Another Summer Come and Gone
By Tom Morrone, CFP ®,CPA, Principal
Living in the northeast, summers are short-lived and I have been guilty and sure many others are guilty of uttering the phrase “where did the summer go”? The first signs of the summer creeping up on a close are the back to school sales. When the kids were young, those sales were like a slap in the face. Now that the kids are older the sales still catch my attention but no longer have to deal with the run to the store to purchase the binders, index cards, calculators or whatever else was on the list to make sure our kids were well prepared to go back to school. Those days seem like a life time ago. As mentioned those sales were the beginning of the end of the proverbial dog days of summer.
As I have written numerous times in the past, I am a summer kind of guy so transitional weather from summer to fall is not my favorite time of year. I am more of a spring to summer type of personality. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the cooler nights and crisp air and opening the windows in the house and car while driving is always a treat. One great thing about the end of the summer is farm fresh corn. I am such a food junkie (it must be an Italian thing) in that I can transition or make anything about food. But you got to love fresh corn on the cob.
Anyway, another summer come and gone and it went even quicker for a number of reasons for us this year. First I had my knee replacement surgery May 9th so the entire summer had some type of physical therapy on a daily basis. Also, we were busy preparing our home for sale and hosting numerous open houses and private showings. It seemed that Cathy and I were always cleaning something so the house would always look just so. All those efforts were worthwhile because we have a deposit on our house and plan to close mid to late October. Hopefully that goes as planned. The third time sucker in our summer has been building our new house. There was always something to look at and a selection to be made. There have been and will continue to be numerous trips to the job site to review some element of the building process and meet with different contractors.
The end of our summer and into early fall has been focused on cleaning out our house and getting ready to move. Cathy has definitely taken the lead in this area and I am so thankful for that. We have been in our house for 28 years so we have accumulated a thing or two over the years. It is amazing how much gets jammed into every nook and cranny of a house. Also, our new house is much smaller and does not have a full basement and only has a crawl space. Therefore, we do not have as much storage space for all the stuff we have now. Each area that is addressed to be cleaned out usually ends up with at least four piles. There is the take with us pile, tag sale pile, donation pile and the trash pile. There is also the occasional “remember this or what is this pile”? Hopefully the packing goes smoothly.
So another summer has come and gone and by the way, does anybody need a gravy boat?
Until the Next Tom’s Take…
