01 Sep 2002 #0235.html

Refinancing 1307 Emerald Green

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Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt via hardcopy,

cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, and Maxine Shirts

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"Well we reached a milestone this week. It is the fourth time I have bought the house at 1307 Emerald Green. The first time was in August of 1984, just before school started. The second time was when I paid it off, after Landmark went public. The third time was to cover the costs of the the divorce. And this time it is to cover debts and college tuition for three girls I have come to love very much. The refinancing of 1307 Emerald Green has brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings, and I'm going to share the more positive ones in this Thoughtlet.

First a report on swallows. Since starting this project on December 26th of 2001, I have swallowed approximately 36,465 times. I anticipate this is accurate +/- 1% or +/-365 swallows. The attached chart does not include 109 swallows so far today, and it does show I have not lost any weight since before Matt and I went to Big Bend in June. I guess plateaus are to be expected, and it would be nice if I had the discipline to control what goes into my mouth better. Oh well! At least I have the integrity to count pretty accurately, and am not afraid to report what I count. Maybe I'm not afraid because I figure no one cares. So those of you who are mathematically inclined, I have included a chart of the area under the curve, or the integral for the key results of counting swallows. Note how the curve for breads and starches and the curve for fruits have separated during this time I have not lost weight. I figure part of the issue is I've been exercising, and I eat more to make up for this, and it's pretty obvious to me some of the fat has turned to muscle. However, with eight months of good data, I think there is enough information to draw some statistical conclusions, and use those conclusions to get back on the weight loosing wagon. If any of you are interested in the raw data, which is a 2,720 line Excel spread-sheet, to do some statistical studies on, let me know. I only request to have a copy of all of the results of your enquiry, so I can include them in my think time, which is the critical component of the process of counting swallows.

Next, in regards to my week, it was like the last couple of weeks. I have finished the 7 3-D Marginal Fields and 1 2-D Marginal Field preliminary seismic interpreations, and now I am writing up the reports. The HP 1600CM Printer stopped feeding paper last night, and I'm stressed about how I am going to get these 8 reports printed for delivery to one of the guys going to Nigeria Tuesday at noon. Oh Well, I'll worry about that tomorrow. The results are phenomenal. Using 500 barrels recoverable per acre foot, there is a potential of over 800 million barrels of oil in these 8 areas. Some of the companies I am working for are bound to win their bids, and because I have done this preliminary work, I would really have to blow it to not do all of their seismic interpretation for those fields they win in the lease bidding. And there is a better than reasonable chance of being able to participate in the equivalent of overriding royalty interests on those fields I work up. The downside is that these are Nigerians, and Nigeria is the most corrupt country on the face of planet Earth. It will be interesting to see what I am writing about this in Thoughtlets in three months or a year from now. Time always tells on these kinds of things.

So I worked late most nights, met deadline after deadline, received the payments promised so far, and learned these guys are willing to just go faster and faster. They have another Marginal Field they want me to work up for them early this next week. Hopefully they will figure out how to get the data to me. In addition, they want me to start working up Emererald Energy Resource's OPL-229 Block. They want the 2-D interpretation of the first well site complete by Friday of this next week. They plan on putting Andrea and me on a plane Saturday afternoon and bringing us to Nigeria for one or two weeks. We are scrambling to get visa's from New York, and to get all of the work done to accomplish this. It has been busy, and it will certainly not be any different this next week. Please understand if I'm a couple of weeks late on getting out the next couple of Thoughtlets.

I was pleased to hear from my Mom that Paul, Kate, and Grant stopped to visit her yesterday. She really enjoyed Grant, and says he is really big. Paul said Grant was in a very good mood, and he sat on the bed and played and talked. I wish Ethan and Colby were closer to LaVeriken. Oh well!

I did take a few hours off yesterday morning to help Matt with his cycling merit badge. We went out to Ken Turner's place and he gave the guys a good show and tell. There were three teachers and three adults. I drove Chris Schmidt's Explorer behind them most of the 25 miles. I did ride Shane Gillette's bike for 5-10 miles of the ride after he got a cramp and a blister. We left the house at 6:30 AM, after I had spent 1 1/2 hours putting together a Work Order for OPL-229, and faxing and e-mailing it to the President of Emerald. We got back about 5:30 in the evening, and except for a couple of cell phone calls, I did no work during this time. It was a nice decompression for me. I really enjoy getting out in nature, and need to do it more often (hint, hint Sara Ellyn. When are we going to do our camping trip?). Of course, today, was Sunday, and we took time off today. Andera's boss's son, David Mark Grant, and his wife Kathryn, and their son, about the size and energy of Ethan, came out today to have lunch with us. David Mark is starting law school at the University of Houston. Bright kid, and he seems to really have his head on straight. It was a very enjoyable afternoon, even though it means I didn't start on the Thoughtlet until after 5:30 PM.

So what are my thoughts about refianicing 1307 Emerald Green? I will list the key ones that come to mind, and then go back and write about a couple of these in the list in more detail. And the other thoughts are always there to take up an in-person visit conversation, or to expand on in some future Thoughtlet:

1. After I left home, I always had my home, the house of my childhood to return to. There were good and bad memories, and it has always been home. It was a source of stability and strength for me. In some sense I have recreated this for me and for anyone whom it might be important to at 1307 Emerald Green.
2. I have wanted to provide this same spatial reference point for any of the 10 of you who are spatially minded, to whom during your time living here this house has become home, and to whom this type of spatial stability could be important to. Thus I have not moved from the house, even though there are times it would have been easier to do so.
3. Refinancing the house brings up basic concepts like money management and budgeting. I don't do these very well. There are a variety of reasons, and the bottom line is I do not put much energy into this.
4. I feel I have let you kids down because of my poor example in fiscal management, and because I have not taught by example nor by taking time talking about how to manage money and about financial matters.
5. I have always paid my tithing, which I consider as the first rule of financial management. And it is obvious that example alone is not enough for those I love to follow and find the blessings associated with living this law. Tithing is very personal, and as with all money matters, even though it has always been paid first, we never really talked about it.
6. It is a bad idea to turn unsecured debt, like credit card debt, into secured debt, like a house loan. However, it is important to be out of debt, and one way to get out of debt is to pay off high interest credit card debt and turn it into tax deductable house debt.
7. There is also the personal integrity issue tied to promising to pay college tuition for three girls I love very much, and not seeing a way to get the cash to do this with in a timely fashion other than through home equity debt. I do believe there will be plenty of cash derived from the work I have been doing the last two years, and the question is timing.
8. I have been very selfish and have done what I wanted when I wanted for lots of years. For instance, I am probably still paying for my trip to Utah to see Paul leave for his mission in Russia. This was not a necessary expense, and the example is not good.
9. There were a lot of things that seemed to keep getting in the way of closing on refinancing 1307 Emerald Green. Maybe by listing them, some of you can avoid similar issues in the down times of your future:
   1. Having signed as a guarantee on Paul's condo in Utah increased the paper amount of my debt load, and made it harder to qualify for a loan.
   2. The survey papers were more than 7 years old, and just as we were ready to close, there had to be a new survey made of the property.
   3. The apprasial was redone and we were charged an extra fee because there was more than three months that had elapsed since we started working on the refinacing.
   4. Closing fees were much more than either Andrea or I expected, even though we had both been given all of the papers to look at. The cash we got out of the exercise was 20% less than we expected.
   5. It is really easy to second guess as to whether it is a good idea to increase house payments, even if the increase is going to be partly taken up with additional tax deductions and a lower interest rate.

So I am going to spend a few minutes this evening writing about #4. Personally finances are a hard thing to talk about, and in fact most folks don't want to talk about them. So hopefully I can talk about how I have mistaught financial responsibilities, and not offend anyone.

When I gave Roice $4,000. to go towards his truck, provided Ben and Sara the blue Saturn, Paul the silver Saturn, Melanie the red Saturn, or Audrey Raymond Gardner's Honda, the terms were not well defined. Each of these gifts, remember gifts are my love language, were tied to a very successful school graduation, or to institute attendance, or to completing a mission. However, they were not tied to what I could afford, nor to what is any kind of reasonable teaching of financial principles.

For instance, at the end of three years, and before the note became due, Ben returned the blue Saturn to me. It is still jointly in both of our names, although I have made all payments on it, including since refinancing the balloon payment. We have not discussed who will own the equity after the payments are made, and need to. Melanie and Jared, at the same decision point paid off the remainder of the debt and took title for the red Saturn. Audrey has a lot of debt related to car repairs right now, and it will be interesting to see how the discussion about car title and equity goes when the last payment is made in a few months. We did not buy a car for Heather because she was married when Audrey got her car. Because I have been covering other expenses, that previously came out of child support, the payments on Audrey's car have been made out of child support. Even though Audrey was told the car would be transferred to her when the final payment is made, the car logically also belongs to Heather, Rachel, Matt, Andrea and me. I think there needs to be some discussion about this over the coming months. Paul and Kate sold the silver Saturn and purchased a larger Saturn to handle the car seat and their expanding family. As I learned in discussing it with them tonight, they were told by me they owned the equity in the car, and they also were told Andrea and I would make payments on the new car after they sold the silver Saturn. It is important to have these discussions, and hopefully I will do better in the future than I have done in the past.

Heather, Sara, Rob, and Rachel have no cars provided by me, and frankly have no prospect of having a car provided by me with my current financial circumstances. Today I can not provide you a car, even if each of you each have perfect institute attendance, or graduate valedictorian of your class, which upon reflection appear to be my personal justification for past gifts. In my mind, these discussions too often lead to the type of `spilt milk' and `fixed-pie' arguments that can destroy family relationships. And at the same time, if these things are not discussed, and if there are not some reasonable expectations on the side of everyone who is participating in the events, they will still eventually destroy family relationships. My tendency has been to ignore this conversation and attribute any issues over finances to Satan, the king of this world, for the scriptures teach us:

However, I think it is time I grew up in terms of financial conversations, and opened the door so we can have these discussions and hopefully thus not allow Satan to have great dominion in our family. And this decision is directly related to the refinancing of 1307 Emerald Green. I look forward to your call, or letter, or e-mail."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

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Copyright © 2002 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.