Aspen Dental and Poor Choices

 Finding a good Dentist is important.

On MSNBC today, this story about how poor people are overcharged by Aspen Dental.   People are outraged by this, but the problem is, there is no problem.   Aspen Dental has done nothing illegal.    They just charge high prices for their services, and in America, that is not against the law.  If it were, well, half of America would be in jail, starting with all the Lawyers.

It is incumbent on you, the consumer, today more than ever, to shop around on price.  And the variation in prices can be dramatic, particularly if you are unsophisticated.  And by dramatic, I mean a factor of 10 or more, in many cases.

People pay thousands of dollars over list price for a car by leasing it - and pay enormous interest rates as well.   And often, they don't even realize they did it - as they concentrated only on monthly payment, and not the actual sales price.  And yes, a lease is a sale.   And even when they buy a car, they often overpay, not realizing that the actual price was hidden in some document that the salesman glossed over during the closing.  Monthly payment is all they know.  They go to a dealer and foolishly say, "I want to pay this much per month for my car" and the salesmen then tries to sell them the least amount of car for that money.

In one blog on Edmunds, a fellow went to work for a car dealer selling cars, and confronted this situation.  He and another salesman had a problem.  No matter how they padded the price of the car, they could not make it expensive enough to meet the lady's stated monthly price.  No problem - they told her that the manager was willing to throw in the "Platinum Service Plan" for free!   No such plan existed, but it added another $1000 to the price.

And no doubt, she went home and told her friends that she told the salesman how much she was going to pay! and moreover, got the "Platinum Service Plan" for FREE!  Which of course made her happy, as like most Americans, she is deathly afraid of car repairs.

I wrote before about Dentists, and how it is indeed possible to find an honest one who doesn't charge much.  He is not the guy with the fancy office, the ads on the radio and the "free examinations!"

It is not hard to do, really.  You just have to move beyond the consumerist mindset that anything "good" has to be a chain with a slick sign and a clever ad campaign.   Usually that sort of stuff sucks - whether it is a chain restaurant, or a chain or oil change places, or a chain of dentists.

Should we feel sorry for the people in the MSNBC story?   Maybe.   No one put a gun to their head and said "borrow all this money so we can fix your teeth".   No one made them do it.   They could have done some research online first.   Hint:  Type in the name of the business and the words "sucks, scam, rip-off" or whatever and see what you get.   Ignore the mindless cheer-leading posts - those are trolls.   Look for patterns.

Part of the problem with professionals and creeping expertism ("Leave it to the Experts!) is that people just shed all responsibility and throw judgement out the door.   And it is not hard to do, when you are laid back in that dental chair, and the man in the white coat with the diplomas on the walls tells you that you need tons of dental work.   After all, he knows and you don't know squat, right?

Well, you can get a second opinion.

It is like when you sit in the Doctor's office and the doc says "bad news, you have prostate cancer" and that you will have to have expensive surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy.  All you hear is the word "cancer" and assume your life is ending - and will do anything to avoid that, even let them cut your balls off.   But some doctors are now saying that maybe this PSA test thing is overblown - and that a lot of men are having unnecessary surgery.

The same is true for colonoscopies.   Many are wondering whether they need to be so frequent.  They are profitable for the doctors, who often own the imaging centers that do them.   But in some cases, perhaps they are overkill.   I have a friend whose 85-year-old grandmother, who was very frail, was told she needed to have one - even though she was otherwise in normal health for a woman her age.  The problem is, ramming a thing up someone's ass at that age, risks tearing the colon and causing all sorts of problems - peritonitis and death, for example.  Better off to leave well enough alone.

Or take my vet.  He wants my dog to have a heartworm blood test.  The risk of heartworm among dogs on the medication is essentially zero, so what is the point of the test?    And here's the kicker:  Even if the dog had heartworms, there is not much than can be done to treat a 10-year-old dog, other than to give it a baby asprin and make it comfortable.   The treatment is so toxic, it risks killing even younger dogs, and damaging internal organs (they basically pump poison into the dog).   And older dog?  it would kill them. 

So what is the point of the test again?

It is OK to ask questions like this and to consider alternatives - including no treatment at all.  And it is OK to shop around on price - you may find that prices, far from being "consistent" are all over the map and may vary by a factor of 10 or more.

For example, until recently, I used MAXEMAIL for receiving and sending faxes via computer.  I could send them online and receive them as PDF files.   Total cost?  $14 a year.   A competing service, eFax, advertises heavily (or did) online, and charged about $14 a month.  That is a price difference of 12X and a lot of money!  Of course, faxing is pretty dead now, but this illustrates the point - people charge what the market will bear, and it is up to the consumer to research prices before buying - even on dental work.

As I noted in Knowing When To Walk Away there are a host of service and product providers out there who charge what they think they can get away with - not what their actual costs are, plus a "reasonable profit margin".  And it is not hard to spot them, as they usually ask about how much money you have, first (by asking where you work and other oblique questions) and then set their price accordingly.

And I saw this at the "fancy dentist" we went to briefly - she listed about $10,000 in dental work I could have had done, including breaking my jaw, on the premise that my insurance would pay for it.   When I told her I had no dental insurance, the "need" for these treatments evaporated.

So you can pick on Aspen Dental all you want - they are just doing what a lot of people do, and it ain't illegal.

And the poor often succumb to these poor bargains, which is why they are poor!   They get payday loans, rent-to-own furniture, title pawn loans, buy-here-pay-here used cars, and whatever other shitty bargains that are presented to them.   They pay twice as much for groceries in convenience stores and bodegas.  They pay twice as much for liquor at their bars-on-the-windows liquor stores.

Yea it is a shitty deal for the poor.  But they don't have to take it, do they?

That is the upside here.  You have choices.   And you can choose to make better choices.

Even middle-class people are making poor choices these days - which is why the middle-class is evaporating.   Falling down the economic ladder, one leased car and one smartphone at a time.  And rather than trying to make better choices, most of them spend all their time justifying, using tortured logic, why their poor choices were, in fact, good ones.  "I need a new car!" they cry, "My old one is so unreliable!"

So, no, I guess I don't feel sorry for people who do dumb things.  Why?  Because no one feels sorry for me, when I make poor choices, do they?

So choose wisely.   And often the best and easiest choice is to leave your money in the bank.   Or at the very least, research the snot out of anything, before you plunk down hundreds or thousands of dollars on something.

Cell Phone Batteries

Replacement cell phone batteries cost only a few dollars, including shipping.  They are easy to replace.  Unless, of course, you have an iPhone.

My old cell phone is horrifically obsolete.   But all I used it for is the occasional mobile phone call, or for that dreaded "calling a tow truck on a rainy night" bit.  Funny thing, though, even though I drive decade-old cars, I haven't needed a tow truck in over 20 years - except when I was in a wreck, and even then the Police called the tow truck, not me.

Oh yea, I forgot to repeat the media mantra, touted by the Car Salesmen of America.   Anything less than a brand-freaking-new car is unreliable and might leave you stranded somewhere.   I promise to utter no more heresy in this regard!

But it is handy to have a cell phone, as pay phones are nonexistent.   And for $100 a year, you can sign up for 1000 minutes of AT&T GoPhone, which has saved me about $800 to $1000 a year, so far, and I am still not even using my 1000 minutes, which by the way, do roll over when you renew.

Most cell phones are technologically obsolete - or hopelessly out of style - long before they physically wear out.  And of course, the phone companies would prefer that you "upgrade" to a new phone and sign up for three more years of a "plan" in order to get a "free phone" - which of course, isn't free.  Overall cost?  $2000 to $3000.   My cost?  $200 to $300.  I'll stick with my "plan" thank you.

But, after a while, even if you like your old phone, the battery will take less and less of a charge - and eventually your battery life will be reduced to hours, then minutes, then nothing.  What do you do?

If you go to the helpful and friendly cell phone store, they will tell you (with a straight face) that "they no longer make batteries for this phone" - which of course, is not true.

You can find batteries for most cell phones, online, on Amazon or other sites, usually for less than $5 including shipping.   I just bought one for an old Samsung phone, and it was $3.40 including shipping.  for my Motorola, it was about $4.50.

Just pop the cover, remove the old battery, put the new on in, charge it up, and the phone will stay active for days at a time now.

How do you know which battery to buy?  Type the battery model number in the Google Search box (or the Amazon search box).  Chances are, it will pull up the correct battery.  The battery model number is on the the battery itself (model number, not Serial Number!).   If the listing that comes up mentions what model phone it fits, confirm this with your phone model number (phone model number is usually in the battery compartment, underneath the battery.  And of course, they usually have a photo that you can look at to compare with your existing battery.  Double-check the model numbers to be sure, before ordering.  I have used Amazon, and they seem to have a wide selection at very low prices.

If you old battery is going bad, you may notice that the case "puffs up" a bit and is not flat anymore.  That is a sure sign it is going dead.   Over-charging the battery may be one problem.  I use a docking station for my cell phone, and I think it tends to over-charge the battery.  But even then, the battery lasts about three years - a lifetime in the cell phone business.

If the battery puffs up enough, it may bend the cover slightly, and the new battery may rattle around in there and not make consistent contact.  I fixed this by folding a business card and putting it between the case cover and battery, to force it against the contacts.  Problem solved.

Many modern phones, particularly Apple iPhones, do not have replaceable batteries.   The battery can be replaced, if you mail it off to Apple or take it to an Apple store and "let the experts fix it!" - for a pretty hefty price (far more than $3.40, to be sure).

Again, this is literally the "sealed box" approach of Apple, and it is appealing to people who buy new electronics all the time (and thus squander their Estate) to be trendy.  They have no abilities or skills of their own, and thus prefer to "leave it to the experts!" for everything.  Replacing the battery on a cell phone would no doubt scare them, as would screwing in a light bulb ("Let's see, is it 'left-loosey, righty-tighty,' or the other way around?  I forget!").

It is one approach to life - but an expensive one.   It would be like owning a car with the hood welded shut, and a small sticker that said, "No user-serviceable parts inside.  Refer servicing to authorized service personnel".

And unfortunately, cars are getting to be this way, more and more.

But, if you have a non-Apple phone - one that is not a "sealed box" - you can keep using it as long as it keeps working.  And when the battery gets lame, over time, for less than the cost of a designer coffee, you can just replace it.

How simple is that?

Why Talent Matters

Today in America, most people think of "talent" as singing and dancing.   While these are great talents, not everyone has them.   It is important to nurture and develop your own talents.  Plural!

Everyone has talents - or the potential to develop them.   Few people do these days.  We are a nation of talentless and clueless people.   A vast army of ignorance who does little more than consume media and goods and go into debt.   And perhaps the powers-that-be prefer it this way - that we have no talents or skills.   After all, a dependent population is a malleable one.   And the fight for control of our country is a fight for control of the world, essentially.  It is worth it for them to destroy us, to gain the ultimate prize.

Self-empowerment is the path to wealth.   And by this, I don't mean going to a seminar where they make you chant slogans and give you all sorts of happy-talk about how great you are.   No, learning how to actually do things, is the key to getting ahead in life.

Sadly, our educational system is falling down in this regard.   Folks on the Right want to dumb-down our schools into Readin', Writin', and 'Rithmatic (but apparently not spelling) and of course, Football.   Anything not related to passing standardized tests is thrown out the window.   Art?  Gone.  Music?  Gone.  Vocational training?  Gone.   Got to pass those standardized tests so the school can get more money and the teachers can get their incentive pay!

And because teachers demand so much pay (and so much in pensions - it is crazy!) the school has to make cuts, because the taxpayers can't take any more property tax increases.  So we ration education to the bare essentials these days - in many schools - and anything not in the core curriculum is cut out entirely.

There are a whole host of talents that people can have that are of use to society, that, if not nourished, will wither and die.   And yes, there are people who are have low reading scores but can sight-read music.   Maybe what we need to do is develop people's talents rather than try to force them into a standardized test routine.

How do you know what your talents are?  Well, at first, you don't.   And that is why a good school should expose you to all sorts of different stimuli.   Today, we have these "focus schools" where some students go to one place for Math and Science, and another where people go for Art, and yet another where people learn to act and sing.   And they even have Gay high schools now, although I am not sure that is a talent, per se.

I tried everything when I was a kid - well, everything they allowed me to try.   Even back then, vocational training was specialized and off-campus.   The Vo-tech kids took a special bus to a remote learning center and were segregated from the rest of the school.   If you wanted to learn how to rebuild a car engine and study Calculus, that was not in the product mix.

Private schools were no better.  While I did take four years of French (and can successfully mangle that language, as well as Spanish), the private school I went to (briefly) had separate "tracks" for A, B, and C-level students.   If I wanted to take A-level math, I had to take A-level French.    I did well in math, sucked in French.   So they switched me to the C-level French, and I was bored to death in math class.

They did have a great art department (as did my public school) and I learned to sculpt and made a lost-wax casting statue of the art teacher's cat (full size!) that came out pretty good.   Perhaps I was interested more in the process than the art aspect of it.  But I also learned to sketch and draw pretty well- which served me well down the road.

One of the best courses I took in high school was typing (can't you tell?) and I took it only because I wanted to program the school's time-shared computer, and needed something more than hunt-and-peck.   Sadly, many Engineers I meet still cannot type.  It is not hard to learn - you just have to take the course.  That course has served me well in this era of the vanishing Secretary.   I highly recommend it.  Even in this era of tweeting and texting, writers are still in high demand.  And you want to be a successful Engineer or Lawyer, you have to know how to type - and write.

Yes, writing - a skill serves anyone well.   And yet, so few know how to do it.   Our schools today concentrate so much on reading level, but not on writing so much.   It wasn't until college, when I took a course in technical writing that I learned how to write reports and other documents - clearly and directly.  Our teacher gave us some great advice on very practical things - the use of white space for example, and how to use short, concise paragraphs to get a point across.

I also took two semesters of drafting in High School - with a pencil, not a CAD system, which had yet to be invented.  This served me well at both GM and Carrier, where I worked behind a drafting table, designing plant layouts at the former, and circuits at the latter (all before the tender age of 23).

I even studied music - trying to lean the Cello, and even taking piano lessons.   What I learned was, while I liked music, I did not have the innate talent needed to become really good at playing music.   But you don't know unless you try.

And I learned how to fix cars - particularly how to patch together old ones - by owning a series of $50 and $100 cars that were nightmares of rust and broken parts.   It was a hard way to learn, to be sure.  But it was also a way to make inexpensive mistakes, too.   But I do like working with my hands.

Of course, things like Calculus, Physics, and the like I did well in.   Other subjects, I did middling well in.  But I learned what I was good at and not good at.

So I learned to write, and I was good at programming computers, science, math, drawing and drafting and fixing things.  In retrospect, it seems I was being groomed to become a Patent Attorney.

But having talents goes beyond your "job" in life.   You can have hobbies as well as other talents that can save you money, enhance the quality of your life, and well, basically make life worthwhile.

We recently built a pottery studio in our back yard.   A good friend was a contractor, and he drew up all the plans and supervised the basic framing and shell.   I did the inside, as he hates to do sheet-rocking work (I sheetrocked his studio in return, he makes stained glass).  But I've framed up walls before, installed windows, plumbing, wiring, you-name-it.  It isn't hard to do - if you are willing to learn.   But learning is, of course painful.

I received an interesting comment from a reader, to the effect of, "How did you learn to do this?" which struck me as odd.   I mean, if you live long enough, you learn how to frame up a wall, if, by nothing else, watching enough home improvement shows (or reading a few books).

Today, people are helpless about so many things.   Few can fix their own cars (and by this, I don't mean half-assed attempts by 20-somethings to bolt-on "mods"), fix their own houses, or fix their own computers.

Hell, most people can't even fix themselves a meal!   Or even a drink - other than a can of beer.

It is sad, but we are turning into a talentless society.   I see kids all the time today with no real interests in life and no sure what they want to do.   You ask them and they say, "Gee, I dunno, I'm not sure."

Why is this?  I think they are not being challenged enough.  Given a core curriculum of test-passing skills, they are not inspired, unless their talents lie within those narrow fields - or football.  So they lurch off to college to study, well,  what they are not sure.    Something that falls within those test-taking skills areas, which really do not lead directly to a job.

And yet, they likely have skills - skills that I don't have.   Maybe they can play an instrument - or could, if the music program at their school wasn't cancelled.  Or maybe they are an artist.  Or maybe they have language skills - and can speak more than one language.  Or maybe they can write.  Or arrange flowers.  Or bake a cake.  Or rebuild an engine.  Or weld metal.

Some are lucky in that they find these talents later in life, usually through work.   Others are not so lucky.   They never nurture or develop their own talents, instead taking an "office job" pushing paper or pushing buttons on a computer all day long, and then hiring someone to do everything else in their life, including raising their kids, cleaning the house, mowing their lawn, and even cooking their food.  I feel sorry for them - they are hardly living.

And part of this, too, I think is fear of failure.   People chuck anything that they can't be expert at.   If you can't be a rock star, just give up.   It is OK to be mediocre in some things.  In fact, it is far better to be an amateur at something than to just give up entirely.  And it seems to day, in this creeping world of expertism, that people feel they have to be at the top of a game, or not play at all.  And that is sad.

We used to be a nation of do-it-yourselfers.   Today, the mantra is to "leave it to the experts!" - the expert being someone trained, like a chimp, in some narrow field of endeavor to the exclusion of all else in their lives.

And often it seems, people prefer it this way.   They don't want to even try at anything, for fear of failure or to end up looking stupid.  Or they convince themselves they are "too good for that sort of thing" - which is really odd, when they end up basically unemployed or working at minimum-wage jobs.

I told a young person once that typing was  good class to take in high school, as being able to keyboard is essential to writing - and that to get ahead in this world, you have to be able to write.   Her response?  "I don't want to be no damned secretary!"    In her mind, the only people who typed were secretaries, and that was that.   Of course, today, there are very few secretaries anymore.   The era of the Dictaphone is quickly vanishing.   And a Lawyer who cannot type is not seen as an asset, unless he is particularly brilliant.  And the young lady who was "too good" to learn how to type?   Working at a minimum-wage job in a restaurant at age 30.   Glad she didn't fall into that secretary trap!

Or the young man who says that learning to weld is beneath him (I can, can you?).  He goes off to four-year college and gets indifferent grades in indifferent studies, and is working crap jobs and paying off a mountain of student loan debt.   Meanwhile, in the paper are jobs for people who have skills - skills he doesn't have, because he was too good to learn them.   People whine about being unemployed, but they are hiring truck drivers all day long.   You need a CDL - Commercial Driver's License  - and a clean driving record.   These are not too hard to get.   But again, if you asked an "OWS" protester, who complains there are "not enough jobs" he would spit at you if you suggested such a thing.  After all, he is too good for that.

The point is, you never know what skills you will need in life, and acquiring as many as possible is essential to getting ahead.   You never know where one aspect of your training, which may seem pointless or inapplicable, will come in handy later on.   It is like acquiring a diverse set of good tools.  Granted, maybe you use the hammer 90% of the time.  But you really can't do much if your only tool is a hammer.   You have to have other tools in your toolbox - particularly in this day and age where jobs are obsolete in a heartbeat.

Developing only one talent, to the exclusion of all others, is never a good idea - it may turn out there is no demand for that talent.  Moreover, you really don't know what will interest you, or what you are really good at, until you try a few things.  Nurturing your talents is essential to really enjoying life and getting ahead in life.

And it is never too late to start!

Would I Invest in Real Estate Today?

Would I invest in Real Estate today?  Well, I'm not jumping in just yet.

UPDATE:  I revised this analysis as I realized I miscalculated the rental income by cutting it in half ($6,000 a side, seasonally, as opposed to $3000 a side).  At this rate, it may be more of a favorable deal, but with the rehabilitation costs, likely still a negative cash-flow proposition.  Since I wrote this piece the owner has taken the home off the market and is renting it for $700 a side, full time.  No imagination!  At those rental rates, the property is worth even less.

I made a lot of money in Real Estate.  But that was back when it was cheap and rents were high and it was a real no-brainer.  Are we getting back to this era again?  Maybe.  It depends on your location.

Renting in Northern Virginia to Government employees was a real no-brainer.  They had steady paychecks, high educational levels, and were good tenants.   Where I live today is a different deal.  The properties in Brunswick, Georgia can best be described as "distressed" and if it isn't section-8 tenants, it is good 'ole boys who think it is a patriotic duty to stiff a Yankee for the rent.

Not with a ten-foot pole, thank you.

But I did have good luck renting condos in Florida seasonally and I think there are opportunities here, at the right prices.

The problem is, there are two local Real Estate agencies on the island, and both suffer from poverty of the spirit as they see only what was and not what can be.   So, for example, the above duplex languishes on the market for $239,000.  It is not in a great neighborhood, as many of the duplexes are owned by the Real Estate agencies, and they rent them out, full-time, for $700 a month or so.

Guess what sort of tenants you get for $700 a month.  Yea.

On the other hand, Canadians and snow birds would pay $1500 a month to rent from December through April, and be a lot less wear and tear on the property.  In the remaining months, you could get $300 to $400 a week to rent the place to vacationers.  Even $200 a week beats the snot out of $700 a month.  But then again, these same agencies don't want competition with their own listings, so maybe that is why they keep these units as full-time rentals.

But let's do the math on this.   Could this unit be bought, fixed up and rented out for a profit?  To begin with, I would not use the island agencies to rent it out.  Not only do they demand too much money to do this, you would be competing with their own properties.   Where is their incentive to push your property?   And as one homeowner told me, they tend to under-rent places, not realizing that winter folks will pay more, for a shorter stay.

We had great luck with VRBO in renting to Canadians.  And I would use this to rent directly myself, cutting out the middleman.  It also allows you to select your tenants and interface directly with them.

So let's assume we can make $1500 a month in rent from December through March.   This may be a bold assumption, as many folks prefer just January through March.  For four months, that would yield $6,000 a year per side, or a total of $12,000.

And in the remaining months, let's assume $300 a week (clearly undercutting the Real Estate Agencies on the island, but most of their rentals at $400 to $500 a week are for 3/2 units near the ocean) and a 75% occupancy rate (again, this may be unrealistic but let's see where this goes).  That would yield an additional $7200 a side, or an overall gross income of $26,400 for the property for the year.  This is a lot higher than the $17720 they are collecting at $715 and $720 a month for full-time tenants.


Property taxes are probably about $1500 a year for this property.   Utilities would likely have to be paid by the landlord, if you are renting it out as a seasonal rental.  Factor in $2400 a year for electric, and another $1200 for water, sewer, trash.  Add $500 for fire fee and another $800 for the lot lease.

So far, we have expenses of $6500 without taking into account the mortgage.

We also have a bed tax or rental license.  The license is $20 a year (per side, or $40) and a percentage of rents.  There also appears to be a bed tax, but I will have to research this further as the actual amounts do not appear anywhere online.  For initial rough calculations, let's assume 10% of revenue overall, or about $2,040 a year.

So, what does this give us?

Income:  $26,400
Expenses: $6,500
Bed Tax:  $2,040

Net Income (before mortgage):  $17,860 per year.

Again, this is a rough estimate, and a final calculation would include the actual bed tax, the cost of running the VRBO ads, etc.  You have to figure it out down to the penny, as even a $20 fee here and there can add up.  Look at actual utility bills, actual real estate taxes (and count on an increase) the actual lot lease amount.  Even the cost of cable or satellite television (seasonal tenants will expect WiFi and Cable).

So, how much mortgage could I get for $17,860 a year?   First off, I would borrow on my own home, that is paid for, and get lower rates (commercial notes for rental properties are harder to come by).  Assuming a 4% rate on a 30-year amortization, we get a possible mortgage of $300,000 which is more than the asking price of $239,000.

(Note:  Even if I was to pay cash for the property, the analysis would still be about the same.  Unless I could make some money on this deal, parking $239,000 of my money here would likely be a bad bet.  And no, I am not cashing in my 401(k) to do something silly like this).

And here, I have probably under-estimated many of the costs, such as the bed tax and licensing fees, as well as cable and modem ($1200 a year, right there!).

You can see why the property remains unsold - the local Bubbas who own the local Real Estate agencies would have jumped on it, if they could have rented it for a positive cash-flow.   And at their rates of $700 a side, clearly $239,000 isn't in the cards.

Compounding this, the property is in sad shape and would likely need an overhaul - new bath and kitchen, perhaps new A/C units, some yardwork, new windows, etc.   To make it attractive to vacationers, particularly snowbirds, you might want to add a screened porch.  Even doing a lot of this work yourself, and it is a LOT OF WORK, you are looking at $50,000 in materials, and that is using home depot generic cabinets and the like.

So if we subtract that from $300,000, we get about $200,000.    Deduct the closing costs, and you end up around $190,000.   No wonder it sits unsold at $239,000.

Funny thing, though, when I drove by this property and a neighbor mentioned it was for sale for $239,000, I casually said, "Hmmm... I could make a go of that at $180,000 as a seasonal rental.  But $239,000?  No way!"

And that was without calculating anything out.   It is funny, but you get a "feel" for this sort of thing after a while.

Now to be sure, there are some other factors to consider.  I could depreciate the property on my taxes and thus reduce my tax burden.  At 10% a year this would knock $20,000 off my income, which would reduce my Federal taxes from $5500 to essentially zero.  Since I am in the 15% bracket (poverty has its virtues) instead of the 28%, the net advantage is a lot less.

In other words, this was a more lucrative gig when I was making $100,000 a year than when making $50,000 a year.  And if the Capital Gains "recapture" is at 25%, then it might not make any sense to take the deduction at all at this stage in the game.

So, what do we learn?  If I could talk the owner into lowering the price by $40,000, I might be able to re-hab the property and rent it out seasonally and basically break even, at least initially.   This would assume a number of risks - that I could rent the place at the vacancy rates postulated and at the rates postulated.  That my re-hab could be brought in for under budget.  That tenants did not damage the property too much (this is Georgia, they will damage the property, particularly the summer people) and that unexpected repairs (not factored in, in this rough analysis) are not too excessive.

I am also taking a risk that property values will increase over time (breaking even on this deal, I can only hope to make something on Capital Gains!).

All that risk, all that manual labor - plus the hassles of self-renting the place - and for what?  To possibly make 2-3% annual appreciation?  That works out to about $3000 to $4500 a year - maybe - to compensate me for all that work.

Uh, No Thanks.

So, at least at the present time, in the situation I am in today, I would not consider buying this property at the present time, at least not for $150,000.  All work, all risk, no payoff, and that's assuming I could talk the asking price down by 1/3, which ain't likely to happen.

And if that was possible, the local Bubbas would have bought it already!

The point of this post is not to say that investing in Real Estate is a bad idea.  No, the point is to "do the math" and add up all the costs you can think of and then figure out what is a good price for the property, and whether you would make money at it.

The problem we had, in the last decade, was that people didn't do this math, and instead blindly assumed that buying any piece of Real Estate was a good investment, as it would "go up in value" indefinitely.

That turned out to be a wrong assumption.

It is fun, though, to crank the numbers, sometimes.

They Ended Up Here...

How do kids end up living in their parent's basements?  Lets look at some real-life examples and see if there are any common themes.

As I noted in How to End Up Living In Your Parent's Basement, there are a number of common denominators that affect your chances of being a "boomerang" or "bounce-back" kid.  And most of these are not economic by themselves - although they affect your personal economics.

The media is rife with "bounce-back" stories, about how awful the economy is, and how this is causing young people to move in with their parents.   In some instances, young people are doing this - strategically to pay back student loans or to establish a nest egg.   But in most other cases, it is merely a matter of convenience - maintaining a pretty cushy lifestyle, at your parent's expense, well into your 30's, if not forever.

And I don't think it is healthy, except in some limited circumstances for limited times.   When you sacrifice your own life to be a perpetual child, well, you aren't really experiencing life.  Going out in the world and supporting yourself and building up your own estate through your own hard work, well, has to be one of the most satisfying things you can do.   And that ain't gonna happen in your parent's basement, unless that is the location of your new tech start-up company.

Let's take a look at some real-world examples of people I know who have done this.  Their names have been changed for obvious reasons.  You will see there are some common threads in each tale.   And while the overwhelming majority of them are men, I have three examples of female bounce-backs, which are somewhat rarer.


1.  Jim came from a wealthy family.  But it was a family of inherited wealth, not earned wealth.  Jim's Father pressured his sons to succeed in life, but one of them - Jim's older brother - suffered from a depressive disorder and was on medication by age 18.   Distraught one evening, he took his life in an overdose of his prescription medications.

This sort of thing tears apart a family.  But the damage wasn't done yet.   Shocked at their loss, Jim's parents never gave him any pressure to succeed at all.  And in short order, Jim found he could get away with bloody murder, if he wanted to.   He graduated from high school with a C average, which his parents said nothing about.  He went to Community College and muddled through there.

Most of the time, he smoked a lot of dope, drank himself into oblivion, and would do things like shoot off firearms.   His parents never said a word about this, but let it slide.   They were too broken up over the loss of Jim's brother, and didn't want to lose Jim as well.

Jim worked at odd jobs, on occasion, to get pot money.  But for the most part, he hung around and fished a bit and just, well, wasted time.  He did this for 30 years, never leaving home.  When his parents died, he inherited their house and a small inheritance, and proceeded to drink himself into an early grave.

Mental Health, Drug and Alcohol use are the common denominators here.   Afraid to "lose" Jim, his parents never confronted the problem, or force Jim to confront his own problems by having to make his own way in the world.

Of course, Jim isn't bothering anyone, I guess.  But he is a very unhappy man.  And that makes me sad.


2.  Joe and James live with their parents.   Handsome and rugged, they are a couple of 20-something "dudes" who like to hang out, hop up old Japanese cars with questionable "mods" and smoke a lot of pot and drink a lot of beer.

Joe and James' parents are both professionals and hoped that their sons would be as well.   But they looked the other way when their son's grades started slipping in high school - as a result of their marijuana use.  The boys acted like big goofy children, even though they were pushing 25.

They both were accepted at good colleges, but after a few semesters of partying, dropped out.  They never took their coursework seriously, and frankly, had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives.  They liked tinkering with cars, but of course, being a car mechanic would be beneath them - and their parent's expectations of them.

So they both moved back home, spend their spare time smoking pot and chasing girls, and worked odd jobs to make money.  Their parents gave me the friend with the perpetual problem routine whenever I saw them.  Always bitching about their bounce-back kids, but doing nothing to change things - and in fact enabling them.

It has been several years now, but the kids are starting to find a direction - one is going back to school, and the other is learning a trade.  They move out for a semester or two, and then move back, in a sort of bounce-back oscillation.

They are finally starting to realize that whatever it is they want to do in life, it will not be what their parents expect of them.   In fact, their parent's vague urgings for them to "go to college and get a good job  as a professional" are part of the problem.  Great advice, but short on specifics.  And not everyone is cut out to go to college - nor should they be.

There is hope for them - they realize that chicks don't like to date guys who live with their Mothers, and this alone is giving them incentive to become more mature.  And they seem to be finding their way - or finding what it is they want to do.   The best thing for them, though, would be to move away from their impoverished home town and seek a new life elsewhere - in another, more prosperous State.  But that ain't about to happen.

What are the common denominators here?  Smoking pot, drinking beer, of course.   Parents who don't push their kids and in fact, welcome them back into the home (while complaining that they never do the dishes or take out the trash) and children who see no reason to change what for them, is a pretty "cush" lifestyle.

They also suffer from low-self-esteem.  They are having a hard time viewing themselves as "serious adults" mostly because of the pot, but also because they still feel like big, goofy kids.   Living with Mom and Dad lowers their expectations and allows them to remain children for another decade or so.


3.  Jane wanted to be a Nun and joined a convent.   For whatever reason (Jane doesn't like to talk about it) she left the convent and moved home with her parents.  She has a good paying job, but she stays at home.  Her parents are "ashamed" of the fact she left the convent, apparently under duress.  Jane suffers from similar shame issues.

Catholicism is fucked up, I tell you.

So Jane stays at home, convinced she should be an old maid and a spinster - that a life of her own is just not in the cards for her.  Rather than find someone to love and live with, she remains a perpetual child living with her parents.   And her parents don't seem to mind.

Jane is an unusual case - as drugs and alcohol are not involved.   But she is not able to break free of her parent's expectations just like Joe and James.  Her parents viewed her as a failure as a Nun, and thus her only option was to live the rest of her life as a spinster, in shame.

She also suffers from low-self-esteem which may be related to depression.   Staying at home, of course, feeds the low-self-esteem-engine and fosters yet more depression.

Moving out and moving away would be her best options - for starting her own life on her own terms.

She can afford to do so, but is afraid to try.   And that to me, is sad.


4.  Jerald had a scholarship to a good school.   He smoked a lot of pot and drank a lot of beer, though.  And within a few semesters, he dropped out and moved back home.  Rather than transfer to another school or go to night school, he "hung out" with his old high school buddies and smoked a lot of reefer.

He played the guitar and went South with a band in search of "gigs".   Over the years, he would play in different bands, usually at bars for cash under-the-table, or tip money.  It was never a good-paying gig, and at one time they were living in an old school bus.

Somehow 30 years elapse this way, and Jerald and his girlfriend break up along the way.  She has weird ideas about raising a family and not living in a school bus.   Jerald can't fathom this.  All she cares about is money!

The last band he was in breaks up, and he hitch-hikes home.  Nearly homeless at age 50, and living in his parents' guest room.  He gets odd jobs at local factories, sweeping the floor and such, but the pay is pretty poor.

Jerald was a smart guy - his scholarship attests to that.   But another fine mind sacrificed on the altar of the ganja.  30 years of pot smoking has basically eroded his personality.

He hates living at home.  His Mother, he says, is a "Nazi" as she does not relish the idea of a bounce-back kid at this stage of her life - she is nearly 80!   Jerald is still a big kid, though, and still viewing life through the prism of the parent-child relationship.   Many people Jerald's age are grandparents by now.  It is sad.

Common denominators?  Drug and alcohol abuse, and low self-esteem issues, yet again.



5.  Jill's parents are abusive alcoholics.   I met Jill at an ACOA meeting.  She complains that they are abusive to her, and scare off any potential boyfriends.

Jill has a good job that pays well - she has a brand-new car, after all.  Of course, the car payments and insurance now make it hard for her to move out, as it takes up a lot of her income.

We ask her why she doesn't just move out - and she stares at us, mystified.  Move out?  Why?   And yet she complains about her parent's wild behavior at every turn.  And she worries that as she gets older, the chance of meeting a "nice guy" and settling down are getting slimmer and slimmer.

Once again, alcohol abuse is a common thread - but this time, of the parents, not the child.  Low-self-esteem is another issue, as is the emotional abuse from her parents that add to the problem.

There is an economic issue here - but a self-inflicted one - Jill would rather have a new car than a new apartment.  And to some extent, this is true of a lot of "bounce-backs" - they can have a better lifestyle living at home than on their own, as we shall see.


6. John lives with his sickly parents.   He has a "pad" in the basement, with a new stereo and wall-screen Television that he "bought for his parents, as a gift".   Freed from paying $500 to $1000 a month in rent on an apartment, John has a brand-new car and all the latest electronic gadgets, toys, several high-end bicycles, and of course, the "gifts" he buys for his parents - but conveniently uses, since he lives at home.

As the eldest, this seems like no big deal at first - the family is together as always.  But when his younger brothers and sisters grow up and move out, it becomes more embarrassing for John, as they get apartments and even houses of their own.

After several years, John realizes that it isn't cool to live with your folks.   He moves in with his girlfriend, and they share a place.  John realizes how expensive it is to live on your own - for the first time.   You can't have unlimited data plans, new cars, and all 500 channels of cable.  That shit costs money!

No wonder he preferred to live at home - where ALL of his income was disposable and of course, he saved none of it.

And yes, pot and beer was involved, although John was not quite a "chronic".  But he did enjoy the lifestyle of going to concerts and raves and 'hanging out' with his buds.

The self-inflicted economic issues again are an issue - John can "live large" at age 21 by not paying rent.  But he really is living beyond the means of an average 21-year-old and is saving nothing for the future.

Living with your parents IS a good way to save money - to pay off your student loans, or to save up a "nest egg" for that first home or whatever.  But John squandered this opportunity in a mass of car loan and credit card debt - and had to learn later on in life, some painful lessons on supporting yourself - lessons he should have learned at age 21.



7.  Jason partied his way through high school and college.  He graduated with a C average and could not find any jobs.  He was at least fortunate not to have any student loans to pay back.

He lived at home, smoked dope, drank himself into a stupor, and yes, suffered from depression as well as mild forms of schizophrenia.  See any patterns here?

After several years of living at home, his parents got nervous.  They actually paid their other son to help him move across the country.   Now safely away, he was no longer a problem to his parents.  However, they had to continually bribe the other son to let Jason live in his basement, and eventually the brother had enough and tossed his stoned ass out.

Jason bummed from one odd job to another and then got arrested - again - for possession of marijuana, driving under the influence, and the whole bit.  He decided to go back to graduate school and try to clean up his act.  His parents paid - relieved he wasn't moving back home again.

He did end up finding a job and doing OK for a while, at least.

Common denominators?  Pot, again.  You see why I really hate it.  And booze and depression and mental illness.   Living at home, though, is never the answer to any of these.  It was only when Jason had his ass tossed out on the street and experienced some "harsh" living that he got his shit together for the first time in his life.

Unfortunately, Jason kept smoking pot.  He married, but his wife left him when he decided to marry the Ganja instead.  And last I heard, he lost his job and was thinking of, well, moving back with his folks, at age 55.  Sad.



8.  Jordan had mental health issues.  Tormented and bullied in high school, he was diagnosed with panic disorder and hospitalized several times.  High school sucks, really.  But Jordan could not see beyond it.

He finally graduated from high school by age 20.  But by then, he had convinced himself that he was damaged goods, and had turned his panic disorder into a major hobby.  He would regale listeners about his symptoms, attacks, and hospitalizations, as well as his newest medications and doctors - all from the safety of his divorced Mother's basement.

What is sad is that Jordan walked away from opportunities to move out - and opportunities for relationships, embracing his "problems" as his primary relationship.

30 years later, he is still living in his Mother's house, although she has passed away.

No drugs or alcohol here.  Just depression and a missed opportunity to live life on your own.  It is sad.


9.  Jennifer was a crack addict.  Well, she didn't start out that way, but she was a "wild child" from the get-go.   Always up for a party, skipping school, having sex with boys, smoking pot and shoplifting clothes.  And that was before age 15!  Children have their own personalities - and often this is less affected by environment than who they innately are.

I wrote about Jennifer before - how she would "borrow" money from her grandmother, conning her out of thousands of dollars over the years.  And Grandma would find her jewelery missing, on occasion.  After Grandma died, Jennifer was caught, at the funeral, wearing one of the missing pieces of jewelry.  She told her parents that "Grandma gave it to me" and Grandma, safely in the grave, could not contradict this.

Her parents let Jennifer move back home after she flunked out of college and her escalating drug use caused her to lose one job after another.  She was nearly 30 and doing crack, meth, and whatever she could get her hands on.    Soon, a collection of very unsavory friends were hanging out with Jennifer in their basement.  And Jennifer's Dad had to break-up late night parties on more than one occasion.   Once, one of Jennifer's friends tried to rough up Dad, and pushed him down the staircase.

And things started going missing from the house - jewelry, electronics, money, and the like.  Confronted, Jennifer claimed her friends stole them.   After more than a few visits from the Police over various bits of trouble Jennifer brought home, her parents bought her a one-way bus ticket to California.

The last I heard of Jennifer, she had several children, and was working part-time as a cashier.  Her children are actually supporting her now.  It is very sad what drugs can do - aided and abetted by low-self-esteem and mental illness.

Letting Jennifer live in their basement did not solve anything though - and in fact caused Jennifer's parents a lot of grief.   They are fortunate that the violence and thievery did not escalate further than it did.  In some cases, parents end up DEAD in situations like this.

Taking a crack addict into your home is never a good idea - even if it is your kid.

* * * 

Drugs, alcohol, depression, mental illness, low-self-esteem.   Are these the cause of bounce-back kids, or does bouncing-back enable some of these behaviors?  It is an interesting question.  Throw in the behavior of the parents, and you have a perfect storm.

Granted, you may not be able to cure mental illness with the wave of a wand.  But alcohol and drug use can be stopped.  And letting your adult children live at home isn't helping them out in this regard, but enabling their lifestyle even more.

And you have to ask yourself, maybe you like this?  Maybe you like lording over the ruined lives of your children, and bitching to your friends about it?  Maybe this is giving your empty life meaning?  It sounds sick, but a lot of parents of bounce-back kids do just that.   Really examine your motives here, as it is key to getting the kids out of the basement.

And maybe another common denominator is communication - or lack thereof.   Parents rarely sit down with their kids when they are in the ninth grade and say, "So, where do you see yourself in five or ten years?"  It sounds stupid, but that should be the age when you are thinking of some sort of career - or at least start thinking of one.   Oftentimes, these discussions don't occur at all, or if they do, only at age 18, as high school graduation nears.

Many parents pressure kids to "go to college" when the kid has no idea why or what for.  When this happens, it is all to easy to drop out, simply out of lack of interest - or because they are studying something that is not what they want to do in life.  And sometimes dropping out of college can be a good idea - particularly today when it costs so damn much.

And of course, communication regarding drug and alcohol use is very hard as well.    Parents don't want to confront this, and of course it is very hard to change a young person's mind about this.  The marijuana user is convinced that not only is marijuana not harming them, but that it is in fact, enhancing their lifestyle even as they live in their parents' basement.

Tossing your pot-smoking kid out on the street might force them to confront their own habit - or at least pay for it with their own money.   Yes, when you let your kids live with you, rent-free or at a reduced rent, you are basically paying for their pot.  That is the long and short of it.  And you know what?  They won't even share it with you!  Ungrateful bastards.  Toss their ass out.

I "bounced back" to my parents' house, for a full week, after I dropped out of college.   My Dad didn't want me around, and the feeling was mutual.  I landed a job within a week, working at an Aeroquip hydraulics distributor (making the staggering sum of $4.25 an hour) and found an apartment about a half-hour away.  I was not getting rich, by any means, but I was supporting myself.

If I had stayed at home, things would likely have been different.  If my parents indulged me and let me live there (and if I was the type of person to tolerate being a kid forever) I likely would not have found that job.  In fact, what motivation would I have to even bother to look?  Kick back, smoke dope, hang out with your high school friends - many of whom were living in their parent's basements.

Thank God our home was built on a crawl space, I guess.

Trying to live on $4.25 an hour was pretty harsh.  But this motivated me to look for a better job - making a whopping $8 an hour at Carrier - who paid for my tuition to go back to college, at night.  In fact, it was the desire to be utterly financially independent from my parents that motivated me to finish my Engineering degree and go to Law School.  I never, ever wanted to be dependent on crazy people, ever again.

I never wanted to end up like many of my friends - even today - who have to suck-up to crazy senile parents, hoping they don't change the will at the last minute before they croak.  That is just sad!

Having to struggle makes all the difference in the world - and struggling makes you stronger.   You cannot become a weight-lifter without lifting a lot of weights.  You cannot master the violin without a lot of practice.  And you cannot learn how to live life without actually doing it - and making a lot of bonehead mistakes (like buying a new car).

Living in your parents' basement is not living.  You do not learn much from it, other than how to have a good time.   Struggling sucks, but you learn that working slacker jobs suck - and that maybe trying harder is a good idea.  And that maybe marijuana is a dead-end that is keeping you a child for far too long.

I think part of the problem also  is that parents tend identify some children as delicate hothouse flowers, who need special care.  Once marked like this, the child will live up to the expectations made.  This happened to Jim, after his brother killed himself.  Or to Jane, after she left the convent.  Or to Jason, when he was diagnosed with mild schizophrenia.  Parents make excuses for their kids, or in fact, coddle them.  Maybe sometimes this is necessary.  Other times, not.

If you have bounce-back kids, think about where this is going.   Are they going to live with you forever?   Are they smoking dope and getting drunk all day long?   Are they acting responsibly or just raiding the refrigerator at night and leaving dirty dishes for you to clean up?

And moreover, at this stage in your life, what about your plans?  Where are you going to live if you want to retire?  Yes, believe it or not, I've known parents who give up their retirement plans because they are afraid to broach the subject of selling the house, with their live-in adult children.   And I've looked at Real Estate with live-in kids, and seen them firsthand, try to sabotage a sale, so they don't have to move.  No, really.

And yes, it is sad that sometimes kids end up as homeless crack addicts, like Jennifer.   And that breaks your heart.   But letting them move into your house only means you have a homeless crack addict in the basement - stealing all your shit. You've done the best you can, raising your kid.  They have personalities and lives of their own - and it is not necessarily "your fault" they they turn bad.  Letting them live in your basement is not making that situation better, but probably worse.

And if you are living in your parents' basement and smoking dope, think about where this is going, and whether marijuana really is your pal, or just an evil bastard who tells you sweet lies.

Just a thought.

If it Floats, Flies, or.....

Renting a Boat can be a lot cheaper than owning one!

We made a reservation to travel thought the Burgundy region of France next year.  We are renting the boat shown above, through "Le Boat" - a boat rental agency in Europe.  For a week's journey, it will cost about $3800, which is a lot of money, but divided by four people, not that much.  And of course, they have smaller, cheaper boats (some under $2000) if were were traveling in a smaller group.

Bear in mind that the cost of storing and insuring my last boat ran about $3500 a year, and suddenly $3800 doesn't seem like such a bad deal.   And I don't have to wax this boat.  And if you have ever waxed, by hand, a 30-foot boat, you will know what I mean.

A pilot friend of mine told me, "If it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it!"  And yes, that is misogynist, and yes, ladies, these are the sort of things that your husbands say when they are "out with the boys".

While I am not sure about the last one, owning a boat is a very expensive proposition.  And part of this expense is the fact that, unless you are using it constantly, it just sits around gathering dust (literally) and dry-rotting.   Much of the expense in running our boat was induced by the fact it sat for long periods of time, getting a musty smell and just sitting.   Machinery does not like to sit and even the fuel in the gas tank will turn to varnish if not used (adding Sta-Bil helps, but a better approach is to not let a boat sit).

In Europe, oddly enough, you can easily rent boats - they have fleets of them.   Perhaps our European cousins are smarter than us - or perhaps they don't have the cash to let a $200,000 boat just sit idle for months on end.

You can rent boats all over Europe, through Le Boat, or go on a narrowboating holiday in the UK through Alvechurch.

In the US, it is somewhat harder to do, although some boat rental agencies do exist.  For example, at the Holly Bluff Marina, you can rent houseboats and tour the St. John's river.  Or you can rent a canal boat on the Erie Canal in New York State.

It is more fun to own a boat?  Well, it can be, if you live on a lake, or if you like to fish, and you go every weekend.   However, when boating is more infrequent - say less than once a month - the cost of owning a boat, versus renting one, starts to look bad.

And by cost - I mean overall cost, in terms of storage, insurance, fuel, maintenance, and that big Daddy of them all - depreciation.

Renting a boat can be a good way to figure out if you really want to buy one.  You may find that after renting a boat that you really get the bug out of your system.

If it floats or flies..... rent it!

That's What Friends Are For.....

 This is a television show, not real life.  Understand the difference between the two.

In America, many folks, particularly women, view friendship as a nearly holy thing - something to be preserved at all costs, no matter how abusive a friendship can be. We are all too willing to divorce our spouses at the drop of a hat ("He left the toilet seat up") but we hang on to toxic relationships, it seems, for life, no matter how destructive they are.

To some folks, my attitude might sound crass. "Friends are for life!" they say, simultaneously buying into and feeding on the myth that is perpetrated. But in many instances, you need to walk away from relationships that are toxic or damaging, otherwise your own life will be scarred or destroyed - literally.

A related problem with friends is what I call the "Friends" problem - people who think they need to maintain superficial relationships with several (sometimes dozens) of friends - like on the Television show of the same name - at the expense of maintaining an intimate relationship with one person. But I'll get to that later.

And note that when I say "friends," I am talking about close relationships with people, not passing acquaintances, co-workers, or folks you hardly know. I am talking about people you invite to your house on a regular basis (and vice-versa) as well as dine with and entertain with. I am not talking about the guy in the next cubicle that you occasionally go to lunch with and that's it. Although the ideas here can also be applied to work situations and acquaintanceships as well.

Are you in a toxic relationship with your friend or friends? Consider these factors:

1. Is your friend a drug addict?

2. Is your friend an alcoholic?

3. Is your friend mentally ill? (this includes disorders such as OCD, hoarding, and the like)

4. Is your friend perpetually putting themselves in peril and expecting you to bail them out?

5. Do you find yourself "helping" your friend with aspects of their personal or work life with no reciprocation?

6. Does being with your friend make you anxious, nervous, depressed, or angry? Does the idea of visiting them do the same? Do you end up complaining about them to other friends?

If you can answer consistently "YES" to one or more of these questions, you may be in a toxic relationship. Note that I say "consistently" as we all can be a burden to our friends on occasion. But then it becomes a chronic thing, a consistent thing, then it is no fun to be your friend. Let's explore these questions in more detail.

1. Is your friend a drug addict?

If your friend is a drug addict, chances are you'll become one, too. It is a nice fantasy to think you can be friends with someone who does drugs while you remain sober and straight. But it doesn't work.

You can't hang out with someone who smokes pot and not smoke pot with them. You can't have a friend who is a crack addict and not be one yourself.  Drug users like to hang out with fellow drug users. Relationships with people who use drugs are strained, when you do not use the drugs as well, as you end up being mystified by their behavior and confused by their actions.

And oftentimes, drug friends end up getting into heavier and heavier drugs, as well as into more and more trouble (See, The Marijuana Trap) often dragging you along for the ride.

Drug use is a dead end, and if you can't see that, we really have nothing to discuss here. Search elsewhere on the web for a blog to read, as nothing I say will make sense to you.

And I know this issue firsthand. I had "drug friends" when I was younger. When I finally realized that drugs were not making me happy and gave them up, my drug friends were not happy, and kept trying to draw me back into the lifestyle.

While I was working all night to pay my way through college, they would hang out at my house and drink beer and smoke pot on the front lawn, wondering where I had been. I would come home to dozens of empties neatly stacked on the hood of my car, long with roaches (marijuana cigarette stubs).

In a way, it was touching that they wanted me to be their friend that badly. But in another way, it was scary that my being sober and working was a threat to them.  They had to pull me back to their level, lest I shatter their world-view of how things are supposed to go.  I realized that in order to find my own happiness, I would have to move on and move away.   And moreover, once we stopped doing drugs together, we had very little in common.


2. Is your friend an alcoholic?

If your friend is an alcoholic, chances are, you'll become one, too, eventually.  Drugs and alcohol are the same thing.  Alcohol is a drug, of course, and abuse of alcohol is drug abuse.

I saw this happen with my Mother, who was a full-blown alcoholic.   She chased friends away, as they got tired of her drunken 3 AM phone calls and visits.  You can't be close friends with a boozer, as they will make your life difficult.

But if you like to drink, being friends with drunks can be hard as well.  They will always want to have that "one more drink" and encourage you to drink more than you'd like.   I have several friends like this, and while they are nice people and all, my body cannot physically stand the amount of booze they want to consume.

The option of "not drinking" or "drinking less" doesn't work, either.   It is no fun to be hanging out with a group of loud drunks unless you are one of them.  It is less than "no fun" - it is actually painful.

There is also the ancillary problem of watching boozer friends slide down that road to oblivion, which can be painful to watch.   Like the Marijuana Trap, the booze trap prevents people from making rational decisions about their lives, and as a result, they tend to end up in bad places and bad situations.  If you care around such people, it can be painful to watch this process.

And prevent it? Ha! You can't stop the boozer from drinking just as you can't stop the pothead from smoking. "Interventions" and the like are largely useless gestures that only make the intervener feel better about themselves (and they often backfire, by providing attention to the addict for the wrong type of behavior).

The only way I have found to deal with the boozer friend is to have maybe one or two drinks with them and then say "Gee, look at the time, gotta run!"  But even that is difficult.

If you are hanging out with drunks as friends, ask yourself why.


3. Is your friend mentally ill? (this includes disorders such as OCD, hoarding, and the like)

This is a tough one. Mental illness is no laughing matter, and most of us are simply not equipped to deal with it. Like drug and alcohol addition, mental illness causes people to do weird and unexplainable things, which can strain a friendship if not outright break it. Some mentally ill people can also be dangerous, if off their medication. The impulse is, of course, to try to be friendly and helpful to a mentally ill person. But if you are not equipped to handle such issues, your help may indeed backfire, and their issues may cause you great distress.

I have written before about hoarding disorder, which is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Being friends with a hoarder is a nightmare. Again, you think you are "helping" them by cleaning up their messes, but when you return days later, it is all back the way it was, only worse.   Don't waste your time trying to clean up after a hoarder. The only thing I think you can do is back away slowly, or at most, meet them on neutral territory.

Now, I know that sounds crass and selfish. But you have to preserve your own emotional well-being.  If being with a person who is mentally ill makes you anxious, depressed, angry, or nervous, then in effect, it is making you mentally ill as well.  How is that helping either of you?  It is just spreading the misery around.

I had a friend who was a hoarder (well, is a hoarder) and after visiting his house of horrors, I would be depressed for days at a time. He was a nice fellow, young, college educated, but he had garbage everywhere in and around his house. Not only that, the house was dirty. It was sad to see such a nice person fall off the edge of the world like that. I tried to help him organize this things, but that turned out to be a big mistake. Not only did I spend hours at a time doing this, I would be chagrined to find everything I did was "undone" at the next visit.

You can't "help" a hoarder, period. So don't try. Leave it to the mental health professionals. Eventually, such folks will have to be institutionalized, or the Fire Marshall will come clean out their house. But it is not your job to "fix" them - not at the expense of your own emotional well being.

Remember what I said about the Unwritten Social Contract? You have a duty to take care of yourself first, not because it is selfish, but because you don't want to be a burden yourself to others. So preserving your own mental sanity is very important. Hanging around people who make you depressed is not a very good idea.

And you know what?  Maybe when people discover their behavior is driving all their friends away, they may have some incentive to change it.   Maybe.


4. Is your friend perpetually putting themselves in peril and expecting you to bail them out?

This is what I call the "Perils of Pauline" scenario. Your friend creates a situation entirely of their own making, and then calls you to bail them out.

For example, a friend of mine was moving from her apartment. She had over a month to prepare, get boxes, get packed, find a truck, and mover her stuff. Instead, on the day she is scheduled to move, she calls in a panic and wants help.

I end up finding a rental truck after hours of searching. It was small and worn out. I get back to her apartment and find that nothing is packed. We end up throwing things in boxes and trash bags, and since the truck is small, we have to make several trips. It is nearly midnight by the time I get home, exhausted, from "helping my friend move."

I don't mind helping a friend move, but that was abusive. She had a responsibility to take care of herself and plan her move and have her things ready to go. Instead, she squandered her time on self-loathing and television (redundant, I know) and then waited until the last minute, hoping friends would bail her out. She felt bad about it of course, which in turn fed more of her self-loathing.

This sort of scenario happens again and again with some folks, and if you find yourself once again "saving" a friend from a situation they themselves created, maybe it is time to find new friends. If a friend creates a deadline situation for themselves and then completely blows it off and expects you to "help out" at the last minute, is that really being a friend?


5. Do you find yourself "helping" your friend with aspects of their personal or work life with no reciprocation?

This is an interesting one and not that as uncommon as it may seem. A friend runs a business and gets behind on their work. They call their other friends asking them to "help out" with a "rush order."   So you run over there to help and end up spending 8 hours of your Saturday doing something that your friends are getting paid for.

How much of a doormat do you want to be?

Business is business. If you want to run your own business, fine. Run it. Take control and get to work. But you can't run a business and then blow off the entire "running the business" end of it, and then expect your friends to work, at a moment's notice, for free or reduced wage, to "help out". You don't ask them to come to your office and file papers, do you? Of course not.

Confusing employment and friendship is always a recipe for disaster. If your friend's business is failing because they don't do the work, you can't "save" them by doing it for them - not without driving yourself crazy in the meantime.

Some folks were not meant to run businesses. Or, they need to learn some painful lessons in order to obtain self-discipline. If you "bail them out" again and again, they will never learn those lessons.

Similarly, helping a neighbor clean out their garage, house, car, kitchen, basement, etc. because they have let it deteriorate to the level of shithole is not "helping" your neighbor, particularly when your own chores are going undone at the same time.  I had one friend repeatedly ask me to help clean their house, with their logic being "Well, your house is already so clean" that I didn't need to clean it further - instead my efforts should be directed toward their stack of dirty dishes.

(In a way, this is like the friend or family member who asks to borrow money, on the grounds that "well, you have so much of it!"   Same twisted logic at work!)

But of course, my house doesn't magically clean itself.  And by "helping" my friend in their personal life, I was merely neglecting my own in the process.  Such abuse is not friendship.  Walk away from someone who wants you to work for them as a slave.


6. Does being with your friend make you anxious, nervous, depressed, or angry? Does the idea of visiting them do the same? Do you end up complaining about them to other friends?

This is pretty self-explanatory, and it is your brain's way of telling you it is unhappy.  If you plan a visit with a friend and then get anxious, explore in your mind why you are anxious.   If their visits leave you feeling depressed and washed out, ask yourself, why?

True friendship shouldn't be that way. It should be organic, and relaxing, and free and easy. Yes, visiting can be somewhat stressful in any situation. But if you find yourself "freaking out" about visiting a particular friend, then something is not right.

Again, you have a duty to yourself to protect your own emotional well-being. (See, Emotional Vampires) and if someone is making you unhappy, then don't hang out with them, or at the very least, limit your contacts to a confined and controlled setting, both in terms of place and time.

* * *

Friendship should be a natural and organic thing. It should "feel right" and not be based on guilt or other negative emotions. Walk away from the urge to "help" friends who don't need your helping. It is a fine thing to help a friend in need, but it is a dangerous thing to have only needy friends.

At the beginning of this blog, I also touched on a secondary issue, the "Friends" effect. I think that television show and similar shows tend to promote this idea that a person should have lots of fairly close friends, often at the expense of a more intimate relationship. This could also be called the "sitcom" effect, as a similar phenomenon is present in Seinfeld as well. The main characters seem to avoid intimate relationships - or such relationships are short and break easily, in favor of a more superficial friendship with a small social group.

(Think about it - on Seinfeld, Jerry's girlfriends were guest stars who barely lasted one episode each.   he ultimate in intimate relationships was posited as the most superficial, while the friendship between the four main characters was characterized as central). 

Please note, that Friends and Seinfeld are television shows not real life. Taking your social cues from television is never a good idea (See, Kill Your Television). It is no surprise that marriages and long-term relationships are dying out in this country, as television actively promotes the idea of breaking up or living single. Think about it - how many television shows, from the 1960's onward, featured broken homes, divorced couples, people living single, or the like? It is an interesting phenomenon.

And I think people do get their normative cues from television. How else can you explain the SUV craze?

I have a number of friends who have a "social circle" very much like on a sitcom television show. They Twitter and Facebook and e-mail and Instant Message and cell-phone their friends constantly, maintaining a large number of very superficial relationships (typical message, "Waassup?" and typical response, "Hey, wass happening?") while at the same time avoiding intimacy.

With such a "social circle", true intimacy is nearly impossible. You cannot maintain a circle of half-dozen to a dozen to 20 or more of these superficial friendships and also have an intimate relationship or marriage with one person. Simply stated, a marriage takes up all of your time.

Many bachelor men realize this phenomenon. A friend gets married and they never see him again. He has no time to "hang out" with his buddies and drink beer and watch television sports. He has to spend time with his wife and children, or working to support them. Or, at least he should.

And in many respects, this explains the divorce rate. We are told, by the television, that a man can "hang out" at his favorite bar ("Where everyone knows your name") and neglect the primary relationship in your life. Not surprisingly, most people walk away from such marriages or relationships, as there is no "there" there. It is not that they hate or despise each other, merely that there is no relationship to begin with - no Love. And that is sad, because Love is the meaning and essence of life itself.

The superficial circle of friends is fine for High School or College. But eventually, you have to grow up and live your life by yourself. And having a mate or partner in life is more important than being "popular" or having a large number of friendships. As I have stated before, you really only need one good friend. Put all your eggs in that one basket and then take really good care of that basket.

You will get old. Things will get harder. Having someone to plan and spend the rest of your life with is more important that having a drinking buddy. Letting friendships dominate your life at the expense of an intimate relationship is, I think, a big mistake.

But then again, what are friends for?

Originally published September 11, 2009.  Edited and Revised July 1, 2012