Long time, no blogging...

Well, I'm sorry to be MIA these past couple of weeks....I have been doing my best in being silent and trying to listen to the Lord, and I feel as if I am tuning in much better to His direction. More on this in a little bit...

On a more personal level, my mom officially moved in to her new apartment this past weekend. It has been a wonder to witness God's hand in all of this - from the apartment manager not giving up on contacting me, even when I thought it was a lost cause because Mom didn't qualify income-wise, to our having our tax refund and DH's bonus in hand to cover her rental deposit and moving costs, it really has been the perfect storm of circumstances for all of this to fall into place.

There is a lot to do for Mom to get her settled in. She managed to pack up nearly all of her belongings herself at the ripe young age of 75 (!!) these past couple of weeks, so I will be more than happy going over there on a daily basis to at least help her unpack. Plus I need to help her get set up with new medical doctors, a new bank, getting her car registered and tags transferred, etc., so I figure I'll be pretty busy for at least the next 2 weeks or even more. Mom has her own car, but really doesn't like to drive, so I told her I would be happy to take her grocery shopping and to the doctor, and do all the long distance driving for her on a regular basis for stuff that's not in town (like her Dr. specialists).

As for my sense of direction, I'm getting a good sense that the best thing to do right now for me to get a steady income coming in is to offer bookkeeping services for local real estate investors. The startup costs are pretty low - basically just getting a copy of Quickbooks and a good guide for Quickbooks for real estate investors (like John Hyre's KISS bookkeeping system), and I can advertise on the local REIA's Yahoo group page. The best thing is that in a worst case scenario, if I absolutely do not get any clients, I can always use Quickbooks myself, and there are no other ongoing costs.

The other avenue which I'm still not settled on is the probate marketing....not sure if I should pursue the leads myself or offer them for sale to other investors....so I guess I'm going to fine tune my listening skills to get a better handle on how to proceed with that.

Anyway, the next challenge is coming up with the extra money for getting the Quickbooks and John Hyre's guide. I guess I'm going to have to fine tune the budget and see what I can come up with.

Will update as more develops. :)