New, Exciting, Terrifying, and The Normal Stuffs…

Where does the time go? I can’t believe how long it has been since I posted last. Its been a busy almost 3 weeks.

I have the Dog & Den website up (dogandden.com). I’m not sure it exactly the way I want it to be, but I think I may feel that way because I’m not a “professional” website builder. I like the site though and feel that I will be able to add to it as I finish more of my trainings, such as animal first aid and CPR and dog trainer training. This is all a bit overwhelming and oh so exciting.

I’ve started my volunteering/apprenticing with the trainer my friend recommended me to, and I’m absolutely loving it. Though its only been a few days of it, so far, I am starting to remember how much I love the feeling of being around a bunch of dogs. Sure, I have my three here, and I am in heaven with them, but it isn’t the same thing. My dogs are my dogs, family. The dogs I am getting to interact with while I’m apprenticing provide a whole different feeling, a detachment of sorts, and this is a good thing.

To help get things going with Dog & Den, I have signed up with a few dog walking, pet sitting, and house sitting apps, such  as  Wag, DogVacay, and Rover.com. Nothing, yet, but I’m there, and, like a lot of things, it’s just a matter of time before things get rolling. Again, super exciting.

I just spent the weekend at a real estate investing training class. A very dear friend came to me saying she wants to do this and wants me to do it with her. She knows my financial situation, so no surprises there. She is funding us to go through all of the training and her credit is sooo much better than mine so she is also the one that will be utilizing the funding available with the investing company we are signed up with. We are working out the details and specifics, yet, of duties and profit splits, but I have to admit this is also an exciting thing happening in my life.

Now, I know what most people think when they hear about real estate investing courses and such. That’s ok. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, right or wrong (I’m not saying either). There was not a single time throughout the whole weekend that I had any feelings of being sat in front of a used car salesman trying to manipulate me into buying the clunker, and this is not the first real estate investing training that I have looked into. In the past, I could hear some potential, but I had also felt like there was a scam there. What’s different this time? I’m not sure. It doesn’t feel icky, I guess.

At any rate, my friend signed us up for the advanced training, which includes mentors to walk you through your first finds and sales transaction. The mentors are something we have access to for life, any time we feel we need them, which will probably be for quite some time. Our next training is in three weeks.

In the training coming up, a group of mentors come here and walk us, physically, through the process of finding the right properties, checking them out, crunching the numbers to make sure its a good deal, making an offer, and finding a buyer. I’m excited to see this part. After that, it’s the expo in Las Vegas at the end of March, which they pay for the travel, three-night stay at the Luxor Hotel, and breakfast and lunch all three days. I’ll, of course, be keeping you all up to date on how this all works out. And, yes, I’m terrified, but also extremely eager to see the outcome. This could turn out to be really great.

We had the water back for about a week, and the well pump went out. The major bummer to this is that the landlord is in Mexico until March and we will have to deal with this ourselves. We had had a feeling it was about to go and informed the landlord, but I had decided we would try to see if anyone in our network could find a new pump at a wholesale price for us, or at least a discounted price. Just trying to save the landlord a little on the cost of replacement since I truly believe that if we weren’t living here, he probably wouldn’t bother replacing the pump. I let him know we would do the labor part of the replacement, too. He said he would pay for the pump if I found one. The pump is only about 85 feet down, so not horrible. Still a lot of work, but doable.

Of course, as seems to be the case more times than not, the pump going out comes at a time when we are very cash poor, so its bottled water for now. This is not an inexpensive way to go, but it could be worse. Again, I am gaining an even better appreciation for running water. We will figure this out.

Well, I had better get to doing some things around here. There is much to do. Have a great day, Everyone!!!