- @Elle_CM Natalie's raid looked like it was filmed with a strobe light. Lame CGI in reply to Elle_CM #
- I want to get a toto portable bidet and a roomba. Combine them and I'll have outsourced some of the least tasteful parts of my day. #
- RT @freefrombroke: RT @moneybeagle: New Blog Post: Money Hacks Carnival #115 http://goo.gl/fb/AqhWf #
- TED.com: The neurons that shaped civilization. http://su.pr/2Qv4Ay #
- Last night, fell in the driveway: twisted ankle and skinned knee. Today, fell down the stairs: bruise makes sitting hurt. Bad morning. #
- RT @FrugalDad: And to moms, please be more selective about the creeps you let around your child. Takes a special guy to be a dad to another' #
- First Rule of Blogging: Don't let real life get in the way. Epic fail 2 Fridays in a row. But the garage sale is going well. #
So You’re Getting Evicted…
Last week, I had the opportunity to visit eviction court, though not for anything having to do with my properties.
It was an interesting experience. Eviction court is a day when nobody is at their best. Landlords are fighting to remove bad tenants, sometimes questioning their desire to be a landlord, while tenants are fighting to keep their homes, often with no backup plan. Occasionally, you get someone who just wants to get out of their lease because the landlord is a creepy peeper who digs through the dirty laundry.
Nobody goes to eviction court in a good mood.
If you ever find yourself in eviction court, here are some things to remember:
Everyone
- If you don’t show up, you lose. Period. Landlord or tenant, judges don’t like waiting around. You will get the worst possible outcome if you stay home.
- The first day is a hearing. The judge will either accept a settlement between the two parties, or he’ll check if there is a valid reason for a full trial. The trial will be schedule for another day. In Minnesota, that happens within 6 days of the hearing.
- Don’t make faces at the other side while they are talking to the judge. Do you want to go to jail for being a smartass? It’s called contempt of court.
Landlords
- Fix the mold, rot, and other habitability issues. You’ll have a hard time getting your rent back if you are a slumlord forcing your tenants to live in a biohazard.
- If you’ve got an automatically renewing lease, don’t file the eviction notice with the renewed lease for violations that happened under the old lease. If you do, you’ll be handing a win to your tenant.
- Make sure you lease has an eviction clause. If it doesn’t, you may not have the right to kick out your tenant for any reason.
- Your tenant’s dirty underwear is not a toy for you to play with. Creep.
Tenants
- Pay your rent. If you are withholding rent to get something fixed, you’ll be expected to put that in escrow the day of the hearing, so don’t spend it on vodka or a new stereo.
- Read your lease and the filing. It may have a backdoor that lets you escape the eviction.
- Try not to get evicted. An unlawful detainer can make it hard to rent again for a couple of years.
- Dress nice. I’m amazed by how many people showed up in ratty jeans and uncombed hair. Look professional. The judge will appreciate the effort.
All in all, it’s best if landlords and tenants try to keep each other happy. The whole business relationship will go much smoother if you do.
‘Mommy, I’m bored!’ Top 5 online activities for your kids
This is a guest post.
When nasty weather, a cold or the flu keeps kids indoors, plan ahead for those days with some great online activities kids will enjoy. Whether it is learning a new language with mom or dad, or practicing multiplication tables with an older sibling, kids can find plenty of cool things to do to kill their time. Here is a top five list of things your children can do while surfing the net.
Fun Languages
Learn Spanish, German, or French online with your kids. Give your children the gift of language with some key phrases and words to encourage brain activity in the language zones. Studies have shown that children exposed to multiple languages in their elementary years are more likely to learn a second language as adolescents and adults. Statistics indicate basic knowledge of a second language promotes better understanding of English grammar. The internet has some great resources for older children and parents wishing to improve their vocabulary knowledge and grammar skills. Word a day programs and test prep programs are often as entertaining for the parents as they are for the kids.
Arts and Crafts
There is a plethora of sites offering downloadable art project sheets, coloring pages, creative flash cards, art activity books and art games on the internet. Let the creative genius of your young artist shine through with how to draw tutorials and interactive art history sites. Don’t forget the musician in the house, as there are plenty of great music tutorials complete with video and audio for the young future soloist to watch. Many sites offer interesting and kid friendly “how to” videos for piano and vocals. Many sites offer inexpensive or free holiday cards the kids can create and print for one of a kind holiday or birthday gift giving. Crayola offers terrific downloadable coloring pages, games and activities.
More Academics with Math
Colorful math puzzles, homework practice sessions all online, downloadable speed tests and great interactive programs abound for the math whiz. Fun and entertaining, these online interactive programs are often free and downloadable in seconds. Your kids will never be bored again when accessing such interesting activities as tangrams, money games and creating their own math flash cards. Periodic tables and math and science in the kitchen bring fun and kid friendly experiments for rainy days and long summer vacations. Keep them interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) with how things work videos.
Early Learners Have Fun Too
There are wonderful sites that teach young children and early learners about counting, colors and shapes. Teach your children about telling time and other valuable skills. Learn about money, traffic safety and stranger danger in fun and engaging videos and interactive games. Young children are remarkably quick to pick up on new skills through technology. Parents can take advantage of wonderful online activities at many educational websites.
Games and More Games
There are free and not so free video and mobile device games for children of all ages. Fun and diverting puzzles, adventure and arcade, card and board games for younger to middle school aged children can be found just a few clicks away. Fun and challenging sports and trivia games for high school aged kids are often found at no charge.
Sell old CDs
Got some unused video games ready for the bin? A DVD that you kids received for Christmas and never watched? An old CD they don’t like to listen to anymore? Here it is another opportunity to spend some time online having fun. Websites such musicmagpie will allow your children to sell their unwanted CDs and make a bit of money out of it. Less clutter around the house, more fun for your kids. That sounds like a win-win.
The Story of Sammy
As I’ve mentioned, we’re cleaning out my mother-in-law’s house. She was a hoarder who passed away a couple of months ago. As of yesterday, we’ve filled two 30-yard dumpsters. For perspective, that’s big enough to park our F150.
I’m not here to talk about that, or the 20 year old can of green beans that burst and ran down my leg on Saturday.
Last month, we put a recliner out on the curb with a free sign. A few minutes later, a couple of guys stopped by and grabbed it.
Last week, one of the guys–I’ll call him Sammy–stopped by and left a note on the windshield of one of our inherited cars, asking about buying it.
Long story short, we sold him two cars. One hadn’t been run in a year or two, and one had been parked for almost 20 years. We signed this titles and let him take the cars while he was still $50 short of the purchase price. This isn’t a story about the cars.
It’s a story about Sammy.
Sammy doesn’t have a lot of money. He’s living off of a monthly check from an old injury, and his fiancee works part-time. They’re living in Section 8 housing, and consistently have more month than money. When he was younger, he made some decisions that make some forms of employment difficult now.
On Friday, Sammy stopped by. He was supposed to give us $50, but said that getting one of the cars running had cost more than expected, and it still had a problem that was keeping it from being safe on the road. He asked about an extension.
No problem.
Then, he looked around my mother-in-law’s overgrown yard and asked if he could help. After we negotiated the price, he asked if he could a) borrow our tools for the work, and b) get a ride Saturday morning.
I am a nice guy.
Saturday, I was planning to pick him up, then drive downtown to pick up a friend who has been living at the Salvation Army since moving to the area. His friend was so excited about the work, he hopped on a bus at 6am and got to Sammy’s house.
When I got there, Sammy also had a teenager he was mentoring. He told me that his dream was to start a lawn-care business with his friend, so they can put kids to work and help them turn into productive citizens. Idle, broke, and bored teenagers are a recipe for disaster. Teenagers who grow into men not believing they have a chance to change their future are worse.
I dropped them off and went to have a chat with my wife.
We’re far from rich but, at the moment, we are fairly flush. We’ve found some cash, and a there is a bit of life insurance money. Most of that will be going into remodeling the house, but we have a bit extra. If we can take a few hundred dollars, and help launch Sammy into a business that will help him, his family, and a circle of kids with few prospects, I think it’s the right thing to do.
When I told Sammy what we were considering, he started to break down. It was a truly emotional experience for him to know that somebody was willing to take a chance on him.
I told him to put together plan. I want to know what it would take for him to get started. Hopefully, he’s serious enough to do that. I’d like to help.
Homeland: What does it cost to make a hit TV show?
When you are producing your own TV show, you can do whatever you want to cut costs. However, you must realize that making a hit TV show is something that is very expensive to do. You must pay your actors handsomely because they are usually Hollywood A-listers, but your actors are only the beginning of the payroll.
You have a very large staff that works on the show to make sure everything works. If you have ever watched the credits at the end of a TV episode, you know that there are many people working on the show. You must remember that every single person on the credits was paid a salary to work on the episode. You must now imagine looking at your balance sheet and deciding how to pay all these people for each episode.
There are many people who wonder why their TV shows do not look as well produced as others. This is something that is left up solely to money. Homeland has Showtime behind them, and Showtime can afford to pay for the exotic locations and all the effects that are needed. However, there are other shows that have to shoot on a much smaller budget. They use a smaller amount of locations, and they use a smaller amount of effects. This does not hurt the show in all cases, but a lack of money would make a show like Homeland impossible.
When Hollywood was equal parts television and movies, Homeland would have become a movie because of the budget. The budget that is spent on just one episode of this show could be used to make a decent movie. In today’s Hollywood, there are many TV shows that would have been movies 20 or 30 years ago.
When you watch Homeland, you need to remember that there is a ton of money behind every episode. You may not like every episode, but you must remember that the producers and studio paid handsomely to have that episode produced. The money that fuels Hollywood today is off the charts, and we must respect that when every new episode come on the television.
The Library vs Amazon
A few weeks ago, I discovered the queue at my public library’s website. The process is simple: Select your books, wait a few days, then pick them up. They are available from any library in the county, delivered to my local library. That’s awesome. Much more convenient-and cheaper-than Amazon
So I moved a couple of pages of my Amazon wish-list into the library’s queue.
I must not have been thinking, because two days later, I got an email telling me that 19 books were ready to be picked up and 10 more were in transit.
In this county, each checkout is good for 21 days. For items that don’t have a waiting list, you can reserve 3 times. That’s 12 weeks for 29 books. Hopefully, I’m up to the challenge. Please keep in mind, I’m a father of three, two of whom are in diapers, and I’m married, and I have a full time job.
I have frugally blown every second of spare time for months.
Update: This was another post written in advance. When all of the books came in, I suspended my request list. Little did I realize, the suspension cancels itself after 30 days. That was 30 more books. Whee!
