Saint Ursula’s Day (Monday)
Holiday
Ahh, another day off. It is nice to be able to just take my time in the morning (more than usual) and not have to worry about work. Saint Ursula’s Day is a holiday to celebrate the naming of the islands. Spent basically the entire day watching TV. Luckily there’s a lot of shows I watch that air on Sunday. This new War of the Worlds on BBC is pretty sweet stuff!
Back to Work (Tuesday)
Work
Holiday’s over, time to get back to work. Not a whole lot on the schedule though. Tomorrow I go to the bank, so today I did some accounting. Entered a few transactions I had built up, didn’t take too long.
Mental Health
Finally got my motivation in order enough to post that last post today too. Three weeks in one go . . . Just glad I did it instead of putting it off again. I will say that I have been getting a little excited about the upcoming move. It will be nice to really have a place I can call home. Somewhere with space for me, so I can get supplies to work on projects. Being able to garden, build things, whatever, will be nice.
Of course, this is all hypothetical, I’m sure that having the roommate back will dull my excitement. Although, it’s possible that with her around it will give me more reason to work on that stuff so I can get away from her, and so I won’t have to listen to the news she’s always got playing. We will just have to see how things go.
Game Development
So, I know I jumped in hardcore to making games a while back, but then just kinda stopped. It’s a bad habit of mine, and is partially due to some snags I hit. I’m not saying that I won’t go back to that game, but I think I might need to try something a bit more simple. So I’ve been mulling the idea of putting together an RPG. I’ve still got the retro and 2D ideas in mind for it. But keeping the physics out of gameplay will probably make my life easier.
I dunno, maybe that’s not what I want, but I still have ideas. Grrr, sometimes it’s so hard to make up my mind on things, too many ideas I want to work on and not enough time or motivation to complete any of them.
More Work
Headed over to the leaky pool to check on it. It’s not looking so good because the pump hasn’t been running. Turned the pump on for a while to get some water circulating and added shock. That should help maintain it while we work on it. While I was there the handyman for the house showed up. He was supposed to be meeting with us later, but somehow things weren’t communicated well.
Luckily, because I was there, we were able to get the meeting done much earlier. Him, the intern, myself, and the guy who put in new doors all discussed what’s to come next. Just some finishing work on the doors really, so we went over all of that, who is going to do what, and when to expect it.
Game Development Continued
Thinking about game development earlier got me itching to do something. So I uninstalled the version of Unity installed and reinstalled a newer version in a better location (more space). Now that is downloading and once it’s done I can look into starting work on an RPG or something. Maybe I need to start even simpler, we’ll see.
And just like that I spent another $20 on assets in Humble Bundle’s “Make Your Card Game” bundle. I probably shouldn’t have, but the assets look pretty sweet. I can totally see myself using them at some point. And really, the assets you get when you buy them seem to really be much higher quality than the free stuff out there.
Investing
So I’ve dabbled in investments before, but never anything real. I have a few stocks that I’ve had forever, an IRA, and my old 401(k) from work. I’ve also been using Axos (was previously WiseBanyan) for some simplified investing. But it doesn’t allow for individual stock purchases and sales. I’ve recently found something called Robinhood. When you sign up they actually give you a free stock? I got a share of Fitbit. Supposedly you have to actually fund your account (no minimum) before they give you one, but somehow I got around that.
Bank Day (Wednesday)
Tortola
Time for another trip to the bank, hooray. . . So the day started a bit early dealing with the handyman since he leaves town today. After that, I headed to the docks and caught a ferry. This time is wasn’t all fancy, but it did the job and got me where I wanted.
An, of course, I started my trip with a stop by the Watering Hole for breakfast sandwiches and a mimosa. I was seriously hungry by the time I got there and the food was as delicious as always.
Bank
Once I had my fill I headed to the bank. The line wasn’t too bad, about half the usual length. While waiting in line, I decided to do some research on investment. I came up with a few stocks I was interested in watching and even setup two limit buys. Robinhood is pretty cool, just what I’ve been looking for to start investing.
The combination of a shorter line and investment research led to a pretty easy wait at the bank. As usual, the teller took a bit of time with my transaction but not too long. After the bank was a quick stop by the pool supply store for some sodium bicarbonate. I was able to fit the entire fifty pound bag in my backpack! Heavy to carry but easier than over my shoulder.
Made it back to the dock just in time to catch the last morning ferry. If I hadn’t, I would have been stuck here for another couple hours. And while on the ferry home I also setup a couple more limit buys in Robinhood. Not really sure my investment strategy is the best, but we’ll see how I do with the small amount of money I’m working with.
Bills (Thursday)
Work
So today was bill day. I got two thirds of the bills paid. Water department was finally able to be paid. Got the power bills paid too. Internet bills didn’t get paid though. Parking was a mess so I didn’t even bother trying to go in. I’m sure the line was super long inside.
Investing
So I spent more time doing some research. Man I’ve really been missing out on the stock market. With Robinhood I can finally do what I want without all the overhead and costs per transaction. Did you know there’s some stocks that pay up to 10% dividends monthly? How did I not know this before?
So I’ma invest in this stock, get my dividends and invest more in that stock, and build up a little monthly income that way. Then there’s the other stocks I’ma invest in for the long term or on speculation. I’m sure I’m not gonna do great at this whole thing, but I’m starting off with a small investment of only $200.
Pool Day (Friday)
Game Development
Started off this morning with a bit of inspiration I wanted to write down. So I’ve started a post to take some notes about my RPG ideas. Not much to share yet, just putting some ideas together so I know what I want to do. Lots of decisions to make. Then I gotta figure out how to build the whole thing in Unity, which will be an undertaking. Maybe I should start out easier with some kind of simple puzzle game. . . .
Investing
Heh, just saw the first TV commercial for Robinhood that I noticed. I’m sure I’ve seen a few before but never realized. So after digging a little deeper and doing some math I’ve realized that if I had started this investing thing sooner I could have easily gotten myself a living income after only 5 years with a simple up front investment of like $100? My math must really be wrong, because if it’s that simple why aren’t more people doing it? I know there’s inherent risk and dividend yields aren’t set in stone. I’ll keep you updated on how things go.
Pools
Pools weren’t too bad this week. It’s nice to actually have the chemicals I need. I just wish I could easily get everything for pool service at once time on this island. There always seems to be something I can find, this week is chlorine tabs. Before that it was muriatic acid. And I can never get sodium bicarb here.
Investing
So after pools I took some time to look back into my investments. Yeah, my math was totally off earlier. I manually put together a spreadsheet to figure out exactly how the investments and dividends would play out. So without adding any more investments it would take WAY longer than I calculated previously to get a living income from dividends. Further math shows it would require an investment of about $200,000 to live off dividends. If only I had started this much sooner!
Saturday
Work
Did a little work today, nothing too major. I went and checked out the leaky pool to see if anything had been done yet. No sign of any work yet. Hopefully that guy will get around to taking care of things soon.
Minecraft
The rest of the day (weekend) was spent playing Minecraft. My friend decided he wanted to remove the water around a guardian temple, so we’ve been busy filling it in with gravel and sand. It is a slow and tedious project. He didn’t realize how much work it was going to be.
Sunday
Minecraft
By the time I stopped playing Minecraft on Sunday we had completely surrounded the temple with glass, filled in all the ocean inside with gravel and sand, and had then removed at least half. All that’s left is to remove the rest of the gravel and sand, which won’t take nearly as long as filling it all in did, then use sponges (we don’t have a lot of those) to clear the water out of the temple itself.
Back to Work (Monday)
Work
Ugh, we got a last minute booking for tomorrow. So I had to go do a touch up on my nemesis. I hadn’t really done much on Friday because I figured it would be empty for a while, oops. Even so, it should not have been in the condition it was when I went there. The damned thing was turning green!
I put a ton of chlorine in the pool on Friday. I guess the rain and heat burned it out because there was none. So I added a bunch more then vacuumed and scrubbed every surface. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find chlorine tabs in large quantities, so I didn’t have any to put in, which is likely why the chlorine was all gone. So I had to run out and buy some individual tablets at an extreme markup. Hopefully that’ll keep the pool looking nice.
Accounting
After that it was time to play a little catch up on accounting. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. It didn’t take me all that long to get done. I feel pretty good about it. I actually do have more I can do, but I can’t push myself too hard or I’ll shut down and that won’t be good.
Housekeeping, Home, and the Roommate
The Roommate returns tomorrow. I am not looking forward to it. Actually, I’m dreading it. So, because of this the housekeepers are here today to prepare her room and the house for her arrival. I wish she had the decency to do that when she left last; the place was a pig sty when I came home from Atlanta.
Of course, next week we should be moving to our “forever home” which will actually make things a bit more tolerable. I’ll finally have a room I can call my own. A place where I can seriously stretch out and tailor to my own needs. I’ll finally be able to start work on some projects because I won’t have to worry about moving them.
Investing
So I decided to throw another $100 into my Robinhood account and invested it all right away. Found some stocks that were suggested at 100% buy for things I felt would be likely to go up in value. They were cheap stocks, so I was able to get a few of each for that money. Hopefully things go up and I can earn me more money!
Early (Tuesday)
Work
Got a message early from the intern about the grill needing cleaning. Oh, so hard! Had to run over there really early, because the arrival is really early. Just scrubbed the damned thing down a little with the grill brush and poof, all is good. Really not all that hard, but woulda been nice to not have to start yet. Then it turns out they’re not even arriving on time anyway due to flight delays!
So after that I went about doing some more accounting. Entered this month’s pool costs and such for all the work I do. Didn’t really take all that long so then I reached out to the plumber about the leaky pool. He hasn’t done shit yet but says he’ll be there this afternoon.
Investing
I just can’t seem to stay away from the stock market. I’m actually at a loss right now, by like a buck, because of one under performing cannabis stock. Weed is the future, so you know that shit’s gonna go up at some point. But for now, it’s not so hot. I did put in another $200 (that puts me like $500 in the market now) to buy more stocks.
I found another stock (ETF) that seemed like a good opportunity to invest in. Hopefully this one will perform okay and I can reinvest the dividends to grow my portfolio. I can’t just keep putting money in though, this is it. No more money goes in until I get money from books.
The Roommate Returns
Well, she’s back. Not so bad so far. Started out with dinner at CocoMaya, which was delicious. Then we hung out and talked for a bit. Maybe I’ve built it up in my head how bad it’ll be. I have really enjoyed my solitude. We will see!
Wednesday
Investing
Completed another trade for an ETF I’ve been interested in. With this purchase ,and other monthly dividend stocks I’ve invested in, I’ll be able to buy a new share in this one every month just from dividends. This will be slow growth though, it’ll take 6 years of just dividend reinvestment to reach only like $15 monthly dividends. Maybe one of my speculative investments will grow enormously to allow for massive gains.
Work
With the roommate back we did a run around of our villas. Got long term tenants vacating one house, so we did a walk-through. This is the house that will be our next (and hopefully last) home here. It’s good they’re out now, so we can start prepping it and moving in soon! After that we went by a few more houses to check out. Next was a bit of furniture shopping, then it was back home.
Home
We didn’t really find anything decent or cheap for furniture. We have to do a bit of shopping to deck out the new house. In the end we decided to go with Ikea stuff. It’s cheap and easy, but we have to do some arranging to get it from Ikea Puerto Rico to us. But we put together a list of all the stuff we need and the roommate is working on getting it done.
Thursday
Work
We have guests at one of our villas (my nemesis) and today a housekeeper is servicing them so I did the pool service a day early. Of course when I got there, the guests were using the pool. So all I did was check the balance (which was good) and hightail it outa there. Luckily it was in good shape, and the guests leave Sunday so I’ll go back over then to touch it up.
Home
We’ve placed the order for the furniture now. They sold out of the dining table we wanted, so we had to pick something different, not as good, but a little cheaper I think. Hopefully if they get the order together quick enough we’ll have it early next week. I’m crossing my fingers!
Pool Day (Friday)
Pools
Let’s see, it was a quick pool day because all the houses were vacant. Don’t have to put in quite as much work when there’s no one using the pools. It worked out too because it became a really rainy day. I do have one house with a broken chlorinator though, still trying to figure out options for that.
Accounting
I’m working on accounting today too, reconciling accounts. One reconciled with no issues, but the other one has a problem with a deposit missing a few hundred dollars. Not sure exactly what happened and I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ve dug around looking for check stubs but I just can’t find it. I’m going to have to much more careful about my deposits in the future.
Working Weekend (Saturday)
Work
Ugh, with the roommate back there’s more likely to be work on the weekends, and it’s already starting. Gonna prolly spend a while doing accounting today. I’ll see if I can get my shit done, just gotta figure out that deposit that seems fucked up.
Accounting
Most of the day was spent working on accounting. The roommate and I went over everything for the month for our company and all our owners. We worked together on the reports as well as fixing a lot of the categorization of expenses and such. Of course, most of the work was me, since I’m the accountant, but she had some good ideas that I implemented. And it seems she’s no longer going to be doing any kind of accounting! Total win!
Still Working (Sunday)
Mental Health
A long time ago (2013) in a galaxy far, far away (Livejournal) I used to make these “What did I accomplish yesterday” posts. It would help me track things I did to better myself as well as give myself motivation to accomplish things. Eventually, just like everything else, it petered out, but I think that might be something I’m going to try doing again, here. Mind you, it won’t start in this post, and it likely won’t start until I’m moved, but we’ll see.
My Nemesis
So, Thursday I checked the balance, but didn’t get a chance to clean it, although it seemed okay. Got a guest changeover, from vacation renters to a short-term rental, so while the housekeepers are there working I’m going to see about making sure the pool looks good.
Luckily, it wasn’t in too bad shape. I added the usual chlorine and tabs. Gave it a scrub and vacuum and all was okay. The housekeepers were still there cleaning the place, but they have a few hours to get it done in.
Featured Image
This post’s featured image is a colored sunset! I love how the clouds layer in the color as the sun is setting . I was just outside on the deck and the sky caught my eye.
Remember to go check out my Gallery for more photo goodness!
