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Vacation Time

July 9th, 2009 by Kenric

It’s time for my annual mountain biking trip.  This year its going to be in Breckenridge.  As usual we rented a nice house and I can’t wait to get there this time.  Below is the weather forecast for Phoenix in the next 5 days.

The high in Breckenridge next week will be 70.

Real Estate

Looks like my tenant in the Chicago condo left the place a mess.  This is the first time a grad student at Kellogg has done this.  I guess I should have known when she did bother to give me forwarding address for her security deposit.  The good news is that her security deposit was $1835!  I don’t think it needs any repair.  Just some trash/furniture haul out, maid cleaning and carpet cleaning.

E-Businesses

Nothing new on the ebiz front.  Sales have been slow the first week of July.  The yoga bag store made it to the front page of Google.  Not bad for 3 months.  I’m used to the Google SEO pattern.  My prediction is that it will stay there for a few weeks and then drop to page 5, then page 10, then back to page 1.  Seems like every site goes through this Google dance.

KTB site earnings have decreased in the past 3 months.  It went from $150+ to $100, but its still not bad.  I started a new site on April 6th.  I actually paid $99 to get the content for this site.  So far, it has made $45.  In June it made $24 and so far in 10 days in July its made $11.  So its starting to get some traction.  At this rate I hope I’ll make back my $99 by September 1st.

Gold

I did pick up one gold coin.  I mainly bought this just to get to understand the market and how one buys and sells gold.  Basically a gold coin is sold at spot price + margin.  So if a dealer tells you that his margin is $25 and the spot price is $500, you will pay $525 for that particular coin.  There is no sales tax and prices are cash only.  If you go to sell the same coin back to the dealer, he will pay you spot price + another margin.  This margin will obviously be lower than his selling margin.   His margin may only be $10, so he would pay you $510 for that same coin that he just sold to you for $525.

So if gold goes up to $600 next month, I can sell back my coin to him for $610.  The coins are fairly liquid.  Any coin shop will buy them.  Before you sell just call around to see who is paying the most margin for your particular coin.  I was amazed at the price differences online and among stores.  You really need to shop around.  I was also surprised to see that on a weekday afternoon that I wasn’t the only one buying bullion coins.

Miscellaneous

Still working on that koi pond.  This week I drive to a bunch of rock quarries to find the right boulders and rock for my pond.  There are some really nice granite boulders/rocks that sell for $240/ton.  In contrast, I can get other rocks that aren’t as pretty for $40/ton.  That’s a huge difference!  The problem is that I also don’t know how many tons I need.  If I get the $40/ton rock I can overbuy and get 10 tons for $400.  In fact, as I type this I’m leaning towards the cheap $40/ton.

Below is the expensive rock.  I won’t be buying boulders this large.  This is a natural AZ mountain look.

This is the cheaper rock.  The main difference is the color and shape.  I’m not to fond of the lighter color angular rock.  But I think the price difference makes it an easier choice.

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