I dont own lots of things. Its generally better, I think, to keep things relatively simple. Warm enough clothes, sneakers and shoes to run around in, an umbrella, baseball glove, computer, TV and phone, you know, the basics. Yet one day, years ago, I bought my apartment. Well, not exactly my apartment. I bought shares in a coop on 13th Street which gives me the right to live in this apartment. So I do and no one else can come in unless I invite them, so its like I own the apartment, except all I in fact own are shares in the coop corporation (BTW, YOU are always welcome). Though its surely a very important number, I never remember how many shares in the corporation I actually do own. I have it written down for those occasions where it is important like when I pay my taxes. This morning was one of those days. One of the other shareholders who also doesnt actually own the apartment in which she lives sent an email to all of us in which she moaned about the Boards recent letter in which they said the maintenance was about to go up by $4 a month per share. The first thing this email made me think was I really should do a better job of checking my mail as I hadnt read any letters recently from the Board. Then, of course, I wondered just how many shares I did own. More importantly, I wondered how much $4 times that amount would make. Maybe I owned, you know, 3 shares which would make sense since its a 3 room apartment. $4 X 3 is a pretty small amount. Maybe I have 13 shares because we are on 13th Street. $4 times that would still be pretty okay. I keep the number of shares I own in my phone book under the letter M (for me) which is also where I keep my cell phone number which I also cant remember. Turns out I own 336. Why, I dont know, but 336 is a nice number, its even which I like and the first 2 digits adds up to the last which makes it a lot easier to remember even though I dont. On the negative side, $4 X 336 equals, well, it equals a pretty big monthly maintenance increase, especially for an apartment that I dont actually own. Well, awfully big even if I did own it, when you think about it. So at this point I was pretty motivated to find the letter, but I couldnt. On top of everything else, now I was embarrassed too. One should always know the number of shares they own and read (and not misplace) important letters. Id done neither. Bad morning. Then I thought maybe it was in yesterdays mail which I had not yet picked up. Okay, another thing Id done wrong. But at least I was correct...the letter from the Board was, indeed, there. And the letter did NOT mention a $4 per share increase. It did, however, note one of $3.9809. Not much help there.... What was helpful is where the letter ALSO listed a 6.6% raise. Contradiction! Until its cleared up, Im going with the 6.6%. If not, maybe Ill just sell off some of my excess shares!
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:14:49 +0000
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