Sunday - morning

Heading to the zoo in a few minutes.  I'm sort of glad to have the days off, sort of not. No idea what they're paying me for break down pay and staying in a hotel overnight.  If it's like everything else, probably not that much.  I'm itching to get that loan and get out of this endless cycle of trucking nonsense.  You just really have no concrete schedule to work with, you are stuck wondering week to week or even day to day what your schedule will be.  

I often just get a couple of loads in the tablet and then they wait to see what's next.  If they are waiting, I am waiting.  Meaning, who knows what hours I will work.  

I figure i made the manager mad by not taking the other truck and also not working today.  As I said previously, I don't care.   I'm going to get some time off here and there and  if they don't like, whoopdee doo.  September of this year will mark 2 years at this miserable place and all that I committed to.  

A 20 plus year driver quit a few weeks ago.  Junk trucks being the reason for him, break downs galore.  His wasn't that bad, at least not comparatively speaking, but as soon as another certain driver got into the thing, he trashed the transmission.  This particular person has now trashed 2 transmission and 1 differential.  I know they have trouble getting help, but keeping people like this around is not helping them either.  The only reason they like him is he'll stay out and just do one load after another after another instead of going home like I do. 

This trucking work life sucks, to be more pointed about it and is driving me to reconsider yet again attempting to get a business loan and just go for it.  If I can get one, it will be a huge risk, at least as far as I'm concerned, for the only way it pays for itself and pays me is to stay mostly full.  The park that is.  People keep telling me to go for it and maybe I will, but I have huge reservations.  Yes, I have turned a couple of dozen people away, but what if that doesn't happen if/when I get a loan with 3 to 4k per month payments?  Lost my life savings and have nothing to show for it, at all, that's what. 

That's what really keeps me reserved about getting into a huge loan.  I was thinking maybe just get a smaller loan and do the work myself, only paying contractors to install a new septic system, the rest I would have to do myself.  But it's still 68k worth of gravel, 21k for the septic system, another 20k worth of electrical and 15k worth of pipe.  There's 124k right there and add 5k for good measure.  Then there's equipment rentals and whether I can even get a dozer on site without having any dozer experience. However, to pay the contractor, we're closer to 300k.  I figure add 15k for equipment rentals.  Saving over 100k doing it myself, but where do I find the time if I still have to do a trucking job?

I can tell ya, my energy ain't what it used to be.  Growing old has several disadvantages and the energy levels going down is one of them.

Meh, we are leaving.

G'day. 

 Saturday - afternoon, early

We are going to a friend's daughter's 1 year birthday party in a bit.  I've done nothing today beyond cleaing the kitchen and making lunch for kids.  Unless the schedule changes - which it easily could - I don't intend on fixing the driveway and other stuff on Monday.  Someone ran over the orange cone I have over a pothole. It is highly visible with reflective tape.  Sorry, but I call such people idiots.  Those cones aren't cheap anymore.  

After the party I am going to walmart to return electronics that don't work that I bought on Walmart site and delivered, get some other stuff I need, take the boys to get $8 haircuts at Great Clips and then who knows what.  It will probably be late afternoon by the time we are done with that.  

Currently, the tablet has Tuesday as my next scheduled day of work.  He was going to have me work "Sunday/Monday".  Sorry.  I don't do this all the time anymore and I don't care how mad he gets.  I'll quit or he can fire me, don't really care.  If he starts paying me back with late loads, same difference, I'll go find another job.  I am seriously tempted as it stands to go ahead and apply for the expansion loan, interest rates be damned.  It's just that I don't really think I will qualify for having a low credit score due to too much credit card debt.

It fell another 20 points when Flagstar sold my loan to some other company.  You'd think your score goes up when you pay off a loan right? I found out long ago that isn't the case at all. The games they play with credit scores. I used to think well, I make all of my payments on time, so I should have a good score, right? NOPE.  These so-called experts lump everyone into the same category and treat everyone the same.  If I have a lot of debt, that therefore means I must be close to defaulting or even bankruptcy.  It's higher risk in their view, which it may very well be, but if I couple it with collateral, a large amount of collateral, I should still be able to get it, right?

Who knows, but seeing how the system works, I'd venture for the "no" department. Hate to be negative about it, but the games these companies play with credit scores I find to be ridiculous.  My property is worth minimum 400k.  Probably 500k.  But we'll go with 400k.  I'm looking for probably around 300k.  I've done the business loan calculators, as long as I could eventually get the place filled up, it wouldn't be impossible to make the payments and do everything else i need to do.  In the end, I'd actually need about 75 lots to be able to afford to live off of that income, make the payments and have at least 1 employee.  I would be able to take home minimum 8k per month after taxes. 

The expansion would take me to 40 lots.  I might need an employee with that, not really affordable but I can't deal with 40 lots by myself and still work a job.  Expansions have to be done in phases.  I'd ask for enough for 60 more lots but that would cost so much more money and I don't want to take that kind of risk with my life savings that I used to build this venture.  Ok, it was about 17 years worth of savings, still quite a lot of time and effort put into saving that money over time. 

To get to 70 lots, I'd have to expand up front, which would mean bringing in many truck loads of dirt to help level it out.  

Anyway, I'm at 25 more lots right now in the works tho I haven't really worked anything.  They wanted info that I would have to go to a bit of trouble to get and after I had thought about it, I just stopped.  

We're fixing to leave and I'm sitting here racking my brains trying to think of everything I need from Walmart. My trips there are infrequent and unwanted. I go because I have to, not because I want to.  The electronics I bought is $25 and change, that alone is enough to get me to go back and have that money refunded to my debit card.  

If I really needed anything, I'd say I need a much larger bedroom or a separate office.  I'd go for a house expansion, but this isn't my house and I'm not dumping that kind of money into something that isn't mine.  We really need more space. The kids are in the same bedroom and the oldest boy is getting the independent thinking that starts to creep in the older they get.  Plus, the younger gets him into trouble all the time, if they had separate bedrooms that would eliminate a lot of it.  

My house in AZ has lost a lot of value over the last year.  It was at around 350k, now it's at 280k. At least I'm not underwater with it - yet.  I find it amazing that the value went down in that allegedly red-hot real estate market.