Was your move smooth? or should I ask, Is the move going smooth? P.S. I hope you considered the container trick you got. It was a slick trick.
I don't mind paying for a good job, but when they charge a lot and still do a shoddy job I get really unhappy. Like the time I found out the guy who charged me $50 per window to fit them didn't bother to put sealant around the inside of them, meaning that despite paying for supply and installation of energy efficient windows I had a draft blowing in around the outside of them. I used a $4.99 tube of sealant that went around three windows and within half an hour you could feel the difference in the room. Sadly it was a rental unit so by the time I realised how many shortcuts the fitter had taken it was way too late to have him revisit the job. But it's a small town, and I tell anyone who will listen that they can probably do a better job of fitting windows themselves than he will do. I truly believe I know more about fitting windows than he does, and the sum total of my experience is half an hour on Google.
Shortage of them means sellers market. They know they can get away with a shoddy job. But, Mostly it would be about the individual. Many just start the work they can get and aren't skilled enough or concerned enough. Many take pride in their work and produce a stellar result, But such ones wouild be in minority.
I wouldn't care to say the good guys are a minority, just that it can be hard to tell ahead of time who will do a good job and who will charge for a good job while doing a shoddy job. For most things around the house I can do a shoddy job myself - no point paying someone else for that. For many things I can do a perfectly reasonable job, even if you can tell it wasn't done by a professional. One great thing about wiring is that just about all of it is hidden so as long as it works and nothing ever pops it's not so much of an issue if it's not a particularly pretty job, as long as it's safe.
Second coat of lacquer is drying on my baseboards. Holes are cut in the drywall ready to house the nice new sockets, and the cables have been fished out from under everything to poke out of the holes. A single wire nut is strategically deployed to protect the live end from accidental contact. Tomorrow's job will be to fit and wire the sockets, and hopefully get the boards pinned to the walls. I'll need to figure out whether it's easier to buy some small trim to cover over the unevenness of the wall and the floor, or to just buy a board and use a combination of router and table saw to make myself some trim. I'll need to get some more wood anyway, to add some trim to the window frames, so maybe I'll take some time in the basement and make what I need. It's nigh on impossible to find yellow pine around here so it won't quite match, but I'm staining it quite dark so can probably get away with white pine.
Still in the midst... Got the refi one the soon to be permanent house done yesterday. 2.875 fixed, 30 year.
That sounds good for a fixed term. We've been doing variable on both our properties which has served us well. Lately its barely paying any interest.
yeah, it's almost stupid money. I'm clearing enough from the sale of our "current but only for 10 more days primary residence" to pay off the River House, but in today's economic culture, and having several years left prior to retirement, I'm going to park the cash and wait until the smoke clears. I know that the math may say that doesn't make sense, but I'm not going to do anything stupid financially in the fog of war...
Gold? Nah... I likes my gold already refined and minted into nice little bars. My favorites are the Vacambia gold "credit cards" in the 50 gram size... I have a client that is the CIO for a gold mining company in Utah, and he gets first dibs... which is never. I would sincerely love to do so, but don't have enough to take that single investment risk, you know?
You can get nice round bars in a 33 gram size with eagles on them from the US Mint. If I recall Canadian Maples are slightly cheaper, as well as being smaller since they are .9999 gold where the Eagles are (I think) 22 carat gold so you end up with 1oz of gold and a bit of something else. If gold engravings of HM Queen Elizabeth II are your thing you can also get sovereigns that come in a whisker under 8g, also in 22ct gold. Of course given your standing as a lawyer, you could look into a coin made by one of the mints (I forget if it was Canada or Australia) that was 100kg of gold. It had a face value of something like $10m and was heavy enough that it would take at least 3-4 people to carry it. Of course, being round, you could just roll it to wherever you wanted it to be, as long as no steps up were involved....
You start rolling around a 100kg gold coin and you're going to start having less and less gold over time.