Show Us Your Life: My First House Project

Shortly after moving into Phil's house this summer, I came up with a list of projects that I wanted to accomplish.  Phil and I have a lot in common but one thing we don't have in common is our desire and motivation to make changes around the house.  Phil is in the "it's fine the way it is" camp whereas I'm in the "but we can make it even better!" camp.  After a lengthy discussion, we settled on a finite list of projects that we'd try to tackle over the next year or so.

In October, I finally got around to crossing the first project off the list:  painting our doors. The previous owner painted them what I considered an obnoxious yellow color.  In fact, she must have loved the color so much that she painted some rocks in the backyard that color (I find this so strange).

I'd say about half the people who have seen them have said they liked the color or at least didn't mind it.  But I had a strong aversion to it from day one.  I just didn't think the yellow coordinated well with the cream color of our house.  And it's just a bit too 'out there' for me.

Picking the color:

Picking paint colors is kind of overwhelming to me as it seems like the color often looks very different once you start painting compared to what you were expecting based on the paint chip. So when I found a color on the door of a house down the block from us, I decided to be a sort of creepy neighbor, and I tracked down the color during National Night Out (a night in the Twin Cities when every block has a gathering).  The couple who owned the house wasn't at the block party, but their neighbors gave me their email address and after sending a couple of emails, I had the brand and name of the paint color.  Score! I ended up going one shade darker as I felt it would coordinate better with the dark brown siding on our house.

The painting process:

I used this 'how to' explanation from the blog, Young House Love, as a resource for how to paint the door. I used a similar technique as I used a 2" angled brush to paint the inset areas of the door. I used a 2" foam roller to paint the flat planks of the door. Our doors required 2 coats of paint + some touch-ups after the 2nd coat dried. It probably took me about 30-40 minutes to paint each door (I had 3 to paint). The most time consuming part was waiting for the first coat to dry.

The finished product!

Here is how it turned out!

I'm really happy with how it turned out.  And the project only cost me about $50 as the paint was 30% off at Sherwin Williams. It feels really good to have the first project crossed off the list, especially since it was one that dealt with the exterior of the house so needed to be done while the weather is mild.

Next up, I'd like to pick out some new furniture for our living room as Phil has some pretty ugly hand-me-down/garage sale pieces that are an eye sore and not very comfortable to sit in.

Are there any projects you'd like to do around your home?

Show Us Your Life: What I Do for a Living

Hey there and happy Monday, friends!  I'm back from vacation and will share photos/stories from our trip soon. But today, I'm kicking off a new post series today called "Show Us Your Life."  My goal is to share tidbits of my life that I might gloss over otherwise. Through this post series, I'll talk about things like how Phil and I handle the division of household chores, how I meal plan, progress we are making on house projects and how I manage my finances.

I'm kicking off this post series with a post about what I do for a living. I briefly reference work, but I have never really delved into what it is that I actually do - mostly because I think it will bore others. But here's a summary of how I fill my work hours each week.

Job Title:  Taxable Fixed Income Client Portfolio Manager

What this actually means:  I am a product specialist that focuses on fixed income investments, or in laymen terms, bonds. There are 2 broad categories of bonds: taxable and tax-exempt (i.e. bonds issues by municipalities); I focus on taxable bonds. I work for an asset management company that manages a wide array of mutual funds as well as some accounts that are managed according to a client's investment policy. I am the liaison between the people who are managing our funds and the sales people/end users. It's my job to understand how our funds are invested, why they are invested in that way, and I have to succinctly explain what is going on with the economy in general as well as every area of the taxable bond market.

So, what exactly are bonds?  Everyone and their mom seems to know what stocks are because it's a bit more of a 'sexy' and interesting investment class. But bonds are sort of the boring sidekick that people don't talk about as much. Which is interesting because the global bond market is nearly twice the size of the global stock market. Plus bonds are an important asset class for our retirement accounts because, in general, the older we get, the more we should invest in bonds v. stocks.  But back to the question at hand. Bonds are basically large loans, but instead of borrowing from a bank, the company or entity (which could be a corporation like Target or a municipality like the State of Minnesota) borrows from a diverse group of investors. For example, in August Google issued $2 billion of bonds, which means they borrowed $2 billion dollars that they will pay back in 10 years from a diverse pool of investors that includes corporations, asset managers, etc. The investors who bought Google's bonds will receive semi-annual interest payments and they will receive their investment back when the bonds mature in 10 years.

But what do you actually do?  There are many facets to my job, but here are the three main ones:

1. I write content. Each week I write a weekly fixed income market date and I also write topical pieces about things going on in the bond market.

2. I answer product- and market-related questions. Our sales people sell funds with exposure to every financial asset class.  There's so much for them to learn and explain that they need subject-matter experts to defer to when they get difficult and detailed questions about bonds or the market in general. Questions I might answer are:  When will interest rates rise?  What's our forecast for interest rates?  What is our projection for the likelihood of a recession?  If interest rates rise, how will various sectors of the bond market perform?  What is our exposure to emerging market debt?  What is our outlook on emerging market debt. And so on and so forth. Luckily I have a portfolio management team that provides their outlook/views on these topics. It would be really hard to answer them on my own.

3. I travel. This is an aspect of my job that will be ramping up in 2017 as my goal is to travel about twice a month. When I travel, I usually travel with a sales person who is trying to get clients, such as financial advisers, to use our funds when investing their client's money. They bring me along so I can provide more detailed information about how our funds are invested, how they've been performing, and what has been driving their performance.

So there you have it - that's what I do, in a nutshell. Did I completely bore you? I don't expect anyone to be interested in what I do for a living, which is why I very rarely talk in specifics about my job!

Ok, it's your turn!  Tell me what you do for a living and give me an explanation of what your job entails - or write your own post and share the link with me!