Category Archives: debt

Life Does it Again

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

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I momentarily must revert back to posting a personal blog.

I am in full panic mode – I’ve broken down crying multiple times today.

I fear that everything is unraveling.

Stress Meter Showing Panic Attack From Stress Or WorryMoments before work last night, my roommate – the one who has been living with me for almost a year.  The one who so desperately needed a place to live because his girlfriend had kicked him out. The one I met through my [former] best friend and helped as much as I could.

He sent me a text letting me know that he is moving out.

Yesterday morning I thought for once everything was beginning to look up for me, and now I have to go through the worry and anxiety of finding a new roommate.

Two of the major reasons why I got this house to begin with… have moved out.

My morning has been filled with thoughts of whether getting this house was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made or not. The tears and the uncontrollable emotions keep coming unexpectedly for me today.

I feel so lost. Abandoned. I don’t know what to do and I feel I have absolutely no one to lean on.

The story of my life continues…

I need a new roommate – preferably someone who shares my interest of books and hopefully can also respect my stuff.

I wish I had the ability to just walk away from all of this – like my [former] best friend and my room mate have, but I don’t have that option.

I am stuck and I fear this is how things will be for the rest of my life. I don’t know how to overcome this.

THE FORGOTTEN MAN by Amity Shlaes – Book Discussion [Part 3]

06 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in Book Review, books, cat, Coffee, debt, Discussion, job, Life, Money, time, Today, work

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hoover-dam

Since I recently finished the book, what I have consists primarily of thoughts I had while reading the last 100 pages or so of THE FORGOTTEN MAN. Since this is a non-fiction book, I prefer to have ‘discussions’ rather than have a review of the contents. Generally speaking, providing a rating of a non-fiction book seems impractical when critiques are more suitable.

But anyway…The Forgotten Man

After an economy falls apart – who is more suitable in rebuilding it; the government or the private sector? This is the question that Amity Shlaes explores in her book, THE FORGOTTEN MAN A NEW HISTORY OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION. The argument that Shlaes is proposing is that the governments interference in the economy actually prolonged the depression rather than rectify it.

After the economy fell apart and millions of people were without jobs, the US Government under the direction of  President Roosevelt believed that the best remedy to this was to put people back to work. In order to do this, the government set up numerous agencies to help re-energize the work force. The Government also believed that another way to help with the economy was to regulate how businesses operated.

The US Government was learning how to deal with the economy through a series of experiments and by observing how other governments were dealing with similar problems. What the author inadvertently made clear was that there was no set procedure in how to pull the USA out of the Great Depression. Whether the private sector could have done it itself or whether the Government prolonged the Great Depression can only be argued in hindsight.

Shlaes presented several anecdotes where the government had overstepped it’s bounds in an effort to show how the government often acted as a hindrance. Although presented as an example as how the Governments programs worked against the economies natural growth – what it really showed was the governments inability to recognize it’s own limits.

I wouldn’t consider the New Deal necessarily wrong – the intention was certainly to correct a problem that hadn’t been encountered to such a degree in America. The largest issue with the New Deal was that the government – primarily Roosevelt – put way too much faith in it. Instead of adjusting to eliminating programs that weren’t going to work – the Government preferred instead to stand behind them, despite the economic destruction they were causing.

The Great Depression and the New Deal were both the results of inexperience – both in Government and in the economy. Before they happened, there was no “lesson” from a previous experience to learn from. Shlaes even notes how the US Government looked to both the Soviet Union and Fascist Italy for answers – the implication being that there was to prior event to look to.

Fear and hope were the primary motivations behind what the Government did – with no procedure to deal with such a problem, of course they’d run into problems – or become the very problem they were so diligently trying to avoid.

Either way, the book, albeit dry at times, was quite insightful.

Interestingly, the New Deal was largely a massive social experiment with varying degree’s of success and failure. The problem is that it essentially became the Government’s go-to blueprint in how to deal with a troubled economy. How numerous parts of it didn’t work is what needs to be examined – but rarely are and instead are just repeated, resulting in similar errors of the past.

THE FORGOTTEN MAN by Amity Shlaes – Book Discussion [Part 2]

29 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in blog, Book Review, books, debt, Discussion, friend, home, House, job, Life, Non Fiction, rain, time, Today, work

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fig38

Admittedly the first and second chapters of Amity Shlaes THE FORGOTTEN MAN are rather clunky – however, if you press on a, (as I like to call it) clarity-in-hindsight occurs where the argument being made in the beginning chapters begin to reveal themselves. Despite the book continuing to be a slow read, I am enjoying the later chapters far more.

Chapter three is where discussion of the Great Depression begins; or at least, where history likes to give it a starting point; October 29, 1929. The build up to this however, was years in the making. This is where the ‘clarity-in-hindsight’ aspect comes into play as Shlaes recap of the prosperity of the 1920’s among a wide range of industries is referenced. The feeling that people did not know how to adjust to the prosperity and take adequate precautions emerges. ‘Panics’ in the stock market were not new – the best way to handle them, however, varied greatly that when ‘black Tuesday’ occurred – there was not a consensus on how to handle it.

The Forgotten ManConflicting opinions in regards to how to handle the stock market crash and the subsequent recession – and what part the government should play in helping to alleviate the economic hardships is where I begin PART 2 of THE FORGOTTEN MAN book discussion.

After the crash – one of the first financial plagues to sweep the country was deflation. Money was becoming scarce and, in some areas, non-existent due to it’s increased value. People could not afford the money issued by the Federal Reserve so some communities improvised by creating their own currency such as the vallar which was developed for a short time in Salt Lake City, Utah. Other communities developed barter systems.

Although these alternative currencies allowed people to make day-to-day purchases from merchants that accepted them, the money wasn’t an acceptable form of payment for the payback of mortgages and other bank issued loans. Citizens weren’t the only ones seeking a way out of the financial problems. The government decided to get idea’s about how to help the economy from elsewhere – and with, what appeared to be the recent success of the Russian Revolution, that ‘elsewhere’ was, indeed, Russia. Later in the book, Shlaes points out that the US government also was looking at Mussolini’s Italy to get ideas on how to confront the USA’s economic woes.

What I found interesting is how much experimenting was taking place both in the US and the world when it came to dealing with the economy. There were two new forms of governments that had emerged – both centralized in nature; Lenin’s form of Communism in Russia and Mussolini’s fascism in Italy. Democracy in the USA, as anyone knows, is an ongoing experiment. At the time of the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve was new – as it was created in 1913 and many banks were not part of it’s centralized money system.

In some aspects it was like the blind leading the blind trying to find the best solution in dealing with an expanding economy and a growing country. A lot of the proposed solutions of the Great Depression were the result of guess-work. The rise of the so-called ‘alphabet agencies’ of Roosevelt’s New Deal were the result of this guess-work; his experimenting.

Putting people back to work in whatever capacity was a clear goal of Roosevelt, the plan was to reinvigorate the economy with jobs, even if the government was the one footing the bill for it. Another experiment was finding the best way to, essentially, control the value of the dollar. Should the US be on the gold standard? Should the US leave the gold standard? The answer to this was debated and resulted in some indecisiveness.

Meanwhile parts of Europe were growing weary – Chancellor Hitler of Germany had entered the political arena and pulled the fledgling Wiemar republic out of it’s depression and was already leading the country into a reconstruction stage. In an effort to protect their gold – people began sending it (or returning it) to the United States for safe keeping.

One thing that appears evident is that Roosevelt believed that, in one way or another, it was the government’s responsibility to get the US out of the depression. That without the government’s careful guidance of the economy there would be no recovery. He perhaps got this notion from Russia (which soon would be recognized as the Soviet Union) or even from Mussolini – regardless he didn’t seem to believe that the economy, left to its own devices would save itself. And that ultimately is the crux argument that Shlaes is attempting to make; that Roosevelt’s interference in the economy enhanced the depression instead of relieving the country from it.

I’ll have further thoughts in Part 3…

Anticipations

16 Sunday Apr 2017

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Easter morning started at 3:30am for me, not for any religious reason – I just badly wanted to finish the book I was reading (The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough). Right now I’m contemplating what I want to eat for lunch.

The weather isn’t as bright and cheery as it was yesterday. It appears that at any moment it could rain and I am anticipating a down pour.

But that is alright.

It came to my realization a few weeks ago that the reason it is so difficult for me to work on my “Bad Dinosaur” project is that it carries with it so much baggage. It was a project that my [former] best friend and I were supposed to be working on together.  A lot of the ideas behind it were the results of brainstorming between him and I.

And that has created a mental road block when trying to work on it.

So I am going to divert my attention elsewhere – to an entirely different project all together. And this morning I spent a little bit of time outlining that project. How that project will ultimately manifest itself is unknown to me at the time.

I figure that I will begin it once my “Daily Donald Trump Political Notebook” is finished – that would be the 90 page notebook that I hand-write a daily essay about the Trump administration in. I have 13 more blank pages to go before that is complete. The notebook has been a nice way for me to get into the habit of writing on a daily basis. Although, I will admit that there was a 10 day period where I didn’t write a single word as I was trying to come to grips with my [former] best friend vanishing on me.

When that notebook is done, I think that I will also log off Twitter so I can focus on the new writing project. Perhaps even this blog will go on the back-burner for a short time.

I need things to start looking up for me.

That’s all I know right now.

Every time he spoke, weird contradictions came out

10 Monday Apr 2017

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There is no way to sugar-coat it; life is hard right now. Pretending that things aren’t tough doesn’t help.

I’m still in need of a roommate, and that search isn’t going too well. Yesterday after getting home after replacing the tire on my car, I had a prospective roommate come here to look at the room that I’m attempting to rent out. I think he would have been a good fit except… he has no job.

He said that the internet I have is too slow (24Mbps) for his gaming and wanted me to cancel my contract with my internet provider so we could get internet through the provider that he currently has.

This is just too much of a hassle for someone who may only stay here a few months. Someone that doesn’t even have a job right now. He didn’t understand why I’d want a partial payment of the first months rent the day he’d move in either. He thought it was some sort of down payment on the room when in reality – as I told him – it’s so I don’t get screwed over again by having someone stay here a few weeks and suddenly leave with out paying a dime.

I really don’t know how to go about finding a roommate.

I supposed to have another prospective roommate stop by this morning. He called yesterday evening while I was just falling asleep.

His story is complicated and confusing.

His current roommate kicked him out because the roommate got a girlfriend. He badly needs a place near where he currently is because he wants to stay near his fiance and daughter. He’d have transportation problems because his fiance takes him to where he needs to go. He needs a place badly but wouldn’t get paid until Wednesday. 

Nothing this guy was saying was making much sense. If he has a fiance, why couldn’t he stay with her for a short while? If he has a job, how exactly does he get there?

Every time he spoke, weird contradictions came out. In fact, he said that he once worked where I currently worked but wasn’t sure what we did there… then asked where it was located.

I’m thinking – despite whatever situation he’s in – I’m not having him move in either. He clearly has trouble conveying the truth and that will lead to inevitable problems.

Assuming he even stops by this morning. He was suppose to have been here 45 minutes ago.

At any rate, I updated my ad on Craigslist so that people who are interested text me instead of call. I don’t know how people managed to get my phone number, but I work 3rd shift and getting woke up by random calls is quite aggravating.

[I will] Get Through This

09 Sunday Apr 2017

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The last of the remaining water in the basement I just finished mopping up. I would not be surprised if there is a bit more in a few hours, however I think the worst of it is over.

Until the storms move in on Monday that is.

Although there was no precipitation yesterday or today, and there isn’t supposed to be any tomorrow either, I’m not sure if the ground is dry enough to take on another surge of rain. So I’m hoping that the storms we are supposed to get on Monday aren’t as heavy as the predictions are saying.

I don’t feel like dealing with another flooded basement for at least a week.

On Friday morning when I first saw what I was up against in regards to the water in the basement, I didn’t think that I’d ever see an end to the battle. Maybe because there is enough bad luck coming my way this year, this new challenge just didn’t seem too promising. But with a mop, a plastic tote box and a lot of persistence, I was able to prevail.

It did take a few sessions because once I got the basement dry, the water would slowly seep back in. But each time that I went back down there and did more mopping, the task took less time and became less frustrating.

It was something that I could deal with – despite it feeling overwhelming.

That will be the case for quite some time from now on as I try to figure out this new situation that I’m in. I’ll need to discipline myself to stick to a tight budget in order to cover the portion of the mortgage that my [former] best friend stuck with me. I’ll need to stay focused.

Will I have tough times in the days and months ahead? I’m sure of it.

Considering that my [former] best friend left EVERYTHING of his that he’s ever owned since childhood here at the house – I do believe that he will, someday, try and come back for it. That day I perceive, will be a tough day.

Does he know that I’ve gotten rid of at least 50% of his belongings? (And I’ll continue to get rid of more in the days and weeks to come).

How will he respond?

I’m not sure I even care any more.

His leaving has left me in the position where I’m wondering if I’ll even be able to afford the house any more.

The waves of depression that I get hit with aren’t as strong as they were weeks ago, but they still come and they still pull me under. I just wish that he had given me some sort of notice before just leaving.

So I didn’t have to lose valuable weeks in trying to figure out what exactly had happened (and I still don’t know what exactly has happened!) Now I’m in this emergency mode where I can’t figure out a solution to how to come up with an extra $300 a month – and still be able to pay my other bills.

Right now I’m taking advantage of ‘grace periods’ when I can.

It’s the utility bill that hasn’t arrived yet that has me the most worried. Whenever I try to budget a certain amount for it, it’s always higher than I anticipate.

I won’t be able to handle a high utility bill this month.

Challenges.

I’ll face them with the same determination and persistence I had when I was drying out the flooded basement. The waters will recede and things will return to some form of normal again.

American Vagrant

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

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This generation is the latest lost generation; drifting around with no real purpose, doing whatever they can to get by – even if it means using people. The recent roommate that I just got  is a prime example of this – due to the circumstances, I will call him his real name; Jon.

I placed an ad on roommates.com three weeks ago seeking a roommate for the room that my [former] best friend left, on March 24 I got an email from a person named Jon asking about the room. We talked a bit and I had him come over to look at the space he’d be renting out, which is what he did on that Friday.

He said he was in urgent need of a place because his girlfriend had kicked him out.

He told me that he is an apprentice electrician and works primarily mornings. I didn’t think much of it on that weekend because I was more relieved that I was able to finally get someone into that room. Over the course of the weekend I asked him what his work schedule looked like, and he told me that he was essentially on call. He said that if he didn’t work Monday, he was almost certain to work the rest of the week.

He didn’t work that Monday, and when I got home from work Tuesday morning (because I work third shift) his truck was in the driveway and I realized that he didn’t work that day either. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were the same thing. He didn’t work one day that entire week. I asked him about it on that Friday and he said that he just didn’t receive any hours and it wasn’t a big deal.

Saturday I ran several errands and kept myself rather busy. Jon’s truck was gone most of the day. Due to my third shift schedule, I went to bed rather early despite having the weekend off. I went to bed at about 5pm and woke up at approximately 3am Sunday morning and went down stairs to get some household chores done. I immediately noticed that the light to the three-season’s room was on and went to see who was out there.

Sitting in my three season’s room is a girl who I had never seen before smoking a cigarette. She didn’t notice me because her back was to the door. I went back to doing my chores thinking I would make an informal greeting with her when she came back into the house.

When she walked past me however, she looked at me then walked right up the stairs and went into Jon’s room. I decided not to make an issue of having this stranger in my home since it was evident that who ever it was, they knew my new roommate.

I figured she was just visiting.

As the day went on however, this girl decided that she would just make herself at home. She was taking shower’s in my bathroom, heating up food in the microwave and walking in and out as she pleased. All while basically ignoring me as if I, the homeowner, wasn’t even there.

I figured she’d be gone by Monday because I assumed that Jon would have to work.

I was wrong on both accounts.

Monday morning when I got home from work, Jon’s truck was in the driveway and the still unknown girl was sitting in my three season’s room once again having a cigarette. I was really getting irritated at this point. I once again refrained from doing anything because it was still unclear to me what was going on.

Tuesday (yesterday) was the final straw however. When I got home from work and saw his truck in my driveway, questions about his employment filled my head. It started to dawn on me that perhaps he wasn’t employed at all, that what he really meant was that him and his girlfriend had been kicked out of the previous place they lived and basically were looking for someone that they could mooch off of for awhile.

In regards to this assumption, I was correct. I called Jon out on this by telling him that the girl (who I STILL didn’t learn the name of) either needed to move out or pay me for staying at my house. I told him that all she is doing is running up my bills and mooching off of me. All he said was, “oh ok”.

While I was asleep yesterday afternoon, him and his girlfriend packed up everything they had and moved out. The room was empty when I woke up at 10pm that evening for work.

In many respects, this is how the millennial generation operates, floating from place to place, job to job hoping that by pure luck they’ll somehow be able to ‘make it’. When things get a little tough, they just move on to the next situation. My [former] best friend was doing this (and continues to do this) and Jon – the guy who I was renting a room to also was doing this.

Jon did give me $20 on his first night here to “cover” for allowing him to move in so fast. Although the gesture was nice, I could only take into consideration that $20 only breaks down to covering only 2 days, not including the utilities he was using.

I’ve learned a few lessons from this experience, the most obvious being that anyone that I rent a room out to needs to pay at least 50% of the first months rent up front. The second is that I need to make a written agreement for any future roommates, and finally I need to make and enforce rules for anyone living here.

Things will get better – I hope.

The clouds move to reveal the sun

01 Saturday Apr 2017

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All my apprehensions about the new roommate appear to have been unfounded. I was able to talk to him quite a bit yesterday and things are getting much better. I really just want this house to be a place that he can feel comfortable in.

I’m really beginning to like that he is here. There is this sense of relief and it is pulling me out of this depression that, up until recently had swallowed me whole. I was able to make chili today – from scratch because I could focus once again.

I’m once again focusing on my plans that I had initiated before the [former] best friend left. I am no longer spending my time staring out the window wondering about whether he is going to return. Life will get better.

My raccoon problem came back recently which I was not anticipating. So I’m going all out this time. I’ve had it with dealing with those pests. I can only image the type of damage that they are doing in the crawlspace above my kitchen.

My parents came over this morning for a short bit and, in under 15 minutes my dad managed to piss me off with just a few of his condescending words. He wonders why most of his children don’t want anything to do with him. Apparently he can declare what stuff of mine is trash and proceed to destroy it without asking – then when I object, decide to make an asshole comment about my job.

There are so many reasons why the relationship that I have with my dad is quite strained – and shit like this is one.

I’m New to This

28 Tuesday Mar 2017

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Before buying the house, I had lived alone for 9 years in a one-bedroom apartment. Then I got the house with the intention of living with my [former] best friend and a third roommate. But since my [former] best friend walked out, I had to get a new roommate. Someone that before March 24, I didn’t even know existed.

I’m living with a stranger.

I have nothing against the new roommate, it’s just that outside of a University context, I’ve never lived with people that I didn’t know. Technically I enjoy having the new roommate here, it’s just that I’m not a very social person.

I guess that since it’s only been four day’s since he’s moved in, as I get more used to him this peculiar dynamic will change. It’s just that for some reason (perhaps it’s the age difference) I feel like there is a employer-employee, very formal type of relationship that is going on.

That shouldn’t be how it is.

I should note that to this date, every person who’s lived in this house (EXCLUDING ME) is here because they were once living with a girlfriend who broke up with them then kicked them out. I find this rather peculiar. Oh well, I am on average, 10 years old than all of them so perhaps that is just how the world works now.

In other news, I feel quite a bit more relaxed now that I have someone here to literally fill the void left by my [former] best friend. I can go back to worrying about what I used to worry about on a daily basis – bills and food. Those things I’m quite used to.

I’m feeling optimism again – a feeling I haven’t had in quite awhile.