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It’s the height of home repair season, a time when established contractors are often in demand and unavailable. That’s a big opportunity for the fly-by-night operators to step in.

Hiring a contractor to do work on your home, whether it’s a relatively small job or a major renovation, is a big deal. For most consumers, your home is your biggest investment. It should be treated with the level of respect that comes along with that.

Just like you wouldn’t want some quack of a doctor to perform surgery on you, you don’t want someone with questionable skills to be operating on your home. On top of that, if you do end up with a shady “contractor” you not only run the risk of poor work you also are taking a chance on getting ripped off.

Scams in the home improvement business have been around for a long time. They’re finely tuned and very focused on getting consumers at their points of maximum vulnerability.

Naked With Cash is an ongoing series at Consumerism Commentary in which readers share their households’ finances with other readers. These participants benefit from the accountability that comes from tracking their finances publicly and the feedback of the four expert Certified Financial Planners (CFPs).

For more information, read this introduction.

Two years ago I wrote about how I was “winding down”, whatever that means, after selling Consumerism Commentary, in the sense that I was looking to involve myself in new projects. I was considering, among other things, investing a portion of my assets in start-up companies. In fact, I signed up for a service called AngelList that pairs potential investors with visionaries looking for capital.

I never took the next step. Although I continue think it’s a good idea to diversify my portfolio across a variety of investing possibilities, I’ve maintained a mix almost exclusively of stock and bond index funds. Several potential investment opportunities came to me from friends, but in the end, each opportunity didn’t progress to the final stage. I’m not so sure investing with friends is such a good idea anyway.

Students of chemistry are likely aware of the four fundamental states of matter. The most advanced chemistry course I’ve taken was in high school, although I must have learned about this basic concept earlier than that. Solids have a definitive shape and volume; liquids assume the shape of its container and flow easily; gases also take the shape of the container but can be compressed in volume. The fourth state, plasma, is like gas, but produces electromagnetic fields and electric currents.

Scientists will argue that there are a number of additional states of matter, but the four fundamental states roughly equate to financial stability. To create this metaphor, there’s no need to look at superfluids or Bose-Einstein condensates.