It’s always nice enjoying the long weekend with my family. My wife had a short “honey-do” list to tackle so we got a lot of things caught up on at the house. We might be having a home appraiser coming this week, we’re curious as to how much our home is worth now that we’ve put some TLC into this place.

Looking to do a little refinancing with the mortgage company, getting a lower interest rate, etc etc. You know, boring adult life stuff! It’s funny because we use a local financial manager to help get our house who told us for our own safety, never refinance or change the original deal. That sort of scared us into never talking with the mortgage company or tearing up any “deals” they send us, and on top of that  all the media coverage making mortgage companies out to be monsters didn’t help either. Ironically it was the local money gal who said she couldn’t get us a better deal this time, so we were curious and called our mortgage company…. what do you know? A much better deal. Fixed rate. We could roll our car loans into the new refinancing and we’d be saving about 800 bucks a month on our bills that could actually be going into our savings account or the kids college funds. Say what!? Now we’re wondering why we didn’t call the “evil mortgage company” sooner.

Of course I’m still very skeptical, I keep waiting for the “SURPRISE!” – It helps that I have friends who have refinanced and done similar things. It’s funny to me that the local lady probably couldn’t get a better deal because she wanted to include her cut in some way… so it wasn’t worth it to her.

America, or heck, the world, is in a really WEIRD place right now. We’re trained to never trust anyone… lock your doors. Meanwhile “don’t talk to strangers” disappeared with the internet and social networks. I have a lot of friends out of work right now, some who thought they’d be retiring with… Jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate and they’re not coming back. I read THIS ARTICLE about when jobs do come back, they will favor the highly skilled. For the unskilled workers who are out of jobs right now, the answer has to be…. get skilled! Or get creative.

As a parent, I’m not sure what to tell my kids. I keep telling them to focus on their schoolwork and getting into college…. but what for? Computers, medicine, science. If I had a son like me who just said they wanted to draw all day and make a living… what advice would I give to put them ahead? Well I’d tell them to learn as much about graphic and web design and development… a job in that arena would totally beat working at Target or a convenience store while you pursued your creative goals. It’s totally scary to think about now… what kind of Dad would I have been to myself.. what advice would I give to mini-me?!

My advice to a younger me…

Go with the flow. Be like water… don’t be rigid or unflexible. Work hard, but do the things you love and be happy. Life is too short…. get to it.

Gonna take my own advice right now.