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I was so excited about my retirement. I had worked 40 years as a nurse, and I loved every minute of it. I had definitely earned some relaxation though, and I planned on enjoying my retirement to its fullest. That meant that I was actually going to get to enjoy spending time at my home, especially outside. I had been wanting to garden, but I wanted to do something else even more at first. I had done some research on landscape design in Nassau County NY, and I found a company that has reasonable rates and quite a variety of projects that they can do.
While I wanted to have my own flower garden, that would only take up a small portion of my yard. There was still a lot left that really had no beauty to it. I had just one tree all the way in the back of the yard, and the rest was just grass, which I suspected was really mostly just weeds. I wanted to have a beautiful yard, but I knew that I could only handle flowers. I needed a masonry company to handle the rest of what I wanted done.
When I asked them if they could come out and give me a quote, I was really excited by some of the things they had told me. They took all of my ideas, and then they put them down on paper along with a couple of things they had suggested too. The end result is what I look at every day when I go outside. I have a really nice patio, and then the walkway goes to my flower garden. There is a wall that goes around the entire yard, and there are flowers planted along that too. There is so much color right now, and it is exactly what I wanted.
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Like every other guy I would like to have my own place, although I am going to be pretty limited in my options unless I am going to wait a long time and save a lot more money for a down payment. Obviously right now I am looking at small houses, most of which have a lot of problems. The one I looked at this morning needs to have the air conditioner looked at and obviously air conditioning repair in NYC is going to be fairly expensive. It is not something that is automatically going to disqualify the house, but the seller did not seem to be offering a realistic price cut based on this and the other problems with the house. It needed to have the bath and the kitchen done over and obviously I am not going to be able to pay someone else to do that. It is something that needs to be considered, but it is not going to disqualify the house.
Of course people lived a long time with no air conditioning. When I was a child I knew a few people who did not have it. My grandmother would talk about how their house had a porch on each side of it. So when the sun was beating down on one side of the house the family would walk around the house to the other side of it where the shade had moved. That probably is not an option for me, but if you have a lot of fans you can obviously sit in front of one all of the time. Out in the shop we have no air conditioning and the guys have these huge fans. So long as you stand in front of them, you are going to be perfectly fine. If you do not it’s really hot.
There is an online accounting software thing that is available for a monthly fee. They have software you can buy, but it is pricey. You have to pay for the most expensive version to be able to do payroll. My employee paychecks are simple to do. I just use a paystub generator from my web browser, and it keeps tack of the running totals for all of my employees. I only have five at the moment. I just run a landscaping outfit that cuts grass and does basic yard work. Hey, it pays the bills. Plus, I pay the people who work for me a lot better than minimum wage.
The paystub generator lets me keep track of the withholding easy. I have to send that money into the government. I really do not know anything about accounting, so I like to keep things as simple as possible. If you have a big company, you can probably afford a payroll firm to keep track of everything for you. Us mom and pop shops cannot afford such things. We operate on a narrow profit margin to begin with. Every dollar you can save in running your business is a dollar you can save or spend on your family.
My business is stable. I am not planning on growing it any bigger. I just want it how it is where we keep the same five people working steady. I keep my profits stable by doing a good job and keeping our operating expenses as low as reasonably possible. The paystub generator is less expensive for me to use for five employees than it is to keep getting updated versions of payroll software. Plus, it is really easy to use and keeps track of things for me. I like keeping accounting for my business as simple as possible.
