07:30 – The morning paper says that Greece is officially in default and Puerto Rico might as well be. No surprise here. That’s what happens when spendthrift governments borrow money that they can’t print more of. The question is, why do investors lend money to deadbeats that they know are deadbeats?
Work on science kits continues.
11:50 – Our real-estate agent has sent us several more possibilities, including a couple that are in “move-in” condition. I’m trying to be as flexible as possible, because I want to get moved and settled in by this autumn. We’re not sure yet when Barbara will retire from her current job, but I hope it’s in the next 3 or 4 months.
I told her that the bulk of the moving tasks would fall on her, simply because I have to keep business operations as normal as possible. That means she’ll be doing most of the packing, other than kit stuff. Our new house will be only 1.5 hours away from our current one, so we have the luxury of being able to move in stages. We’ll concentrate first on getting the essentials into the new place, so we can sleep/eat in either place. We’ll gradually get more stuff moved up there until we’re eventually ready to have a moving company move all the furniture and so on. And the whole time I need to be able to ship kits from either place.
12:22 – Well, it’s official. Barbara’s last day of work is 30 September, which is just about ideal. She’ll probably be using her accrued paid-time-off between now and then by taking Fridays off when there’s stuff to be done. Next up, we need to figure out health insurance. There are several options, including COBRA and Obamacare. Also, Barbara has 20 years in with the Forsyth County Public Library, which is part of the NC state retirement system. She hasn’t officially retired from the library, but we’ll look into that as a health-care option for her since the NC retirement system provides retirement benefits to retirees.
Meanwhile, with Barbara going full-time with our company, I’m going to look into setting up an employee benefits arrangement that would, for example, reimburse all medical costs not covered by insurance, including co-pays, drug costs, and deductibles. That’s a legitimate business perk and a legitimate deduction. I’m also looking into setting up a SHOP Obamacare account, which would pay health insurance premium for all full-time employees and be deductible from business income. If we go with a Platinum plan, I may even be able to get our personal income down to a level that’d make the company eligible for subsidies. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
