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How to Get Through College Without Drowning in Student Debt

Part B: Decide If You Really Need to Go to College

Declan

Exceptionally smart (but I might be prejudiced), Declan is one of the most creative people I know. Traditional academia did not suit his learning style. Now he is building his own success story in his own manner, without being stifled by a system designed to produce employees.

The first decision you need to make in determining your financial future is whether you really need to go to college or university. I know suggesting some young people don’t need to go to college borders on heresy. After all, I have a master’s degree in Education! But the truth is:

Some people are not temperamentally or intellectually suited for an academic life.
All of our kids and bonus children are whip-smart, but many of them do not learn well in a traditional academic setting. For young people like this, being forced into a traditional education or career path can not only frustrate them to no ends, it can also damage their initiative, creativity, and likelihood of success.
This is not an excuse for academic laziness. But the decision on whether to pursue a university degree should depend on your goals, learning style, and talents. Like everything else in life, this I hope you never base this decision on peer (or parental) pressure or worse: the “everyone else is doing it” excuse.

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Fun Way to Give Back

Yesterday, Mandi got a call from our friend Jonathan at the Milam Community Theater. He was asking if we happened to have any old cabinets just lying around, because they needed some for a set in an upcoming production.

We didn’t have any (other than the ones that are supposed to go in Mandy’s kitchen eventually (once we can get to the storage container–it’s muddy).

But then, Lee said, hey, we are going to take the cabinets out of the Washington house and replace them! So, we told Jonathan that if they would come and get them, they are welcome to them. It saves us on the demo cost, and still we are helping out the community. It’s a win for all.

Another floor and cabinet view!

And it fits right in with recycling rather than throwing away, which we always think is a good idea.

When we go to the play, we will be sure to get pictures of the cabinets in their starring role. In the meantime, the annual Gala is tomorrow night, so we will go enjoy that benefit of sponsorship!

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Landscaping and Rental Properties

Here’s Lee adding more to my old shade garden, because “helpful” workers had dug up my perennials. Some came back!

One of my coworkers had a really good question for me today. She has a rental townhouse, and the back yard of it is completely shaded by large trees. That sounds great in a hot place like Austin, but then you have to remember that when there’s no sunshine, turf grass has a hard time. And her tenants have two dogs, who have turned the “lawn” into a muddy mess.

She wondered what I would do if I had a property like that. What a good question! Here’s what I’ve done to answer it:

First I was going to suggest she consult a landscape designer, but ha! She’d already done that, and got a plan full of pea gravel, not her favorite.

I then thought back to my Braesgate house, which was always completely shaded over, even after we cut down one big tree. There, we made a large covered porch, which meant the dogs had to traverse it to get into the house, wiping off some of the dirt, at least. And even before the porch, I’d planted a shade garden full of local plants that like shade (inland sea oats and Turk’s cap are my favorites). That took some experimentation.

This grass did not last long. We ended up with just a small grassy area and a lot of crushed granite.

Later, we did a landscape featuring that crushed granite stuff for paths, and large stones elsewhere. That worked great, except that, even with landscape cloth under it, weeds showed up like crazy. You need to remember that weed seeds are often air-borne (or bird-borne), so they got deposited ON the rock. The leaf litter from all the trees provided a great growing medium, no matter how hard the lawn dudes worked to clean it all up and put it in the mulched areas.

But, that was my personal house. Would I go to all that trouble for a rental property, my friend asked? The answer to that was a resounding NO! You want the landscaping in any rental property to be as low maintenance as possible, and you sure don’t want to spend money on a fancy design or expensive lawn maintenance people (just having them mow and trim is expensive enough).

The best idea I could come up with was to just mulch the whole back yard, and keep top-dressing it yearly. The mulch would keep the mud down, and look tidy.

What Do You Think?

I don’t think my answer was all that great, so I would love to hear your ideas for keeping a shady back yard in a rental property from becoming a mud pit in the rain and a dust bowl when it’s dry. It seems like something many of us who own rental properties must deal with.

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Washington Has New Floors

This picture shows the floors before, along with the suspicious glue.

Our start on the Washington House rehab with our fried Jennifer managing the project was slowed down at first, when Contractor David discovered the glue used on the flooring that we wanted to get rid of looked suspiciously like something we didn’t want to breathe. So, we waited until high quality ventilators arrived. Thinking back on it, we should have had those when we were removing the ceiling on the Hermit Haus, but, well, you live and learn.

I really appreciate David and Kim’s concern about safety and health. While we try not to tell contractors what to do, there have been times we’ve really wished we’d seen gloves, safety glasses, masks, or ventilators on projects over the years. I’d take a delay any day over someone getting hurt or sick!

Toilet is now gone. The rest will go, too.

The scraping did end last week (thanks to the scraping team!), and then they spent quite a bit of time putting new base floor paint down over the concrete slab. This paints has many good feaatures.

First, it’s smoothing out the floor, so that when we put in new top flooring, it will look its best and (bonus) stay put. Second, it has something that kills mold and mildew and any of those kinds of things that might still be lurking down there.

One little delay was caused by the difficulty the team had in painting the bathrooms. The toilets were not cooperating and would not come up off the floor. But, HA, they showed THEM, and they are finally outside (nice lawn art), ready to be replaced with shiny new ones. Ah, just one of the services we provide.

Pause for a moment, and enjoy Mandi’s tour of the Washington house, where she shows you the floors and the other repairs our team still needs to make.

Do YOU think she sounds “country”? I think she sounds Texan.

I’ll be interested to find out what’s next on Jennifer’s agenda for working on the Washington house. There is a cat-shaped hole that needs to be filled, that’s for sure.

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, (Re)Move

Somebody should neatly tear down these boxes and store them for their next move.

As part of our home staging business, we moved again recently. We’ve been averaging a move every six months lately. We’ll probably move again soon, though, because this house is getting shown a lot (a realtor brought two people by as we were moving in).

(Reduce) Now, you might think all that moving is unbearably stressful. Actually, with enough practice, one can actually get good at it. And, it turns out, it’s actually good for us, too. Stuff doesn’t have a chance to turn into useless junk when you have to take everything out of its spot in storage, decide where it will go in the new house, pack it up, box it, ship it, unpack it, and set it up in the new place. The burden of this side of “ownership” puts the value of things in a totally new light. If you’re not using it and it has no sentimental value, get rid of it. Sell it, donate it or throw it away.

Hint, hint.

(Reuse) One aspect of moving is, of course, boxes. It really does take lots of boxes to move. We give ourselves 5 days to move fully from one house to another. Once we get fully moved in, the boxes get broken down and put in storage (on or off site) until the next move. One lesson we learned on this last move is to use a different color of marker for each move. You pack stuff in the boxes and then label them with either the contents (and “heavy” or “fragile”) and/or with the name of the room they’re supposed to go into in the new house. The problem for us was that we never marked out the previous moves’ writing on the reused boxes. (Hey, we’re in a hurry! We only have 5 days to completely move in.) We didn’t mark them out this time either, but next time we’ll use red markers so we know which words to believe.

These are great for Move #1. Thank goodness they make other colors!

(Recycle) The activity of moving does take its toll on boxes, and there are always some that aren’t going to be usable again. There are probably going to be some with too much writing on them to be usable, too. Luckily, cardboard is still recyclable, so these get fully broken down and sent off to the blue bins to become something else in their next lives. You’ll also see listings on Craigslist for free boxes. Someone will have moved and won’t be planning to move again. Knowing that everyone else who’s moving is going to need boxes, they’re more than happy to get the usable cardboard off their hands.

(Remember) By the way, if you do pick up someone else’s boxes, take my advice and mark out whatever they have written on them.

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Most Recent Posts

How to Get Through College Without Drowning in Student Debt
02/17/19 - Business Update, Education - 1 Comment

Part B: Decide If You Really Need to Go to College The first decision you need to make in determining your financial future is whether you really need to go to college or university. I know suggesting some young people don’t need to go to college borders on heresy. After all, I have a master’s…

Continue Reading
Fun Way to Give Back
02/15/19 - Business Update, Community Outreach - No Comments

Yesterday, Mandi got a call from our friend Jonathan at the Milam Community Theater. He was asking if we happened to have any old cabinets just lying around, because they needed some for a set in an upcoming production. We didn’t have any (other than the ones that are supposed to go in Mandy’s kitchen…

Continue Reading
Landscaping and Rental Properties
02/13/19 - Education, rental properties - 3 Comments

One of my coworkers had a really good question for me today. She has a rental townhouse, and the back yard of it is completely shaded by large trees. That sounds great in a hot place like Austin, but then you have to remember that when there’s no sunshine, turf grass has a hard time.…

Continue Reading
Washington Has New Floors
02/12/19 - Rehabbing - No Comments

Our start on the Washington House rehab with our fried Jennifer managing the project was slowed down at first, when Contractor David discovered the glue used on the flooring that we wanted to get rid of looked suspiciously like something we didn’t want to breathe. So, we waited until high quality ventilators arrived. Thinking back…

Continue Reading