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Hey Advisor,
I need advice. I will most likely be taking a new job. It will involve a lot of travel. I need some kind of service that provides me with a mailing address, and will collect my mail and send it on to wherever I happen to be. You know, credit card bills, insurance stuff. Anything that requires relatively prompt attention from me. I need info about services like this, or a starting place to look for services like this.
More advice. I will start by being an employee of this company. But I might want to work into doing the work on a contract basis.(There is another company which has made overtures about doing similar work for them.) The work involves process control equipment at oil refineries/chemical plants. Local contractors would install the equipment. I would assist/oversee the start up of the equipment and troubleshooting any problems. Where would I find info about setting myself up as a contract worker. Consultant maybe? Info about self-incorporation, insurance, tax effects, etc.
Even more advice. It looks like a lot of this work would be in the Spanish speaking world. My 2 years of high school Spanish was a long time ago. I have a book, some CD's, dictionary and am starting to learn again. Are there any resources on the Web to find technical words and terms in Spanish?
Well, probably more than you wanted to hear, but you did not specify what kind of advice you gave. Any help would be appreciated.
S
Hi S,
On the mail: if you have a Mail Boxes Etc. or similar type place in your town, set up a box there for all your mail to go to. You can pick up your mail there when you're in town, and when you're away, you can have them forward it to a local address. This isn't that expensive, but the forwarding can get expensive if you get a lot of junk mail or catalogs. As far as we know these folks won't sort through your mail for you and send only the "important stuff". MBE is set up to do exactly this kind of thing (other companies may not be), in fact, and now that the postal thought police have let up on the requirement that all mail to postal mail boxes be identified as such, no one needs to know that your mail is going there instead of to a home address.
On setting yourself up as a self-employed consultant on a contract basis: first, do you really want to self-incorporate, file and declare taxes, and all that state-supporting stuff? The more things you do like this, the easier it will be for the feds to keep track of you, and to continue to extort money from you--and the more likely they are to take an interest in you. If you're self-employed, your so-called tax liability may actually go up; you'll bear the cost of both employer and employee taxes (your taxes can also be much more difficult to figure out, if you can imagine such a thing). If you incorporate, you can get quite creative about finding ways to reduce your "tax liability" (you should consult a tax attorney about such matters--cooperating with statist extortionists is not our specialty), but you create a legal fiction that is an unholy mixture of yourself and the state. There are prices to be paid for this, not the least of which is more paperwork.
Being self-employed means that there's the potential for a lot less paperwork on you and your income... which translates into the possibility for less to go to the state. If you earn over a certain amount of money from a single company per year, they're required to file a Form 1099 with the IRS, so there's still the potential for them to track you with that. However, many forget this, or think of you as a vendor instead of a contractor, and don't think to do it. If you know your potential employers well enough to gauge their reaction, you might be able to offer them a "cash discount" deal, if they don't report the money you earn. Before you think that doing this will cut into your profits, consider that people will generally pay consultants a much higher hourly rate than they would a regular employee. Consultants are more likely to be thought of as experts, thus justifying the difference; consultants are also known to have other business expenses (health insurance for example) that employees don't fully bear. Your hourly rate can be very lucrative for you even with the offer of a cash discount rate to a company--even if it's 10% off, that's less than most legalized extortionists would take from you. Check around in your field for what typical rates are, and adjust if needed for your years of experience and the area where you'll be working (areas with higher costs of living, such as New York and California, generally support higher hourly rates). There are plenty of contractors who fill in all the forms and pay everything they are "supposed to" on every dollar they make, that can be documented...
About the Spanish (or any language, for that matter): your best bet is to find someone who speaks Spanish to hang out with, and to practice with. Hire a tutor if you have to--preferably one who's a native speaker of the language you want to learn. As for online resources, our Web research turned up mostly translation services geared toward technical documents, rather than what you seem to be asking about. Anyway, CDs, books, and Webby things are fine, but can only go so far. In a conversation, people seem to speak fast, and you need practice in hearing the language, and making yourself use it. For technical terms, there are lots of dictionaries available that offer translations of jargon specific to a given field. An online search should offer several results. For example, we found Chemistry Dictionary, by S. Kaplan, that is a Spanish/English-English/Spanish dictionary. It covers a number of fields within chemistry, and is about $45. This is one of many examples.
Dear Advisor:
Is there a network of places we could camp for a day or a week that isn't national parks? Private property that the sheeple do not have access to, where if there are other people there I don't have to worry about being so guarded? It's a big question I know, and has concerns revolving around trustworthiness, but it would be so nice not to have to hang out with Mr. & Mrs. Voter and their statist (conscious or unconscious) worldview. And if I could combine this with gold prospecting which is something I want to take up and hunting, again something I wish to learn, there would be no reason at all to be settled. And if I remain nomadic and I want to write, how do I arrange to get paid without being near a mail drop or having a bank account?
Speaking of hunting, that article was great but this is one of those things that has to be done to be understood. So, is there a way I could learn hunting? Are there classes for this? Do I put an ad in the paper? Is there anybody willing to teach a 35 yo almost fat guy how to hunt? If I take an animal, is there a way to swap that meat for some other kind? A clearinghouse for hunters, where you could put in how much elk you have that you are willing to trade for alligator or cobra, buffalo?
Churchmouse
Dear Churchmouse,
Wow, okay, let's take things one at a time:
There is a network of places where you can camp: KOA. There are others, and for a little green, they're more than happy to see you for as long as you want to stay--but beware, during the height of their season, whenever that is, they can be almost as expensive as hotels.
Now, camping away from sheople is a taller order, as you rightly surmise. We could probably do it in most of the 50 states and some places overseas, but that's because we've spent years developing a network of friends (and open invitations to drop by whenever we like). You can start now, before you need the network, and develop one of your own. It doesn't take much, just make a point of going to events like LRT conclaves, ISIL conferences, etc.--and make sure you put some effort in to meeting people and making friends! Now, under certain circumstances, we might introduce someone in need of a place to lay low to a friend with space to offer, but we don't want to blow our nascent underground railroad by running a feral through it. We'd have to feel pretty damn convinced about the need and the person.
About the mail drop, see above. Also, most MBE-type places will send your mail wherever you want--you can call in with a new address every week, if you like. If you think someone with serious resources and legal backing might come after you, you may need to run your mail through a private party who can withstand that kind of pressure (or at least warn you that the heat is on). This can be very difficult (as mentioned in another article in this issue)--not just to find someone willing, but to find someone who will perform reliably. Depending on how much of a hurry you are in, getting a mail drop overseas might help cover your tracks, or give you more warning time--but beware: many countries cooperate fully and readily with various Big Brothers, and/or have lousy, slow, or insecure mail service.
About the hunting: lessons are easy. Just look in the local phone book or on the Web for a tourist destination in an area of the country where lots of hunting is done--Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for example. There are guides who will, for a fee, teach you everything you want to know. The clearinghouse idea is a good one. It's possible that such a thing exists, or that the meat processors who handle venison, elk, etc. already arrange such swaps. If not, you've got a business idea you could develop and sell... wonder if it could be done on line: GameXchange.com!
'Til next time, keep your powder dry and your bug-out kit packed.
The Advisor
(c) 2000
