Saturday, March 15, 2014

That's my story and I'm stickin' with it!

I get razzed a lot for my rather pathetic attempt at retirement.  I work a while, then I coast a while, then rinse and repeat.  Here's why I can't / don't just hang it up completely:

First, K is still working (did I mention she just got a BIG promotion / raise?), so we can't just hop in the car and drive off for weeks or months at a time.

Second, while I did officially retire a year and a half ago....I resigned as company president and turned it all over to my brother....he does still need help in one important area.  For all those years I handled the operations (actual construction) while bro handled the "office administration", and there is a ton of office administration.  The paperwork burden just keeps growing and growing!


My brother's weakness is his lack of deep understanding of the structural aspects of building.  I'm talking about the foundation, framing, installation of mechanicals, etc, and understanding the building codes.  

When we have a home just beginning construction I come out of hibernation and handle things up through getting inspections.  After that it's pretty much cosmetic....picking paint and stain colors, marble, granite, fixtures, etc.  Bro is great at working with customers on all that.  That's when I can take a step back and coast.



While I no longer have any day-to-day responsibility, I still own half the company and derive income from it, so of course I want to see it succeed.  We're too small a company to hire someone else full-time to do what I did.  It's a nicely profitable business if you watch your overhead, but another split of the $$$ won't work, so.....

And finally, I actually like building homes.  I enjoy watching things progress day-to-day all the way to completion.  I like driving through a neighborhood we built in 5 or 10 years ago and saying to myself, "We built that one, and that one, and that one...".   And when one of those old customers comes back and asks us to build them another, it's hard to say no to a friend.


If I can just steer clear of all the #$^& paperwork, I rather enjoy the work / retire rotation.  We'll see how long it stays fun.  :)

S



6 comments:

  1. Looks like you have the best of both worlds.

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  2. So long as it's fun and profitable I see no reason for you to stop. I only wish I was in the market for a house because your homes look incredible.

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  3. I bet a lot of retirees wish they could be so lucky. Ha, I bet a lot of working people wish the same thing!

    Congrats to you for being able to pull it off.

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  4. Bill said exactly what I was gonna say. So I won't.

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  5. oh those beams....I never get tired of looking at those :)

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