I’ve lived in Colorado Springs for 22 years and have seen restaurants come and go.  A few I was sad to see close.  Others were open such a short time it was obvious the owners didn’t plan for enough money to stay afloat until they were solvent.  Or maybe they just didn’t have good food or service.

One of my favorite places for Chinese food is Tsingtao House at the corner of Woodmen and Rangewood, just east of the King Soopers.  I used to have another favorite Chinese restaurant but when new owners took over I didn’t like the food anymore.  Then I found Tsingtao House.  I have to go a few extra miles to get there, but it is worth it.  It’s a great value.  They have a varied menu and the food is consistently good.  They have a great lunch and dinner special that includes soup, crab wonton, eggroll, and hot tea.  Give it a try!  It’s great when we can keep local restaurants open.  And watch for more favorites in the future.  What is your favorite Pikes Peak Region restaurant?

This cozy little BBQ place really satisfies the desire for good ol’ Texas BBQ.  Having spent years driving to Johnnie’s mobile BBQ wagon on Saturday mornings to get a couple huge brisket sandwiches, we’ve missed the mouth watering taste of that Texas treat.  (Okay, so Bird Dog says it’s Oklahoma style, but we won’t dredge up that old rivalry.  :-)  Mesquite or oak smoked, it all tastes great! ) Well, no more waiting!  Colorado Springs loves Bird Dog BBQ and so does my family.  Great pulled pork, brisket, and links and a unique wasabi BBQ sauce that adds just the right tang to your sandwich.  Give it a try.  They are located at Stetson Hills and Powers but I read recently they just opened a new location at Shops at Briargate too.

I have been extremely remiss in posting recently.  Life events have taken over, but I’ll try to be better in the future.

I always like to try to understand how other people perceive the world and I have many sites that I visit to get that look at life.  Sometimes I shake my head.  Sometimes I nod in agreement.  We are a very diverse lot in this country in how we see the world and what is important to us.

I was visiting the blog on The Quilt Show today and saw this life list of lessons from Regina Brett.  A lot of common sense in 45 lines.  Thank you, Regina, for sharing your insight.  I am happy to send people your direction.  For more about Regina, visit reginabrett.com.

Here is her list of 45 lessons which was posted on The Quilt Show blog:

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’

27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s,we’d grab ours back..

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.”

Here’s a neat tool to help you get a REAL person when you call companies trying to avoid talking to you.  Now instead of just repeatedly hitting zero like I usually do, you’ll know what to do.  After all, it costs money to provide customer service and heaven forbid companies putting that in their operating budget.  I found one on the list that I need!  I’m sure you will too.  Click here.

I’ve been an investor for a long time and I’m interested in trends in the market, because we all know investing in the stock market (or real estate market) is not a short term endeavor if you want to truly be successful.  I love the charts on Yahoo and with the DJIA rising in recent weeks I wondered what the long term chart looked like for the DJIA in January of each year over the past 20 years.  I kept buying shares during the 2000-2002 downturn and made a very nice double digit return in 2003.  Is the current chart so very different?  Looking at the chart for the past 6 months is scary but here’s what I found out when I took a longer view.

At the beginning of 2003 after the previous downturn, the DJIA was at 8054.  In January 2009, the DJIA was at 8001.  Let’s look at the long term trend from 01/1989 to 01/2009:   01/89 2342, 01/90 2590, 01/91 2736, 01/92 3226, 01/93 3310, 01/94 3978, 01/95 3844, 01/96 5395, 01/97 6813, 01/98 7908, 01/99 9358, 01/00 10940, 01/01 10887, 01/02 9920, 01/03 8054, 01/04 10488, 01/05 10490, 01/06 10865, 01/07 12622, 01/08 12650, 01/09 8001.  Would you have invested over the past 20 years knowing what has happened in the past 6 months?  I sure would have.  I would have put in even more than I did!  The point a lot of people miss is that the real value of long term investing is not how rapidly the indexes rise, but how many shares you are accumulating along the way.  If you sell out near the bottom or you don’t continue to invest when the market is down you lose a lot of ground.  Buy low, sell high means buy lots more shares at low prices and reap the rewards when prices go up and you get to cash in to have money to live or achieve goals you’ve set.

Just thought you’d like to know.   If you had continued to invest and have more now than 20 years ago, do you think you’d have money to invest in historically low priced real estate too?  Something to think about.  Fear and greed drive short term movements in the markets.  A long term vision helps put it all in perspective.  If you want to know how to do it, there are a lot of good books on library shelves that can help you.  If you need help picking and sticking with an investment allocation, meet with a good experienced financial advisor to get you going.

I am a book fanatic.  I never read just one book.  I usually have at least a half dozen on my bedside table tabbed where I left off when I was in the mood for that topic.  When I check books out at the library I have to make sure I read them straight through or I end up renewing them or paying fines for being overdue.  So lately, I’ve been buying books more trying to keep the bookstores in business and help the economy.

I learned about a book on being a Realtor in the changing real estate market while at the CRS Sellabration in San Francisco last month.  Shift by Gary Keller.  Gary has a lot of great ideas that I rip off and duplicate - the greatest form of flattery - in my business at RE/MAX.  The other book I learned about today from Margaret Kelly as she spoke to the RE/MAX Convention attendees.  (I watched her on the web.)  The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon.  I think I’ll check that one out.  It sounds like it has a story I would enjoy and I can probably read it in one sitting.

Did you know a very small percentage of the US population reads books?  We have a wealth of knowledge from people sharing what has and hasn’t worked in their lives and businesses on the shelves of libraries,  bookstores, and online bookstores all over the country.  I learn so many things that help me in business and in my creative pursuits that I can’t imagine not taking time to sit down with a book each day.

Are you familiar with leverage?  Have you used leverage?  If you’ve purchased a home, chances are you have.  When you made that purchase did you make a down payment of 3, 5, 10% or more?  How long ago did you purchase your real estate?  Depending on that answer you have either leveraged up or down.  It’s also dependent on where you live.  Florida?  California?  Phoenix?  Las Vegas?  Michigan?  If you bought in one of those places between 2004 and 2007, you most likely leveraged down.  If you didn’t make a down payment, you may now be in foreclosure or on your way unless you locked in a fixed rate that you could afford.  If you used creative financing, you used another type of leverage and the combination can be deadly to your finances.

Leverage according to Daniel Webster is “1) the action of a lever or the mechanical advantage gained by it, 2) effectiveness, power”.  A Lever is “an inducing or compelling force”.  I like that word, compelling.  The effect of leverage is compelling.  It creates power.  It creates the power to gain or lose.  Leverage is what caused the Great Depression.  Leverage is what you use when you buy a home using a down payment or no down payment and financing.  It is neither good or bad by itself.  It all depends on the context in which it is used.

Here’s an example.  You are buying a $250,000 home and buy it with a conventional loan in the current market.  You provide a down payment of 20% or $50,000.  Now we know it isn’t going to appreciate anytime soon, but when it does, we’ll assume the average appreciation rate for the next 7 years (the average real estate ownership period) is 5% per year.  That means that in 2016 your property is now worth $351,775.  You have a gain in simple terms of $101,775.  When you divide that number by your down payment your money is now worth a little over triple what you invested.  You have made a 204% return or an average of 29.14% per year on your cash investment.  Your investment was not the purchase price of the home, it was the amount you invested as a down payment.  That’s leverage.  Is that better than a CD?  Better than the average return of stocks over the past 80 years?  Not bad.  And you get to live in the house, use it, make it your own, not have a landlord, and get tax breaks to boot.

What if you bought that same home in 2006 for $350,000 and not soon after it nosedived and when you needed to sell in 2008 you could only get $250,000.  The $50,000 you risked now is a loss of $100,000 or a 200% loss.  Again, you used leverage, but this time it didn’t benefit you.  That is why real estate, like stocks, should be considered a long term investment.  That’s why it is important to buy wisely and make sure the mortgage you get is one you can handle under most circumstances.  That’s why it is important to have additional reserves to get you through the hard times before purchasing real estate.  We just don’t know when those hard times will hit.  We don’t know when the balloon will pop or when the balloon will rise again.  Buying real estate is a lifestyle and investment choice that has to be carefully considered.  Sometimes circumstances are out of our control, but most of the time you will be able to control your circumstances by the choices you make before buying.  It does pay to be prepared.  Leverage is why the rich get richer.  That’s why paying interest on credit cards is a bad idea.  You are leveraging your debt to the benefit of the credit card company.  This market is making people think about frugality differently.  Being frugal is smart and allows you to leverage the money you have to your benefit.  Compounding is the eighth wonder of the world.  Be a winner!

So consider your current situation and how you might use leverage.  Is it a wise choice for you?  Check out the Recommended Reading List Page to find resources that will help you learn when it is and how to control more of your own circumstances.

The importance of quality was brought home to me again this week.  Many companies talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.  My daughter had a roof leak this summer and has had a new roof put on and is having damaged drywall replaced and her ceiling repainted.  One process went very well and one not so good.  It IS important who you work with no matter what the job that needs to be done.  That’s why my team and I emphasize the level of service and skill that we bring to our clients.  We want them to be wowed.  You can read testimonials at carefreehomes4u.com if you’d like.  The people providing my testimonials would give you the same testimonial on the phone too.

Back to my daughter’s story.  Our insurance company used to be run by a fabulous agent named Brian Smith, who was very responsive and always treated us like we were his best customer.  Since his retirement several years ago, the company has been sold twice and neither agent is anywhere close to being a Brian Smith.  Once a claim is out of their hands, forget about it - “Not my job.”  I hate that!  I’m looking for a new “Brian Smith” with the same company.

I referred an excellent roofing company, Empire Roofing, to my daughter and they did a great job.  They were timely and did skilled work.  They also did a great job for both a business partner and a client of mine, so I am happy to refer them.  The insurance company’s “preferred” contractor is your run of the mill firm doing insurance work who it appears is running their project manager ragged all over southern Colorado and there is a lack of oversight.  The painter started prepping and painting without the damaged sheetrock being replaced.  Duh!  Unfortunately, there are a lot of businesses like that out there.  Somehow we all let them get away with it.  Stop that!  Before you hire anyone, check them out.  Get referrals from people you trust - your Realtor, your great aunt, your neighbor, your lender, your dentist, whoever.  Call the BBB and see if they are listed and have a good record.  Get references and CALL them.  Drive by the location where the work was done and look at it.  Ask what the reference’s experience was with the company you are considering hiring.  Be specific with questions that are important to you.  Let’s all drive the quality of business up by increasing our expectations of the companies we hire.  You deserve excellent work.  Talk with your pocketbook and don’t sign off until it’s the way you expect it to be.

I always ask my clients to rate me after the transaction is complete and have a Platinum (100% satisfaction) rating for 2007.  Are the people you are working with doing that?  If not, what are they afraid of?  If they don’t ask, still give them feedback on the job they did and let the BBB know.  By the way, the contractor I trust in Colorado Springs is Brian Rief, owner of Independent Construction and Remodel.  Let me know if you need Brian’s contact information.

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