Took the 300 over to the dealership to take care of a TSB… Apparently a few 2022 cars have flakey tire pressure sensors and people are too stupid these days to manually check tire pressure occasionally – so the Feds had to step in and have Chrysler check the TPMS system in every 2022 car.
While I had the car there I had them change the oil and rotate the tires. I’ve only put about 2500 miles on the car, but it’s entirely possible I’ll be moving across the country ‘soon’ and I figured it was best to be prepared for that.
Things at work aren’t going well with the economic situation and all, so we’ve been laying a few people off and tightening the belt where possible… But between the crap economy, our sales team being pretty bad even in the best of times, and the city of Aurora deciding to do an egregious tax audit in the middle of an economic down-turn, my boss / CFO looks to be just about done with it all.
The random tax audit is really the icing on the cake… They are auditing everything over $1 for the last bunch of years – across all of our various business interests (including my boss’ real estate endeavors) – which has the entire company scrambling for receipts while we’re also scrambling to keep the doors open. But someone has to pay for all of that free stuff the current regime promised, and I guess that’s us.
I don’t really fault my boss for being done with it all; he started the company in ’99 and while things were really good for a long time, since 2020 it’s just been one body blow after another… Whacky regulations, stupid lockdowns, tax insanity, economic shitstorm, industry brain drain, etc, etc.
I’ve been with the company since August of ’04, so I’ve been around for both the good and bad – and right now it’s the worst I’ve seen.
My current “SHTF” plan involves heading to South Carolina where my roommate has a little land and a trailer we can hole up in until things improve or fall off a cliff. I have my property in south Colorado, but I wasn’t able to get anything built on it before the economy caved in… I should probably convert it into liquid assets while I still can.
If my boss decided to end things today, I’ve probably got another six months or so to spin everything down so it won’t be “Surprise! You’re unemployed!”. But as a precaution I’ve been turning off the non essentials and reducing my monthly outlay as much as possible to bank as much as possible.
I’m still a bit over a decade away from retirement, so I’ll have to land on my feet and keep running for a while. And I’ve never been on unemployment, ever, so I hope that counts for something if I have to call on it for a bit between jobs.
Basically everything sucks.
Listening to "The Ride (Into the Midnight)" by Kalax