvest” it in another house? (This one we have answered now: only if we sell our house for more than $250,000 more than we bought it for. In our dreams.)
- How do the new overseas banking regulations affect us?
The difficult thing in finding the real answers to these questions is the fact that every cruiser is different and most policies aren’t exactly written with roaming nomads in mind. And while both of us are fairly confident in our abilities to read and understand legal contracts and other important documents, we aren’t very comfortable with basing very serious decisions on our own knowledge of tax, immigration/emigration, and healthcare law. I mean have you ever tried reading raw tax code? Not recommended for the living.
We are normal (well ok, not so normal) people that have a dream to see the world and live life as it was meant to be. We both have successful careers in the healthcare industry, even in this terrible economy. We want to break free of the current cycle of trading time for dollars and dollars for more and more things we don't need. So, we have decided to forego the fruits of our economic success and "retire" well before we are 30 and set out to see what is over the Horizon.