Thefirstmillion

08/21/2026

In July 1975, a union plumber in America earned $9.77 an hour.
That sounds like poverty until you run it forward. In today’s money it’s $60.64.
The median plumber in America today makes $30.67.
I want to be careful here, because this is the part where most people stop reading and start arguing. So let me stack the deck against myself before you do. Take the lowest-paid region in the entire 1975 federal survey - Texas and its neighbors - and put it against today’s national median, which runs higher than Texas. Rig it in every direction.
Still down 42 percent.
Meanwhile the house that plumber worked on has never been more expensive to build. Construction costs now eat 64.4 percent of a new home’s sale price, the highest share since anyone started counting.
So the house costs more. The man in the crawlspace earns half. Somebody is getting the difference, and this is an attempt to find out who.

08/15/2026

60%.

That's how many plan sets come back with something overlooked - and that's a professional's rate. He pulls 50-70 permits a month.

"There's always going to be something that pops up that was overlooked."

If a guy doing this full time sees 60%, the number for a first-time builder submitting alone is worse.

Plan for the comment letter. Don't hope against it.

Comment PERMITS and I'll send you the full episode with permit expediter Michael Kane plus a written summary.

08/13/2026

"That's not a tree. It's a power pole."

Foundation poured. Framing up. Crew on site. And the entire house was built inside a power line easement.

80% of it had to come down.

He wrote the client a full refund and walked away from the job.

This is why you check easements before you buy the lot - not after you pour.

Comment PERMITS and I'll send you the full episode with Michael Kane plus a written summary of everything we covered - timelines, what actually causes delays, and the traps that catch first-time builders.

08/04/2026

I spent last week reading Reddit posts about stolen contractor deposits. $7,000. $8,000. $13,000. One family in Massachusetts lost $60,000, sued, won in court, and two years later has collected exactly nothing.

Here's what got me: not one of those families lost their money the day the contractor vanished. They lost it weeks earlier, the day they hired him.

Two signals that would have caught most of them:

He can start Monday. Every good contractor in your area is booked months out. So who's free tomorrow? Availability is information.

He needs your cash for materials. Real contractors here in Austin have pro accounts at Home Depot or Lowe's - net 30, sometimes net 60. Materials arrive, work starts, the invoice comes a month later. The only guy who needs your money up front is one his own suppliers stopped trusting. They know him better than you ever will, and they've already voted.

On a full build you'll hire twenty-plus contractors. Framers, roofers, drywall, electric, plumbing. That's twenty chances to get this wrong.

Full breakdown & video - in the comments.

08/03/2026

08/02/2026

Jemish Kikani built a $1.5M spec home as his first ground-up project. No construction experience. No bank loan.

I spent several days on site with him - walking his spec build, then his own family home going up at the same time. Sat down and went through the whole thing, start to finish.

What I wanted to know was simple. How does someone with zero building background pull that off, and what did it actually cost?

A few things that stuck with me:

He’d flipped about 20 houses over three years before this. That gave him cash and contractor relationships, but he was clear - flipping and building from scratch are two different skill sets.

He paid cash instead of financing. Not because he’s against loans. He couldn’t get one without a track record, and at 10-11% he’d rather risk his own money than the bank’s.

Paying cash changed how he ran the site. Invoices in Thursday, subs paid Friday. No waiting on bank inspections or draws.

He imported his windows and doors. Local quote came in at $85K. He got them in for $40K installed.

He spent $50K on mechanical in his own home - ERV, dehumidifier, HEPA filtration. He walked me through exactly why.

Swipe through for the rest. The five trades he says decide your entire build, why he started with a spec instead of chasing a custom client, and where he landed 13 months in.

Full conversation is recorded , summary and notes made. Let me know in comment if you want to get full video and summary of 90 min talk. Just drop any comment please