Whatever your inten­tions, you’ll even­tu­ally forget to do something.

Last week, I forgot to write two blog posts. I thought I had them written (I did a lot of other writing), but I was wrong. That left you without anything to read for a few days and since I took an unan­nounced break for a few days I didn’t catch the mistake.

Whether it’s a deadline that can’t be met, an oversight with a large price tag, or a surprise budget buster these kinds of things hit hard and fast and leave only disap­point­ment and confusion in their wake.

When that happens, you gotta pick yourself up, dust off a bit and remind yourself that it is okay.

It’s okay to make mistakes, to fail miserably, and to be surprised.

Just don’t use it as a reason to give up. Mistakes are only as valuable as the lessons you learn from them.

What did I learn from my mistake? I need to get further ahead in updates so this doesn’t happen. Right now, I’m only about 2 posts ahead at any time. After this week, I’m back at 0. Getting 3-to-6 posts ahead will all bust stop this sort of thing from happening.

A hard lessons that’ll be even harder to implement.

This isn’t my Grandma’s house either.

(This is part of the Selling Grandma’s House series. For the rest of the series, click here. Also, I wasn’t asked or paid to talk about the ELP program, I just wanted to ).

How do you sell a house when you’re 1,000 miles away? You get someone else to do it for you.

The hard part is finding someone trust­worthy to do the job.

Like any good entre­pre­neur, I didn’t just want to outsource the selling part; I also outsourced finding a good realtor. Well, most of the finding.

Dave Ramsey has a program he calls Endorsed Local Providers. These are accoun­tants, realtors, insurance, health insurance, and invest­ment profes­sionals that have met the insanely high standards Dave puts forth including:

• Willing to teach newbies (like me).
• A veteran in their profession
• Years of success in good and bad climates.

You can’t get much easier than picking a realtor through this site. Continue Reading…

This isn’t her house.

In December, my Grandma moved into my parent’s house. She’d had a few falls over the years and around Thanks­giving it got so bad that she couldn’t live on her own anymore.

She has lived in Florida since before I was born so, having her in Dallas has been a blast for me.

Unfor­tu­nately, there is still one big loose end to tie up in Florida – her house. It’s in a lower-income area of Florida and is pretty old. She’s taken care of it, so it should do pretty well. Plus, she paid almost nothing for it when she bought it.

Though I’ve never talked about it on the blog, one of my goals is to buy a few houses, get renters in them, and make a decent future living as a landlord. My kind grandma knows this and asked me if I wanted to sell the house for her.

How could I refuse?

So now I’m in the process of helping her sell her home. I’m contacting the realtors, making sure all the house stuff get taken care of, and will be nego­ti­ating the final deal – all from 1,100 miles away!

Join Me

I’m taking you with me as I sell this house. I’ll be blogging every­thing from finding the realtor to getting the house cleaned to final­izing the deal.

You’ll learn with me as I figure out how this whole house selling things works.

• Finding A Realtor
• The First Offer

Have you ever sold a house? What surprised you the most?

[Image credit]

The Problem With Going Green — Most people just ignore the green movement. David Owen calls it selfish and misguided. Maybe the best exposure of sin written by a non-Christian. Tim Challies has some great comments on it here.

Why French Parents Are Superior — This article is making some waves, but not because the author has an axe to grind. Check out why French parents are better than us.

Coffer, This Must Be The Place — a short film about Coffer, a man living (mostly) an 18^th century lifestyle.

Can I See Your Body Of Work? — Degrees and previous jobs are starting to matter less and ‘body of work’ is mattering more. Which one are you more concerned about?

Shakespear’s The Three Little Pigs — John Branyan has figured out what the Three Little Pigs would sound like if it was written by Shake­spear. I couldn’t stop laughing!

Think bonds are safe?

Most people would agree that bonds are one of the safer invest­ments and a great alter­na­tive to the stock market for the risk-adverse. If you’re older or more conser­v­a­tive or can’t handle the ups and downs of a good mutual fund, bonds are where your money should go.

Or are they?

The idea that bonds are safer than stocks is true in one sense and untrue in another. Continue Reading…

I didn’t get to watch Sunday’s game because I was out deliv­ering pizzas, but I did make a point of watching the commer­cials this morning so I’d know what everyone was talking about.

If you missed them, or just want to see them again, you can find all of them here.

After watching all 54, I have one thought: they mostly sucked.

But among the garbage are a few gems. Doritos made me laugh their fan-made commer­cials, there were some neat (but pathet­i­cally short) trailers for upcoming movies and tv shows, and while Best Buy is lying when they say they’ve invented something special, their commer­cial was good.

But, the best commer­cials weren’t funny, clever, or even very long. They were inspiring.

I have two favorites from this year’s list of Super Bowl commer­cials. I know that’s a bit of a cop-out, but I couldn’t decide which one I liked better. Continue Reading…

After 4 months deliv­ering pizza, I’ve stepped down from the job that helped put food on my table. Yesterday was my last day.

It was a good gig (after a slow start) but it took a lot of time away from Entre­pre­Life and my rela­tion­ship my family and friends.

Leaving wasn’t an easy decision, but after a bit of looking I found a part-time job that leaves me more time to work on the projects that will define my career – instead of being exhausted all the time.

Like any part-time job, there were ups and downs. Obviously, the best part of pizza delivery is the tips. Thanks to social pressures in America, I get anywhere from 2 – 10 dollars a pizza! Way more lucrative than most minimum wage positions.

Beyond the joys of tips, there are a few other things I noticed. Continue Reading…

It’s been a crazy week and it’s not over yet. Tomorrow, I’ll be deliv­ering pizza for the last time. What’s next? Why am I giving up pizza delivery? Stick around and you’ll find out.

‘Poor’ Consume Like Rich — Turns out, the people our govern­ment consider ‘poor’ live like the middle class — even without all the subsidies.

90-Days Without Social Media or a Cell Phone — Calling it the “Amish Project”, Jake Reilly spent the last quarter of 2011 without a cell phone or any social media contact. The results are stag­gering. This is a must read. “sometimes you just sit on the internet and four hours goes by, and you’re, like, I really didn’t do one single thing. Maybe I looked at an article, looked at pictures, watched some dumb videos and got stuck in a YouTube black hole for an hour, just looking, looking, looking. I think you’d have a hard time finding anyone who thought that was really enriching your life.”

2011 Predici­tions in 1911 Newspaper — This is one of the most inter­esting reads in a long time. Some are spot on, some are ridicu­lous, and others are just sad.

Is Buying A New Card For Zero Percent Interest A Good Idea? — Joe gives his take on a popular car buying tactic.

A Mess On The Ladder Of Success — An inter­esting article — more of a history lesson than anything. Hopefully it will make you think. “Until now, a B.A. in any subject was a near-guarantee of at least middle-class wages. But today, a quarter of college graduates make less than the typical worker without a bachelor’s degree.”

You Love To Sing — This is a beautiful song I had long forgotten about.

Don’t blow your money on things you dont need.

Here’s a problem I see way too often.

You’re at the store and you see a great deal on something you’ve wanted for a long time: a pair of shoes, an iPad, anything you might want.

While buying it isn’t in your budget, it’s 70% off and you’ll save over $100 bucks if you buy it today during this insane sale. That’s a good idea, right?

Wrong. Buying something you don’t need because it’s “on sale” isn’t the same as saving money. You don’t “save” 70% by buying it, you spend 30% and fall into one of the oldest marketing tricks. Continue Reading…

Not that kind of apple.

Apple has gotten a lot of bad press recently. Allowing workers to be mistreated overseas hasn’t done a lot of good for the company (check out the articles I’ve linked to here and here).

But, they’ve recently gotten some amazing press – and for good reason!

Last week, Apple announced they don’t have any debt to speak of; only cash. 97.6 billion in cash.

That’s 97,600,000,000.00.

That’s a lot of cash.

As one website put it, Apple has enough cash to pay the entire world’s oil demand for 9 days. It could bail out Greece. It has more money than the GDP of 2/3^rd of the world’s countries.

There are a million things Apple could do with that giant pile of money which is what financial nerds all over the internet have been spec­u­lating about for days.

And while it’s fun to compare and speculate, there is only one thing Apple will do with that money: sit on it. Continue Reading…