Rumours swirl around Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian that their marriage is in trouble due to the basketball star’s addiction to recreational drugs. The couple has not been spotted together since June, and Kardashian has been photographed recently not wearing her wedding ring. On Sunday, August 25, TMZ reported that Odom had been missing for 72 hours after a dispute with Kardashian that some say was a failed intervention.
Los Angeles Hotel
On Monday, August 26, ESPN reported that Odom’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, claimed that Odom was in a Los Angeles hotel and that friends were attempting to get him help for a drug problem that the agent declined to explain further. The agent also said that Kardashian knew Odom’s whereabouts. Kardashian herself tweeted that she was unhappy with the news reports about her family, but failed to elaborate on whether the reports were true or false. ( http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/9601746/agent-disputes-report-saying-lamar-odom-missing)
History of Drug Probems
In 2001, Odom violated NBA drug policies twice in eight months, apologizing at a press conference after the second offense. Odom claimed he did not have a drug problem and was only guilty of smoking marijuana. Odom often speaks of losing his mother to colon cancer at the age of 12 and his father’s heroin addiction, eventually moving in with his grandmother. In 2006, Odom’s son, Jayden, died of sudden infant death syndrome. In 2011, a cousin who Odom was close to died of gunshot wounds in New York, and just two days after the cousin’s funeral, Odom was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of a teenager. Odom’s chauffer driven SUV collided with a motorcycle, causing the bike to go out of control and strike a 15-year old pedestrian who died of head injuries the next day. (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/02/sports/la-sp-lamar-odom-accident-20110803). Odom took a 10-day leave of absence from the Dallas Mavericks, claiming his father was ill right after the incident.
Clash over Partying
Odom Shooting (Photo credit: compujeramey)
According to insiders, Odom and Kardashian have often clashed over his partying, but that she had kept his addictions secret from her family. According to many who have known Odom well, when things are difficult for him, he likes to get away and hide, which is what some say he did when he took leave from the Mavericks and just recently when he disappeared for a few days. (http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20728355,00.html) Insiders are reporting that Kardashian is contemplating divorce, which will be costly for Odom as there is a strong infidelity clause in the couple’s prenuptial agreement, and there are rumors that Odom has been unfaithful.
High Cost of Addiction
Most of the rumors surrounding the Kardashian Odom marriage are related to the fact that two women have come forward claiming affairs with Odom while he was married to Kardashian, and not due to his drug use. However, the fact that there is a strong fidelity clause in the prenuptial agreement indicates that Kardashian may be unwilling to ignore his dalliances. If it is proven that Odom committed adultry and the couple divorces, Kardashian retains the Tarzana mansion the couple share, $500,000 for every year they were married, two vehicles, shopping money and spousal support. However, many reports continue that infidelity is not the problem in the marriage, but Odom’s continued use of drugs. Odom checked into a San Diego rehab in 2012, but left after only three weeks, and insiders claim that Odom’s recent disappearance was related to an intervention, staged by Kardashian, to encourage him to return to rehab.
Regardless of whether the marriage ends due to infidelity or drug use, it appears that addiction may be a costly proposition for Odom due to the clause in his prenuptial agreement.
What has happened to this week? It’s already Friday afternoon, and I’m short a post today. Since I skipped the link roundup last week while I was off with family, I’ll do it early this week and cheat you out of a real post today.
Finance links:
I enjoy trying new foods and eating out. Christian PF provides tips on doing that frugally.
Trent talks about “Family Dinner Night”. Invite a bunch of friends over to help prep and eat a buffet-style meal. Good time for everyone on the cheap.
Netflix just volunteered to shaft its customers again. There’s a 28 day wait to get most new releases, now. If I didn’t have almost 500 movies in my queue, I’d be royally ticked.
Mother Earth News has plans for a smoker/grill/stove/oven. I’d love to build a brick oven with a grill and smoker. A complete, wood-fired cooking center would be perfect for my house.
The old one still works, but it’s kind of slow, and kind of in demand, especially when Kid #1 has friends over. When I need to get on the computer and whip up some side-hustle money, I shouldn’t have to fight with kids and deal with the whiny “Are you done, yet?” every 10 minutes.
This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment purchase. Since the old laptop still worked, we had quite a bit of time to find the new one, so I started watching sales. And I waited.
Eventually, I found a great deal. I got a much bigger/faster/smarter/nicer laptop for about $375 with tax. There was a sale, a coupon code, and a rebate all in play to make that happen.
I don’t mind coupons and sales. In fact, I am a fan.
Rebates, however, irritate me.
It shouldn’t have been bad. After all, I was going to Staples, home of the Easy Button®. I should have been able to go home, fire up their website, fill out a form, and get my money in a couple of weeks, right?
Grr.
Apparently, the easy rebate doesn’t apply to the good rebates. If you’re getting $1.05 back on a $100 printer, you can do it in a few clicks. But if you’re getting $50 back on a $400 laptop, watch out. Then, Staples has the same horrible rebate process as everyone else. Print the forms, peel off the UPC label, snail-mail it to the middle of nowhere and wait 4 to 100 months for a gift card.
Double grr.
Obviously, they are hoping a statistically significant percentage of their customers forget to claim their money.
Shady rebate garbage.
Rebates are a marketing ploy to convince customers they are getting a sale, while hoping the customer forgets to ask for the sale price, thereby paying full price and being happy about it.
Ethical businesses would just have a sale and be done with it. Treating your customers right is good for business. Really.
Last weekend, I was having dinner with my friend and business partner. After our carry permit class, we try to get dinner, unwind from the class, debrief, and figure out how to improve our business.
Over the course of this discussion, the idea of owning a bus came up. It was part of an impractical-but-useful solution to one of our larger expenses. My partner mentioned that he had a friend who owned a bus, so I asked him to find out how much he was asking.
A few days later, he called me and said simply, “We bought a bus.”
Oops.
What year?
“I don’t know.”
How big?
“Huge!”
Does it run?
“It used to. It probably still does, but they lost the key.”
Crap.
So we own a bus. It’s a 1987 Ford B700. It’s 20,000 pounds empty, has a 429 motor that doesn’t leak oil, and an air horn.
Under the hood, it’s got a couple of issues. There are some melted vacuum tubes leading to a vapor box. The vapor box is used to cheat obsolete emissions standards and doesn’t do anything productive. There’s also some belts missing. The belts drive an air pump that pushes clean air into the exhaust system, again, just to cheat emissions standards that we don’t have anymore. Nothing necessary–or even useful–is broken.
Part of the $1000 we paid for the bus went to a locksmith who came and made us a key.
The interior of the beast is 3/4 converted to an RV. There are 4 folding bunks in the back, minus mattresses. There are two RV sofas that fold down to beds, plus seating for another 12 people. No kitchen or bathroom facilities.
We’ve done some research and come up with a few choices for this impulse purchase:
Flip it. We should be able to at least double our money quickly.
Finish the RV conversion already in progress. This wouldn’t turn it into a fancy motorhome, but it would make a great deer shack on wheels. I figure we could make this happen for about $500 and turn it into a $3500 toy to sell. Or take deer hunting.
Turn it into a full RV. This would be more expensive. My estimate is a $5-6000 investment to make it a $10-12000 RV. It would take most of the summer to do, which means we wouldn’t be selling it until spring. I quit wanting to do this when I saw the bus in the light. There’s not a lot of rust, but it’s more than I’d want to fix to make the outside look as good as the inside, in my head.
Party bus. What’s a better way to spend a Saturday evening that shepherding a drunken bachelorette around with her friends? It’d take about $2000 to outfit the bus, plus insurance, plus licensing, plus the fact that drunken bachelorettes are obnoxious.
Auction. We got an estimate for a $3000 sale, minus a 20% commission.
Stunt-jumping. I saw a video of a guy jumping a bus over 20 motorcycles. I could do that. I’m sure one of the race tracks around here would pay good money to have us do that one weekend. Afterward, we’ll melt the bus for scrap.
Sell the engine and scrap the body. That should bring us at least $1500.
We jumped into this with no real plan, but there are a few ways we could make our money back. I’m expecting a healthy profit on a pretty short timeline.
