JITB, Coke, Electricians and Taxes . . .
JITB and CokeSo I'll just get this out of the way . . . I went to JITB for breakfast this morning and I had a coke. So my initial goal was to drink fewer than 5 cokes per month with the first month being entirely coke free. So I made February entirely coke free and now that it's March, I had a coke with my breakfast this morning. And to be honest, it wasn't nearly as satisfying as I had thought it would be. So they say 21 days to make a habit right? So for 28 days I drank water instead of Coke, I'm hoping that's now the habit and the Coke was just an indulgence. As for breakfast, I paid for it. The damn breakfast sandwich leaked grease all over my shirt, so I had to go home and change. I had a lot to do this morning, so JITB seemed more convenient. I needed to run some cable out to the electricians wiring my house, then I had to be in Lakewood to get the furnace and dishwasher serviced on one of my client's homes and finally I had to be BACK out in Puyallup to make sure my electricians and siders had some good lunch today. I stopped by Papa John's and had a few pizzas delivered to them. They're doing a GREAT job.
Electricians
So yesterday the electricians started wiring our new home. I met one of the owners of the company, Dave and we walked through the home and he asked me a ton of questions. I'm totally stoked that he did because now I have 100% confidence that everything that I asked for in my upgrades addendum will be done. We walked the whole house and went through everything. It's gonna be so cool! While we were talking about the Surround wiring in the Family room, I just asked if I brought my own cable, would he run that instead of what they normally run? He was totally OK with it, so I went to Magnolia Audio/Video and got 100 feet of good speaker cable. For the whole house audio wiring, it's not really a big deal, but if I ever do end up using the wiring they install for the surround sound, I wanted to make sure it was some quality cable. I honestly doubt I can hear the difference between different grades of cable, but just in case I can . . . I may see if I can con the electricians into adding a couple extra outlets in the garage too . . . :-) They never put enough outlets in the garage.
Taxes
So I got my taxes done this week. Ouch. Even after paying my estimated quarterly taxes like a good boy last year, I still have a HUGE tax liability . . . fortunately someone VERY wise in the Real Estate business told me early on to put 30% aside for taxes out of every commission check I get and NEVER touch it. I did a VERY good job with that last year, so fortunately the money I have in my tax account will cover my tax liability and allow me to finally set up my SEP this year and throw some funds in there as well. I was hoping I could do both of those things AND have some $$ left over to put down on my home, but that won't happen. But I'm still OK. The stress of getting my taxes done is finally over though. So I don't have to stress over that now. That'll help me out a bit and REALLY motivate me to get going on finding some new clients to work with. I hate not having very much money as a cushion in my tax account.
Misc Stuff
So as I mentioned they are wiring the home now . . . AND the siders are well on their way to having the home completely sided. So that will really seal off the home. All the windows are in now, the whole home is wrapped and mostly sided. The electricians should be done by Thursday or Friday and the siders will finish up on Saturday. So looks like we're a go for having the house insulated next week. Cool. It's neat to walk into the home after it's been insulated. It's so quiet. You get a REALLY good idea of how quiet it will be in the home after you move in. Of course until the sheetrock is installed, they can't insulate the attic so it's still not as quiet as it will be. The sheetrock and carpet add a lot to the sound dampening too.
I'm just about done with Puget Sound Safety's website. Just have a couple little items to fix for them and then send them the bill. That will mostly pay for the upgrades I've done in the home. Between that and Toscanos website, I'll have them covered. Speaking of websites, it looks like my professional website, Hurlbuthomes.com, will be getting a bit of a makeover too. See, I had a professional marketing company make some letterhead, etc. for me and I REALLY like the design they came up with. So I'll be taking that design and applying it to my website so everything is all visually the same. AND speaking of MY website, I'm starting to get a lot more traffic to the site, and actually getting some quality leads from it as well. I have a few forms on my site that allow people to schedule appointments with me, set up a home search for them, or mail them a relocation kit if they're moving from out of state. I'm getting 1 - 2 leads a week from my site. So that's cool to know it's finally doing some work for me. I won't consider it a total success until I actually convert one of those leads to a client however. But I'm getting there I think.
My Blog
So last night I added a component to my blog that will allow folks to again comment on my blog posts. Just click the comments link below each post. I had originally disabled commenting because I was getting a lot of comment spam. So now there is a Captcha field that you have to fill in to get your comment posted. So hopefully this will disuade the comment spam bots from infiltrating my comments section now. So comment away!
OK, I gotta go grab some water and have some yummy lunch brought in. :-) Have a great day everyone!