[00:00:05] You're listening to casual talk radio, where common sense is still the norm, whether you're a new or longtime listener, we appreciate you joining us today. Visit
[email protected] and now here's your host, Leister. Good evening, everyone out there. Casualtalk Radio
[email protected] dot my name is Lyster. I'm your host. Welcome or welcome back. It's been a very challenging couple of weeks. I would argue, and not the hardest ever, but I would argue many people that will go through what I went through.
[00:00:41] See, this is how the society steers you to this world of being married. It's all a scam. And that's what today's episode is going to focus on. Scams. There's many scams. I'm going to be talking about a couple of scams. Let me share personal what I went through, because it's one of the scams. So to refresh, and if you're new, you didn't hear this or some sharing again, but to refresh, I bought a home and I got keys. I was still, and just to give some disclaimer, I wouldn't call myself paranoid. Let's say I'm very cautiously optimistic when I'm told something. So what I'm told, we're going to close. We're going to close. I don't believe these people. Right? It's not that I don't think, it's not that I think they're lying. It's just I think they're lying. So I don't, I don't take that on face value. Then it's like, okay, closing dates here, right? I'm saying I don't believe you people. There was all sorts of chaos.
[00:01:37] The sellers, here's the story. And I don't know if I told all of this, but I was settled on a couple of homes, and I learned from the first one that I looked at, they just like to play hardball out here and they're messing with the wrong one, because when you try to hardball me, you're going to lose. That's just the way it is. The way it is. You know, I, I'm coming in with 20% down. I'm coming in with cash upfront. You know, with 20%, I'm coming in strong. I already had the loan approved. I've already got the bank funds. The funds are in the same bank that's funding the loan. Like, it's the sweetest possible situation for a seller that you could think of. The first home I looked at was an absolute piece of garbage death trap built in the 1920s. I'm not having a problem with homes built in the 1920s. Where I've got a beef is when you do nothing. In my mind, you do nothing to improve said home. To get it out of the twenties and at least get it into the eighties, they did nothing, nothing to this home to advance it. However, it's sitting on an acre of land.
[00:02:47] I wanted the land. I figured I can do this, I'll buy it. I'll tear the frickin house down and build what I want. Because it was just a little tiny home.
[00:02:57] It was like hobbits lived in this thing. The stairs were narrow, the crawl space. I'm pretty sure they were locking dogs in the crawlspace because it smelled like absolute terrible. The master bedroom. Now I'm six foot two. Last I checked. I'm going to guess that the ceiling is probably six foot five because I, you know, the ceiling fan, I'm like, there's no way this is a safety, you know. So I said, I want the land. I'll tear this piece of garbage house down that's sitting in the middle of this acre of beautiful land with this airport hangar of a garage that I thought was amazing. So I said, let's go ahead and put an offer on this business and we'll see what we do about it. Okay? Now I'm thinking, look, I understand how much you want, but there's so much wrong with the home. You already know coming in. I'm going to have to do major work to renovate this dude. If I rebuild the home, it's probably going to be another 200 plus grand. So you're not going to get full price for the home. So I came in with, I thought a very fair offer upfront that came down off that price. I think I said, you know, I think I was like 50 grand off the price or something. But it was still fair given the condition of the home. The seller, or, excuse me, my agent couldn't even open the doors because they were those old school door handles with the little key thing in the bottom that comes from like, you know, Abraham Lincoln. You know, it was just.
[00:04:20] Anyway, so I said, no, we got to come down off that price because you're not getting full price. Okay. They came back with the same price, but they said, we'll give you a closing credit. Do, do, do. That scam number one is the closing credit. Closing cost credit. A closing cost credit. I know I talked about this one, but again, a closing cost credit is when they're throwing you a pittance, and that only benefits you. If you're coming in with less than 20% down or you're straining all your reserves like you're pulling every single last waking dollar you have to make this work. That's the only time that a closing cost credit really benefits you, is when you're spending every last frickin dollar you got left to make this work. I'm not. I had the 20% down easy work, and then I had reserves of probably about another 5%. Even though they asked for 1%. I was, I was sitting pretty and I had another check come in in the middle of this negotiation. Money was not my issue upfront. Thus the closing cost didn't do any good. What I wanted was a cut of the price because it wasn't worth it. So I told my realtor, walk, we're done. Okay, so we're walking. These jokers came back and they said, well, come down 10,000. Do no. So, all right, so I know you're hardballing me because that means the first comeback. You could have come down ten. I had to come back with my 50, and we could have gotten somewhere. But since you want to be playing games, sending me back an offer that you know I'm going to say no to, I'm not playing that, brother. So then I move on. Doing the search again. We looked at a bunch of homes. There was some historic. There was actually one that's on the National Register of Historic Places that was on for sale. And it was a nice, you know, if I had the free money, I got a lot of money, but not free money. I'm talking, you know, blow your nose money. I don't have that much money, but if I had it, I would have bought that and fixed it up nice. We're talking to home. I think it was built in like 1890. Really nice inside. It had historic, it was just historic. But. But it's on a busy freaking street. And if there's one thing I can't stand, is when my house is on a busy street, I've been there. That's how I was in Washington in 2014, and I was never going to do that again. That's the reason I walk from that one. Fast forward, we find the house that I eventually did buy.
[00:06:42] And I'm looking at the house and I see potential. I see raw potential. This part I think I mentioned it has there. So first they mistreated it, as in they didn't get maintenance on stuff. They didn't upgrade the right things. They let certain things go to disrepair that I'm currently working to get up to speed. But it's got opportunity. There's something there. The ability for it to suppress noise is extremely impressive. The room sizes are actually really decently good, at least on the first floor. I can't say the second floor, but on the first floor, the room sizes are decently good. To put this in perspective, I'm sitting right now in what will be the office. I had to change a bunch of stuff, and I'm still constructing, but just to tell you, it's got two pointless cabinets in here. Two. This is supposed to be the dining room. Why a person needs to have these cabinets like this? And then they were like, yeah, they're closets. Why? I don't want to swear, but why do you need closets in your dining room separate? Why do you need two closets to boot? It makes no sense.
[00:07:50] But even with those two closets, and they're pretty darn good sized closets, they're bigger than most master bedroom closets. And there's two of these things.
[00:08:00] This room, which is supposed to be the dining room, just the dining room. They put carpeting in here. That makes no sense. The baseboards are illogically installed compared to the carpeting. They had one of those ghetto ceiling fans from. I'm pretty sure it was like the 1940s ish or whenever they first started to be a thing. The registers are old, the returns are old. I just swapped the register return in this room because I'm prioritizing this one. And then I had to neutralize the walls because it had. I don't. It wasn't a tan. It was, like, so weird off orange, like a pastel orange type color that made no sense whatsoever. They had a. One of those large lcd's from, like, 2001 when LCD's were hulking huge. I think this guy was 50 pounds or something mounted on the wall. And the bracket was heavier than the tv, so I had to pull that down myself, drywall, fix behind it, and then repaint, neutralize the paint, and then put up the accent and then put up my acoustics. The acoustics are working really well. That's why I sound so good right now. Then I had to change the ceiling fan to a super slick, you know, remote controlled unit that's got, like, a crystal thing going. And then I'm going to be doing window work sometime in the third quarter.
[00:09:16] This room that is supposed to be a dining room, it's got to be roughly I'll say 50% larger than where I came from. The apartment I was at what they jokingly called the master bedroom. This dining room is that much larger than what they call that master. That's why I knew, okay, this was not a bad decision at all. I. So I saw that and I said, you know what? There's. There's opportunity here. There's. I see inspiration with the carpeting. The carpeting. They chose decently good carpeting. They didn't take care of the carpeting, but they chose decently good carpeting. The carpet I'm sitting on right now, it's a really nice carpet. They just didn't take care of it. If they had taken care of it, you know, gotten it shampooed and took really good care of it and foot traffic, it would be a really nice carpet. That actually reminded me of the carpet when we first moved into my parents house way back in the eighties. That's what this carpet kind of reminds me of. It's not that same type of shag, but it has that same. Same styling to it. It. If. And then I'm going to put a french door in the entryway, and the entryway is larger than a normal door's entrance. So it's going to look like this grand dining room effect that I don't think anybody can touch what this is going to look like when I'm done.
[00:10:36] So I'm seeing all this opportunity. I. They want a certain amount. I said, there's other issues, though, although I see opportunity and I see something here.
[00:10:48] We. I see some issues. My inspector sees issues. There's at least, at least $50,000 worth of work on this guy to get him to the modern era. We're talking the air conditioning, and of course, it was getting hot. So to me, that was a critical path. The basement was jacked up. The pipes are galvanized, and if you don't know galvanized pipes. Galvanized pipes were a big thing decades ago. Most homes were standardized on them that were built prior to, say, about the sixties, seventies. They were standardized on galvanized pipes. Sounded good at the time. The problem is that galvanized pipes especially depend on the water. Tended to rust from within, and they would leave sediment and stuff in your water, but also your water flow would be disrupted. Cities would then have to go through and replace the piping on the city side. But homeowners are expected to upgrade the pipes. At the time, the logical replacement was copper. Later, PVC becomes an option, later, Pex becomes an option. But it's assumed that if your home was built roughly in about the fifties, as this one was, that you're going to have upgraded the pipes to at least copper. That didn't happen. So I still have galvanized. I have a plumber. He's going to be doing a swap to Pex in this case, assuming he can do what I want to make it flexible so I can add my own fixtures. Okay. So I'm gonna have to do that. The garage is leaning. It's gonna need some work. The basement, a nightmare. The electrical is a nightmare. There's no grounded outlets in many of the rooms. When I looked at some of the outlets, I had flashbacks of my grandparents house. Okay. They look the same. It's the same kind of. So I knew that whoever was here, they just wanted a place to live. That they didn't care about really enjoying it. They just wanted a place to live. Meanwhile, there's a great room, what used to be called a great room, aka a family room, but it's a great room, as in it's the largest room in the house that was appealing to me. It's massive. That room easily, easily surpasses any room of any property I've ever owned, including the master of the house I owned. That was a 2600 square foot home. None of those rooms I could fit like that was a five bedroom house that I had. I could fit all five of those bedrooms in this great room. It's nuts. Nuts. Biggest room. Home. That's what I like. Masters. First floor. The master is twice the size of it, you know, so I put the offer in knowing I need to fix stuff. I'm saying I'm going to come down on you, 25 grand. You're not going to get full price. And I need you to fix the plumbing and I need you to fix the electrical because those are the two that make the home livable. I didn't ask about the garage. I didn't talk about the roof, which needs a little bit of work, but it's not. It's. It's usable. It survives rain. It's, you know, it's not leaking, but it does need some work. Garage essentially needs to be replaced. Foundation was jacked. There's all these other problems I said I would take.
[00:13:53] All I need you to do is come down on the price, 25 grand. Fix the electrical, fix the plumbing, fix the things that you should have fixed. That's all I'm asking. These jokers came back and they only dropped the price by five grand. Said they were not going to fix anything. And again, with this closing credit garbage. So I didn't even go back. I told the realtor walk, because clearly they're not desperate to sell this house, because that is a joke of a return. Because the inspection report clearly tells them there's at least 30 defects on your home. And you're telling me you're not going to fix any of it, and you're not going to give me any money to fix it? No, we're not doing this. Okay? So we're writing up the paperwork. I literally signed a document that said we're going to cancel. We're not going to go forward. We're done. Cancel the contract. I was signing papers. That's how serious. Cause I think they assumed I was playing with them. Okay? I get a call from the agent. Agent's like, hey, they're. They're willing to go down on the price. 15 grand. It's still not ideal, because, again, there's a lot to do. However, now we're getting close to the realm of feasibility, and I'm looking at it big picture. If I take your offer now, it means I'm gonna have equity off scratch. If my appraiser comes in as high as I think they might do, and with my down of 20%, that means that loans going to be nothing. Absolutely nothing.
[00:15:22] We make the deal. Okay. Everything's good. So now I'm with it. With the 20 cent down and with this 15 grand down, that money I can save to do the improvements that I'm doing now. Appraiser comes in at basically they're asking. So I essentially ripped them off, all because they refused to do the repairs that I wanted them to do, which would have improved the value of the home from day one. Turns out they still had to fix the foundation because the foundation was cracked. There was water damage in the basement. You can't sell the home because of that condition, which was called out by the inspector, but was also called out when they put it up for sale. Their agent didn't do them a good service because their agent didn't tell them, I'm not ethically going to put this up for sale until you fix these things, bottom line. So they ended up having to fix the foundation anyway. They spent $22,000 getting that fixed three days prior to closing the garage door. Just the actual door broke. Completely broke. They had to fix it because it was not part. You know, they still own the home. They call me by way of my agent and say, would you like to go in on it? Because you're the one that's going to benefit from it. Sounds good. I said no problem, but I call the shots on what gets purchased. If I'm paying for it, it has to be what I want because it's going to be my property. So whoever you get is they have to follow my rules. They put the installer, they put the unit I want in there and I'll pay for the unit, you pay for the door. This is a fair offer. Their guy comes back and says, well, I don't like that unit just arguing with me. It's like, dude, seriously, bro, you're going to just toss a garbage unit in there that I don't want and then you want me to pay for it then no, tell the seller they got to pay all of it and I'll just have to replace it and they'll waste money to the tune of $2200, a $1700 for the door, 500 some odd dollars for the frickin opener. And they got ripped off on the opener because the opener is secondhand. The opener probably cost this guy about 100 fricking dollars. He ripped them off because they're not telling their contractor no, he's the buyer of the home. You do what he says so that he'll pay for it, which I would have because I ended up buying the dang opener I wanted anyway. And yes, I can install the opener myself. I did it in my house in Washington. The point is he's already on site, he's already doing the work. All I said was you install the unit I tell you to install and I'll pay for it if you keep refusing. We're not doing it. Tell the seller they got to pay for it. This numb nuts comes back and says, well, I'll install your unit, but I'm not going to warranty my work.
[00:18:04] Really, bro? You're going to actually screw up the install and then not warranty it so you could just dust your hands and walk away. That ain't going to happen. You will warranty your work if I tell you to install my unit. You will warranty your work because you're giving me the sense you don't know what you're doing. If you don't know how to deal with these new autofa autofangled, what's it's, I understand that. Just say you don't know how to do the overly technical openers and you're stuck in the eighties in terms of opener technology. I got you. But don't come at me talking about there's a problem with the unit. I know there's nothing wrong with the unit. I've installed it before. You just don't, you're not used to that tech. There's all sorts of gaps in functionality. I don't want the old school button opener of a thing. I want the one that's a key fob. I want the one that Amazon could do my key. I want the ones that has more tools to it. He comes back with another model that has none of this and says, what about this? Like he's not listening. So I'm getting pissed and I'm on the verge. We're three days from closing. I'm on the verge of telling the wall. I'm trying to help the seller out because they've already started moving their stuff. Sellers got to pay it all, pay it all, do whatever you're going to do. It doesn't matter. It's a waste of your money. I'm sorry, but your contractors an idiot and I'm not going to play his game. So he, there's one opener every freaking this I know it's secondhand. Every opener sold comes with two openers. He gave me one opener. He didn't put the door stops so the door bangs up against the rails. He didn't fix that. He didn't fix anything. He just thought that is what is fine. I just had to get him out of my face. Give me the keys and go away cuz I'm tired of you people. Okay, I fine.
[00:19:42] I get to the closing. So right now I'm actually at the title company, we're at the table, they're walking over paperwork. Fine. I still don't believe any of you fools until I've signed it. And you hand me those keys. When the keys are in my hand, you ain't getting them back.
[00:19:56] I'm signing the papers. I'm signing the stuff. There's one form that's a little bit questionable about the address. I didn't worry about it too much. Turns out someone screwed up the calculation of the closing cost by $10. Here's my public service announcement and my intent to help somebody going through the process. Always make sure you carry cash what you please when this happens. I don't know how the dang thing gets under calculated by $10 because there's a very methodical process that goes into calculating the closing costs and it's checked about six times. So for that to have been missed really pissed me off. Fine. Though I carry cash in my wallet all the time. So I hand her a ten and we're good. And then the bank has to refund me. Turns out she miscalculated the wire fee because they had to wire the funds because they have to be there same day. Now, prior to this, I had asked the lender, the one I'm working with, for the loan. Should I just bring my checkbook just in case something gets screwed up? The calculation? No, it'll be fine. You don't need a checkbook.
[00:20:59] Listen to
[email protected]. dot if you don't want to carry cash and you're going through this process, I implore you to carry a checkbook with you because it's a strong probability that there could be some sort of screw up with the calculation. And you don't want to be at the closing table short on the money because they're not going to give you the keys out of the kindness of their heart. Your agent might foot you, but it's rare. So I would implore you to just carry cash. Cash is king. It gets you by everything. That's how it works. That rhyme. So I got the keys, I got the home. Everything's good. They gave me a little painting of the home. Everything's good. But now the work begins, and so does the scam. The scam? That is the scams that are, that is the tail end of my update today. It's not a rant. I'm sharing stories because it may be entertaining to some people. Scams. Scams are all around us. Scams take many forms. Scams, they're the bane of our existence. The first scam that I ran into outside of this whole fiasco at the closing, the first scam that I ran into is that many of these contractors are rushing away from cash. That's a scam. Why is it a scam? You're like, why is it a scam? I'll tell you why it's a scam. I was trying to get a flooring contractor in here, okay? I get the guy in, he does a walkthrough, he gives me a quote. It's like $5,000. Excuse me, $6,000. You know, it's not terrible, because I did ask for, you know, there's some tiling on one place and there's carpeting in one place. It's gonna be a little bit of labor. Fine. So I do a little bit of the money up front, and I wrote a check for this, okay? And I decided I was not going to move forward because as I looked at this is for the office now, primarily the kitchen, which is the other part, and the hallway. My thought is I could just lay over some tile. There's already tile there. I can lay tile over top of it. I can do that myself.
[00:22:56] The office I had a whole different vision for, and I figured for the vision I want, I'm not sure that six grand is a fair price.
[00:23:07] They said, no, it'll just go back to your bank. We're going to just do an ach. Back to your bank. No, they mailed me a check, so then I had to deposit the check. The bank's not open on the weekend, so I had to do it to the ATM, which puts a hold on it from seven to ten days. Could I have waited? No, because my bank, the current bank, is only in the old place I was at, not in the new place. They choose not to be out here because they call themselves a community bank, which pisses me off. It's a scam that they're able to hold funds. I understand because of the risk it could balance the do do do. My point is, I would like to see a change of the rules that says a bank can close on Saturday. I think banks should be required to be open on Saturday, even if it's limited hours. That's a scam. But I digress.
[00:23:58] The next scams. So I have Internet, I have dual Internet, technically three. I have dual Internet because I need a primary to backup. And I've always done this because Internet goes out, it happens. So I set up the Internet. I get everything going right. The primary Internet starts going in and out, no problem. I go online and they're saying, hey, you owe this money, that it's not related to the in and outs. But it's pissing me off because they're asking for money when the thing's not stable. And normally I wouldn't have paid them, but I need the Internet because it's the primary and the money that they're asking is significantly inflated. Significantly inflated. They're charging an install fee that shouldn't be there. They're charging a fee on the old place, it shouldn't be there. Nothing's right. Nothing makes sense. Nothing adds up. I call in.
[00:24:49] Oh, looks like you added a new service line. No, I did a move. Why are you still charging on the old? Well, it says it was a new ad. I'm telling you I did a move. It doesn't make any sense for you to have two lines in two different parts of the state. What are you talking about? So the guy goes through, he does the fix and duh, duh, duh, and tells me not to pay it. He's gonna clear out the late fees, take care of the stuff. And then I dialed in earlier and took care of it. The point is, it's a scam because when you do a move, when you set up to do a move of any utility, but mostly Internet's notorious for this.
[00:25:23] What ideally should happen is they are required to contact you and confirm this is a move order. We are terminating service. As in a human calling, we are terminating service. You're not giving the old. They should follow up on it, not just sit getting fat charging without contacting somebody. I think that's a scam, in my personal opinion.
[00:25:46] The third, renting. Renting. And I've had more time to reflect on this now that I bought a home and now that I'm a homeowner again, I've had more time to refer. The plan is to double up on the mortgage payments. So the other piece I had to do is set aside. The reason I was so frustrated about the check refund is some of that money is going to go to the mortgage payment because I plan to double pay the mortgage year over year to eat away at the principal.
[00:26:14] Renting, ladies and gentlemen, is the biggest scam I can think of. Of them all, it's the biggest. Think about what renting is. This also came up in some of the other stuff I was doing, like rental cars and rented a van and all this, you know, but renting in general, it's a scam. Let's take the rental truck. Okay, that I just did. Or actually, even better, I'll do the rental car. That didn't happen. So uber, the application has an option for you to rent a car. Sounds good. And it goes through and it books the rental. You don't have to give a credit card, just books the rental. Says, here's your confirmation number. You're all good. Here's the problem.
[00:26:55] If you're trying to get a car from an airport, okay, there's two issues. The airports are open pretty much every day. However, they require, you have a return ticket because of the government. And this is why it's stupid and why it's a scam. Number one, they're assuming you might be coming from some international destination and not going back. So you might be illegal or something. That's the only reason that they do it. But it's stupid because if your driver's license is an american address, the only way you could have gotten it is to be somehow an american citizen. Now, there are states that allow illegal immigrants to get ids. California. But you can't get a real id without proving that you're an american citizen because your birth certificate is required to submit this thing. And I've had real ids in every state that I've been in except for California and now the state I'm in now. But I have every. I don't have my California id anymore. It's lost on what happened to it. But I have my other ids, and I have my current one, and I have a copy of the birth certificate. I have everything necessary to otherwise prove I'm an american citizen. But worse, my driver's license has the address that I'm taking the rental car to, and they still won't take it. Now, they'll begrudgingly take it, but then they require you to have a credit card. I do not carry credit cards. I don't have credit card debt. I don't believe in debt, because credit is another scam. I have debit cards. Sure. I have cash. Sure. I will not be carrying a credit card simply because they. Because the credit card doesn't do anything. So then they say, well, that's how we can make sure, in case you do it doesn't disprove or prove anything that you're doing. A credit card versus a debit card related to this whole international debacle. So I booked this. The reason I ranted a bit. I booked this car in good faith, thinking Uber is overriding it. I get down there, there's a heavy line for no damn reason. I get in.
[00:28:57] The lady looked like she'd want to be there. Fine.
[00:29:00] All right. Id and credit card. I give her id and the debit card, but I ask her twice. I have a confirmation number. Would you like to look it up? Now, I don't know why, but this is so right now, she's already on my hit list with an s. I can't take a debit card. Why not? I need a proof of return ticket. Why? It's booked. The Uber. We don't book the Uber, which is a lie, because I'm showing her the confirmation. Proving is booked through Uber. Well, I don't know why they did it. Neither do I, and that's not my problem. But you're pissing me off because I have a confirmation. It's confirmed. I expect you to do the car. She refused to do the car.
[00:29:35] If you wanted to get a rental car from a non airport rental situation, they're not open on Sunday, which this so happened to be, which was yesterday. So I'm not going to get the rental car now. The only reason I needed the rental car is I wanted to drive back to my other place, which is the apartment, to at least make some progress towards getting the final cleanup. And I can't do it now. I had gotten a truck, a van, and I driven it, drove it out there, left it there, took the car that I don't want to keep. So I have the car I want to keep at the car I don't want to keep. The car I don't want to keep. Was still there. So I had a slick. Let's go ahead and just leave the van there. Take the car. I don't want to keep. Drive it up here. It's now in the back. Great. And then I'll take this rental car one way. Go down there, load up the van, come back up here. Sounded perfect, except for this chick at the freaking hertz. Okay, so I have to take the bus. Everybody in this area recommends a certain bus because apparently it's better than sliced bread. All right, fine, so I do the bus.
[00:30:45] I'm not going to bore you with that story. It's not relevant to the scam.
[00:30:50] The scam part comes in with the van. Okay, so then that requires a deposit. And the deposit is roughly $200 higher than the rate that they charge, which is based on mileage. I don't mind that so much. It's just, it's the principle that it's so much freaking higher.
[00:31:08] What they do, though, when you return it, they have all these terms. And if you've ever rented a car, it's the same thing. Well, you know, you better fuel it up or we're gonna do something. You better have not have a damage. We're gonna charge there. Deep, deep. They're doing everything in their power to basically hold your deposit hostage and then try to justify why you should get it back. And every single one of them pretend or act or present, like, I'm supposed to be really chomping at the bit over this $200, and I'm not. And they're shocked when I'm telling them, I don't care. Take the frickin thing back. I don't care. Keep the money. It's not worth this nonsense because you're like, we'll just fill it up. I can't. Where the rental place is, all the gas stations are closed because it's a frickin slum and crime is out of control in this particular area that it happens to be in. So I'm not going to be able to do it close. If I do it here, it's just going to drop the tank away because of how far they are away. It's like half, it's like half an hour away. It's going to drop the tank because it's a fricking truck. So no matter what I do, it's a losing game. All to scramble for 20 or 200 fricking dollars. You're listening to me saying you're dismissing the value, $200. It's all in perspective. I make to put math to this, right? For me to make $200, I only have to work 2 hours a day. It, for me, it doesn't make sense. I'm saying to scramble for $200, I actually have a refund on that same primary Internet I haven't filled out yet because it's only $150. And when I do, I'm probably going to use it to pay the bill. There's no value in these low amounts for me. So how does that connect to the rental of the apartment? It's the same darn thing. When I signed up for it, they charged me $1800 for the deposit. Okay, fine. It's just money. I do. But, but the thing is, after you move out, and this is every apartment and I can't stand this garbage. It's the same business where. Okay, well, you better, you better keep the walls perfectly clean and, you know, you better shampoo that carpet and you better perfectly clean up and scrub all the toilets and get it all perfectly clean or you're not getting it all bad. Doo doo doo. And then if it has carpet, it doesn't matter. They're going to charge you for the carpet replacement. They're almost guaranteed to charge you for the paint repainting, especially have a headboard that happened to do scuffs or something. If you have pets, they're going to charge you for that. No matter what. They're going to take away from that deposit and they know that. And they're holding that money hostage so that they can take it away from you. Because what should happen that they don't do is that they simply send you a bill with, without holding excess money upfront, just like the frickin Ir's wants to do. You know, you need to pay us upfront and then you have to explain why you should get it back. That's what these rental companies are doing. That's why it's a scam. They're taking money from you, you don't get interest on that money, you don't get the fair share back of that money. And then they expect you to jump through hoops and dance around, tap dance in order to justify why you could get those scraps back. And I wasn't going to do it. So with the apartment, great example. They're going to have to charge me for the walls. They're going to have to charge me for a little bit of the flooring. They're going to have to charge you with replacement of the carpet, guaranteed. They're probably going to charge you for a little bit in the kitchen, whatever. They're likely going to charge you a little bit in the bathroom. Whatever, whatever. I don't care. It doesn't matter. The place I came from, Nevada, I'm pretty sure I did first months and last month's rental in that business. I didn't get a dime of it back. And I didn't expect a dime of it back because I wasn't going to dance their hoops when they left me with a house that had a rat infestation to it. But that's me. I'm coming at it from the principle of it. It's not about the dollars. And I'm not going to tap dance and play that scam game where you're holding my money interest free and then you expect me to scramble to get it back. I'll tell you to go kick rocks. You have your unit back. I gave you the notice that you wanted. Whether it's a car, whether it's a truck, whether it's apartment, whether it's a house, you got it back. Keep it, take it. The money, keep it, take it. I don't care because it's not worth the fight. The worst that can happen, or the best in some cases is either. A, they'll go ahead, just keep the money cool. B, they'll cheat it to the state, as in, say, it's unclaimed money, whatever, excess. Cause they don't want to talk to you anymore. If they just cheated to the state, that's even better because it means I don't have to talk to those numb nuts. I win anyway. Because no matter what, what they, these players want is, nope, you can't paint the walls and you can't decorate and you can't make it yours, and we can hold your money. We're not going to pay you interest. I don't play those scam games. I don't. I don't expect other people to feel the same way. I just personally do not. It's all scams, all of its scams, and I just don't play them. And I didn't want to buy a house when I did, just to put in perspective why I'm so frustrated. I didn't want to buy a house when I did. I certainly didn't want to buy a house where I did at all. But the rental, it wasn't going to happen anymore. And if I was financially in a situation where I could feasibly buy something and then hopefully pay it off in quick order, then I own property, then I own land to some degree, and I can turn around and rent it, or I can sell it or I can do something else. There's a short time frame because I don't expect to be here for the, you know, it's a 15 year loan. I expect to have it paid off in ten. I don't expect to live in this place for ten years because I usually don't live in the same state for more than five these days because none of them seem to understand. The presidential election will tell me a lot about whether it's worth staying here or not. As I sense it, I get the sense that most people don't really care for the leadership structure here. I get the sense that the political sphere has shifted. I get the sense that the vast majority of people who are here are not happy. I. This is a sense I get. I don't know if I'm right, that they're not overall happy and they would like to see change. If that's true, then I suspect the vast majority of the state would vote for Donald Trump if he gets that far instead of Joe Biden. And I don't know if the vast majority voted Joe Biden the last time. I have no idea. I've nast. I will tell you, though, everything for me is a scam that I sense and I smell and I hate it. This disgusts me. It absolutely disgusts me. I'm hopeful that being here in my own dang house, where I don't have to listen to that nonsense, once I get these things fixed that should have been fixed by other people, and once I get past all the nonsense, especially with my office, once I get the office set up, I'll feel a lot better, I think, overall, and I'm going to be back full throttle on podcast with a full setup. I'm actually on a desk right now, believe it or not. But it's not even in the middle of the room. It's you know, once I get all things settled and I'm going to tell the story next week, I think of the reason why I'm pretty much avoiding the entire upstairs of this house, at least for now. There will come a time that I'm going to be attending to the upstairs, if only because, you know, storage, maybe because there's a lot of storage room up there, but I'm. I'm purposely avoiding it. And I'll tell the story of why I'm avoiding the upstairs. I'm also going to tell the story about sweat equity. I had a very interesting interaction with people online who don't seem to value sweat equity. I'm going to tell the story of sweat equity. As somebody who's somewhat older, I think it's important that people value sweat equity for what it is. And I'm hopeful I can defray this narrative that everything is all about money. To avoid problems, that you're not going to be able to avoid certain types of problems. They're going to be there. And you can choose to do it yourself. That's sweat equity. Or you can choose to pay somebody. The worst thing you could do is nothing at all. I'm going to tell that story. I think it's entertaining because the whole mission I have with the ceiling fan, at least in the master, it's going to make you laugh. It may make some of you angry, but I think it's going to make you laugh more than angry. The silliness that is and the reason that I had to do it, but also inspiration when you have to do it for your own place sometime down the road.
[00:39:57] How old.
