I quit my job in July and that means no steady, guaranteed income. Is the idea of that dreadful? Yes, especially because I spent so much of my young adulthood in dread of money after inheriting my parents' view of how money is supposed to work in America. I carried all of my money worries throughout my 20's and 30's.
Honestly, if I left my job a year or two ago I don't think I'd be as okay and relaxed about it as I am now. Especially after all the things I'm going to tell you in this writing.
So let's go back to August. I quit my job, spent a week doing nothing but preparing, and left for Paris. We had a house sitter watch our dogs and she was great, gave us daily updates about how our pups were doing and according to our neighbors they were much more well behaved than when they are with us.
In the middle of August I get an unexpected WhatsApp. The garage just flooded. Well that's surprising, because we replaced an entire boiler a few years ago when it blew up during our vacation (what is it with vacations and home maintenance?!). What was the problem? I stayed up that night so I can contact a plumber to check out our home.
Well, there was a blockage for sure. But more than the blockage there was a deeper problem: our cast iron pipes were corroded and it was seeping water into the ground, preventing flow that would normally take care of blockages like this. The plumber gave me a certain quote and we decided to check some other quotes out once we got back into the states.
Soon it became September and I called another plumber to get a second quote. And these guys came with a large machine that took very detailed videos of everything that was going on underneath our house. Here's the bad news though: the entire piping system needed replacement, not just some portions.
I thought about this. Should I bite the bullet on this and get to work on it? Or should I just solve this in the band-aid style, as issues come up? I contemplated for quite a while and after seeing the state of the pipes in crisp digital videos, I decided to have this thing worked on. The next day the entire crew came in, went underneath our crawl space to take out all the pipes and replace them with plastic. I saw the pipes once they came out and holy crap were they in bad shape.
But here's the kicker. During the work the found out that the pipes that join at the end of the flow, which directs to the city's sewage, also needed replacement. Because the sizes of the pipes do not match, it basically doubled the amount of work and cost. All in all, I was suddenly in for a 17,000$ bill.
When I decided to do this I decided to do this no matter what the cost. So I liquidated some assets after discussing it with my wife and there we were, suddenly a lot of money shorter but with a brand new piping system we won't ever have to worry about. After watching the plumbers work in the blistering California sun sweating their arses off, I felt like they most definitely deserved that money.
Surprisingly this isn't really related to the actual topic of today. Now the actual topic starts. During the work they needed to dig up our front lawn so that they can install new pipes and a drain cleanout. They dug up a bunch of dirt, and after they were done they put the dirt back in. The lawn looked a lot different than before, but I understood that their job was to take care of the plumbing and not the lawn.
After a few days I called my gardener for some miscellaneous work and he was very surprised and distraught at the state of my garden. "Billy! What happened here? The dirt is all in the wrong place!". I gave him the overview and he said that the plumbers did a very horrible, irresponsible job and I should consider calling them again to have this amended. My gardener almost fell into the dirt because the dirt wasn't packed!
I contemplated this for a while. Should I call the plumbers again? But the thing is, even if they come is my gardener going to come and give them directions on how to properly fill in the dirt? No, because none of that is anyone's responsibility. The plumbers gave me the overview, they did what they said they were going to do, and now it was up to me to clean things up. I told my gardener that I'd just be happier to pay him for his labor, and he agreed; he'd undoubtedly do a better job.
So that was something that happened in September. And now I'm faced with a new problem in my home: a rat problem. A few nights ago I heard a skittering noise and at first I thought it was an intruder but the cameras didn't detect anything. I wondered where the noise was coming from and I heard that it was coming from the attic. It felt like whatever was making the noise was fairly big, so I thought it was a raccoon.
Since I am in no way equipped to handle raccoons, I called my pest control company and they drove in to give me a quote. Turns out the attic has a rat problem and not a raccoon problem. But get this: to solve this problem I need to replace my entire insulation, which is going to cost yet another 18,000$.
Now the thing is, even if I want to I don't have that kind of money lying around anymore. So I need to cut corners and solve this problem another way. Another reason why I'm so hesitant this time is, we replaced the entire insulation just a few years ago when we replaced our HVAC unit. To throw that all insulation away and replace it yet once more, especially when their typical lifetime is 15-30 years, felt like a massive waste.
So I call the HVAC guys to see what they think about this. And the conclusion is very similar: they can only do work related to the HVAC and they don't want to be responsible for the damage the pest control might do to the HVAC. The thing is, pest control has no regard for HVAC and might touch it during the replacement.
My greater point to you is, it is expected that NOBODY really is responsible for thinking about YOU apart from YOU. You see this in medicine as well; for a toothache, the dentist wants you to have NSAID. But NSAID messes up your stomach. So the gastro wants you to stop taking painkillers. But the dentist's job isn't to look at your stomach, and the gastro's job isn't to look at your teeth.
All of this has been a great lesson for me regarding how the real world works. I couldn't have really learned these things in advance because I never grew up in a single family home; I grew up in apartments. All of this knowledge makes my future home purchases more informed and it allows me to solve a lot of home problems myself. Sometimes it comes at the cost of a lot of money but ultimately I want to accumulate wisdom rather than money.
What will I do about the rat problem? I tried getting the HVAC guys to talk with the pest control. I tried getting the pest control to talk with the HVAC guys. Neither want to be responsible enough to keep me as their first priority, which is completely understandable. So I'm going to get some help from my gardener (he's like superman to me) and lay some traps, and I'll be able to learn more about my attic thanks to this experience. In the end, I become better thanks to this experience.
Only YOU can care deeply and selflessly about you. Nobody else owes it to you. Everybody else has themselves to care about. They can care about certain areas of your life, they can equip you with great tools; but ultimately you are the one who has to be willing to help yourself when all else fails. So today, be on your side.
Billy Seol
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July Life Coach
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