#anyway. just doing budgeting and updating my spreadsheets

[reikunrei]

you know what’s kinda pathetic? my dad taking over $10.5k from my savings account lol

[fiercynn]

i appreciate the update on the paid staff transition officer, thank you. two years between brainstorming the role and appointing it is still pretty long – they did manage to appoint the diversity research officer, brainstormed at the same meaning, a year earlier. (even that was pretty long to, again, appoint a volunteer to start working on researching something.) without any urgency around appointing even the volunteer, it's not a terribly compelling argument for why anyone should be giving them money right now, when they have this surplus to get started on that with

i've replied to so many different versions of this post that i don't know what masterpost you're talking about that i linked to, and tbh, i'm going to stop responding to reblogs of this post soon because i've spent far too much of my limited energy on this topic, but i'll at least give you my reactions to the reddit post: essentially, this post is also two years old and basically just says what i shared from the otw finance q&a, which was later that same year? but okay, let's break down what it says:

Most NPOs have a goal of having at least one year's reserve in accessible funds, either cash-on-hand or short-term access. In fact, if you go to charity evaluation websites, that's usually the basis of any sort of "fiscal health" attribute.

yes, i said that nonprofits typically have between 6 months and 2 years of operating expenses on hand. otw's 2023 operating expenses were $577,774 and their surplus (again, i'm only counting their actual reserves, not what they transferred out of reserves to use in 2024) at the beginning of this year were $2,798,530.

that's 4.84 years worth of operating expenses. (and because their operating expenses have been rising gradually along with their surplus, there's actually been a pretty similar ratio for years)

Since the Spring 2020 Drive, we have been artificially deflating the hell out of our goals, because everyone's mentally, socially, and fiscally stressed. We keep having the drives to keep the pattern up, but we have the aforementioned reserves, so we don't have to push.

true, but lowering their goals has not resulted in a meaningful reduction of the amount they raise in their biannual drives. here are their goals for their spring and fall fundraisers vs the actual totals since 2017 (yes i did go look at all their budget spreadsheets to put this together lol):

them raising under $100k in fall 2020 is an outlier, because it was 2020, but it’s worth noting that their spring fundraiser that year was massive so fall would not have put them into any dire straits, especially since they still out-raised their goal

also, it's not "artificially deflating" their goals if they don't need the money??? i'm very curious as to what goes into setting their goals, because typically you set your goals based on looking at what you have currently, and what you expect to have to spend in the future (including, yes, some prudent amount for reserves and emergencies and some amount for concrete long-term projects, but generally not five years of operating expenses' worth), and your fundraising goal should be the difference between them. given how much money they have, their goals should be low because they don't need to raise much more for their budgeted expenses. that's not artificial, that's just how budgeting works?

anyway, it's pretty clear that the little ao3 fundraiser banner itself does enough to galvanize people into donating at these levels regardless of the stated goal. if they truly wanted to keep people from donating money that they won't use, they have lots of options: they could lower membership dues (actually, early on in the organization there was discussion about not having a membership fee at all, they were just so worried about financial health at that point that they instituted it, but they are far past the point where that's necessary), or stop doing the drives and just rely on the donations they get the rest of the year (which are pretty high themselves, i think usually around $200k), or, you know, be transparent about their surplus

As someone mentioned, while the AO3 is one of the recipients, the other functions within the OTW do get some of the donation.

that’s relevant to the reddit question but in all my posts i have been discussing otw’s full expenses, not just ao3’s, so skipping this one

New servers are not cheap. I have fingers crossed on both hands and am knocking on wood as I say this, but gods forbid if we have enough infrastructure go down that we need to rush order a server? During the current semiconductor shortage? Even without speaking the evil into existence, site growth means that we'll consistently need more servers, not just replacements. And that's before considering space- and bandwidth-heavy cases like a/v hosting, which will require massively more front- and back-end server capacity.

yes, i did mention that they wanted to keep 25% of their reserves on hand for emergencies including potential server failure. as for future servers, they budget for server replacements by line item in the budgets they publish on their site, so why wouldn’t they be transparent about money that they're saving for future servers in their actual budgets? they can have line items for long-term projects…but they don’t. they hide this away in the surplus that they don't list on their budgets

In theory, we'd like to have more cash-on-hand for some various tasks where volunteering is nice, but it helps to pay people - whether that's throwing one or two or ten design spec sheets at a coding contractor to do heavy lifting, or being able to continue to pay for semi-regular audits (see also fiscal responsibility), an actual HR consultant of some sort, or getting a diversity consultant in who can work with the wacky Org structure.

yes, i mentioned the 50% for paid staff. again, not having meaningful change on this in multiple years while they still have this huge surplus means there’s no reason to donate until they have at least started hiring those staff

Long term, Fincom wants to roll some of the reserves into something that will happily generate interest - again, fiscal stability in case 2020 rolls around again.

but i thought nonprofits didn’t invest? lol. anyway, given that in 2022 they only had a net transfer of $10 into their one existing interest-bearing account, i'm pretty sure this isn’t normal accounting for when you plan to try and generate interest for your long-term fiscal stability

my biggest question honestly, because i don't really expect competence from them, is why they aren't at least more transparent about all of this. it shouldn't take having to dig through reddit posts, twitter threads, and their financial documents to find this information. now that they publish a comprehensive budget spreadsheet every year and biannual updates, why aren't they including their surplus in those spreadsheets and naming what it's for? that way people can track whether they've made any progress on those items or not and hold them accountable to it. of course, that would also involve them actually responding to the emails that they told people to send the fincom if we had questions, or holding their finance q&a meeting in a year like 2023 when they knew they were under increased scrutiny... 🤷🏾‍♀️

on ao3's current fundraiser

apparently it’s time for ao3’s biannual donation drive, which means it’s time for me to remind you all, that regardless of how much you love ao3, you shouldn’t donate to them because they HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY AND NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH IT.

we’ve known for years that ao3 – or, more specifically, the organization for transformative works (@transformativeworks on tumblr), or otw, who runs ao3 and other fandom projects – has a lot of money in their “reserves” that they had no plans for. but in 2023, @manogirl and i did some research on this, and now, after looking at their more recent financial statements, i’ve determined that at the beginning of 2024, they had almost $2.8 MILLION US DOLLARS IN SURPLUS.

our full post last year goes over the principles of how we determined this, even though the numbers are for 2023, but the key points still stand (with the updated numbers):

when we say “surplus”, we are not including money that they estimate they need to spend in 2024 for their regular expenses. just the extra that they have no plan for

yes, nonprofits do need to keep some money in reserves for emergencies; typically, nonprofits registered in the u.s. tend to keep enough to cover between six months and two years of their regular operating expenses (meaning, the rough amount they need each month to keep their services going). $2.8 million USD is enough to keep otw running for almost FIVE YEARS WITHOUT NEW DONATIONS

they always overshoot their fundraisers: as i’m posting this, they’ve already raised $104,751.62 USD from their current donation drive, which is over double what they’ve asked for! on day two of the fundraiser!!

no, we are not trying to claim they are embezzling this money or that it is a scam. we believe they are just super incompetent with their money. case in point: that surplus that they have? only earned them $146 USD in interest in 2022, because only about $10,000 USD of their money invested in an interest-bearing account. that’s the interest they earn off of MILLIONS. at the very least they should be using this extra money to generate new revenue – which would also help with their long-term financial security – but they can’t even do that

no, they do not need this money to use if they are sued. you can read more about this in the full post, but essentially, they get most of their legal services donated, and they have not, themselves, said this money is for that purpose

i'm not going to go through my process for determining the updated 2024 numbers because i want to get this post out quickly, and otw actually had not updated the sources i needed to get these numbers until the last couple days (seriously, i've been checking), but you can easily recreate the process that @manogirl and i outlined last year with these documents:

otw’s 2022 audited financial statement, to determine how much money they had at the end of 2022

otw’s 2024 budget spreadsheet, to determine their net income in 2023 and how much they transferred to and from reserves at the beginning of 2024

otw’s 2022 form 990 (also available on propublica), which is a tax document, and shows how much interest they earned in 2022 (search “interest” and you’ll find it in several places)  

also, otw has not been accountable to answering questions about their surplus. typically, they hold a public meeting with their finance committee every year in september or october so people can ask questions directly to their treasurer and other committee members; as you can imagine, after doing this deep dive last summer, i was looking forward to getting some answers at that meeting!

but they cancelled that meeting in 2023, and instead asked people to write to the finance committee through their contact us form online. fun fact: i wrote a one-line message to the finance committee on may 11, 2023 through that form, when @manogirl and i were doing this research, asking them for clarification on how much they have in their reserves. i have still not received a response.

so yeah. please spend your money on people who actually need it, like on mutual aid requests! anyone who wants to share their mutual aid requests, please do so in the replies and i’ll share them out – i didn’t want to link directly to individual requests without permission in case this leads to anyone getting harassed, but i would love to share your requests. to start with, here's operation olive branch and their ongoing spreadsheet sharing palestinian folks who need money to escape genocide.

oh, and if you want to write to otw and tell them why you are not donating, i'm not sure it’ll get any results, but it can’t hurt lol. here's their contact us form – just don’t expect a response! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[callioope]

I said I was going to post about my fencing experience but then life got in the way, I finally drafted up a whole thing, and then I just lost it all (thanks tumblr!) I sometimes run into a bug where if I resize my browser window, tumblr just loses my post. :;aksd;fajs;dfja;sdf

I don't know if I have the desire or time to write all that again tonight, so my recap will have to wait again.

But like. The brief summary is:

it's been fifteen years since I fenced

I had anxiety looking for a new place (I moved states since I last fenced, and I had some poor experiences with other coaches back in the day when I used to fence)

I did SO MUCH research to find a new place (yep I have a spreadsheet)

I settled on a place that was decently close (20ish minutes), had good recommendations, and had a schedule that worked for me

I was SO NERVOUS leading up to it because still not over COVID and being around strangers indoors, and I haven't fenced in FIFTEEN YEARS, and my equipment is also very old

I was definitely super awkward because how do you interact with people in person again?

Everyone was so nice and welcoming

Being on the fencing strip! Holding the sword! the way the rest of the world fades away when you put on your fencing mask! AHHH!!!

I was so overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions

like, i haven't accessed this knowledge in fifteen years! and i have 6 years worth of training! it was like information overload

But i was fencing again!!!!

It was surreal, absolutely surreal

I managed to even get a few touches on my opponents, but honestly also they probably got cheated out of a few touches against me because of my equipment being old

Like apparently they have new chest protectors now

because they updated some rules about the length of time the tip of the blade has to be pressed to count as a touch and the old chest protectors could sorta mess with the timing

kind of like the blade just glanced off when really it should have hit

But anyways! i scored! i didn't get steam rolled!

and they were like "hope to see you next week"

I was also like internally like "omg i hope i did not accidentally make any etiquette faux pas bc i wouldn't know it's been so long ahhh"

they run classes differently than my old coach but that's not a bad thing, actually probably makes more sense for what i'm looking for these days

the only thing is that they are the most expensive club around as far as i can tell

my spouse really wants me to try at least one other place but maybe two

this gives me anxiety bc like, i did the research up front! i did!

and also like, this place went well, i have already imprinted on it and feel a sense of loyalty, stupid i know but i'm weird like that

also trying new places means i have to meet a bunch of new people all over again, overwhelming

but like the cost is a factor sigh

so anyways, i will not be going back to the same place THIS WEEKEND, and actually, I'm really sad about it :/ which i think says a lot

hopefully tho i can go through the motions of trying other places and cutting some other costs to make room in the budget so i can keep going to this place

[keltonwrites]

I bought a house in the middle of nowhere

“Yeah, I loved it, but she’d never move there.” It was something akin to that, at least. He didn’t mean any mischief, no deceit or planning. It was an honest take on what, at the time, was true. I saw the road into town on Google Maps, noted that it was closed during the winter, acknowledged the reality that a person can own a snowmobile, and I said, “we are not moving there.” But, all good truths are just dares in the making.

And here I am, living in the “there” I said I would not. Two years ago, I left my job at Headspace for a life reset. It was pre-pandemic, and Ben and I were planning a big road trip. Our perfect paradise in Topanga, CA, had crystallized itself as many people’s perfect paradise, and those “many people” all had more money than us. Our options to buy a home were nil, and home-buying was essentially all we wanted. Ben’s a builder and I’m a world builder, and we wanted somewhere to invest that didn’t belong to someone else. We packed the car with the tent and the bikes and the dog and all the things that come with tents and bikes and dogs, and off we went on our own Tour de l’Ouest, looking for a place to call home. We knew what we wanted, knew our odds of finding it, and hit the road anyway. Here was the dream list — concocted by two pie-in-the-sky dummies who married each other:

Not rainy or consistently windy

Notable access to the arts

Remote and challenging to get to/close neighbors

Wild West influenced architecture

Progressive community

Exceptional trail access out the front door

High-speed internet

In our budget

And my personal favorite: had to “feel right” Good luck to us with a list like that, but thus began our hunt. We camped in the snow, tried every dirty chai in the Rockies, and explored every town we could. Whatever a good time it was, it felt useless. Every town Ben was OK with, I hated. Every town I was OK with, Ben despised. And the few places we both loved required money we just didn’t have. We came home with our sails down, limping into the harbor of our rental. But as is the way with romantics, our dreams began to slowly eclipse our reality. Books fell victim to Zillow and Trulia. TV was replaced by the MLS. All writing time was dedicated to Realtor.com. Hours were spent pouring over maps, county records, and updating spreadsheets that tracked price per square foot compared to beds and baths. Over time, all that internetting led to one singular town of 180 people at 10,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado with a road that said “Closed Winters” on Google Maps. Look, I don’t know what happened. Ben found this town on a map, I said don’t be ridiculous, and after a year or so of him telling people I'd never move here, here I am, being ridiculous. Was it reverse psychology? Maybe. Was it the charming “town plan” that mandated all houses be rustic cabins and forbade AirBnB? Could be. Was it the fact that when I looked at Strava’s Heatmap, it showed what seemed like thousands of miles of trails just out the front door? I mean, yes. All these things played a part, but all I know for certain is that one day I woke up and said, “we’re going to move there.” Ben doubted this conviction (and the realities behind it) thus cementing it into place in my head. In a town of 180 people there’s only ~60 houses, which means maybe 2 or 3 get listed per year — but my spreadsheet had the proof: we hadn’t missed our chance yet in this tiny town. The data showed a strong likelihood there would be at least two houses listed within the calendar year. This, however, was also our last chance. The spreadsheet also showed that if we didn’t find a house this year, we wouldn’t be able to afford one the next. We called a realtor, made our case, and harangued her until she believed us that we were truly the kind of yahoos who would move to an avalanche field and stay there. And then it happened. A pocket listing. It was a darling home built in 1890. It had the beds, the baths, and the views. We were the first and only to know. We put in an offer, they agreed, and we would come to see the house in a few weeks. But in those few weeks, the circumstances changed. The sellers lost their own sweet deal, and they couldn’t sell yet. Their agent promised we had right of first refusal, it was only a matter of time. Ben lamented, I preached patience, and we went to see the house that was no longer for sale anyway.

It was a quiet winter morning in Covid when we drove across the packed snow to meet our realtor outside the house. The sun was out and the 13 degrees Fahrenheit felt warm. I unzipped my jacket, mask on my face. I took long videos and talked about where I would set up my office and where we’d put the bikes. As we closed up and I settled into a future where this house would eventually be mine, our realtor told us there were comps in the area — other residents quietly interested in potentially closing out. Would we like to see them? Sure, let’s.

One home came with an incredible commercial kitchen. The whole house was a whopping 3500 sq ft if my memory serves me correct, which falls under the category of “houses too big to find your cat in."

Another home had an open-air-to-the-kitchen bathroom.

The third was dark and overpriced with cracked windows and open beer cans scattered about.

And then, plans changed.  “Hey guys, there’s actually one more house we can see.” The last house we saw was a log cabin, nestled in the hillside by itself, with massive A-frame windows looking out onto the peaks beyond. Inside was a labyrinth of a life lived long and large. The cabin was built and loved by a man we’ll call Jack. Jack was 82, and as we walked toward the front door on that sunny winter morning, he exited with two beers in his pockets, headed to the mountain to ski. Jack was an attorney — in his life he’d been both criminal and defender — and from the stories, somewhat interchangeably. There were artifacts from running in the same scenes as Hunter S. Thompson and Willie Nelson; there were stuffed birds, bad books, sheet-covered couches, smoked spliffs, and piles and piles of mouse shit. Every inch of the house was lived in, and not just by people. You think millennials like plants? No. This man likes plants. The biggest monstera deliciosa I’ve ever seen, spanning some 10 feet wide and 15 feet tall. Draping cactuses, spider plants, massive aloes, and an ambitious hoya carnosa clawing its way to the top of the massive fireplace. But there were problems. I’m trying to be diplomatic saying the house was lived in. The wood by the door handles was dyed black from years of hand grease rubbing against it. The carpet in the upstairs was soiled almost everywhere with bat scat. Newspaper was stuffed between the massive logs to keep the wind out. There was cardboard taped over almost every window, blankets nailed over the others. Half the doors wouldn’t open. It was unnerving to touch the crusted light switches. It was early enough in the season of Covid-fear that touching anything felt like gambling. On our way back to our rental in the bigger neighboring town, we shared our awe and our no-ways, lamenting how long we’d have to wait for the little 1890s fixer upper. That night, I sent the video I took of the cabin to my parents. “Can you believe this?” I asked. And do you know what my dad said? “Great log construction.” After that, the cabin was all we could talk about. “Could you believe those plants?” “Did you see how big those logs were?” “I just googled Jack, look at this.” “Do you know what the insulating factor of logs is?” “How much did he say he was asking?” It came down to the plants. Amidst all the chaos in that house, the tender care of those decades-old plants sung the clearest. This wasn’t just a place Jack lived in, it was a place that wanted to be lived in. We made an offer the next day.

Jack had six months to clear out his 30 odd years of collecting, and the town had six months to speculate about the worrisome Californians moving to their high-altitude, high-risk town. The town itself is an old mining town. It rests in a high valley, surrounded by peaks over 13,000ft, and is over six hours from the nearest major airport. Five people died around this town in avalanches this past year. The dirt road into town is littered with avalanche fields, warning visitors to not stop when driving in. The other way out is a pass road, only drivable in the warm months, but you could skin out if it was dire. Most August days, the high is in the mid-60s. The valley is blanketed in wildflowers, and the aspens littering the mountainsides suggest a promising fall display. The town had a heyday, a low day, and now it’s a community of preppers, adventurers, appreciators, and “get all these idiots away from me”ers. We don’t know these people yet, but the ones we’ve met have the same like to live hard attitude we do. Heli-ski guides, ex-CIA agents, woodworkers, bakers, teachers, just a general can-do group of people. The kind of people that see a California license plate and peer with skepticism between the thin gap over their sunglasses and under their caps.

You might say I’m romanticizing the place, but the residents are worse. Like all good old-timers, they’re full of threats: “wait’ll you see the snow drifts,” “let’s see how you do outrunning an avalanche,” “good luck with the winds,” “the last Californians didn’t last a year.” God, what does that remind me of?

“Yeah, I loved it, but she’d never move there.”

With every taunt, my teeth ground more enamel, fingers rolling into a clench. And maybe Jack recognized this intensity, because on the day of closing, he hosted a gathering for us in the town's open space. He had us introduce ourselves to the skeptical locals, and I made my case in court, eyes narrowed and lips curled. “I’m the daughter of a smokejumper and wildlife biologist. I grew up watching the wind and the door. I’ve lived in big cities, small boats, and more than one cabin. I always take the stairs, I never use air-conditioning, and I’m a very good shot.” I’m just a girl, standing in front of a town, asking them to give her a fucking chance. Jack stepped forward to speak. “You know, I had my doubts about a couple Californians coming to look at my house. But these people? These are the nicest people you’re ever gonna meet.” And then I helped Jack set up his cot so he could spend his last night under the stars in the town that kept him young. Cooper ran circles with the other dogs. People brought homemade cocktails and bowls of dip and we felt welcomed. Even the mayor, a fellow writer, came and she struck up a conversation. “I hear you’ve got a little bit of a following on social media!” She teased. “I guess, nothing wild.” “Well I just wanted to let you know if you ever geotag this town, I’ll drag you out of it.” She grinned. This was a special place. And every visitor who couldn’t handle the realities of being here threatened the very wellbeing of the people who lived here. This town survives on a delicate balance. They source their own water, manage their own roads, and fervently protect the land and the people around them. Their stories about racing avalanches, snowmobiling in the dark of night to the doctor’s house, hunkering down in each other’s homes as the storms pass — these stories were bylaws. You can join when you’ve proven you’re ready to join. By their own projection, they are hardy and steadfast people, and when they see a Californian, they see something fleeting. Many years ago, I worked in the British Virgin Islands. The people born and raised there were called Belongers. At the customs office, the placards above the lines literally read, “If you belong, stand here” and “If you do not belong, stand here.” Whether or not we belong isn't up to the town council, and it's not up to these residents. It's up to years spent drifting my old Mustang in the snow on the way to school, up to Ben's months and months spent in the backcountry, up to my years of reading fire reports and assisting with evacuations, up to Ben's ability to read the landscape and the weather, up to my doggedness, his diligence, and our pathological love to do difficult things well. It’s up to us, to these old logs, and to this valley. Doesn't mean we'll belong, but it does mean we'll try. And for the record, the road is open in the winter. But do these sound like the kind of people who’d tell Google that? Next week, a tour of the house that we get to call ours — stuffed with newspaper, run by plants, and filled with mice. P.S. Here's where we get our mail.

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[thescentoflavender]

Hi! Now that season 2 of mlqc got released what really happened with the boys? I heard it got really angsty and the boys’ personality changed. And MC’s too. Thank you for your answer 😊

This answer covers everything from Season 1, Chapter 37 to the end of Season 2, Chapter 1 (i.e. where the latest update ends.)

Spoilers abound; read at your own risk. 

Hello! EVERYTHING CHANGED. The second season is like a soft reboot of MLQC. Emphasis on the word “like”. It’s definitely related to the first season, but it’s still a mystery as to how. 

Anyway, before you get to unlock the second season, there’s Chapter 37 to “finish off” the first season. You know how there’s all that talk about how Judgment Day is coming? The angsty bit comes when the guys bid farewell to MC, who then leaves to save the world.

What happens next is a bit of a mind-boggler. 

MC goes back seventeen years in the past and becomes her younger five-year-old self. She meets the four younger guys, changes history, and waits another seventeen years...

And then we have MC back as a 22-year-old, in the New World.

Introducing:

MC as a well-respected producer and Nox in BLACK SWAN. 

Li Zeyan as the boss of BLACK SWAN and CEO of Huarui 

Bai Qi as the head of the Special Forces

Xu Mo as the head consultant of the Special Forces, the head of the Highest Life Research Centre, and the Adjunct Lecturer at Loveland University

Zhou Qiluo as a pop star under MC’s company and Helios (affinity currently unknown)

Ling Xiao as ???

I won’t comment on their their personalities, because it’s rather hard to tell from a single chapter. 

---

Brief summary of Season 2, Chapter 1:

Zhou Qiluo gets into trouble because he’s a suspect in an Evolver-related crime. MC is busy fighting fires in the media, and then she goes to see Li Zeyan in BLACK SWAN. MC promises to persuade the Special Forces to stop snooping around in their business.

MC proceeds to head to the Special Forces to see Xu Mo. She doesn’t have a permit to enter the Special Forces building, but because she swiped Xu Mo’s pass from him the last time, she manages to get in anyway. She sneaks into Xu Mo’s office and starts rifling through the documents on his desk, but doesn’t learn anything new because two other officers come in just then. They gossip about how Xu Mo is close to BLACK SWAN and one girl (MC) in particular. Xu Mo then comes in, and MC takes the opportunity to persuade him to collaborate with BLACK SWAN. Xu Mo refuses. 

“If you’re going to replace an excuse with another, you need a new one.”

MC leaves, and nearly bumps into one of the officers who went into Xu Mo’s office earlier. She uses her new Evol, mind control, to get him to forget that she was ever here. 

Then she bumps into Bai Qi, who brings her in for questioning. He doesn’t quite believe her story that she’s a reporter, and scissors her arms behind her during his “interrogation”. He lets MC go in the end, though. When Gu Zheng (EN name Eli) laughs at him about it, he brushes it aside. It’s hinted that he accepted this job to find MC.

MC goes on to resolve the issues surrounding Zhou Qiluo’s Evolver identity. Much like in the first season, she meets him by chance in a convenience store.

“Wow, my favourite flavour!”

MC goes home and sees Ling Xiao on her couch. He broke into her house for unmentioned reasons. As ever, Ling Xiao remains an enigma.

There’s also a scene with Helios but there’s nothing much there so I’ll recap it another time.

END OF CHAPTER 1

---

P.S. I hope this is intelligible haha. I’m just doing it before my bedtime, and I’m still so overwhelmed from calculating which sets I should buy to get all the top-up karmas + doing pulls in the event + marathoning the entire two chapters. I kid you not, I actually created an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the most value-for-money sets and see whether it was within my budget etc. That, and I was literally hugging my calculator to me as I was doing gacha pulls. 

P.P.S. I will answer your other question...some time. I need to figure some stuff in the game out first, especially the karma stats and values, whether it’s worth it etc., and I might compile the stats for this gacha event on the side. 

[cosmotropic]

For transparency's sake, its been a number of things blocking me from completing it as I'd like. First and foremost is that my desktop is out of commission--it needs a new graphics card--and my laptop and tablet arent as equipped as I need to work at full capacity, at least consistent with the style i built up. On top of that, many of the files I had completed are on the desktop, and I have no way of accessing them.

Now, on top of this, my student account for Adobe ended, and I'm quite broke from a more than 30% price hike on our electric bill, as well as a number of health bills and student loan payments coming up. These expenses also mean my backup subscription service is down. Heck, even if i scrapped together the money for the backup, the date it last updated appears to be just a couple days after the files I do have, and I doubt would help much. I'm okay financially, no bills to pay, so I'd really rather not ask for assistance.

As it is, I spent most of the last week trying to track down backups of the files, but all I can find are incomplete versions. I'm trying to get them back up to where I had them, but its also hard to get time to get that done between my day job, which I'm taking overtime in to try and make up the financial difference. I'll also admit that its hard to get the motivation to do them, considering the pages are sitting there complete on my desktop, inaccessible. I'm kinda hoping I can get ahead of my finances a bit (I did a budget spreadsheet update, if I'm careful I should be okay within two months), but until then I'm gonna be lagging.

Anyways. I'm sorry that this is all happening as I was trying to debut my webcomic to everyone. Its quite embarrassing.

Yeah I'm gonna have to rearrange the Psychadelta 2000 release schedule. Sorry folks, sounds like it was a bit too ambitious of me to do two pages a week, especially with a few unexpected wrenches thrown into the works. I'm gonna start releasing new pages again ASAP!!!

[drunkkenobi]

As promised, I come bearing a spreadsheet update on this Monday! Some exciting news in here and also some stats that are more puzzling to me.

The newest episode of Puppet History, The Dancing Plague, is easily their best performing video thus far. I clocked it at 435k views this morning and it’s already up to 439k now. It trended Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This is fantastic and well-deserved.

PH remains their best performing show* overall. The first episode hit 1 million views last week and the series totals over 3 million views with just 4 episodes (and one of those newly released). It has the highest per average views over the first 3 episodes (and still with the newest one added but I did it with 3 since every show has 3)

*Shows considered for this are Puppet History, Homemade, Spooky Small Talk, Weird and/or Wonderful World, Grocery Run, and Top 5 Beatdown. Watcher Weekly and SD&D&D are kind of their own things and Making Watcher and Tourist Trapped just have 1 episode each.

Tourist Trapped is on track to be their next 1 million views video, though, so get on it! 

Homemade has consistently been one of the more interesting shows for me to track. It doesn’t historically do well its first week, but consistently does well in its second. Food Youtube seems to be its own thing and I wonder if its success comes from the concept and less from Steven as a presence (whereas I think most of Ryan and Shane’s shows benefit from them being them.) Not knocking Steven, of course, but again, food Youtube is even more of an enigma to me. Anyway, I was super pleased to see the newest one, about pho, have a stellar second week last week, tripling it’s first week numbers. It’s reached 300k faster than the two episodes that came before it.

I think it’s too early to tell if SD&D&D will return for a second season. I think part of it will come down to this ol’ wacky world we’re living in and if they need the content, but I wouldn’t expect it for awhile. It’s numbers average out to ~102k per episode, but D&D stuff can be slow growers, too. Even if we don’t, I think it was a cute, low-budget way to have some quarantine fun. I’m interested to see how their other quarantine shows that they’ve teased do to compare.

The newest episode of Weird and/or Wonderful World, where Shane takes Ryan to the Independent Shakespeare Company and experiences an entire feeling, has not had quite the numbers that the first two WAOWW’s have had and I’m not sure why. They dance! They try to act! The owners and actors at the theater are very funny and charismatic! C’mon algorithm, pick this one up.

I also wish I understood why Grocery Run has had such a hard time finding its footing. The Shib Sibs are people my mom knows so they have name recognition and the episode was a very cute and fun. Plus, the videos are short and breezy. Disappointing it’s not doing better.

Before this very good weekend, Watcher had had a couple slow weeks so I’m extra glad that Puppet History did so well. With their pilot season coming to a close in June (we only have new episodes of SST, Grocery Run, and WAOWW left), I’m eagerly awaiting what comes next. Obviously, the world is on fire and they didn’t get to spend this spring filming when they were planning to, but they did get some of a new season of WAOWW filmed before quarantine times so I wonder if we’ll see that next. Or maybe one of these shows they’ve been teasing during Watcher Weekly. Or maybe something else! It’s so hard to tell with them.

Finally, please subscribe to Watcher Podcasts! I’m not going to track these because those views seems arbitrary compared to the regular channel and because podcasts can be found so many places. But I do like watching the videos because Ryan Bergara remains one of the lucky few on earth who looks good laying down. 

That’s all I’ve got this time. As always, my ask box is open for any questions or people who are better at stats than me. 

[wingtrap]

SPN Stay at Home: Gentleman

“Why don’t you talk to that neighbour of yours? He was such a gentleman when I spoke to him,” says Mary.

Dean rolls his eyes. “I’m not that bored,” he says. One week isolated and his only hope for actual social interaction is apparently his stuck-up, grumpy neighbour.

“Well, I don’t know what you expect me to say then,” says Mary. “He was perfectly nice to me. It wouldn’t kill you to say hello.”

“He moves two boxes for you and you think he’s an angel,” Dean grumbles.

---------------------

“Oh, come on. Real gentleman, that one,” Meg teases.

“You were flirting. Of course he was nice to you,” grumbles Cas. “He is the sort of person who sleeps with anyone with open enough legs.”

“He’ll flirt with anyone, yes. I’d say he’s going through a dry spell. All flirt and no bite,” Meg says salaciously.

Cas massages his temples. “He’s an arrogant loud-mouth. No thank you.”

Dean knew perfectly well that a stupid baggy suit did not make his neighbour a gentleman. The guy wore a permanent frown and just had this offended look on his face when Dean had tried to strike up a conversation about Star Wars. The guy acted as though he hadn’t even heard of Star Wars. Prick. Even his name was pretentious. Not that Dean could remember exactly what it was.

Unfortunately, the kitchen looked straight into Mr. Pretentious ’s lounge. The guy didn’t even bother to close his curtains, like he thought that his life was so important that the whole world wanted to see. Dean refused to stoop down to his level and as such refused to shut his own curtains.

Dean spent a lot of time in his kitchen. Stress-cooking if he was being honest. The fridge was getting full and Dean was starting to run out of room. But he also had no idea of what else to do. He was getting too fidgety watching movies - there was only so much sitting on the couch he could do.

So, he cooked. And tried to figure out what on earth Mr. Pretentious did. The guy was obviously some sort of paper-pusher. The computer he sat in front of clearly hadn’t been updated since the eighties. He’d spend hours squinting at the screen as though this was his first time on a computer. His job was probably incredibly boring. Dean could imagine him talking about his work for hours as though whatever spreadsheets he made were of any use to anyone.

---------------------

Cas found his work incredibly boring. But it paid the bills. It didn’t help that his neighbour seemed to have a hobby of staring into Cas’s apartment. Who actually spent that much time in their kitchen? Microwaving didn’t take that much time.

Cas had no idea what his neighbour did. He had considered attempting to converse with him, but in the few times they had spoken to each other things always seemed to go badly. His neighbour wanted to talk about odd things, like something called star war. Or just plain things that Cas had never heard of.

The constant staring got on his nerves anyway. And the expression of mild disgust that so often sat on his neighbour’s face. Cas really didn’t know what his problem was. Why didn’t he just close the damn curtains?

But Cas really did need to talk to someone. Well, he spoke to Meg, but she was out of state and was often rather sporadic with actually answering. Cas certainly wasn’t planning on spending six months with nothing but budgeting spreadsheets to keep him company.

---------------------

Dean frowned. His neighbour was staring right at him. Probably judging. Dean was in the kitchen scratch-cooking pasta. And his neighbour was just staring. Like he had shut down. He was probably a robot.. Dean should probably go over there and press the restart button.

Eventually, his neighbour jerked his window open and raised his hand in an awkward wave. Dean decides that he was bored enough to give this a go. Besides, his neighbour might just need something. He slid open the window.

“Hello?” he says.

His neighbour blinks as though he was actually surprised that Dean responded. “Uh, hello? My name is Castiel,” he says.

“I know that.” Dean didn’t know that. He’d just known that his neighbour’s name was odd and pretentious. “Did you need something?”

“Not really. I have been wondering if you would be amicable to socialisation.”

Dean blinks. Who the heck talked like that? He nods, though. He’d at least be less bored spending a couple of minutes chatting. “Alright. Anything you wanted to chat about?”

Castiel tugs on his trench coat, the boxy thing engulfing him as though it’s a security blanket. “I was wondering what you meant by star war the last time we spoke. I believe it might be something to do with the Cold War? Or is it some sort of space food?”

“I- what?” What the hell was his neighbour talking about? “I asked you if you liked Rogue One the last time we talked,” says Dean.

Castiel looks even more uncomfortable. “I don’t recall that,” he says. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of that, is it some sort of thriller?”

“Star. Wars,” Dean says, slowly and carefully. God, this was like pulling teeth. He really had no idea what his Mum meant by gentleman. This guy was just deliberately infuriating. “You know, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vadar, help me Obi-Wan Kenobi… any of this ringing a bell?”

Castiel is actually smiling. Well good, apparently he has magically heard of Sta- but, unfortunately. “I’ve never heard of that,” he says.

---------------------

Cas smiles. His neighbour is actually rather attractive when he isn’t glaring. Apparently, Star Wars, plural, is some sort of movie franchise set in a fictional, futuristic space universe. Dean’s already talked for fifteen minutes straight on the correct order to see the films in, and keeps becoming adorably frustrated over not spoiling anything, which Cas does appreciate.

He is, though, only half listening. His mind was instead occupied with how Dean seemed to just light up. This was apparently a topic he was very passionate about. Like this, Dean would be very enjoyable to be friends with. He still couldn’t see the gentleman Meg talked about, but he did see someone a lot nicer. Dean usually postured and was the sort of guy who didn’t do dishes because it was a girly thing to do. But watching Dean talk now, Cas though that it was rather like seeing all those hard edges fall away.

“Cas!”

“What, oh, my apologies, Dean,” Cas says. Dean is looking annoyed once more. “Please do carry on.”

There’s a stiffness to Dean’s posture now. He crosses his arms and says “I said, would you be interested in seeing the stupid thing.”

Cas’s smile is smaller, now. He decides that he doesn’t like it when his neighbour pretends to not like things. Though he does also wonder what else Dean only pretends to not like.

--------------------- Dean isn’t entirely sure why he’s doing this. He really must be bored. But he now has his neighbour’s number, landline as Castiel doesn’t own a mobile, and is talking him through why they had to start with a thoroughly disinfected VCR copy of episode four, and not episode one.

This was going to be a long night. It had taken no less than half an hour for Castiel to push play. And video. Castiel had reacted to the word ‘Netflix’ as though it was an obscure Russian chess player from the 1830s. This is reiterated when the opening has barely started and Castiel pauses it. He’s moved his TV so Dean can sit in his kitchen and see him. Like a long-distance quiet night in watching a good movie. Or at this rate, several months of explaining a good movie.

“Galactic empire?” Castiel asks, “How does that work? I would find a global empire difficult to believe, let alone a galactic one.”

Dean takes a deep breath and settles in for a long night.

---------------------

Cas is smiling brightly as Dean explains his theories as to how lightsabers work. Cas still thinks that physically, they don’t make a whole lot of sense, but he is enjoying just listening to Dean talk.

“You even listening?” Dean asks.

“Yes,” says Cas. “My apologies. I find you very enjoyable to listen to.”

He can see Dean’s confused expression through his window. “Uh, yeah. Right,” Dean says. “Look we should probably call it a night.”

Cas glances out the window. He has no idea what time it is, but night has long since fallen. “Of course,” he says. “Good night, Dean.”

---------------------

It takes them a solid month to get through the original trilogy. Dean had honestly considered stopping, but then Cas had recited one of Dean’s speeches (rants) word-for-word perfect a fortnight after he had heard it. Dean had stopped and blinked. And he suddenly realised how earnestly Cas really was listening.

Not that Dean thought Cas was cute, of course. He did think that Cas’s gummy smile was sunshine in itself, and he might have thought, theoretically about Cas’s thighs and being between them and… well, Dean certainly did not go red when he thought about that.

But something had shifted between them. Dean had heard all about Cas’s family and his plans to open an orderly, cozy bookshop. In turn, Dean had told Cas things he had told no one else.

---------------------

“See?” said Mary, “You just had to give him a chance. I told you Castiel was a gentleman.”

“He is not a gentleman,” argues Dean. “What sort of a gentleman has never used a stove before? Cas could burn water. And have you seen how he dresses? Socks with bees on them, and….”

---------------------

Cas just tells Meg that Dean is not a gentleman on account that no gentleman wears pink panties.

[notebooknebula]

Dr. Paul White of RealNumberz

https://www.jayconner.com/dr-paul-white-of-realnumberz/

Jay Conner is joined by none other than Dr. Paul White, the founder and CEO of White Orthodontics, and author of several best-selling books.

White Orthodontics is a high-end, technology-focused orthodontic practice based in Virginia.

Dr. White created RealNumberz with his son, Trey, to utilize the latest technology to “supercharge” his real estate investments.

RealNumberz is the only comprehensive software application designed to help investors manage a diverse set of assets that includes rental properties, private lending, fix-and-flip, and fix-and-hold projects, as well as mortgage notes and syndications.

This incredible software eliminates investor anxiety by using real-time data and an automated reminder system to allow real estate investors to maximize their returns with 50 percent less time.

Paul believes the key to achieving financial freedom has as much to do with optimizing your existing investments as it does with acquiring more of them.

RealNumberz is the easy-to-use solution for the ongoing problems associated with late or inaccurate rents, incorrect note payoffs, uncontrolled and over-budget rehab projects, “yield drag”, and much, much more.

RealNumberz has helped many of its clients save thousands of dollars and manage their real estate investments from their pockets! Go to https://www.realnumberz.com to see how you can “supercharge” your portfolio with this amazing software!

Real Estate Cashflow Conference: 

https://www.jayconner.com/learnrealestate/

Free Webinar: 

http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

#RealEstate #PrivateMoney #FlipYourHouse

————————————————————-

Jay Conner (00:00): Well, hello there and welcome to another episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I’m Jay Conner known as the Private Money Authority. Also the host of the show today. And if you’re brand new to the show, we talk about all things that relate to real estate investing. We talk about how to find off market deals, motivated sellers. We talk about how to get your deals funded without relying on banks or mortgage companies also talked about how to rehab houses. We talk about how to sell them fast. And just as importantly, we talk about how to automate the business because after all, why are we in this business? Well, we’re in the business for the wealth and the freedom. So we’re not looking to replace our day job with another job, called real estate investing. We’re looking to run the show to where we are running our business and our business is not running us.

Jay Conner (01:03): Well, again if you’re brand new, I started back in 2003 in Eastern North Carolina, investing in single family houses. And for the first six years, until 2009, I relied on the local banks. I got cut off like the rest of the world did in January, 2009, after being in the business for six years. And I learned about this world of private money and private funding. How to use people’s individual investment capital and their individual retirement accounts to where I can have an unlimited number of private lenders into an unlimited number of private deals. As of today, my wife, Carol Joy, and I have got 49 private lenders individuals, just like you, that are investing with us and and funding our deals. So if you are also interested in learning how you can get funding for your deals and not ever miss out on another deal, because you didn’t have the money and you don’t want to rely on your credit, you don’t rely on your verification of income and your credit score.

Jay Conner (02:05): I’ve got a free gift for you. And that free gift is to come join me, access free for the first 30 days to my new Private Money Academy membership. So why in the world would you want to come check me out for free? Well, first of all, you get me live two times a month in a Zoom coaching call in the group setting for all of the members. Right now, we’ve got about 150 members or so, and it’s growing very, very quickly. We do that twice a month. You can bring all of your questions to the Academy membership, Zoom call. And we also update content every month, talking about locating deals and funding and et cetera. And on each Zoom coaching call twice a month, we put one of the Academy members such as yourself in what we call the hot seat, where we analyze your business, figure out what your challenges are and help you put together a plan to help take you to the next level in your business.

Jay Conner (03:04): So come join me for free for the first 30 days at Jay Conner, www.JayConner.com/Trial again, that’s Jay Conner, JayConner.com/Trial. You will absolutely love coming and checking out these Zoom calls and et cetera, with all the benefits that you get as being in the membership. Well, if you are brand new to joining the show, you may not know this, but if you’ve been tuning in for awhile then my lands, we launched June, 2018. We’re almost North of 300,000 downloads and growing very, very quickly. I have some amazing experts here as guest on the show. Well, today is no different. Let me introduce to you my friend and expert. Well, this gentleman is the founder and CEO of a company called White Orthodontics, which is a high end technology focused orthodontic practice in Virginia.

Jay Conner (04:12): And he’s also the author of several bestselling books. Now this gentleman also created a service that is called Real Numberz that ends in a Z. And he created that with his son, Trey, and the reason he created it, they created it was to utilize the latest technology to supercharge their real estate investments. Well, here’s what Real Numberz is about. It is the only comprehensive software application that’s designed to help real estate investors manage. And that’s the key word because this gentleman is an expert when it comes to managing deals after you bought them, which is a challenge for some people, but he designed this software to help real estate investors manage a diverse set of assets, which could include rental properties, private lending. There you go! Fix and flip properties, buy fix and hold properties, as well as if you’re into notes, mortgage notes, or syndications, his software will also help manage those investments as well after you get in.

Jay Conner (05:25): So this incredible software that he and his son Trey developed eliminates the number one investor anxiety by using real time data and an automated reminder system that allows real estate investors to maximize their return with 50% less time of yours involved in the deal. He also believes the key to achieving financial freedom has much to do with optimizing your existing investments as it does with acquiring and getting more investments. Well, his software Real Numberz is that easy to use solution for the ongoing problems associated with later inaccurate rents, incorrect note pay offs, uncontrolled or over budget rehab projects, and much, much more. In addition to that, this software has helped many of their clients save thousands of dollars and manage their real estate investments from their pocket. So with that, let me welcome my friend to the show and expert Dr. Paul White. Hello, Dr. White!

Dr. Paul White (06:35): Hey Jay, how are you doing?

Jay Conner (06:37): I am Fantastic! And just for the sake of these, may I call you Paul on the show?

Dr. Paul White (06:42): Oh, please do.

Jay Conner (06:45): So. Welcome to the show Paul. So glad to have you. Of all the experts and guests that I’ve had on this show. I haven’t had anybody else come on the show with this type of software and this kind of service to help real estate investors. I mean, in my business still today, we keep up with everything on an Excel spreadsheet. Seems to work pretty well since our average profits are 67,000, but you know, one of the four pillars that I teach in my business is what I practice. And that is automation. I actually work in the business less than 10 hours a week because of automation, other software we use and the team we have. And so I’m so excited to hear about this automation software that you and your son Trey have developed.

Dr. Paul White (07:33): Well, Jay, thank you so much for having me and, you know, I appreciate so much what you do and the great coaching that you give your clients. And it’s an issue that I have seen. It’s the same thing you just said. There’s just not much out there, right? We’ve never had anybody on that talked about this stuff. And it was a problem that I had and, went to solve the problem by looking for software. And all I found were spreadsheets and things like that. And I had sort of a bigger list of things I wanted to accomplish. And so spreadsheets are great, but they don’t take care of everything that you want to do with them. And so as a matter of fact, I was a member of a mastermind years ago, and I’m doing a lot of what you were coaching and that is to acquire stuff.

Dr. Paul White (08:09): You know, I had been for too long that guy that did what Dave Ramsey said, and that was to just save your money and pay off all your debts and do all those things. And that’s great if you’re in debt or if you have, if you can’t manage your money, but it’s not a great formula for managing wealth , and so anyway I started, you know, I had some money saved up. So when I got into these masterminds, I started, you know, acquiring a bunch of assets and I was feeling really good until the phone started ringing, you know, for more money and, you know, verifying payoffs and all this stuff. And I just started going, Oh my gosh! You know, what do I do? And here’s the problem. I went and talked to some of the guys in the group that had been in there before me.

Dr. Paul White (08:43): And I said, what are you doing to kind of keep track of all this stuff? And surprisingly the answer was nothing, you know, and occasionally the really sharp guys were using spreadsheets. And so then I asked, okay, well, what, what kind spreadsheet? And one guy said, well, I got this one off the internet. And other guy said, well, I got this from my brother-in-law. And I looked at him and they weren’t even the same, you know, and as orthodontists, we were like things nice and straight and neat, and even, and I just, I wouldn’t see in any kind of congruency there. So it made me a little nervous. So that’s sort of how it got started.

Jay Conner (09:11): There’s no doubt. There’s a huge demand for this type of service. Let me go to your background for just a moment.

Dr. Paul White (09:17): Sure!

Jay Conner (09:17): Please share with me and the audience, your story. You’re a doctor. And you know, you can straighten people’s teeth, right? And then you got into real estate investing along the way. So let’s hear your backstory.

Dr. Paul White (09:31): Well, you know, thank you for the question, cause it’s a great question. And it’s a lot of what we wrestle with it, you know, Warren Buffet famously said, you know, if you don’t make money, while you sleep, you work till you die. And that was sort of a, you know, kind of a crazy thing. And the Aha moment for me was when I finally understood the difference between income and wealth, you know I have a great job, but as Kiyosaki would say in his book, Cashflow Quadrant, I owned my job and that was all I had. I didn’t have wealth and I wasn’t building any wealth I was just working. So, you know, just like you’re trying to do with your clients, we’re trying to have freedom. You have to have income for that. Actually I have to have wealth from that.

Dr. Paul White (10:08): And I had income and I didn’t have freedom. And even still with my job, I own a good job and I make a good living, but I can’t leave the job for more than, you know, a week or so because of the amount of work that it creates before I leave and the tremendous amount of work that leaves when I get back. And so you just never gone very far and you’re always, you know sort of tied or chained to the practice. And so that was sort of a big Aha for me, is understanding that if I’m going to have some more freedom, I have to have something that’s making money while I’m not there. And for me, orthodontics was not that, not that thing. I love it it’s been great, but I started looking for other ways to make money and I discovered what you know, and what all your clients have known or will know.

Dr. Paul White (10:46): And that is that all the wealthy people in the world that are successful have real estate as a major portion of their portfolio, if not all of it. And so including our current president. Thanks. So, anyway it’s one of the things that I’ve learned is that real estate is the way to go. And, as I said, when I was in this mastermind sort of, you know, a little hand holding and trying to learn how to learn the ropes I just found that no one was keeping track of things. And so you see these pictures of messy desk and and so mine, wasn’t a messy desk. It was on a pool table. So I had paperwork spread everywhere and I was just excited, you know, I was acquiring stuff left and right. And I was just leaving this pile of, paperwork and assets behind me.

Dr. Paul White (11:26): And I thought, that’s all I had to do. Right. Cause you hear the term passive income. And so I thought that was it right? I’m there I’ve arrived. And then, you know, the headaches started coming and the questions started coming and you’re getting a lot of emails and phone calls asking for more information or more money or any of these things. And I just started going, Oh my gosh, how am I going to handle this? So my, momentary moment of sort of peace and I feel finally arrived and I’ve got it going, just sort shattered into the reality of my portfolio was chaos. And so I had to find a way to get control of it. And and that’s when I went to my son. Cause I know you mentioned you know, spreadsheets Excel. And to be honest with you, I’m a little intimidated by that.

Dr. Paul White (12:08): It’s not that I don’t like numbers, but for some reason I never learned Excel and all the other software that I ever learned, I just sort of picked it up and started working with it. So, and I can do the basics in Excel, but I can’t really do, you know, create all the sales and do those kinds of things. And so I asked my son who is a programmer. I said, can you make me an Excel spreadsheet? And he said, sure, what do you want on it? And so I told him a few things and as he’s programming, I said, I started asking more and I started adding more things. He goes, alright, do me a favor before I keep this madness going, make a list of all the things you want this to do, and then I’ll make it happen. Right? And I made the list and I handed it to him and he goes, he said, data, a spreadsheet.

Dr. Paul White (12:42): I mean, spreadsheets, can’t do this kind of stuff. I said, If I said, so what are we doing? He goes, you need an app. And I went, A what? Cause I had no idea what an App was Right? And so that’s how we started Real Numberz. And that’s been the, probably the most rewarding thing for me has been to have these ideas of how I want to manage my real estate and all the different investments that are real estate related investments have him sort of have these ideas in my head and I write them down on a piece of paper and he makes it happen. Now in the software world, they call Wire Frame is how you plan out every little step in the development of software out. And I, I call what I’m doing, you know, Wire Frame me. He said, dad, just writing crap on a piece of paper.

Dr. Paul White (13:20): You’re not Wireframing so, that’s been kind of fun, but it’s been amazing. Number 1, to recapture some of the money or my investment in his education. And number 2, to be able to work together with him and sort of work through these tools. And to be honest with you when it first happened, you know, and I looked at for spreadsheets, I go, well, there’s gotta be something else out there. And I looked everywhere for some software that was as comprehensive as what we’ve created and there’s nothing out there. So that’s been, you know, my why for 30 years was to make the quality of orthodontic treatment in the Richmond area better than it was when I got into it. And now my why’s to help real estate investors know their numbers so they can get to freedom faster.

Jay Conner (13:59): I love it! S, what different, before we actually get into what Real Numberz does.

Dr. Paul White (14:07): Sure!

Jay Conner (14:07): And the benefits of it. Because it definitely sounds multifaceted as to what it will do before we get into that. What type of different business models can this software serve and help real estate investors? For example, my business model is two fold. I either buy them in single family houses. So we’re talking to here all single family houses, I mean, in my case. So that will be a subset of my question. What different business model is that many single family houses only is it also commercial? We’ll get to that in a second. But in my single family house world, I’ve got two business models. I buy them. Business model, number one, I buy them, I fix them up. I flip them, I cash out, right? So we kill the golden goose, no wealth right there.

Jay Conner (15:01): That’s just big checks. My second business model or that I do with other deals is I’ll buy them. If they need fix up, I’ll fix up. If they don’t need fix up. And they’re a pretty house in either case. The second business model is I sell on rent to own. Now what makes my rent own or selling a lease purchase different is I actually believe it or not actually require my buyers to enter my credit repair program. And I actually help them get a mortgage. Therefore, 80% of mine cash out. Most of the real estate investors may be 5% cash out on least purchase. Those are my two business models. So leading up to my question what are the different models that Real Numberz will serve?

Dr. Paul White (15:54): Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, you know, what’s so funny about software and this is a true expression software’s never done. So you have this long runway of things that we’re trying to accomplish. And, basically real numberz is divided into four basic buckets. One is real property. The next one is private lending. The third is mortgage notes. And then the fourth is funds and syndications. And so within the real property space you can it takes care of any kind of property think of multifamily, single family you know, self storage, all those kinds of things. And, and what’s really neat about it is also there’s a dashboard for the entire portfolio. And so what we’re trying to build is a piece of software that not only manages all of your properties or all of your assets day to day as needed, but it also gives you a global input about how you’re doing as far as having some kind of target date for retirement or job transfer or, you know, whatever it is that you’re trying to do.

Dr. Paul White (16:49): And so what we’ve gotta do is have weighted average returns on all those things. And that’s a pretty complicated piece that we’re building. As far as real estate now, all there’s a general ledger for the entire portfolio for your entire asset base. And so, regardless of what kind of assets or different types of assets you’re doing, there’s a ledger that keeps track of all the money coming in and out of your portfolio. Then each individual asset has a ledger as well. And so it obviously takes care of transactions. And then those ledger items are then used to drive analytics, and then eventually it’ll drive tax reporting as well. And one of the features that we added to it, what’s sort of speaks to your fix and flip is I, years ago I was buying active turnkeys, like you’re talking about.

Dr. Paul White (17:35): And I had bought a piece of property and and from a guy in CG and so they were rehabbing it. And then I got an email that said we needed, you know, $8,000 more. And so I just wired the money site on scene. And, you know, one of the challenges with professionals, doctors, dentists, lawyers, whatever is at least for medical professionals, is we do whatever it takes to make things right for a patient, even if it costs us money. So we’re just, you know, we just want people to trust us. So we do whatever it takes. And we tend to have that same mentality with those that we work with. And what I’ve discovered in all other walks of life is not everybody’s that way. And even there’s some, I guess, in the medical profession, not the way, but I don’t know any of them.

Dr. Paul White (18:15): And so we’ve just always done whatever it takes to make it right. So there’s a high level of trust. So if somebody said I needed $8,000 more, I just would wire the money. Right? I don’t do that anymore, but that’s what I did when I first started. And it turns out after the the property had been rehabbed and closed, and then we had a tenant in place. We had actually then just finished creating real numberz. So I went back and just to play with the software, entered in all of the the data from the acquisition. And it turns out that that $8,000 was $8,000 over the budget. And I didn’t know it, and I had no clue. And and so I called the property management. So what’s the deal with this $8,000 is, Oh, we put new windows in the house and I go, well, great!

Dr. Paul White (18:53): I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done it, but that certainly would have been a decision I would have liked to been involved in. And so that really sparked me to create one of the features of a real property is a thing called a rehab tracker. And so you create a budget and you create as many different rehab projects as you want to name them. And then you put the amount of the budget, and then you start making deposits towards that budget, which come off your balance sheet, but then any of the charges against those do not, again, hit your, ledger again. So it keeps track of those things, and it keeps a running balance of how much money was spent in those kinds of things. So it can certainly be used for that. If you’ve got a business where they’re flipping a bunch of houses all the time, you know, there are other softwares out there where you need a professional to help you develop it for you, but for the average investor, it’s a great, it’s a great solution.

Dr. Paul White (19:37): That’s a fairly inexpensive to be able to manage those things, and then to have the property and track the income, if you’re renting it as far as the the selling part of it, it’s one of the things that’s actually in development is a sell feature that then you create a subject to, and then seller finance the houses as well. So in our mortgage note section, we already have that capability. So you can then turn and open that app up in the mortgage part, and then keep the mortgage that way, if you want it to. But eventually I want to meld the two, but we’re trying to get a basic program that works for enough people. Cause that what you’re talking about is fairly sophisticated. So,

Jay Conner (20:12): So you mentioned there’s actually four different categories for Real Numberz, one was flipping, Right?

Dr. Paul White (20:22): Well, real property in general. Yes.

Jay Conner (20:24): So just real property though whether you’re flipping or holding,right?

Dr. Paul White (20:27): right, right.

Jay Conner (20:28): And then you said private money or private lending. Tell us how.

Dr. Paul White (20:31): Yeah.

Jay Conner (20:32): Tell us how the software helps that category.

Dr. Paul White (20:37): That’s ,Thank you for the question. Yeah, one of the things that’s funny is, you know everything that we do in Real Numberz, I wanted everything lifestyle wise to be able to my portfolio from my pocket. So everything you need is stored on the app. Your pictures, your photos, your contacts, your documents,security duct, documents, all those things are right there in the app. And so one of the things that’s interesting if you’ve done, I know you have, but I don’t know about your listeners that have done private lending, but you know, at some point in time that the borrower wants to pay you back. And so they want you to verify the payoff. And again, because of my ignorance and inexperienced, I just assumed when they gave me a pay-off amount, I went, yep, that’s right. And it turns out I went back and checked them off by several thousand dollars or one of them.

Dr. Paul White (21:18): And so, and I typically lend out of my self directed IRA for those, those types of investments. And so one of the things that I kept noticing was the sense of urgency when they want to close all of a sudden, they out of the blue, they need to close some cause some deals coming up or they need money. And so anyway I got an email one time that said,we want to close this deal today, if possible, can you verify this pay-off? And I got, well, you know, my stuff, the documents are on a pool table back in my house. I don’t even have them here at work. And I’ve got my hands in somebody’s mouth all day. And so, I said, I can get it to you as fast as I can.

Dr. Paul White (21:52): And so, you know, worked all day. And then I went home and then I found the folder. At first I had things in piles on the pool table, my wife at least put them in folders put address on. So I found the folder and I find the the promissory note and I started doing the math. And at first I didn’t even understand that. So I’m doing it monthly, which is not the right way to do it either. And so of course now know that. And so I did the math for how much I was owed. Then I had to log into my self directed IRA account, find that asset, then look at all the amount of money that had been paid to me and then subtracted them, and then add it back to my original principle. And five hours later, I got the instant pay-off for him.

Dr. Paul White (22:27): And I was like, well, there’s gotta be a better way to do this. And so, because each asset, regardless of whether it’s your lending or flipping a house or whatever, has its own ledger, you’re tracking all the payments that you’ve received, which actually saved me a lot of money in the long run. But anyway, and so it knows the deal of the, of the original note, even if you’re wrapping somebody, which you can do, you can have a, we shouldn’t use the term JV, but a partner in the terms it’ll keep track of what the partner what his portion of the deal is. If you’re wrapping somebody. And when you hit, pay-off, there’s a button called pay-off and you hit that button, select a date, and it’ll give you the pay-off amount instantaneously. And it’s accurate. I closed five lending deals in January and every one of them was wrong to my favor, you know? And so it’s nice to have a piece of software. I just pull it out of my pocket and do find the, you know, open the app, find the asset and then push a button. And it tells me what I need. So it takes no time. And, It’s really kind of fun to be able to do that and people know, I know what I’m talking about now, so.

Jay Conner (23:25): That’s awesome! So that’s,

Dr. Paul White (23:27): yeah,

Jay Conner (23:28): That’s an App or that category confirms to the private lender as to how much they should be paid off.

Dr. Paul White (23:37): That’s right. So, yeah. And so it’s great for me. So I’m doing mostly most of the lending, so it’s telling me to pay off what it should be so that they, and they want me to verify it. So that’s the way that it works best. What’s really interesting is again, before I hadn’t created the software with my son I went back and again, sort of historically looked at a deal I’d done. And it turns out that they had missed a payment to my IRA. And I just thought, I didn’t really understand what a custodian did. I just thought they keep track of all the payments and call them when there’s a missed payment. And then they will give you some analytics to tell you how much money they’re making. And it turns out that that’s not right either. I looked up the word custodian means, it hold your stuff.

Dr. Paul White (24:19): You know, so I had closed the deal. I went back and just entered all the numbers. And this particular borrower had not paid a $1,500 payment during the whole transaction of the whole note. But then they closed the note as if they had paid that. So I missed a $1,500 payment, you know, and didn’t even know it and had already closed the note. So I couldn’t get that money back. So the app, just for that reason alone has saved me thousands and thousands of dollars. And it’s been great. And we hear that same thing from other investors that use the software.

Jay Conner (24:50): And I suppose that, of course, for the app to give you an accurate pay-off, then when you receive money you or someone is putting in the App, Oh, I received.

Dr. Paul White (25:03): that’s right.

Jay Conner (25:03): $1,500 payment on such and such a date. So it’s keeping up with what you have received so far.

Dr. Paul White (25:09): Yeah. And even if you get part of your capital returned, it’ll track that as well. So it’s really doing the math based on what you’re owed and what you’ve already received. And so that’s really, you know, and again, if you have a lot of these going, it’s hard to keep up with that kind of stuff. You know, spreadsheet can do it, but you know, what’s great about this software is it sends me a reminder of somebody misses a payment. Now, again, my need was somebody didn’t pay me and I didn’t know it cause an IRA is not calling them. I thought they were right. So, now I get a reminder if the payment has not been entered as received into the software. And so it’s a great way for me not to have to scan all the investments all the notes that I’ve got to see if there’s a problem. You know, it tells me if there’s a rent, a missed rent payment, it tells me I don’t have an interest payment from a loan, or if a note, a monthly payment hadn’t been made, all those things I know without having to go looking for it. So it really does make it easy to it reduces my stress and it alerts me when there’s a problem. So I can kind of keep doing what I’m doing and not have to worry about it all the time.

Jay Conner (26:06): Dr. Paul White’s website, that you can check out Real Numberz is www.RealNumberz.com , Paul there’s two other categories you mentioned that this software keeps that where, so it keeps up with any kind of real property investment keeps up with private money when you are the lender and what was the third category?

Dr. Paul White (26:32): Well, the other is a mortgage note, and I make a distinction between private lending and mortgage notes, because it’s a longer term investment and what’s unique about, and you can do these things with a lot the private lending, but a lot of private lending is usually straight answers with some points. And so what’s interesting with mortgage notes is you know, it’s an amortizing investment. And so it keeps track of all those things. And basically you can just buy a note and hold it and that, and just have this income for as long as you want. But there are other things you can do with a mortgage note that really can supercharge it. And one of the things you can do is sell it. And you can sell either a portion of it, or you can sell all of it.

Dr. Paul White (27:08): If you sell a portion of it’s called a partial.And so you can actually, in some deals, like if you bought a note, that’s, you know, say $50,000 and you bought that note for $30,000 let’s say a 10% rate, you can turn around and sell it to another friend or investor let’s say a 6% rate and get your 30,000 back out of it. And they will tell you in the app itself, it’ll calculate the number of payments that you have to sell in order to get your money back. And then at the end, the note comes back to you and you’ve got zero money in and invest it. And yet you have this stream of payments that are coming to you. And so, you know, a zero invested money returned is a pretty good infinite return that we all like to hear about.

Dr. Paul White (27:45): So that’s one of the things you can do. And the other thing you can do is borrow money against that note. So it’s just like having a house where you can borrow money against it. You know, it has that same kind of value to a bank or to a private lender. So there’s the things, and it keeps track of all these things. And again, if you sell five months, five years of a mortgage note, it creates a reminder at 4 years and 11 months to tell you that this payment’s coming back to you. So again, it gives you a heads up when a note is coming due when investment’s coming due. When rent is coming. And when the end of a lease on a rental that you have, it’ll send you a reminder, say this rental is coming due in 30 days. And so it helps me to send a note, send that very thing I just forward it cause it comes to my desktop or to my phone to be able to forward that note to the property managers say, okay, what are the plans for this property? We got anybody rolling here. Is he going to reinvest, you know, or renew? And so that way, again, I look like I’m on top of my game and I’m not having to do all that. I love that kind of aspect to it.

Jay Conner (28:41): That’s what I call automation. And then there’s a fourth category that this app provides service for, right?

Dr. Paul White (28:47): Yeah. Some people do funds or syndications and we’re just starting to build that part of it out. It’s mainly to track, you know, the issue with funds or syndication, is really no money in it and not much is returned to you until the deal closes. So, you know, a typical fund or syndication, will go five to seven years. Some of them pay off early. And so that one, we haven’t put as much time into it. Cause not as many people do those. It’s a great way for people that maybe don’t have a whole lot of experience to, if you can trust them. That’s, that’s the deal because a lot of those things can, you can lose your principal real quickly. So you have to be able to trust the people that you’re doing business with, but you don’t have to know a whole lot about real estate. But again, everything has due diligence. A better way is to have somebody like you start them off with a single family home because you can see that thing. You have all the control where you have no control over a syndication. So it’s one of those things that we’re sort of programming out for some of the other investors that have requested that. But most of what we do is those first three buckets.

Jay Conner (29:45): So the bottom line Paul, as I understand it is whether you are investing in single family houses, commercial, any kind of real property, the software is going to keep up with where you are and make sure you’re not, you know, wasting money or losing money, same thing as a private lender, make sure you got coming to you. What was in the promissory note and then mortgage notes, which are longer term you can do fractionals and then again, syndications. So, wow!This is simply amazing, Paul! And I’m so glad I’ve had you on here. So what do people need to do to go check out this software?

Dr. Paul White (30:25): Well you know, if you go to our website, RealNumberz.com and there’s a 14 day free trial. If you want to check it out, we’ve now adjusted it. So we’ve got a special running now where there’s a discount of 30% off the monthly fee and we do it by property. So if you have five properties or less, it’s less than it’s $47 a month as a subscription. And you have all the software, one of the cool piece of software that I didn’t talk about, there’s a piece of software attached to this, again, that you can’t do with a spreadsheet that actually connects to your bank account securely. So we don’t store any of the data. So it’s secure and encrypted, but it’ll pull the numbers and the transactions that go to that account. So on the general ledger, you’ll get uncategorized transactions and you would simply assign those transactions to one of your assets and it automatically populates the the ledger for that particular asset.

Dr. Paul White (31:14): And then it keeps track of all the other things that are going on. So it’s really helps you understand what’s going, coming and going and your business account. So it’s a great way to keep up with things and you should have a separate business account. Don’t keep this in your personal account. I’m sure you already have taught them that, but I’ve seen guys do that too. And it’s like, yeah, they have no idea where their money is or what’s going on with it. And you have to keep some reserves. Cause you know, real estate takes a little bit of management sometimes. So anyway, and then there’s an unlimited version of that, which is which also includes the mortgage notes part plus all the other things. And it’s unlimited data, all those other things and it’s $97 a month with a discount.

Dr. Paul White (31:49): And so one of the things that’s interesting to me is we had a client that was, I think he was spending a thousand dollars a month for a Bookkeeper’s account just to keep track of some rentals. And I’m like, dude, we can save you some money here. And he jumped on this in a heartbeat. He goes, this is way more than what I was getting before. I said, well, that’s, you know, we’re trying to make it something that you just, after you start using it, you won’t want to go without it. And that’s been my experience. It has saved me literally thousands, thousands of dollars.

Jay Conner (32:14): That’s wonderful!

Dr. Paul White (32:15): Yeah.

Jay Conner (32:16): Well Paul, thank you so much for joining me here on the show. And folks there you have it. Be sure and check out www.RealNumberz.com And go check out how to stay on top of your business and save a lot of money. Paul, thank you so much. I look forward to staying connected with you and folks, I’m Jay Conner, Private Money Authority wishing you all the best. Here’s to taking your Real Estate Investing business to the next level. We’ll see you on the next show!

[detectiveharmony]

How I Planned My Wedding

  Hi guys! I realize this isn't normally the sort of thing I write. Usually, I write book advice that has to deal with writing, editing, publishing novels, and everything in between! But as I have recently been married, I thought I would release the secrets of dark magic I conjured in order to plan my wedding.

1. Set a Budget

   The first thing is first. Set a budget. If you ask yourself if this is really necessary, yes, it is. It is 1000% necessary. While you are setting a budget, I would also get a binder to make your wedding binder. Whether you want to or not, you are going to be purchasing a lot of things for your wedding, and it's best to keep all receipts together in case you need to return some things.

   Now, as far as setting a budget goes, I just downloaded a free spreadsheet online and printed it out. If you don't want to print one out, there are a lot of websites that have online budgeting and spreadsheets. Weddingwire.com and the Knot App were especially helpful for me because they had super helpful checklists plus budgeting, registry trackers, and online RSVP. I kept budgets on everything I made. My printed budget looked something like this:

   I didn't use all of the spaces, but it at least kept me on track. The goal is to set the absolute most you are willing (and have the ability to) spend on any certain thing. This was sort of a game for me. I'd set the amount, and see for how much cheaper I could get it, with quality, in reason. Mine and Josh's total wedding budget was around 11K. I think we actually ended up spending around 7K. A lot of our services were gifts from friends, and for that I'll be forever grateful. Which brings me to my next point:

2. Find Talented Friends Who Are Willing to Help

   I would first and foremost like to say that just because you have a photographer friend does not mean you should go up to said photographer friend and blatantly ask them to take pictures of your wedding for free. It's cheap and demeaning to them, especially if that is their only source of income, or if they work a job with low income. Even if they have plenty of money, they are not going to be willing to take 6-10 hours out of their day plus weeks in editing to take pictures of your wedding with no compensation. The same principle applies to other services. What I am meaning is to search out friends who render services, and ask them for quotes. In my experience, 9/10 times they cut us a deal or even offered the service for free as a wedding gift. If you are part of a church family, I would definitely recommend looking there first. In the spirit of the Lord, most people are more than happy to help you for free without you even asking. My church family is where my cake, sound, and officiant services came from, and they were all more than perfect. It's also worth noting that I tipped my friends anyway, even though they didn't ask to be paid, because I really appreciated their services (even though some of them returned the tips and refused any type of payment).

   The talented friend also applies to friends who have also been married before, who are good with money, or good with budgeting if you don't know where to start or how to begin.

3. Set a Guest List

   When you are setting your guest list, it's important to remember that you don't have to (and probably shouldn't) invite everyone you have known since kindergarten or on your Facebook. The more people you have at your wedding, the more expensive it's going to be. In our case, if our guest list exceeded 100 people, our security cost would double, so I tried to keep it at a minimum, only inviting close friends and family. A lot of people didn't understand this, and you'll probably make a lot of people mad in doing so, but it was important for me to cut costs wherever possible. At the time I was financing an 11k wedding by myself on a 20k salary. Long lost cousin Susie wasn't a priority on my guest list. People I hadn't seen or spoken to in years weren't a priority. I gave my husband a pen and paper and told him to invite whoever he wanted, but he also understood that we were trying to save money. Every penny saved helped, and honestly, the day went by so quickly I don't even remember a lot of the people who were there. If people truly care about you, they'll understand that married life is hard and will be eager to help you in any way they can, even if that help is not coming to the wedding. Most of my friends and family were understanding when I explained to them that we didn’t have the money to invite everyone we wanted. And at the end of the day, it's your wedding, nobody else's.

4. Do as Much as You Can Ahead of Time

   If you want to be so stressed out that you are incapacitated, then wait until the last second to book all of your services. I recommend, if you can, to book at least a year ahead of schedule. I didn't, and around four months before my wedding I was wondering how everything was going to get paid for.

  You will end up financing a lot of things, especially the more expensive things. Unless you have boat loads of cash just laying around, of course, and a lot of places will turn you down if you don't have an adequate time frame to finance. The most important of these are the wedding ring, your catering service, the venue, the cake, and your wedding dress. A lot of DJ and music services will also require you to book ahead of time. We did, but I ended up stressing anyway because our DJ canceled on us 2 weeks before the wedding.

  The process of looking for these people is pretty straightforward. I just googled the service I needed and made inquiries until I found someone within my budget. The venue will be slightly different though, as you'll want to tour venues and see which best suits your needs. It's also worth mentioning that before you choose a theme for your wedding, look at venues first. I originally planned for us to have a vintage wedding, but then we got married in a barn in Texas, so it ended up being a country fall wedding.

   The very minimum amount of time you want to have for your dress is six months, unless you are having a friend or family member make your dress. Besides it taking a long time to pick a dress out (for some of us, anyway), bridal boutiques need time to clean and do alterations on your dress. I went with David's Bridal, but I personally wouldn't recommend them. The first time I picked up my dress from cleaning, I was deathly ill, I had to wait for 3 hours after they said it would be done, and when I picked it up and drove almost two hours home, I noticed the next day that my dress had oil stains all down the front of it from the sewing machines. They eventually fixed it, and my dress turned out to be gorgeous, but I would rather not have had that stress, especially when I was running fever and lost my voice. Not to mention the arm and leg I paid for my dress. I know a few who have had similar experiences, but I also know some who have had great experiences with David's Bridal. Either way, it's up to you.

  Weddingwire.com had some great timelines to follow for booking all of your services. If you are past the month mark for booking your services, don't worry about it. I did the bulk of my planning in the last 6 months of my wedding (not recommended).

5. Wedding Shower and Wedding Registries

   I forget how early I made my registries. I think maybe 5 or 6 months in advance. Even if you are already living together and have house stuff, making wedding registries is a good idea because you can update all your stuff, or get new stuff that you've wanted for a while. People are going to buy you gifts regardless, so you may as well have lists people can shop from to avoid ending up with a bunch of duplicate gifts or useless stuff that will just sit in the garage or in the corner of the junk drawer in your kitchen for years to come.

  I registered with a variety of places. Amazon, Target, and Walmart were my top choices. I would especially recommend getting an Amazon registry because a lot of people are last seconders, and prime 1 or 2 day shipping will still give them a way to buy your gift even if it is the last second. Amazon was my most highly trafficked registry. Walmart was second, but a lot of people don't like shopping Walmart online because it can take up to two weeks for items to ship, and even if you go in store, most stores carry different products. Just because they have it online doesn't mean every Walmart (or any Walmart near you) carries it. When making your registries, don't be afraid to put anything and everything you could possibly want or need on there. I wish I had put more stuff on mine because nearly everything got purchased. I amended my registries right before the wedding, but very few gifts were purchased at that time.

   Your wedding shower is typically two months before the wedding, around the same time you send out the official invitations. A lot of people I knew didn't know what a wedding shower was, so here you go: A wedding shower is an event where people bring gifts to the new couple to usher them into their new life together, helping them settle in. No matter what you do, weddings will end up being expensive, and if you buy couples gifts, even small ones, it helps them out a great deal in the long run by helping them save money on house things they won't have to otherwise purchase.

6. Wedding Day Preparation

   Assemble a wedding day crew. Find people who are going to help you set up decorations, organize, direct, and put everything away once the event is over. It's easiest if you assign small duties to everyone who is helping you. I made lists of all my bridesmaids names, plus my grandparents, brother, parents, and aunt, who also came to help me set up. Under each name I wrote what I wanted them to do. It can be simple things like, “Decorate tables,”, “Set up head table,”, “Be in charge of handing out cake after the cake cutting,” or, “Decorate main stage.” Whatever small thing will make it easier for you, designate it to someone you can trust. My family was wonderful and helped me out more than I could ever thank them for.

   I also had a table chart everyone could reference, so when we were moving tables and chairs around, everyone had a picture of what I wanted everything to look like so they knew what I wanted without asking me. It's also important to set a wedding day timeline. Even before the ceremony starts, you want to have given time frames for any activities, including decorating, salon trips for hair and makeup, a love note exchange, or whatever else you want to do before the ceremony and during it. Unless, of course, your venue let's you decorate the night before, which ours didn’t.

7. Last Bits of Advice

   Your wedding day is going to happen one way or the other. Some things are just going to go wrong, and you have to let it happen and not worry about it. You're going to be married at the end of the day anyway.

   Do as much reading as you can on planning a wedding. Every little tip I read helped, and in the end, I think my wedding was perfect. The only thing I would have changed was shortening the ceremony a bit so we would have had more time for family pictures. The wedding itself ended earlier than I thought, but I wasn't going to complain. I was exhausted, and thankful to get to go to bed early.

   As my last piece of advice, turn your phone off on your wedding day and give everyone someone else's phone number to text or call for important questions. I designated my maid of honor for this task, but you could also use your mother or anyone else for this. Turn your phone off on your honeymoon too, or if you can't turn it off, don't answer text messages. And if you are that person who calls or texts on wedding day or honeymoon, unless it's of dire consequence, don't be that person.

Happy wedding planning!

[kyoko0001]

私に薬の主人を呼んではいけない Chapter 01

SMUT ALERT!! 

Fai doesn't think the term 'drug lord' is an accurate description for his line of work. Of course, it's hard to explain exactly what it is you do when you find out that your Tinder crush is a officer at the Tokyo police department. Modern Day AU. KuroFai. Mentions of other CLAMP ships here and there. Full list of warnings at the beginning of each chapter.

Chapter 01 available here or click the read more link! 

Fai Fluorite was on his third large, triple chocolate caramel latte with 2 shots of expresso, and he wasn't even half way though his night yet. He had two more clubs to visit and a meeting with his Guatemalan importer to get though before he had to head to the Neko no me Café and start the ovens.

It took every ounce of his self-motivation to eat the grilled cheese his assistant, Syaoran, had so kindly acquired for him. It was easy to ignore the food while he balanced the books of Fenikkusu though. The once familiar task took frustratingly long…

Normally this particular establishment ran smoothly, but with Oruha out on maternity leave he had to spend a maddening amount of time keeping things moving. Don't get him wrong, he was happy for her—she had been trying for a child for so long after all—and he wanted her to have as much time off as she needed.

But—

He would be much happier with her back in her office where she belonged. There was just no substitute for someone who had been running this club for him for the last 8 years. She knew this place better then him naturally.

"Please eat a few more bites Fai-sama." Syaoran was frowning at him from the other side of the ornate cherry wood desk and the blond tugged his cheeks into a too cheery smile as he looked up from his work.

"I swear I'll finish it." His tone was purposefully cheerful, but he didn't quite manage to bring the smile to his eyes.

His assistant didn't look as though he was buying it today, and he wasn't sure if he currently had the energy to tug the muscles in his face any tighter.

Syaoran gave a defeated sigh—He could be such a smart kid sometimes.

Fai had every intention of sticking to his usual diet of pure sugar, caffeine and various other stimulants for the rest of the night. He would probably eat some blueberries at the café… Toyo had mentioned that the last shipment was deliciously ripe.

Keeping his body running when he couldn't sleep more than three or four hours a night was a delicate balancing act. Carbs and fat would make him sluggish and he couldn't afford that so early in the night. He had probably already hit his calorie goal anyways with the sugar packed lattes.

A greasy grilled cheese wasn't going to do him any good. Even if it was from the little dinner across the street and one of his favorite foods.

"Can you go run to the backroom and grab the inventory list for me?" Fai looked back down at the spreadsheet he was updating. Better to keep Syaoran busy then letting him fret over silly things like his lunch.

The teen nodded and pulled the door open just wide enough to slip through. After a year of working as the blonde's assistant he knew when to take a hint, and left quickly to give his boss some space.

The loud sound of the music rushed into the quite office like a tsunami despite his efforts, causing the blond to scowl. As soon as the door swung closed again the noise faded back down to a more tolerable level and Fai stood while grabbing the now cold sandwich off the plate. He had a hot minute before Syaoran would return—but better safe than sorry… Fai headed towards the employee restroom for some extra privacy.

Locking the door, he tore sizable chunks of the sandwich off and tossed them in the toilet. Flushing away the evidence, he sighed and washed the greasy residue off his fingers and dried his hands quickly.

Now to the next line of business.

If he was going to get though the rest of this night, he was going to need a pick me up.

It had been that kind of week unfortunately.

Or rather… That kind of month…

Year?

The blond wasn't entirely sure.

Fai pulled his cell phone out of the inner pocket of his dark blue Brioni suit jacket and set it on the sink. Digging a little deeper he found what he was looking for—a dime bag with just enough 'help' to get him though the rest of the night.

Lazily, he tapped some of the powder onto the shining porcelain of the sink. With practiced grace he shaped two identical lines with his visa. The only cash he carried was for the soul purpose snorting his snow, and he made quick work of twirling up his lucky ¥10,000 note.

Two deep breaths later and Fai was tilting his head back and closed his eyes while he sucked in a few deep breaths. What little discomfort he felt was quickly forgotten and the blonde used a damp paper towel to wipe down the side of the sink and slid the baggie back into his inner breast pocket.

He would need to do a lot more to get any sort of rush—but those lines would serve to make him feel a little more human.

He had been doing this on and off for years—and though he was sure his body would thank him for a brake form the illicit substances—he couldn't deal with it now. There were too many things that needed his attention. This shit was way better then caffeine that was for sure.

Once he was feeling a little more like himself, he leaned against the porcelain counter top and unlocked his phone.

The second line of break business was making sure there was nothing urgent that needed his attention. His people had his cell and knew that he was available at all hours should they need him.

No urgent texts, so there was nothing that needed his immediate attention. One of his bouncers had needed a few stiches after breaking up a bar brawl and Fai set a reminder to take care of the doctor bills and send him a card.

Emails for this week's accounting were coming in and he would add them to the books while he waited for Yuukito and Touya to show up for their opening shift this morning…

He added that to his calendar as well and sighed before hitting the home button. Between meeting with the troublesome supplier, one of his managers being out, and trying to get the months end accounting done he was going to lose his mind.

Absentmindedly he opened Tinder and started looking though the messages he had been ignoring for the last few hours. Maybe a good lay would help relax him enough to actually be able to sleep tonight…

Fai didn't have high standards and he had probably slept with half the men in Tokyo by now. Well… Half the gay ones at least. The blonde didn't care what line of work they were in—what they were majoring in—if they were vegan—liked beer or whatever else hipsters drank these days—what exotic vacations they took.

He just wanted them tall, with a strong shoulders, a killer body, and big cock. He didn't do clingy, long term, or batshit ether.

Fai already had money, nice cars, and a big house. He didn't need someone to take care of him—just get him off. As long as their kinks weren't anything too crazy, Fai was usually down to party.

It was nearing 10. Not too late to arrange something if he moved his schedule around. The blond scrolled though his open chats with a frown…

To clingy—To skinny—to short—to nosey…

Honestly with over nine million people in Tokyo the options were pretty shitty.

Back to the drawing board…

Backing out he started to sift through pictures of singles.

He never bothered to read anyone's profile and he sent the same messages to all of his matches.

Currently out on the town.

Would love to meet for a drink if you're not busy?

He made sure to include a few kissy faces and heart eye emojis and switched back to his email. It was Friday night so chances were good someone might take him up on his offer. If he didn't get a response soon, he was going to have to keep an eye out in the next club for a tipsy Mr. Tall dark and handsome that wasn't too far gone to keep his cock up.

He preferred his partners to be sober. They were usually better at actually getting the job done when they weren't too drunk to see strait.

Fai sighed rather loudly as the first responses started trickling in and read though them with disinterest. A few busy—a few too-forward responses including images of rather unimpressive genitalia—and hello!

My shift ends in two hours.

Still going to be out?

What were his chances that the hot one worked late? Fai smirked and sent back a thumbs up.

Where we meeting?

The blonde checked his calendar. He would be at Kyuden.

This club was on the tamer side—it had only opened two years ago and had surprisingly attracted an older crowed. Business men and single 30 something's who had money frequented the joint.

To cater to the more mature taste they usually had live local bands, or comedians preforming. It suited a more distinguished crowed better than thumping music and flashing lights the university students enjoyed. Fai rather liked Kyuden for that reason. Yuto kept it well managed so he didn't have to visit often—but they were looking to remodel the VIP area and Fai needed to approve the budget.

More privet rooms were needed—and more discreet seating.

Fai not only made sure that they had the largest selection of top shelf liquor in all of Tokyo, but at this joint he also staffed an impressive array of ladies to cater to the single gentlemen's needs.

So—like most of his establishments—it was walking the line of not quite legal.

It was far from a gay bar—but it didn't chase that crowd off ether. The could fuck quick in dirty in one of the more privet booths—and Fai could see firsthand the issues with the current layout.

Kyuden?

He received a response almost immediately.

See you then.

Perfect.

Fai slipped his phone in his pocket and turned to look in the mirror. He splashed his face with cold water and toweled his hands dry before heading back out to the office. Syaoran—the sweet thing that he was—had returned with not only the ledgers but also what looked to be another coffee for him.

"Thanks, Syao." Fai winked at him and accepted the folder as well as the warm paper cup that smelled like heaven.

"No problem."

Hiring this kid was honestly one of the best decisions he had ever made. Syaoran had started out as one of Fai's 'boys.'

Syaoran was not cut out for moving goods though— but he had needed a job. Fai had taken pity on him and hired the kid as his assistant. It turned out that he was a hard worker and had good taste in coffee, so it worked out for both of them.

He always seemed to know when Fai needed a refill on his latte, a Redbull, or shot of tequila.

The blonde had been though a lot of assistants over the years—that particular skill was a rare talent that Fai greatly appreciated.

Poor thing had made the unfortunate mistake of getting his girlfriend pregnant when they were still in high school, and regrettably, he had been forced to drop out to support them. There little son Tsubasa was too cute and Fai had a soft spot for kids. Syaoran was an honorable little knuckle head—so Fai had also hired his honey to work at his café during the day as a server.

Sakura was ditzy and clumsy, but she made up for that with her kind heart.

The blond sat back down in front of his macbook to focus on what he was supposed to be doing in the first place. His little hit early was doing its job and he powered though the last of the book keeping faster than originally planned.

They had made a profit. He always did—but the numbers were still lower than they had been before Oruha had left a month ago. It wasn't as though the staff had forgotten how to do their jobs—they were simply slacking since there manager was not there to ride them on their duties.

It peeved him… But made him appreciate the hard work of his managers. He wouldn't be able to run his business if it wasn't for their hard work… He couldn't do this for each one of his 22 clubs. Even if he never slept, he wouldn't have enough time to oversee all of the little details.

The blonde made a note to give each one of the managers a bonus. Keeping them happy and right where they were was paramount to making sure no additional responsibilities feel onto his plate.

Fai felt his eyes getting heavy again, his concentration didn't last long. He managed to discreetly excuse himself to the bathroom again and took another bump before he and Syaoran headed out to meet the distributer.

His McLaren 570s was in the parking garage across the street in his reserved spot. Syaoran rode shot gun and Fai put the top down as they pulled out onto the busy street.

Tokyo always had traffic—and after navigating those packed streets for 18 years—he knew the quickest ways to get around town.

They were meeting at one of his warehouses in the industrial district. As soon as they exited downtown, the traffic thankfully died down enough to actually feel some wind in their hair as he cruised the artificially lit streets in a comfortable silence. He pulled up with time to spare and double parked in front of the building.

During the day this place served as a clothing Wearhouse. Fai owned the property and rented it out to some exporter who sold cheap clothing online to rich foreigners. They got the space for cheap and Fai used it after hours for his own needs.

It worked out perfectly as a place to transfer goods, and as far as his intel went, the police had no idea. He switched it up every few weeks whether they were suspicious or not though. He hadn't had a meeting in this particular building in a little over a year.

Two of his enforcers were already waiting for him. Syaoran followed close behind him as they got out of the car and slowly approached Kusanagi and Seshiro. Both were dressed in their usual uniform. Black skin-tight tee and black jeans that served to make their muscles look even more impressive.

Too bad both men were spoken for. Seshiro was currently engaged to one of Fai's managers and Kusanagi had himself a cute little wife at home.

"Evening Sir." The men said in unison and Fai grinned at them.

"Have our guests arrived?"

He didn't expect any trouble. Even outside of Japan the exporters he worked with knew what happened when you crossed him.

If they tried it? Well the night would be a little interesting then now wouldn't it?

"No sir. Fuuma is with them in rout. Traffic." Seshiro returned his smile before opening the door to the Wearhouse.

That was all good and well. Fai could live without being the one fashionably late this time.

The blonde entered with his assistant following close behind him. They made themselves comfortable in one of the offices and waited. Syaoran made some tea and Fai checked his phone.

Kanoe, the manager of Kurōbā had texted him to inform him that one of the bartenders had quite mid shift. They were handling it for now but were going to need to get a decent replacement asap to handle the 4th floor bar.

He had a few promising resumes waiting for a spot, so Fai sent back a text that she needed to set up a meeting with him to go over them to find a suitable replacement. He accepted the meeting request that came in moments later.

Tomorrow at 5pm was early for him… but if she was short staffed, he could do it. Okoku brought in a good amount of money for him and if they had to shut down an entire floor, his pocket book would notice.

Now that that was settled Fai moved on to the next line of business… He opened a text from his step dad praying that it wasn't bad news.

It wasn't that he didn't get along with Taishukuten—not now that he was an adult at least. They just didn't talk unless it was about Ashura. If his stepdad hadn't married Fai's adoptive father, and had simply remained his law partner? Fai would probably avoid him.

After stepping in as a step parent and being put though the ringer by both he and his twin from the time they were first going through the emotional, hormonal, train wreck that was middle school? The feeling of polite annoyance was mutual.

Needless to say—the only time he got a message from the man was when something was wrong.

A picture of his father and… a cat?

Awe.

They had gone out.

How sweet.

Fai sent back a few hearts. He couldn't tell where they were from the background, but he was glad that Taishakuten had gotten Ashura out of the house. Since the accident his adoptive father had a tendency to stay cooped up in doors more often than not.

Fai saved the photo to his phone and set it as his wall paper. There were too few happy moments in his life recently. He like to have reminders of why he did all of this garbage to begin with.

Tapping the home button, he smiled at the new photo one more time before checking his tinder messages. Nothing else from—oh what was his name?

Kurogane?

Well at least his name matched his serious profile picture.

Fai looked through the few photo's the man had attached to his profile and smirked. He hoped Kurogane was as handsome in person as he was in these pictures.

One of him wearing a traditional Hakama was particularly charming. He must be into some sort of martial art—which hopefully meant he was in wonderful shape.

Fai smirked thinking about taking body shots off a well-toned stomach… Maybe this Kuro would be up for some less traditional fun tonight. It might not be the best idea seeing as he would still have work to finish tonight… but it was tempting.

If they clicked Fai thought he might chance an evening off to have some much-needed naughty relaxation in an actual bed. Maybe a ritzy hotel with a jacuzzi and bottle service in the room?

He could tie Kuro-hottie to the headboard and lick whip cream off his most sensitive areas?

"Is something wrong Fai-sama?" Syaoran came back into the office carrying a small tray with two cups of steaming tea—green tea of course—and pulled him out of his fantasies.

"No. I decided to meet someone tonight at Kyuden for a drink." Fai turned the phone so that Syaoran could see the photo of Kuro in his sexy hakama. "Cute ne?"

"If you say so Fai-sama." Syaoran laughed awkwardly and the blonde found himself chuckling.

This poor kid knew way too much about his sex life… Fai was severely allergic to long term commitment but had an obnoxious need for human contact. This caused and interesting predicament that played out in a near constant steam of short flings and one-night stands.

In the last 10 years his longest relationship had lasted a whopping 4 months and ended with him leaving his date at fancy eatery in Paris when they had dropped the L-bomb.

"If you wanted to call it an early night, I wouldn't be mad. I'll have Kusanagi give you a ride home after we finish up here?" The blonde offered with an innocent smile.

As much as he loved having his assistant to vet his phone calls and get him lattes, he didn't need the poor thing waiting around while he got plowed in a semi-privet booth by his date.

He paid him handsomely—but not enough for that.

"Yeah. The baby has a cold and I know Sakura-chan is exhausted from staying up with him." Fai frowned at that. It was that time of year he supposed… But why hadn't Syaoran mentioned it earlier?

"Why don't you have Sakura take the day off tomorrow too? I'll toss her an extra vacation day, so you guys can all take a day to rest." Fai was always lenient when it came to things like this. Surely Syaoran knew all he needed to do was ask and his boss would send him home?

"Are you sure that's ok Fai-sama?" the brunet didn't like to accept charity—the fact that he didn't out right refuse showed just how stressful having sick baby really was. He couldn't relate—probably would never have children—but he had spent enough time around their little tot at the café to know he was a handful when he felt under the weather.

"Yes." Fai confirmed.

Before his assistant had a chance to say anything further Seshiro knocked on the door of the office. Fai sipped his tea as he entered into the cramped room and closed the door behind himself.

Looking out the large window that overlooked the main floor Fai could see that the new distributer was waiting very patiently for them. He had brought a man and a woman with him—it wasn't unusual—normally distributers were accompanied by bodyguards like Fai's enforcers—but not always.

It was ether a show of faith.

Or over confidence.

Only time would tell.

"Are you ready Sir?" Seshiro didn't seem overly concerned.

Must not have found anything alarming on them during the pat down.

Wordlessly Fai stood, and they made their way out of the office. Fai had pulled a serene, emotionless mask onto his face and walked with Syaoran and Seshiro behind him, head held high, eyes blasé.

This was a well-choreographed dance. He had a reputation to maintain after all. It had taken a few years to prefect this particular act, but it had served him well so far.

He wasn't Fai Fluorite—the friendly neighborhood drug ring leader. He was Fai Fluorite—the slightly off his rocker, smiley psychopath that wouldn't think twice about ordering a hit on you or your entire family if you crossed him.

Once he was just close enough to see the individual hairs on the man's head, he offered a pleasant smile. "Its nice to meet you in person Mr. Reed."

Fei Wang Reed did not seem pleased to see Fai. This meeting was to set boundaries after all—and no one liked to be scolded.

"The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Fluorite." Fai could tell that he was forcing a calm tone as he spoke—he could see the anger in his eyes.

Good.

He may have just climbed to the top of the food chain in South America—but he was in Fai's house now.

His guests had to play by the rules.

His rules.

Tokyo was a big market after all. Sure—finding a new supplier for coke would be annoying. The stuff he had gotten from Fei Wang Reed's predecessor had been top grade, and Fai's boys had been able to cut and move the stuff faster than he could import it.

This last shipment? Low quality and full of cheap and slightly hazardous additives.

Since Cocaine was the drug of choice of his most wealthy clientele—he was not happy.

He was a drug lord sure—but he wasn't going to lower his standards and start selling low quality, possibly harmful shit to his customers just because he had gotten ripped off. He had built his business on his integrity after all.

"I'm trust you received my return shipment?" Fai made sure that his face was a perfect expression of disinterest. His tone apathetic.

Fai had sent the cheap shit back, along with an invitation to discuss their future business relationship.

"I apologize for the misunderstanding." Reed offered. He didn't shift under Fai's gaze.

He was a ballsy one alright.

Ballsy enough to send a response stating that they had tried to provide him with a service by sending him 'precut' product so that he would be able to get it to his customers sooner.

Right.

"And I trust that you have ensured this shipment is what were accustomed to receiving form your office?" If it wasn't, Fai was going to have to teach him a lesson… He would very much prefer that Fei Wang Reed followed his warnings.

"See for yourself." Reed tilted his head to Kusanagi who held out a small sample baggy to Fai.

He had been doing this a long time—and had picked up a few tricks over the years. The first rule of dealing with someone like Fei Wang Reed was assuming they were trying to off you.

It was pretty much the ultimate goal in the business he was in. Currently Fai was the ring leader of the drug trade in the Tokyo metropolitan aria—taking him out would be a big step up for someone like Reed. The respect he would earn from accomplishing such a task would be more them enough to ensure at least a few years of control.

"Syaoran. Please bring that table over here." The blonde motioned to one of the folding tables that was set up against the far wall. Reeds eyes narrowed—no doubt offended—but the blonde didn't care.

His assistant complied quickly. Fai dumped half the powder on to the table and used his Palladium Visa to slide it into one long line. Fai fished out his lucky ¥10,000 note and made quick work of rolling it up and handing it to Fei Wang Reed.

"Cheers!" Fai chimed.

Reed was glaring daggers at him as he accepted the note. Fai didn't buy for one second that this man didn't sample his own products—so he was ether seriously offended—or about to snort his own poison.

He bent, and Fai watched him finish the line in one go before straitening and tipping his head back—snuffing his nose loudly.

So that was a no on the poison then…

Fai pinched the edges of the dime bag between his index finger and thumb forcing the plastic to pucker open. It smelled fine… looked good… apparently not laced with poison…

Fei Wang Reed had apparently come here in the hopes of saving a client. For now, at least.

"Much better than the last shipment." Fai offered, but Reed continued scowling at him.

He would buy enough from the man to smooth his ego over the next year no doubt. Business was business after all. Nothing soothed a bruised ego like regular orders totaling over 50 thousand dollars.

"I am glad that it is up to your standards." Fei Wang Reed managed to keep his tone even, but the blonde could tell that he was seething.

"Yes. Sorry to drag you all the way out to Tokyo for this meeting. I'm sure you understand the importance that were on the same page however." Fai turned and started to walk towards the entrance of the warehouse. "Fuuma will take you to your hotel room. We should grab dinner before you head home."

Reed didn't answer, and Fai didn't look back to see his look of annoyance as he strolled casually out of the building. Seshiro and Fuuma would be keeping a close eye on him for the remainder of his stay.

Kusanagi and Syaoran followed after him. As soon as the door closed Fai heard his assistant let out the breath he had been holding. Even after 6 months he still wasn't used to the tense situations that came with negotiating price and purity.

Poor kid.

Kusanagi had joined him after he had left the military and was not so easily shaken. He placed a reassuring hand on the teens shoulder as soon as they were out of the building. "Once Fai gets outta here I'll take ya home. Give your nerves a brake."

Fai smiled kindly at both of them and checked the time. "Have a good night you two. I'll see you both soon ok?"

"You heading straight to Kyuden then?" Syaoran grabbed his bag out of the passenger seat of his boss's car. He dug out a small can that he offered to the blond.

Just what he needed—more caffeine.

Fai accepted the red bull. He opened the can and sipped it before answering. "Then to Akai Shiro and finally Neko no me Café."

"Please make sure to go home and rest Fai-sama." Syaoran's face was worried as Fai finished off the last of the energy drink and crumpled the can in between his hands before tossing it in a nearby garbage bin.

"I will."

He wouldn't.

Fai wasn't jittery—he existed in a state of perpetual exhaustion these days. His insomnia didn't seem to think he needed any sleep between working 18-20 hours at a time though. He would probably just go home and toss and turn between short naps.

He refused to admit that his poor diet, lack of exercise, coke habit, and the excessive amounts of caffeine he consumed on a regular basis had anything to do with it.

Hopefully Kuro-handsome would tire him out though.

Fai got into his car and backed out of the parking lot slowly. It was almost midnight and the lateness of the hour did nothing to unclog the constantly overcrowded streets.

The drive was tedious, but Fai didn't mind. He did his best thinking when he was stuck in traffic anyways. He ended up putting the top back up on the Mclaren and blasting the music.

There was a lot for him to think about. The café was doing well for only being open for a year—and a food critic was going to by tomorrow to write an article about them. He had to do the prep work for Toya so he could really wow him or her.

The good press might bring in enough new clients to fund the opening of a second café… Yuuko, his personal attorney and impromptu life coach, had warned him to keep the funds for the Neko no me Café completely separate from the rest of his affairs, as it was the only joint that had nothing shady going on.

He was building his safety net should things go south with his more lucrative clubs.

In reality he was hoping that he could eventually manage his expenses with the café's profits alone and sell off the riskier side of his business to be done with the madness of it all. The novelty had worn off years ago and he was getting to old to deal with the constant power struggles, and import/distribution issues anymore.

It was affecting his mental health drastically.

His family was starting to notice… Ask questions… it was all becoming so terribly complicated.

When he had first dropped out of college to deal, he had resigned himself to the fact that he would probably end up this way. Even the best of them did. It was a hard field to be in… But he couldn't help hoping that maybe there could be more to his life then working 100-hour weeks.

Fai sighed loudly as he pulled in front of Kyuden and tossed the key fob at the bouncer. There was no line outside the door like most of the clubs he owned—Kyuden was slower. There VIP tables were booked up most nights though and even with less foot traffic, Yuto pulled in a nice profit for him.

They sold more skin then booze here.

The blonde pushed the heavy wooden door open and smiled kindly at the hostess who greeted him. She knew who he was. They all did.

"I have someone important meeting me here for a drink soon. His name is Kurogane. I'll be at my usual table." Fai flashed her the profile picture and she gave him a knowing smile and nodded—making a note of his name on her list.

With that taken care of Fai headed in through to the main bar and headed straight up the stairs to the balconied VIP section. Yuto had been behind the bar mixing drinks for an older couple but nodded his acknowledgement before continuing what he was doing.

The most privet booth had been reserved for him when he had announced that he would be stopping by to talk budgets tonight. It worked well for a privet conversation about finances, as well as some hot and haughty alone time with his date.

Hopefully he wasn't shy.

Fai took out his phone and sent a quick message to Kuro-muscles.

I got us a booth.

Let the hostess know you're here to meet me.

she will bring you back.

While he waited Fai ordered a black coffee and stood to refamiliarize himself with the layout of the upper level of the club. There wasn't much unused space to work with… but they could probably move some things around to suit the guests needs better.

As it was—most of the tables had a wonderful view of the stage down below—but no view of the other patrons. That seating was rather limited however… only so much room.

The blond rubbed his temples and checked his phone again.

Be there in 5.

Fai finished of his coffee and double checked his appearance in front facing camera of his phone. The waitress swung by and collected the empty mug and left two drink menus in its place—and he was left watching the entrance of the club impatiently.

True to his word. Kuro-sexy arrived in five-ish minutes.

Dear god was he tall.

Kurogane towered over the hostess who had been just a few inches shorten then himself in her heels. He looked uninterested as she flashed him a flirtatious smile and Fai was left smirking as he followed her though the main bar and up the stairs.

He made himself look busy by checking his phone as they made the rest of the trip to the far end of the VIP section. He could hear his heavy footfalls as they approached but didn't look up from what he was doing just yet.

He didn't want to look thirsty—even if he was.

Kuro-hunk didn't need to know how desperate he was. It would probably be a huge turn off.

"Here you are sir. The waitress will be by shortly to take your order." As they were trained to do, the hostess bowed deeply and Kurogane thanked her before sliding into the circular booth next to the blond, Leaving a respectful amount of space between them.

She left them be, and only then did Fai look up from his phone to flash his most dazzling smile. "Thanks for agreeing to meet me on such short notice."

"Yeah." Kurogane was looking him over carefully and Fai just continued to smile. He knew he was exotic looking compared to your average person here. He had been born overseas after all.

Maybe Kuro-broad had a fetish for blondes?

"Something wrong?" He kept his voice purposefully sweet and tilted his head slightly to the side.

"Not really. You normally dress like that?" The raven-haired man's voice was deep. Wonderfully deep.

Fai glanced down at his outfit. Yes—yes, he did. He was almost always dressed in a three-piece suit.

"Work cloths." He confirmed and Kurogane nodded. Still watching him with piecing crimson eyes.

Fai hadn't noticed his eyes in his profile picture, but they were stunning.

There was another long silence between them and Fai was starting to wonder if something was amiss? Something in his teeth?

He was hot, but for Christ sake. You would think he had sprouted a second head with the way Kurogane was scrutinizing him.

"I don't mean to be rude—" the tanned man finally spoke. "—and don't get me wrong I think you're… You're fucking beautiful. But why the fuck are you, of all people on a hookup app?"

Oh?

Fai smiled. That was not the first time he had been asked this on a date before. Especially if they saw him pull up in one of his expensive cars—or when he ordered the most expensive menu items.

He made a point not to allude to being well off financially before he met someone the first time. It attracted the wrong crowd.

"Trying to find out what's wrong with me?" the blond gave a mischievous smirk, his nose wrinkling with amusement at the younger man's words.

"Tch. Pretty fucking much." Kurogane finally glanced over the menu and Fai shook his head slowly.

Such a potty mouth.

"I'm an emotional wreck who works 80+ hour weeks and I'm in desperate need of a good orgasm for my sanity." Fai deadpanned, and those crimson eyes locked with his own.

He saw the younger man's ears tinge red at his directness.

Ugh. How freaking cute.

"What about you Kuro-handsome… Why is someone so—" Fai gestured vaguely in the man's general direction and smirked. "—surely you must have gentlemen such as myself—well you know." The blond winked, and the blush spread to the taller man's cheeks.

Oh god. Why was he so cute?

"Same, minus the emotional wreck part. I moved here and I'm working late shifts so it's hard to meet people… And my name is Kurogane." Kuro-proper set the menu aside and the waitress took that as her que to interrupt them for their order.

"Let Yuto know I'll have his recommended scotch. Neat please—" Fai looked at his companion and cooed. "And this handsome gentleman here will have—?"

The red spread further on his cheeks still and he swore he saw Kurogane's eyebrow twitch. "Masumi sake."

The woman nodded politely—used to Fai's flirtatious behavior with his 'guests.' She retreated to retrieve their drinks leaving him to continue to smile at the seemingly grumpy man if front of him.

"So, you just moved to Tokyo?" Fai said to break the silence.

Normally there was a hand down his pants by now and a few hikies on his neck. It seemed as though his companion was ether shy, or unhappy about something.

That was ok—he knew he had a tendency to intimidate people—younger men especially. They could chitchat till Kuro-cutie was comfortable.

"I moved here about a month ago from a smaller town just outside of Tokyo." Kurogane seemed to settle from his earlier embarrassment. He was still handsome even when he wasn't trying to hide his awkwardness, so Fai wouldn't complain.

"I see. And how do you like it so far?" Fai had met more than a few new arrivals to Tokyo since had started whoring his way through Tinder almost two years ago. A few university students—some art enthusiasts—young business man—they all had their reasons.

"I hate it. The rents expensive and there are way too many people. Its dirty and its always loud." Fai blinked a few times.

He wasn't wrong.

The blonde chuckled at that answer though. Kurogane really was no nonsense and Fai liked it.

"So, what brought you to Tokyo then if you dislike it so much?" The blonde had lived here his entire life, so he was used to the hustle and bustle of big city life—he knew it was off putting to some.

"Work. I'm hoping I don't have to stay for long." Well that was that Fai supposed—Tokyo wasn't for everyone—and it meant that Kuro-cranky wasn't looking for love.

Excellent.

"You have an accent. Were you born here?" Kurogane asked when Fai didn't immediately respond to his earlier statement. He was staring at his body again—the blonde's suit was well tailored but in the darkness of the room it would be hard to tell what he had going on under the layers of fabric.

"No. I was born overseas. My father adopted me when I was little. This has been my home for the last 29 years."

A lot had happened in 29 years…

"Shit. How old are you?"

Fai was sure that out of the sparse information that he had included on his profile he had at least provided the fact that he was into boys and his age… that's all the information there was about him…

"I'm 33."

"Damn. I thought that was a typo. You sure as hell don't look 33." It was Fai's turn to laugh uncomfortably.

He was fine with an age gap for something like this. They were both consenting adults—and seemingly attracted to each other. Anyway, he actually preferred his partners younger then himself. He would rather play the roll of sugar daddy vs. sugar baby with the people he dated.

No matter how casual the relationship, or who toped whom.

"I'll take that as a compliment I suppose."

Kurogane's checks flushed again and he scrubbed at his face roughly with both of his hands.

"—I didn't mean— you're fine. I didn't mean to make you think there was anything wrong with that. It ah—just surprised me is all." Those crimson eyes fell to stare at his tanned hands and Fai tried not to grin too widely.

Kuro-shy was adorable. He shouldn't tease him too badly else he may scare him off.

"You've never done anything like this before have you?" the blonde chanced reaching his hand out to place it over the younger mans in an attempt to comfort him.

He didn't flinch at the platonic touch. That was good right?

"This is the first time I've actually met someone off tinder in person." Kurogane admitted.

No wonder he was so nervous.

"Well there is a first time for everything. We aren't going to do anything you don't 100% agree to. We can just have a drink and talk if you want?" Fai really wanted to get his clothes off and ride his dick until he saw stars. But only if Kurogane wanted to pound him till he couldn't walk right.

Fai had enough people trying to get in his pants without having to pressure his date into sex.

"Its not… Fuck. It's not like that ok?" the raven-haired man seemed to get even more flustered and Fai's amusement tuned to confusion.

What the hell was it then?

Tonight was not supposed to be this complicated.

"I'm not some sniffling virgin-" Kurogane locked eyes with Fai and glared hard. "You're just… not what I'm used to. That's not a bad thing I just don't… want to do the wrong thing."

"Oh." Fai said.

Not what he was expecting? What was he expecting then?

"Are you pleasantly surprised or moderately disappointed Kuro-muscle?" Fai offered in a teasing tone as the waitress brought there drinks back to them. Fai thanked her for the both of them and took a nice log sip of his scotch.

"Both. You're hot as fuck but annoying as hell. And my name is Kurogane." His companion sipped his sake and watched Fai with sharp eyes.

"Whaa? Kuro-meanie thinks I'm annoying? I was only concerned for your feelings…" he said a little too loudly in a whining pout.

"Are you some kind of idiot or something? Ku-ro-ga-ne." those red eyes were glaring sharper still and Fai chuckled. They were almost sharp enough to cut paper.

It shouldn't be so much fun to get a rise out of him.

"Kuro-tan?"

"Kuro-gane. It's not that hard." His eyebrow was twitching now, and Fai had to bite the inside of his cheek to hold back his grin.

"Kuro-pii?" the blond said innocently and sipped his drink again.

"Jesus Christ…" the younger man rubbed at his temple. "Say it with me. Kuro—"

"Kuro—" Fai chimed happily.

"—Gane." He repeated the second half of his name slowly. "Kuro—gane." Spoken with extra emphasis on the 'gane' part.

"Kuro-myuu?" Fai offered. He swore he could see a bit of his dates soul die as those words left his lips.

"Fuck me…." Kurogane was looking at him in disbelief. The blond wasn't sure if he actually thought him incapable of speaking his name properly, or if he knew the older man was pushing his buttons on purpose.

The fact that it was hard to tell was gloriously amusing.

Had no one ever teased this poor guy in his life? Fai was having far too much fun doing it now.

"Gladly." He made sure to keep his expression as neutral as possible while the younger man's face flushed beat red.

"Shut up!" Kuro-bashful huffed and looked away and Fai raised a single, impeccably manicured eyebrow at him. "You're a fucking weirdo you know that! That's what's wrong with you!"

Fai simply sipped his scotch and swished the earthy liquid around in his mouth, before swallowing it.

There was way more wrong with him then they had time to discuss—so he settled for continuing to tease his new friend mercilessly.

"I think I know what you meant by me not being what you expected."

Those red eyes flashed back to look over at him again and the blond gave a devilish smirk.

He thought about what he was going to say next carefully. He wanted to see those tanned cheeks blush dark enough that Kurogane looked like a delectably embarrassed tomato.

"You saw my picture and imagined a shy little blonde foreigner clinging onto you and blushing like a meek little bottom didn't know?" Fai always attracted that type.

He could play innocent if he was feeling it—but he had done things that would make your mother roll in her grave.

Kurogane seemed suddenly petrified by Fai's words as he continued to speak in a singsong tone. "Then you met me and realized I'm older then you and more experienced. I'm definitely not meek—I am not the one who has been blushing tonight—and you start to wonder how things would work out if we had sex right?"

Kurogane remained silent and Fai leaned in close enough to whisper hotly in his ear. "You're totally freaked out that your aroused right now—even though it might mean taking it up the ass from a pretty blond foreigner. Right Kuro-honey?"

"Shut—Shut up." Kuro-manly pushed Fai roughly away and the blond burst into a fit of giggles.

It was so much fun teasing Kurogane that it should be illegal…

"I don't see what's so fucking funny here blondie." The look of pure shame induced hatred was just too much and Fai covered his mouth with one of his hands in an attempt to get himself under control.

"I'm right aren't I?"

"I swear to god blondie if you don't shut the fuck up right now, I'm going to make you regret it."

Fai took another sip of his liquor. The distinct harsh taste helped distract him as he tried to think of what could put his potential lover at ease. When the last of the giggles had wiggled free of his throat, he slid closer to Kuro-baby again, so that their thighs were touching.

"I'm flattered that you think I'm so attractive you would let me fuck you Kuro-sexy." Fai drew out his words seductively and nipped at his junior's neck playfully. "But I have never had any desire to top anyone—definitely not someone as—" Fai sucked slowly on his neck this time. "—impressively tall and broad as yourself."

Kurogane shivered. Fai didn't know if was from sheer arousal or relief at knowing he wouldn't being trying anything too different tonight. Both were likely seeing the massive hard on bulging rather obviously in the man's jeans.

"I could perhaps be convinced to bend you the table and make you my bitch—But only if you beg me of course." Fai added as he looked up at Kurogane though heavy lashes.

"You're a fucking bastard you know what?" Fai yelped as he felt a muscular arm slide around his waist and pulled him close so that he was pressed firmly against Kurogane's hot body.

God he was big.

"You're not the first to tell me. It's not a secret." Fai sighed as his date ran a hand all the way up his side—applying just enough pressure to tickle through the layers of fabric—right to his neck, callused fingers brushing the sensitive skin in a surprisingly gentle manner.

Kurogane used his free hand to sip his sake and Fai was suddenly aware of just how horny he really was from just those chaste touches.

He hoped he didn't embarrass himself…

The waitress returned with a tray carrying another neat scotch and Masumi sake. She set both of them on the table—along with a suspicious number of napkins—and pulled the curtain that covered the entrance of the booth closed.

Kurogane looked confused and Fai used the opportunity to crawl into his lap—swinging his leg into position so that he and his date were nose to nose.

Fai didn't want to explain to him why there were privacy curtains on the booths—or that the waitress had closed the curtain because there flirting was probably catching other patron's attention. That would just ruin the mood.

Instead he closed the distance between their lips and kissed him sweetly. Fai would let Kurogane take the lead for how he wanted this to go. If that would make his lover more comfortable, Fai would roll with it. he relaxed into the taller man's chest and simply enjoyed as his senses as took his partner in.

Kuro-koi was warm. His skin felt hot against Fai's chilly fingers as he trailed them up and down his strong arms. He smelled clean—like aftershave and fresh laundry—and his lips were flavored with the sake he had been sipping.

All in all, he was intoxicating.

Kurogane seemed to get the picture and brought one hand up to tangle in the blonde's soft hair and used the other to lift his ass and scooch their bodies even closer, so that the smaller of the two had to crane his neck to keep their lips connected in the heated smooch.

Fai couldn't help the soft sighs he was making as Kuro-chi massaged his scalp and ran his fingers though his short locks while they kissed. The younger seemed to notice his fondness for that particular action and so continued to so even after their kiss broke.

The hand that had previously been on his ass started to loosen Fai's tie and the smaller man was biting his bottom lip while he watched Kurogane pull the decorative fabric fee and let it hang around his shoulders loosely. Next was the vest—but this required two hands—and Fai gave a disappointed whine as the he worked the layers of his clothing free.

Fai shivered from a combination of cool air of the room touching his previously covered skin, and his lover's hot hands ghosting over the sensitive flesh as he slowly worked the buttons of his dress shirt free.

His gaze had stayed transfixed on Kurogane's hands while they finished their task. The blonde considered what those hands would look like rubbing up and down his chest, and over the sensitive skin if his thighs.

An involuntary soft moan escaped his lips and he closed his eyes to picture it further as the younger continued to carefully undo each and every button with care. Fai didn't know it was because his hands were so big that he had a hard time with the little buttons—or if he was savoring the moment.

He didn't care ether way. He was enjoying himself.

Eventually the last button came free and Fai heard Kurogane growl as all three layers of his clothing were push off his small frame at once. Suit coat, vest, and dress shirt sliding to the floor underneath the table, forgotten.

"Shit." Kurogane leaned back and looked down at him. Fai was panting as he was observed though half lidded, hungry crimson eyes.

"Shit." he repeated as those hot hands were hesitantly placed on either side of the blonde's torso—just above the hem of his pants—and Kurogane bit his lip as he slowly ran them up and his naked skin, leaving goose flesh in his wake.

"Thank you?" Fai smiled at him and Kuro-swear at least had the decency to look slightly embarrassed at his language.

"Beautiful." He corrected, and it was Fai's turn to flush.

He had been called beautiful before—usually by woman with perhaps a handful of men offering those words to him—but never in the middle of sex with a Greek god of a man looking at his body like he was thanksgiving dinner.

Fai shuttered and closed his eyes. His entire body was feeling hot—he wasn't used to his skin being this sensitive but the raven haired man's feather light touches were driving him crazy.

He couldn't remember the last time he had had sex this good—and they hadn't even gotten to the actual fucking part yet.

This was not his usual quick and dirty hook up he got off tinder, and he didn't know if that was a good thing or not. Normal there was a few minutes of sloppy kissing before Fai got pushed against a wall, or bent over a table, and fucked hard and fast. Occasionally it ended with him getting sucked off if he needed a little extra help to finish…

No one had ever freaking worshiped his body with hungry eyes like Kurogane was currently doing. He had bent forward and was currently swirling his tongue around one of Fai's nipples while his finger gently massaged the other, alternating between rubbing the areola and pinching the tender skin between his thumb and index finger.

Applying just enough pressure to make Fai squirm his hips in the younger man's lap. He was acutely aware that this was not the most privet of setting and the blond mentally kicked himself for not finding them a better place to continue.

Fai wanted his lover very naked right now. Naked and on top of him—inside of him.

He didn't want to focus all of his attention on being quite—he wanted to scream in pleasure and curse his lover for making him feel so undone.

Not in the middle of his club though—definitely not in front of his employees. To ensure he didn't draw too much attention to himself, Fai was coving his mouth with one of his hands—his other fisting into Kuro-tease's tee-shirt.

All of these sensations were too much but in a wonderfully, overwhelmingly, delicious way that made him want to crawl out of his own skin.

Kind of like when you went to chiropractor—and their adjustments just hurt so fucking right.

Fai tugged particularly hard at Kurogane's tee and the younger stopped his intoxicating little nips and kisses to look at Fai.

"Do you uh… really wanna…?" Kurogane ground his erection against Fai's ass as if to finish the unspoken question and Fai whimpered and nodded his head quickly.

He was sure he was going to die after all of that teasing. He needed release.

"You wanna do it… here? I don't have any lube or a condo—" Fai silenced him with a sloppy kiss.

"Fuck the lube just use spit." Fai ground their hips together and Kurogane growled at the contact.

"And the condom?"

Fai would defiantly prefer it if they didn't use one—but now was not the time to push that issue. While he only ever used protection when his partner requested, he always came prepared.

"Wallet." His words came out in a breathy sigh while he shifted to regain the black leather Dunhill wallet. He retrieved the shiny metal wrapper and handed it to Kurogane before tossing his wallet back on the table.

To his surprise—the taller man set it aside and those hot hands run up his sides again and pulled Fai forward and the taller man kissed his way down the blonde's neck. Every move he made was smooth, paced, thoroughly deliberate, and it was intoxicating.

Kurogane ran those hot hands back down his sides, dragging his nails lightly across the smooth pail skin, then up his back. Massaging small circles in the tight muscles as he went. Fai was left again gripping uselessly onto his cloths and shifting his hips back and forth to create an enticing friction.

Eventually with enough quite whines Kurogane kissed his lips a little more roughly and reached for the blonde's belt. The buckle came loose with a little work and Fai shifted onto his knees so that he was eye level with his lover.

Their position was unfortunately awkward considering their tight quarters and the inconvenience of clothing. Fai didn't want to get completely naked in public like this… that wasn't a good call.

Again, he mentally kicked himself for not planning this better.

Kuro-crafty seemed to be content to make it work and Fai didn't question him when he was presented with three very large fingers. The blonde gave his best sultry look as sucked them with a little more force then needed.

Kurogane watched him with famished eyes—Fai hoped that he was thinking about what it would be like to have him sucking someplace a little more pleasant. His mind wondered back to his earlier musings about whip cream and a little rope and he moaned a little too loudly.

It was a much more—vivid—picture from the taller man's lap.

There was no need for fantasies when he had the real thing in front of him right now though.

Once he had meticulously coated Kurogane's fingers with saliva he closed his eyes and tried to relax as he felt that same hand slide down the back of his slacks. Kurogane probed at his entrance while nipping and kissing his way down Fai's neck and the overwhelming sensation of the hot breath puffing against his skin, and the gentle pressure of those slick fingers made him squirm.

The feeling of wanting to crawl out of his skin was back and his own breath of coming out in airy gasps before there had even been any penetration at all. At this rate he was going to cum—and that was embarrassing.

He wasn't used to someone being able to make his body react this way.

The first finger entered his body smoothly and Fai leaned forward to burry his face in the crook of Kurogane's neck to muffle his moan when he crooked it just right. The blonde swore he could hear a satisfied smirk in the younger man's next low growl.

Fai could only assume what he looked like right now. On his knees hovering above Kurogane's lap—ass out—leaning forward with arms wrapped around strong shoulders.

Sure, he could ruin the picture that his lover seemed so pleased with if he wanted to. That didn't sound like very much fun—so Fai let Kurogane continue to lead their little dance for now and closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling of strong fingers slowly stretching him.

A second finger was added and the taller mans free hand moved to tug down the front of Fai's boxers to free his arousal. His entire body shivered as Kurogane touched his cock just like he had been touching the rest of him.

Who would have thought him such a fucking tease?

Fai loved it.

A little more pressure was applied as Kurogane was smoothly running a closed fist up and down his length while the third finger was added. Fai had taken to kissing and sucking at Kuro-koi's thick neck and bit him rather roughly as he hit that bundle of nerves that threatened to put Fai over the edge.

"I take it—" Kurogane brushed it again while swiping his thumb over the head of the blonde's cock. "—that's the spot?"

"If you keep that up, I'm going to—"

"Do it." Kurogane massaged his prostate with a little more pressure and quickened the pace of his other hand and Fai unwrapped his arms and leaned his weight back so that he could kiss his lover.

"What about?" his eyes flickered down to the painfully obvious hard on in the younger man's jeans.

"Don't worry about that right now. I want to see you cum." Kurogane's voice came out in a low growl that caused Fai to shudder again.

"And is Kuro-sama usually such a gracious lover or do you just like to watch?" Fai leaned back into the raven haired man's touches, encouraging him to increase the pressure a smidge more.

He didn't answer—but Fai could assume from the way those eyes were watched the smaller man's hips moving provocatively—that he may have found a cute kink.

He could defiantly get into this.

Fai sucking in a deep breath though his nose and held it for a moment, in an attempt to get better control of the tingling in his cock. Not yet—this was too good to end yet.

The blonde made a show of using a single finger to tilt Kurogane's chin up, forcing their eyes to meet, before using the other hand to drag up his own torso. As he had expected—those crimson eyes locked in on what he was doing to himself.

Fai left a frustrated pout on his face while he closed his eyes and tiled his head back. With his own hand he traced up his sensitive side, traced over his protruding collar bones, ran them over his own erect nipples.

It felt nice—almost as nice as when Kurogane had done it for him earlier.

It must have looked nice too because he felt the younger man shift below him and sigh. The grip on the blonde's dick was firmer, and he was jerking him off faster now—matching the way he was moving his fingers.

Fai was bracing himself against the tanned man with a hand on his very warm, very broad chest. Said hand fisted in to the fabric, nails digging into his skin as Fai was hit with a sudden waive of pleasure that he wasn't expecting.

He came hard, back arching in an impressive show of flexibility as he covered his breathy gasps with his hand. Streams of sticky, hot cum shot out of him as he felt his member jolt.

Kurogane didn't seem to mind the mess that had spattered his clothing and continued to move his hands as his lover orgasmed.

When the last of pleasurable spasms washed over Fai's body the raven-haired man withdrew his fingers and reached for the napkins the waitress had so kindly provided them and started to wipe away the mess.

The blonde tugged his slacks up a little higher, so he wasn't as exposed, and shifted to sit next to him. Fai sipped his scotch and tried to think just how he was going to pay this little scamp back for that.

He hadn't expected this to take as long as it was—but this wasn't an unpleasant surprise by any means.

Slowly he leaned down to grab his clothing that was currently rumpled by Kurogane's feet and tossed them to the other side of the booth before sliding down to take their place.

"Hey, you don't have to—" Kurogane gave him a surprised look.

"I want to." Fai cut him off and placed his delicate hands on the man's belt buckle—pausing for permission.

Kurogane gave a nod and watched with wrapped interest as Fai turned his attention to the pesky cloths that was hiding his prize. He had popped more than a few belts in his day—and Fai was marveling and the younger man's impressive manhood within seconds.

The blonde licked at the impressive amount of precum that had collected at the head of his dates cock and concluded that Kuro-myuu had been enjoying himself with his earlier teasing. It was the blondes turn to make his partner squirm now though—and given their sizable age difference—he had a lot more experience doing just that.

Swirling his tongue around the head he slid both of his hands up under the hem of the dark shirt that was marring his perfect view of Kuro-love's no doubt impressive stomach.

And what a sight it was.

He was definitely going to need a night to admire this body in all its glory.

Fai took more of his lover into his mouth and sucked hard. Smirking around his cock, the blonde's blue eyes flickered up to see Kurogane's face, and he was not disappointed. Those red eyes were still watching him—only instead of being heavy with hunger—they were half lidded with need.

Good.

Fai closed his eyes and relaxed his throat and impressed himself by taking the entirety of his date manhood. Humming softly, he opened his eyes again and felt Kuro-wan twitch when their gaze met again.

Fai felt heat rushing back down between his own legs and he reached a hand down to slide inside of his own boxers.

Leaning his head back the blond applied just enough pressure with his lips to get his first moan. Kurogane raised a hand to tangle into his short locks and watched as Fai swished his tongue over the tip.

"Kuro-chan tastes good." He purred and felt the fingers in his hair tighten uncomfortably.

"It's Kurogane damm—Fuck…" Fai cut him off by sucking hard on the head of his penis and giving him an innocent look before closing his eyes and bobbing his head up and down.

It continued on like that. The older man earned quite a few moans and curses from the younger any time he would glace up or make a show of what he was doing. Fai could feel Kurogane getting close a few times—his cock was twitching with need—and he made sure to switch things up enough to keep this little game going for as long as he could.

He had been in the middle of deep throating his lover when he felt a tug at his hair. His eyes flickered up to see the taller man motion for him to come up with his free hand.

Slightly disappointed at not getting to show off the rest of his oral skills with the big finally, he climbed up from under the table.

He was letting Kuro-handsome be the boss. He had to remember.

Fai settled in the booth next to the raven-haired man and relished in the feeling off Kurogane's hands on his cool cheeks as he kissed him roughly.

"Not that that wasn't fucking amazing…" he let his words trail off and he kissed Fai more insistently. "I just really wanted to fuck you."

"By all means Kuro-chan." Fai cooed.

That had been the ultimate go of all of this hadn't it?

The blonde could tell that his date was much more excited now then he had been at the beginning of their little necking session. His hands moved with fervor as he tugged him into position and Fai found himself on his knees—hands gripping the top of the high back booth while his partner wracked hands over his body and kissed his neck.

He had already cum once tonight, but he was more than ready for round two.

He could here Kurogane opening the condom and adjusted his own clothing so that his lover would have better access to where he needed to be.

Fai held his breath as Kurogane slowly entered him—one of those hot hands on his left hip—the other on his right shoulder.

The blonde winced a little—Kurogane was definitely well endowed and prelubricated condom or no—it would unquestionably be more comfortable if they had come a little better equipped.

His discomfort was quickly forgotten when Kurogane reached around and grabbed his throbbing cock, however. After a few seconds of adjustment time—he set a brutally brilliant rhythm for them that had Fai breathless.

Was it possible to be addicted to a sensation? Because Fai was sure no other feeling in the world was quite like the feeling of Kurogane fucking him in this booth.

They were both exceedingly careful to stay quite—for Fai that meant again covering his mouth with one hand while he tried to hang onto the back of the booth with the other. Between his own muffles sighs and whimpers he could here Kurogane legitimately growling as he thrusted into him and it was honestly the most erotic thing that had ever happened to him.

Fai came shockingly fast and was sure his eyes were rolling into the back of his head from the hot waves of pleaser that were slamming into him with every thrust. Kurgoane followed not long after and the blonde found himself grinning as he came with a stream of curse words whispered under his breath.

Oh yes… this had been just what Fai needed.

Kurogane pulled out carefully and handed Fai a few of the napkins before cleaning himself up. Fai hadn't expected to be pulled back into his dates lap after they had finished—and he especially didn't expect to get a soft kiss on the neck and his drink handed to him.

"You're awfully sweet Kuro-puu." Normally Fai wouldn't tolerate such affections after a hookup—but he was starting to get tired and Kurogane was really very comfortable.

Besides they still had drinks to finish.

"Not really. What do you expect me to do? Zip my jeans and ditch after I just fucked you?" Kurogane sipped his sake and Fai rolled his eyes.

Yes. That is usually how these things went.

"That's normally close to how it goes. If I didn't know any better, I would think you had a crush on me." Fai leaned his head on his dates strong shoulders and yawned.

He was going to need to find somewhere privet to refresh soon.

"Fuck that. You're hot but I can tell your fucking insane."

Fai snorted. Good observation kid.

"You're not wrong there Kuro-woof." Fai tipped his head back and finished off the rest of his drink. He could vaguely here his stepfather scolding him in the back of his mind for not savoring the flavor of such an expensive scotch – but Fai only drank the stuff because he liked how it smelled. Besides the sooner they finished there drinks the sooner he could go top up.

"It's Kurogane you freak." The taller man fallowed suit and knocked back the rest of his drink. "Hey, you know where the bathroom is here? I gotta clean up a bit."

The blonde's eyes flickered to his soiled clothing and frowned. Yeah—that would be for the best.

"Sure. Just a sec ok?" Fai grabbed his own clothing and quickly buttoned up his dress shirt, tucking it in and fixing his belt in an attempt to look a little less sex rumpled. He didn't think he was pulling it off, and draped his vest, tie, and jacket over his arm and stood.

Kurogane watched him lazily and followed him out of the booth. Fai was reminded of his date's glorious height and smirked as he led them though the winding booths, back down the stairs, and past the door that very clearly read 'employees only.'

"Hey, is it ok if were back here?" Kurogane looked around curiously as Fai led him past the store room, back past the brake room, and into the employee bathroom.

"I work here silly." Fai winked at him, holding the door open for the younger man.

"You seriously screwed someone at your job? Your boss is cool with that?" Kurogane entered the room and looked at himself in the mirror. The dried cum on his shirt and pants stood out against his black clothing.

Whoops.

Fai didn't answer as he followed him in and started to fix his own clothing. The lighting was dim enough in the club that no one would notice. The light provided from the street lamps weren't much better, so it wasn't the end of the world.

"What are you doing after this?" Kurogane asked as he used a damp paper towel to try and get some of the evidence washed away.

"Going back to work." Fai made quick work of redressing. This wasn't the first time he had had to salvage a wrinkled outfit—wouldn't be the last.

"Fuck. Good luck with that." Kurogane gave up and tossed the paper towel in the trash and turned to lean against the sink and watch him.

"I take it your nightly excursions are over Kuro-tan?" Fai tightened his tie and pulled out his cell phone.

Ugh. He was starting to regret sending Syaoran home…

"Yeah."

The blonde ignored the text messages and emails that had flooded in since his arrival at Kyuden and went to his contacts. Opening up a blank card he handed his phone to his date and smiled.

"If you don't mind Kuro-cutie." Kurogane took his phone and gingerly entered his name and number into his phone and handed it back. "Thank you sir."

The blond stepped close to the taller man and pressed his back against Kurogane's chest. Lifting his phone up above both of there heads he gave a dazzling smile and cooed. "Say Cheeses Kuro-scowl!"

Of course—Kurogane didn't comply and instead of a selfie with two gentlemen smiling happily in a post sex glow—they ended up with one man smiling in a post sex glow, and one glaring so hard one would expect the camera to shatter.

And wasn't that perfect?

"Whaa! Look how cute we are?" Fai teased as he set the photo as Kurogane's contact picture. He also sent it to the younger man, so he would have the blonde's number.

"You are such a fucking weirdo." Kurogane growled at him but checked his phone as soon as the message came though non the less.

"Yes—but I am a hot weirdo." The blonde reminded before turning to lead them both back out to the main room of the club.

Fai tossed his cc on the bar as they passed Yuto and walked Kurogane back out to the street. "I ordered you an Uber."

"you didn't need to do that or pay for the drink you know?" the raven-haired man sighed and glared daggers at him.

"What's the point of seeing and older man if they don't pick up the tab?" The blonde teased and Kurogane gave him a slightly scandalized look.

"Hey! That's not what this was about!" Fai laughed. Kurogane was practically stomping his feet in frustration.

Luckily for the younger man, the cab pulled up and Fai graciously opened the back door for him.

Once the cab had pulled away Fai went back inside—he just had to get though the rest of the night… He could do this.

[globalteachonline]

What you'll learn Learn how to add, edit, and manipulate data to create powerful projectsTake control of your finances by building your own fantastic professional looking personal budget after following my step by step instructionsEnhance your skills and take your job to the next level by learning ExcelCourse updated February 2017 Why not learn a new skill for 2017 and get ahead of those New Year's resolutions! "You don't know what's going to happen when you try, but if you don't try nothing will happen!" Master Microsoft Excel easily even as a total beginner with our comprehensive course: Excel for Beginners: Learn Excel, Create a Budget, Have Fun! We take the boring out of numbers, in a fun, engaging and interactive course, that takes you step-by-step to becoming a Microsoft Excel pro. No Previous Knowledge Needed Complete beginners are welcome, there’s no need to have experience using Excel previously and certainly no requirement of any technical qualification. All you need is Microsoft Excel 2007 and we can get started. Who Likes Numbers Anyway? Most of us aren’t good with numbers and that’s exactly why Excel was created. This powerful software will work the figures and charts for you. What we do at Not Your Average Courses is make it as easy as A, B, C to navigate Excel to create financial budgets, overviews, spreadsheets, lists and so much more, in no time. We’ll be revealing secrets that make it so easy you’ll be shocked you never learnt to use Excel sooner. What Make This Course Different? We make learning fun, unlike most online Excel courses that are complicated, time-consuming, confusing and just plain boring. We like to make our Excel for Beginners Course fun, simply because it’s the best way to learn. We believe in keeping it simple. Over complicated and exhaustive explanations that bury the student in technicalities just cause confusion, distress and the desire to retreat. With our Excel for Beginners Course we break the details down to bite sized piece and keep the information to exactly what you need to know to get the job done. We encourage and motivate our students. Our students are encouraged to ask as many questions that they like, which can be general or related to specific projects. We’re happy to help you work through practical examples and will ensure you’re motivated and encouraged from start to finish. Lively and interactive learning is key. This Excel for Beginners Course doesn’t use conventional textbook methods for learning but instead real live examples by assisting you prepare your own financial budget in Excel. This relevant reference point will improve your memory of the formulas and commands used in Microsoft Excel. What You’ll Learn on this Excel for Beginners Course How the main components of Microsoft Excel work Entering, editing, and copying data in Excel Sorting, filtering, and organizing data Writing formulas and creating calculations Shortcuts to make your project easier Using graphs to represent data in Excel How to build your own personal budget What you will get from this course? With this Excel for Beginners Course You’ll Learn to create powerful projectsTake control of your finances by creating and editing your personal budget spreadsheet Enhance your skills for jobs that require a working knowledge of Microsoft Excel Ideal for complete beginners or those who want to brush up on their skills, our Excel for Beginners Course is an excellent way to master a new skill and your finances all at once. Who this course is for:This course is designed for anyone who has the desire to learn Excel and has little or ZERO prior experienceIf you want to have fun while learning then this is the course for youThis course is not for advanced Excel users or people who don't want to have fun and are looking for a boring mundane course

[glowyjellyfish]

Here’s the problem I’m having with playing a Sims 2 Megahood. Every time I play, I think “oh, this is an interesting story I should share,” but every time I play, I’m just in it for playing and never think to take pictures or do a full write-up afterwards. I want to change that.

I am, somehow, playing a perfectly functional game on Windows 10. Don’t ask me how. I had it installed for a few months last year before it suddenly broke after my software insisted on updating, couldn’t get it working again no matter how hard I tried, had the urge in January and it installed with no problems. Shrug. I… may have switched to using the UC version over the G4W version? And then used the G4W installers to cram in the missing expansion packs? Anyway, my whole intent was to set up different downloads folders so as to lessen my ungodly loading time and make Flavor Games capable of using Defaults and such. I… am not particularly far into this project, but my Modern Downloads folder is looking pretty clean. Might swap it out for Medieval one of these days and try to play MCC again, but not today.

I have a whole host of MATY mods, ACR and Inteen (partially because I collected the mods when all my downloads were in one folder and I was playing historic hoods, and partly because it just bugs me when teens can woohoo without any possible consequences. I don’t usually go for it, but it makes for fun drama if it happens), and recently installed Hat’s Proportional Aging Mod, which I’m still getting used to. I didn’t like that sims would stay in college for WAY TOO LONG and also didn’t like playing 24-hour semesters, but boy howdy is there an adjustment period for this aging mod. I’m just hoping to avoid a Young Adult Desert as the last of the sims who were already teens when the hood began has departed for college, and it will be Entire Rounds before the next batch of teens is ready. I usually have teens leave for college at any point when they are at 5 days or less to Adult, but might bend that rule in a couple rounds to prevent the colleges from going empty.

I’m also trying to use LTW-focused gameplay, as opposed to ignoring the LTWs that don’t fit how I usually play, such as the Business ones and the Pet ones, but at the same time I’m setting up a pyramid-style Career Slots scheme whereby each career level has a limited number of jobs available (10 at level 1, 9 at level 2, etc), to try and encourage diversified gameplay. I’ll use the job stoppinator when a sim cannot advance, and sims in a level with no open slots are required to use chance cards (which I often ignore in regular gameplay). I also have some standard rules for rolling a sim’s Aspiration, turn-ons, and orientation when they become Teens (the orientation is newer, and i don’t have many queer sims yet but I am hopeful), and a little program where broke college graduates can be ‘hired’ by households that are soon to lose their last guardian to housesit and watch the kids until the household family ages to teen or moves back from college; they’re paid in room and board, and a fair share of the household funds when they leave.

I’m using Google Sheets to have a massive spreadsheet for a census and record as I play, as well as record family trees (I figured out a way to simply write in family trees, so excited), and figure out potential pairings based on attraction.

I have a play order that spaces out the Main Three Hoods so I won’t hit a rough patch of too much Unfavorite Hoods or too much College to play before getting back to the good stuff. Currently, I’m in Belladonna Cove at the opening of a new round, and a lot has already happened in the four or five rounds I’ve played so far.

In Belladonna Cove, the Goodies befriended Bella Goth--the poor thing, stumbling around with no memory of her former life, clearly she needed friends! ...when in fact although she did lose her memory in the traumatic event that also resulted in a clone, she’s dimly aware that she has a family (ie she’s on the family tree), and she’s much happier just seducing sims and living her best life. She’s debating whether she’s interested in staying in Belladonna Cove, or would prefer to move Downtown, while Herbert and Faith have just been going hiking and entering cooking contests with their spare time.

Gavin and Ginger Newson managed to care for their siblings until they were ready to go to college. Gabriella and Gallagher are teens now, taking care of Georgia and Garrett, but are concerned they’re going to miss their chance for college before the kids grow up. They might end up hiring a broke college graduate.

Carlos Contender didn’t marry Chastity Gere, but she moved in with him and had twins Patience and Verity (girl and boy) with him before she unexpectedly died of disease. Carlos isn’t too far off from Death’s Door himself, and is looking into hiring some kind of caregiver, or possibly asking his family to take in his kids.

The Patels moved to a modest house and currently have three kids, Jaya, Kavita, and Umar. Jaya just grew up to be a child.

The Clevelands had two more children--a daughter, Melissa, and the result of an abduction, Sylvia--and moved Downtown; Justin’s currently attending Sim State University.

Kimberly Cordial successfully married Armand De Bateau, and moved with him and Tara out of the penthouse to a mansion nearby in the wealthy district--one that needed plenty of remodeling, by the way. Giant awkwardly shaped empty rooms do not a mansion make. Tara has departed for college (SSU, at the moment teens attend the next college that will be played in the order), and Kimberly gave birth to a daughter, Libby. Meanwhile, Samantha Cordial had unexpected chemistry with Luis Aspir, and got married to him. They live together in the Cordial family home, working on renovations, and have a daughter together, Sabrina.

Jessica Peterson had a fair amount of options to consider, but ultimately she moved in with Jason Larson in Bluewater Village, choosing a husband who shared her goals. They have one son so far, Stanley Peterson, and future children will have the Larson name.

Gabriel Green has been quietly working on his career as he waits for his girlfriend Jane Stacks to graduate college; she’s just about to move in. I hope to find a way to remodel Gabriel’s cool industrial building to retain the style but become a little more livable for a family, or else I might move them.

The Gavigans are struggling in a house that’s a little bit too small for them--they were unable to find anything larger in their budget, and BDC is short on homes that are appropriately sized for families anyway. It certainly doesn’t help that they’ve had three more kids--daughter Ruth, and twins James and Judith--and they’re working very hard at earning enough money to slowly remodel their home so they have enough space.

Vivian Cho and Timothy Riley fell in love and got married, as they are wont to do, and have moved to a remodelled Nightlife house that now has an attached garage (I love remodelling that unit!). Sally’s a teen, Etsu’s a child, and they have a toddler son together, Yeong Cho. Timothy’s fast making his way up the Medicine ladder and may become the first chief of staff in the tri-city area (...oct-city? How many hoods are there??)

The Baldwins moved Downtown, and had a third child, Rosa. Not a lot else going on with them, although they might take in Isabel’s uncle’s kids.

Geoff Rutherford has mostly been working on his career and the notches in his bedpost, but he is considering choosing one lady to carry on his family name. This is most likely going to be Nina Caliente, but could also be Bella Goth or DJ Verse. Meanwhile, his housemate Connor Weir has done a little pining over fairly-happily-married Cassandra Goth Lothario (...nope, not weird at all, moving along), but is currently happily involved with Blossom Moonbeam and waiting for her to graduate college. (...this is happening a lot).

Next in the roster is Downtown, which I’ve already described via the few families that have moved there. I’m hoping to make Downtown and BDC the only hoods with apartments, and populate them heavily when sims finally start graduating en masse. And after that comes Desiderata Valley, the bane of my Megahood, full of boring gimmicky families and ugly, ugly houses. I’m working very hard to change that, but we’ll see when I write up the next round.

Part of me wants to either wait until I take pictures to go with this, or come back and add pictures later, but see, that’s the kind of thinking that leads to me never sharing anything. I’ll share it now, dammit, and continue to share updates as I play through each round.

[hauntedfalcon]

#remember when ppl said the money was for authors' legal fees#and then when that app copied down all that fanfiction & sold it thus opening authors up to litigation#ao3 was like ''wow that sounds like a you problem''?#anyway i remember laughing @ that mess & now the same fools are donating so ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯#sucker born every minute! (tags by @princessnijireiki​) 

one of my favorite things to do every six months is see how big the Legal Advocacy portion of the Organization for Transformative Works’ budget is 

huh, five grand and they haven’t spent anything in Q1 of 2020? seems low but let’s check 2019

oh

well, they spent some in 2018! let’s see--

so they weren’t even defending a writer... okay... 

and at the start of 2018, they had budgeted $5,000 for Legal Advocacy. But between February and August, that line item was reduced by $1,330, which was reallocated... somewhere. AO3 didn’t publish where it went. The legal budget question (which made note of how small the final line item was) in the comments for the 2018 budget update post was never answered. (Neither was a request for AO3 to commit that their investment portfolio will be exclusively composed of ethical companies who don’t use slave labor.) 

but we press on! August 31, 2017: 

February 28, 2017: 

(apologies for the lack of a graph on this one, it looks like the images in the original 2017 budget post are all broken links now)

again, somehow, in the span of six months, the budget for Legal Advocacy dropped by $2,000 

2016 (no budget end date given, but the post was made in September): 

this is an incredibly specific number that happened to leave exactly $1,000 more in the budget than their expenditures up to that point. I had to go into the spreadsheet to figure out what those expenses were: 

(actual expenses in middle column, budgeted expenses on right) 

okay! they filed something in 2016! I don’t know what ‘cause that’s not in this spreadsheet! also if you go all the way back to the OTW’s posted budget in March 2016, which is as early as the published budgets on AO3 go... it looks completely different and is not categorized the same way

so it’s really difficult to say what the budget just for Legal, as it was classified in later years, would have been in the start of that year, but at the absolute least they cut $700 from the filing fees line item. 

anyway, my only point here is that I want people to stop saying AO3 does important legal work, thanks 

like ive always thought its so weird that ao3 ask people for donations multiple times a year, always exceed their goal and yet keep asking for donations like where does all the money go???? ur site still looks like someone made it in 2006 and it's been a beta ver for years now so what do u do with all that money?????

[insanetwocubes]

The problem is with the car maintenance stuff. It needs so much work, man.

I'm gonna have to figure out all the regular maintenance stuff because I've been between so many mechanics to find the cheapest deals lol

Not to mention that I can't work when my car is being worked on. I have to take that into account. But when I'll be able to take a week off, I'll just do it on my week off.

Cuz lyke okay. I'm working within the week standards because I'm so behind in the long term and worrying about it constantly is gonna make me work to death. But after my savings are back up, I can work within the month, which would give me an even more relaxed work schedule. And then when I'm confident my car is all good, I can work within the year.

And potentially have a few months worth of vacation if I ever need them.

It's probably gonna be easier for me to save when I work for the short terms instead of the long terms, but at the same time, when I have money, it would be easier to spend less so it makes it slightly easier to save so it might even out in a way. And also I know I won't take out the solid week or the solid month to just laze around. I'll invest the time into crafts or cleaning or tbf I'll work at a more linient pace and still make money.

So things are good. Right now I'm working within the week. Because of ex dys and exhaustion problems. Those might take a day out of me because I'll work through a week straight without taking a day off.

So right now I'm working within a week. And I'm trying to make up for the maintenance days and weeks that I lost in the past few months. I got August covered lol. And July is about 600 down right now. I'm working backwards lol. It started out as -1000 ealier in the month so I'd say it's progress lmao.

So after I'm working backwards with the days I missed, then I need the cost of all the maintenance stuff. That might be more tricky because it's just trying to make up the money through savings. But I'm sure if I just keep working within the week, I'll make it up. Plus the tax money should help. Actually, I can just work backworks in accordance with the paperwork.

And then after that it's just gonna be making up what's necessary for the savings after that. And after that, I'm gonna look at the spreadsheet and decide if I can take a week off.

And I'll do that by taking each budget section and seeing what else is left to pay for the month and making sure I have enough for the next month and when I do, I can take the rest of the month off.

But until then, I'm working every single week.

Actually, I need to recalculate all of my necessities to take into account the 3rd paycheck week. Because some are and some aren't. Which explains why my food budgets is always less than what I expect lol

And actually I'm gonna need to modify my spreadsheet if I want take more than a month off. But I probably won't need that much time off anyway. Like I said, I'll be doing things that are gonna make money anyway.

I'm gonna have to update my spreadsheet to find out my necessities with the 3rd paycheck week taken into account, just to absorb all the variation of chance. And then start working off that new metric as soon as possible.

But for now I'm worried about this week. And making up for the July missed days.

Then it's going backwards on the missed months, then it's past maintenance costs, then it's the savings, then it's the future car fixes, probably the recaculation somewhere in there, and then I'll be able to scale down the work.

~Flare

[stevensavage]

Steve's Almost Zero-Sum Budgeting

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve's Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Some friends and I discussed money management, both in general and how to handle it during the Dumb Apocalypse. I use a version of Zero-Sum budgeting they were interested in, so I wrote it up to share it.

You know me - most things I wrote up become blog posts.  I'm no expert, so use my advice at your discretion, but I hope it helps.

The basic idea of Zero-Sum budgeting is that you assign purpose to your money - all of your money. In theory, your budget is so perfected you know what you need to save, when you spend it, and every dollar goes somewhere.

Now I'm not trying to make it perfect. I include leeways for error in my method, but the basic idea is something I've done for over twenty-five years in one form or another. I never heard of zero-sum budgeting - it's just what I came up with, and later found it had a name.

THE BASIC IDEA

First, let's get to the goal - because the only purpose of using this method is to meet a goal. Simply, my idea is to manage my money so I'm aware of how much I have and use it properly, working towards living well and retiring happily.

Here's the basic idea of my "Zeroish Sum Budgeting":

Know what your expenses are.

Assign money to them, essentially setting it aside for appropriate times.

Make sure every dollar is assigned (even if it's "here's my rainy day fund").

Have a buffer because you may screw it up.

Move your money around to reflect these plans.

Keep checking this budget and making sure it works.

OK, so how do you do this? Here's what I do.

FIRST: ASSESS YOUR FINANCES

First, see where you are. That consists of:

Assess how much money you have. This should be liquid funds, not investments. I track investments separately, and that's not my focus.

Evaluate your income by year.

Taking this step is simple, but needed - learning what you've got to work with.

Next up.

ASSESS WHAT YOU SPEND ON CORE EXPENSES

Core expenses are those things you do to live - food, rent, etc. This is not what you should spend, but what you're spending now.

Figure out your annual expenses on things like:

Rent/home payment

Utilities

Food

Insurance

Medical care (on average)

Transportation (Gas, etc.)

Medical and Dental Care

By the way, notice the last one? That's kind of iffy, right? Do your best to project what your average medical care will cost per year. Now that may be regular, or it may be something you save up for and tap occasionally. This is where you get into a big thing for Zero-Sum (or whatever I do) - projecting expenses.

How do you find this info? Well, your past expenses, credit card bills, and so on. oMake your best guess - because you'll improve over time. Just do your best now!

Now that you've got these expenses, it's time to apply my 10/20/30 rule. If you're a bit unsure of an expense, add 10%. If you're more unsure, add 20%. If you think you need 30%, then you need to rethink your estimates and try again.

You'll also see how much money you have after these expenses (which helps you plan further or spend better).

ASSESS WHAT YOU SPEND ON OTHER EXPENSES

Now you've got your basics. Not only is that helpful, but it's also good practice - figuring out your annual expenses for everything else. This will be a challenge.

Some expenses are weekly, like food. Some are monthly, like rent. Some are yearly like insurance. Some stretch over the years, like saving for a car or a computer. Some are unpredictable, like clothing.

Here are some ideas:

Home electronics (Computers, phone)

Clothes

Housewares (blender, silverware)

Education

Car/car loan

Car repair

Licenses.

As noted, some of these are unpredictable or spread over time. What I usually do for these is figure out:

How much I spend within a timeframe (you purchase a new refrigerator once a decade).

Divide that up by how many years it takes.

But as we get here, some of this is unpredictable! Other things may be so far in the future (like a car) inflation may be a worry. This is where my 10-20-30 rule comes in as well.

Notice that we didn't cover investment or having fun? I save those for later. So anyway, next up.

INVESTMENT AND SAVINGS - AND FUN

At this point, you know what you need to live, what you want to live with, and hopefully, have money left over. Now you figure out how much you can invest and how much I need "for fun." These are the last numbers, and I hold them for last as they can be variable.

Think that's it? No! Read on!

REASSESS IT ALL

Now you can set up a spreadsheet with all these numbers, and see how your income is distributed over the year! And you can see if it works. And then you're going to probably want to rethink it all again.

That's part of this whole process - assessing and reassessing. Don't worry, you'll do this a lot, but over time you won't do it as much.

Save this spreadsheet. You'll turn it into a budgeting tool!

ASSIGN YOUR CURRENT FUNDS

Now you have an idea of what you'll be spending and saving over the years, so take that money you've saved and assign it to those categories you came up with. How much is in food? Rent? etc. Do your best with that, and stick that in savings.

An important note - I leave a buffer fund of about half a paycheck to half a month of money in checking.

Initially I didn't keep everything in savings and spend from there - things like rent and food I kept in my checking account because it was predictable enough. But the Pandemic, which has altered a lot of my spending patterns, has made me see the virtue of tracking more tightly.

ALLOCATING FUNDS

So here's what I do to track my funds week by week.

First, I set up a spreadsheet that lets me see what I should allocate weekly to my expenses. This way I know how my money is supposed to be saved.

Then, every week, I allocate money, moving it to savings. As you can guess, that's a lot of categories to keep track of, so I just set up a spreadsheet to update itself with a simple cut and paste. I see what's currently allocated to each category, what I add each week, and what it should be - then take the latter and copy it to the allocation column.

Then, guess what? I move that money once a week! That way I see where it's going! But . . .

I also see if I have anything wrong. Did I cross my buffer? Did I have more left than thought? Was there some surprise? Each week provides me more feedback!

Plus you get feedback when you spend money!

SPEND MONEY

As noted I'd take money out weekly for things like food, but in general, what I did was put things on a credit card or write a check. To cover those, I'd use my spreadsheet to figure out how much money had to come out of savings and go into paying those things. That way, I see where my money is going every month or more.

By spending money you get feedback. Did I spend too much? Less? How is my savings going in categories that aren't going to be touched for years?

I find that except for basic expenses (like food), its hard to track things every day, so I usually do weeks and months. If you can do daily great, but don't drive yourself nuts.

MOVE MONEY

Sometimes, like in the case of investment, you have to move money too. I won't go into investment (I'm a max-out-the-401k/403b type guy into index funds otherwise). But that is something you set up as needed. For instance, in our current crisis and stock ups and downs, I held off on investing.

LEARN

Finally, you should always, always learn and check your money. If something is suspicious, go over your numbers. If you need to rethink expenses, do so - prices change.

A personal example from recent events; I noticed some gaps in my spending - my cash flow had a weird anomaly of a few hundred dollars. That's when I realized I hadn't worked in changes to retirement - I became eligible for a matching plan and had more money taken out of my paycheck. Then forgot to update my spreadsheet.

AND THAT'S IT

Look, you can probably find some books and guides and articles. But this is what I do. Just me, some calculations, and a spreadsheet.

It won't solve all your problems. It will help you track your money, so you have a chance to deal with those problems.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com