Second Home: 7 Warnings!

May 29th, 2012

Buying A Second Home

TJ and Mrs TJ are walking along the beach loving the sand, surf, and sun.  They’ve  enjoyed their first nap in 6 months and have recharged their relationship…(wink, wink!)

It’s a picture post card twilight.  The kids are racing each other, jumping nimbly on brightly painted boards, golden in the fading light.  The bottle of Pinot Grigio is almost empty.  Begun earlier with the spicy boiled shrimp on the deck at sunset- it’s been a delightful and relaxing evening.

Beach Sunset-Good Stuff!

As they walk back to their condo holding hands like the young lovers they used to be, they both start to speak at the same time. “You go first, Honey.” “No you!”

“OK, I saw there are a lot of these condos on the market-this has been so much fun and we both work so hard, do you think we could see what they cost!” ” My friend Mary and her husband bought a beach place on a short sale a few weeks ago, and they don’t make near the money we do.”

Sand Between Their Toes.

As my Realtor friends at the coast call it, another tourist has  “sand between their toes.”  The only other thing you can count on during a week at the beach is that last day when all you have time for is packing.

It’s always a gorgeous day when that beach is in your rear view mirror, with a siren song playing in your head-”you too can own a piece of me….” as you drive back to your home and job.

“These times they are a tempting” to make that second home purchase, whether for investment or just family fun.

What makes me think so?

These Second Home Buying Positives

  • The economy seems to be stabilizing.
  • The value of my dollars in the bank are plummeting as fast as my Atlanta Braves in their Division.
  • The stock market is  tanking, gold is dropping, Europe is fast becoming like a third world investing environment.
  • Interest rates are at multi-generational lows.
  • Real estate prices have bottomed.

These are all wonderful reasons to think this may be an ideal time to jump into a second home, huh?

Before you let yourself be drawn into this second home dream that can quickly turn into a nightmare, let’s look at the negatives to buying a second home/vacation home/investment property.

  • Life changes.  Moving, divorce, ill parents or children-the number of potential  life changes are immense. Owning another home limits your flexibility and nimbleness to respond to big life alterations.  If you need to move, you’ll have to sell your current home and oops, you’ve got this vacation home to deal with too!  Rent it?  Try to keep using it though you’ll be on the other side of the country?
  • Finances change. Layoffs, downsizing, retirement, oh my.  What may be easy to afford today may be a big strain on your retirement income.
  • Fixed vacation site-having owned several second homes over the past twenty years-it does limit your ability to see the world.  You’ll feel the need to go to your own place.
  • Upkeep-yes you have to clean toilets at your second home, too….Hooray! I love cleaning toilets…(Cil is thinking “the only time you hold a toilet brush is to try to save your cellphone that fell in.” I knew I shouldn’t have confessed that story to her.)  Even if you can afford to pay a housekeeping service and maintenance service, you’ve got to spend time and thought arranging all that, it doesn’t happen on autopilot.
  • Costs.  I don’t care if you are the master manipulator of Excel and can make it do things that would make your CPA proud-you’re going to underestimate the costs.  The next hurricane can cause insurance to triple.
  • Less relaxing vacations. When you’re vacationing at your own place, you’ll be noticing what needs painting rather than making goo goo eyes with your partner during that sunset on the deck.
  • Financial uncertainty: If you finance at a variable rate, you’ll have rate increasing risks to deal with.

I’m not against second homes.  We’ve enjoyed all our past  properties, but as I’ve gotten older it is much easier to see how much money we’ve spent on ‘em that could be still sitting in our retirement account.  Could our memories have been just as good without the hassles of ownership?  Who knows, I’m not spending time worrying about things I can’t change.

I’m here, though, to help you make these big financial decisions, to decrease your chances of making a mistake.  It’s what I do here…

If you’re in the market for a second home, or on vacation and get tempted by those time-share offers or Realtor brochures, take a few minutes to re-read this article.  If you jump in the deep end, at least wear your life jacket made of careful, meticulous planning and projections of costs and of your future-as least as much as possible.

See you at the beach-I’ll be the old guy wearing black socks with his sandals and wielding a  metal detector!

{photo credit:DVitoriano}

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Nurses, Networks and Entrepreneurs

May 27th, 2012

LeaRae Keyes and Entrepreneurs

by Cil Burke BSN

You’ve just had an “a hah” moment. That most wonderful of can’t miss ideas to make life better for thousands of your peers just popped into your head.

What’s next?  For many, that next step is a Mount Everest climb.  They aren’t prepared for the challenge and the great idea is left to stagnate.

Marketing Your Idea

Developing a platform to market your fabulous idea or product or concept can be the most difficult and complicated part of the whole entrepreneurial process.   Even so, it’s a hurdle that must be overcome if you want to become a successful entrepreneur.

Nurse Entrepreneur Network

LeaRae Keys is the founder and driving force behind The Nurse Entrepreneur Network. This online site is the solution to the nurse innovator’s problem with that pesky ‘marketing platform development’ issue.

LeaRae’s Nurse Entrepreneur Network is a membership site with several levels of membership and includes a blog, forums, weekly email tips, and a plethora of other resources, all with useful content that addresses the many stages of idea development.  An especially interesting and unique segment of the site is the ‘Mastermind Group.’  Nurses are able to idea share, problem solve and generally offer support within a group.   Group sessions for nurse entrepreneurs.  Wow.

LeaRae has been in the business of helping nurses succeed, in a variety of venues, for a couple of decades.  If you are on the social networks, the name probably sounds familiar. LinkedIn, Twitter, the Nurse Entrepreneur Network, Facebook, she has a presence in all of these.

She is an amazing woman who happens to be a nurse, an innovator, and a leader.  With a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing from Minnesota State University at Mankato, she has worked in multiple areas of nursing.

She started in Med-Surg, but had a desire to go the psych nursing route.  A few years in to her career, she went into case management, a move that became an important stepping stone in her development.  It was during this time she fine tuned her savvy business skills.  Not only was she in case management sales, but she was a branch manager, and 13 years ago started her own case management company, Keyes & Assoc., which she still owns.

Coaching

Always drawn to helping others, she says she has been coaching people all her life.  So, 12 years ago, she became a business and life coach through Coach U, starting a coaching network, and through which she added e-books and other products.

Coaching was a pleasure for this people person, but also planted the seed for the Nurse Entrepreneur Network.  She realized the nurses she was coaching were in desperate need of mentoring for sales and marketing information.

LeaRae has continued her coaching career, but has enjoyed watching the Nurse Entrepreneur Network take root and grow into the awesome online resource that it has become.  She is driven by her desire to help nurses be independent and self-reliant.

Tips For Starting a Business

With these successful enterprises she has built from the ground up, she has an impressive depth of knowledge about business development and maintenance.  She readily shared some tips for starting a business:

  • Identify the problem you can solve.
  • Develop a unique solution.
  • Decide if there is a hungry crowd in need of this solution, and who they are.
  • Get your idea in front of this crowd.
  • Provide them with exceptional value and content.
  • Sell your product or service.
  • Over deliver.

The Rest of the Story

Her most recent hobby is making jewelry from various metals and loves designing unique pieces.  She and her husband have 2 Labrador retrievers that enjoy being the center of attention, especially on lazy spring mornings at their lake cabin.

Do-it-yourselfers, they read how-to books and then built the cabin themselves where they escape for long week-ends.  Her husband of 36 years is retired and is her IT and Customer Service rep.  We shared a few of the wonders of a long, happy marriage to your best friend-something she and I have in common.

She works hard and admits entrepreneurs don’t work 9-5.

Asked what she finds the most rewarding part of all her many jobs?  “Seeing a nurse entrepreneur I’ve assisted become a tremendous success.”

LeaRae Keyes has much to offer her fellow nurses and she considers it a privilege to be making a difference.

If you’ve got an idea and need help with it’s development, check her out.

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Friday Financial and Health Follies: Foolish Facebook Buyers Edition!

May 25th, 2012

The Friday Financial and Health Follies (FFHF) summarize the important (or just fun) financial and health issues of the week.

  • Share the humor of the funny
  • Make fun of the stupid.
  • Highlight and explain new financial and health news-so you don’t miss it!

Friday Financial Follies

Tired of Facebook News

Are you tired of the Facebook follies this week?  Me, too.  If it’s not the fresh faced Facebook billionaire getting married, the lucky bride, the ups but mostly down, down, down- of the stock, who knew what, when, and who told them.

A class-action lawsuit against the underwriter and Facebook, filed on the third day of trading-gotta be a new record.

Enough already.

Between Facebook and the Greek debt debacle, I’m about to decide to shut down my business reading, if it weren’t for you, my readers who expect me to stay up so you don’t have to.

So, as Chief Dan George was quoted as saying, “I’ll endeavor to persevere!”

The Long Arm of the iCloud

In the Adventures of a Stolen iPhone, the wronged owner opens Facebook account and posts photos of the thief and his associates as they stream to her iCloud account.  She just might get her phone back.

Pricey Parking

If you own one of 8 condos in a luxury building in NYC you can buy a parking spot for a mere $1 million.  I heart New York???

Pubic Affairs Typo

The commencement  program for the LBJ School of Public Affairs lost the ‘L’ and had to deny that pubic affairs exist.

Invasion of the Honey Bees

Car in New York City has about 10,000 buzzing bees swarming the passenger side mirror and door.  Quite the photo-op.

Penguin on the Run

You can run swim, but you can’t hide, even if you’re a penguin.  The bird escaped its enclosure in a Tokyo aquarium 2 months ago, and has ‘resurfaced’ in Tokyo Bay.

What’s That Smell?

Scent marketing is spreading.  Hospitals, doggie-day-care, funeral homes, gyms, law firms and airports want their own scent, too.  Abercrombie & Fitch uses Fierce, the smell of a freshly shaved underage male model’s chest.

Bulletproof Polo

The shirt for kicking back on a leisurely Friday in say, drug cartel country?  Designed by Columbian Miguel Caballero for those who need a ‘little extra protection’,  even when wearing a polo shirt.

Medical News

Neural Interface

For the first time since a stroke left her paralyzed 15 years ago, a Massachusetts woman used her thoughts to bring a coffee cup to her lips.  She was using a system being developed call BrainGate.

PSA Controversy

Brouhaha is brewing in the medical community after the US Preventive Services Task Force issued an almost failing grade for the test that has been used for close to 2 decades to detect prostate cancer.

Baby Boomers and HepC

New CDC Guidelines for hepatitis C screening for those born form 1945-1965. With 1 in 30 in this age group infected with the disease, the guidelines encourage them to screen for the disease.

Great Blogosphere Reads:

Jon Morrow tells bloggers how to get the most from Stephen King’s writing advice-well worth the read. I’m going to check out the book from my library to see if it’s worth buying and adding to my permanent writing collection.

A sobering review of what it takes to have a successful retirement account, and it’s not diversification or asset allocation.

A Blinkin over at Funancials reviews the similarity between online dating sites and house hunting.

Erin at The Dog Ate My Wallet tells the not quite finished story of her mother’s ordeal with a short sell.
Her son’s Rubik cube accomplishment has Maria at Money Principle rethinking her feelings on skills we need and the skills we have.  The truth is, many skills we have accidentally acquired are as useful as those we studiously developed.

Giveaways

The Prairie Eco-Thrifter Giveaway Extravaganza: 2nd Anniversary with an iPad 3 and over $200 Cash to be won plus a Bonus prize

Modest Money is giving away $75 in Paypal cash.

APcodes is giving away a $25 Amazon gift card.

Book give away for beach reading at Women’s Health Magazine

Carnivals

Carnival of Money Pros at Little Miss Moneybags

Finance Carnival for Young Adults at 20s Finances

Yakezie Carnival at Young Adult Finances

Carnival of Financial Camaraderie at My University Money

The Wealth Builder Carnival at My Wealth Builder

Stock Carnival Ecstasy at Fast Swings

photo credit:  skenner

Thanks for reading.  Let me know if you find something you think we should share here in our Follies, all nominations are welcome, but we only share the best here at the Friday Follies, at least we try…

Have a great weekend!

Dean and Cil!

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Mushroom Magic

May 24th, 2012

Growing Mushrooms At Home

Average Joe from the Free Financial Advisor has been bothering the hell out of me requesting I give you guys an update on my mushroom farming operation.

I’m sure he thinks I’m growing  magic mushrooms he and I heard about from our older friends who grew up in the sixties when LSD and magic ‘shrooms were a rite of passage.

I’m sorry to disappoint him, but the only trip I got from growing these mushrooms is a trip from my breakfast room, otherwise known as the ‘south 40′ where the indoor mushroom farm is located, to the stove.

The reason I have been a little slow in getting back to this subject is:

  • Growing mushrooms from scratch isn’t quite  as fast as growing Sea Monkeys…
  • Mushrooms are not plant ‘em and forget ‘em.
  • Drilling holes in a freshly sawed red oak stump and logs will burn out a 30 year old Black and Decker drill in a hurry.

To get you up to date with our efforts let’s start at the beginning.

I was fascinated about a story on TV about this company selling mushroom spores in a brown bag filled with recycled/reclaimed used coffee grounds. Add a little water and poof-mushrooms.  But they were a little pricey for a cheapskate mushroom lover.

If I had the time, I would be in the forest finding my own damn mushrooms.  Free-range mushrooms, if you will, just waiting on my walk-about under a canopy of verdant shade trees.  Finding your own can be a little dangerous if you don’t know your mushrooms but hey, life is dangerous….

So, instead of wandering about like Gandalf in search of the golden mushroom ring,  I did a little research and found two companies that sell home versions of  the do-it-yourself mushroom spores-without the added premium for the California green entrepreneur.  Mushroom Mountain and Fungi Perfecti.

Mushroom growing facts

When you’re dealing with mushrooms, you’re not buying ‘seeds’ from Burpee.  You’re buying mushroom spores.  For knowledgeable science folk,  you know spores are baby fungi, similar, but not the same as those that cause yeast infections.

{These are the thoughts you have to deal with when reading the ramblin’ writin’ of a gynecologist, sorry…}

Our (Cil and I) initial efforts at ‘shroom rearing began with the purchase of the type spores that have to be plugged into a freshly cut log or stump and can be grown in your own mushroom garden outside….And since we had just cut down a few oak trees-it was destiny.

Step one: burn up the drill on the logs.

Step two: Buy another drill, drill the 1/4 inch holes and hammer in your mushroom spore containing plugs.

Step three: cover the plugs with a small amount of wax.

Step four: wait, wait and wait some more….

We have several drilled  logs and are still waiting on them to burst forth with mushrooms.  The fine print on mushroom instructions, it may be another 3-6 months before we can start harvesting and eating those log/stump grown babies.

We also bought oyster and shiitake mushroom spores that produce results faster.  I am proud to announce we’ve had our first harvest and feast.

Freshly Harvested Oyster Mushrooms

We should’ve had our own version of the first Thanksgiving, but Pocahontas and Mr Smith couldn’t make it-plus turkey season is over.

I sauteed our spore spawn in olive oil with a little garlic.  We ate some on the side, and added others to a tomato sauce for spaghetti.

Yumm!  They were delicious, and we are still here to talk/write about it.  Sorry Joe, no trips taken, so far…

Our oyster and shiitake spores came implanted in a growth medium that had a strong resemblance to a 3 layer Italian Cream Cake, and a Chocolate Cake, respectively.

Mushroom Growing Cake

The mushroom ”cakes’ were  somewhat more caddywhompus than you would find on a  “from a real bakery” cake.  The cakes actually looked more like my past attempts at miming a pastry chef…Gordon Ramsey would’ve given me a pastry bag enema, cleaved me with a cleaver and sent me packing….but I digress.

We bought other spores that you mix with your own coffee grounds in a bucket, layering spores, with coffee grounds, with more spores, more coffee grounds…

We are  patiently waiting on that bucket to  fruit fun fungi.

Mushroom Farming Foray

What have I learned from my foray into growing fungi?

  • Do your homework and plan on patience.  Fine mushrooms are like fine wines, they aren’t made in a day.
  • Mushrooms, even the grow your own type, aren’t cheap. Since we haven’t weighed our harvest (too busy sauteing) I don’t know our per ounce cost, but I’m sure Wal Mart’s mushrooms are cheaper, but they don’t have quite the cachet of my home growns.  And they wouldn’t be worth a blog post either.
  • Make sure your drill and drill bits are in good shape before you tackle freshly cut red oak logs and stumps.
  • Read the directions, read the directions, read the directions.

I’m sure we would have had better and quicker results if we hadn’t forgotten to water them a few times.  Both companies had very helpful and accessible customer service people-a plus.

Oh, the wonders of science.

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Are You An Investing Scaredy Cat?

May 22nd, 2012

Risk Tolerance

Risk Taking Conundrums (I love that word.)

  • Does flying make  you nervous, but you don’t think a thing about driving your car across town?
  • Why do people buy lottery tickets but don’t invest money in a retirement account?
  • Why do we consistently follow the herd, piling into the market at the top and running away from the market at the bottom?

Social scientists, brain experts, and psychologists, as academics are wont’ to do, have studied these issues ad nauseum. (With our tax dollars paying their way).

Risk taker, is that you?

I’m not going to bore you with a litany of lingo on heuristic analysis.  Or an amazing analysis of the amygdala’s influence on fight and flight or our ability to use our neo-cortex to thoughtfully predict our ability to predict…

Nope, none’a that, as we say down heah…

I would like to enlighten you about our persistent inability to define risk in our lives accurately,  and our tendency to make poor financial decisions.  These poor decisions can keep us as poor as a church mouse, whatever that means….

Humans operate on a weird risk/reward wavelength. Let’s look at a few of the facts:

  • We all  know that Social Security is in big trouble and the younger generation readily admits it is unlikely to be there for them when they reach retirement age.  If these people  reacted to that information in a risk appropriate manner, they would be piling away money into retirement accounts.  Of course they are not.
  • Flying is much safer than driving.  Ever heard of driving anxiety?
  • General public participation in stock investing is always in an inverse relationship to the market’s success.  We tend to put more money to work and in riskier investments when the market is peaking and take that money out when the market is bottoming. The opposite of the behavior that makes one a successful investor.
  • When we’ve been successful at something, even if it was pure luck and not from any decision or effort we made, we tend to think we had an effect on the outcome.   In our hubris, even when we’re told for a fact we had nothing to do with the success, we continue to take more risks than justified.
  • Poor people spend a much greater portion of their income on lottery tickets than wealthy people.

All this is true, you may be thinking, but what the hell should I do about it?

What is our risk tolerance and what can we do about it?

Like many things, recognizing our problems and our limitations is the first step towards fixing them.

Because I have been an investor through bull and bear markets, and have thrown good money away during the tech bubble, the bank bubble, and the real estate bubble, I feel I’ve earned the ability to give you some practical advice when it comes to improving your risk taking.

Keep in mind, you may have a problem taking acceptable risks, or you may be a risk taking fool.  Putting all your savings on horse 12 at the Derby-not a good risk strategy,  just as keeping all your money under your mattress rather than investing it, is poor risk strategy.

  1. Quit picking on the weatherman.   Meteorological predictions have improved immensely in the last twenty years.  Considering the vagaries of mother nature, they do a remarkable job.  If we picked stocks as well as tomorrows weather is predicted, we would be wealthy indeed.
  2. Remember, our tendency is to feel that when our hands are on the wheel we have a better chance, known as the illusion of control. Even when that’s stupid.  Like thinking you can pick stocks better than the experts who spend their lifetime studying investing and research techniques.  If you must invest in individual stocks, do so with only a small portion of your investments/net worth and label it SPECULATION.
  3. When we are excited about investing and our friends and neighbors and hairdressers are asking investment questions-it may be time to become more conservative in our investments.
  4. When we think the market will never be a place to invest money, and we would be crazy to even think about it, we need to think about it. We should tell that portion of our brain (the lizard brain-that amygdala thing) to shut up, and start increasing our risk tolerance.  Not following the herd is difficult, even for investment professionals. If we want to be successful, we have to practice that art.
  5. Keep score-Research shows that those who keep score in their decision making, improve.  Amazing, huh?  So when you make investment choices, keep up with your results.    Your stock or mutual fund grew 10% this year, and the stock market as a whole grew 5%.  You beat the market.  It doesn’t mean that you’re Warren Buffett, but keeping score will make you a better investor.

Reader questions:

Do you have risk figured out juuusst right, just like Goldilocks? Or do you take too many chances, or not enough?

{photo credit: miamism c.c.}

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Best In Nurse Blogs: Teamwork Works Edition!

May 20th, 2012

The latest edition of the Best In Nurse Blogs-my bi-weekly focus on the best writing by, for, or about Nurses!

Best In Nurse Blogs:

A company I do consulting work for, combines a once a year training exercise with a marketing component.

The training involves employees, contractors, and sub-contractors from all walks of life.  An attorney, or accountant might be working with a caterer, electrician or plumber  Nobody wore a shirt that said, “I’m more important than you.”

Teamwork!

If you looked like you needed a hand with something, someone volunteered to help-usually more than one.  Much of the work was physical, in the heat and humidity you can only get in the deep south.

Cil and I trained half the group on First Aid, CPR with AED use this year and will get the other half next year.  It was amazing, and I’m not given to hyperbole, how focused everyone was on learning and asking questions, with gentle jabs at one another to belay the stress.

On the final day, potential customers toured the venue, saw what had been accomplished and left impressed with what can be done in just a short time when everyone works together.

People call going to their jobs ‘work’ and that word has a negative connotation for many.

Though the folks involved here put in a lot of effort, physical and mental, nobody seemed to be ‘working’.  They were enjoying each others company while at the same time building great things.  It’s a sight to see when  it happens.  I wish more organizations were like this.

High expectations, high rewards all for a common goal-serving others- their customers.

Let’s get started with

The Best Nursing Blogs

Toronto Emerg has a monkey video that is different from all monkey videos.  Hint, don’t expect toilet humor, it’s not that kinda’ video…

Bittersweet memories of leaving a home where you raised your kids, is Nancy’s topic at In The Shadow Of The Steeple.

The Yoga Nurse discusses preserving the safety and sanity of the health care team with Dr. Mary Foley, former President of the American Nursing Association (ANA).

Protecting your online reputation is the subject at The Nerdy Nurse.  Hmmm, do I have one???

Lorry at Correctional Nurse gives tips on “looking out for the con!”  All of us in health care are faced with those using lies, fake symptoms, and manipulation for their personal gain.  So check it out.

A Nurse’s Story, by  Carol Gino is reviewed by Keith at Digital Doorway in honor of Nurses Week.  He finds the book amazingly relevant even today.

New products from INS 2012  (the Infusion Nurse Society) are reviewed by Cora at Infusion Nurse.  I wonder if she went to the Heart Attack Cafe in Las Vegas? (probably not..)

Innovative Nurse has a great infographic on the picture of healthcare. 

Cheerleading is going on at Nursetopia.  We need a little get-up-and-go sometimes, don’t we!

Kangaroos and grenades sprinkle the real life drama of Ian’s career down under at Impacted Nurse.  Who needs TV dramas, he asks?

Don’t forget the basics, reminds Crass-Pollination.  A simple blood sugar screen can solve a lot of problems if we would remember to do ‘em.

Not Nurse Ratched is pleased by a little thing. Maybe she’ll continue to get lucky!

Nurse Kitty has a ravioli al fresco recipe that sounds delicious.

Thanks for taking a few minutes and visiting and commenting at these great nurse blogs.  They are all worthy of a few moments of your precious time.

Have a great week.

Dean and Cil

{photo credit: jongosier c.c.}

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