The Life and Times of a Wistful Writer

                On July 7^th, I received one of my rare correspondences from my old film partner David Stern.  I only hear from him once every year or two. The last I had heard from him was last fall when he had just completed his third independent (and ultra-low budget feature film; I think his budget was just a few grand, but you can get away with that these days with digital video and generous donations of equipment and video from people who believe in your script and, more importantly, believe in you.)  He sent me the finished film via a private link on Vimeo but he is not yet making it available to the public via either DVD or streaming while he shops it to festivals and distributors.  The film turned out remarkably well, very professionally acted and shot.  “The Forgiving” is a very touching story of a couple who loses a child to a tragic drowning incident.  The father blames himself as he is a college professor and novelist, down on his luck, who had allowed himself to be distracted for just a minute or two as he was editing a manuscript; but that’s all the time it took for the little girl to fall into the water and drown outside their woodsy cabin.  The wife also blames him and it has ended their marriage.  It is a heartfelt story about struggling for forgiveness and searching for a way to make the family whole again.  It is his best film yet and I will be first in line to buy it when it becomes available. 

                So two weeks ago he wrote me to see how everything was going on my end and I sent him a good summary of what the year has brought me.  As is typical for him, I have still not heard back.  But I thought the summary I sent would make a good blog post to bring everyone else up to speed on the life and times of this wistful writer.  Ironically, I wrote this letter during our last searing heat wave, which lasted 8 days.  This one has lasted two.  I hope that will be it. 

                So I wrote him about the condo purchase, which was just 8 lines and on which the rest of you have already been amply informed.  But I also wrote a fairly detailed account of my creative endeavors which is something I haven’t been sharing except for my recent tweet announcement about beginning my first novel. 

So why am I writing a novel?  After fifty years of creating screenplays, have I given up on film?  Well, yes and no.  Ash Wednesday was a relative success at quite a few of the literary competitions to which I submitted but, in writing it and submitting it for critique, I also learned a fair number of things about how the business has changed, how screenwriting has changed, and how I have changed. 

Ash Wednesday has gotten very positive critiques (for the most part) from the many screenplay contests I have entered. The problem is I don't know how to sell a screenplay anymore. You can no longer just send them to production companies and agencies; they only accept submissions based on referrals from other industry professionals. How do you do that? And I find that the whole business has changed. It's no longer at all realistic to write an original screenplay and sell it. Anything you write now is just a calling card to get assignments to write drafts for other people's scripts, something I not only have no desire to do but, at my age, there's no way anybody's going to hire me anyway. 

So I've sort of learned that screenwriting is no longer my bag. I've begun another project with the title of "Furious" which is about guns and road rage. I've researched it heavily, even went to the trouble of taking the gun safety class at the West Bloomfield Police Dept a few years back (which I was quite impressed with) and got my license (no gun, just the license) as research.  I’ve always enjoyed target shooting as a sport and am an excellent marksman, quite a crack shot in the Navy and scored at the top of the class at the WB Police. But whenever I’ve gone to the range, I’ve always been with a friend who could loan me a pistol so I’ve never seen a need to own my own nor do I see one in order to write this story.  My research will be sufficient. 

I think I can write this thing so that no matter what side of the gun issue you're on, you'll find something to relate to here. But I'm going to do it as my first novel. Even though I no longer have a clue as to how to have a career in film as a screenwriter or anything else, I've always known what the protocols are for selling a novel. Not that it is by any means easy but, assuming it's good, it's certainly doable. You get a list of publishers and agents that have a track record with the kind of book you’ve written.  You query them with a brief synopsis.  If they like your query, they ask for an outline and a few sample chapters.  If they still like you, serious talks begin.  That used to be how you sold screenplays too.  The Writers Guild would send you a list of all the agencies willing to read scripts by new writers.  You send a query.  If they liked the query, they would ask for the screenplay.  If they still liked you, then you were called in for serious discussion about rewrites and a plan for approaching the studios. 

But the Writers Guild doesn’t do that anymore.  They still supply a list of all the agencies willing to consider new writers.  But it is no longer a matter of querying and then sending the script.  When you go to any agency web site, all they’re interested in is the contact information for a contest(s) you’ve won or a recognizable industry professional who knows your work and is willing to recommend you.  And being "good" is no longer "good enough" to get consideration for a screenplay. Most of these contests I've entered have had thousands of submissions and only the top two or three win and you must win in order to get a referral to an agent. So you have to be in the top 1/10 of 1% to even have a chance. In most of these contests, "Ash Wednesday" has ranked in the top 1/2 of 1% -- but that's not good enough. (I've also been in contests where I've ranked in the bottom 10% so there is a fair amount of arbitrariness in all this. And it's not like the other writers aren't good. The majority of them are graduate students in screenwriting programs at the nation's top film schools. That's why it felt quite rewarding to rank in the top 1/2 of 1% against competition like that!)

But I guess the main reason I'm more interested in novel writing now is that I've always been told that my scripts have a decidedly literary flavor to them so maybe literature is where my true calling has been all along. I’ve been told by several people that my talent is wasted on screenplays and that I should be writing novels instead.  And there's also that pesky reality that, unless you're going to direct the film yourself, your screenplay is not really yours. But a novel is entirely yours. Plus there is the added frustration that you can’t really share a screenplay with people outside the industry. Screenplays are meant to be produced, not read.  Unless you’re a film student or professional, the structure and format of screenplays do not readily lend themselves to an easy read by laypeople.  Unless you are seriously into film, you’re not going to be able to lose yourself and become enveloped in the universe the screenwriter has created, not the way you can with a good novel.  That’s been a major frustration for me in writing screenplays all these many years.  I can’t share them with anybody because they’re not easy to read and they’re not final products.  Only the film itself is the final product.  A novel, of course, is a final product. 

There’s also the problem that after a 60+ year love affair with film, my passion for cinema has been waning for the past several years.  I used to go see 3 or 4 films per week; now I’m lucky to see that many every year. Audiences have become rude and crude.  It used to be a real high for me to sit in a crowded theater and absorb all the energy from an audience that was really into a great film.  But now everyone is busy texting or checking their email throughout the film; they’re not even watching it!  Why are they paying $12 to come a multiplex and then not even watch the film; and worse! – engage in all this rude behavior while they are there distracting the rest of us?  I still enjoy going out to see special films, but unless it’s very special, I now much prefer to see them On Demand at home, or on Netflix.

And I don’t particularly like the films the studios are making anymore.  I’ve lost my desire to go participate in that industry. But even if I were to go back to L.A. to try to start a new career, I no longer have a clue as to how I would approach that.  Ever since I started dreaming about my career back in grade school, it had always been my goal to write, direct and produce my own films.  And throughout the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s many young filmmakers were able to do just that.  No more.  Now the best you can hope for is to work on other people’s films, not as a stepping stone as it once was, but as a very blunt definitive end in itself.  Yes there are a number of fine films being made for older audiences but the people making these films have been in the industry since their 20’s.  There are no opportunities for anyone starting out in their 60s.  And even if there were, I have neither the inclination nor the energy to help make those kinds of films.  And trust me, it would require a huge amount of energy, energy I just don’t have any more. 

So where does that leave my options for my film career?  My decision in recent years that I no longer desire to pursue a conventional film career has given me a new peace of mind.  But that doesn’t mean I have to give up entirely.  Affordable digital technology has still left it within reach to write, direct, and produce my own little homegrown movies and it’s not that difficult to find distribution on the Internet, particularly YouTube and even Netflix.  (Even David got the film he made in 2004 on Netflix.)   And this is also where switching to novels may prove very beneficial.  If I can publish a novel and then adapt it to a screenplay, that might open enough markets to crack some doors.   But if not, I still have the novel and I will find ample satisfaction in just that much.  Even if I don’t publish, I will find ample satisfaction in just having written it.  I would like people to read Ash Wednesday so I will be adapting that to a novel.   But for my first novel, I am starting from scratch with a brand new original story. 

So what is “Furious”?  My first recollection of road rage being a news item was in the early 1990’s when there were a number of freeway shootings in Los Angeles.  That’s when I first conceived the story so, like Ash Wednesday, it’s been in my computer for a long time.  Heaven knows I could never have imagined at the time that the story would still be in the news and still very relevant nearly 30 years later.  Mine is the story of a milquetoast tax preparer who has had a considerable history of being bullied and is afraid of the world.  When he gets mugged early in the story, he finds himself drawn to the gun culture for self defense and it doesn’t take long for him to become proficient.  It gives him a whole new confidence and soon he stumbles into a situation where he is able to stop a robbery and save the lives of everyone in the store.  

This makes him a local hero which boosts his self-esteem even more.  He joins a local police civilian auxiliary force and soon becomes a celebrity.  But alas, as things evolve he takes it too far and one day a minor blunder threatens to erupt into a major tragedy.  He realizes that the courage he has acquired with the guns has been a false courage and the only way to avert the impending tragedy is to find within him a new courage, but a courage that will probably destroy everything he’s built – and threaten his job, his family, his very freedom.  This is basically the story of a coward who ultimately finds redemption through the painful process of finding a strength within himself that he never before knew existed. 

I’ve actually been the victim of several road rage incidents in the past 30 years, the most frightening of which was a day when I was on Northwestern Highway driving home from the office and this idiot pulls out of a parking lot right in front of me (with me doing 50) and I had to honk at him to keep from having an accident with him.  He was really furious with me.  In rush hour bumper-to-bumper traffic, he chased me for 3 miles until he finally caught up with me.  I was completely sandwiched in with eight cars surrounding me so there was no escape.  I was trapped like a fish in a barrel.  Fortunately, all he wanted to do was roll down his window and scream “Dumb Ass!” at me.  All this fury because he honestly had expected me to slam on my brakes going 50 and let him out of that parking lot ahead of me.  All I could think of the whole time was that, had he had a gun, I would not have been able to get away from him. 

So that’s the story.  It’s “Death Wish” in reverse.  Actually, I’ve always wanted to buy the rights to the Brian Garfield novel and remake that film because, unlike the movie, the book’s theme is that vigilantism makes the problem worse, not better.  But the studio obviously felt that such a theme would not do well at the box office so they completely flipped it through that film and its many sequels to make the case that private citizens taking matters into their own hands would be a good thing.  If criminals knew that any random person could and would blow them away, they would stop committing crimes.  

“Furious” isn’t exactly about vigilantism.  It’s not even about anything particularly dramatic as I feel that sometimes small drama makes a bigger impact than big drama since small drama is something that happens to a lot more people.  That’s my objective here.  Write a small drama with which more people can relate and write it in such a balanced way that whether the reader is pro or anti gun, they make a connection.  

That’s what it means to be a wistful writer. 

The Long and Winding Road -- Conclusion

CHAPTER TWO  --  7/6/20

The 4^th of July weekend is behind us now, it’s been three weeks since I posted Chapter One, and the good times just keep on rolling, the paperwork still coming. One surprise I got last week was Bloomfield Township sending me a bill for summer property taxes even though it was very specifically stated to me that Comerica was including the taxes in my mortgage payment and the bank would be paying the taxes out of the escrow account they set up for me.  So now I’m trying to get with Comerica to find out why I’m receiving a bill when they were supposed to be taking care of this.  And secondly, I received in Friday’s mail what they call the Ladybird deed to my condo.  This little piece of paper says not only that the condo is officially mine but that it transfers to my trust upon my death so my heirs will not have to deal with probate in order to liquidate, something that the sisters failed to do so they had a mess to go through. My heirs will not be so encumbered.  But let’s get back to the story. 

Have I mentioned that the owner of this unit who passed away in September was also Renee’s ex-husband?  It was an amicable divorce and she continued managing their joint business affairs which included the ownership of about 1/3 of the units in this and other complexes.  So she was keeping her eyes open for me.  She was not only managing her own units but was on retainer for the HOA to manage all the rental units, as well as being President of the HOA.  So every time someone gave their notice, she was on the horn to me saying she might have another place for me.  I had one such offer in December for a beautiful unit in my same building with a ten year lease if she couldn’t find a buyer by a particular date.  But she did find a buyer. 

In February, another unit became available at a complex at Square Lake and Woodward (two miles away) for less rent.  We were now just one month away from when the sisters would likely list it.  It was a charming and newer place, slightly smaller but with a new kitchen and bath, ground floor with a nice patio, view of a beautiful courtyard and a 5 minute walk to an abundance of shops and diners on Square Lake Road.  She could move me easily on a single Saturday afternoon.  She owned this one herself free and clear and wanted to keep it as a rental. She would give me a ten year lease and put it in her will that her heirs would have to keep it as a rental and honor the lease, changing the will being the only way to circumvent the Michigan law.  I have to get with the sisters and have them either release me from the lease or give me a deal to purchase my condo.  She recommended offering 95Gs with 20% down on a land contract.  This was based on the fact that the unit was worth 140 but that the sisters were planning to invest 40-50 on renovating the kitchen and both baths.  It was simple math.  Save yourself the 50Gs and sell it to me as is for 95.  Or let me go to this other place.  She was going to Arizona for two weeks until the end of February.  She would need an answer when she returned so she could find another renter if I wasn’t taking it. 

Suddenly this started looking more doable if I could actually swing anywhere near 95.  I really didn’t hold out any illusions that the sisters would go that low but if they were even in the ballpark … even if I could get it at 120 that would still be a bargain that I couldn’t afford to pass up.  So I texted the proposal to the local sister and was pleasantly surprised when she did not outright reject it, instead stating her willingness to have discussions.  When she had originally informed me that she was looking for an investor to buy the unit as a rental property, she reminded me that back in October she had stated her desire to sell the unit to me but that I did not feel at that time that I could afford it.  She was looking for an investor but she really just wanted to have it over with and preferred to sell it to me.  When Renee texted her that this other property was available to transfer me to if I couldn’t get a longer lease, that provided the incentive for her to consider my offer.

Then the world changed again when John called me and said he had run the numbers through a mortgage calculator and came up with a mortgage payment of $600 plus the HOA.  And why would I want a land contract?  Land contracts are for people who can’t qualify for a conventional mortgage. That’s the advantage. The disadvantage – and it’s a substantial one – is that they’re more expensive and, even more substantial, the sisters would become my lenders and thus I would remain under their thumb which was the last thing I wanted.  Since my credit score was over 800, he encouraged me to apply for a regular mortgage feeling I should be a shoo-in.  I got a quick confirmation from Renee that the HOA would be $330 per month which would put my total payment at just under a grand.  That’s cheaper than my rent!  Suddenly, instead of this deal costing me $400 more than I’m paying now, it was less than I’m paying now. 

I needed confirmation of this from a bank. The next day I went across the street to Comerica and they ran the numbers and came up with a total payment including HOA of $980 per month. The day after that I was told I was preapproved and the bank emailed me a letter to that effect.  I forwarded the letter to the local sister, Roxana, and she immediately set a meeting for me the next day to discuss my $95G proposal or giving me a three year lease.  Now this is looking like it might actually be happening. 

Everything would of course hinge on getting the right price.  I anticipated that she might counter my 95 proposal with 120 and then I would propose 110.  If I could get her to 115, I’d take it.  The meeting did not start well.  She stated at the outset that she had no intention of keeping the unit as a rental and thus no intention of offering me an extended lease.  She was looking for an investor, had two interested prospects, and if either one took it they would likely want me out so they could renovate and get a much higher rent.  Going the investor route would be troublesome though so she’d prefer to sell it to me and have it over with.  Then things got much better real fast.  She countered my offer of 95 at 105.

Wow!  Her counter offer was 5 grand lower than what I had already decided my lowest counter offer would be.  I saw no reason for further negotiations.  I just said “Sold!”  There was a $4300 roofing assessment due on the unit which Renee had strongly advised me to insist that they pay it.  Roxana’s only condition was that we split that assessment and she would lower the price to 103 to accommodate that.  I said I preferred to keep the price 105 and that she pay the entire assessment. I didn’t think $2300 was worth haggling over on a $105,000 purchase so I was prepared to cave if she balked.  Much to my surprise, she did not balk. We had a deal at 105 and she would pay the entire assessment.  (To this day, Renee is still annoyed with me for not sticking to my guns on the 95; but I don’t like haggling - I’m not good at it either - and was honestly quite satisfied with the final result.) 

So we had a deal.  I had already filled out a ream of paperwork just to get the preapproved mortgage.  I had never done this before so I was really quite uneducated with the process and naively thought this was the end of it.  Roxana would simply plug the agreed upon numbers into a boilerplate purchase agreement, I would turn that over to Comerica, and then it would just be waiting for close, which Comerica had told me would be 45-60 days after turning in the signed purchase agreement.  Well, that wasn’t the end of it; not even close. 

What followed in the next three months was an unbelievable barrage of forms and documents that seemed to never end and amounted to about 400 pages before it was all said and done.  Even this very simple purchase agreement turned out to be no simple task.  Between her lawyer and my lawyer reviewing and revising the various drafts and the added complications and time delays of getting signatures from the sister who lived in Canada, the deal we had agreed upon that day in the third week of February was not ready to turn in to the bank until the third week of March.  I had gotten the preapproval literally days before the pandemic started surging and the stock market started crashing. A month later when the purchasing document was turned in, they now wanted all the forms and documents redone, except now my bank balances were about 30% lower than they were in February.  Would that make a difference?  I now had to consider the possibility that this might not be approved after all and this began a 3-month period of nerves. Would I have to start over from scratch and move again if this all went south? 

After I turned in all the new documents, my case got transferred to another bank officer who was specialized in closings.  None of the documents got transferred with my case because the new officer asked me to send everything in all over again, once again updated.  Every single time I sent in a load of documents, I thought they had what they needed.  But for those three months, it was literally every second or third day that I would receive yet another request for yet more documents. 

The ultimate in bureaucratic nonsense occurred with my Catholic credit union.  Immediately after receiving the Comerica letter of preapproval, I hedged my bets by putting in an application with my credit union, not only as a backup in case Comerica turned me down in the end, but also out of curiosity to see if they’d give me better terms.  The reality was that the credit union completely fell down on the job.  The pandemic was just beginning to surge when I started the process and for weeks no one was responding to my application.  I finally learned that the loan officer was out on extended sick leave (COVID-19?) and the officer I was transferred to was evidently so overloaded that I never even got an answer to my many emails.  But the very fact that I had started the application at all got on my credit report that I was taking out a loan at my credit union and Comerica needed to know how much debt I was incurring.  I don’t know how many times I had to go round and round with them on this issue, how many times I had to explain that I had no debt with the credit union, that it was just a backup mortgage application that had been completely ignored and was therefore irrelevant. 

So I’m sitting on needles and pins for weeks wondering whether this crashed stock market was going to sabotage everything and wondering when there was going to be an end to the demand for paperwork and documents to be studied and signed.  Another major frustration was that I could not make the loan officer at Comerica understand that it was Comerica’s job to inform me as to the specific date that close would take place.  She kept asking me over and over to supply her with the close date.  I did not know.  The close date would be when her bank said.  When would I like the close to be?  I would like it as soon as possible but I’m not the one who gets to make that call.  There was also the problem of homeowners insurance.  This officer kept telling me that they could not schedule a close until they had a document from State Farm that I had a homeowner’s policy.  But I could not get a policy because I was not yet the homeowner.  State Farm sent me documents of their intention to give me a policy but that the actual policy itself could not be written until I was actually the owner.  Comerica said that wasn’t good enough, that I need the actual policy. How many times did we have to go around on that one until State Farm finally explained to them how it had to be. 

Meanwhile, Roxana is bugging me week after week.  Why is this taking so long?  When is close going to be?  She wants this over with.  I kept trying to explain to her – Comerica has been saying since Day One that it would be 45-60 days from the day we turned in the signed purchase agreement.  The bank had told me they were shooting for a May 15^th close which would be right on time.  So this really isn’t taking any longer than they said it would.  Finally on a fateful Tuesday afternoon in early May, I got the word that everything was looking good and they were still shooting for a Friday May 15^th close.  I would be receiving a notice to this effect no later than Tuesday May 12^th and would then have a max of 48 hours to sign an agreement to accept this date or the close would be canceled.  Okay, my lawyer still needs to review the close documents so send me the notice before May 12^th.  They did.  My lawyer gave it the thumbs up and we had a 1 pm appointment on Friday the 15^th with the title company in Farmington to close.  I would need to have the balance of the down plus the closing fees wired to the title company at least one day in advance and I made arrangements with Merrill Lynch to do that. 

Now the only thing that could mess things up is if something happened Friday the 15^th to prevent any of us from attending that meeting.  Fortunately, it went smoothly but I had always known that this wasn’t a done deal, the condo really wasn’t mine, until all the signatures were in and the funds transacted.  At the meeting there were at least 40 documents that needed signatures, many of them full of figures and legalese, all of which had to be reviewed.  I assumed that they had done their jobs and that all the numbers were correct but when I put on my MBA hat and studied them, I found several arithmetic errors that amounted to double-counting and overcharges of about $800.  When I brought it to their attention they were happy to correct it, blamed it on the computer template that automatically calculated the charges and had for some reason used a wrong formula, and they cut me a check for the overcharge.  Still, it should not have been my responsibility to make sure the numbers were correct, especially when there were so many of them.  I was paying thousands of dollars for closing fees.  Wasn’t accuracy part of what I was paying for? But, as it was, they weren’t doing their job and so, yes, it did fall to me. 

After the May 15^th meeting, it took me a good full week just to let it sink in that I was now a home owner.  In fact, now seven weeks later, I’m still pinching myself not quite believing that it’s true; I have a permanent home now; no one can ever make me move again.  I go into the kitchen and put dishes in the dishwasher and think – hey, I own this dishwasher now.  I get food from the fridge – hey this is my refrigerator now.  In the seven weeks that have passed, I still continue to get an occasional request for forms or information.  One nice thing was that there was no June payment. My mortgage began on July 1^st. I did not receive any instructions for how to pay the mortgage, was only told that a welcome package would be sent which I finally did receive about a week before the first payment was due.  I still need to set up both the mortgage payment and the HOA to be done online.  But except for that and the issue of this bill for the property taxes, I think I may finally be done.  And I now have the deed.  That should be the final final. 

Most of you reading this are homeowners yourselves, most of you having been through it more than once. Now that I have apprised you of my long and winding road, I have a question.  Did any of you experience anywhere near the same level of bureaucrat nonsense, travails, and frustrations that they put me through? 

To end on a positive note, I love that I am now secure and am no longer under the thumbs of those two sisters.  I also must commend my original loan officer at Comerica.  Patrick was always right there for me, always taking my calls and taking care of my issues and confusions.  I was not terribly impressed with his partner at the other end of the bank but I was very much impressed with him.  I ended up getting a rate of 3.25% (ironically, the pandemic and subsequent stock market crash ended up working in my favor; being on a fixed income actually made me a desirable customer) and my total monthly payment including property taxes and HOA is $850, $300 less than my rent was.  That’s not bad for 1100 sq ft of hardwood floors, 2 bedrooms (the master huge), 2 baths, spacious living room, dining room, balcony, walk-in closets and an enormous 14x17 storage bin in the basement.  (Also, any new owner would almost certainly have raised the rent by at least $100 so I’m really saving more than $400.)  I have the option of making extra payments that would go directly against principal. If I can manage even an extra hundred per month, that will trim a number of years off my 30 year mortgage.

So even though Renee still harps on me for not pressing for the 95, certain that the two sisters were so anxious to unload the property that they would have caved, I am still quite happy.  I am also quite anxious to get the place decorated and turn it into a real home.  It is a beautiful condo in a beautiful complex with a huge lovely courtyard and what have been so far quiet and courteous neighbors.  I think I can be quite comfortable here for the rest of my life. 

The Long and Winding Road: Chapter One

Sun 6-14-20

Subj:      The Long and Winding Road

                CHAPTER ONE

                It’s been 14 months almost to the day since my last blog entry.  And it’s been four weeks almost to the day since I closed on this condo and became a proud homeowner for the first time in my life. I’ve neglected this blog far too long and really need to start doing more regular entries.  But you’ll excuse me this past year as I have been rather intensely preoccupied with this whole notion of finding a place to live. In a way, though, this journey is still not at an end. As recently as yesterday, I received still more documents to sign, more forms to fill out, more paperwork to review.  But I should be at the 99% mark anyway and will report on status thus far. 

                To be more precise, this long and winding road to obtain a little security in my living situation actually began nearly two years ago  -- August 2018 – when the owners of my rental house in Keego Harbor, people who had owned the house for 15 years and had declared on multiple occasions during the seven years I rented there that this was a permanent investment and they had no plans to ever use the property as anything other than a rental investment – but then in August 2018 had grown weary of 15 years of being landlords and put the house on the market. 

               

                But they were sneaky about it. They didn’t want to take a chance on me looking for another place and vacating before they found a buyer (and thus be out the rental income) so they didn’t tell me.  They had come by in August to photograph the place under the guise of doing it for the insurance company but, in October, I checked Zillow (as I occasionally do just to see what’s out there) and found the house listed with all the photos they had taken and with the original listing date as August. I was displeased that they had not informed me, but pleased that they at least had it listed as an investment property, which meant I wouldn’t have to move.

                I was also pleased that it had been two full months since the listing and not a single prospect had surfaced. That meant there was little interest in the property (though the fact that they were asking a good 20 grand more than the house was worth might have had something to do with that) and that thus there probably would never be any interest in the property.  So for the time being at least, I felt safe. 

                Then in November 2018, the first prospect came in.  In January a 2^nd, February a 3^rd, and both of these were realtors sizing the house up for prospective investors.  We never heard back from any of them which meant there was no interest in this property.  Three prospects in seven months; I felt safe.

                Then in March there was a fourth, this time some kid in his 20’s who had had a lovely childhood growing up in this neighborhood and had been dreaming all his life of moving back here.  That meant he wanted this as his residence which meant I would have to move if he qualified for it.  He didn’t seem to have much on the ball.  He was in the house less than ten seconds, had literally just stepped into the living room when he suddenly declared, “I love it!  I want it!”  He made his decision without looking at anything. He made his decision without checking out the basement, which was a disaster of flooding and dankness and mold.  He made his decision without checking that the house had only two bedrooms whereas it was listed with three bedrooms.  He made the decision without checking to see that there wasn’t a single window in the house that could be opened. 

                There were a ton of problems with the house that I could have briefed him on but I did not feel that was my place.  It was up to the owner and the owner wasn’t fessing up to anything, just bragging about all the improvements he had made to the house over the years including the brand new energy efficient furnace. But even though the owner wasn’t disclosing any of the problems (which I didn’t really blame him; they would have been very obvious to anybody doing any due diligence at all), he did do the ethical thing and take the kid aside and asked if he planned to hire an independent inspector to go through the house and evaluate it for any problems.  To this the kid arrogantly brushed him off exclaiming, “I don’t need to pay no inspector. I know how to do all that myself.” 

And he did do the inspection himself.  I watched him.  It took all of two minutes, which means he didn’t really inspect anything at all.  He had his mind made up.  I thought for sure his trip to the upstairs would be the game changer when he would discover that there was only one bedroom there, not the two that were in the listing. And he would discover there was no heat upstairs.  But nope, he came down the stairs after his “inspection” and said only, “Everything looks fine to me!” 

The kid struck me as someone who was very low-income (I was told he had only a low-wage job at the Oakland County Animal Shelter) so both the owner and I expected that he would not be able to find a bank that would give him a mortgage and, when two months went by without hearing anything, I once again felt safe.  There would be no bank.  But then in May, he was back in touch that he had arranged the financing with a bank.  The bank inspector even came over and, again, we were certain it would not pass muster.  And lo and behold, as she’s coming down from the upstairs, her first comment is, “There’s only one bedroom up there.  It’s listed as having two upstairs.”  I figured that was finally it. This house was going to get a big fat F.  Then a couple weeks later, we got the shocking news that the house had passed.  That was at the end of May.  We were told that the clock would start on close probably by mid-June, then 30 days to close, and it was in the purchase agreement that I would have 30 days beyond close to vacate.  So I had at least 60 days.  That’s about the minimal comfortable time it takes to move an entire house.  It takes about 30 days just to find a place and sign a lease, then another 30 to arrange the move and get the house emptied and cleaned. 

Okay, to be safe, it was time to rent another big storage locker and move as much of my stuff out of the house as I could before the 60 days started.  iStorage in Sylvan happened to be running a special so I got a pretty good sized storage bin for $75 and began moving all my many, many boxes over there.  In mid-June, the word came.  I had now at least until the middle of August to vacate.  I started looking to rent another house but, unlike my house search seven years ago, all the ones that were available were either horrible or in horrible neighborhoods and all the ones that were good were already snatched up before I could even get over there.  There’s a decent apartment complex in Sylvan (Bloomfield On the Green) that I knew always had vacancies so that would be my backup. 

But after three weeks of running into a wall trying to find another house, it occurred to me that I didn’t really want another house.  I didn’t mind mowing (in fact, I liked it) but I did not care for yard work, only did it because it had to be done, especially did not care for the neighbors (ie. Val) being critical of my curbside appeal (which was perfectly fine from the street if you didn’t look too closely, but she insisted on looking closely) and, after a lifetime of shoveling snow, I absolutely did not want any more of that.  For years, I had been mortified every winter about slipping on ice, or hurting my back shoveling, or having a cardiac episode shoveling. 

I was especially mortified at the prospect of those days that happen every winter when you wake up to go to a critically important appointment only to find that you’re snowed in.  The house in Orchard Lake had a huge driveway and it was a 2 hour operation every time I had to clean it off (and 3 hours to mow the lawn.)  The appeal of the Keego house was its tiny lawn (only 15 minutes to mow) and the very compact 10 foot driveway.  For the first four years, taking care of the place seemed a breeze compared to Erie Drive. But those last three years after I broke my elbow changed all that.  The lawn, porch, sidewalk and drive all seemed massive now and quite burdensome.  So if for no other reason, I now found myself preferring an apartment instead just so that someone else would be taking care of the snow.

It was right after the 4^th of July weekend that I changed my orientation and within a week had identified three places: a complex near Pine Lake, one on Cass, and my current place in Bloomfield Township.  From the outside the place on Cass looked very snazzy, a two bedroom overlooking Cass Lake for $400 less than I was paying in Keego.  The place in Bloomfield looked like a dump.  The constraint on both places was that I couldn’t get an appointment to actually see the unit.  When I saw the one in Bloomfield, on the inside it looked wonderful.  The rent would be the same as Keego.  I made the decision.  Unless the place on Cass was a lot worse than advertised, I would take it.  As luck had it, I gave them a call the minute I left Bloomfield and they said come right over.  But indeed, the 2-bedroom they showed me was not at all as advertised.  On the outside it looked great, on the inside a dump.  It was a lake view all right … a lake view of a marsh!  And the units were shabby … and the rooms so small.  But the deal breaker was that they did not supply laundry facilities.  I would have to buy a washer/dryer and pay not only for it to be installed but for it to be uninstalled and disposed of when I vacated. 

So the gods (or Ruthie and Richie) had directed me to the Devon Square Condominiums in Bloomfield.  As soon as I was in, I knew it was home for me.  Renee, the manager, had wanted me to take a 3-year lease but until I lived there for a while, I insisted on a one-year.  I signed the lease on July 19^th and moved in and slept there for the first time on July 29^th. August 1^st there was still no close on the house so I had at least the entire month of August to empty it and hire a cleaning crew which, fortunately, Renee was able to recommend people to help me with both.  And it took the entire month of August to accomplish these tasks. 

By early September, I knew I wanted to stay here long term and had decided to ask Renee to tear up my one-year lease and give me the three-year.  But before I could get over there, it was right around the 15^th of September that I got a letter in the mail notifying me that the owner of my unit had suddenly passed away so ownership had now been transferred to his daughters and, under Michigan law, when a rental unit changes ownership, the new owner is not obligated to honor the lease.  Yikes!  It had only been six weeks (after nearly a year of stress in moving to this place) and I’m now being told I could be getting another 60-day notice at any time.

After only six weeks, I once again had that very unwelcome axe hanging over my head. The one sister (who lived in the complex next door) assured me they had every intention of honoring the lease until it expired in July and possibly extending it another two years.  The other sister (who lives in Canada) however was reported by her husband that she wanted to unload the place ASAP.  So what am I supposed to think?  They both agreed on one thing.  They were happy to sell me the unit on a land contract.  It would require a 40% down and then the mortgage would be the same as the rent plus $400 for the HOA dues.  Well, there was no way I could afford an additional $400 in housing costs, let alone the 40%, so I had to pass on their “generous” offer.  That was October.  I knew I was likely safe until March – but it was only 5 more months until March.  One thing was certain – I wanted to get these two sisters out of my life. 

I had been thinking of buying my own place for quite a few years but always assumed I couldn’t afford it, and this was only reinforced by every inquiry I had ever made to realtors who either tried to set me up with places that were way out of my budget or opined that, given my financial status, I would never qualify for a mortgage.  Bottom line – keep renting. 

And that was the status quo until one fateful day in February when Renee, out of an abundance of consideration for my stress levels and the fact that I very much wanted to stay in this complex, forced the issue with the sisters and sort of inadvertently set me on the path to home ownership. 

April 15th

                Another tax season has come and gone but this particular one was quite problematic as this was the first tax filing since the new tax law was passed a year ago January.  This new tax bill was lauded as being both a tax break for everyone and much simplified filing forms.  Now that I have been through it, here is my commentary on how the new tax bill worked out for me. 

                But first, we should recall that when it was passed in January 2018, everyone was singing its praises since everyone’s paycheck suddenly got larger.  There was more take home pay for all.  Very few people paid attention to the why, just very happy that it was happening.  But for those who did pay attention, it should be noted that the reason for the bigger paychecks was not because of less taxes but because of less withholding, thereby giving the illusion of a tax break.  The public was warned by those in the know that the withholding requirements had been reduced and that smart people should heed this and increase their withholding if they wish to avoid a surprise tax bill in 2019.  But few people did heed this which is why, come January of this year, one story that has been prominent in the news is how shocked so many people are that they are receiving much lower if any refunds, or even owe tax for the first time in their life.  What, they asked, ever happened to the so-called tax break?

                Well, the tax break was there all along all right but since it was diluted by the decrease in withholding, few people realized that their tax break was part of their increased paychecks and that they were spending it already.  That is why this year saw a dramatic increase in the number of people who had reduced refunds and, worse, an increase in people who discovered they owed. 

                So many relish getting a big fat refund.  They seem to think of it as free money.  They don’t seem to get that it is not free money at all; it is their money that the government has had use of all year and is now returning to you.  They take their fat refunds and buy toys with it, not really getting that withholding is really just a forced savings account.  It’s not a gift, it’s their money.  Ideally, people should be relishing not big refunds but no refunds, as no refund means that you’ve done such a good job estimating your tax that you’ve only given Uncle Sam exactly what is required.  Instead of the government investing the excess and making interest, you can invest the excess and make interest. 

                So that’s the first.  The extra money people were seeing in the checks all throughout 2018 was the tax break and if they spent it rather than banking it, they discovered this tax season that they were getting a much lower refund than usual, or even ended up owing. 

Second, though you can continue to claim your minor children (and in some cases adult children) as tax exemptions (or rather child credits), you can no longer claim yourself or your spouse. 

Third, the 1040 is about half the length that it has been throughout the years.  This again was to lend the illusion that the form had been simplified.  Actually, not!  The two-page traditional form that had been used all these years had a concise listing of all the sources of income and deductible expenses that most people would have.  For those who had more than the usual, there were umpteen more forms for them.  But for the average person, the 1040 was all they needed, plus one additional form for listing extra deductions (called the long form) for those who had legitimate expenses that exceeded the standard deduction.  Most anyone with a successful business would qualify.  For most everyone else, the standard form was fine. 

Here is the problem I discovered with the new shortened 1040.  It did not produce less paperwork.  In fact, it produced more.  All of these income and expense items that used to be on the 1040 were now cleverly relegated to six other forms which now had to be filled out in addition to the new 1040.  These are the new Schedules 1 thru 6 and it was difficult to even figure out where they were or what they were used for without reading the manual pretty closely. 

Case in point:  Capital Gains and Losses.  I was shocked to discover there wasn’t even a line item on the new 1040 for this.  I was wondering if I had missed something.  For as long as I have been alive, the Republicans have been lobbying at every election for a reduction (or even elimination) of the capital gains tax.  Now it was no longer even on the 1040.  Did I miss something in the news?  Did the Republicans finally succeed?  Did the new tax bill eliminate the capital gains tax? 

We wish!  No, it was there all right.  It was hidden very subtly in the subsection under Line 6, Total Income where they reference that you must here add Line 22 from Schedule 1.  What is Schedule 1?  There’s never been a Schedule 1 before, not this kind anyway.  So I discovered that the new Schedule 1 is where all the additional income that is not included in this abbreviated new 1040 must now be accounted for and Capital Gains and Losses can be found on Line 13.  There are five other Schedules for other types of additional income and deductible expenses. 

So this year it took me about five times longer to do my taxes than it usually does because there was a whole new learning curve, a whole new system to master.  Now that I’ve done it, next year will be a snap; but it wasn’t much fun this year. 

The good news, and it’s very good news, is that despite the elimination of the personal deductions, the new standard deduction is considerably higher than before, enough so that for a great many people the long form is no longer necessary which, for them, does make filing a good deal simpler.  This also means that for them and most of the rest of us, the net result was a lower tax, even if it’s a small amount.  (i.e., for 2017 the deduction for a single tax payer was $6,350; for 2018 it is $12,000.) 

This is the wonderful new world of taxes and why most of us must continue to use professionals to prepare our returns though, for the sake of my own education, I have always done my own. 

Afterword: 

There is a mystery concerning capital losses that I have been unsuccessful in solving all these years.  The IRS code clearly states that “a MAXIMUM of $3,000 in capital losses MAY be taken each year.”  In other words, it’s an option, not a requirement.  If there’s no benefit to taking your losses in a given year, you can take them another year.  However, four tax lawyers and accountants I have consulted have told me it’s quite the reverse; that “a MINIMUM of $3,000 in capital losses MUST be taken in a given year.”  It’s a requirement, not an option, regardless of whether there’s a benefit. When I bring it to their attention that the code does not say that, their response is, “That’s not what it says, but that’s what it means.”  When I ask them to send me the part of the code that says that, their response is, “We can’t do that.”  This is one of the reasons I’m studying taxes but, so far, none of the text books I have read have shed any further light on this topic. 

Labor Day

It seems it’s been about 6 months since I’ve been inspired to do a blog post but today, being Labor Day, I’ve been inspired due to my futile efforts to find labor-related movies on TV.  TCM is the only network that’s offering anything appropriate for the holiday and even their three meager offerings (George Clooney’s white collar satire “Up In the Air,” the mockumentary “Roger & Me,” and Arthur Miller’s classic American Dream tragedy “Death of a Salesman”) are all on after midnight so they don’t really count. 

A Bucket of Cold Water In This Age of Ageism

In the past week there has been a major new development in my quest to launch my new career in finance.  You may remember Matt, my broker at Merrill Lynch.  He had been leaving messages for me to review my portfolio but instead I called him a week ago Thursday to get some advice on the CFP.  I was in a state of disbelief over the latest info from Oakland University in which they stated that the program now had a requirement that you had to have both a broker’s license and an insurance license just to get admitted to the classes. 

Losing a $1,000 Bet

Sat 2-3-18

Subj:       Losing a $1,000 Bet

                After my accident last January which subsequently forced me to relinquish my place in the 2017 Certified Financial Planning (CFP) program at Oakland University which started last February, I spent the year with two main objectives – 1) Recover from my injury, 2) Make further preparations to enter the CFP.  The director of the OU program had told me last February that, despite my MBA and 37 years of financial management experience, I was not qualified to enter their program and should pursue my studies at an institution that offered an online self-paced option.  I was really quite put off by this in view of our previous discussions that if I completed the mentorship program which I did from May through September 2016 and then completed a subsequent internship, that I would then be sufficiently qualified. 

                Having completed those requirements with the exception that my mentor had not yet lined me up with an internship, it was with some disappointment and no small amount of disgust to learn that I was still deemed unqualified.  The second big shock came in April when I contacted my mentor to resurrect the search for an internship only to be told that he was leaving the program, leaving Michigan, and leaving his firm of 35 years to pursue “a new chapter in my life” (presumed translation: retirement) in Florida and would no longer be available either to work with me or even advise me. 

                Speak of feeling completely betrayed and abandoned.  I was genuinely counting on OU and that internship program to jumpstart my new career given the difficulties with age discrimination.  I was very much counting on OU to be able to point me towards firms that were actually looking for candidates my age (as I had been assured three years ago when I first became involved in the program) rather than me randomly contacting firms, 100% of which would claim they did not discriminate, 90% of which would discriminate.  I was going to be spinning my wheels a lot unless OU was willing to be an intermediary. 

                So being advised to go to another institution did not go over at all well with me.  I was no longer feeling at all favorable towards OU, in fact very much put off by the fact that I could not get accurate information from anybody there.  I was curious to talk to the director again to find out if I was still a candidate for internship, though I strongly suspected the answer would be no and, even if a yes, also suspected that I would just be given worthless leads without any vetting.  If that were the case, I would be better off just going my own way. 

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                Thus, by the end of the year I had pretty much decided that I would not attempt to return to Oakland University.  I had done a considerable amount of research regarding the online programs and though they looked suitable enough, I was put off by the lack of support they offered.  I am the kind of student who asks a lot of questions.  I was shocked to discover that both of the online schools that OU had recommended had a limit of just three 15-minute phone calls for each course to instructors to ask questions.  That was hardly adequate.  Both in undergraduate and graduate I routinely dropped in on my professors for 10 to 15 minutes before each class session to shoot questions at them, which they were always very happy to answer.  This was in addition to questions asked during class.  And it was this support system for having questions answered that put me on the Dean’s List at BU and the top ten percent of my class at USC. 

Perhaps for the online programs the material would prove to be self-explanatory and the need for questions would not be as crucial as I thought.  Still there was something about them that struck me as deficient so about three weeks ago I began rethinking OU.  After all, it would be providing live instructors to whom I could ask questions and the support of 15 to 20 fellow students with whom I would be sharing the experience for the next 14 months. 

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that it might actually be quite a good investment just to take the first course in February and March and see how it goes.  After all, my main concerns about the program being too intense or that I would find out that I wasn’t good at this stuff or, more to the point, didn’t even like it – all these could be answered very efficiently simply by taking the first course, especially since this year the first course was investments.  Though they did tell me last year that I lacked experience, I was still under the impression that completing the mentor program with a rave recommendation from my mentor solved that.  I even had a letter from the mentor singing my praises and stating his opinion that I would be a great success in the 14-month cohort.  

To find out for sure, it would cost $850 for the course and $150 for the textbooks.  So a gamble of $1,000 could finally set my mind at ease as to whether this was the right path for me.  Best case scenario: it turns out not only to be manageable but great and 14 months from now I become a Certified Financial Planner.  Worst case: it turns out disastrously so for the thousand dollars I get to find out that I belong on a different path; besides which I’ll also learn a lot about investments.  Either way, I win.  A thousand dollars is not a lot of money to get the answers to these crucial questions. 

Having made the decision, I actually for the first time started feeling very excited about starting the investment class on Wednesday.  Sunday night I registered online, paid the tuition and ordered the two textbooks.  On Tuesday, I received a detailed syllabus from the instructor along with the first assignment that would be due already when we come to the first class session on Wednesday.  As of Tuesday, there were 25 students registered for the class.  These were the 25 people I’d be spending the next 14 months with.  It was going to be a good program this year. 

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I’ve mentioned that I spent five months in 2016 taking the introductory course from my mentor.  We covered two very large textbooks in that class which was basically a condensed version of the entire 14 month program which itself is a condensed version of the original two-year program.  It was fascinating and I loved every bit of it except that we were covering 150-200 pages of technical material for each 45 minute session.  This was very intense, there was only time for one or two questions (when I had a dozen or more) and scarcely time to do any more than the most superficial overview of the material.  What’s more is that there was an exam at the beginning of each session on the material that was assigned but not yet covered.  The exam was very detailed so it was quite necessary to study all 200 pages very thoroughly to pass the exam; and did I mention that we were under threat of expulsion if we failed two exams?  Thus there was a certain amount of stress in each session.   (Now I know I need not have had any stress at all for now I know it would have not made a bit of difference.  They never had any intention of admitting me to the program.) 

But Tom, my mentor and instructor, was very amiable towards me; I got the impression very quickly that he was only looking for evidence of a commitment and that I would be passing as long as I was making an effort.  Besides, the only real objective was to pass the course as a prerequisite for acceptance to the intern program.  I could tough it out for five months to get into that program. 

Tom also assured me that the regular academic program would not be nearly as rigorous or intense, that we would be covering far less material for each session, the sessions would be 3 hours long and there would be ample time for questions.  Thus I was shocked last February when I signed up for the taxation class only to receive a textbook that was 1600 pages long (plus 1200 more pages of supplemental material) and a syllabus that had us covering about 300 pages per week.  Covering so much in so little time, the instructor was also quite candid with me that there would be little time for questions.  It appeared I had once again been given bum information.  The regular program was going to be even more intense than the introductory course.   

When on this past Tuesday I saw the preview of the investments textbook and received the course syllabus, I was quite relieved.  The book was only about 400 pages long and per the syllabus we would be assigned about 40 pages per week.  That seemed quite manageable.  In the intro course, we were assigned between 100 and 200 problems to do for each session.  For this course, we were being assigned about 30 problems each week.  That seemed entirely manageable. 

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Then, on Wednesday, the tables were rather abruptly turned.  I received an email from the program director who noted that she had seen my name on the registration list and was now telling me in very direct language that I was not qualified for the program.  When I first inquired five years ago, a high school diploma and working towards a bachelor’s was all that was required for admission.  Three years ago they were now recommending (but not requiring) two years of experience in the financial services industry for admission.  Two years ago it became more of a requirement but the intro course and internship was touted as a suitable substitute for the two years of experience.  Last year they made clear that they did not consider my successful completion of the intro course to be adequate preparation; but they also said that there were students in the program that also did not have experience and, though they were struggling much harder than the professionals, they were at least allowed to be in and complete the program. 

Wednesday’s email from the director stated a very different scenario.  Now they are saying that the candidates are expected to already have both insurance and stock broker’s licenses.  You are expected to already know how to analyze and select securities for your clients.  There is another item of curiosity in their statement that “students are required to be active in the industry and planning to challenge the CFP Examination.”  I don’t know what they mean by “challenge the exam” but the Financial Planning Association of America, the national governing body that oversees all the CFP curricula and credentialing, also uses that term but with a very specific definition.  To the FPA, “challenge” means petitioning the FPA to demonstrate that you are soooo knowledgeable in the topics that you can be excused from taking the national exam.  Is that what the OU CFP has evolved into, a program that will allow candidates to qualify to be exempted from taking the national exam?  Thus, I am being warned that if I insist on joining the program and taking the investments class that they will be watching me to see if I am able to keep up and, if they determine I am not, they will be expelling me.  No refunds. 

Needless to say, all the ill will I had been feeling towards Oakland University throughout last year was now back with a vengeance.  On Wednesday I sent a letter to the instructor pleading my case, summarizing my very extensive background in finance, and asking him directly if I will be allowed to take his class.  Since the director has already stated her position, I doubt this instructor will go against it.  He has not yet replied.   

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Given this rather untidy reception, I have decided to withdraw from the program as I see no rationale for staying where I am not wanted.  So I have lost this thousand dollar bet as I will not be getting an answer to my concerns about whether I belong in this profession.  However, all is not lost.  I will be getting a refund of the $850 tuition and I could also be getting a refund for the textbooks except that, for the relatively modest $150 investment, I think I will keep the textbooks.  I have the course syllabus; I can teach myself the course.  I think by the time I finish with these books I will know whether this is what I want to do. 

Instead of gambling a thousand dollars, I will only be gambling $150 dollars.  If the answer is yes (and I very much suspect it will be), the online courses are suddenly looking much better.  In fact Boston University has a CFP program that is only $800 dollars more than OU, offers the option of both online study and to Skype live classes, you get four months to complete each course (though since it is self-paced, you can complete them sooner), access to instructors for asking questions, and a database of thousands of practice questions to help prepare for the national exam.  The American College also has an impressive program but it is about $1500 more than BU. 

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I’m no longer waiting on Oakland.  I’m taking the bull by the horns and moving forward.  So these past couple of days I’ve formulated a new plan.  First, take the next couple months to teach myself the investments course.  If that goes well, I will immediately sign up to take the online IRS courses to become a tax preparer.  There are three courses, each requires about 70 hours of online study after which you go to a testing center to complete a 3-hour exam.  You can take all three courses at once or one at a time.   Once I’ve completed the three courses and three exams, I will start work as a tax preparer whilst I begin the online CFP. 

Two years as a tax preparer is considered eligible experience for receiving the CFP credential.  Taxes are something I’m very comfortable with.  It is a rules-based profession where you are applying the book to client problems, calculating the numbers and entering them onto spreadsheets and forms.  This is what I did for 8 years as a financial analyst in aerospace.  This is what I have done for 37 years managing finances in my other enterprises. 

After that, there are any number of additional online tax courses and finance licenses I can test for to elevate my expertise and qualify for even better professional positions.  OU has done me a considerable service by kicking me to the curb where I must now go off on my own, something I probably should have done three years ago except that I had no idea that they would not deliver on a single promise they had made. 

And this business of needing both a license to sell insurance and a stock broker’s license just to be admitted to the CFP is really quite ridiculous.  What is the point of the classes if you’re expected to already know all this stuff?  I know a ton of financial professionals and nearly all of them have one or the other but very few have both.  If you’re going to be an insurance agent, why would you need a stock broker’s license?  If you’re going to sell stocks, why would you need an insurance license?  This is just another example of OU feeding me bum information. 

But I don’t regret it.  I learned a ton from Tom in the intro course and because of the accident I really wasn’t in a position to do much of anything last year anyway.  I will run with this under my own power and I may even get there in better shape than the OU route.  As for the age discrimination, I’m going to deal with that the same way I have dealt with every other challenge in my lifetime.  You put one foot in front of the other and just keep going until you accomplish the objective. 

The OU program begins Wednesday.  Wouldn’t it be interesting if I manage to complete my studies before they wrap up in March of next year?  It will be one step at a time. 

Addendum:           Sunday 2-4-18

                I have now received the email from the investments course instructor.  It was very amiably worded but as I suspected he took the same position as the director.  The final line said it all:  “It is advised that you do not take this program as you do not meet the requirements.”  Boston, here I come!