BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

28Nov/170

White Carpet

I have this white carpet in my room.  It's the next thing to go.

Basically, I throw out one thing a week.  Last week was an old space heater that kicked.

Next week, or, more likely, the next two weeks, will be this carpet.

The thing is, my cats have wrecked it.  Lots of scratching it up, and of course, hairballs... Gross.

So... I'm just tossing it.  I went to lift it up, but, it's basically kind of disintegrating under.  I think?  Or, I don't know what's happening with it.

Anyway, my idea to just roll it up and throw it out in one fell swoop isn't working.  So, instead, I'm cutting it into small pieces and throwing the pieces away.

Maybe it's symbolic somehow.  The rug actually original came from my grandparents second house in Cambria California.

That was their vacation house.

A lot of the stuff from that house sale came back here and was in storage.  When I moved out to my apartment, my mom used that rug to go in my room which became a guest room.  When I moved back home, I just left it there.

It's weird throwing it out piece by piece.  I mean, it's a double or triple edge sword.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm definitely grateful for all that I have.  But part of it is... The Cambria house sold for a million dollars just that house.  And that money was/is still seemingly MIA... Of course my grandparents main house in Montecito Cali sold for 4 million...

Which is also something that upsets me too, because it was sold in 2007/8 at the height of the housing bubble.  It should have sold for 6 or 8... It was worth 10 the last time I looked it up.

I don't know, every day that I wake up and walk into work, I'm just angry really that things turned out how they did.

Sure, I do music, and all that, but with only a little bit of time in the day.  My life just could have been so different.

Oh well.  So part of it is, basically, we got some random furniture sent our way, while the proceeds from the house went... Where exactly?  My guess is, it went to fly a lot of people to France several times.

Anyway... The other edge is that it's another piece of letting go of my mom and her parents.

The carpet under seems to be turning to dust.  In a way, it's like... Without me keeping their memory alive.... All they were turned to dust too.

I don't know.  And piece by piece I cut away, and then vacuum up the mess.

Eventually, it's gone.

Well, anyway, so once the carpet is gone, I'll go to the next thing that I want to get rid of.  When I get to the last item...

I'll probably then start the process of listing the house.

My goal is still to downsize my physical footprint in this world, and continue to upsize my investment footprint.  I'd like to live more modest as far as my personal living space and belongings go. But I want to continue to boost ownership in things.  Shares of stock is what I'm doing at the moment.... But I definitely think I want to buy businesses, and be a passive owner/investor on businesses, and real estate as well, rental property.

I don't really know to what extent I want to be personally involved in operations of these things.  I just know I want to be more like one of those activist investor types, or a Warren Buffet type.  Where I just buy into things, check to make sure that good people are in charge, and then let them have a significant amount of autonomy to run things how they choose.

That's basically how shareholding works.  I mean, I'm not out there telling 3M how to run their business.  I just hold a handful of shares, and collect the dividend.  The price at which I bought them is less than the value they are at now should I sell them tomorrow.  That means, the people working at 3M are working in my favor.  So, I really have no need to walk into their corporate headquarters and tell them how to run their business.

Keep up the good work would be my only input.

I guess it's weird, because a lot of people really want the opposite.  They want lots of personal stuff.  Big house, fast car, lots of expensive things in the house.

I mean, I'm not opposed to that, but the thing is, a lot of people do it in a way that isn't, sustainable.

Like, they work a job, that brings in income... And if they had some kind of event occur that made it so they couldn't work... The income would be cut off, and so would the ability to pay for the nice stuff.

Mortgage, car payment, credit card debt for all the things in the house bought.

My grandparents never did it like this... They had more money in the bank than they had physical items.  Their houses were paid for in cash, their cars were paid for in full on the day they picked them up.  Credit cards paid in full every month.

So, sure, I can't buy an 8 million dollar house in cash... But I can make sure that I live so that I have more money in the bank than I have physical items.  And the advantage of this is... I can use the excess money coming in to reinvest into new things.

Anyway, that's my plan.  Continue to slowly get rid of old things that are falling apart, like this carpet, even if piece by piece... and then only buy things I can pay for with cash on hand.

I guess, my view on things is that you should live like a tip of an iceberg.

When someone gets a first glance of you, they should only see the tip of the iceberg.  Your clothes, car, house, watch, whatever... That should be the tip of the iceberg of your wealth.

The rest, under the water, would be your investments.

A lot of people I know, actually, live the reverse... Tip of the iceberg is their checking account.  they have no savings, no investments, no retirement... And the part underwater?  Is... Debt, and the things they own are actually owned by banks, and credit card companies.  And they just keep things barely going by making these monthly rent payments.

Well anyway, those are my thoughts for the night...

I think what I meant to  say with all of that is, nothing is impossible if you handle it piece by piece.  Maybe you set out to take on the entire task in one fell swoop, and you find that you have to handle it one little piece at a time.

 

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