Other bits of content I feel important to post here are the constant (and enjoyable) contributions I make towards the upkeep and improvement of our household.
As I make little money doing accounting and administrative work for the family company (~$450.00 per week after taxes), I have no means of paying any substantial amount of money for rent and utilities to cover my personal bedroom and bath space here at our shared property.
Hence, I make an effort to "pay my way" by seeing to any/all home repairs and or maintenance that might (and is) required on a monthly basis. These projects range from larger efforts such as repairing broken electric garage door railings/fixtures and sealing of the massively leaking (and old) household windows as well as constant smaller efforts such as repair of electronic devices, assembly of all household office and general living furniture, installation of shelving, drywall repair and painting, etc.
Freeloading...
It does not take a degree in sociology or social psychology to know that the common view among the "99%" when casually observing a 57 year old man like myself living in a family home with a particularly wealthy 81 year old parent is that the 57 year old must surely be "living off the tit" so to speak, or otherwise taking advantage.
And frankly, perhaps unfortunately, this tends to be the dominant trend (IE: semi-senior offspring milking their millionaire parent figure).
I'll suppress my urge (mostly) to segue into bringing sibling comparisons into this diatribe but I've certainly not had a three bedroom homes complete mortgage and utilities payments covered by "Dear old D..." as certain of mentioned siblings have and continue to enjoy the luxury of. These are well employed ($1300 a week average folk with partners who make even more) persons/siblings who have literally had their entire three bedroom houses completely paid for (monthly mortgage payments, etc.) by "Dear old D..." for many years. But there I go, segueing into that inappropriate (useless) bit of commentary so I will digress.
Moving on...
Add to that the 20+ year constant propagation of the false claims made by my family members to vast amounts (all) of their immediate social circles that I am mentally ill, up to and including the endless claims that I've actually been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the likelihood of such (not their fault) beliefs are made exponentially more likely.
So following are some examples of the sorts of work I do on a daily basis as a simple means of internally assuring myself that I am contributing real value to the utility and function of our household. To say it again (and again, again..) ... I personally am fundamentally repelled, disgusted, insulted and appalled to constantly hear from (mostly) my father's immediate circle of life long "friends" the constant sarchastic comments of my being a "freeloader" or, essentially, taking advantage in some way.
This is especially repugnant when just considering the very clearly outlined personal efforts made towards just the beginning steps towards somewhat more appropriately organizing our family companies administrative processes as well as the vast amounts of time/research/study/direct efforts in cleaning up the mess that was my father's significant ($xx,xxx,xxx.00) investment portfolio. The latter process which quickly saw me firing his legacy advisor who not only has several glaringly bad disciplinary infractions at SEC.gov and FINRA but who was also quickly discovered to be doing the same thing to my father for many years (15+?) ... "churning", etc.
But at a point recently, about four months ago, I had to necessarily establish boundaries and withdraw from the majority of investment/portfolio management.
It had become a matter of real impact on my health and 90% withdrawing from that NON-CONTRACTUAL, 100% zero-pay work as it had taken a year and a half of my life, studying/counseling with local friends/professionals, etc. ... up to 15 hours a day in my chair, often times, simply sleeping in my office chair, just to gain the basic knowledge/skills necessary to re arrange his assets in a way that is foremost, safe as possible ... and second most, guarantees him a $8000 dividend "paycheck" deposited into his core cash position every single month on top of the starting "pile" or principle asset base.
No lie...
At the point of withdrawing from those investment duties, I had spent so much time in my chair, working 12 to 16 hours a day (some times 24 hours a day) that I literally had developed bed sores all along the top of my buttocks!
My doctor assured me the bed sores were nothing to be concerned about and they cleared up within a month or two after establishing a more reasonable ~10 to 12 hour work day (which I'm completely comfortable with).
I found the whole bed sore thing quite hilarious, frankly. Bed sores for feck sake! I didn't even know what they were before discovering all the scabs on my booty lmao.
Perhaps I am alone in this opinion, but considering the state of the property when I moved in seven years ago as well as the need to transition our entire family company (owned by my 81 year old father) to a completely new and home based operation, such work as demonstrated below is far more valuable than the $500 or so dollars a month that a room in this area of Houston would cost to rent. But no amount of (attempts) at dialogue to discuss the endless ways I constantly strive to contribute, the only thing most folk either genuinely respond to or pretend to take note of is "how much MONEY are you paying!!?" ... which leads this essay down yet another rabbit hole which is the very real (and super interesting) debate around genuine value/utility vs simple monetary values. But here too, I digress.
But, for the record, it's necessary and helpful to document such here, just "for the record" and the possible need to actually present this kind of stuff in some other venue in the future (god I hope for that as I'm way beyond tooled-up/prepared for such an event):
MISC Assistance with understanding new technologies
Posting printed "instructional" material for new technical items which my father has a difficult time in becoming familiar with. Here is one such item, simply to show how to make a call on the home office VOIP phone system which I set up 1.5 years ago:
Fascilitating or Managing Larger Home Repairs
Repair of electric Garage door: At some point in mid 2024, the main cable which controls the raising/lowering of our single car electric garage door broke; another portion of the cable came off of both pulleys. The home owner was planning on calling a garage door repair company to come out and fix the system but after seeing the garage door unfixed and, literally, left stuck half open for some time (weeks?), I went out and had a look at things and with a bit of new cable, some wire snips and a couple YouTube videos, I managed to replace and re route the damaged cable so that the door functioned correctly. Just a brief search on such repair services showed that most of such repairs range in the $300 to $500 dollar range.
Sealing of multiple windows and doors for energy conservation: MANY of our aging homes window sand doors were very poorly sealed. In some cases, such as the two back doors opening on to our external back porch, it was literally as though the doors were left open; that much external air was coming through.
So I've been working around the house, identifying and sealing such as I have time to do so. These are just a couple of the windows I've worked on. The most impactful modification was installing sealing foam/tape around the two main back doors which I've not taken photos of yet:
Ongoing/as needed drywall repair and painting:
Other regular/ongoing efforts to reduce home energy/utility costs:
1. I use the household washer dryer ONLY 4 to 5 times a year (give or take). I actually maintain a dated log of every time I use the household washer/dryer but will spare you those details. Otherwise, every two weeks, I take my personal wash to a "wash/fold" service near our home.
After researching the major impacts that various devices have on home utility bills, I found that washer and dryer use was among the foremost devices that use the most in the way of utility services.
Hence, by seeing to my own personal wash (for 1.5 years?) at the dry/fold shop is a major impact on reducing gas (heat), water (wash) and electricity (wash/dry).
2. Any time the home owner is at the shop or on a trip, I completely turn off the home central AC and/or heat. During those times, depending on the season, I will use either a small, portable AC unit in my home office while I work (intermittently) or a small personal heater (and lots of clothes) during the winter. This too makes an enormous impact towards reducing energy bills.
Our home AC unit, for instance will use roughly 4000+ watts when simply running the compressor. The same home/central AC unit will also surge upwards of 7500 watts each and every time the compressor cycles on or off (which is all day). Juxtapose those central AC wattage numbers with the ~750 watts that the small, portable AC unit in my home office uses and the energy cost/reduction is obvious.
3. I see to all household external and internal weekly maintenance. Everything. Name it, I see to it. This is something normal and to be expected as my housemate/father/home owner is approaching 82 years of age, and along with the normal biological degradations we all will deal with in that regard, he also suffers from increasing hearing and eye problems which (understandably, again) make even basic daily tasks challenging. So it's daily, par for the course movements for me to ensure the property is 100% well maintained, improved and taken care of in all regards (inside and out).
4. I vacuume and mop all carpet and hard wood floors in the home daily (basically, a live in daily house cleaner). I could do this less frequently, such as once per week but I've found doing it every morning both keeps things clean constantly and also, very much, makes the cleaning much easier and faster than putting things off to a weekly or monthly schedule.
5. I manage and see through any/all insurance claims for household including all contractor sourcing and management as well as all documentation processes with our home insurance company.
6. I facilitate all of home owners personal purchases upon request (shavers, new devices/phones, airport booking, license/registration processes for his personal vehicles, etc.). I even do the same for his "significant other" upon request and here too, this is something I enjoy and that gives me a genuine sense of internal reward and reassurance that I am "paying my way." So, before the naysayers even get started, I am in no way complaining about any of this. To the contrary...
Otherwise...
Otherwise? Here are just a very few examples of how I constantly attempt to make things a bit more manageable and hopefully, more understandable in regards to simply maintaining our shared property (of which I am, technically and legally, a "tenant.").
The following is daily, weekly on my part ... and nearly an "afterthought" in comparison to the work I do on managing the administrative aspects of our company as well as the (as of yet) pro bono work on investment advise and management that is slowly creeping back into my daily regimen...
Also note that in the below, once more, very few examples of such work, I carefully note, date, and photo log every such daily communication; all of which are then stored (redundandtly) across both local and cloud based secure storage locations... ("tool-up/prepared"... future reference, etc.).
Monthly fun commentary/presentation of household energy/utility use and how/what we can do to improve it further...
Here I am simply showing how a good portion of just our TXU electricity bill is the ridiculous and controversial ~$50.00 "delivery fees" tacked on to everybody's bill(s) here in TX.
I also make clear to show that our household is generally (and ever improving) about ~30% less in general utility cost vs similar household in our area....
Daily, random and per request provision of invoicing/pricing data
Throughout any given day, I receive phone calls from the legacy, brick/mortar company location where my father still works. Even though I've developed a semi-legit and functional online system whereby he can check any given client invoice and/or statement, going back months, he still (understandably) is challenged by simply using that most basic of archival/document management scenarios I created and maintain.
Here is only one very basic example recently requested by the company owner, simply to know what he charged this client for a particular tire/item on the most recently submitted invoice (pricing consistency being kind of important after all).
Another thing I should suppress but which I'm obviously unable to do at the moment is that prior to my fully taking over administrative, client/vendor management for our company, invoices similar to that shown below would be sent out to our clients (for decades!) with ZERO line items typed out and/or listed. Previous "administrative managers" would simply put a numeric count value and an item.
Like, "1ct tire for this $ amount" with no information on what exact tire was sold/installed, much less what unit/machine was worked on.
Or even worse, "1ct labor charge" with absolutely no line item description of what the particular labor or service provision was! I mean, it's incomprehensible to me.
In fact, one of the first "milestones" I inwardly note (for lack of any external validation lol) is getting a client who was $30,000.00 behind with their invoice payments (going back over a year), to actually pay that amount completely and within only two days of addressing the issue.
It was rather simple, really.
The issue, as it turns out and after speaking with the main payables department representative at this particular client/company was (to quote her exact words): "Well, we haven't been able to issue any payments because, although we have received monthly statements, at the same time, we've received no copies of invoices or even line items describing what we are paying for!"
Her exasperation and explanation were immediately understood by myself. Obviously.
So among the other "improvements" I made from day one when assuming full responsibility for such daily, simple tasks such as invoicing/statements generation, etc., was to ensure that every invoiced item or service was typed out, verbatim, from the owners (father's) hand written/originating invoices.
The same client who was a year behind (to tune of $30,000.00 or so) now sends payment checks, like clockwork, every single week and since that one, small change was made in our invoicing/statements process. "It's the little things..." as they say ... and actually being able to use a keyboard helps as well... ;-)...
Daily management of random home insurance claims after storms/floods/hurricanes/etc.
This is just one example among many I could share, but this was the finalization of a recent home repair reimbursemet from our insurance company after last years Hurricane Beryl event. Our home insurance provider initially issued us a ridiculous (typical) $700.00 check to cover necessary repairs. So, over about three months of (regretably) having to basically assault our claims/adjuster email/phone inbox with updates, I finally managed to get the remaining ~$1700.00 reimbursement check issued which then adequately covered the home owners contractor cost for necessary repairs.
Again, I note/photolog/archive every single of such communications/achievements:
Monthly review and notation of all company credit card statements...
I have full authorized access to all company (and owner personal) credit card/banking accounts, including possession of personal "employee" cards from multiple credit card providors.
Central to my contract role working for the family company is the obvious and necessary monthly, semi monthly purchasing of either routine materials needed for office functionality (staples, paper, ink, invoices, etc.) as well as any unforeseeable, but also routine needs to purchase much more expensive items that might be needed such as new workstations or parts necessary for equipment repair. Things will and do break ...
So every month, I print and mark up every line item on every credit card statement. This being important as even the purchasing of new printer paper generally results in a day long tirade on the part of the owner (lol) ... but also because fraud, historically, has always been a very real factor on many of these accounts.
This is just the cover page of our latest primary company AMEX statement but the remaining line items throughout the statement are also highlighted and explained in detail, especially the monthly items such as payment to our company VOIP phone service, company internet fees and other monthly payments such as that needed to maintain extended warranties on office equipment, etc.
DAILY updates left for TOMMY re: misc HTIRE and HOME matters; most of which never are read or even noticed short of tossing them on the floor... this is only three of hundreds I leave out as very informative and important updates on a daily/monthly basis..
DAILY assessing and maintenance/installation of home systems such as wall mounting file organizers, wiring, security cameras, etc..
Finally wall mounted (heavy drywall anchors) the Ego and Dewalt battery chargers. Previously just strewn on floor by home owner:
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This post supplements the facts made public on my main website,
http://www.jbhfile.com/; it probably will not make much sense to you if you have not already become aware of the legal and personal efforts discussed there. Please see
http://www.jbhfile.com/ for a necessary introduction to why this blog exists. Or, if you just like reading weird stuff, then don't. And, enjoy.
jbh.
