I thought this was interesting, yet not surprising. A study often cited by consultants and motivational speakers turns out to not have happened. This is why documentation and references are very important. My last post was about MLMs (Multi-Level Marketing) organizations. I have been involved with an MLM in the past. I can remember statements in "The Plan," or the Sales and Marketing Plan, such as "The Wall Street Journal says that this is the business of the future." I even made that statement myself on occasion when I was giving "The Plan" to people. Looking back, I am more than a little embarrased by my naivete in regard to believing and passing on undocumented statements. If I could sit through that original "Plan" today, I would likely ask if the article or author could be produced to document the reference. I can also remember being told that "The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that this business is not a pyramid!" Again, no documentation was offered. Of course, I can also remember being told that "If you work this business only 8-10 hours a week, which is spare time, you can retire in 2-5 years!" I didn't have the Internet back then (1993), but from what I read now, most testimonials reflect mine- giving up lots of time prospecting, showing "The Plan", going to functions and meetings a lot more than 10 hours a week, and getting nowhere. I'm not aware of anybody who can claim to have "succeeded" on only 8-10 hours a week.

Goal setting is a wonderful thing, and motivational authors and speakers certainly have a place in the world, but always pay attention and listen for undocumented references or stories when dealing with them. The same thing goes if you find yourself invited to a "business meeting." Look for documented refences. Any salesman can make fanciful claims about a product or system and people who have been successful, but can the salesman substantiate them?

Casey Serin is coming back. This should be interesting.

I first heard about Casey Serin I believe around March of 2007 from a story titled "The World's Most Hated Blogger." At that point, I still had aspirations of being a "problogger" and making lots of money from blogging. The title of the article intrigued me, so I clicked on the link wondering what it could possibly be about. I read about a person named Casey Serin who spent a bunch of money on real estate "investing" courses and bought a total of eight houses in several different states, maxed out all of the available equity through routine yet illegal means such as "liar loans" and overstating income, then couldn't sell the houses and the entire deal crashed down around him. He started a website, I Am Facing Foreclosure.com, which is no longer available but thanks to the Internet Archive can still be read. For some reason, like a lot of other people, I was intrigued by this guy. A lot of people suspected him of being some kind of viral marketing stunt, as if there is no way what he did could have been possible. Could anyone really be that greedy and stupid? I followed along for months with others watching him borrow more money, take afternoon naps, and pursue more "sweet deals" rather than trying to get a job and provide for his wife. I honestly didn't know what to make of the whole deal. Did he have some kind of personality disorder, or was he brainwashed by too many real estate seminars or "Rich Dad" style motivational books? I don't know.

One of the things that really bugged me about Casey is that everybody who disagreed with him was labeled a "hater", which later came to take a more trademarked style of "haterz." As you can see through political correctness in society, disagreement with a position is often immediately connected to hate. This is a logical fallisy but is highly useful as it has the effect of immediately shouting down the dissenting voices and dismissing any possible points they may have.

Casey had several people along the way who tried to help him. They all attempted to get deals with him, which would give him some productive work to do and give them the chance to capitalize off of his popularity. He always managed to slip out somehow, leaving the other person hanging. Sometimes money and commitments were involved and a lot of feelings were hurt. One person did pursue legal action, but as I remember he was talked out of it.

Like other readers, I tried to leave comments and even sent Casey an occasional email offering prayers and advice.

Casey ran off to Australia on an offer to stay with a fan on really short notice, leaving his wife to deal with the collectors. By the time he came back, his wife had it. He eventually sold his blog and shut the operation down. So far he's popped back up twice, only to dive back into obscurity.

I honestly want the guy to come out of whatever got him into his current mindset and be successful. Honestly, he makes a perfect case study for a Dave Ramsey class: trying to borrow your way to prosperity does not work.

I'll stay tuned. Let's see what develops.

Yesterday, Dave Ramsey and a caller really got into it over something called "United First Financial." Dave called it an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) scheme and the woman insisted that he didn't know what he was talking about while Dave insisted that she couldn't do math and didn't understand how a mortgage works. Things got really heated when she let on that she was a Realtor. Wow. Of course, in true MLM distributor fashion, she claimed that Dave Ramsey couldn't know anything about their services if he had never been to a presentation.

Having been involved in a couple of MLM's in the past, and having studied various aspects of them, I thought I would check into this "United First Financial." From what I gather, the program involves purchasing a $3500 web-based software program. You also take out a HELOC (Home Equity Line Of Credit.) The HELOC has to be at a lower interest rate than your mortgage. You then use checks from the HELOC to pay your mortgage and other bills. The $3500 program apparently tells you the optimal time to pay your mortgage. The point to this is to hit your mortgage account right before interest is calculated so that interest is calculated on a lower amount. This can apparently save a bunch of money in the long run.

To me, the whole process seems over-complicated, expensive (if you have an extra $3500 around, why not just dump it into your mortgage in the first place?) and has the potential for dangerous amounts of debt to be racked up. Dave Ramsey's books can all be purchsed for under $25. I'd recommend starting there.

If anyone who has been or is involved in this stops by, what are your thoughts?

I said a while back that I'm going to start monitoring oil so I can get a feel for what's going on and what's going to happen. I generally don't trust most news reporting because of the "if it bleeds, it leads" policy, among other reasons. I can remember stories back in 2002 and 2003 stating that "gas will hit $4 a gallon this year." While that did eventually happen, it took until this year, 2008, to happen, making the reporting from 5 and 6 years ago highly inaccurate.

Any research into how the oil market works will inevitably come across some discussion of "futures trading" and "oil speculating." I'm not sure how that works entirely, but I have heard that "futures traders are responsible for the mortgage mess we're in" a few times. I don't know what kind of truth is in that statement. It seems like greed, impatience, and shortsightedness on the part of both homebuyers and lenders was a large part of the cause, and yes, I take some credit for that as I am in my own mess in that regard from some shortsighted decisions I made.

Anyway, I came across this brief primer of how futures trading works, and how Congress, which won't allow any drilling for oil on our own shores, is starting to haul oil futures traders in front of their committees as they have run out of oil executives to blame.

My Realtor and I talked before about writing a book about trying to get our house sold. We've been through quite a bit on this deal. We spent from June 07 to Feb 08 on BuyOwner, where we had a few showings but mostly got calls from Realtors looking to list us. We finally listed with one Realtor who came off strong but in the end didn't seem to possess the drive to market our house. When we hadn't had a single call in over a month, and I started pushing her to get people back in the door, she suggested a short sale. I said "no way" for several reasons. She suggested a bridge loan to cover both our house and my in-laws' house. Ugh. When I said no, she said she'd let us go to refinance. I pressed for an unconditional release, which I never officially got, but she said I could list with another Realtor. When we relisted, things were going fine when the former Realtor's broker called demanding that we finish out our listing agreement. Our Realtor was forced to undo hours worth of work that made for really effective marketing, which got people in the door. After a couple of days, the broker let us go and signed a release. Then we went thrrough the three almost contracts between a woman and her daughter. I'm sure with the proper writing, this would make one heck of a story.

I even picked out a title for the book, but I won't give the address at this moment. The title is "BOHICA- the (our address) Story." BOHICA is an acronym from my Navy days that is very crude yet I believe tells our story perfectly: "Bend Over, Here It Comes Again!"

When asked how I was doing this morning, all of my willpower was required not to reply in an Eric Cartman impression "Well, I'm pissed off!" (Pardon the "French.") Perhaps that isn't the ideal description of my overall mood, but it sure is a great conversation starter. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the situation we went through over the weekend, but "crushed" and "disappointed" are family-friendly words that could be used.

I've blogged for over a year on the misadventures of trying to get our house sold. We ran up against what looked like 3 contracts with the same people for the sale of our house. The first person came through several weeks ago. She quickly came back with an offer. We counter-offered. She countered. We countered. She disappeared for a week. Our Realtor kept calling her agent, but got the feeling that they were playing games. She came back a week or so later through her agent and we began negotiations again. I've said before, we're selling the house at a loss and we know that. We went back and forth a couple of times, then she disappeared once again. Her agent wouldn't return calls to our agent, or if she could be reached, she just gave some blather. We finally went back to her with an acceptance of her lowest offer, which would exhaust our financial reserves to get out of the house. We heard nothing.

We had several showings along the way. One person who came through turned out to be the daughter of the woman who started and disappeared twice. She came through with a Realtor from our agent's brokerage. She began to list her home with that agent. We weren't sure why they wanted to run another family member through another agent, but we went through the offer process and came to an offer that we could accept with a contingency so all we had to do was sign contracts. While this was going on, we had yet another showing. This showing turned out to be the agent who showed the house to the first person. We weren't sure why, and she didn't leave a card like Realtors are supposed to do so something seemed shaky. We only knew who it was because our Realtor checked the log book. We found out later that the first person came back through with her Realtor to show her sister the house at the same time that her daughter was supposed to be signing a contract on the house with another Realtor.

OK, I'm doing the best I can to lay out some details without giving away anybody's identification or confidentiality, if any exists. On Thursday, as I was inching my way home down 42 in weekend shore traffic (there should be a law that idiots driving to the Jersey shore for the weekend should have to go down Thursday night so they don't interfere with those of us trying to get home from work on Friday) I got a call from one of the brokers that they managed to nail down an offer from the original woman. The offer would be the lowest price we could accept, with no contingency, and closing on August 1. That would make things tight, but we could do it. We told my in-laws, and started busting our butts getting their house ready to move into so early. Throughout the weekend, I stayed in touch with the broker (my Realtor was on vacation, so I've been dealing with her broker who was working on our case in the interim.) The broker was working on getting this deal to a signed contract, which kept getting pushed off. The woman claimed that she needed to sign a lease on her house. Then, after being put off all weekend, the broker had to ping her agent several times. Her agent responded that her daughter had a baby with heart problems and the boyfriend left so she's not going to do anything until her daughter is settled. That worst part of this is, after almost going to contract 3 times with these people, we really are hesitant to believe this. It really doesn't matter; it's not our problem. It can't be our problem. Our problem is we need to sell a house, and we were so close, only to have all of our hopes dashed once again.

At this point, I'm at about the end of my patience for these people. Unfortunately, they're the only serious interest we've had in more than a year of trying to sell the house, but all they've seemingly done is jack us around. It's possible they are going through some life-challenging situations, but so are we, and we don't like being jacked around. What really pisses me off is that while they've been jacking us around, they've had three tours of the house. Each showing involved several hours of work to clean up, plus if we were home we had to walk down the street while the showing went on, so all of this totals more than seven total hours of cleaning and inconvenience. It almost seems like they've been playing us. I'm so frustrated at this point that I'm ready to tell my Realtor that we're not dealing with them again, no matter which family member or agent they go through. I'm tempted to say that if they do come back, we will acccept only our full list price AND I want a contract signed within 24 hours, and if they're not willing to do that, then get lost. My wife is more tolerant of them screwing with us, so I may tell our Realtor to call her if they come back with an offer, but I want a signed contract within 24 hours no matter what.

At least we got to live in three days of euphoria thinking this was all over. No we're back to square one.

So far we've had no offers on the house, but we have had a steady stream of showings. It seems that every time we're tempted to drop the price, we get some more calls for showings, so we haven't have to drop the price yet, which is good because our list price is just about the break-even point. Since I've been listening to Dave Ramsey lately, I'm kicking myself in the butt for maxing out our equity three years ago, and for the two second mortgages before that.

Our first Realtor, let's give the benefit of the doubt, wasn't quite up to the challenge of selling this house. We had two showings right away, then nothing else happened for the rest of the two months we were listed with her. It was very discouraging, and when I started asking how to get people back in the door she suggested a short sale then let us go from our contract "to refinance." Our current Realtor is a professional associate of a friend of ours, and she is working hard. I a so thankful to have the hope that not all Realtors are created equal, and not all brokerages are created equal. With our current Realtor, it seems that her entire brokerage is involved in selling our house. There are three brokers on the name, and they've visited and brought clients to the house. Other Realtors in the brokerage have shown the house as well. It seems like they're personally involved. I plan to give a glowing recommendation when this is all over.

I think I'm going to be drinking the Dave Ramsey Cool-Aid. I read his Total Money Makeover book over the weekend. I'll write more on that later. This is just a quick post about a site I found, the Debt-ective. I read a couple of his stories, and they're amusing. Check it out.

My wife and I have been with AT&T for many years. We started in 2000 with Cellular One, and were bought by Cingular shortly after. We left Cingular for AT&T Wireless in 2003, only to be bought by Cingular two months later. In 2005, we renewed our contracts with Cingular, and were then bought by "the new AT&T." I upgraded my phone last year and got us on another 2 year contract. Our contract will be up in January next year. My wife doesn't like AT&T. She had a lot of problems with the network and her phones, but that seems to be fixed. As far as I can tell, the network works well enough for me. My company issued me a Verizon RAZR, and I can't tell a difference in service between that and my unlocked GSM Pocket PC phone on AT&T's network.

When I look at prices from the other companies, I'm honestly not inspired. Even T-Mobile doesn't seem that impressive price wise. Verizon and Sprint use a proprietary architecture which is on the way out in some countries, although our telecom giants have enough clout here that I see it remaining for a long time.

I would love to see some true competition and innovation in our telecom industry.

Listen here. A woman was getting credit card offers for all members of her family, including a three year old. She had the 6 year old fill out the application and send it in. The application clearly listed his birthday as 2002, his income as $0, and his status as "other" rather than homeowner or renter. BOA granted him a card with a $600 limit. As Dave Ramsey says, this is the same industry that goes before Congress bitching and moaning about how much money they're losing and they need tighter bankruptcy laws.

I keep wondering how the "Debt Industrial Complex" got so loose. 1992 wasn't that long ago, and in 1992, when I was 18, I could not get credit to save my life. Nobody would give me credit, for the reason "you don't have an established credit history." No kidding, how the heck did they expect me to get a credit history? I used to belong to Security Service Federal Credit Union in San Antonio, Tx. I think I still have $5 in savings there but I've long since closed my other accounts. I went to visit Security Service when I was home on leave to see if I could get a credit card from them to establish a credit history. They told me that if I saved up $500, I could probably get a secured Visa. It took me a year to save up that money, but I came back on leave about a year later with $500 to set aside for a secured Visa. Then they told me that my income had to be a certain amount. I think it was $1200 a month. At the time I was an E-4 making just over $1000 a month in base pay. This time I tried another tactic, the good old fashioned "Oh, sure, I can die for my country but I can't get a SECURED VISA card from my federal credit union, which I have been a member in good standing of since I was 13." That actually did the trick, and I got the card. A year later, I was able to have the $500 put back in my Savings account.

I wish Dave Ramsey had been around back then. Looking back, I should have just left debt alone. I should have just taken my dad's 1987 Hyundai Excel with me into the Navy rather than buying a Mazda truck.Kids, remember this: Debt is bad. Say it with me.

I told my wife that I came across Dave Ramsey's website last week, and read and listened to some of his content during slow points in my day. I found out that somebody gave her the Total Money Makeover book, which she was able to find. I guess I'll read it. We've been fairly good at not letting a lot of debt build up, but we still use debt "as a tool", no matter how smart we think we're being.

I can't say I've paid much attention to Dave Ramsey. Before she died, my mom went through a phase where she was really fascinated by him, but I learned over the years that just because my mom got highly interested in something, it wasn't always going to be relevant to me. She went through a phase where all she could talk about was some town in England that claimed Jesus traveled with Joseph of Arimathia to England as a boy, and after His ascension, Joseph traveled back to England and started the first church. My response, then and now, was "So what?"

Anyway, I was led through one of my RSS feeds to Dave Ramsey's site, and I've been poking around. Here is a hilarious, yet highly insightful rant of his.

Reading through my RSS feeds this morning, I came across a post Brad Isaac made about reasons to become debt free. I've thought several times over the years about becoming debt free, but most of my attempts resulted in more debt. My wife and I have become good at keeping our credit card debt low, and when we must buy a car we buy used and keep the payment close to the $200 mark. Debt definitely limits our options, especially in selling our house. We took out a second mortgage in 2003 to refinance some debt and to replace windows and our sliding glass door, which was ready to disintegrate. We refinanced that second mortgage in 2004, then combined both mortgages into one good mortgage in 2005, since rates were low and our house had appreciated so much. Now it's biting us. We're looking at selling our house at a loss to help family out. Obviously, at the time we took out the mortgage, we planned on staying in the house for a long time.

Check out Brad's post and give some thought to becoming debt-free.

So far, there's no real news on selling the house. We've had several showings recently, and the feedback our Realtor has gotten has been mostly positive, with of course that one deal breaking objection in each case. One potential buyer loved our house, but thought our bedrooms were too small. Hey, so did I. I had a HUGE master bedroom in my former condo. I personally like the large family areas in the house, but I already bought it. One person liked the house and found it fit perfectly within budget, but is a first time buyer and expects to find a house that won't require any painting. When we bought the house, we had already looked at about 25 to 30 houses prior, and this one was in about the best move-in condition of any that we saw. I've been told that buyer was just starting, and may be back after viewing the other inventory in this price range.

We did have two offers come in, from the same person. The first offer involved a contingency to sell another house. That was fine, but my Realtor suggested we counter with a requirement for this person to reprice and then drop the price by a certain amount every two weeks until the house sells. We liked that, because otherwise we would have to take all of the risk. If we were to enter into a contract with a contingency, and the other house didn't sell as a result of being overpriced, we would be screwed. Our Realtor researched comparable properties in the area and came back with a price, but the buyer didn't want to reduce and walked away. The person did come back with another offer with no contingency, but the offered price was too low. We're selling our house at a loss, and though we do know that and have built up a financial reserve to compensate, that price would have been more than we could afford to bring to the table to get out. Why are we selling at a loss? Family. My in-laws asked us to take over their house for several reasons which I will leave vague, and we are happy to comply even though it means taking a loss on our house.

We counter-offered. The potential buyer came back with another counter, which was still lower than we can go, so we countered again. We have heard nothing since. That is very frustrating. It seems to me that common courtesy would be to reply with a rejection or another counter, but we have had nothing but silence from this person and agent. That leaves me wondering if the person went away, or needs time to consider, or is pulling together another counter... We have no idea. I really would have appreciated some word, even a "get lost, and take your counter offer with you." The difference between our offers was very small in the grand scheme of things, and I can't see how it would break the bank on the potential buyer's side, though it would break the bank on our side as it determines how much money we have to bring to the table at closing to cover the difference between the sale price and our mortgage balance plus closing costs..

I will be so happy when this is finally over, although one of my fears is that as stressful and frustrating as trying to sell my house will be, we'll find out that this is the easy part. That is the kind of fear that can keep you up at night. On top of it, I'm hoping to trade our Windstar in on a used Hyundai Accent to help get our gas costs down, but we can't do a damn thing until the house sells. We need to see how much of our reserve is left over after closing before I can consider getting a used, more fuel efficient car.

I debated with myself for a few days whether to post this or not, but I believe I have not given any significant details to identify anybody involved. I doubt anyone involved reads my blog, but I have done the best I can to respect any confidentiality that may be in play.

I ended up on the wrong end of an email chain yesterday with that idiotic "Let's not buy gas on Thursday next week, then gas prices have to drop!" This time the email was apparently started by "an (unmaned) executive at Dr. Pepper" or some other soda producer, who likely knows everything there is to know about the oil industry. Seriously, it's not even worth my bandwidth or time anymore to send back the Snopes.com article on that email.

USA Today has a story about oil prices dropping to $123 a barrel, although our local price at the pump is going up above an average of $4 a gallon.

An excerpt from the article:

While the cost of oil accounts for the vast majority of the price of a gallon of gas, other factors — including gasoline supplies and refining margins — can also affect the price. Refining margins are slim because oil prices have nearly doubled over the past year, while gas prices have risen only 27%.

While oil prices have retreated, refiners, gasoline wholesalers and retailers remain under pressure to raise prices to improve their margins, analysts say. That pressure is why gas prices are likely to go higher.

Still, Rozell said, if gas prices get to $4 nationally, they aren't likely to stay there for long: "I think we've pretty much petered out unless there's an event that affects supply."

Even if oil prices remain where they are, gas prices will likely fall 5 cents to 7 cents over the next week, though they may first briefly hit $4, Cordier said.

Even though oil prices are slowly dropping, gas prices won't follow an immediate corresponding drop for various reasons. Even if everybody in the United States didn't buy gas next Thursday, that would not affect anything. If anything, it would throw a statistical glitch into the system and further destabilize everything.

After hearing a comment today that gas prices *could* hit $6 a gallon by Labor Day, I decided to start tracking issues related to oil. I'll post a few here. I'm hardly an expert on the subject, so I'm sure I'll learn something along the way. I'm going to track in an effort to get a handle on what's going on and how to plan for it.

The first thing I've come across is this article about Union City, SD, approving a zoning ordinance for the first potential oil refinery to be built in this country in 32 years. This is only the approval for a zoning ordinance; I don't know if the refinery will ultimately be built. Although I recognize some disagree with this, I consider it good news. Why? One word: capacity. We've all heard the basic economic terms of supply and demand. These are most of the reason why we're paying so much for gas at present. Sure, there's the mythical greedy oil company executive and of course Congress is beholden to special interest groups, but for the most part our supply is not great enough to balance out the demand. There are several reasons for this, and very few of them have to do with SUVs and minivans and the distance many of us have to commute due to boneheaded zoning laws we've put up with over the years because gas was negligible. You may have heard of a couple of nations, China and India. Both of these nations are modernizing rapidly, and as such are competing with the world's supply of commodities, like, well, oil. As these nations grow more thirsty for oil, there is less available for the rest of us. As the world's supply decreases, we also have to realize that our infrastructure has remained the same since the 1970's. Many oil refineries actually closed during the 80's, and no new ones have been built. That means that no matter what our supply is, we still can't refine and transport it to the local gas station if we don't have enough refineries to provide the refining capacity.

Before I post this, I just want to leave one more comment. Do you know what the difference is between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist is uncertain about the future. I hope, if I actually track this issue seriously, not to become entirely pessimistic about it. I don't know how the future will ultimately work out. I can track and analyze trends and data, but I can't see what's coming around the next corner. I'll try to keep that in mind. Although I don't see things improving in the short term, I'm not going to herald this increase in fuel as the "Black Horseman" of the Apocalypse (Rev 6:5-6).

I thought I'd post a brief update on selling the house. We switched Realtors, and the new Realtor is working very hard. We still haven't had any substantial development. We had one offer, but the person needed a contingency to sell a house, and when our Realtor asked the person to drop the price, the person said no. That places all of the risk on us, which isn't right. Like I said, this Realtor is working very hard. It's nice to have her to worry about the details, which takes a huge load off of us.

When we bought the house in 2001, it was a seller's market. This was probably the 25th or 30th house we looked at. We looked at a lot of them. Any time we put an offer in on a house, we got beaten out by a matter of minutes by another offer.We almost lost this house to another offer, but the person apparently had two Realtors fighting, so the sellers rejected their offer and accepted ours then put us through hell for the next several weeks. I don't think they really wanted to sell the house, but from what we're heard from the neighbors they didn't have a choice.

It's the exact opposite now, and it's really starting to get demoralizing. One good aspect of the way things have worked out is that although we've been trying to sell for about a year now, our listing appears brand new in time for summer. We have to work hard for a showing. We have to keep the house clean, and any time we get a call about a showing, we have to straighten up, clean the windows, clean and mop the floor and the bathrooms, put away laundry and other items... It's hard work. Even when we can keep the house clean, it's still at least an hour and a half of work at a minimum just for one showing. Then the person walks through in five minutes and leaves. If our Realtor gets feedback, it's usually something like "It doesn't meet our needs" or "The bedrooms are too small." I know that buyers have to buy a house that meets their needs, but it's hard not to take something like this personally. I can't tell you how many times it's taken us two or more days to get ready for a showing and we don't even get feedback.

Last night was about the same. My wife had to do most of the work because I had an eye doctor appointment. When I got home, we had dinner, cleaned up, tried to keep the kids from scattering toys and smudging the windows, then at five minutes to seven, we put the dog on a leash and walked down the street. When we're home for a showing, we'll do that. We'll walk down to the corner so we can watch. We saw the family drive down the street and pull up to the house. They went in, and came out a few minutes later, then drove away. It's all I can do not to ask "What's wrong with my house? Why didn't you buy it? Don't you know how hard we've had to work just so you can walk in for five minutes, drive away forever, and dismiss it?" I haven't heard anything yet, so I guess no news is good news.

I hope we sell soon. I don't know how much more of this we can take. Even my wife is getting cynical about it. There are times I can't help but think "Why clean up? They're not going to buy it anyway."

From my post on Saturday night, my wife went back to see the broker today. She was very kind and apologized for Thursday. As somebody who can let a bad day overshadow other people's lives, I completely understand that. I still have no idea what the Realtor we originally listed with did, but it caused a lot of trouble and I'm sure I got pulled into some of that Wednesday and my wife on Thursday. We have the signed paper letting us go from the listing agreement, and I will recommend this broker as a person of integrity.

My wife was looking at our original listing agreement, and she's not sure it was filled out correctly. It's possible that it was never valid from the start from a contractual point of view. That's interesting. We just hope to move forward. We just want to get the house sold.

I've been thinking of writing a post on having to depend on professional services for which a person has no training or experience, and how a person can truly be at the mercy of the so called professional when something goes wrong. Real Estate, for instance, is a heavily regulated field. A lot can go wrong. Most of us are not Realtors, and have little interest in becoming one. When you sign a listing agreement with a Realtor, you expect the Realtor to know what he or she is doing. When the Realtor doesn't, or doesn't represent your interests, a lot can go wrong. The same goes for medical billing. You can read my "Darn It Jim" series on Blogger about how it took two years to get a pediatrician's bill settled for Caleb. I am not a medical billing specialist, but I had to spend way too much time acting as one when Aetna screwed up, and one Aetna customer service representative after another refused to do his or her job properly. I wish I had some journalistic training, so I knew which way to go with that article.

I asked in my last post what problem is being solved, and what need is being met by time shares. I thought back to some high pressured sales pitches I've found myself under. I have succumbed to many, including a couple of multi-level marketing organizations. I learned two things:

1. I am not cut out for sales, whether multi-level marketing or otherwise
2. Often, you think life is going just fine until you sit through one of those presentations and learn that somehow your life is all screwed up. It can take years to overcome what they put in your head in one of those organizations.

I figured I would share one. In early 1994, I was a 19 year old FC3 (Fire Controlman 3rd class, or E-4). I was finishing up my class "C" school in San Diego, and had orders to report to the U.S.S. White Plains in Apra Harbor, Guam. I went to the Fleet Exchange for something, probably uniform items. As I walked in the door and showed my ID, a woman sitting at some display booth just inside the door called me over to show me something. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what it was. She was selling some set of books, but they weren't encyclopedias. She was selling the entire set all at once, and as it cost more than $2000, it could be financed and she could arrange the financing. She seemed more interested in giving me the financing as they probably made a lot of their money on interest from young sailors. A lot of people make a lot of money on interest off of young servicemen, which is why they hang around the bases.

From what I can remember, this set of non-encyclopedia books could somehow be used for college credit. You can get a long way with a young sailor by using the words "college credit." To this point, I had come up with a few questions. Note, I did not have the 3-point test I mentioned in my last post at this time. I had just been sucked into that multi-level marketing organization the year before, and I would succumb to many more apparent rip-offs in the years to come.

I asked if I could buy them one at a time. The answer was no, the entire package had to be bought. Hmm, that sounded silly. I said that I was on my way to a ship, and I had no idea what personal space I would have to keep a set like this. She said that sailors told her they can always find places to put things (this is true; sailors can be incredibly resourceful) but she could keep them and mail them back and forth to me while I'm overseas. I had never been to Guam, but I grew up in the Air Force and I know how well the postal system can work overseas.

To this point, she was being very nice. Then I asked if I could think about it overnight and come back the next day. Then her composure started to fail. She said that she wasn't feeling well and might have to be out sick the next couple of days, and I believe this was my last week before going on leave then flying to Guam. She really got insistent that I buy the books before I walked away. At this point, somehow I had enough gumption to tell her that I wasn't going to commit to anything today, and if she's back before I leave, then we can talk. I walked away, bought whatever I came for, then went to lodge a complaint with NEX Customer Service that this woman was trying to strong arm sailors into parting with their hard earned money. I have no idea if Customer Service listened or not, but I never saw her there again.

Maybe I'll have to do a series on sea stories. Do you know what the difference is between a fairy tale and a sea story? A fairy tale begins "Once upon a time..." A sea story begins "You're not going to believe this, but it REALLY happened..." (NOTE: that is the clean version of the joke.)

My family and I are in Virginia Beach this week. I'm down this way for work. I couldn't seem to find a decent hotel close to where I needed to be within the price I am allotted, but my search on Hotels.com kept popping up a nice beachfront suite hotel 20 miles away in Virginia Beach for $90 a night. I could not, for this time period, match the amenities closer to where I needed to be, so I decided to just go with it. For a week long trip, a suite is a nice idea. For my next trip down, I'm only staying one night, so I used Hotwire.com to find a 3 star hotel for $79 a night. Hopefully I'll get better at this business travel stuff. Since I had a suite in Virginia Beach, it only made sense to bring the family with me. This is where having a wife who is a stay-at-home-mom is a real benefit (in many other ways as well); she can pack up the kids and come with me on a moment's notice.

Our first night in the hotel, the concierge stopped us to "ask us a few questions". Turns out the company that owns this hotel is building some fancy time-share places up the beach, and want to offer us a nice meal and a 3 night vacation for sitting through a video presentation. They also offered us breakfast and dinner.

I wrote last year about Sundance Vacations on my other (now inactive blog). I've never actually sat through a time-share presentation. I can't quite wrap my mind around the concept well enough to sit through the hype. As I understand it, you "buy" a share in a vacation destination, usually in a suite or a condo at hopefully an upscale resort. You are allotted a certain time frame when you can use this suite. I guess you can sell or exchange your time to other people or locations. It seems to me like having another mortgage, as you have to finance these things. I can't quite see where the benefit is to me. I've sat through many presentations in my life where an opportunity is presented to me, and I have to make a decision that moment. I've come to not trust anyone who won't allow me the opportunity to go home and sleep on it, or do some independent research on the internet. If it's such a great deal, why be afraid of giving me time to think and research? If it's so great, wouldn't you expect my research to turn that up?

When confronted with these kinds of opportunities, I've devised a 3 point test to decide whether to pursue the opportunity any farther.

1. Problem- I got this idea from Joel Spolski, of Joel on Software fame. Joel is a gifted writer and a successful programmer (I assume his programming is gifted as well, but my exposure to his writing is much more vast than my exposure to his code). He asked the question in regards to a silly, pointless product foisted on Wired Magazine readers about a decade ago: "What problem does this solve?" Joel says that the way to be successful, specifically as a programmer but I think it applies to other areas, is to find a problem and solve it. For this blog post, I'll ask this in regard to time shares: what problem does this solve? Do I have a problem that can be solved by time shares? I know that the presenters want me to think that my problem is that I don't have several weeks a year of access to an upscale vacation resort in Virginia Beach, but do I? My problem is actually a lot more basic, and until I solve this problem, I'm not worried about regular access to a vacation resort. My problem is that my career path keeps leading me into positions where I can only advance by finding another job. I can't seem to stay in a job long enough to build up much of a vacation balance. I also have young children, and a mortgage, so really, upscale vacationing isn't an issue for me right now. My problem is that I need a vacation balance and money. Solve that problem, and we'll talk. (Note, and I'm going to post an update on this soon, I really do love my new job. I'm having a lot of fun, learning a lot of valuable knowledge, gaining some valuable experience, and meeting some fascinating people. I'm really enjoying this position.)
2. Need- This question comes from Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a truly gifted man. I'm a gentile, and a Christian, but I get plenty of insight from the Rabbi. He points out that the way to be successful is to become obsessed with meeting other people's needs. If you meet needs, people will come to you to have their needs me. I ask, in regard to time shares, who's need is being met? I don't really feel that I have a need, at least at this point in my life, that can be met by time shares. The high-powered sales pitch gives me an idea who is getting their need met, and I don't believe it to be me.
3. Think- As I asked above, why can't I have a night to sleep on it? What are "they" afraid I'll find out if I'm allowed to walk away, do some research, talk it over with my wife, and come back?

If a high-powered pitch is presented to me, and it doesn't solve my problem, or meet a need, and I'm not allowed to think, I do my best to get out of there as fast as I can, but I try to be as polite as possible. I try to be kind but firm. Obviously, sales people try to be nice. They want you to think that you may be hurting their feelings by turning them down, but you HAVE GOT TO look out for your own areas of stewardship. Their bottom line is not your concern. It never should be. Be nice, but get out.