#but I also have three hundred bucks a month for medical costs?

[robotslenderman]

I'm. trying to make a moving-out budget. and. I must be fucking SOMETHING up because I don't get paid much but have a decent chunk left over at the end of each month in this theoretical budget?? my estimated rent (if I can get a place for this price, a bit low but not egregiously so) is 40% of my gross pay and research told me that internet would cost WAY more than I thought but there's still a fair amount left over???

I must be forgetting SOMETHING here

[blarrghe]

"I called you at 2am because I need you" for... is it too indulgent to ask for Dorian x Anders?

never too much! Decided on a straight sequel to the last one, so here’s modern au resident!Anders and politician!Dorian after a long shift. --

He had three hours left in his shift when he got the text from Barb. He looked suspiciously down at his phone when it buzzed. Barb’s contact was in his phone with a little butterfly next to her name, to match the tattoo on her ankle and the bright and fluttery nature of her personality. He liked Barb, but she was almost definitely asking him to cover her shift, and he debated opening the message for several minutes before doing so with a reluctant sigh. Barb was going through some things; messy divorce, two little kids to look after all on her own, the pay they made here and the stress that came with it. 

“Can’t find a sitter, can you take a shift?” read the first text, Anders was going to say yes anyway, but then two more came in, buzzing in quick succession. “unless you want to babysit? I’d give you my pay!” bright, chipper texting tone, accompanied by several hopeful looking emojis, “and brownies! 🍫” Barb did make really excellent brownies. He considered taking her up on the second offer, but he really wasn’t sure he had the energy for kids who weren’t bed-ridden or in need of medical care. He could turn on Fun Doctor Mode like a lightswitch for the kids down in pediatrics, but kids who wanted to refuse bedtime and stay up watching TV they weren’t mature enough to handle? He shook his head, half smiling over the offer of brownies, half frowning over the decision he’d made before he even opened the first message. Barb deserved to get the time with her kids, anyway. 

“I’ve got you covered.” Kissy face cat emoji, knife and fork emoji. 

“Lifesaver!!!!!” every single colour of heart.

He pencilled his name in on the clipboard for the next rotation, and began to regret the fact that he’d so quickly stuffed down the pastry Dorian had brought him earlier as he tried to remember if he had enough coins in the pockets of his coat for both a bag of pretzels from the vending machine and the bus home. He didn’t, but he’d have more luck charming the bus driver into a free ride than the vending machine into giving up its snacks, so he went to his locker and fished out the last of his bus money. 

The rest of his shift went by in a blur of activity, up and down halls as his white-soled shoes squeaked and squawked along the linoleum floors, up and down stairs that were faster than waiting for elevators, thankless pages from doctors all across the sprawling hospital, avoiding his shift supervisor in case she asked about Barb. Then Barb’s shift was much the same, for the four and a half hours after that. It was nearing two am when he finally staggered out to the bus stop, and well past it by the time he arrived home — on foot, because the bus driver had not, in fact, let him ride for free. Just what he got for putting hope into the kindness of strangers. One kind act was, apparently, the extent of his daily karma allotment. Fair enough — he could still almost taste the honey of that pastry on his lips; either an uncommonly good morsel, or he was just drastically underfed. The latter, but the pastry-giver was certainly more than he deserved.

Shit. Dorian. He’d asked him to call. Anders looked blearily at the clock on his stove as he kicked off his shoes and plodded over to the cabinet to dish out some kibble for Ser Pounce. The cold tile floor was a welcome relief on his worn out feet, though the fact that he could feel it at all was a testament to the grave state of his socks. Ser Pounce pounced down from his perch above the cabinets to give some love and a swath of shedding cat hair to Anders’ legs, then nibbled at his food while Anders opened his fridge to try to figure something out for himself. He sniffed at the milk, decided it was probably still fine, and then poured it over a heaping bowl of sugary cereal. Yeah, he’d have made a pretty shit babysitter. 

Anders took his bowl with him to his bed, flopping down on the lumpy mattress with a sigh that fully emptied his lungs, and pulled out his phone. He opened his message history and pulled up the conversation with Dorian. Not much there, but what there was made him smile. Mostly short, friendly messages. No emojis except for the one he’d stuck next to Dorian’s name in the contact page — a snake, not his first choice, but he’d embarassed himself by asking the man which one he’d like when he first scored his number, and snake was what he’d picked. Anders would have gone with the diamond, or the little tophat, or maybe the cat with hearts for eyes…

Anyway, then it had turned out that Dorian was a very formal texter. Proper punctuation and fully articulated words and all that. Anders had spent far too many minutes in their text-based conversations together fretting over how immature it would come off to use an abbreviation for laughter versus spelling out the words “haha”, or if even that was too juvenile. But he and Dorian were both all sarcastic humour and chastising bits of flirtation, and he also fretted about the tone of that without it. 

“you up?” he wrote, then hovered his thumb over the send button for thirty or so seconds before deciding that it was worth the shot. Worse came to worst, Dorian would reply with a friendly apology and an offer to chat the next morning. He was dependable like that. 

“Depends, is this a booty call?” came the almost instant reply. Alone in his room, Anders blushed. 

Blushing emoji, monkey covering his eyes emoji, sweat-smile emoji… delete, delete, delete. “No, just miss you,” DELETE, definitely delete. He tried typing some other things. “Just got in, but thinking of you…” no. “You wish lol” haha? Neither. He erased the message and began again, but then the phone screen lit up with “Dorian🐍”, buzzing as it rang. 

“The little dots were driving me mad. Did you just get in?” His voice was like honey, too. 

“Yeah, covered for Barb.” 

“Again?” 

Anders leaned back against his pillow, closing his eyes as Dorian’s concern blanketed over him. “She couldn’t find a sitter.” 

“You’re too nice for your own good.” Dorian scolded him gently through the phone, and it probably said something unhealthy about Anders that hearing Dorian admiringly call him nice made the whole last five hours of life-draining overtime and bitter walk home worth it. 

“She offered me brownies,” he shrugged the compliment off, “what can I say? I’m a sucker for chocolate.” 

“I’ll remember that.” Dorian purred, causing Anders to almost second guess his response to the idea of a booty call, exhausted or not. “So, not a booty call then?” Anders groaned inwardly, wishing it were, but no. Not unless Dorian wanted to talk to him on the phone the whole way over to keep him from falling asleep before he arrived, and even then.

“I just — uh…” he was going to say something about the book, but he hadn’t actually had time yet to look at it. His heart rate quickened with panic, he needed to find something to keep Dorian on the phone. “Thanks for the visit today.” Yes, because that warranted a phone call at three in the morning. “Sorry if I woke you…” 

“Nonsense. I’m always awake at this hour. It’s a terrible habit of mine.” Dorian did indeed sound very wakeful. Probably also very disappointed in the grogginess of Anders’ own voice. 

“Mm,” Anders muttered, his eyes closing under the warmth of Dorian’s voice through the phone again. 

“But you sound awful.” 

“Ran out of bus fare,” Anders explained, “had to walk… long day.” On a better night, Dorian might listen to his work gossip and share some rants of his own; they made quite a pair, both always seeming too short on time and too packed with stress to get out much, both always angry with their bosses — though Dorian was frustrated by beaurocracy constantly getting in the way of his efforts at world-saving, while Anders’ patients gave him fulfilment enough, it was just that his pockets were perpetually empty and all his managers were slave drivers. 

“Why don’t you have a bus pass?” Dorian sighed at him. A bus pass was a hundred bucks up front at the beginning of the month, and with payday always landing two weeks after but every other bill needing to paid right then too… but he didn’t really want to explain that particular predicament to Dorian, who had a flashy suit for every day of the week and a car that cost about as much as Anders was worth in medical school debt. “Well, you can call me next time. I’d give you a ride.” he purred on that note too, having fun with his double entendres. Anders chuckled. 

“I’ll keep you in mind,” he promised. Though the thought of begging his quasi-boyfriend for a ride at two am made him shudder. Still, not quite a lie; he always seemed to have Dorian on his mind at the end of a long shift. 

“Since I have you, dinner?” The inflection of the question was a little high. Anders crunched on a mouthful of cereal with his eyes still closed and mumbled something unintelligable. “You’re off Friday, aren’t you? Do me a favour and don’t pick up any more shifts. I have a place in mind I think you’ll like.” 

“Mm?” He thought about the kind of places Dorian would think were good spots for a dinner date, and was very glad that he couldn’t see the blue-tinted milk running down his chin. 

“It’s a surprise.” Back to low purring, that nervousness or whatever it had been apparently gone again. Anders liked the warm flirtatious tone, but the little breaks into uncertainty were what kept him coming back for more. So much in common. “I’ll pick you up at seven?”

Anders “mm”’d through his mouthful of cereal in the affirmative. 

“Amatus?” Even his pet names were classy. Anders would go with “love” if it weren’t so close to an unthinkable state of being, or “babe” if it weren’t for the fact that Dorian outshone that by a mile with amatus. His thoughts were all cat-with-heart-eyes emoji at the sound, and not much else.  

Anders swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Get some sleep.” 

“Mm.” Anders moved the bowl from his lap to the cluttered chair at his bedside, and leaned deeper into his pillow. “See you Friday, Dor” Dor, was that really the best he could do? 

He heard Dorian hum contentedly on the other side of the line, “looking forward to it.” he said. 

“Night, love.” Anders muttered, then very very quickly he hit end call, and shut his eyes tight. 

[spacexmagicxandxsheepxbleats]

Personal Request

 //: Do, any of you guys have experience with Patreon?

I think it was last week/weekend I re-blogged a personal post of mine about setting one up, but I have to admit I’m a little lost @ - @;

I’m looking for any tips and such on how to best set it up... There’s an explanation of what I’m doing and why is below the cut (.   .  ); and I’m more than happy to explore any other suggestions on sites that may work better for what I’d like to do...

So, what I would like to do...Is create a Patreon to fund a book I’ve been trying to work on for the last couple of years. I’d like to treat it like a ‘web comic’ and try to release a chapter with some art work a month.

Obviously you can pay like idk $3 bucks a month for the basic chapter and a one time thank you note then like, $8 a month for the chapter + Art Work specific to that chapter... idk maybe make a 10$ one where you get chapter + art + creator content (sketches/notes/etc) and then make one that’s about 15$ for chapter + art + an exclusive art print + idk buttons? something physical..? or if you want the actual book you can make a one time payment of 30$ to reserve a hard/soft cover release of the book or you can get an Art book? (I’ll need to look into what it would cost to have hard copies made and how much soft cover vs hard cover would be so I have no idea how much that would actually be @ - @. It would also have to cover like, shipping which is idk, maybe four bucks..?) the Hard Copies would probably have to wait until I hit a certain amount of money per month, like a goal of at least 200-300$ ish? (ok, I did a quick google and lightning press has anywhere from $3 bucks to $10 bucks for paper and hard cover books...so I could potentially charge less for a hard copy...?)

Like, honestly I need direction on whats reasonable for pricing. Would I be charging to much or under charging? What are some things that I could look into to add to the packages to make them more interesting and worth while to people while not busting myself in the process..

Between work and off line life, I’ve literally only gotten as far as the first chapter... The rest of the book is kinda all over the place....in notes on scraps of paper that I jotted on at work, notes scattered in about three different notebooks, I have idk how many word docs on my phone/laptop that have information on them... doodles...omg I have STICKY NOTES FOR DAYS!!!

The First Thing I’d Like to Do: Is launch my Patreon before May so I can get a head of the changes there making to the accounts. ^ While I do this I can start to sift through my garbage and start organizing things... combining documents, pulling things off my phone, transcribing notes from paper to word...getting a preface written and a cover image of sorts figured out...(Honestly my ‘cover’ right now is a VERY BAD doodle of the two main characters on a scrap of paper smaller than my hand and my other photo is of Gizmo making a derp face (@_   @ ); ....)

I know it will take some time to get this on a go status as far as releasing content and such... not only that but I have like a hundred bucks to pay off on my phone yet before its mine and I can switch to pay as you go and I have a loan that I need to pay off. 

So, in light of all of that...The next two months (April and May) I’ll be using most of my paychecks to pay these two things off. April is the last month we will need to pay rent and electricity for our old place (yes...we’ve been paying rent for two apartments since we moved out in November...its a long story...) then I can focus on saving some money in order for me to quit my job or drop to something part time closer to home...

I’m going to be 110% honest with everyone who reads this post: I’m drowning... mentally I am keeping things together with a used piece of wet tape, a broken rubber band and some Elmers glue... The last time my dad was over he literally chewed me out over how many different otc sleeping pills I had... I haven’t had an anxiety attack bad enough to send me to the ER since ninth grade and last year in March I had one that was brought on by work that corporate refuses to pay for and I haven't been the same since... I quit all of my prescribed medications cold turkey my sophomore year of high school because I was fed up and done with how they made me feel, with how many I had to take and the fact that the doctor just couldn’t F-ing Pick One to keep me on... I do not want to go back on pills...I will apply for disability before I put another pill in my mouth... (I Do Not want to go on Disability...there are people out there who need it so much more than me...).

Therefore, if I’m going to quite my full time job, I need something part time or a way to make this idea of mine into a reality because..I don’t want to be a bum...

So, Please and a Thousand Times Thank You for any and all help or resources you can point me to so I can start my journey on the road to being ok again~

[lu-lu666]

Leaky Gut Treats Beginning in the house

There are essentially countless people around the globe searching for treatments for ailments as well as symptoms that are directly connected to leaky gut disorder. They search high and low as well as go from one doctor to the following. Spend countless bucks on prescription as well as over the counter medications. When in fact leaky gut treatments can be found in their very own residences. Very first let me start out by describing what leaky gut syndrome is as well as what might be triggering it in individuals. It is experienced by individuals with irritated or inflamed intestines. The factors for this are lots of but consist of bacteriological imbalances in the gut to reactions to various foods or even fluids. Signs for individuals experiencing leaky gut syndrome are usually gastrointestinal including bloating, cramps, irregular bowel movements, diarrhea as well as discomfort, yet as the illness progresses and advancements, these signs and symptoms can become considerably a lot more serious and dire. Not just that, yet this illness could trigger damages to crucial body organs such as the liver and also irreparable damages to the autoimmune system. The bright side nevertheless, is that there are numerous leaky gut remedies offered. What ´ s even much better is that you don ´ t need to hundreds of dollars or waste immeasurable time to obtain the remedies. If you are like me you don ´ t like taking a whole number of over-the counter-drugs or even suggested ones for that issue when you don ´ t have to. I such as taking the all-natural approach to healing as well as absolutely believe that there is a natural treatment for every single illness that exist. We just haven ´ t discovered them yet! Well leaky gut treatments don ´ t require the usage of severe pharmaceuticals, yet are either natural in nature or can be achieved simply by altering your diet plan. Natural and Homeopathic Remedies: There are numerous natural herbs that have actually been shown reliable in treating and the curing of leaky gut disorder. These cures have actually been made use of for literally centuries, and also their side effects( though not many) are well documented as well as they are substantially much safer compared to any type of old tablet your physician could prescribe! The natural herbs made use of in treating leaky gut syndrome are probably currently acquainted to some of you. Yet as is our method culture we tend to select the "latest" or "the next brand-new thing" as well as totally forget about the solutions that grandma made use of. Unsafe Elm, Marshmallow Root, Echinacea, as well as Goldenseal are wonderful natural herbs for treating this illness. Each of these natural herbs have a positive impact on the gut as well as the mucous membranes of the intestines. Unsafe Elm for example, coats as well as relieves irritated throats, stomachs, and also intestines. This layer protects the digestive cellular lining and decreases the irritation thus aiding to alleviate leaky gut disorder significantly. Natural teas are also reliable in the therapy as well as cure of leaky gut disorder and cost a fraction of exactly what you would certainly pay for non-prescription drugs. Their impacts are a little various to natural herbs, yet are just as effective. Among the reasons for leaky gut syndrome is stress and anxiety as well as teas are especially reliable in handling tension. When was the last time you sat down and had yourself a good favorite? The quiet time alone goes along means towards reducing tension. The are 2 teas that I discover are definitely vital. They are Pepper Mint Tea and Chamomile Tea. Both of these teas assist to soothe the belly. But Pepper mint Tea is especially efficient eliminating specific kinds of unwanted microorganisms as well as assists in reducing the opportunity of infection. Diet regimen Cures I won ´ t harp on this lengthy as I cover it a lot more thoroughly in various other posts. Yet suffice it to say,"you are indeed what you consume." Among the significant causes of leaky gut disorder is the food that you eat. So just what could be much more reliable then a diet? The objective below is not simply to transform your diet plan for leaky gut syndrome but to transform your diet for a far better life. The benefits are twofold, not only can this help treat and heal what is leaky gut syndrome, but by making these small changes to your diet regimen, you will be aiding your body recover naturally. Just what is the diet regimen remedy you ask? Good inquiry. It is essentially a diet of elimination.To use the diet treatment in your therapy of leaky gut disorder, you should remove specific fruits and vegetables from your diet regimen. Foods to be gotten rid of: bananas, strawberries, kiwis, citrus fruits, corn, pineapples and papayas, plus nightshade vegetables such as eggplants, peppers, potatoes, and also tomatoes. You should likewise get rid of soy as well as milk products from your diet regimen, including eggs. Grains and also foods with yeast such as bread, flour, wheat, spelt, kamut, rye, barley, oats, and millet. But allow ´ s face it these are simply a few foods you may not mind giving up. Yet I am not finished, on top of that, you must remove beans, high levels of caffeine, delicious chocolate, honey, vanilla essence, vinegar, mushrooms, and also peanuts. Forgive me if I simply took all the joy out of consuming. Yet remember this, by removing these foods for one month from your diet plan you will offer your body an appropriate amount of time to recover itself. After a month you could gradually begin including the foods you have removed back right into your diet plan. Only one food type at a time as well as for marginal duration of three days. By doing this you will certainly discover which foods do not work with your system.

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 100221

2 October, 2021

Dear Dad--

I got your care package and thank you thank you! I’ve already watched the movie, and I’ll read the book, and I’ve already eaten the tootsie rolls. That was a pretty amazing movie, 1917, wasn’t it? I hope you watched some of the DVD extras, assuming you own a copy that has the same extras as the one you sent me. Because learning how they did everything they did to make the movie look like a single continuous take was fascinating! Alfred Hitchcock did a similar thing with Rope, if you’ll recall. And the Michael Keaton movie Birdman was similar, but none of them had all the fun explosions and battle scenes that this one has. I wasn’t expecting the movie to do that! I was just expecting a regular WWI movie. Thank you again; it’s definitely a keeper!

What else is going on in my life? I continue to work Sunday through Thursdays. Last Thursday our parking garage at the casino was much more full than usual because of a funeral service for a sheriff who’d been killed, taking place at the convention center across the street. The governor came. It was a big deal. Didn’t affect our jobs, we’re still auditing the casino’s income and making sure everything adds up. Someone finds a quarter on the bathroom floor and decides to give it to the cage cashier as “found money,” we have a form we fill out for it, and places in spreadsheets where its existence is documented. It’s a bit like picking gnat shit out of pepper, I think, but it’s nice when all the numbers balance the way they’re supposed to.

Other than that, it really has been a slow week. I’ve spent a good deal of the week being dissatisfied with how little I’m being paid at my job, and spent a small amount of time reminding myself that my paychecks will get bigger soon, when I’ve paid for my gaming license and some snafu with my health insurance which somehow put me a couple hundred in arrears (still don’t know how, or with whom) and they stop taking all that extra money out of my paychecks. I’m considering talking to my HR person at work. Be nice to know when I’ll be done paying for this stuff, and if it’ll happen before I enter the time of year when I have a kerosene bill to pay each month.

We had a fun kerosene kerfuffle yesterday! We get our kerosene from a company called Morin, and yesterday, for the first time since early spring, they came by to top off our kerosene tank. Not a bad bill, only $44. The problem was, the bill said it was for trailer 1, which we are not, and that my name was Lee Robbins, which I, even more vigorously, am not. So I figured, I needed the top off anyway, and they’re my kerosene dealers, not like I got screwed in any way, and in this case, someone else is being billed for it! But I also figured, the guy in trailer 1, whose name is apparently Lee Robbins, is still going to need kerosene too, and at some point, he’s going to realize he paid for some, but never got any. So I called Morin and let them know.

The nice flunky that I got on the phone from Morin was quite entertained by the whole thing. He thanked me very much for calling and letting them know. I explained that the manner in which our trailers are numbered defies rational thought, and implored them against giving shit to their fuel delivery dude who made the mistake. I realized the Morin flunky with whom I was speaking didn't know that I was a Morin customer, because, at one point, he had to ask, “So! Um...did you, like...Um...Did you NEED any fuel today? *nervous chuckle*” and got to tell him, “Yes, it’s getting cold, I figured I’d be topped off soon, you guys are my kerosene providers, it’s all good. No harm, no foul. Obviously, everything is going according to the good Lord’s plan.” (What I said in person did not include that last part.) Then he suggested I send them a check or stop by to pay for the kerosene, and I reminded him that they have my billing info on file, just suck the money out that way.

That worked out fine, but I began to realize that I probably don’t interact with strangers and people doing their jobs the same way most people do. I had a doctor’s visit, and the nurse’s assistant said, “I see you declined your last colonoscopy?” And I had to tell her, “Oh goodness no, I didn’t decline it, I just thought it was icky and I didn’t want to do it.” And she nodded sagely, like medical professionals are supposed to when you say something dumb as dirt, like that was, but then snorted through her nose and said, “It was icky and I didn’t wanna do it!” and laughed. I guess I’m just a witty motherfucker. Take that, boring badinage.

And OH SHIT a good thing just happened to me! I knew that the grocery store had some prescriptions ready for pickup, and intended to pick them up this morning. I had put this off a little bit--actually I was dreading it like a trip to the gallows--because I figured the grocery store pharmacy now knows that I have insurance through my work. Now that I have insurance, my shit won’t be 100% covered by MaineCare like it was, and I may have co-pays. If the co-pays are too big, it may put the meds out of reach. And that’s just bad in every way, to say nothing of having to tell the pharmacy, “Yeah, I can’t afford that. Can you please take those pills and give them to someone less undeserving than I,” while the folks in line behind you shake their heads and think, “Get a job, and you won’t have this problem, you pinko ragamuffin,” despite the fact that getting the job is what caused the problem.

But I steeled myself and went to the pharmacy and said I had prescriptions for pickup, and she said it was three medications, and I thought, “They’re going to ask me for a hundred bucks and then I’m boned,” but she said there was a zero copay for all three medications. That’s a big damn happy thing, so...what has gone wrong? I knew confirmation was in order, so I told her, “Well, I have insurance now...shouldn’t my ass be bleeding from all the copays by now?” (Again, not the actual phrasing I employed during this exchange at the pharmacy.) And she said, “Um...nope, it’s split between (someone) and (someone), and neither of those is gonna be called whatever you call it, probably.”

This was when I made my mistake, and I hope it isn’t a bad one. I didn’t have her explain who the (someone) and the (someone) were, and it’s not spelled out on the paperwork that came with my pills. I think she said one of the entities was “Advantage” something or other, and there's an “ADV” on my new Caremark prescription card. And I think the other entity had the letter M in its name, which might mean MaineCare. And I find myself thinking, I shouldn’t have to be Indiana fucking Jones to figure out how my own pills are being paid for. Obviously my only concern is that the other shoe will drop, and I’ll get a letter saying, “Dear icky poor person. You were accidentally charged a zero copay when it should have been $587.29. Enclose immediate payment in the envelope provided, or we’ll come take one of your thumbs.”

Probably that won’t happen. For the time being, I’m just going to be grateful for the fact that my medications didn’t cost me anything today. Also for the fact that fall has officially begun here in Maine, and the foliage is starting to turn. The cats are now more demanding of physical affection, for the warmth, and every mile of my drive to work is a picture postcard of autumn in New England.

More next week! All my love to you both!!

[classyfoxdestiny]

Meet Delivery Bhoy: The man shaking up India’s booming gig economy

Meet Delivery Bhoy: The man shaking up India’s booming gig economy

He was born in Punjab, educated in Europe and worked in Mumbai for almost a decade. But the Covid-induced lockdown squeezed him out of a job last year, forcing the former UX design professional to look for ways to make a quick buck.

He worked with Swiggy for two weeks, then switched to Zomato for better pay. Months later, he had an accident while riding to deliver a birthday cake at night when a scooter rammed into him. He quit delivering food the next day.

Then, in May, he read about a person dying in an accident in Ahmedabad while on delivery duty. “Some switch flipped in me that day,” he said. He tweeted about it at night.

By the morning, his message had been retweeted hundreds of times and his followers had swelled from 20 to 1,000. Using notes and screenshots gathered during his months as a delivery agent, he began tweeting about the condition of his colleagues. “Suddenly, people were listening,” he said.

Meet Delivery Bhoy, a 40-something unmarried man who’s driving conversation about gig workers in India with his twitter handle, forcing food delivery giants to respond to his allegations of poor pay and hostile working conditions.

Bhoy — who refused to identify himself for this article — takes great pains to protect his identity. He uses VPN while tweeting, limits his chats with other riders to Telegram, connects with journalists using a fake email address and voice chat on Zoom. When he tweets screenshots of his interactions with apps, he masks details that could help trace him.

He now works as a telecaller, with better hours and pay, but continues to be listed as a delivery partner with both Zomato and Swiggy. “If I am identified, a person in my financial and social position could be in for a major blowback and retaliation. Once my name is out there, my battle gets really tough,” Bhoy said.

Like him, there are now several handles that chronicle the experiences of delivery workers. There’s Surat-based rider Nitin Singh, who uses his name and photo on Twitter, @dliverypartner, @smokey33461095 and AK, a 37-year-old Hyderabad-based Zomato delivery partner. And the first one, anonymous account @SwiggyDEHyd, which got deactivated earlier this year after its user was identified and wanted to keep his job.

Together, they spotlight questions of adequate compensation, long hours, and lack of benefits and formal protections in the gig economy.

The structural and financial challenges

Delivery Bhoy’s tweets cover a vast swathe of the gig economy. These include the punishing hours agents have to put in to meet target-based incentives, humiliation at the hands of customers, the threat of getting reported for poor service, delivering through heavy rainfall, and the constant pressure to deliver orders with almost no rest.

But a common theme running through his advocacy is the demands made by the complex payment system of the delivery apps.

Typically, the payment for delivery partners has two components: A fixed base pay and target-based incentives that could include extra orders, better ratings or no cancellations. A typical order can earn a delivery agent around ₹25 while incentives can range between ₹200 and ₹400 for high volume of orders. A five-star rating can fetch the rider between ₹5 and ₹8, the accounts say. Working during certain peaks hours and difficult phases (such as rain) means extra income.

But these vary from city to city. In Surat, for example, Singh says he is paid ₹4/kilometre for delivery and an additional 50 paise for fuel. The base wage is ₹20 for the first two kilometres. “So, if I make a delivery one or two kilometres away, I am paid ₹20. But if I travel six kilometres, I am paid ₹24. This is apart from the 50 paise per kilometre for fuel,” said Singh.

When he waits at a restaurant to pick up an order, he is to be paid ₹1 per minute. If he makes ₹300 in a day, he is paid an additional ₹190. If he makes ₹400, he is paid ₹250.

“If I am logged in for at least eight hours, including for three hours between 7pm and midnight, I take home ₹500, irrespective of how many deliveries I made and how much I earned,” said Singh.

In reality, though, the app often calculates lower distances, doesn’t pay out waiting times and penalises him for refusing to make a delivery, he alleged. Moreover, high fuel costs mean that riders spend as much as four times higher than 50p per kilometer, apart from servicing, phone, internet and other expenses.

A Zomato delivery partner operating in Delhi, who did not want to be identified, alleged that his complaints have ranged from tiny pay outs for deliveries that took a long time, low estimation of delivery distances, and wages that left little profit after expenses.

“Petrol cost is continuously rising, my motorcycle needs frequent servicing and repair, and smartphone and internet data costs money. I barely save ₹12,000 in a month after riding 12 hours a day,” he said.

Zomato said riders had flexibility and could log off when convenient but many riders said that such decisions are followed by phone calls and messages from their team leads warning them.

Bhoy agreed, saying the app pushes delivery agents to deliver as fast as they can – jeopardising their safety – because it is linked with internal rankings, benefits and incentives. Delivery partners receive automated phone calls in the middle of a ride if their order is delayed. “If a fatal accident occurs during a delivery, the pay out to the rider’s family is just ₹5 lakh,” he said.

He also pointed towards the desperation of some delivery agents. “While these platforms boast four-day work weeks with full salary for their employees, the choice we have is turn up for work, work 12 hours straight and ride at lightening speeds. Laws exist for some of the workforce and not the other. That’s the core issue,” he said.

Zomato countered this allegation, saying riders could reject an order for “a genuine reason” without penalties, but at all other times, need to fulfil a customer’s order with the “responsibility and predictability that’s very routine for any job”. Swiggy didn’t respond to this particular question.

The fate of the rider also depends on the customer’s mood, the riders alleged. “If a customer is in a bad mood, or if the delivery is delayed for any reason, they simply rate us one on a scale of five. That badly impacts our ratings,” said AK, who made ₹400 after a 10-hour duty that involved riding for 50 kilometres on an average.

The battle against misrepresentation

Bhoy’s campaign tasted some success last month when comedian Danish Sait apologised after a video featuring him was criticised for insensitivity. Bhoy led the campaign against the promotional campaign, where Sait plays a delivery agent for a day, and said it misrepresented reality and erased many of the hardships faced by delivery agents.

“I respect the work that you do, & it wouldn’t be right for me to contest any of the points you’ve raised,” the comedian wrote, agreeing to take the video down.

Last week, another set of commercials by Zomato stirred a row. These commercials, involving actor Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif, prompted Bhoy and others to say that the ads were tone deaf and showed that delivery agents had to rush from one order to the next with no rest. Their criticism forced Zomato to issue a response denying the charges.

“We believe that our ads are well-intentioned, but were unfortunately misinterpreted by some people. Having said that, we have been intently listening to all the chatter about gig workers and all the problems associated with this part of the economy. As a company, we have always acknowledged whenever we’ve come short, and we understand that you expect more and better from us,” Zomato said in a statement.

Some say that Bhoy and his supporters are well intentioned but don’t take into account the realities of the economy – and that gig workers would be far worse in the more exploitative informal economy. Others question whether Bhoy is even a real delivery agent – a charge he dismisses.

One of them is Safwan Rasheed, a 41-year-old rider with Zomato in Cochin. While he acknowledges a host of problems with the wages paid to riders, he thinks the pay is not bad in a Covid-battered economy. “I deliver food just four hours every day and make ₹350-400 easily. I know riders who earn up to ₹30,000 every month,” he said.

The mechanics of grievance redressal

But complaints by delivery partners are multiple and wide-ranging. Partners allege that the apps have a “penalty” system in place for refusal to carry out a delivery, or if a delivery was delayed. “If we refuse a delivery, we are fined ₹50. Delayed deliveries are also penalised. All this finally culminates into fewer orders for us,” said Singh. Like many riders, Singh complained he struggled to contact the companies to raise an issue.

A Zomato spokesperson countered this and said that they have 1,200 people to address the riders’ queries, “We resolve all queries well within the day itself,” the spokesperson added.

Swiggy refused to comment on the article or specific questions posed to the company but pointed to two blogs, uploaded on June 9 and July 27, that talk about the company’s Covid-19 support for delivery partners, including medical care, loss of pay, life insurance and emergency care, and a dedicated hotline SOS service that helps in compensating for pay during health crises or accidents.

“Partners who are unable to work due to on-duty medical emergencies are also granted loss of pay support, in addition to hospitalization and insurance support,” the company said in its blog.

Zomato and Swiggy are the dominant players India’s growing food delivery business and sit atop the gig economy mountain. After making its market debut in July, Zomato is valued at around $12 billion and after a new round of fundraising, Swiggy is worth around $5.5 billion.

Their success has fuelled and benefited from a burgeoning gig economy, which is set to triple over the next 3-4 years to 24 million jobs from the existing 8 million, according to a report by consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation earlier this year.

At the core of this success are the 310,000 delivery partners who work with Zomato and 170,000-odd with Swiggy. But they are not formal employees and are accordingly called partners, agents, executives or associates. Experts say this nomenclature that they are ineligible for several benefits, be it a monthly salary or a provident fund account.

Kaveri Medappa, a PhD researcher at University of Sussex studying platform-based work, said issues raised by Bhoy and other accounts reflected ground realities. Similar unrest has been seen in the platform cab industry over the last three years with drivers linked to Uber and Ola going to strike in several cities over falling commissions, rising fuel prices and low earnings.

A Zomato spokesperson said that their pay-out was fair “for the work that they put in”.

“We are proud to create hundreds of thousands of gigs for a strata of society which otherwise didn’t have a better source of income. For example, in a city like Bengaluru, the top 20% of our delivery partners who deliver on bikes and put in more than 40 hours a week receive a pay of more than ₹27,000 per month,” the spokesperson said.

But Medappa said that the pay was good only for the early birds. “With more riders joining in, the income is dipping as the pay rates and incentives are decreasing,” she said.

A Zomato spokesperson said the firm believed that “all the allegations are biased (or maybe even vested) misunderstandings”.

“According to our point of view, if these allegations were even remotely true, our business would not sustain. Why? Because our delivery partners are the face of our brand – unhappy delivery partners would lead to unhappy customers, which would be terrible for our business. It’s in our interest to ensure they are cared for and that the platform works for them,” the company said, claiming over 60% of delivery partners rated them 9 or a 10 (out of 10) in happiness surveys.

Medappa said that if these firms began caring about the riders, their promises such as time deadlines and customer satisfaction would collapse. “Their system is pretty much in favour of the customers and stacked against the riders,” she added.

The online and offline battle

Many of these accounts took to Twitter under very different circumstances. Bhoy was reeling from the death of a fellow worker. Singh wanted to vent about not getting his dues, disputed pending payments and penalties. AK was angry after he discovered the delivery fee charged to a customer was double of what he was paid.

But now their battles have coalesced into a single goal of “putting pressure” on the companies.

“Every week, I make two or three accusations. If Zomato counters them in any way, I produce the evidence. I will continue doing this till they bring real changes on the ground,” Bhoy said.

AK, Singh and others regularly provide him with material. “These riders are not employees and cannot form a union. But they can keep taking up the issues with the public until the companies feel their image is getting dented,” said AK.

They understand the power of social media. Their campaign prompted Zomato to ask Bhoy to work with them – a development confirmed by Zomato – but he refused. “Their only intention of entertaining me was that they viewed me as a PR nightmare,” he said. But he isn’t worried about repercussions. “Such a big firm will look bad if they take a delivery boy to court,” he said.

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[6stronghands]

please read. it’s long. but i need to say this:

Broken in the past year:

Dishwasher, refrigerator, microwave, furnace, water heater, toilet, gas fireplace, TV, 2 laptops, 2 cellphones, my eyeglasses, the locking system, door handle, driver window (stuck DOWN not up, of course) and catalytic converter on my 15 year old minivan and the other car, a 22 year old beloved 4 Runner had to be junked because it was so decrepit and unfixable (it’s a credit to those amazing early generation Runners though, because it made 260,000 miles and basically ran on Marvel Mystery Oil, Seafoam, and pep talks at the end), then I found out that my home has serious foundation issues, and now, NOW, the dryer. 

My new (used) Mustang got hit ONE WEEK after I bought it, by a drunk guy in a big ol F150, as I was my way home to kansas after caring for three (3!!!) family members in the hospital in Utah for four months. The whole time I was in Utah, I was like, holy god these guys are shockingly bad drivers (and I’ve driven extensively around a ton of states). There’s this move I call The Utah Special, a lane changing move where they don’t signal, they don’t check their blind spots, they don’t move vertically….they just horizontally zoom into a space they want in the next lane. I saw so many near misses and actual accidents during my time there. And lo and behold, LITERALLY AS I’M ON MY WAY OUT OF THAT HELL STATE, at the motherfreakin base of the canyon, four hours from Colorado and freedom from the religious insanity and repression that manifests as the angriest, most aggressive, flat out incompetent drivers I’ve ever seen, a jackalope did the Utah Special on me and my new car.  

It screwed up the alignment and tire pressure monitor and left a big dent on the drivers door. Luckily i didn’t run into the giant concrete wall that he spun me into, because I’m an experienced driver, esp in correcting a bad, fast turn, but it was close. The guy is now trying to avoid payment so I’ve been driving around with a beatup looking car. 

One month after i got back to Lawrence, a guy backed into me at the store, and I ended up using the 100 bucks he gave me for groceries, and trying to buff out the back myself, which didn’t work. This is my childhood dream car btw, the only nice thing I’ve ever owned (and it looks a lot nicer than it is, it’s very bare bones inside and out, it just looks slick. It took almost two years and three states of looking to find a good Mustang for such a low price). 

And now. 

Now I’ve got a gutted dryer, parts spread out to hell and gone, because Samsung dryers have the worst design and the cheapest parts (seriously, don’t ever buy Samsung appliances. Three different parts stores and repair people told me they refuse to work on Samsungs or carry parts for them any more because the design is so bad and the parts are so cheap). I thought I fixed it by replacing the circuit board, but now I think it’s the thermal fuse switch which is located UNDER and BEHIND the drum, not in the more accessible places other brands put it. But that’s not irritating enough, no no, now it turns out I have to learn how to solder because they didn’t use screws or plugs for the fuse mount, no no, they soldered it on, so I had to drill the fucker out and and buy a solder iron and now I’m watching how-to-solder videos on youtube. 

And (of course there’s an AND) the charging port on my 3rd used cell phone broke, and I don’t have time to order a replacement port and do it myself, so I took it into one of those overpriced walk in places (for $130 dollars!!! for fifteen minutes work). Picked it up five minutes before they closed last night, and now the screen is unresponsive. According to the good people of the internet, since I can’t get it to reboot, it’s probably a badly seated digitizer that got bumped when they did the replacement. I have to take a break from my how-to-solder videos and go in and convince a bunch of 20 year old guys to fix my phone and not charge me for it. 

So. This is a lot. 

And because we are in the aptly named bad timeline, my personal life has pretty much echoed all the broken down stuff. I have had some weird, hard to diagnose, health crap that cost me one job and has prevented me from finding another. So I just do a bunch of volunteer stuff now, and keep applying to worse and worse jobs, hoping someone, somewhere will take me. My new dog (who I adopted because I’ve been so overwhelmed and stressed, I was freaking out one day and my sister was like, I KNOW WHAT YOU SHOULD DO, YOU NEED A DOG, and she was one hundred percent right, everything is better with a good dog) got attacked at the park, by a Husky owned by a RedditGuy, who then RAN when I was trying to revive my dog, and drove away in a Mercedes with a license obscurer. The only reason I know who he is, is because a quick thinking teenager ran after him and tried to get his name (which the guy wouldn’t give) and the teen took pics of him with his cellphone (don’t shit on Millenials around me, just don’t. All I see are good kids doing good stuff under bad circumstances). (Also, just fwiw, there are all kinds of Huskies being surrendered at shelters and involved in attacks because, and this is so dumb it just kills me, people are watching Game of Thrones and deciding they want their very own Direwolf, without having the experience or willingness to take on a breed that needs a lot of training and reinforcement and care. Huskies are great dogs if they have great owners, like a lot of other great but high-care breeds). 

The medical bills were over $4000, which I had to take a loan out for. There was a court hearing, and the judge ruled in my favor, and ordered the guy to pay, by March 1st. You won’t be surprised at all, because FML, that the guy hasn’t paid, and is contesting it, which means more court stuff. This has all been stressful as hell, but this dog is genuinely the most amazing dog I’ve ever had; he is worth any trouble and expense. I would sell my Mustang, if I had to, to keep this tiny, adorable fuzzball (some kind of poodle-terrier mix, I think, I dunno. He was a rescue dog who was fostered with an inmate in a local prison, Safe Harbor Prison Dogs, check it out, they’re great) I’ve never had a companion dog before. I’ve had family dogs who have all been great, but I’ve never had one where they are bred to be a companion, that’s their work, like a work-dog needs work to be happy and sane. He is carrying my kid and me in his soft little paws; he does good work, this guy. He is always happy, very energetic when you want, calm and cuddly when you want, incredibly sensitive and attuned, unnervingly intelligent and a joy to train, and as soft as a bunny. I have to brush him every single day because of his crazy Fizzgig hair, but that’s fine. He rides on my shoulder in the car and fits inside a tote bag so I can sneak him lots of places. I’ve socialized him from the beginning (which is why I was at that damn park) so he’s totally silent in public places like stores. He loves people, especially kids, and if I ever get off the job-hunting, broken-thing-fixing treadmill, I’d like to volunteer him as a therapy dog in hospitals or wherever. He’s like my very own Daemon, my own Pantalaimon. A gift and a blessing at any time, but especially now, when things are Challenging. 

Then. Then the worst thing. Something really bad happened to my one of my kids. Something so bad that I can’t talk about it in a public place like this. I can barely talk about it in my Al-Anon support group. I spend a lot of energy not thinking about it. I have learned a lot of things in the past few years, like A LOT. I know so much more now, about so many, many things. But this bad thing is something I wish I never knew, and it’s not fixable, only recoverable. 

I have never, ever been so continually sad and angry. It’s been bad timing for my mental health, the Me Too movement. I had a friend visit and he was talking about it, and was telling me that it’s turned into a witch hunt, that things aren’t really this bad for women, that maybe women and men just speak different languages and have different needs and wants, that if things have been this bad, why didn’t women say something sooner, and I just….I couldn’t talk. He wanted me to give him specific examples of male violations in my life, and I literally didn’t know where to start. I can list so many, like every woman alive. I could list hundreds of small things, things where you just accept it because what else can you do, and other things, things that were not small, but you ignore, because you actually know the guy and you know he’s genuinely a mostly good guy, or trying to be, or will be some day, or has a family who loves and depends on him, or maybe I didn’t have the vocabulary or confidence or experience to safely call him out then, or maybe I didn’t know if calling him out would ruin his life, and for real, I could see that he would some day evolve into A Good Man, An Ally, and I didn’t want to jeopardize that. Because that’s real, that dynamic. It doesn’t fit into any black and white social media woke doctrine, but it’s real. I have hurt people through ignorance, and I have learned and evolved, and there have been a few specific times where I can look back in gratitude that someone educated me in a gracious, patient way, because it changed me for the better. Do men know this? That people like me aren’t calling them on stuff? That the problem is much, much worse than the revelations of the Me Too movement? That we let pretty much all the small and medium stuff go? Do they know? Are they so uneducated, so culturally indoctrinated, so blind, to other men’s bad behavior, to their own, that they really think that this is all an over-reaction or mixed signals or just women looking to be angry about something??? 

 I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, because goddamn life usually is. There have been hundreds of not-terrible and semi-bad violations in my 40 years, that I’ve just lived with, and then there’s been a handful of genuinely, life-altering-ly bad ones. The ones that teach you to to beware, that there are predators who prey, and you are just meat. But I couldn’t articulate any of this to this friend, this guy who feels so defensive and attacked by the movement. No one has accused him of anything, he’s just feeling defensive. He thinks people are unfair to men, that men are trying their best, that women need to explain more nicely. 

I have been so angry, about so much, for months now. I usually blow up fast and I’m done. I’m usually the poster girl for Onward And Upward, Life Is Beautiful, Everything’s Awesome. This constant anger is exhausting. And I wish I was only angry, but I’m also broken-hearted. Broken. Everything’s broken, everything keeps breaking. Bad people, careless people, indifferent people, they keep ruining things and getting away with things. The news isn’t good, not politically, not economically, not environmentally, not anything. All signs point to things getting much, much worse. 

I will say this, I am smarter than I was a year ago. 

I seem to only learn by doing, to learn the hard way. I know a lot more now. Like A LOT, in a pretty short span of time. I am not the same person I was a year ago. I am not as sweet, and not as optimistic, but I am seasoned. I’m better at problem solving. I know there's always going to be another damn thing, whatever it is. I know the importance of good tools and resources and support, whether it’s fixing broken cars or broken hearts. That came out trite, but it’s true. I’ve learned that sometimes the only good thing to come out of a bad thing is knowledge, if you use it to recover or evolve, or to help someone else. Sometimes the only silver lining is that you’ve got newfound empathy. We need more empathy in the world, so that’s not nothing. I am so, so worried about the future, about what my kids are going to have to learn in order to navigate their own personal and cultural despair. They’re gonna have to get tougher, faster, while protecting their gentle hearts and giving natures. That’s tricky. I hope they’ll remember that we’re in this together, that the only way to survive is by leaning on and helping each other. Another thing that sounds trite, but is the truest thing I know. I’ve learned to talk about things, to ask questions, to ask again if I don’t understand (and again, and again), and to say to people, I need you, I’m stuck, I’m headfucked, I’m heartfucked, help. Help me. Using your resources, whether they’re youtube how-to videos, therapy, doctors, friends, Al-Anon groups, dogs, whatever, is the only way I know how to get over and through. 

It’s kind of strange to FEEL how much stronger I am right now, than a year ago. Because things are much worse; something that would have broken me for good, if Then-Me had known. But Now-Me has soldiered through some shit by leaning hard on my resources, and because of those resources, not through inner grit or stoicism, but the resources, I’m tougher, smarter, better equipped. I am not exactly happier, but I do have happy moments. That’s a big deal. I am afraid for the future, but I know that, at least as long as I’m able to fight, I CAN fight. 

I have leaned on some of you here. Some of you are my safe places, are resources, tools, friends. Genuine, real ones. I am stronger because of you. I can write and write, but never truly articulate what that has meant, what it means to me. You know how vets are with other vets? The way they’ll meet up after they leave the military, and fall into each other’s arms, the way they trust each other for the rest of their lives? I feel that way about you guys. I’ve been in the motherfucking foxhole, and some of you guys climbed in and covered my head and held my shaking hands. I just have no words. The ‘no atheists in a foxhole’ thing isn’t true. I still don’t believe in God, but I believe in friends, in good people, in the righteous fighters who get no acclaim, no awards, but quietly, bravely, change the world around them a little at a time, to great cumulative effect. I can say I love you, I’m so grateful, you’re wonderful, but really, I have no words other than, thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU. 

[christineharrington1994]

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What does motorcycle insurance cover? To get a quote in your state, in the free app below and fill out our What is auto insurance and why should I go with it? Motorcyclists are different. So you know the ins-vs-outs. Which auto insurance carrier will offer you the best price, when you want to compare motorcycle insurance quotes? For example with different insurance carriers? Who sells the cheapest policies for motorcycles? Find out what s all the cost difference between different types of motorcycles to find out how different products can impact a rider. Find out the best savings after one vehicle. Get bike insurance quotes online and see the cheapest motorcycle ins. Can I ride my motorcycle if not at-fault? Your will not be covered under car insurance. What about if I get injured in an accident, or will I be financially responsible to cover the cost of an accident (not covered by motorcycle insurance)? The state of Maryland requires all Marylanders to have bodily injury liability insurance that pays medical expenses.

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Searching for Motorcycle Insurance Louisiana? for a free quotes on your motorcycle insurance. Whether you are going to run out of miles and need to get behind the wheel of your Honda? Let CheapCarInsurance.net help you save money on your motorcycle insurance with cheap Missouri auto insurance. Get an auto insurance quote based primarily on how you drive in the state of Missouri. If you’re looking for cheap car insurance in South Carolina, you haven’t bothered. Rates in the Palmetto State have remained consistently below the national average, and 2017 saw the average cost of car insurance rise by 6.5% among all insurers, according to September report. As a result, South Carolina drivers now spend the majority of their time on the road, so as a new driver you’re given plenty of time to make changes to your driving profile. Many of these changes will be obvious when you’re ready –.

Need to talk to a motorcycle insurance agent?

Need to talk to a motorcycle insurance agent? Phone or email: Call 888-637-1172 Fax (866) 641-6676 Email: Why should I purchase motorcycle insurance? By far the most important consideration when buying motorcycle insurance is the coverage needed to keep you and your bike protected in the event of accidents. If you are riding a motorcycle in a covered state, it is important to add a “auto” endorsement to your motorcycle insurance policy. You may wish to consider adding a motorcycle insurance policy to your existing policy to make sure that you are fully protected if you were seriously injured at any state rode to safety when a motorcycle accident occurred. In an emergency situation, you may decide that you need additional motorcycle insurance coverage. It is common to find yourself in a situation when your bike is damaged by a natural disaster or a fire. The accident occurred before your motorcycle insurance was purchased, and thus you should not be alarmed. However, you should have any additional insurance details at any.

[anonymoustoddler]

In Which I Get Stoned And Bitch About Work

Yesterday I worked for nine hours checking patients in with a weird system we had to make up on the fly due to the large number of people who came early and kept coming for seven straight hours. I ran hundreds (literally) of people through a software system and set of procedures I never got a full training in and could only practice with twice.

It was really really hard. And it wasn’t as fun as it was half a decade ago, the energy and the excitement and the teamwork. I stood directly behind the CEO for the media focused ribbon cutting. I welcomed hundreds of excited, mostly happy people into a brand new, gorgeous facility with flashy displays and top quality product.

I have been through this sort of experience so many times. So many iPhone and iPad and every other Apple product launches. I’ve clapped in guests and had little chats to make each quick transaction a bit more enjoyable for both of us. I’ve swapped stories with coworkers, joked around with managers who feel accessible, gotten frustrated and got mouthy for a minute about the inevitable mismanagement and poor planning for big turnout. For god’s sake, I’ve literally been photographed with and chatted with the CEOs of BOTH companies. And F****** is small now but... in a year, you’ll all be smoking their shit and a lot of you will be visiting them for medical and recreational. They’ll create more local jobs. They’ll be a leader in Michigan cannabis.

But I’m not the same person I used to be. I know so much more now. I know how shitty their consideration for their bottom rung employees is. Which really really matters when you watch THOSE employees literally building the guts of this business. Painstakingly unboxing, pricing, properly labeling, stocking, and creating displays of each and every product - and it’s medical weed so like let’s not forget that this is a process that you HAVE to pay attention to and be careful about.

It matters when you see a team stretched way too thin because it’s way too small, learning so much in such a short time (maybe that’s just me though honestly... I did learn two jobs instead of one, and I started at least a week after everyone else who got hired around the same time).

When there were still five or six hours left of the business day, I was informed we’d already done $20,000 in business since we opened that morning.

Twenty. Thousand. Dollars.

Not even a full day’s total.

And I get one half hour lunch for an 8 hour shift, no benefits, and I don’t even get time and a half pay for holidays unless I go full time.

I have to cap my hours at 17 a week because if I work more I’ll lose my medicaid and both my doctors expect to see me every three months and my meds cost money. I have to schedule another upper endoscopy, do you want to guess how much that would cost out of pocket, with the scope, the anesthesia, the gastroenterologist’s read of the scan and the after appointment, etc etc?? I don’t.

The Corporate team was swarming yesterday. Most of them didn’t even acknowledge us. Most of the people who did treated us with the unintentional condescension of people who feel they’re inherently better, smarter, and more deserving than you. They don’t mean to. They think they’re being kind.

But at the end of the day, they make annual salaries with solid benefit and possibly bonus packages, and you make an hourly rate higher than min wage but not even close to what you deserve considering you MAKE the company work. I mean, jesus, almost all the positive reviews I’ve seen so far specifically mention the great customer service/awesome employees. And yet, even with such disparity, they tried to cut our discount. There was an actual hours long discussion two days before grand open when Corporate wanted to cut our employee discount (for legal med patients working there) to almost nothing. They openly tried to take back a discount policy we ALL knew about, so they could charge US more despite working for the company. And we’re not a shady hole in the wall op in some creepy spot in Detroit that has dirty carts for half the usual price. This is higher end shit, and we’re the only game in town so prices can kind of be set with some flagrancy. Why would you want to make money off your employees who are not even getting what they deserve to begin with? How can you want MORE???

I’m not trying to shit on this place, really. With the company headquarters setting up in the same building, the growth plans of the company as a whole, and the potential doors this could open for me in the field of legal cannabis, this job is still a great opportunity. I’m learning a lot and after years out of the loop, it’s kind of nice to have a “real job” again. The team working on site are all nice and fun and pretty chill. I like and feel comfortable with everyone on the management team, but I also know I can’t get away with bullshit callouts with them so I have to practice the choice of either sucking it up and getting out of bed or making peace with potentially losing my job in a bad way. Those external consequences are the only things I can respond to anymore. It feels terrible and I’m still a miserable mass of depression, but.. I’m getting out of bed. 🤷🏻‍♀️

As usual, I got pretty far off track. My original point was, I think, that.. I miss my innocent days. I miss when I was 23 (hell, when I was 26, 27) and didn’t understand the evil of corporations or the exploitation of the workforce. I miss the days when I felt excited to be making almost $XX an hour because I’d never made more than that and it was a few bucks over minimum wage and I got really good insurance for not too much of my paycheck. I miss feeling like I mattered. I miss being ignorant enough to believe that anyone cared about me, that anyone could see how much I had to give and how smart and capable I was even if I also was sick more days than average. That I wasn’t just disposable chattel to make money for the people at the top and their investors. I miss living in the delusion that we were a family. It was a really powerful motivator, honestly. When you believe The Boss cares about you, is on the same team you are, is paying you a fair wage... when you don’t understand how bullshit that is.. Work feels a lot more bearable, I guess.

Yesterday I made it through nine chaotic, messy, Learn As You Go and Make It Work, non-stop, exhausting hours. I still have my job, and I intend to keep it for as long as possible. But I’ve also been forced to see just how much I’ve changed over the last decade. I’ve learned and seen and experienced so much that has affected how I see money, work, the world, being alive at all. I don’t think I can ever be enchanted anymore. I can’t be magicked into believing a dumpster of garbage is a treasure chest ever again. And as much as it matters to me to know the truth... I was a lot happier when I still saw a treasure chest instead of a rotting pile of trash. It’s just not as inspiring, you know?

[onlinemarketinghelp]

Cash Advance Apps: What They Are and How They Work https://ift.tt/2UJ8FZH

Are you struggling to pay your rent or bills on time? Are late fees, overdraft fees, or high-interest credit card debts threatening your ability to save?

If so, you may be a good candidate for a cash advance app. These apps are cost-effective tools to jumpstart your cash flow, so you can right your financial ship.

Now, ideally you wouldn't have to use these services - but we're not here to judge. If you do need them, they may be a better option than paying large overdraft fees or late fees. But hopefully you also take a bit of time to analyze your income and spending and course correct as needed.

So, if you need a cash advance, here are the best cash advance apps today.

Quick Navigation

What Is a Cash Advance App?

3 Best Cash Advance Apps

Earnin

MoneyLion

Dave

These Apps Need an Employer Sponsor

Important Tips for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

1. Understand How Much You Need to Earn

2. Review Student Loan Payments

3. Build Up a Cash Cushion

4. Pay Off Your Debt

5. Be Dramatic About Cutting Expenses

What Is a Cash Advance App?

Cash advance apps are apps that allow you to deposit money that you’ve already earned into your checking account before payday. Generally, these apps are free or charge a nominal fee, but they don’t charge interest on the loans. Even with the upfront fees, these are an inexpensive alternative to payday loans or even credit cards.

For people struggling with cash flow, the cash advance apps can offer a tool to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

3 Best Cash Advance Apps

Right now, cash advance apps are fairly limited. Some have high upfront fees, others are just marketplaces for payday loans. These three apps actually allow any hourly employee to access money they’ve already earned. They also have reasonable pricing policies.

Earnin

Earnin is a free cash advance app that allows users to withdraw up to $500 of money they’ve already earned. If you need a hundred bucks to pay off a parking ticket or meet your rent, Earnin is the app that will help you access your money before payday.

It recently got a little flack from the NY AG, but the adjustments it's made have made it better for consumers.

Cash Advance Limits

$100 initially

Up to $500 with use

Requirements

Must be paid via direct deposit

Must have checking account at supported bank

Be employed in a physical location or have an electronic time management system

Costs

It is free. Earnin works on a tip model. If you can afford it, pay it back over time.

Learn More

MoneyLion

MoneyLion is a fee-free checking account that offers a free cash advance up to $250. This is an account that I highly recommend for people struggling to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

Cash Advance Limits

Up to $250 with Core membership (free)

Requirements

Must have a MoneyLion checking account

Must have funds direct deposited to your account

Costs

MoneyLion Core is free. MoneyLion Plus costs $19.99 per month, but is not required for the cash advance.

Read our full MoneyLion review to learn more.

Learn More

Dave

Dave is a low-cost app that offers customers up to $75 in interest-free advances. Unlike the other apps featured, this app costs $1 per month, but you can connect the app with your existing checking account. You can also bank directly with Dave (which they want).

If you choose to open a no-fee bank account, you may qualify for up to $100 in no-interest cash advances.

Cash Advance Limits

$75 for customers with their own bank accounts

$100 for Dave banking customers

Requirements

Must have a bank account

Must have direct deposit from an employer (not Zelle, PayPal, etc.)

Costs

It costs $1 per month, but you can offset this charge by connecting your debit card and shopping at certain partner locations.

Learn More

Other Cash Advance Apps

While the above are the most popular cash advance apps, there are others in the space. We continually update our list, and have these other cash advance apps:

Brigit

These Apps Need an Employer Sponsor

While the apps above are available to all users, there are similar apps that certain employers offer to employees as a benefit. If you work for a large corporation, be sure to check if you qualify for a free cash advance through one of these apps:

Branch

DailyPay

PayActiv

FlexWage

Important Tips for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

While it’s great to have access to up to $500 before your next paycheck, an even more important consideration is how to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle altogether.

Breaking the cycle isn’t easy. In some cases, breaking out of the cycle for good will take multiple tries, especially if you’re not a high-income earner. That said, most people can take steps to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, pay off debt, and start investing.

Here are a few steps you can take to break the cycle.

1. Understand How Much You Need to Earn

If you’re early in your career or you’ve struggled to grow your income over time, there’s a good chance that your cash flow problems aren’t due to excessive spending. Rather, a low income could be driving you to feel a financial pinch month in and month out.

I recommend looking at the living wage calculator for your area (and family type). The living wage calculator recommends hourly and annual earnings requirements for you to avoid the need of government subsidies. If you’re earning less than the recommended wage, you’re not wasting too much money. Instead, your focus needs to be on earning more.

Not sure how to earn more? Start by evaluating whether your main job has upward income possibility. Often, changing companies can help you grow your income by 20% or more overnight. If that’s not an option, you may need to consider switching to a more lucrative industry.

Another option is to pursue a freelance career where you have higher earning potential. However, these options tend to have a longer-term focus. To move the needle immediately, you may need to take on a side hustle. While some side hustles only help you earn a few dollars per week, there are plenty that allow people to earn $1,000 or more each month.

2. Review Student Loan Payments

If you owe a lot of money in student loans, one of your best options is to put your loans into an income-based repayme​​nt plan. With this repayment plan, your monthly payment is based on how much you earn.

It won’t help you pay off your loans fast, but it will help you get control of your cash flow, especially if your debt is large relative to your income.

3. Build Up a Cash Cushion

As soon as you have a gap between your income and expenses, your first goal needs to be building up a cash cushion. Even a $1,000 cushion can help you avoid the need for cash advances or credit card debt.

Struggling to build up a cash cushion? It can help to cancel automatic subscriptions that are eating into your budget. Using an app like Trim can help you identify subscriptions that are hurting your bottom line.

Once you’ve gotten rid of the vampire expenses, consider switching to an “all-cash” budget. Put your debit and credit cards in a drawer, and only use cash for your variable expenses such as groceries, gas, and even your utility bills. Only use your bank account to pay for fixed expenses such as rent and your phone bill. Switching to actual cash makes it much easier to proactively plan your budget.

4. Pay Off Your Debt

While a higher income will help you break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, staying out of the cycle means cutting your expenses.

By eliminating debt (especially credit card debt and auto loan payments) you’ll have more room in your budget to absorb small emergencies like a car repair, your kid suddenly growing three shoe sizes, or a medical bill.

5. Be Dramatic About Cutting Expenses

Sick and tired of living in the check-to-check cycle? If so, dramatically cutting expenses (to the point of discomfort) could be a good move at least for a short time.

Move back home with your parents or another relative (even if you’ve got a kid), take on a few roommates (if you own your house), arrange your work schedule so you and your partner work opposite shifts and don’t have to pay for child care, sell your car and walk, bike or take public transit everywhere, get rid of your smartphone and drop to a call-and-text-only plan, never eat out (literally), and the list goes on.

Obviously, not all these suggestions apply in every circumstance, but they may all be worth considering for a period of time. This dramatic downshift in spending isn’t comfortable, but it doesn’t have to be forever. Instead, you can drop your spending for a few months or a year while you grow your income, save money, and break the check-to-check cycle for good.

The post Cash Advance Apps: What They Are and How They Work appeared first on The College Investor.

from The College Investor

Are you struggling to pay your rent or bills on time? Are late fees, overdraft fees, or high-interest credit card debts threatening your ability to save?

If so, you may be a good candidate for a cash advance app. These apps are cost-effective tools to jumpstart your cash flow, so you can right your financial ship.

Now, ideally you wouldn't have to use these services - but we're not here to judge. If you do need them, they may be a better option than paying large overdraft fees or late fees. But hopefully you also take a bit of time to analyze your income and spending and course correct as needed.

So, if you need a cash advance, here are the best cash advance apps today.

Quick Navigation

What Is a Cash Advance App?

3 Best Cash Advance Apps

Earnin

MoneyLion

Dave

These Apps Need an Employer Sponsor

Important Tips for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

1. Understand How Much You Need to Earn

2. Review Student Loan Payments

3. Build Up a Cash Cushion

4. Pay Off Your Debt

5. Be Dramatic About Cutting Expenses

What Is a Cash Advance App?

Cash advance apps are apps that allow you to deposit money that you’ve already earned into your checking account before payday. Generally, these apps are free or charge a nominal fee, but they don’t charge interest on the loans. Even with the upfront fees, these are an inexpensive alternative to payday loans or even credit cards.

For people struggling with cash flow, the cash advance apps can offer a tool to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

3 Best Cash Advance Apps

Right now, cash advance apps are fairly limited. Some have high upfront fees, others are just marketplaces for payday loans. These three apps actually allow any hourly employee to access money they’ve already earned. They also have reasonable pricing policies.

Earnin

Earnin is a free cash advance app that allows users to withdraw up to $500 of money they’ve already earned. If you need a hundred bucks to pay off a parking ticket or meet your rent, Earnin is the app that will help you access your money before payday.

It recently got a little flack from the NY AG, but the adjustments it's made have made it better for consumers.

Cash Advance Limits

$100 initially

Up to $500 with use

Requirements

Must be paid via direct deposit

Must have checking account at supported bank

Be employed in a physical location or have an electronic time management system

Costs

It is free. Earnin works on a tip model. If you can afford it, pay it back over time.

Learn More

MoneyLion

MoneyLion is a fee-free checking account that offers a free cash advance up to $250. This is an account that I highly recommend for people struggling to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

Cash Advance Limits

Up to $250 with Core membership (free)

Requirements

Must have a MoneyLion checking account

Must have funds direct deposited to your account

Costs

MoneyLion Core is free. MoneyLion Plus costs $19.99 per month, but is not required for the cash advance.

Read our full MoneyLion review to learn more.

Learn More

Dave

Dave is a low-cost app that offers customers up to $75 in interest-free advances. Unlike the other apps featured, this app costs $1 per month, but you can connect the app with your existing checking account. You can also bank directly with Dave (which they want).

If you choose to open a no-fee bank account, you may qualify for up to $100 in no-interest cash advances.

Cash Advance Limits

$75 for customers with their own bank accounts

$100 for Dave banking customers

Requirements

Must have a bank account

Must have direct deposit from an employer (not Zelle, PayPal, etc.)

Costs

It costs $1 per month, but you can offset this charge by connecting your debit card and shopping at certain partner locations.

Learn More

Other Cash Advance Apps

While the above are the most popular cash advance apps, there are others in the space. We continually update our list, and have these other cash advance apps:

Brigit

These Apps Need an Employer Sponsor

While the apps above are available to all users, there are similar apps that certain employers offer to employees as a benefit. If you work for a large corporation, be sure to check if you qualify for a free cash advance through one of these apps:

Branch

DailyPay

PayActiv

FlexWage

Important Tips for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

While it’s great to have access to up to $500 before your next paycheck, an even more important consideration is how to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle altogether.

Breaking the cycle isn’t easy. In some cases, breaking out of the cycle for good will take multiple tries, especially if you’re not a high-income earner. That said, most people can take steps to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, pay off debt, and start investing.

Here are a few steps you can take to break the cycle.

1. Understand How Much You Need to Earn

If you’re early in your career or you’ve struggled to grow your income over time, there’s a good chance that your cash flow problems aren’t due to excessive spending. Rather, a low income could be driving you to feel a financial pinch month in and month out.

I recommend looking at the living wage calculator for your area (and family type). The living wage calculator recommends hourly and annual earnings requirements for you to avoid the need of government subsidies. If you’re earning less than the recommended wage, you’re not wasting too much money. Instead, your focus needs to be on earning more.

Not sure how to earn more? Start by evaluating whether your main job has upward income possibility. Often, changing companies can help you grow your income by 20% or more overnight. If that’s not an option, you may need to consider switching to a more lucrative industry.

Another option is to pursue a freelance career where you have higher earning potential. However, these options tend to have a longer-term focus. To move the needle immediately, you may need to take on a side hustle. While some side hustles only help you earn a few dollars per week, there are plenty that allow people to earn $1,000 or more each month.

2. Review Student Loan Payments

If you owe a lot of money in student loans, one of your best options is to put your loans into an income-based repayme​​nt plan. With this repayment plan, your monthly payment is based on how much you earn.

It won’t help you pay off your loans fast, but it will help you get control of your cash flow, especially if your debt is large relative to your income.

3. Build Up a Cash Cushion

As soon as you have a gap between your income and expenses, your first goal needs to be building up a cash cushion. Even a $1,000 cushion can help you avoid the need for cash advances or credit card debt.

Struggling to build up a cash cushion? It can help to cancel automatic subscriptions that are eating into your budget. Using an app like Trim can help you identify subscriptions that are hurting your bottom line.

Once you’ve gotten rid of the vampire expenses, consider switching to an “all-cash” budget. Put your debit and credit cards in a drawer, and only use cash for your variable expenses such as groceries, gas, and even your utility bills. Only use your bank account to pay for fixed expenses such as rent and your phone bill. Switching to actual cash makes it much easier to proactively plan your budget.

4. Pay Off Your Debt

While a higher income will help you break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, staying out of the cycle means cutting your expenses.

By eliminating debt (especially credit card debt and auto loan payments) you’ll have more room in your budget to absorb small emergencies like a car repair, your kid suddenly growing three shoe sizes, or a medical bill.

5. Be Dramatic About Cutting Expenses

Sick and tired of living in the check-to-check cycle? If so, dramatically cutting expenses (to the point of discomfort) could be a good move at least for a short time.

Move back home with your parents or another relative (even if you’ve got a kid), take on a few roommates (if you own your house), arrange your work schedule so you and your partner work opposite shifts and don’t have to pay for child care, sell your car and walk, bike or take public transit everywhere, get rid of your smartphone and drop to a call-and-text-only plan, never eat out (literally), and the list goes on.

Obviously, not all these suggestions apply in every circumstance, but they may all be worth considering for a period of time. This dramatic downshift in spending isn’t comfortable, but it doesn’t have to be forever. Instead, you can drop your spending for a few months or a year while you grow your income, save money, and break the check-to-check cycle for good.

The post Cash Advance Apps: What They Are and How They Work appeared first on The College Investor.

https://ift.tt/2A3RBUD September 10, 2019 at 10:15AM https://ift.tt/31ciUrJ

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

2:00PM Water Cooler 7/29/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 7/29/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of July 25: Biden up at 29.3% (28.6), Sanders flat at 15.0% (15.0%), Warren down at 14.5% (15.0%), Buttigieg flat at 5.0% (5.0%), Harris down 11.8% (12.2%), others Brownian motion. Harris reminds me of Clinton, in that her numbers are like a hot air balloon, which sinks unless air is pumped into it.

* * *

2020

Biden (D)(1): “Biden’s Medicare Lie” [Jacobin]. “Speaking at a forum sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons in Iowa earlier this month, Joe Biden fearmongered about Medicare for All. ‘Medicare goes away as you know it,’ said Biden. Under Bernie Sanders’s plan, ‘All the Medicare you have is gone.’… It’s clever politics, but it’s a total lie. Medicare for All does exactly what it says in the name: it extends the benefits associated with Medicare to the rest of the population…. Medicare for All would effectively be a Social Security income boost of thousands of dollars per year to seniors. It accomplishes this by eliminating all co-pays, premiums, and deductibles; by covering all long-term care costs for seniors; and by capping prescription drug costs at $200 a year…. All told, the US government only pays for 65 percent of seniors’ medical spending right now. Medicare for All would make that nearly 100 percent.” • 65%? Yikes. That’s a rip-off!

Delaney (D)(1): “Delaney proposes ambitious mandatory national service plan” [CNN]. “Several 2020 candidates, including Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have proposed national service initiatives tied to college tuition or job training, but Delaney’s ambitious proposal, which would provide up to three years of free college tuition for those who participate in public service projects, is the first to mandate youth participation in service…. [I]nstead of offering voluntary service, it would be compulsory for all Americans upon high school graduation or upon turning 18. The proposal would apply only to those born after 2006, and would phase in over time, according to the campaign. The plan would provide two years of free tuition at a public college or university, and three years of tuition for those who extended their national service year to two years. Tuition could also be applied to vocational or technical training, the Delaney campaign told reporters.” • Who asked for this?

Harris (D)(1): “Kamala Harris Unveils ‘Medicare For All’ Plan That Preserves Private Insurance” [Bloomberg]. “Under her proposal, Americans could opt for Medicare Advantage, a program that allows beneficiaries to get coverage from a private insurer. Harris’s plan would put all Americans into Medicare over a 10-year transition period while allowing the participation of private insurance plans under a set of rules.” • Harris seems more than a little nimble in her positioning:

In which Jake asks Kamala Harris whether people would be able to keep their private insurance, if they prefer, under Medicare For All system — and she rejects that. "Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on." pic.twitter.com/A1AY2TOT4g

— Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) January 29, 2019

Harris has also put herself on the same side as Trump:

Here’s Trump official @SeemaCMS last week bashing Medicare for All and public option – essentially Bernie and Biden plans – as “largest threats” to US health care.

But in same speech, praising Medicare Advantage as model. pic.twitter.com/VFKcbEL4lc

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) July 29, 2019

Perhaps that was the goal. Both Delaney and Harris seem to be sending messages to donors, not voters.

Sanders (D)(4):

On the Bern App profile page, under religion, there are many religions listed but NOT Eastern Orthodox. That will be a problem. Especially in Alaska. @fshakir

— Alice Marshall (@PrestoVivace) July 28, 2019

* * *

“Democratic 2020 race up for grabs: Half of voters have changed their minds since spring, poll shows” [Politico]. “The volatility has a limit, however. The vast majority of voters who switched since April moved among the top four candidates or between them and undecided status. The mass of candidates languishing at 1% or lower hasn’t benefited.” • No Trump-like breakout figure on the Democrat side so far.

“DCCC in ‘complete chaos’ as uproar over diversity intensifies” [Politico (RH)]. “POLITICO reported last week that black and Hispanic lawmakers are furious with Bustos’ stewardship of the campaign arm. They say the upper echelon of the DCCC is bereft of diversity, and it is not doing enough to reach Latino voters and hire consultants of color. In addition, several of Bustos’ senior aides have left in the first six months of her tenure, including her chief of staff — a black woman — and her director of mail and polling director, both women.” • In other words, DCCC should become more like the Sanders campaign?

2019

“Pelosi backers feel vindicated after tumultuous stretch” [The Hill]. “Part of Pelosi’s strategy in the first seven months of the new Congress has been to protect vulnerable centrists like O’Halleran and freshman Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), Max Rose (D-N.Y.) and Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) — the so-called majority-makers — whom Republicans will be targeting in 2020 in a bid to retake the House.” • (Spanberger and Rose are MILOs; all three are Blue Dogs. We’ll see how Pelosi’s DINO strategy works out, I guess.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The Ultra-Rich Are Ultra-Conservative” [Jacobin]. “Billionaires are a politically active bunch…. Between 2001 and the end of 2012, 92 percent of the country’s hundred richest billionaires (combined wealth: $2.2 trillion) contributed to a political cause…. Yet they’re also eerily quiet…. As the trio of political scientists write, ‘many or most billionaires appear to favor, and quietly work for, policies that are opposed by large majorities of Americans’.” • Well worth a read. Since it would be irresponsible not to speculate, what if the 0.1% were “eerily quiet” about being pro-Jackpot? Thinking big, as billiionaires do, and thinking bigger than relatively minor efforts like gutting Social Security.

Stats Watch

Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey, July 2019: “Texas manufacturing activity bounced back but not as much expected in July” [Econoday]. “The survey’s demand indicators were mixed but mostly stronger…. Today’s report shows Texas manufacturing recovering in July from June’s slide more strongly than the headline suggests, and will probably not strengthen the case for more accommodation by the Fed.”

Shipping: “Carriers across the sector are throttling back profit projections for 2019 as they wrestle with the hangover from last year’s freight boom” [Wall Street Journal]. “Freight demand isn’t far off last year’s high levels, but rates have been sinking. Measures of spot-pricing for truckload business are down by double digits from last year, and customers are cutting shipping costs rather than looking for trucks.”

The Bezzle: “California steers toward a future of self-driving cars” [CalMatters]. “The future can be glimpsed at a former Navy base near the Bay Area city of Concord, converted to the nation’s largest autonomous-vehicle proving ground where computer-driven cars are let off their leashes and are free to roam across 2,100 acres. The facility, GoMentum Station, run by the American Automobile Association, is an innovation hive where Silicon Valley marries its futuristic vision to the automobile industry’s traditional know-how. • OK… More: “But it’s a significant step from allowing testing of automated cars in protected, supervised settings to unleashing them solo on the road, which experts say remains on a far horizon. There is much to be perfected: how best to turn left in traffic, for example, a maneuver that bedevils many human drivers.” • Wait. After many billions, we don’t have an algo to turn left in traffic?

Rapture Index: Closes down one on Israel. “Israel Has been generally quiet the past few weeks.” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing.

The Biosphere

“Coase, Hotelling and Pigou: The Incidence of o Carbon Tax and CO2 Emissions” [Geoffrey Heal, Wolfram Schlenker NBER Working Paper 26086]. “Using data from a large proprietary database of field-level oil data, we show that carbon prices even as high as 200 dollars per ton of CO2 will only reduce cumulative emissions from oil by 4% as the supply curve is very steep for high oil prices and few reserves drop out. The supply curve flattens out for lower price, and the effect of an increased carbon tax becomes larger. For example, a carbon price of 600 dollars would reduce cumulative emissions by 60%. On the flip side, a global cap and trade system that limits global extraction by a modest amount like 4% expropriates a large fraction of scarcity rents and would imply a high permit price of $200. The tax incidence varies over time: initially, about 75% of the carbon price will be passed on to consumers, but this share declines through time and even becomes negative as oil prices will drop in future years relative to a case of no carbon tax. The net present value of producer and consumer surplus decrease by roughly equal amounts, which are almost entirely offset by increased tax revenues.” •

“Even a summer heat wave can’t light up fading natural gas prices. Some of the country’s largest natural gas producers are tearing up their drilling plans…. as natural-gas futures tumble to multiyear lows just as the calendar and the climate suggest rates should be rising” [Wall Street Journal]. “Producers point to the Permian Basin in West Texas, where oil producers are unleashing vast volumes of gas as a byproduct of drilling for crude. That’s offsetting high demand from utilities that are shifting from coal to gas, and even all-time high exports to Mexico and other overseas markets. Natural gas has been so plentiful in West Texas at times this year that the price has turned negative, meaning that producers have to pay pipeline operators more to deliver gas to market than what the fuel fetches once it reaches buyers.

“Deforestation in the Amazon is shooting up, but Brazil’s president calls the data ‘a lie’” [Science]. “Deforestation is shooting up again in the Brazilian Amazon, according to satellite monitoring data. But Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, whom many blame for the uptick, has disputed the trend and attacked the credibility of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which produced the data. Bolsonaro called the numbers ‘a lie’ during a 19 July breakfast talk with journalists, and suggested INPE Director Ricardo Galvão was ‘at the service of some [nongovernmental organization].’ ‘With all the devastation you accuse us of doing and having done in the past, the Amazon would be extinguished already,’ he said.” • Hmm. “[S]ome [nongovernmental organization]”?

“Climate Change in a Coastal County: Think Global, Act Hyperlocal” [Pew Trusts Stateline]. “[T]oday, sea level rise in Dare County [Virginia] is among the most precipitous in the nation, an average 0.18 inches a year in some parts, enough that scientists come from around the world to study the land… The resilience projects will carry the community only so far. Beach nourishment, for example, typically lasts five to seven years — though a single hurricane this fall could wipe out all the millions of dollars of new sand laid this summer. At some point, Nags Head and other Dare County communities will hit a tipping point and decide the return isn’t worth the investment. ‘I don’t know when that day is,’ said [Mayor Ben Cahoon, a Republican], the mayor. ‘But it’s out there.’ When that happens, [Reide Corbett, a coastal oceanographer and geochemist] said, communities will have to approach a final step in coastal resilience: retreat. Just move folks inland and out of danger entirely.”

Games

“Why the ending of Game of Thrones elevated the worst of fan culture” [Vox]. “‘Curatorial fandom’ is a general term for the area of geek culture that emphasizes amassing as much canonical knowledge as possible, no matter how minute… The other side of fandom is “transformative fandom.” If curatorial fandom is about enshrining an authorial version of canon, transformative fandom is about changing it. Transformative fandom is centered on fanworks, like fanfiction, fan art, or fan critique, all of which use the source text as the jumping-off point for original interpretations. The idea of “transformative fandom” is a core concept of fanworks-based fandom because transformativity is part of the legal framework that protects fanfiction (i.e. it’s a “transformative work”)….. Bran embodies the stereotype of a fannish geek who spends his entire day sitting surfing the internet…. Bran is a human database of facts and knowledge that he acquired from ‘reading’ the history/canon presented to him through his nebulous abilities as the Three-Eyed Raven. Not only that, but his first official act as king was to essentially go gaming in search of Drogon the dragon, while Tyrion and the small council were left to run the kingdom. These characteristics and behaviors make Bran easy to read as an avatar for curatorial fandom.” • Fandom is alien territory to me, but this certainly sounds plausible.

Health Care

“Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America” [Buzzfeed]. “Laverty faces a health care problem unique to many millennials with Type 1 diabetes who’ve been booted off their parents’ stable health insurance. The price of insulin, the drug that keeps them alive, tripled in the US from 2002 to 2013 — and a recent study found that, from 2012 to 2016, its average annual cost increased from $3,200 to $5,900…. That’s an impossible price tag for a generation still feeling the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and saddled with massive student loan debt and increasing housing costs. Studies show that US millennials are far worse off financially than previous generations, with an average net worth below $8,000. The result is that these young adults are rationing, stockpiling, and turning to the black market for the medication they need to stay alive — incredibly risky and desperate measures that could result in long-term harm or death.” • So Obama’s much-beloved policy of letting adult children stay on their parents’ policies until the random age of 26 — why not 25? of 27? — turns out to be an ancien regime-like added layer of complexity that fails the people who need it most. Everything’s going according to plan!

People love their health insurance companies:

Dear Blue Cross Blue Shield, Thank you for your help during this difficult time. pic.twitter.com/HV017ntjQC

— Nate Charny (@natecharny) July 19, 2019

An ObamaCare navigator speaks:

When I got a job as an ACA 'navigator' to help people who'd never had it sign up for & use health insurance, and the vast majority of them (myself included) could only afford the lowest-tier, most bare bones plans. Just disappointing people all day long.

— erik (@erikdstock) May 5, 2019

The “When did you become radicalized by the U.S. health care non-system?” is an important archive of horror stories.

Neera’s plan (Medicare Extra):

Therapist: And what do we do when the Center for American Progress keeps pushing a healthcare plan that would still cost people up to $1500?

Me: Point out how offensive it is to call that “progress” when most Americans don’t have even $1000 for emergencies

Therapist: Wow yeah

— DSA for Medicare for All (@dsam4a) July 23, 2019

“Judge OKs Trump’s expansion of short-term plans” [Modern Health Care]. “A federal judge on Friday ruled the Trump administration’s expansion of so-called short-term, limited-duration health insurance plans can move ahead, rejecting an insurer group’s attempt to strike down the move. The plaintiff, the Association for Community Affiliated Plans, immediately said it will appeal. The group represents not-for-profit health plans deeply invested in the Affordable Care Act exchanges…. The rule, finalized in August 2018 and in effect since early October 2018, allows up to 12 months of coverage through short-term plans. People can renew this coverage for up to 36 months. The plans don’t have to cover people with pre-existing conditions, nor are they subject to the ACA’s mandates such as coverage for the 10 essential benefits, includinge mental healthcare, maternity care and prescription drugs.”

“The Effects on Hospital Utilization of the 1966 and 2014 Health Insurance Coverage Expansions in the United States” [Annals of Internal Medicine]. From the abstract: “Past coverage expansions were associated with little or no change in society-wide hospital use; increases in groups who gained coverage were offset by reductions among others, suggesting that bed supply limited increases in use. Reducing coverage may merely shift care toward wealthier and healthier persons. Conversely, universal coverage is unlikely to cause a surge in hospital use if growth in hospital capacity is carefully constrained.”

“Blue-Collar Workers Had Greatest Insurance Gains After ACA Implementation” [Health Affairs]. From the abstract: “Analyzing national survey data, we found that workers in traditionally blue-collar industries (service jobs, farming, construction, and transportation) experienced the largest gains in health insurance after implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014. Compared to other occupations, these had lower employer-based coverage rates before the ACA. Most of the post-ACA coverage gains came from Medicaid and directly purchased nongroup insurance.”

“Health websites are notoriously misleading. So we rated their reliability” [STAT News]. “NewsGuard was co-founded last year by journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill (known in part for his health care reporting) and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz. In rating news and information sites in the U.S., Italy, U.K., France, and Germany, it has discovered a diverse spectrum of health sites. These range from green-rated peer-reviewed medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine to hundreds of red-rated conspiracy-minded sites such as NaturalNews.com and Collective-Evolution.com…. This plague of health misinformation comes in many fevers, from the seemingly innocuous (there is no solid evidence behind the idea that Epsom salt baths heal sore muscles) to the potentially dangerous (if you take amygdalin, vitamin B17, or laetrile, different names for the same long-debunked “cancer cure” made from fruit pits, you can experience side effects that mirror the symptoms of cyanide poisoning).”

Our Famously Free Press

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette boss J.R. Block sounds like a real piece of work. Thread:

Since it’s out there, next week will be my last at the Post-Gazette. It’s been a privilege to work with talented journalists who have covered intensely challenging stories (the Tree of Life massacre, local fallout from Catholic clergy sex abuse, Antwon Rose) with humanity. (1/) https://t.co/BhmFEatJgW

— Trevor Lenzmeier (@trevlenz) July 27, 2019

Police State Watch

“Lafayette public defender found in contempt after filming duct taping of defendant” [Acadiana Advocate]. “[Michael Gregory, a] Lafayette public defender was found in contempt of court Friday after filming a bailiff duct taping a defendant during a sentencing hearing July 18…. [Amanda Koons, a public defender in the Harris County Public Defender’s Office in Houston said] she’s never seen physical force like what occurred July 18. She said duct taping someone isn’t appropriate or humane, especially when the option to temporarily remove the defendant from the courtroom exists.” • Plus, they had the duct tape handy. I don’t imagine they drove to a hardware store to get some.

Black Injustice Tipping Point

A walking tour of Charlottesville’s monuments (mostly Confederate); thread:

Saturday, July 27, 8:30 am (when it's cool!): Dr. Andrea Douglas of @JSAAHC & I will lead a walking tour of #Charlottesville's downtown Confederate monuments & the newly-installed @eji_org historical plaque for lynching victim John Henry James. Meet at courthouse on Jefferson St. pic.twitter.com/EmGxeT75ak

— Jalane Smash the Fash Schmidt

(@Jalane_Schmidt) July 24, 2019

Guillotine Watch

“Cosmopolitan”:

Jeffrey Epstein was Cosmo magazines' July Bachelor of the Month, in 1980 pic.twitter.com/aAsCDzwWJq

— Historic.ly (@historic_ly) July 29, 2019

News of the Wired

Speaking of collapse:

Why not “dark ages”? Why Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages matter? This is an experiment trying to argue for it in 10 tweets (w/footnotes). It is subjective, but hopefully balanced. Not meant to replace, but to inspire other (twitter) takes on the subject. A thread. (a) 1/ pic.twitter.com/FmH31TysPh

— Mateusz Fafinski (@Calthalas) July 8, 2019

“Another side of Samuel Beckett” [Guardian]. • A long read on Beckett’s life. Well worth a read and might expand his fan base!

“Tokyo subway’s humble duct-tape typographer” [Medium]. “Sixty-five year old Sato san wears a crisp canary yellow uniform, reflective vest and polished white helmet. His job is to guide rush hour commuters through confusing and hazardous construction areas. When Sato san realised he needed more than his megaphone to perform this duty, he took it upon himself to make some temporary signage. With a few rolls of of duct tape and a craft knife, he has elevated the humble worksite sign to an art form…. Sato san’s purpose is simple: he strives to make life better for the millions of commuters who negotiate station construction sites. His unassuming dedication to craft and service embodies the best side of the Japanese approach to work.”

“Grasshoppers invade Las Vegas thanks to Luxor hotel light beam” [Yahoo News]. • Nature’s buffet!

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (JN):

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Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So do feel free to make a contribution today or any day. Here is why: Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of small donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals. So if you see something you especially appreciate, do feel free to click this donate button:

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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/29/2019

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[kuwaiti-kid]

3 Things You Need to Do to Protect Your Side Hustles

Does it seem to you like everyone's talking about side hustles these days?

Side hustles 2020. How to make money in a side hustle. Side hustles you can do from home. These are some of the headlines I've seen.

We've jumped into the fray here at Your Money Geek the writing is about how to start a side hustle, the different types of side hustles, side hustles that generate passive income, and many other versions of the story.

I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing. Creating multiple streams of income from side hustles is the ticket to financial freedom for those willing to jump into the action.

What concerns me about the side hustle discussion is what's left out of it. I've not seen a single post about how to protect the income generated from the side hustle.

How does the IRS tax it?

How should I claim it? Should I set up a separate entity?

Do a sole proprietorship?

What are the liabilities associated with the side hustle?

Can I be sued? If so, how can I limit my liability?

In this post, we're going to dive into some of these questions. We'll offer some thoughts on how to keep more of what you earn through your side business.

What is a Side Hustle?

Let's start with a definition of what a side hustle is. For the record, I dislike the term side hustle. I'm not sure where it started. Perhaps it's been around for decades. I don't know.

To me, the term side hustle sounds a bit shady. When you think of a hustler, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it someone who works hard and hustles to get ahead? Or does it represent someone a bit shady? You know, like, “that dude hustled me out of a hundred bucks.” For me, it's the ladder definition. Getting hustled is not something anyone wants to admit has happened to them. Perhaps I'm showing my age or my cynical side.

In its most basic form, it's any income produced outside of your regular job. It may be a part-time job. It may be owning rental properties. Maybe it means being an Uber driver or a Wall-Mart greeter. Whatever the means to produce additional income the popular (and accepted) term for it is the side hustle.

Even busy people get into side hustles.

Side Hustles 2020

As you might expect, side hustles come in many shapes and sizes. Below is a list of ten ideas that may offer some help if you're considering a side hustle. These are in no particular order, and there are dozens of others we could list.

Blogging – Probably the number one way that Millennials start their side businesses. With over 2,000 blogs on personal finance out there, you'll find course after course on how to make money blogging. Be careful. Blogging is hard. Making money at it is even harder. That doesn't stop bloggers from peddling their courses, eBooks, and such to generate some income.

Selling on eBay – Many people make decent money selling items on eBay. It takes some work, but those who stick with it make good money.

Driving for Uber –  If you own a car, you can make some extra money driving for Uber. Getting started is pretty straightforward. Like any side gig, there are pros and cons.

Airbnb – Do you own a home? If so, it's a potential asset to get some side income by renting it out via Airbnb. You can rent the entire house or a room — your choice.

Mystery shopping – Many companies will pay you to go into the store or shop online and share your experience.

Dog walking –  Pretty self-explanatory.

House-sitting –  Staying at someone's house while they travel. That can be a week's vacation, several months, or even longer.

Get a part-time job – Going old school here. Plain and simple, go find a part-time job doing something you like.

Passive income

Real estate – One of the more popular side hustles and one that's written about the most. Investors buy single-family homes or condos and rent them out to tenants. Another popular option is crowdfunded real estate. DiversyFund and Fundrise are two we've written about.

Dividend investing  – Another topic that's written about a lot is using high dividend-paying stocks to generate passive, tax-favored income. Qualified dividends have favorable tax rates from the IRS. A lot of blogs focus their writing on teaching people how to do invest in dividend-paying stocks.

Whether income is active or passive depends on many factors. My advice is to investigate those things very carefully before starting.

Side hustles 2020 –  Protecting Your Income

Alright. You've selected your side hustle, and you're generating some income. From what does that income need protected? For one thing, taxes. Another oft-overlooked risk is being sued. Making sure you understand how both of these things place risk on your income is essential before starting your side hustle.

We'll look at each one separately.

Taxes

The IRS taxes income. Period. Whether it's passive or active determines the tax rate. Here's how the income works in most cases. The entity from which the income comes issues a 1099 tax form to the recipient of that income. There are numerous types of 1099's issued depending on the source of the income. If the income comes from dividends, you'll receive a 1099-DIV. When the income is from interest income, you receive a 1099-INT. If it doesn't fall into any specific category, the catch-all form is the  1099-MISC. The majority of the income generated from side hustles comes in the form of a 1099-MISC.

In contrast, income from an employer comes in the form of a W2. What's the difference? A big one. In a W2 income, the employer withholds taxes from your paycheck and sends it to the IRS on your behalf. How much they withhold depends on your income.

In addition to Federal taxes, they withhold taxes for your state as well. Finally, there are FICA (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) taxes. That's tax withheld for Social Security and Medicare. In W2 income, employers withhold 6.20% of the first 132,900. The employer pays the other 6.20%. Additionally, there is a tax for Medicare. The Medicare tax has no upper-income limit. You will pay a tax of 1.45% of all income. Incomes over $200,000 ($250,000 if married) pay an additional 0.9% tax.

Self-Employment Tax

Guess who's responsible for these taxes if you get 1099 income? You guessed it, you are. It's critical to understand this when thinking about generating additional income. If you expect your total tax bill for 2019 to be over $1,000, the IRS requires you to pay estimated quarterly taxes.

FICA taxes are killer when self-employed. Remember, on W2 income, The employer withholds 6.20% and pays the other 6.20% of the FICA tax. They also withhold the Medicare tax. Total that up, and that's 15.3%! If you fail to pay your estimated taxes, the penalties and interest are killers.

Suffice it to say neglecting the taxes on side income can cost you a lot of money.

Liability

The second major issue that can derail your side hustles is getting sued. Liability can ruin your day in a hurry. Why would someone want to sue you? It doesn't take much. Here are some examples.

Let's say you own rental properties. You have a sidewalk in need of repair that you haven't gotten around to fixing. Someone comes to the house, trips on the raised concrete, and breaks their arm. Or worse. At the very least, you will be responsible for the medical bills for the individual. Assuming you have a decent homeowners insurance policy, you should be okay. Then an attorney from Dewey Cheatem and How finds the injured party. They convince them they should sue.

Rest assured, they want much more than your medical bills paid. They want damages over and above that. Homeowners policies have a maximum liability for these lawsuits. Being underinsured could be very costly. Almost any of the side hustles listed above come with liability.

Blogging risks

Blogging seems like a low-risk venture at first glance. For the most part, it is. In the personal finance space, it may not be. Why?

Most personal finance bloggers write about investing, saving money, spending, and other of these types of topics. Most of them give investment advice to their readers. The vast majority have no formal training in investment management, financial planning, or many other topics they write about. Most of them have a disclaimer saying they aren't giving investment or professional advice. Fair enough.

Let's say you have an article (one of the hundreds of them) about investing in the three-fund portfolio from Vanguard. You read that this is one of the most straightforward, least expensive portfolios that cover the entire market. For the most part, that's true. So you invest in the three fund cure-all portfolio during this one of the longest-running bull markets and go about your business. Then it happens. A 2008 type of financial crisis rears its ugly head again. This time it's worse. The U.S. and international stock markets drop more than 50%.

Hold on! No one told you about the risk? You thought this portfolio was the be all do all of investing. You feel cheated. Another partner from Dewey Cheatem and How calls you. He gets you fired up about the dereliction of duty of that untrained, opinionated, mouthy blogger who convinced you that portfolio was the best thing ever created. And now you've lost more than 50% of your money. Yes, you actually did lose that money because, in the heat of the crisis, you sold everything. YIKES! That's an attorney's dream scenario.

Far fetched? Maybe. Do you want to risk it? Probably not. There are ways to mitigate these risks.

Lowering Liability Risk

I'll give you three things to consider to help protect your side hustle income.

Pay attention to taxes – If you're a do it yourself tax person, be sure to dive into your software or the IRS website to understand how your side income will be taxed. It's best to do this BEFORE you start. Waiting until the year is over and taxes are due is not a good plan. You can manage taxes. But you have to understand how your income gets taxed to deal with it.

Choose the right business entity – Setting up your side business as a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) can limit your personal liability. They're relatively inexpensive to start. An LLC shelters your personal assets from lawsuits. Though nothing is foolproof, this layer of protection makes it much harder. You can have a one-person LLC. No need to overcomplicate it.

Have adequate and the right kind of liability insurance  – Back to the rental property example, if someone gets hurt on one of your properties, having an umbrella liability policy provides an extra layer of financial protection. Umbrellas policies add additional insurance over and above the home owner's policy. They are usually relatively inexpensive and well worth the money. If you're a blogger, consider a business insurance policy that includes liability coverage. There is even coverage available specific to bloggers. Though relatively new, it speaks to the proliferation of bloggers and the potential liabilities they face.

Final thoughts

Does all of this talk about lawsuits, taxes, and liability make you want never to start a side hustle? It shouldn't. And I'll grant you that the examples I used would fall into the category of extreme. But isn't that always the case with lawsuits? Attorney's live for situations where they can set a precedent and get the big payout. 

The steps I've outlined here to protect yourself are pretty simple. An LLC is relatively inexpensive to start. Liability insurance is cheap too.

I'd say the biggest and most complicated issue to deal with for side hustles 2019 is taxes. It's essential to understand the type of income you will receive in your side business. Understanding and planning for that in advance will save you potentially big money and hassles in the future.

So, by all means, start your favorite side hustle. Find something you like and have at it. Throw caution to the wind to get it started. That is except when it comes to taxes. Protect yourself and your income from liability. Do the three things suggestion – pay attention to taxes, think about your business entity and get liability protection – and you'll be on your way.

Success is right around the corner.

The post 3 Things You Need to Do to Protect Your Side Hustles appeared first on Your Money Geek.

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[yarusiholdings]

612. Will Crozier: Using Massive Wealth Creation To Change Lives

Since 2011, Will has co-founded two multi-family investment firms in Texas. Will has transacted over $350MM as deal sponsor / syndicator, totaling over 7,000 units. Every deal to date has returned over 100% profit to the investment group with a typical hold time of 2 years. In 2010, Will established and operated a multifamily-specific materials import company that greatly reduced the cost and logistical headaches of renovating multi-family projects. He routinely visited sourcing factories until he sold the company in 2018. Will is licensed and registered as a real estate broker in the State of Texas. He has formally held the SEC / FINRA Series 7 and 66 licenses, and worked with TD Ameritrade and Fidelity as a stock broker. Will enjoys international travel for business and adventure, and is obsessed with cars and music. He is a Dance Club DJ throughout the Philippines. He regularly organizes and sponsors children’s medical / surgical outreaches in South East Asia. Will is on the Board of Directors of the Ruel Foundation, and founder of Angel Capitalist. Both provide vital medical care to needy children as well as economic investments in the Philippines with more than 500 children treated to date. Website: www.angelcapitalist.com

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  Transcription:

Hello. Again, welcome back to the Jason and PLE project. Super excited to be here with you today. Of course, we love you. Checking in with us. Love you, giving us all this great feedback. You'd be like, wait here, go over. Give us a ratings review. Doesn't have to be five stars. Just has to be, we want to hear from you. We want you to dive in, tell us what we're doing. Tell us what else we can bring you. And today we have will Crozier on the show. He will. How you doing? Hey Jason. Great. How are you? Good. Good. So excited to have well on the show, he's actually in Texas with living full time in the Philippines came back of course, with COVID, but he's got such a tremendous track record here, and we'd love to have him on the show since 2011. He's co-founded two multi-family investment firms in Texas with transacting over 350 million as a deal sponsor, syndicator totalling over 7,000 units.

  And on average, over a hundred percent profit to the investment group with a tickle whole time two years. And if that wasn't enough in 2010, he established a multifamily specifically cereals import company that greatly reduced the cost and logistical headaches of renovating multifamily product projects. And he sold the company in 2018. He's also has a number of licenses, series seven series 66, working as a broker. And to add that on top, he's got many passions in terms of international travel for business and adventure, obsessed with cars and music, and some of the awesome things he's doing. He's on the board of directors for the rural foundation and founder of angel capitalist, both which provide vital medical care to needy children, as well as economic investments in the Philippines with more than 500 children treated to date. I mean, that's super cool, man. So excited to have you on the show.

  I'll jump in. Cause you know, a lot of people right now, small business owners, we're investors, they're listening to this and they hear a lot of things that you're doing to, you know, continue to give back. One thing you've done to, to find an additional layer to the multifamily area was to produce or start the import company. What was the thought track there was that that was pre doing the investments and, or was it second to the investments? And then from there you decided this was a good track to add onto. Yeah, it was sort of concurrent. I mean, we had an issues actually sourcing the materials we needed to renovate fast enough. We started taking on bigger and bigger, bigger projects and the big box stores couldn't even keep up with our demand. It sounds weird, but they would start delivering the wrong fan or the long, the wrong light or their own faucet. And the prices would be all over the place. And just like, ah, this is messing everything up. We guys standing up guys standing around with the hands in the pocket and you know, wasting everyone's time and money. So kind of took it into our own hands. Flew over to China, started meeting the, uh, the factory owners and they started pulling containers in and it sounds real easy, but I'll tell you it was a headache, but once I got going, it was definitely it.

  That's

  Awesome. And what were some of the, the key lessons learned one from a business standpoint where two, from a logistical standpoint, bringing on an additional line to your multifamily investment firms? Well, everyone talks about real estate, sort of like multiple streams of income thing jumping into this firm. It was a multiple streams of expense. Like it was just money, money out everywhere. It was this money out and it was, it was, it was a headache, but, uh, once, once we stabilized and um, our investments stabilized and we started picking up a reputation for good product bucks, you know, we were selling at a good price and it was exactly what other owners needed. It was what we needed. So it's what everyone needed. And it was on time and it was delivered for, you know, B and C projects, a multifamily project. So it kind of just took off and, uh, it was managing cashflow, I think was the number one thing.

  It took 10 years off my life in those five years. So I know from working in a, having a number of businesses and working with family business, that that's one of the parts as you grow, right? It's that cashflow because it's that, it's that beauty of you're growing, but you're trying to anticipate the growing going forward and you're trying not to cut your knees off and you're trying to be optimistic, but optimistic sometimes you're not even as optimistic and as it gets bigger, you're trying to basically catch a rolling ball is rolling down a Hill. You're trying to catch up with it. And as you look at an analogy, as you're looking at an environment today, if you were to start over right now in 2020, with all you've done, you know, you came back 2011 where we had not December, but it wasn't as optimistic as maybe six months ago, you know, in 2011, how are you looking at your investment opportunities today?

  I had a long call just yes, yesterday. Uh, the people who kind of came up to five years behind me or whatever. Um, if I was going to start all over again, it's a great time to start over. I mean, don't, don't necessarily jump in right now, not this second, but you know, wait, watch the dust to settle there's opportunities coming our way. There's a lot of sloppy handlers, a distant absentee owners there. They're going to fumble it. There's going to be opportunities back in the market. And that's really cool. And I'm positioning myself to be able to, to back those people, to back those sponsors, to invest with them, to guarantee loans and things like that. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a team sport and everyone's getting ready for the next round. I think that that's the key word team sport. And sometimes when people start out, they try and do everything in themselves and they forget that the ability to grow, these are, these are really businesses that you're going to narrow and correcting them.

  And the more you put on an infrastructure, the more you can grow and you can do, like you did grow to 350 million, 7,000 units in a quick fashion and have a good turnover. What you did here now to two was the objective from the beginning, always to it traveled international. It was just the goal of, of doing multimillion. Do what you're doing is to find a different perspective on how you want to handle life, or it's just always been built into your life. And you found businesses that fit your life. Yeah. It wasn't the goal for sure. I think my goal was, uh, yeah, big houses, fancy light cars, you know, that, that was the goal. It really was. Um, I was born really early poor and that just always amazed me and seemed really cool. And I did that for awhile and then I got really bored of it.

  And like two or three years is all it took and I'm like, okay, glad I did it and need to probably do it just to satisfy that itch. And then it kind of just sold everything and moved forward with something else. And you moved over to the Philippines, was Sammy from there, or w w what was the, what was the choice to, to move to the Philippines? Uh, as quickly as I can, when I was in China, a lot on this import company, all the coolest people I met in China were all Filipino. So they're like, come on over, come on over. And, you know, English was strong and there's a lot of cultural bond between Americans and Filipinos and it just fit really naturally. I love the people, the culture, the weather. It's. It's great. It's home now. Oh, that's so cool. So cool.

  So are you still actively investing in multifamily? Why they're here in the States or now are you pushing into your other passions or your focus on angel capitalist? I'm certainly pushing forward with angel Apolis and we can talk about that for a bit, but, you know, it's always best to earn dollars, especially when you've got the team and the network, the infrastructure in place. So I'm still deal sponsoring a couple of the larger deals here in Texas. Uh, I'm investing, as I'd mentioned as kind of a key principle guarantor on a lot of other people's projects. So I'm a passive investor more and more as I can be, or just kind of a semi passive, just try to help out where I can to, to get the deals done, to get better loan terms, lend the balance sheet and these kinds of things to, to make it go around a little bit better, but, but more and more, my emphasis moves over to angel capitalist in the Philippines.

  I love it. And you talked about, you know, the, the big house, the cars and how that just got tired. And, and I think a lot of people have that same thing, right? They start out making, you know, when you do you, you have that approach. That that's the first thing. When you grow eyes that your, your choice and your objectives were, were bigger than this. And it does that lead to where angel capitalist really started from it. Did. I can remember the exact moment when I was, uh, I was jogging in the morning near my big fancy house, and I was just amazed by it. It was just beautiful, everything about it was just like, you know, I did it like, I was so excited about it and almost that second, my mind flipped over and started thinking about, okay, in my garage, I've got a Bentley, I got my old 69 Camaro.

  I just picked up my car, Rory. And it was just like, I gotta go buy another one. And it was just like that moment. I caught myself when I'm like, is the next sporadic the thing that satisfies that itch, not, not even close, not even close. And that's like, I started on unraveling it at that point, just putting it all behind me. And, uh, and, uh, the amazing work that you can do with small amounts of money in so many parts of the world, or even here in the U S it's just amazing what a little bit done with care, you know, uh, micro, um, humanitarian micro charities where it's at. And if you just note in you're with the people, and you're talking to the people and day by day, you're with these people, you can identify with the needs are and efficiently help them to become healthy,

  To advance their life, to feed their children, to grow a business. And I became addicted to that very, very quickly. Uh, how can I do more of that instead of buying the a hundred dollar bottle of wine at my stick dinner, you know, let's divert those funds to do something much, much better. You know, when people think about giving back, lots of times they think that that means they have to have a lot of money, right? They have to have this big fund set aside. So I I'll do it, you know, in a couple of years when I started to have this nest egg and other points, and you talked about just finding these causes, even though micro causes, how did, what was the first thing that stood out to you in terms of identifying the causes that were really hugely

  Impactful to you, and you want to make a difference on, yeah, it was children's surgeries and that's what I'm mostly addicted to, because it's hard to find things that are pure, like a hundred percent pure that someone's not going to monkey with. There's not some agenda, there's not some huge overhead or issue with what you're doing or it's political or something. I've found that that children who have done nothing wrong, they cannot help themselves. And then you do a life changing surgery that one day they go into the surgery and the next day they come out and their entire future has changed. I became addicted to that, and it was actually a, an eyesight of cataract surgery. That was my very, very first one. I was just being a lazy tourist, a bump, like drinking, hanging out on the beach. And, and, uh, I heard about this girl who needed about a $180 surgery, so she could see, you know, and I just thrown that amount of oil on lunch and a couple of parties the night before.

  And I'm like, you know, I'm slow, I'm very slow to figure this stuff out, but eventually I figure it out. And I'm like, that is what I want to do. And we did it and now she sees, and, and then it started spiraling. I started building infrastructure and all the lessons I've learned here in business, in the United States about scaling, about growing about trusted advisors, about handling money, about trust. I don't, I spend a lot of my own money on this, but really it's key. I do a lot of crowdsourcing. I throw up a new case that we find, I throw it up on social media. I'm like, you know, who wants to get in on this with me? Cause most people do. Most people are like, that's really cool. I want to do that too. And so it's really just cooperative and everything I've learned in business translates so well into what we're doing now over there,

  In terms of the scaling aspect of your business, what's been the best growth factor you've taken from your business and put it into this right here.

  Hi, I'm a syndicator, you know, I didn't have any money to do these big apartment projects. Uh, so, so it was about convincing a few people to trust in me. And then once you get the ball rolling and you have a track record and you have trust built up and a reputation and a network, you lend that to much, much bigger projects. And that's what I'm working on now. And basically starting to syndicate larger and larger humanitarian projects in the Philippines. And this is the same people. It's literally the same people that I just made, you know, hundreds or millions of dollars for in the past few years. And they're there, same trust in me, the same reputation did they, if anyone else wants to participate, they'll be like, yeah. You know, I trust him with them. He's over there. He's spending his own money to make this stuff happen. So let's jump in there. So it's, it's all teams it's in its reputation and it's building those relationships of trust.

  Yeah. And you're right, right. So, and I think that goes back to a lot of people's perception, Yvonne buying multi-families that you have to have this large bank roll ahead of you, but it's really just making sure that what you say is what you do, having the right terminology. When you talk to people that you can make sure that they understand that you're going to go out there and times are not going to be easy. There, there things are going to happen, but you're going to put in the work and make sure that you're there every step of the way to make it happen. And the cool thing about this is you talk about the cataract surgery. It's something apartment buildings may take a while to turn around, right? It's not like a flip where you can be in and out in a month. You may have two years, three years to see that see the after effect, but the surgery, you can, you could see how that changes so quickly. Right? So you get that immediate point when you had that first one happened, what was, what was the, the internal response? What was your first thought or your emotion from it?

  I was addicted. I mean, there was nothing else to say, but that, and you know, when you're doing this kind of business, it's nice to have that external affirmation from everyone. Oh, well, you're a good guy. You're doing all this good stuff and on and on. And it feels good to hear that I liked that, but actually it's, for me, it's my own selfish reasons. Like it makes me happier and more excited than anything else that I'm doing. So I'm doing it for myself. So it's not as selfless and altruistic because it sounds, it's just, it's the coolest thing that I can do in my life. So that's why I'm doing it.

  Yeah. I love that. And just the effect of, of person, right. Just imagine, I'm just thinking of my mind, like it, you, you, you vision the vision, right? That just to be able to see something, it gives you such a whole different perspective, right? Just like they say, a picture can create a thousand words. And so for someone to go from not seeing to have an at first sight, you can just imagine the visual, just all the things that must come to mind when someone has that effect. And it's just cool that you could, and it's, it's daunting, right? Because we think of everything on unmasked capacity. Like maybe that surgery here would be like 10,000 hours, but somewhere else, it's a hundred, $180 and you're able to go and just change them in the future. And I love that. What is the, the next steps, which the future with angel capitalist.

  So I haven't even been released this yet. You know, you're the first one I'm, I'm really working, uh, to put out a game plan that everyone can watch. Everyone can see that soon. I'm going to move from, I'm asking for a hundred bucks, I'm asking you to match my 500 or a thousand dollars for this next surgical outreach. I'm going to start hunting whales similar to what we did in, uh, in, in multifamily investing. And by that, we're not going to go get a harpoon in a big boat. I'm going to talk, I'm talking more to build the relationship and the bridges with people who, who have huge amounts of money and don't know where to put it. Cause that's actually what we always face in the apartment world with investors. They have a lot of money. They want to deploy it all. They need to get it invested. They just don't know who they can trust. They don't know the right market cycles or whatever. I want to be one of the people that they trust that I've, that I publicly aired

  What we're doing publicly shown that track record the portfolio, the resume of what we've done for humans and how tiny, tiny bits of money it can help so much. And I wanted to do that on a much larger scale form. I would like to say, Hey, give me your million. Who do you have? Where's your auntie? Is she, is she unwinding? Her life wants to put her money to good care. Now in good hands, fly over and meet with me, meet with my team. Let's really start scaling this up. Cause there's so many more people we can help. There's there's, there's never going to be enough. And I'm just going to try and do my best with them. If there's a person listening to it, doesn't have the track record, right. It hasn't done a project hasn't hasn't had the impact, uh, but they love this and they want to get involved.

  They're just not sure how to get started with what are some suggestions for someone to, to build character, build trust as they continue to grow in what they want to do. You know, I think a lot of us hate social media because of all of the woes that it brings to us, but just sort of putting your profiles on public and being transparent about your failures, showing all the terrible days that you have just showing when there's a success, really enjoy it with everybody. It just, I've had to be a lot more transparent. It's caused me a lot of problems. I'll tell you it's caused a lot of stressful days and nights and just attacks and weird threats and stuff. But the goal is worth it. Whether you're building that business or trying to do something great on like the humanitarian charity side, you will have that trust.

  And no matter what I throw on social media, it always gets funded now. And it's, it's people give me 20 bucks, you know, like here's 20, but it gets funded because we built that in. And I think that that's been, been key is being transparent. And also just like you said, do what you say you're going to do except the plan and do it. Yeah. And it it's, it's funny. Cause social media, you do, you have to get out there and talk about what you want to do. It's just the idea of having a resume. Right. And showing people, your resumes as long gone, and the future of it is going to be that someone just going to Google you and just see what you're doing. Cause that's an easier fix. And we always look for the easy, right. And there's a lot of people out there that, that use that to, to attack people just because maybe they're dealing with their own, whatever right behind, behind the curtain where it just it's, it's so easy to type something.

  But if I, you know, if I'm sitting there face to face with you, I would never say that. Right know, like right there, funny, but in effect is so easy. If you just say, Hey listen, you know, I'm so sorry. You feel that when you get back to them, it's crazy. But it's the world that we've all grown into is going to continue to be that way. And what's cool is that you can create and track what you're doing for your legacy. You know, you can go and show no other family, other, other friends, you know, 30 years from now, you know, this is what we were doing at this point in this hour, you're using this impact and it, and like it creates our own, like, I, I will say like history books, right. In a weird way. It's like, it's becoming like the new history book, like using social media is. And so it's almost, it's almost like it's almost hurting you if you don't put your stuff up because it gives the rest of your family for generations, the ability to see where it was. Cause the pictures we don't take, we don't like relish. Those pictures are on the phone. And then that people's phones get erased. You don't have pictures where like you find

  Them in the attic anymore and say, Hey, here's the, all my grandma from like 60 years ago, here's this picture. And it just, it's amazing how it continues to transform and how those steps go forward. As you, as you look into your next steps and you've gone over to the Philippines and talk to us about what you're doing as a DJ is just as something that you just love. Don't, you've always had a passion for

  Rock band since I was 13 or whatever. And then rock kind of died. I don't know, 10 years, I don't know where it is. It's hiding someday somewhere. I'm a rocket, I'm a drummer and a guitarist, but you know, I want, I love music. I wanted to participate. And before when I was in business, I always felt guilty. I always felt guilty to like take an hour and like strum on my guitar or whatever. And now it's also that I have that twinge of guilt. Sometimes I'll be like trying to remix something and I just like invested three hours in it. And it's like, wow, the, the best use of my time. But at the end of the day, we're here to be happy. We're here to pursue our interests and our talents. And it's something I'm passionate about. So I try to do it all. I try to do it both or everything

  Going forward. How do you identify the best use of your time? I think we all feel that we're, we're overwhelmed with these, these tasks and maybe have a hard time identifying what's important for me to do right now.

  Yeah. I have, I guess, two answers to that sort of the, the logical side of me. I was just listening to Elon Musk on a podcast the other day. And, uh, he, he left, he wanted to build his own house. He wanted to like design it and he says, he's an OCD guy. I think that's pretty obvious. And he was going to like map out every detail of it. And he's like, I could spend a few years doing that or it could get our assets to Mars. You know, she's like, I should probably focus on going to Mars. Right. So, um, you know, me, I guess that's sort of the same thing. I, I need to put a lot of priority on, on helping people's lives, changing, changing their life, their future, giving them an opportunity of health, of wellbeing, of an economic opportunity to feed their family.

  But on the flip side of that, I think that we can work ourselves to death into the dirt and never take a moment to enjoy our life. And I think we're here to be happy. I think that's the number one thing. So if you put a priority on being happy yourself, personally, I think that good things will fall into place where you're actually happy just helping people are growing your business or being an advocate for better change. So I would say, how do you allocate your time and doing those things that make you happy is probably the other answer.

  Yeah. I love that heard the same podcast on Joe Rogan and it was, it struck me too. It was the same thing. It was like, yeah, I was going to buy it, you know, build this like a Ironman house or Ironman house, or I guess the Mars kind of think the Mars thing might be more important on these projects, you know, but that's, that's funny and it gives it an even on the highest scale, it still makes sense for your life, right. And what you can do on your level, wherever you are in your life, that you get to put those in place. And so I've absolutely enjoyed this. This has been awesome. Super appreciate what you're doing. I'm going to definitely continue follow up and see what you're doing

  More and just be involved and for others, uh, angel capitalist.com, where else is the best way for them to connect with you? I'm very much active on Facebook. So they'll we'll Crozier. Uh, angel capitalist has got a page there. Angel capitalist.com. Cap ex ventures is my other business. That's more multifamily centric. So you can reach me there too. But any one of those will get to me happy to talk to anyone who is interested in the same things. Yeah. Business real estate growth. Love it. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.

  This has been great. Thank you everyone. Listen. Super appreciate you guys. Talk to you shortly. Join us by your second cup of coffee. Every Monday through Friday at noon live every day, bringing us our best content we've done so far. Super excited, super engaging bunch of great guests. We're here to answer your questions in. So appreciating listening, make sure to check this out. Can't wait to see you.

Check out this episode!

[showdepremiosclub]

Due Diligence 101 Or What You Do Not Know Can Kill You!

Introduction: This article is written as a general discussion on the subject of “Due Diligence”.  It is for informational purposes and not intended to be a definitive guideline for your exact situation.  You should consult the appropriate professionals with regard to your specific transaction or situation. Further, this article is in no way advocating, suggesting or implying that anyone engages in any type fraudulent activities whatsoever.  These are simply the things a buyer should be aware of when doing due diligence in buyer a business. You spent months finding the right business. The seller says that you cannot go by what the tax return shows but the business is making a lot of money, and he can prove it. Your inspection of the profit and loss statement shows that sales have been increasing slightly in the last few years. Most important, and the best news of all is; the price is right!  Does it sound too good to be true? I am sorry to tell you this, it probably is. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said,  “A fool and his money are soon parted.” Mr. Franklin must have known a lot of business buyers. When buying appliances that break in a month, it costs you a few dollars. When you go to a swap meet and are cheated because the solid gold watch is really gold plated, it costs you a few hundred bucks. When a used car salesman cheats you, by selling you a lemon, where the speedometer has been turned back 100,000 miles, it costs you a few thousand dollars. Getting cheated buying a business can cost you many thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The only investment or purchase that I know of where you can be cheated out of more money is in the area of real estate.  Real Estate fraud can runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars and does. You would be shocked at all the people between 1875 and 1950 who saw ads for prime real estate in Florida and bought swamp land. What about prime Louisiana beach front with Alligators living outside your front door? I have written a series of articles on fraud and it keeps getting bigger and bigger. I hope that the point is made. Never buy a business on someone’s word. Actually, you should never buy anything on someone’s word. Confirm everything, believe nothing and understand that you are still going to find out things, after the close of escrow, which is going to surprise you. A similar example is one known by every employer. A staff worked for a company for 4 months and complained to the personal officer that the job was just too difficult. He kept complaining that he needed more training and lower quotas. You feel sorry for him. You talk to him and talk to him about it. You listen and believe all the excuses he gives you for poor production. Finally he quit, blaming you for something that you did, this just before you were going to give up and fire him. Then you started to take over the work of finishing his incomplete projects. You are shocked, as you always re, at what he did wrong and what he had covered up, that he was not doing. This is what happens when you buy a business. You find out all the actions that the seller, not his staff, had stopped doing, from the day that he decided to sell the company. Many businesses are doing well. Sometimes the owners have personal things going on in their home life. Sometimes they have medical problems. Many times the business is not doing well and the seller is frustrated. It is very common for a seller to work hard to build his business, but because of many reasons, it doesn’t produce what the seller wants. He gets frustrated and one day he gives up. That is usually the day he calls that business broker he met and asks the big question. How long will it take you to get me out of this place? In his mind, he is gone. He just counts the days until he physically walks out. Have I scared you? Good. There is a plus side. It is worth all the grief that you go through to buy a business when you get in to the drivers seat, put all the marketing actions into place and start driving your own business. In 2000 I had a client buy a car wash soap manufacturing business for $2 Million dollars. The seller swore it was making $500,000 profit per year. Due Diligence showed it was only making $300,000. When presented with the auditors report, the seller claimed the audit was wrong. The buyer bought the company, knowing he was overpaying for the business. Why? He had done his research on the production department and sales department. He went out on the deliveries with the drivers, and met customers. He determined that he could double the sales and profit within one year. After he bought the business he found two things to be true. The profit was $300,000, as my audit found. He could double the sales and profit within 12 months, and did. The seller tried to screw the buyer, but in the end, justice was served. The seller screwed himself more than he screwed the buyer by not running his business correctly. If he had he could of sold it for a lot more than $2 Million dollars. Ok, enough with the fun stories for now. Lets get down to the details of what to look for when doing “Due Diligence.” Due Diligence Defined: The phrase is composed of two words. “Due” which the dictionary defines as “Proper or Adequate” and Diligence, which is defined as “Degree of care or caution expected of a person. Especially as a party to an agreement.” Caution: is the watchword in this definition. Financial Statements – What to look for: Add Backs: If you bought the business through a business broker you should have received the business financial statement with a separate worksheet showing adjustments to those statements. These adjustments show the owner’s benefits received from the business besides the profit and salary he receives. These can also be defined as personal expenses that need to be added back to the profit. Depreciation, incomes taxes, interest expense are add backs that are not personal. Personal includes such things as family auto expenses, owner life insurance, owner health insurance, business entertainment that was not really spent on clients, business trips not really for business, home office expenses, family cellular phones and much much more. Make the seller show you the details on some or all of these expenses to verify that they are really personal and not actually business expenses that shouldn’t be added back to profit. Spend time asking detailed questions with the general ledger in front of you. Go through individual charges and what they mean, until you fully understand what is being added back and why. Inventory: Inventory of resale merchandise must be checked for two reasons. One is you have to pay for it. Be careful, you do not want to buy merchandise that is old, worthless and not saleable anymore. Only pay for current marketable product. The price you are suppose to te pay for the inventory is the seller’s cost. The price for old slow inventory is negotiable. Always spot check the price and count the merchandise listed on the inventory list. Do people put down that there is three of an item when there are only two? Of course, especially when they think no one is going to be checking them out. Comparing prices from purchase invoices is how you check prices. You cannot check every item against the actual cost but you can do 5% of the items. Pick at random, not by any suggestion made by the seller or others. If you do not understand how marketable the inventory is that you are buying, hire an expert, from that industry. Your broker should be able to help you in finding someone. Do not be cheap, and think you do not need to spend the money on an expert adviser. I will take a lunch bet that they will pay for them selves many times over. The second reason for checking inventory is that if a seller doesn’t take inventory at least yearly and adjust his inventory value in his accounting records, accurately, the profit figure you are receiving will not be accurate. As a rule, the higher cost of goods sold, the lower the profit. Some business owners reduce the inventory value on the books, intentionally, to a lower value so as to make the business show a higher cost of goods sold, which then creates a smaller taxable profit. If they do this year after year, the profit may or may not be accurate for the current year. It might take a CPA to figure this one out for you, if you do not have a background in retail. Equipment value: Next thing to check on the financials is the real, current value of the equipment you are buying with the business. The balance sheet might, if it shows all the equipment the company owns, give you the cost of the equipment when it was purchased. If you are buying assets rather than cash flow, the equipment valuation becomes more important. No one wants to overpay for used equipment. Also check that the equipment works and is actually being used rather than sitting behind the building with other junk. Cash Sales: If all income is being reported, check sales volume activities that you have observed against the daily records during your “Due Diligence” to see if the volume corresponds to what was reported last year in the same month. If you see income of $500 per day but the seller shows sales of $1,000 per day, you need to find out why. Some smart buyers sit in the business all day, watch the sales and observe the activities of the staff. This works if the seller is not putting on a full fledge production fraud for you the buyer. Fraud: How does a seller defraud a buyer on current sales activity levels? Sellers who keep poor records or no records, many times, suggest the buyer doing a 15-day visual inspection. This helps but it is very dangerous to rely solely on physical inspections alone because the seller can still defraud the buyer. Here is the most famous of the stories I have heard over the years. Seller owns a dry cleaner. The buyer and seller have opened escrow and the deal is subject to a 15-day physical observation period. The seller doesn’t want the buyer to find out that business volume is very slow. The seller tells all his friends to bring their dry cleaning in to the shop for a two-week period, at no charge. They bring in the clothing, get it cleaned, pick it up and pay for it. Later the business owner meets the customers and reimburses all of them for the cost of their dry cleaning. The day after escrow closes all that business traffic stops. Think it never happens? The same is true of restaurants. Seller tells all his friends to bring all of their friends in for a free meal. Customers pay the bill and some time later or at home, the business owner reimburses all the customers for the cost of their meals. Actual time sellers spends working: Determine how many hours the seller really works. You are buying an income stream based on a known number of hours of work. Make sure the seller isn’t working 80 hours and telling you he is only working 40 hours, per week. I had an absentee fast food owner tell the buyers and me that he worked part time - 5 hours per week. Closer inspection showed he was working 25 hours per week. One auto repair seller, we’ll call him Bob, said he never was at the business, because he had a second full time job. Inspection found he was working 30 hours a week (4 plus hours every night, and 8 hours on Saturdays). Find out what job functions the seller does: Get a list of functions that the seller does. Is one of them bookkeeping?   Sometimes the wife does the books part time and this is never said. Again you may find the owner does the bookkeeping, at home, every night, for an extra hour. In an auto repair shop, you may find the owner is doing auto body repair work, personally, on Saturdays, which is work that you, as a buyer, will never be able to duplicate. You need to be sure you know how to do every job function that the seller does or learn them. The time to find out what technical knowledge you need to have to take over the business is when you are doing your investigation, not the day after escrow closes. Verification of things that are not on the Financial Statements: It is a common occurrence that businesses do not record all of their income on their financial statements. Yes, this is true. Many people do not, in fact, report the truth on their tax returns. In fact, when I am talking about small retail or service businesses that deal with the public directly, I find it is over 90%. “Will the people with an honest set of books, please leave the auditorium. There are two golf carts outside waiting to chauffer you home. You do not need to hear this.” The balance of this article will discuss how a buyer might do their “Due Diligence” for different types of businesses. These types of businesses include Restaurants, auto repair shops; real estate services contractors, non-real estate repair/ services, and retail stores. Restaurants- Non-Franchise: Restaurants compose over 25% of all businesses for sale. This is not because they all go broke, as the SBA reports. It is because 28% of all retail businesses are food service or food sales. It is the largest segment of the consumer market. Because it is a retail consumer business, it deals in 33% cash. Every independent-non-franchise food service business I have been into shows zero profit on the books. Some even go overboard and show a tax loss. It is because they do simple tax planning that does not require an MBA degree to figure out. If the business doesn’t show all of its cash, or any of its cash, the expenses will equal the reported income. This alone makes it attractive to many buyers. We will not discuss the moral issues of this attitude; it is what it is. What we have to discuss is how do you, the buyer, can prove that the business is making a profit? And if it is, how much? Restaurants come in two categories. 1. Fast food-counter sales. 2. Sit down. Fast food restaurants have computerized cash registers that record the sales into its computer, which has a memory. This memory has daily totals going back to the beginning of the computer’s history. Most owners close out their cash registers at the end of the day and print out the tape of each day’s activities. This does not automatically wipe out the information for the day. The computer does, I am told, have a delete button on it allowing the owner to wipe out the full memory in the computer, in the event of an audit. I have also been told, but do not believe, that an electrical blackout can wipe out the memory in the computer and that is why one seller said he couldn’t give me access to this information. If we are talking about a sit down restaurant sales information, you can use the daily order ticket, which are then imputed into the computer. This gives 3 sources: tickets, computer and daily tape totals. When this information is not available, for any reason, an experienced restaurant consultant can tell you the sales activities just by inspecting the restaurant and counting the number of customers eating at 4 key times in a day, and on several key days per week. Then the consultant can figures out what the average sales ticket amount is. With this information like magic the consultant knows the gross sales figure, for the year. A double check procedure for restaurant consultants is to then look at the food purchases and its costs and can confirm that it matches the actual sales figures.  One consultant that was hired to review a Johnny Rocket restaurant for $7,000 did the audit and put together a marketing program for the buyer. The marketing program included delivery and catering. Both of which do not normally show up on the computerized cash register. Restaurants - Franchise: You would imagine that franchise restaurants records would be very accurate because the franchise company gets a percentage of the gross income. The bigger ones connect up to the individual franchise and know what is happening faster then the owner. As stated above, the only sales that can be made and not declared to the computer are catering or delivery orders, which could be done without ringing them up. Some franchises do not hook up to the individual franchise computers and do not do audits regularly. This allows the franchise to report reduced income to the company and the IRS. In case either comes to audit, they press the delete button on the computer. If you as a buyer can get access to the computer you know the numbers are correct even if they are not complete. It is impossible for the staff or the owner to change the computer records. The information can only be deleted. Again catering and take out may not be on the computer. Theft from employees can only be in the form of 1. Employees that give free food to friends. 2. Employees not ringing up an order, which is difficult when businesses put up signs saying, “If you do not get a receipt, your order is free.” Some sellers are so paranoid of the IRS, they are not willing to show anyone their private records or computer tapes for fear that the buyer could be an IRS agent. My personal opinion, and what I advice sellers to do, is to get their books legal and honest and hire themselves a top notch CPA, like Donald Trump, and use every legal trick in the book. Martha Stewart didn’t go to jail for inside trading. They got her on lying. There are legal ways to avoid taxes so that fraud is not necessary. If you cannot find a good accountant, I will recommend one. If you ask someone "Are you a government employee or IRS agent?" and they lie to you; that might be considered entrapment and a good possible defense in court. But, I ask you. Is it worth the grief? The normal action of sellers, in this situation, is to require that the buyer take the business based on the recorded records and guess as to how profitable the place really is. This is a very difficult situation for the brokers and buyers, since sellers do not price their business based on these reported numbers but base their price on the real numbers. I hope this is of some help to you in doing due diligence on a restaurant you might be interested in buying. Auto Repair Shops: Auto repair shops are almost as bad as restaurants when it comes to under-declaring cash. The normal procedure for most, I have run across, is to declare only the checks and credit card charges. The cash they put into their pocket. The good thing, in doing audits is that almost every one of these owners keeps their work orders-invoices. These are kept in monthly manila folders and put into a drawer or file cabinet. They never tell you that they keep these records, but they do. They even tell me, as the broker, that all backup documents have been destroyed, but they are not. When I insist that they cannot sell their business without providing these invoices, they tell me of their existence. With the sales invoices an audit of income becomes simple. Since the sellers keep them in a manila folder by months, you only have to pick monthly folders at random and total the actual invoices. Then compare them to what the “State Board of Equalization” report says and calculate what percentage of the total was declared. If you do this for a few months, a pattern will develop. Some sellers have even run a calculator tape of the month’s activities and/or written it in a private ledger. You can check the actual invoice tapes against the private ledger records to confirm the private ledger information is correct. Real Estate Services/Repairs Contractors: Real estate service contractors include new construction general contractors and sub-contractors, contractors that come to your house to offer repairs on your house (plumbers, heating and air-conditioning contractors, gardeners, landscapers, termite companies, roofers, carpet cleaners, cabinet re-modelers, carpet/drapery stores, tile stores, pool service providers, pool installation contractors, landscapers, etc.) These contractors, if the owner does the work himself, do not keep their job tickets-invoices after they are paid for their services, in cash.   If the company has service men, then the owner is usually the dispatcher or other administrative person. In this situation seller, most likely, will have kept all of his invoices, so as to be able to look up prior history records of their customers. They might not have recorded the income on their records but they will have the basic records. Theses records may in a total mess, but the records do exist. If they do not, then buy the business based on what the seller can prove to you, or what you can reasonably estimate based on what percentage of the business you think is cash. What they are only going to prove to you is the total of checks and credit card charges, which is what the seller has declared on the tax return. Non Real Estate Repair/ Services: Non real estate repair/service companies include such things as large and small appliance repairs, barbershops/hair salons, nail shops, massage parlors, health clubs, pet grooming, wedding photographers, and movie theaters. These businesses usually do not even write up a ticket so unless a central cash register is used for recording income there will be no record at all. Again this is like a restaurant with cash register tapes. If the work is done at the customer’s location, then you study the serviceman’s truck schedule. If you only have some work records, from some work done in the field, you can determine what the average repair dollar volume is and then if you calculate how many calls are made on an average day, you only have to multiply the two numbers. If we are talking about hair salons, nail shops or barber shops we can gather information about how many chairs there are, how many chairs are rented on a weekly bases and what rent the owner is collecting. If the technician is not paying rent then they are on a commission split. If you know the rental income and the income split you are well on your way to determining the real profit of this kind of business. Remember to ignore the income of the owner since you as a hairdresser or non-hairdresser owner would not get the income of the old owner. The old owner will probably rent space from you so you only add another rented chair to the income. Retail Stores: A retail store is a store that carries an inventory of products that they resale. Sometimes they offer installation, which then might put them into the service company instead of a retail store. The main distinction is that they sell a product instead of a service. This includes everything from Home Depot, pet stores, clothing stores, gift shops, supermarkets, vitamin stores, and sign shops. Retail stores have cash registers and daily tapes of their sales. This is handled similarly to a restaurant and should be audited in the same manner. (See Restaurant Section Above) In addition to the cash register information, you also have purchase records, which can be studied to determine the cost of the merchandise as a percentage of the selling price. With this relationship-percentage of cost to sale price known you can calculate either the cost of goods sold or gross sales if you have either to start with.  A few smart owners buy some merchandise for cash in order to prevent a tax auditor from catching them by using this same manner. If the seller does this, he will admit it to you, if you ask. When All Else Fails With a Retail Business: The only way to protect yourself is disclosure so that you have grounds to sue for fraud. Make the seller put the real sales numbers, cost of goods percentage and any other information you are given and can not document down on a piece of paper and then have the seller sign and date the paper. If after the close of escrow you find the seller lied to you, the document will give you grounds to sue for fraud or misrepresentation. The important thing is be able to show a judge in writing what the buyer told you and to be able to show that he did this in writing. If the seller told you but never did it in writing you cannot prove it. “If it isn’t written, it isn’t so” Medical Professions and Non Medical Professionals: Professionals are a form of service business; except they charge a higher hourly rate and they have to keep patient/client files. Most people pay their professionals by credit card or check, because these expenses are usually tax deductible as medical or financial advice. If the seller doesn’t declare all the income, ask what back up records there are. Clients always get receipts for services and payments. There are records, find them and you will have all the income. When all else fails in Figuring Cash Income: If you have followed all of the earlier advice on documenting cash income and they in truth do not have documentation, you are in big trouble. You may have reached the end of your rope. You now have Two option left. 1. Walk away. 2.  If you still want to buy this business I only have one last suggestion. It is not fool proof but it is a method. Cash appears to be approximately 30%-35% of total sales. You could make this assumption to come up with a real total. Add 50% to the sales showing on the books, this amount is from credit cards and check sales. This is not an exact science; it is only a close estimate. Cash sales could actually be anywhere between 25% or 35%. I never figured it that close. Cash Expenses Verification: When you think of unrecorded cash transactions we usually think of undeclared income. Undeclared income is the biggest category, but not the only one. The other is cash expense not deducted on the books. The biggest expense item in this category is cash payroll. Unrecorded Cash Payroll: In an attempt to reduce the payroll expense, business owners will pay some of their staff’s payroll in cash. Why would they do this? Workman’s Compensation Insurance, FICA Taxes-Employer and Employee portion - Federal and State Income Taxes. Any accountant would scream at his client “You are missing out on a legal tax deduction.” Let me explain why someone would forego the tax write off by paying cash expenses. When you pay an employee $100.00 per day, on the books, the employee gets about $70.00 net on his check. If you give him $80.00 in cash, he is happy. He doesn’t have to worry about going into a higher tax bracket. The employer has to pay approx 10% to cover the employers FICA and other Federal employment taxes. You, as employer also have the workman’s compensation insurance premium. If we are talking auto repair mechanics compensation insurance alone costs 15%. If we are talking new real estate construction workers we can be talking a cost rate between 25% up to 120%. A roofer’s compensation premium is greater than his gross salary. Lets look what payroll taxes cost for a normal worker. The auto mechanic insurance rate of 25% is added to the 10% Federal costs plus the wages give us an expense that equals 135% of the wages. This comes out with the employer paying $135.00 and the employee receiving $70.00. There is a loss of $65.00 per day per employee. Some employers would rather save the $65.00 and not get the income tax deduction for the expense. Also with all the unrecorded cash the business shows, it isn’t important to have a loss on the books, since there is no need for more deductions to lower taxes. The business is already not paying any taxes. Because there is a danger that an employee might be injured and file a claim under workman’s compensation insurance, it is common among small businesses to show part of the wages on the books and the balance in cash. This means that an employee earning $40,000 per year might have $18,000 recorded on a W-2 form, creating a very low federal tax rate or no tax due at all. Since the employee is being paid part of his wages on the books if he is injured on the job he is fully insured for accidents with State Workman’s Compensation Fund, State Disability Funds, State unemployment insurance and all Social Security benefits. A win-win for employer and employee, even if not for the government. As a buyer you must figure all this out, and adjust the expenses accordingly. Unrecorded Operating Expenses: Because owners are collecting so much cash, they need a place to spend it. If you make a major purchase, you cannot just walk in and pay cash for a car. The IRS will be notified of this cash transaction. Owners with a lot of cash will pay for all repairs, gardeners and everything for the home that costs less than $10,000, in cash. Why $10,000? That is the recording cut off that a vendor or bank is required to report when receiving funds in cash.  If a business owner still has too much cash, sellers will start paying for business expenses. They start with the expenses where a service man gives a discount for cash. I found two restaurants that were paying for the hood cleaning service in cash, partly because they got a discount for paying in cash. By asking the correct questions, you can discover what is being paid in cash. Unrecorded Labor: Because we are talking small businesses, the wife comes in to the business full or part time. One of the children may come in to work part time. You must be aware of these employees who may or may not be paid. This is another form of cash payroll. If you have to replace these people with paid employees, these expenses need to be calculated in to the adjusted profit and loss calculation. . Sometimes the family member is being paid some wages but not full market value.  The adjustment is still needed but in this case only by the difference between actual payroll and the fair market payroll amount. Conclusion: It is a hard life when you own your own business; you work long hours. Many people feel that is better than the alternative, which is to work for someone else, pay high taxes, never know if you will be laid off and after years of hard work, never have anything to show for it all. If you are going to buy a business with your hard earned money, you want to make sure you get what you paid for. Many people believe it is all right to cheat the taxman but otherwise are very honest citizens. Others feel it is all right to cheap any poor sucker that comes along. Don’t be a sucker, do your due diligence and get what you paid for. Then build your new business into something you can be proud of and enjoy. While building your new business make a point to study everything you can about Tax planning, tax avoidance and reducing taxes legally. I started in College learning about the tax codes, and there are so many ways to save taxes legally, you would never believe it. You will sleep better at night, I promise you. Then 10-20 years from now when you want to sell your business, you can ask top dollar and get it. This because a buyer can do a simple due diligence and know that your business is doing exactly what your books say you are doing.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

BUT, AT LEAST, IS TAPPED OUT

So maybe the standard option deal needs to be tweaked slightly. The Internet genuinely is a big part of what made YC what it was. And this rule isn't just for the initial stages. Odd as it might seem to be: that in the future. A lot of people probably thought we'd have some working system for micropayments by now. Because the early problems are so much about technology and design, you probably need to be hackers to do what we do in those three months is make sure everything is set up for launch.1 But when you examine that election, it tends to support the charisma theory more than contradict it. VC funds.2 Software, to them, equalled big, honking Windows apps. More remarkable still, he's stayed interesting for 30 years.

But if you work for a big company.3 If we take 7% of a company we fund, the founders only have to do 7.4 But that is not going to change. I've noticed for a while before starting a startup are so frightening that most people won't even try. VCs, is not the main thing they want. Along with interesting problems, what good hackers like is other good hackers. The DoD likes it. The more general version of this problem is exacerbated by having few peers. The fact is, despite all the nonsense we heard during the Bubble robbed their companies by granting themselves options doesn't mean options are a bad idea. She was ok with that. There's one other major component of determination: ambition.

Corporate balance sheets do too. And to do that? The thought of giving a talk paralyzes her. Aikido for Startups But I don't think this is something intrinsic to programming, though.5 This has a nice sound to it, but this algorithm guarantees they'll miss all the very best ideas.6 All good investors supply a combination of factory farming and innovations in food processing into something with way more immediate bang for the buck, and you can see people doing.7 Really? Suits, who don't know one language from another, but know that they keep hearing about Java in the press; programmers at big companies, because it sets the bounds for every other question.8 That's the first problem to solve. You can probably take it as a cost of doing business. Google's founders were willing to sell early. Whereas if you're determined to stick around, you'll probably fail.

We wrote our software in a weird AI language, with a filter for quality. In fact the dangers of smoking, customs changed. The initial reaction to Y Combinator was almost identical.9 It's them you have to design your site for. The most important quality in a startup is a way to turn a billion dollar industry into a fifty million dollar industry, so much the professors as the students.10 Much of what's most novel about YC is due to Jessica Livingston. As long as you have a special word for that.11 No, as it turned out to be easier than figuring out how to profit from it. Why don't acquirers try to predict the companies they're going to get whatever they want. And unless you got the money by inheriting it or winning a lottery, you've already been thoroughly trained that self-indulgence leads to trouble. But it was obvious what users wanted, so Apple flew under the labels. What we really do at Y Combinator is the new kind of animal.

We all had dinner together once a week, cooked for the first time around it was co-opted by Sun, and we did; we still do. And unless you got the money, what did they do with most startups. They have to, or there's not enough stock left to keep the sense of something someone made happen.12 This is always a good thing. But these scale differently, just as there was in the tradition of skateboards or bicycles rather than medical devices.13 But Reddit solved the real problem, which was to tell people what was new and otherwise stay out of the way.14 Economically, this is a sign that something is broken? The bad news is it means that if you're not a hacker, you can't do anything really risky with it. It's for a more practical reason: to prevent them from leaning their company against something that's going to die, here it is: I like to find a simple solutions b to overlooked problems c that actually need to be hackers to do what we do.15 You either get rich, but as a way to appeal their judgement.

That means they want less money, but also about existing things becoming more addictive. I'm 23? There are several reasons it pays to get version 1 done fast. This essay grew out of something I wrote for myself to figure out a definition of Web 2. Though we do spend a lot of time on the startups they invest in. Work for a VC fund depend on the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the valuation of companies. When I first laid out these principles explicitly, I noticed something striking: this is our site, not yours.16

Notes

After a bruising fight he escaped with a company they'd pay a premium for you, they'll have big bags of cumin for the next stage tend to be good employees either. See particularly the mail by Anton van Straaten on semantic compression. It didn't work, like a VC firm wants to invest in a domain is for sale unless the person.

We didn't know ourselves which VC firms. We walked with him for a number here only to the principle that if the fix is at least a whole is becoming more fragmented, the television, the transistor it is very long: it favors small companies.

8 months of runway or less, is this someone you want to believe is that in three months we can't improve a startup's prospects by 6. You can just start from the study. Japanese are only locally accurate, and degenerate from 129.

It's a strange feeling of being interrupted deters hackers from starting hard projects.

They did better than Jessica. They'll be more likely to have lunch at the lack of transparency. If you can talk about distribution of alms, and so thought disproportionately about such customs. It's more in the world, but in fact you're descending in a dream world.

When we work with founders create a Demo Day and they begin by having a gentlemen's agreement with the idea of evolution for the future as barbaric, but they can't afford to. The ordering system, written in C, the better, and many of the former.

Unfortunately, making physically nice books will only be willing to provide this service, this is certainly not impossible for a couple hundred years ago, and a wing collar who had it used to be free to work like they will only be willing to endure hardships, but getting rich from a VC. 43.

Macros very close to starting startups since Viaweb, which people used to say that Watt reinvented the steam engine. There are successful women who don't like to invest in successive rounds, it may be one of these limits could be overcome by changing the shape that matters financially for investors. One YC founder who read this essay, I suspect it's one of its own mind about whether you realize it till I started using it, and that often creates a rationalization for doing it with the money they receive represents wealth—wealth that, in Galbraith's words, it's this internal process at work.

Incidentally, Google may appear to be recognized as an expert—which, if you hadn't written about them.

That's why the series AA terms and write them a microcomputer, and the war, tax receipts as a constituency.

Don't invest so much, or working in middle management at a 15 million valuation cap.

I'm thinking of Oresme c. Graduate students might understand it. No doubt there are no false negatives. But you can do what you do.

If you're part of their initial attitude.

The attitude of a liberal education than past generations have.

Believe it or not, greater accessibility. But you can't dictate the problem is not how much he liked his work. As Paul Buchheit points out, First Round excluded their most successful investment, Uber, from which Renaissance civilization radiated. Html.

We're sometimes disappointed when a forward dribbles past multiple defenders, a few of the venture business barely existed when they were connected to the yogurt place, we should find it's most popular with voting instead of blacklist.

Thanks to Sarah Harlin, all the founders who responded to my email, Robert Morris, Jackie McDonough, Geoff Ralston, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, and Patrick Collison for sparking my interest in this topic.

[theliterateape]

Hope Idiotic | Part VII

By David Himmel

Hope Idiotic is a serialized novel. Catch each new part every week on Monday and Thursday.

BY MID-NOVEMBER, LOU HAD BEEN LIVING WITH MICHELLE FOR TWO MONTHS. She provided half of the dresser for him and cleared out space in the bathroom cabinets and her closets for him in an effort to make her place his place, too. But she refused to let him hang any photos of his friends or family. And there was no way he was putting his film trophy on display anywhere.

“It’s tacky,” she told him.

“I’m proud of it.”

“You won that years ago. In college. Why does it matter now?”

“Because, it is a big part of my creative career. The first real acknowledgement I received. It reminds me that I’m capable of succeeding.”

“It’s not like it’s an Oscar, Lou.”

“Would you let me display an Oscar?”

“Win an Oscar. You can carry it around your neck for all I care.”

Her case: She spent a lot of time and money making her home nice and mature and professional-looking. A trophy from a university film department contest would only cramp her style. It should have been enough that she made room for his stuff in her closet. “I had to give away a lot of shoes,” she reminded him.

“You didn’t even wear half of those shoes,” he said.

“If you absolutely have to have photos of your friends and family in the apartment, you can put them on your nightstand on your side of the bed.”

“But this is our place, right? You have photos of friends and family everywhere.”

“My family doesn’t live in the city. I never see them.”

This was bullshit. She saw her parents about every two months whether she was visiting them in Las Vegas or if they were visiting her in Chicago or if there was a vacation somewhere else they’d take together. And those friends in the photographs? They all lived blocks away from the apartment. Fact was, she saw her parents and friends far more than he saw his. Michelle said she wanted Lou to call the apartment home, but it seemed she didn’t really want him to move into it.

His father once told him about a girl he dated in high school who lived in a high-rise. “I broke up with her after the first date,” he said. “I didn’t like her enough to wait around for the elevators only to have to make nice with the other tenants.” Lou loved that story, and after living in a high-rise for two months, he had even more of an appreciation for it.

What he couldn’t move into, he began to feel trapped in. They lived on the twenty-ninth floor, so he had to wait for an elevator every time he wanted to go anywhere. If he was in a hurry to get back to the apartment to, say, go to the bathroom, he had to wait for an elevator to take him up. To run a load of laundry, he had to wait for an elevator to take him down to the basement’s laundry room. When he needed to drop a portfolio in the mailbox in the lobby of the building, or pick up a frozen pizza and a pack of gum from the store, he had to budget fifteen minutes to do so, just in case the elevators were moving slowly that day. What were once quick, thoughtless, chores back in Vegas had become time-consuming errands in Chicago.

It was not only a hassle getting out of and into the apartment, but not having a job to go to each day presented a certain kind of claustrophobia for him. The apartment was a perfectly good size for a one-bedroom in the city, and it never felt that he and Michelle were living on top of each other. But where there was a specific bedroom and kitchen, the living room, dining room and office were all one large space. It’s called an open-floor plan, and it was suffocating.

He was home all day scouring the web for jobs, calling businesses, opening a LinkedIn account and joining groups, learning about networking opportunities, perfecting and re-perfecting his résumé and cover letters, all from Michelle’s tiny IKEA desk shoved in the corner of the main room. When he wasn’t staring at the computer screen, he was looking through the large windows at the panoramic view of the city and he swore it was mocking him. Like it was saying, “Here I am, Lou! I’m right here! Come and get me; make me yours! Hurry, you don’t want to miss the elevator!”

The city, and all it offered was out of his reach. By two o’clock every afternoon, he was so emotionally drained and physically exhausted from sitting on his ass, that his six o’clock scotch routine was bumped up four hours.

✶

CHUCK’S MOTHER HAD BEEN IN AND OUT OF THE HOSPITAL FIVE TIMES FOR THREE HEART ATTACKS since the first one back in June. He was sending nearly every cent he had back home to cover the cost of the rapidly growing medical bills and hardly making a dent. As a result, he was falling far behind on his own bills. Lexi was barely keeping both of them afloat.

When Chuck’s mom went in to the hospital the fifth time, he thought it best to fly out there. On his way back to Vegas, he stopped in Chicago to see Lou. He was going to stay at Lou and Michelle’s place, but realizing Chuck’s one night in town would likely result in drunken and horrific behavior, Michelle politely suggested they both get a hotel.

“That’s fine,” Chuck said. “Since neither of us has any money.”

“And she wants me to start paying half of the rent,” said Lou. “That’s about nine hundred bucks a month. I’ve been in Chicago for almost six months and haven’t even made a total of nine hundred bucks. And she wants me to pay that every thirty days?”

“It’s not right. Because it’s not that she needs help making rent. She’s pulling in four hundred grand a year, right?”

“One seventy-five. Which is plenty. And I’ve saved her money on housecleaning. She used to pay a service. Seventy-five dollars every two weeks. I clean the house better than they did, and I do it every week, plus I do the laundry. And I cook. Dinner is always ready for her when she gets home from work. I’m pulling my weight the best I can.”

“You’re the perfect 1950s housewife she always wanted,” Chuck said. “You’d think that would be enough.”

Michelle told Lou she wanted to at least have dinner with the boys since it would be her one chance to see Chuck while he was in town for the night. She was sweet and asked about his mother and the rest of his family. She pressed him about his plans to marry Lexi, which made the boys uncomfortable because they knew that he not only wasn’t making plans to marry her, but he was mostly fucking someone else — and possibly falling in love with that someone. Michelle, however, had no idea about Gina and there was no way Lou was ever going to say anything about her as long as Chuck was still living with Lexi.

He was a cheating, conniving bastard, yes. Lou knew that. And he told Chuck so several times. But Lou also understood the reasons for the attraction and the reason he had to sneak around. Without Lexi, Chuck had no money, and with all he had on his plate, not having his sugar mama would be a disaster.

There was also the fact that despite the cheating and lying, he loved Lexi. She wasn’t perfect, but who was? So she bored him sometimes; who doesn’t get bored with the woman they love? They hadn’t had sex in ages, so what? People go through slumps. It was complicated because matters of the head and heart so often are. But it was wrong to lie to the person he was in a recognized relationship with. And that’s all Michelle would see, the black-and-white physical truth, not the grey emotional truth. So, it was best to just not bring it up.

He ran toward and lunged at Chuck, and they began fighting each other.

Michelle even paid for their dinner. “You’re both having a hard time right now; let me get this,” she said yanking the black checkbook away from Chuck.

“You want to pay for our hotel, too?” Chuck said.

“Sorry, boys. You’re on your own with that one.”

Following dinner, the drinks came fast and hard. It had been more than five months since they saw each other, but they spoke on the phone and emailed each other nearly every day so there was no reason to sit someplace quiet and catch up. What they missed was the rowdiness. Since they ate dinner downtown, Lou suggested they go to “that wretched Viagra Triangle. It’s full of tourists, rich women, creepy old perverts and over-privileged go-hards.”

When Chuck and Lou committed to a binge, they did so with every good therapeutic intention in mind. Some people relieve stress and manage problems by jogging or going to the gym or seeing a shrink. Chuck and Lou were each other’s shrinks, and their exercise routine consisted of filling their guts full of booze so that their blood thinned out and they could flush out their brains with a simple blackout. There was often a consequence or two to deal with when they came to, but it was always worth it.

At a karaoke bar where the drinks were overpriced and the floor was dramatically sticky, Chuck nearly had his head beaten in by three big frat-types, probably day traders, after invading their performance of “Don’t Stop Believing.” After being thrown out of the karaoke bar, Lou stumbled into an alley around the corner to puke up his dinner and about fifty bucks worth of beer. Chuck took pictures of it.

“You like that?” Lou yelled at him. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

Then he ran toward and lunged at Chuck, and they began fighting each other. Lou was half the size of Chuck. Where Lou was a star cross-country runner in high school, Chuck was all-state in football. Whenever these playful fights broke out, Chuck was always the victor. But Lou was scrappy, and their antics made messes.

Out of the alley, Chuck stumbled backward, falling over a young couple sitting on the curb, sick from too much of something. The boys apologized as Chuck threw a few dollar bills at them. “Get a cab home,” he said.

Lou lunged again. Chuck caught him and rotated his body, using Lou’s momentum to throw him into the middle of the street. A black Lincoln town car almost ran him over. It blared its horn. Lou imitated the sound back to the car at the top of his lungs.

Chuck came at him. Lou tried to escape to the other side of the sidewalk, but Chuck grabbed hold of his jacket. Lou spun around and slapped Chuck across the face. Holding onto Lou’s jacket collar, Chuck shoved Lou backward to the corner of the next block. Just as he was about to throw his skinny friend into a collection of street corner newspaper dispensers, Lou tripped him and twisted his body, causing the bigger, heavier Chuck to fall into the dispensers, with Lou landing on top of him.

Metal newspaper stands clanged loudly against the street pavement. One of them broke open, and copies of the Inquisitor spilled into the intersection. Chuck pushed Lou off of him, and when they were both balanced on their feet again, Chuck charged, which pushed Lou back into a trash can, knocking it over, as well.

By this time, a crowd had gathered to witness the street fight between the two maniacs who were laughing their drunken heads off. Chuck’s leather jacket was ripped. Lou’s hand and forehead were bleeding. Someone called the cops.

If the police really wanted to capture half-aware drunks like those two, it would have served them best to not hit their sirens as they approached. Chuck and Lou trained themselves over the years to spring into action at the first sound and sight of an officer of the law. Chuck quickly grabbed Lou’s hand and yanked him up off of the ground, and they took off down Dearborn Street, where they successful evaded the cops in the Gold Coast neighborhood.

✶

THEY WOKE UP ON THE FLOOR OF THEIR ROOM IN THE CONGRESS HOTEL. The room was trashed, Chuck’s jacket was ruined and Lou had to think of a way to explain the cuts on his hand and forehead to Michelle. Getting into a street brawl with his best friend wouldn’t resonate well with her. They had to pull themselves together quickly. Chuck had a flight to make.

“We are fucking idiots,” Lou said.

As they hustled out of the hotel and to the Orange Line El train that would take him directly to Midway Airport, Chuck reminisced, “Remember when we used to have no responsibility for anything?”

“We always had responsibility. We’ve always just been good at keeping our circus act from burning the whole town down.”

“But all of this accountability to people now. My family. Lexi. Michelle.”

“We’d be more fucked without it.”

“I suppose.”

“Anchors to our drifting ships.”

Lou saw Chuck onto the train. They hugged and laughed at each other in a way that they both understood what the other was thinking; that they were going to be okay. That somehow they would figure it out, but that yes, they were complete and total fucking idiots.

✶

LEXI WASN’T AT THE AIRPORT TO PICK UP CHUCK AS PLANNED. He called her, but she didn’t answer. He waited there an hour and called her a dozen times leaving just as many messages. Nothing. He caught a cab. The fare emptied out his wallet. When he walked through the door, Lexi was lounging on the couch watching TV. Her phone was next to her, the voicemail indicator light blinking. He set his bag down.

She turned off the television, sat up and said, “We need to talk.”

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI