Waaaaaay too long without an update, so here’s one…
Dan on August 27th, 2006
Wow! I can’t believe it has been over a month since my last update. I have a lot to write about.
First, I’ve finally decided to sell my house. I’ve owned an investment property for 3 years now. I bought it from HUD as a rehab project and never finished it. At the time I had the money but not the motivation. After my arrest I had the motivation but not the money. After talking to a real estate agent friend of mine I decided to clean it out. The place was a total mess. Plaster and lath was everywhere. There was litterally debris 3 feet deep in the kitchen. After spending a few hours a day there for a week it was finally cleared. The place looked pretty good again so I decided to made a complete list of everything it needed and what it would cost. After seeing the list I decided it just didn’t make sense for me to put that much money and time into it so now it’s listed for sale. My agent already has a few people interested so here’s hoping it sells. I’d like to use the money as down payment on a place to live so we’ll see, maybe I’ll have a decent house to live in soon! My current lease is up on Sept 15th. I have a temporary place lined up that I can live at for pretty much as long as necessary. It’s not the ideal apt but I don’t need to sign a lease which will allow me to move if I buy a house.
I’ve been trying various things with diet and exercise. It’s a bit long to include in this post so I’ll try to make another one today. I have been working out for just over 6 months now and I am very happy with the results. Watch for another update.
Last week I took a two day trip to NYC. I hadn’t been to the city in nearly 7 years. It was quite fun. I could see myself living there if it wasn’t so expensive.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life. It’s hard to make long term plans with potential jail time hanging over your head. My next court date is coming up in a week and a half. I’d like to have it end but it may get pushed forward again. We need to rework the plea and I’m not sure there is enough time.
So what do I want to do? I’ve been thinking a lot about retail fraud consulting. As far as I can find there aren’t many consultants out there who specialize in training of sales associates and store managers to deal with and prevent fraud. The ones that are out there have never actually committed the fraud they teach about so they don’t have first hand experience like me. I enjoy doing presentations and teaching others so this may be an avenue to turn my experiences into a positive thing. I need to do a bit more research on the topic but I think there is huge potential here.
I haven’t been trading much. I still follow the markets and have done some virtual trading but right now my brokerage account is just too small to work with. Right now I don’t have enough money to move to a brokerage with lower fees ($5k minimum) so I am unwilling to trade less than 10 options contracts at a time. This equates to a minimum margin of $1000-$5000 on spreads, which limits me to 1-3 trades. I hope to have the money soon which would allow me to open an account with a discount broker and have no minimums. Then I could do single contracts and spread my risk around.
I want to make another post about how my goals are progressing. There are quite a few that I haven’t made much progress with that I’d like to focus on.
