Awakenedsoul: "After getting out of debt the second time, I decided that car loans and credit card would no longer be an option. Also, I made having an emergency fund my top priority. This was a huge shift. " I love the profile name you have chosen. Awakened Soul. I so agree with you, my husband and I are now making a "huge shift" too. You sound so peaceful and so in control of your life. I want that so much too and I see it is now very possible.
Thanks corkym. No being worried about paying back debt has been a huge relief. Cutting my expenses made a huge difference. I regularly remind myself of the importance of distinguishing between wants and needs, spending less than I earn, etc. A lot of what we do boils down to habits. I realized it's just as easy to create a good habit as it is to stay stuck in a bad habit.
So true awakened soul.....
Corkym, my husband is sixty now and I will just be turning fifty-four. I cannot work, but my husband makes a fantastic salary as an artist. He has a side business that he will continue through retirement because he loves it and we need the money for taxes p, which are 6,000 per year right now. We never want to leave our home, so we feel it can be done...is there any side business that you and your husband can created at something that you love? It could be just a little now and you could grow it as you retire or semi-retire. My mother is semi retired from being a legal assistant and she just loves her job,with her personality and living alone, I just couldn't imagine her not doing it...what types of talents do you and you husband have?
Hi Tussiemussies - Unfortunately, neither of us has any special talents. Our son and his wife are doing ebay as a little side business. They do extremely well with it and set my husband up in his own ebay store. I hope we get to a point where we can expand it more. They make quite a bit of money by going to garage sales and reselling the items. My husband does o.k., but we could do better once I start helping I think. It will double the time spent on it. I've been auditing home inspections for 14 yrs so that is what I am mainly experienced doing. Your husband must be incredible if he is making a great salary as an artist. That is so wonderful. So many artists struggle, so he must be really something!
African proverb:
The best time to plant a tree is a hundred years ago.
The second best time to plant a tree is today.
Hi cork,
Ebay is a great idea! Although they seem much stricter now than they did when I was younger and selling on there. i guess it makes it a safer interaction for everyone. That will be so great when you start helping out. If you are going to use the post office and have a PC not a Mac, you can set up with the post office a way for you to have a scale at home, and print out your stamp for the box or envelope from home.
My husband is very good at what he does and has a licensing agent that does the legwork of finding clients for him and then he has two clients on his own. He also works at a full time job where they design bedding and kitchen towels for major stores.
What does auditing for home inspections entail? Never heard of that really before although we have bought three house during our marriage....you think I would know! LOL!
That is so great about your husband. I bet he loves his work. It would be so wonderful to be so creative and talented to make a living doing what you love.
Ebay has high fees but for us it has worked out pretty well with only a few glitches every now and then, just as in any area of life. He is able to bring in about 300 more a month and that helps to fill in the gaps. Our son and his wife have a real knack for finding the right items and pricing them so they make significantly more than my husband. And that is just a little side thing they do.
The company I work for contracts out to inspectors who go to the homes and inspects them. We have major insurance companies we service. Even high value homes for some celebrities. Unfortunately, I would say about 60% of the inspectors we have are to lazy and very rude or just aren't trained enough. So the "inhouse" people have to audit their inspections which means we basically start from scratch and try to do the whole thing from the photos they send us. It could be a 4,000 sq. ft. home and instead of diagramming it correctly they will just send us a square that is about 1,000 ft smaller than the actual home. That is just one example. The auditors have to diagram the whole house correctly with porches, decks, bay windows, etc, all outbuildings (that the inspector didn't include) and we have to fit it into the correct sq. ft., because they didn't do their job. The inspectors consistently leave off all the conditions, so we go through the photos and try to find everything and list them and label the photos and mark the correct condition on the rpt which there are over a hundred. Each insurance company has their own guidelines so we have to make sure we do it according to their specific instructions. The inspectors hardly ever give us good photos to work from, so we are trying to figure things out from a blurry, wrong angle perspective. There is a lot more involved but that is what we do. Sorry to go on and on, I get carried away when I start talking about this position. You should hear what others say. At least I am not using 4 letter words....hahaha
Interesting to hear about your job, Corky. Just this week, we were contacted by a company saying they needed to do an inspection for the insurance company we just switched to. Never had that happen before so good to hear an insider's point of view. Hope the objective is not to make our rate go up.
Pinkytoe - I don't know how it works from the insurance company's side about if they raise your rates or not. But I know our company has auditors to make sure we stay within the original replacement cost unless there has been significant changes. We are there to make sure the insurance company is made aware of any conditions on the house or property and then they make their adjustments accordingly. We have some inspectors where seriously if there was a volcano in the back yard and half of the house was washed away in ashes and fire they wouldn't note it. From the photos the auditors would condition it. As long as the inspector provided a photo of the yard showing the ashes and fire...lol. I actually had a photo where there was a photo of a cat and the inspector noted the insured had a dog. I also had one where one of our inhouse people noted there was no interview and yet I could see there was a person in the photo. I asked how did they know there was no interview and he said you can tell from the picture he doesn't speak English. WHAAAAAATTTTT?????!!!! You have got to be kidding me. But our company is clamping down on idiotic people like this thankfully. It is a good thing there are auditors.
Also, its good Pinkytoe that the insurance company notified you. A lot of the companies don't and the inspector just shows up without being expected.
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