Brigitte Bowers: Big business dreams

My husband and I have been considering buying a small home as an investment property.

I imagine that this property will be the beginning of great wealth for us. We’ll rent out the house, using rent payments to cover our mortgage on the quaint bungalow that will never have leaking pipes or need electrical upgrades. Our renters will be a quiet couple just starting out, or perhaps a pensioner living alone with a well-trained house cat.

In just a few years we will have realized at least $30,000 in equity mainly because, over time, we will return the home to its original early 20th-century character. Then we will use our equity to buy another rental. At the end of 10 years, when we are ready to retire, we will have amassed a real estate empire. We will be just like Donald Trump, only we won’t be living in New York or have billions in assets. But we will be rich, on a Merced scale.

I am determined to believe in this scenario of sure and easy affluence even though I am a terrible business person.

I do not have Trump’s ruthlessness or the kind of no-nonsense attitude required to make someone pay off a relatively small bill. I know this because my last foray into business was a disaster. It involved a beat-up truck and a guy from Stockton who wanted to start a towing service.

My story begins in spring 2014 when I sold a 1-ton dually to pay off unexpected IRS assessments. (You might be thinking that the problem with taxes is another indicator of my financial incompetence and you would, sadly, be correct.) The truck wasn’t worth much but I sold it for $2,700, enough to cover the unpaid taxes. The guy who bought it, Bob, planned to use it as the foundation for a towing fleet in Stockton.

However, after an initial payment of $700, I didn’t hear from Bob for over six months. I waited for a call or a letter with a check enclosed, but spring passed into summer, summer into fall, and fall passed into winter without a word from Bob.

“I thought you sold that truck,” people would say whenever they came over to my house and saw the dually.

“Me, too,” I’d answer.

I occasionally thought about Bob during that time, of course, especially when I wrote my monthly check to the IRS. I wondered what might have happened to him. Was he dead? Was he incarcerated? Was he in a coma in a hospital somewhere, a victim of a horrible accident? I was reluctant to call him, especially since I suspected that he’d changed his mind about the truck and I didn’t want to return the $700, which I’d spent almost immediately and not on a payment to the IRS. And even though the dually sat in my backyard gathering dust, it wasn’t in the way of anything.

A family friend who is a paralegal told me in August 2014 that I was not obligated to Bob in any way, and since Bob had not held up his portion of our contract, I didn’t have to refund him. But I just couldn’t do that to Bob. He seemed like a nice guy and he had a dream. Our truck – I’d decided that Bob and I co-owned it by then – was necessary to the realization of his ambition.

The problem was that the IRS is not as tolerant as I am. They would not wait for payment without extracting vengeance, and my assessed liability grew and grew. As anyone who has owed the IRS for back taxes knows, the federal government does not fool around. I ended up paying about double the amount originally owed once late penalties and interest were added. I might have learned a thing or two from the IRS about how to conduct business, but I did not. I continued to believe in Bob and to forget about him in equal measure.

Then one day in September, as I lounged in a hammock in my backyard looking at the truck (which by then had four flat tires and a bed full of junk because we’d turned it into a garbage bin), I picked up my phone and called Bob. It turned out he’d been having a hard year financially, but he still wanted the truck.

His vision of his towing service had grown more vivid over the many months since his $700 installment, and he thought he might be able to make payments again. Within a week I received a money order for $150 and then over another eight months, I received random payments, always in money orders. I began to understand how much Bob trusted me and how difficult his life was. His dream, however modest, depended in some small way on my patience. I was rooting for Bob, even when I wrote my monthly checks to the IRS.

This past spring, a neighbor offered to buy Bob’s truck for $1,500, cash on the spot. That would have put a good dent in the IRS bill, but I was reluctant to give up on Bob, who by then owed me only $1,600.

Bob’s last payments came in quick succession. He paid off the truck by late September. I still have two more payments before I’m done paying off the IRS. Clearly, I am not MBA material.

I have not given up on my plan to become a real estate tycoon. After all, if Bob could make his dream come true, then surely I can, too. I am certain I will make a fortune in investment properties. Perhaps someday I will even erect a tower in our city. A shimmering example of modern architecture – all steel, glass and sharp angles – it will dominate the Merced skyline. Will I dare name it Bowers Towers? Yes, of course. How could I possibly resist?

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 9:52 AM with the headline "Brigitte Bowers: Big business dreams."