Don't go lighting your cigars with $20 bills just yet

This morning while making my rounds I saw this on the front window of a Domino's Pizza store:

How can they pay "UP TO" $15 an hour "OR MORE"?  Which one is it?  I think I'd go for the "MORE".

The official US unemployment rate recently dropped to 3.9%, the lowest since the Pilgrims beached their boat in Massachusetts, before it was Massachusetts.  Historically the stats people say 4% is considered "full employment"....anyone who doesn't have a job now just doesn't want to work.

Here in my area of the northern DFW Metroplex (Plano, Frisco, McKinney, etc) they say the unemployment rate is somewhere down in the 2% range.  Pizza delivery drivers can get $15 an hour, and McDonald's is begging for help, even offering starting pay of $12+.

Yesterday I was talking with my steel fabrication vendor and he said it was just he and his son....they can't hire and keep help, and they pay very well!  My electrician has been trying to hire for 2 years with no luck.  Construction material prices are continuing to climb.  We try to buy 300 yards of concrete and can't get anyone's attention at the concrete plant....they're shipping tens of thousands of yards daily to commercial construction sites.  We're small fry!  Any materials with a petroleum base have gone up dramatically along with the recent increase in crude prices.  Talk of import tariffs isn't helping, either.

It wasn't long ago that the cost of living in my area was below the national average.  Now, according to one report I saw recently, the CoL in my immediate area has surpassed the national average.  Property tax bills are hitting homeowners hard after a few years in the doldrums.  Standard and Poor's Case Shiller home price index actually says our area's home prices today are OVER valued.

Where am I going with this?  "Make hay while the sun shines" as they say, but be cautious.  Make all you can while you can, as these good times will eventually go flat just as other overheated good times have in the past.  Just recognize where we are in the economic cycle and don't let yourself think this is the "new normal".  Remember what happened to those who got fat and sassy back in the run-up to 2008?

Let's all enjoy our good fortune today and be grateful, but not let it go to our head.  Been there, done that.

S

Rough week ahead

I am NOT looking forward to this week.  Bro has to go to a wedding (in-law side of his family) in Michigan and is driving there with two other couples.  I've been recycled as CEO / head flunkie again, this time for 6 days.  Ugh!

I can feel summer a-knocking.  For several days our temps have topped out in the nineties.....probably the first of about 150 this year.  It's 7am as I write this and I can already hear the lawn guys out mowing.  It's times like this I remember why I'm a happy renter.  Also, K found a leak under our kitchen sink.  I fixed it.  Didn't even break a sweat.  (I fired off an email to maintenance :)

Building Crane....the official bird of Dallas

Two more of these things have gone up near where I live.  This one is about 1/2 mile SW.  I'm told it's to be an 8 story office building, all pre-leased to an insurance company.  The other is about a mile S.  Plus the news reported local pre-owned house prices are up over 10% from last year.  Listen....can you hear it?  *inflation*

More drivel later.  Gotta go.  Have a good day everyone.

S

My downsizing saga, Pt. 1

I've been a custom home builder for nearly 40 years.  Inflation, zoning laws, and buyer's tastes being what they are, most of the homes I build today are very large and cost well over $1M (just the kitchen appliances cost more than my first home) and look something like this:

(Sorry for the small photos.  Any larger and they lost sharpness.)

Maybe that's why big swanky houses hold no special allure for me....I see them every day.  *yawn*  For myself I built a more modest-sized home....3,147 sq feet, two-story, corner lot, study, 24' x 36' Great Room, etc.  (I know...what was I thinking?)  When I met K and first brought her to my home her jaw hit the floor when she walked in.  To me it was just run-of-the-mill, but to her it was "a mansion".  She loved it at the same time I was tiring of it.  That was in 2006.  By 2007 the economic outlook was getting scary.  By 2008 it was obvious to me it would be "man-the-lifeboat" time very soon.  I could see a little pro-active strategic planning was in order.

In retrospect I'm the last person who should own a home.  I HATE yard work, but with a next-door neighbor who was Mr. Yard-of-the-Month I had to put forth at least some effort.  To me a yard is just a place for the dog to crap.  I don't entertain much at home, and never have any overnight company. 

I DETEST doing maintenance of any kind, but of course I do it (grudgingly)....I want things to look good and work right.  I flip the switch and expect things to come on.  Unfortunately things don't always work like that and my home was by then at the age where maintenance / repair was becoming a regular occurrence.

My kids were long since grown, educated, married, and on someone else's payroll.  I had bedrooms....an entire upstairs even, unused.  When is a 24 x 36 foot Great Room too big?  When you have to wave your arms and yell to get your mate's attention.  And besides, when you're in bed asleep you can't tell if your bedroom is 13 x 13 or 23 x 23.  The thought of paying for all that unused space, and paying taxes on it, and insurance, and utilities, etc, was really bugging me.

I knew it was going to break my new bride's heart to give up her "mansion", but she deferred to me (thank you Sweetie!) and let me put it on the market.  My timing was fortunate....values were still up there and financing hadn't yet seized up.  We sold it before the economy "hit the fan" and did well.

Since K had been driving 50 miles round trip in heavy traffic daily to work I told her we'd rent a 2 bed, 2 bath apartment somewhere closer to her work for a while and we could address another, smaller home later.  My plan was moving forward.  

That's where I'll leave the story for now.  Part 2 tomorrow.

S