Our dumbest purchase: A North Shore (Pupukea) house at the peak of the Hawaii housing bubble in 1990. We were seriously considering buying the property for very little down, renting out the basement, and commuting an hour (each way) to Pearl Harbor. Of course we also needed to sell the home we'd bought the year before, even though we'd stripped the master bath down to the studs and hadn't yet rebuilt it. And we would've needed two mortgages, one of them taking back paper from the seller without him bothering to record the loan (which lien might have upset the primary lender).
The whole deal fell apart when the realtor's verbal assurances didn't translate to a written contract. Animosity & recriminations took over and we eventually forfeited our $5000 deposit. That hurt almost as much as the housing bubble popping shortly afterward. Our prospective $625K purchase (if we'd even been able to keep renting it out and paying the mortgage during the 1990s) would have appreciated today to about $2M, or roughly 6%/year. Of course it would've crashed to less than $400K first, and that appreciation would have barely paid the fuel bills for our commute. Oh, and the Navy transferred us to San Diego four years later. Keeping two renters in that property during our absence would've been a bit problematic.
The experience was well worth the tuition. We finished our master bath renovation, hunkered down around our equity with other improvements, and weathered the storm. (We also implemented Plan B of starting a family.) Today our first home has appreciated at the same ratio as the Pupukea estate, but in a much more affordable manner while we were able to keep paying the mortgage during our entire time there. And when spouse eventually found our "dream home" a decade later we had the experience, skills, & confidence to pounce on the deal.
For all those of you still holding on to your own dumbest purchases, the liquidation solution may be: Craigslist. We've bought dozens of deals from Craigslist, many of them furniture or appliances that qualified in the original owner's mind as "dumb".
200 pushups a day is about the max I'm capable of building up to. (Thanks to StrengthBuilder.com.) Next week I'm going to see if I've made any improvements on my pullups.
The dojang might appreciate your donation. All of our "old" pads & hogu (that our kid grew out of) have found a second life in our dojang's gear bin. We used donated gear for almost our first year of training and we were able to learn what worked for us before we bought our own.
The whole deal fell apart when the realtor's verbal assurances didn't translate to a written contract. Animosity & recriminations took over and we eventually forfeited our $5000 deposit. That hurt almost as much as the housing bubble popping shortly afterward. Our prospective $625K purchase (if we'd even been able to keep renting it out and paying the mortgage during the 1990s) would have appreciated today to about $2M, or roughly 6%/year. Of course it would've crashed to less than $400K first, and that appreciation would have barely paid the fuel bills for our commute. Oh, and the Navy transferred us to San Diego four years later. Keeping two renters in that property during our absence would've been a bit problematic.
The experience was well worth the tuition. We finished our master bath renovation, hunkered down around our equity with other improvements, and weathered the storm. (We also implemented Plan B of starting a family.) Today our first home has appreciated at the same ratio as the Pupukea estate, but in a much more affordable manner while we were able to keep paying the mortgage during our entire time there. And when spouse eventually found our "dream home" a decade later we had the experience, skills, & confidence to pounce on the deal.
For all those of you still holding on to your own dumbest purchases, the liquidation solution may be: Craigslist. We've bought dozens of deals from Craigslist, many of them furniture or appliances that qualified in the original owner's mind as "dumb".
Add me to that club. Glad I bailed in 2006, and I think I'll be sitting out this bankruptcy analysis.Ouch.......
We've bought an elliptical, a treadmill, a universal machine, a weight bench, and a set of weights from Craigslist-- all for under $250. (We spent more than that on the flooring for our storage shed.) As soon as our kid got her driver's license, she stopped using the home gym in favor of [-]picking up hot soldiers[/-] working out at the local military base. But spouse and I enjoy using our gym, and it was a great starter parent-kid home-improvement project.Never ceases to amaze me what these exercise equipment makers can foist on people. I found out early when I was a dirty poor grad student that the only things I needed were 200 push ups a day, a backpack full of engineer text books, a solid chair, and insane amount of motivation. I wish I have that motivation now. Now 20-40 pushups, and I'm done.
200 pushups a day is about the max I'm capable of building up to. (Thanks to StrengthBuilder.com.) Next week I'm going to see if I've made any improvements on my pullups.
Do you see yourself ever using the gear again? What made you stop sparring? I'm asking the question because our kid is leaving the next in 576 days and without her inspiration I might find it difficult to keep reporting in for my Friday-night thrashings.
The dojang might appreciate your donation. All of our "old" pads & hogu (that our kid grew out of) have found a second life in our dojang's gear bin. We used donated gear for almost our first year of training and we were able to learn what worked for us before we bought our own.
