Eric G shares valuable insights on ways to save money on your monthly bills in this midweek update. He emphasizes the importance of looking into property tax relief options for seniors, which could lead to significant savings. As the retail home goods and construction industries face challenges, many longstanding companies are shutting down, prompting Eric to advise caution when making purchases. He highlights the shifting dynamics in the economy, including the impact of cheap Canadian lumber and changing forestry laws. Additionally, Eric encourages listeners to regularly check in with their service providers to ensure they're not overpaying and to take advantage of customer retention offers, especially as the holiday season approaches.

As the holiday season approaches, many homeowners are seeking ways to cut costs and manage their monthly expenses. Eric G delves into practical strategies for saving money, emphasizing the importance of reviewing property tax obligations, especially for seniors. He explains how various jurisdictions offer property tax relief programs for those over 65, urging listeners to explore these options to reduce their financial strain. Eric shares his personal experiences with local tax assessor challenges, detailing the frustrations that can arise when navigating the application process, and encourages listeners to reach out with their own stories to build a support network around this issue.

The discussion transitions into a broader examination of the economic landscape affecting the home improvement and retail sectors. Eric points out a troubling trend of long-established companies shutting down, attributing these closures to a combination of factors including increased competition from cheaper foreign products and the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. He highlights the significant changes occurring in Oregon's lumber industry, where local sawmills are closing as a result of new laws and market pressures. This, in turn, raises concerns about job losses and the economic viability of communities reliant on these industries.

In light of these developments, Eric stresses the importance of vigilance when making purchasing decisions. He advises listeners to be cautious about where they spend their money, particularly during this uncertain time when many retailers are facing challenges. He also recommends taking advantage of customer retention programs offered by service providers, suggesting that regular check-ins can lead to better rates or upgrades on outdated technology. This proactive approach to household management not only helps in saving money but also ensures that homeowners are equipped to handle the challenges posed by a fluctuating economy.

Takeaways:

• For homeowners over 65, check local tax relief programs that can save you money.
• Many states offer property tax relief for seniors; research local laws for assistance.
• Retailers in the home improvement sector are closing down due to economic shifts.
• It's crucial to pay with credit cards for better recourse in case of retailer issues.
• Contact your service providers annually to negotiate lower rates on your monthly bills.
• The recent economic changes are causing significant disruptions in the home goods market.

Links referenced in this episode:

• aroundthehouseonline.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Talk Media Network
• Basset Furniture
• Roda Paint
• Miller Paint
• Lowe's
• Home Depot
• Dura Supreme

To get your questions answered by Eric G give us a call in the studio at 833-239-4144 24/7 and Eric G will get back to you and answer your question and you might end up in a future episode of Around the House.

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

If you want to join the Around the House Insider for access to the back catalog, Exclusive Content and a direct email to Eric G and access to the show early https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/support

We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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It's AROUND the house.

When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered.

This is AROUND THE house.

Welcome to the Round the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

I'm Eric G.

Thanks for joining me today.

This is our midweek update.

This is that show that didn't make it into last weekend show and of course, is it making into next weekend's show now.

Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving out there.

For all of you in the United States and other countries that catch this show on a weekly basis and all of you that catch the radio show as well out on the Talk Media Network, I say thank you for always tuning into the show and helping us grow year after year.

And I really appreciate it.

Today I wanted to talk about a few things.

One of them are some ways to save money this time of year to take a look around.

And I'm not just talking about sales, but I'm talking about ways to reduce that monthly, that monthly bill for people and especially the first one.

Here is something we're going to talk about in a future main episode, but I just wanted to give you a little clue out there.

If you are over the age of 65, if you're taking care of parents that are over the age of 65 or have grandparents over the age of 65 or anybody out there that is a homeowner, take a look at your local tax assessor or the county or township or whoever does the property taxes in your area.

Many states have or counties or even cities have relief for senior citizens or people above the age of 65.

Now this can be state by state.

It can be area by area.

So it's a wild west out there as far as what they are.

And I'm working on a story right now because in the state next to me here in Washington state, they have just that it is a state law for property tax relief for senior citizens, especially those that are unlimited budgets and things like that.

And we're going to talk more about that because I have one area that we're looking at that I had a viewer reach out for some help on.

And then I realized, you know, I should be doing this for some of my family members and get them taken care of.

And I ran into some of the same problems of a particular county that you follow the rules, you give them all the paperwork you need as per the state law, and then they don't want to give that money back.

So they start slow playing you they start going, hey, we need all this other information.

It's when we were in there, we gave you all the information and you said that was all you ever needed.

And we were so prepared, that kind of thing.

And they come back for more information, they come back for more information, and all of a sudden you're going, wow, they are really getting deep on this, well beyond what the law requires.

So if you're having problems in the state of Washington trying to get this, feel free to send me a message.

Head over to around the house online.com if you've had troubles with this.

I'm working on a story.

I'd love to hear about it.

The one county I'm talking about is Benton county, and that is a county in eastern Washington that we've had some trouble with trying to get through there.

And it's taken months and months and months to get through this process.

And I don't think we're any closer than the day we dropped off the paperwork, which was many months ago.

So we'll have to see what happens with this and how this process goes.

But if you're running into those delays or they're giving you a hard time when you clearly make, you know, meet all the requirements, love to hear from you over at around the house online.com and that could be something you're hearing in a future episode.

But for the rest of you out there, make sure and take a look and see if you could get some relief from property taxes and things like that, because that could save you thousands of dollars a year.

And if you're on a fixed income for you or your loved ones, that could be a big deal.

So take a peek at that.

It might be a way to save some money.

I wanted to talk about a few other things here as well.

We've got some interesting things going on in the economy out there, and I'm starting to see things playing their way out and we'll see how it goes.

But this has been brewing for a long time.

So this has nothing to do with the election or politics of that nature, but we're starting to see retailers and companies in the home improvement market going out of business or drastic reductions in force in Oregon.

Here we have seen, because of the Canadian two things, Canadian lumber coming in cheap into the US and two, some of the changes that they've been doing to forestry laws in Oregon.

Many of our sawmills have been closing down here in Oregon, which is a significant impact to those communities as well as west coast or western US Lumber production.

And so we're seeing that happen.

We'll see what happens with the whole tariffs thing.

I'm not too concerned about that.

If anything, we might see some of these places start back up again.

But now we're starting to see retailers that have been around for 20, 30, 40 years close up.

I was just looking and up in Seattle and saw the Kisky family up there who's had two Basset Furniture locations in the Puget Sound area.

I know these people, I met him on a cruise once.

They've closed up and shut down all of their stores up there.

And we're starting to see these retailers that have been around for decades disappearing.

And that's interesting.

We're starting to see that happen in my neck of the woods out here in the Pacific Northwest.

Rada Paint, which is a huge regional paint supplier, just picked up Miller Paint, who I've worked with.

Those guys have been around here for I think 120 years in the Portland area.

They were an employee owned company that just sold to rad of paint.

So I'm curious to see how that worked and how that played out because I'm not sure how an employee owned company sells to another manufacturer that's a competitor.

But not that there's anything wrong there, but I'm just curious from the business side how that works out.

But we're starting to see all of these things change like that.

And a lot of it is just a sign of the times now on the retailer side of things, I think what we're seeing is we're seeing so many companies out there that came through Covid with all the demand for things with your home and everybody ramped up.

There were waiting lists, especially furniture.

There was.

People were waiting six months to get a couch.

And we're seeing this even in school districts where they got money and all of a sudden they can't manage it.

I'm seeing that all over the country where school districts got money for Covid and then they turned around and spent it on administration.

They spent it on places that really didn't do much for the students.

And now all of a sudden you're seeing the shop programs, the art programs, the music programs.

All of those things get cut back and massive layoffs.

But of course it's never the.

It's always the kids feet.

It's one of those things that we see this, right?

And it's one of those things that we see in the public sector a lot.

And it's interesting.

It's that fear based type of thing.

If the police department has cuts.

They don't cut administration, they cut the police force because they're going to say, hey, now you're not going to get enough.

There's a little bit of fear in this money game.

And it's fire department, same thing.

And those guys are always underfunded.

So trust me, I'm not going after those guys at all.

School districts, on the other hand, are a different one.

We spend here in Oregon, where I live, some of the most per capita per student, but have some of the worst education of kids in the country.

And a lot of that has to do with their just massive spending on management and not stuff that puts kids and put kids in the classrooms and stuff.

So we're seeing that in the business side too, where companies went out, had all this money come in, expanded, remodeled, started by hiring more people and then couldn't.

When that faucet turned off, they didn't react fast enough.

So you're seeing designers now out there and contractors start to split their business up.

Okay, instead of just working with one company, I'm going to work with three or four because if one shuts down, I'm in trouble.

And you're seeing that with cabinet companies and everything else.

And I think one of the things that's going to get even more interesting is if you walk into the big box retailers, your lows, your.

Any of these big box retailers, Lowe's, Home Depot, that kind of stuff.

If you walk into those cabinet departments, most of those are cabinets in there are in the top two or three brands in the country.

Now, there are exceptions like some of the privately owned ones like Belmont Cabinets or some of these other guys out there.

But really, if you're looking at the craft maids, the American wood marks, all of those different brands that you see Schuler or whatever in the home centers and their private brands that go with it.

And this is where I think the tariff conversation is going to get interesting, is that those big companies decided a handful of years ago to ship raw materials over to China or Southeast Asia, have parts cut out.

And these are generic parts.

These might not be your caboteors, but they're the, the stretchers or face frames or cabinet box sides that they can put on CNC machines over there or have people cutting them out and ship them back in bulk for their stock cabinetry.

And so then they come back in the US and they get put into your cabinetry.

So that saved them a bunch of jobs here in the US and it was cheaper to do that.

I think in the tariff situation.

That could be interesting because now I think those jobs might be coming back in.

But what we're starting to see, though, is a lot of these, like Dura supreme cabinetry, who is a.

I was one of their largest deals in the country for a number of years.

We're starting to see that those guys got bought up by another company, one of the big cabinet conglomerates.

And I'm not here to beat on anybody, but it's just what happened now all of a sudden, their new plant that they just opened up is shutting down and they're moving stuff around.

So we're starting to see some of those conglomerates starting to really dive in and change how they're doing cabinetry a little bit.

And they're combining forces within the brands.

Kind of like how GM and Chevrolet, for instance, might build a GMC truck and a Chevy truck on the same line.

You're going to see that more and more, I think, in the big box store brands where it was really there was this brand in this factory, this brand in this factory.

You're going to see more and more, I think, with these cabinet lines that have five, six, seven cabinet brands under an umbrella.

I think you're going to see those change into a regional thing to cut down on shipping and things like that.

So we'll see what happens.

But there's a lot of change out there.

But just be very careful with the retailers that you're working with out there.

I don't want to see you go put in, you know, thousand bucks down on a couch and realize that a month later those guys closed up and you're gone.

So for those kind of things, I would highly suggest paying with plastic.

So you have versus cash.

So you have some recourse.

You can always go back to the cabinet, to the credit card supplier and go, hey, Visa, MasterCard, whoever I paid for this and never got it back, you had a good chance of that coming back to you.

Or if you paid for cash, you're in line with the rest of the creditors.

So be a little careful.

We're in a really interesting time this time of year and we're seeing a lot of people close down, at least in my area.

And I'm seeing stuff across the country as well.

Be real careful out there with your purchases.

Be careful with the contractors you're working with and of course, make sure you do your background checks and all that stuff.

And take a look and see.

Many times you'll see with retailers if they're having delivery issues, if they're having money Issues.

You'll start to see reviews online going, wow, I ordered X and it took extra two months.

Sometimes that could be a warning sign of things to come because maybe they're not paying their bills.

Just be a little careful out there.

Be a little careful out there.

And a couple other things here, guys.

Another thing to do to wrap a bow around this, we started talking about some ways to save on your projects out there as well.

One way to save some money just on your regular bills around the house.

We talked about this earlier, but it's a good reminder.

Great time of the year to call the cabinet, your phone company, your cable company, your Internet provider, all those people, and take a peek at what it's costing you.

There's probably ways to save money.

A lot of them have customer retention things where if you're out of contract, and that's the same thing, if you're calling your cable company once a year, do it.

Make sure that you're on there.

Because the problem is many times you've got cable stuff, modems, TV boxes are well out of date.

Make sure that you bring that up in the discussion because if they've been there for a year or two, they probably have newer ones that work better and have better reception.

It's always good every year or two to have the cable company come out, take a look at stuff.

And if they can upgrade your boxes for the same price to keep you there, that's also a good thing.

All right, everybody, we got a great show coming up this weekend.

If you're a new house buyer or if you're looking at roofing.

We got so many things going up on the radio this weekend with some great interviews and some great discussions and the podcast.

You don't want to miss it.

If you want to find out more, hit us up at around the house online.com and you can find out more information there.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Hanukkah to all the people out there as we come into these seasons and enjoy the time with your friends and family and just enjoy the holidays.

We've been through a lot this last year.

Have some fun and some relaxation and get to enjoy some of the projects we've been doing to make our house a better place that we call home.

I'm Eric G.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House show.

We'll see you this weekend.

Somewhere unseen and un discovered anywhere beyond the me Love is a love song let's be lovers we're all over the radio Take my hand out Nowhere to go all over the radio with.