Sometimes the Truth

I agree. Just saying.

WSJ - usually short-lived as free to view

Whew! or Uh-Oh?

I don't have to tell you that there have been stressful episodes in our move. Overall, no biggies maybe. But all of us have stories, no?

Accidentally came across an internet radio/podcast program that lists activities to avoid if you want to stay out of the emergency room. It's an interview with an ER doctor. Well, #9 out of twelve things he lists to avoid is "Retiring and building your dream house".

Tune in at 34:45 in the program. 

http://www.philosophyinaction.com/archive/2013-05-08.html 

#12 is interesting too. 

When I realized what we are doing is not exactly "building your dream house" [it's an existing house] or really retiring either [I plan to still work, Sue will probably too or at least stay busy ] I let out a "whew"! Should I have gone Uh-Oh instead?

Spring Turkey 2013

Also go to the next post.

All pictures uploaded now.

Here is Russell and Buddy with the Tom. The beard shows better here. 

So no pics of the beast coming out of the oven *sigh* but here is the carved bird and somebody's plate with all the fixings.  
 

My luck now that I spend less time turkey hunting in the Spring seems to have meant that my luck has been better. This makes two years in a row getting a Spring Tom.

No pictures from times past. Sometimes someone would take a picture, but I never saw most of them. This time I intended to take a picture with my cell phone of the whole bit. And I did get a picture of the hunters, me with the bird, the bird plucked, and the bird on the plate. I was determined to get a picture of the turkey coming out of the oven, a pretty sight. I reviewed my determination all day long. When it was time, a cocktail or so later, I just could only think of the task ahead of carving the bird. I'm afraid our dinner guests were treated to an explosion when I realized I had forgotten the key picture! My apologies to Sue's brother and his wife, Dennis and Ellen, who were quite surprised at how good the turkey was. Hopefully I was forgiven. 

Below: The lucky hunter with his bird, and Russell and Buddy [who called it up again] with the Tom as well [this pick in the above post]. The idea is to fan out the tail and show the beard, about 11 inches.

Russell and Buddy listening for a gobble.

The turkey mostly plucked. Further plucking was required before handing it to the cook [Sue] who did another fantastic job.

The carved bird etc. were intended to be shown next, but due to the nature of blogger dot com, I have to show them out of turn, perhaps some time later. Allowed file size I guess.

The House as an Investment

Interesting link at bottom shows the return you have on your house. Yes, Louise, it can do negative numbers. [vbg] At least we have to assume no return yet for Louise!

In our case, I added in roughly what we put into it and also other costs, going by the escrow payment and trying to average that a bit. 

Nothing exact here, but the result with all that shows a bit less than 2% per year. 

It has to be said that it isn't as simple as that. The alternative is paying rent, so you could flip that around and claim the entire equity of the house came nearly free, an astronomical rate of return. In some cases rent would cost more than a house payment, how do you crunch those numbers?

The site doesn't help you with any of that. If we leave out the escrow as a modifier, and leave in what we put in to it, the rate of return is about 3% for us. It's hard to say what insight to gain from this. 

One thing for sure, under certain other easier to figure out situations, real estate is not that great an investment, such as having so-called income property. On the other hand,  that can be good to have in periods of high inflation. Nothing about real estate seems simple, and there are large costs involved to make it complicated. But you hear people say, "my home was the best investment I ever had.". Well, no, it shouldn't have been anyway, but such a person benefited greatly probably from not renting, at least at not renting something equal to what he lived in. What can be said for sure is it was the best leverage that person ever got on an investment. That meaning buying it with a mortgage of course. Completely unavailable to the average guy on anything else.

http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/home-rate-of-return/?iid=SF_PF_Highlight