All Forum Posts by: Daniel Read

Halloween. Ah yes, that magical time of year when I get to teach my kids about America and the power of Capitalism!

What's that? You don't use Halloween as an object lesson to teach your kids the same principles on wealth distribution and profit? Well, allow me to enlighten you on my teaching method.

You see, just before the neighborhood opens up to the ritual taunting of "trick-or-treat" on the evening of Halloween, every child has a choice. They can choose to stay home and eat the candy their parents purchased or they can go out into the neighborhood.

If they choose to sit at home and eat the candy given them by their parents then they will not need to exert any energy at all and they will have some candy immediately at their fingertips.

However, this option also requires that they share their candy with other children who knock on the door and they will soon discover a rapidly diminishing supply of sugary sweets in their bucket.

If they choose to go out in the neighborhood they will quickly realize that the more houses they visit, the more candy they receive. The supply is only limited by how quickly they can walk and how much candy they can carry before needing to drop off their load at home and retrieve an empty container for more goods.

If they stick at it long enough, they will soon also see the value of being the last kids walking the street. Each stop yields exponentially more candy at the end of the evening than it did at the beginning of the evening because demand has just gone way down and each homeowner is wanting to hand off as much of the weight-gaining Fun Sized wrappers as possible.

By the end of the evening, my hope is for my children to have learned at least three lessons:

1. More can be gained by going and doing than by staying and consuming.

2. The harder you work, the more you earn.

3. He who works longest and last receives the biggest portion.

About me:

I am a father of five who is just venturing into the realm of entrepreneurial real estate at age 30. I hope to leverage my life lessons to that my children can start at a young age to know how to build and run a business. 

I have had two companies come out and tell me that there is no issue with the unit itself, though the way the duct is run is not ideal. It makes a tight turn and runs up along a wall in a very narrow duct. They both said that the ducting is contributing to the issue but that there isn't anything that can be done for it without running a new chase upstairs. 

I have an old row house that is 100+ years old. Brick walls with a retrofitted central air system that has been installed. Everything works, but the air flow doesn't get to the 2nd floor very well in the master bedroom. The heat didn't get in there well in the winter and now the AC isn't getting in there well in the summer. The tenant would like me to add a window unit in the master bedroom to help cool it down. 

When I went over there last week the room was warmer than downstairs, but not uncomfortably so. It was very comparable to my house--warmer upstairs than downstairs is par for the course during the summer months, IMHO. 

The question then is this: should I pay to add a window unit or is that a comfort cost paid for by the tenant? I.e. Where is the line between a want and a need? In this case, it seems as though the window unit is a want (comfort) without being a need. 

What would you do? Am I at risk of losing these tenants if I don't add the unit?