I've long wanted a collectible car. Now I just want to drive my non-collectible car over asphalt.
There's an interesting story that goes along with the money we're using to pave the driveway. And since you guys seem to like a good story, here it goes.
Back when we were building the house, on one of the many days we felt like we were in over our heads, we were facing huge costs to purchase all the material for the kitchen. We were given an allowance by the builder, but of course, once you actually design the kitchen, and select the cabinets and counters and bathroom vanities (they were part of the same budget), it ends up way over. It happened that if you left out the cost of the countertops, we'd be in-budget. Mrs. Scotch joked that we needed a rich uncle to come out of nowhere, and pay for our countertops.
A month later, I got a letter from the American Research Bureau, saying that a relative of mine had passed, and since they had no children, I was in line for an inheritance. My father's brother, who died 10 years ago, left a wife, and she had just died. They never had kids, so their estate would be split between the siblings. My uncle's wife was Norwegian, and her name was Marja. She had a brother and sister in Norway. And my uncle was my dad's brother, but my dad died a long time ago. So the estate would be split 3 ways, with my dad's family getting a third. There's 3 of us kids, so we'd each get a ninth of the total estate. Since my brother is gone, his 2 kids would split his ninth.
When I was 17, we took a family trip to the west coast. We started in San Francisco, went to Monterey, Saint Louis Obispo, then over to Vegas (stopping at the Hearst mansion), then on to LA. We landed in SF during a hotel worker strike, and also, Mt. St. Helens was erupting. So if you looked it up, you could figure out the exact date. Anyway, the only time I ever met my uncle and aunt was in SF on Fisherman's Wharf. We had dinner together.
At some point, they moved to the Topanga hills outside of LA. The "estate" that I'd be getting part of, was just the proceeds from the sale of their house. They bought the house in the early 80's; it burned down at one point, and they rebuilt it. It looked like a shack, but because of the real estate market, it was worth close to $1M. But they had been taking a reverse mortgage on it, so the equity was small. Also, it narrowly avoided being burned down again in the recent wildfires. The total estate of my aunt and uncle includes bank accounts and personal property, but that goes to her siblings only.
The American Research Bureau gets one-third of our part of the inheritance, which sounds like a lot, but it includes all of the attorney representation in the state of California. And frankly, without them, we wouldn't know anything about this. It took over 3 years to settle the estate and get the inheritance. There was a Jewish congregation (a Chabad) who claimed my uncle willed them $100,000, but they didn't have signed documents proving it, so they settled for $10,000.
In the end, the same week I was buying my replacement car, was the week we got our inheritance check. It's about enough to pave a driveway.
