Monday - morning - not very early. 

I screwed up last night. I knew what I was doing but I couldn't stop myself.  You see, I completed a 30 hour eating binge last night that included everything that I have been craving for a while now.  The final straw was Domino's pizza.  The Extravaganza pie that has all kinds of meat and some veggies on it.  I ate way too much of it.

The problem? If I eat more than 2 slices of pizza in the evening, it will keep me awake all night long.  This has been going on for many decades now.  But as I said, I couldn't help myself, I kept wolfing down one slice after another....after another..until my gut was completely full.  I knew at that point it was going to be a long night.  It's not that I feel particularly bad after eating pizza like that, it just keeps me awake for some reason.  Nothing else does that.  I gained 4 pounds in that little eating spree.

No worries here, I didn't get so carried away with it that I extended it for many days or weeks or even months.  I'm not going to do that, I have a goal to reach and I am going to press forward with it now that I have gotten that out of my system - for now anyway.  If/when I go back to AZ next month, I doubt I'll try to stay on keto then, either.  But  until then, I will keep strict keto.

So yes, I am a bit tired but I have stuff to do.  I just decided that getting up early and getting over to the property to work was out of the question.  I am now just going to wait until Taylor gets home at around noon.  I have to go to court and deal with this ticket and I have to get to the post office and return that DirecTV equipment.  That didn't last long - DirecTV that is.

I wrote ATT off several years ago and I should have just stayed that course.  But alas, I just had to go back to it to get away from Dish's high prices.  The next time this happens, I will just cancel Dish, stay off of it for a month and start a new service unless they offer me the discount again.  I can deal with not having access to satellite to save myself a bunch of money.  I can't really do that at the AZ property but I definitely can here. We have smart TV's and unlimited internet, easy enough to just stream stuff in.  

Well I take that back.  I can do it at the AZ property, I just don't want to if I don't have to.  I have switched several times over there when one or the other company refused to give me what I wanted or needed.  DirecTV once lost my business over there for the old equipment we had and kept breaking, they refused to replace it.

Well, they refused until I got to the customer retention department, a thing I had been trying to get to before I decided to switch to Dish.  Then, when I went back to cancel DirecTV, I finally did get to that department without asking and they offered all new equipment for nothing, not even a new contract.  Too bad, so sad, too late, at the gate, I already switched, you can have this junk back. 

They didn't want it.  Of course not, it was outdated receivers that were well beyond their prime.  

Anyway, I will get the post office and court done and then it's a toss up whether I will go do stuff at the property.  Probably not.  It's going to be too late to tear out all the sewer stuff. I want to get it all cut out of there and reinstalled in the same day, if possible. A solid 6 to 8 hours should afford me enough time to get it done. 

On an aside, I tried this new Bing with AI technology that the internet is raving about and apparently Google is freaking out about. I mean, it worked okay, I guess...didn't really think it was any better than Google but it was better than Bing used to be.  Bing basically is trying to give Google a run for it's money. The problem is, I have several accounts that are tied to Google and atm?  I am not interested in just canceling those accounts or attempting to change how to access those accounts, this blog being one of them. 

Have I actually gotten all the start up costs paid and over with?  Well if I haven't, I'm very close and I'm ready for that day to say yayyy! It's all done and no more money needs to be spent right now on new construction!  There's probably another 10 sheets of drywall I will have to get - not a huge expense, some outlets for the HipCamp, maybe have to rent a bobcat to backfill all of that trench dirt. We'll see, it's a lot of dirt, but I am loathe to spend that much money on what would amount to maybe 45 minutes worth of work on a bobcat.  I could use it for other stuff, I suppose, but it's so freaking expensive. Even their 4 hour rate is almost $400 after taxes/fees.  Getting anyone to do that kind of labor for hourly rate? Lmao, yeah, good luck with that. 

I probably could just do a little here and there and get it done over a week's time or so.  

I still need that outside hanging lamp for illuminating the door/entryway.  But that's maybe $30 - $50.  I want to get a small vanity and that's going to cost around $100.  Realistically, to finish what I have started, I probably have around $500 more to go.  The kitchen setup can wait.  It will wait, for now anyway.  I suppose I could just get a used oven in there with a range top.  That's really what those types of travelers need, something to cook on.  But, then I would have to get a sink to wash the pans.  And all the drain pipe and stuff to run the water and drainage plus the electrical outlet.  Well, I think I have the electrical outlet, but that heavy gauge wire? It's like $80 for just the little bit that I need! And of course I would have to buy a cabinet for pots, pans, mixing bowls and kitchen utensils. 

See? It will end up costing me $500 to $800 or even more just to do that little bit.  I just don't have that right now to spend on such luxuries.  A bathroom with a shower stall and laundry will have to suffice.  I've noticed people going in there using the toilet, lol.  Yes, they have a toilet in their RV's, as I have stated before, for whatever reason, people would rather use a regular bathroom. The funny part is that the walls aren't all up yet, lmao.  I haven't advertised that the bathroom is finished yet, either.  I mean, if you walk into the shed and some dude is in there taking a dump, you won't see him.  The wall is up right there and the door. You'd have to either go open the door or peek around the other side of the door where there is no wall.

That got put on hold temporarily to get everything else done.  It's a priority this week, but court is top priority today since this is the date they have printed on the ticket to get it done by. So is returning that DirecTV equipment.  

There are just some days where I just write off working at the property and that's that. Days I would normally go over there and work, I don't include Sundays on that list. Sundays - as I grew up anyway - are supposed to be a day or rest. Where you go to church, worship the Lord with other believers, go home and make a Sunday afternoon dinner then go take a nap. I complained about this regularly at my last job when I was driving most Sundays and absolutely hated it.  I dealt with it - yes for those huge paychecks - but I disliked it greatly.  It was even more disturbing that other drivers with more seniority were able to ditch Sunday driving to people like me with less seniority.  

I don't miss that job.  I haven't missed that job since I was released from it.  

I don't miss trucking in general, at all.  I don't care about the 'open road' in a truck anymore. It's nothing like it used to be 30-40 years ago.  There is no wonder there is such a huge turnover of new drivers in their first year. I think it was 86% the last time I looked and no, I'm not looking again now. It's way up there is the point.  The older generation of drivers is slowly falling off and newer generations of drivers is not keeping up with that attrition.  This is undoubtedly why they are trying to ramrod through all of these autonomous trucks that won't need a driver behind the steering wheel, or so they say. 

Whatever the case, I have 3 hours until Taylor gets home, I'm going to look once again at tax stuff.  My books are caught up now.  I mean, completely caught up.  It's all on Quickbooks and that's all I'm doing. I was going to keep a written ledger, but after seeing what Quickbooks does, I see no need for it.  QB literally does everything and more that hand written ledgers do and handwritten ledgers take up a lot of time.  I just wrote 2 receipts off of Quickbooks for cash transactions. That goes into the ledger and is counted as sales income.  I don't have to take the money to the bank if I don't want to - and I don't want to.  I need a riding mower badly.  Oh, that's the other big expenditure, of course!

I knew I was forgetting something.  Walking around behind a self-propelled mower does give some great cardio exercise, but come summer and the heat wave? No thanks.  It will be bad enough driving a riding mower, but pushing one?  Maybe early morning before the worst of the heat hits.  I remember building that bridge in the worst of the heat last summer. 

I'm sitting here attempting to figure out how much I will make for the entire year this year.  I've taken no paycheck yet.  

Wow. I was doing the estimated taxes all wrong.  The wording is sneaky from the IRS website.  I just figured out I can take $3,000 per month net pay, still pay the taxes and still have almost a grand left over.  I need to save money -not for expansion although that would be nice, but to have an emergency fund and be able to pay cash for the property taxes and insurance for next year. 

The only thing is, my calculations were conservative on what I will be taking in on a monthly basis.  It may be that every month I will keep getting these random reservations in like I finally got with a 33 day reservation, another 2 day stay that left yesterday morning and another overnight stay that I got last night.  

However. If I don't take more than I just calculated and it just sits in the business checking account, I am not taxed on it. It's just what I'm paying myself that counts.  If I were just to collect money and not spend what was leftover, ever, I would pay nothing.  Of course, I think that might open me up to scrutiny by the IRS and I am not going to do that anyway, but still.  

Since I have enough to last a while longer in my personal checking account, I don't want to take a paycheck until after the beginning of the month, where I will take in a nice sum of money and then I can take my 3 grand and hope that I can take even more after I get this other operation going.  Or, just get all the lots filled up with long term. The Hipcamp isn't long term tho I guess it could be if it goes that way.  It would be difficult for a person to live there long term.  No holding tanks, every time they needed to go to the bathroom, they would have to go to the shed. Not a big deal, until you think about having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  

Not really intending that to be a long term operation back there, not atm anyway. But, I need to think outside of the box and consider all the potential alternatives.  If the operation doesn't sell for overnighters or several night's stay, I suppose I could advertise it as long term but with well worded caveats.  No surprises, folks, you aren't getting 50 or 30 amp outlet and you aren't getting a sewer dump.  You could probably run a garden hose clear over to the nearest water outlet, but that would be on your dime, not mine. 

I'm just optimistically hoping that HipCamp will eventually bring in at least $500 per month.  It will be on the reservation system as lots 15 and 16 with respective pricing to begin with, including that lengthy description of what they will be getting and what to expect before they rent it out.  

Never-the-less, I do feel a lot better now that I have figured out I can take more than I initially thought I could in a personal paycheck.  I assume but will be looking at whether I need to write myself out an actual check to show it listed in the bank as a paycheck to myself, or if it's legit to just transfer the money to my personal banking account.  Not sure how that's done, more research is necessary.  

I think writing a check and putting a copy of it in a file to show exactly how much I paid myself for the year is the way to go. Leave no room for errors, these are copies of the paychecks, this is exactly what I paid myself, any other questions, Mr. IRS Taxman?  One of the biggest reasons I wanted the books caught up is for the potential eventuality of an audit.  I will be hearing from a CPA soon enough as well, next week I think was the appointment.  

Anyway, I have until tomorrow to get that estimated tax in the mail. I'm going to stew on it - in a good way, not stewing like I'm angry - for the rest of today and try to decide what I can take without cutting my business account too short to begin with.  There is plenty of money in there right now, but taking a paycheck and paying estimated taxes will cut that thing to less than a grand.  Getting rid of constant start up costs is going to be extremely helpful as well. 

A person starting up a park like this from scratch likely wouldn't have any idea of all of the little expenses and even bigger ones from the vantage point of having had just bought land and getting the process started. You look at the big costs from the contractors to build the main portion of it out. You try to look at all the other costs but when you haven't done anything like this before? I was definitely way off.  

This is why I am not wanting to take exactly the full amount I can take for paychecks leaving little left over. Besides saving for emergency fund, taxes and insurance, there may be more things that I haven't considered that I will need to dump money into.

The grass situation coming up is one of them. I have considered it, of course, but how am I going to go about doing it?  

I dunno, stay tuned for that I guess. I'm going to keep searching out all the options before making a decision. The winter grass is still looking good, but the day is coming when it will all die out and I will have dirt lots - that's just not where I want this to go. 

Well, enough for one entry. My mind is buzzing with all of this tax stuff and attempting to figure out a reasonable paycheck.  I'd really need to be able to take at least $3,500 net pay to not have to go back to work and have a reasonable comfortable lifestyle.  Getting rid of the car payment in 3 months will help with that.

G'day