Er, ahem... *Smiles sheepishly...*
So I didn't really get on top of it back in 2013, now did I? Haha.
Well, things got, and have been, kind of crazy.
At that time, I was working at a local sawmill making ceder fence boards. Not excatly my idea of fun... but it paid well.
It was a big motivator for me, also, to continue trying to save money, make my plans, and attain those crazy goals.
While I was there, I found that everyone was... angry. They did a lot to compensate for, "reward" and soothe themselves for the hard labor they spent most of their daily lives doing. They made a lot of money, but most of them spent it just as fast on cars/trucks, beer, cigarettes, junk food, and family lifestyles that cost a lot to maintain... even though that meant that they didn't get to see much of their families. Especially the ones working swing. (Which is where I ended up.)
It pretty well demonstrated all of the concerns I have with the way our conventional societal system goes here in the modern world.
Of course, it has its benefits. Why else would we do it? It's the most obvious responsible path for us to take to be a productive, respectable member of society, and for us to take care of ourselves and get by. But is it really the best way to live?
As I question our "norms" I wonder, why do we live like this, in general? It is initially convenient in a short-term sense, and the guesswork is mostly eliminated when you just do what's expected of you. If we work really hard, we can have nice things (though often at the cost of rarely being home or with our families where we can enjoy them). Everyone else lives like this, it's what we know, and we don't want to go astray and make a mistake. We even face conditions that make it just about impossible to go far from the beaten path (taxes, insurance, our dependence upon technology, our family/social structures, etc).
However I have come to the conclusion that, for me, it isn't right. No comventional job is, in and of itself, going to make me happy, so why would I devote so much of my time and energy to it, specifically? For money? Because people have thrived without dollar bills in the past. My life isn't about a job, or money. I want my life to be about my family. I want to spend my prime years with my fingers in the earth, making something real for myself and living simply (now that kind of work I enjoy). I don't mind work, but I believe that our daily work should bring families together, rather than take them apart, and it shouldn't be the redundant, mind-numbing, souless existence so many (not all, but many) experience.
So, I got a job I didn't like, but it paid very well for an entry level type of job, and it allowed me to make a decent savings quickly. My husband's income paid the bills, and mine went to savings. We lived in a school buss on my family's land, heated with a wood stove, to avoid rent and regular bills (heat, electricity, water/sewer, etc) and lived without most luxuries. (Very hot in the summer and cold in the winter, by the way. Kind of leaky also.)
In a year and a half we had a good deal of money saved up. Due to this and some other fortunate arrangements, we were able to buy a 10 acre piece of land to call our own, and also made a small down payment on a separate investment property. We were going to live in it for a year as we built on our land, which gave us access to homeowner's financing, hence the downpayment being small. This property was not just to give us a temporary home, but also to compensate for the fact that I would be no longer working, as I want to be staying at home and raising a family. If we can also become established on our land and start living self sufficiently, this income may be able to take care of most of our monetary needs, so that Tim may be able to at least cut back to part time. Then he can also have more time to pursue his career goals, to create video games.
Sounds great, huh?
Well, it looked good up until the investment part. The best laid plans and all that... couldn't be that easy, anyway, right?
We made some mistakes buying that property.
It penciled really well. It was in a good location, vacancies shouldn't be an issue there. The units were well laid-out and had nice features. I didn't even hate the idea of living there for a while, despite it being in town, since the units were so nice.
We had a great realtor on our side who suggested a reputable inspector. When we looked at the units, they looked pretty nice also. The upper two were very clean. But the lower one we saw had smokers in it, and I was pregnant, and there was an 8yr old girl in the bathtub with the door wide open while we were in there... which I don't really care about, but I felt like it wasn't appropriate to linger in there. I thought, "Oh, if there's something we miss the inspector should see it. That's his job."
In the other unit, supposedly the family became ill the day of our walk-through, with a newborn baby. Again, all of the other units were nice, and we figured that the odds were that even if that was a little rougher it wouldn't be too much worse. And even if it was, that was the inspector's job. He should tell us. That's what we were paying him for.
But he didn't.
In both of the lower units, but in that we didn't see beforehand especially, there was a terrible mold infestation and moisture issues. Turns out the upper units had some related issues, but they were kept by very clean tenants at that time so they didn't really crop up. It was a huge money pit for us, and we are still in debt a year later. It took our whole summer and the money we had leftover that we were going to use to build on our land. That and we had a child! She was definitely the highlight of 2014.
In the end, my grandparents very kindly lent us a fifth-wheel to live in. We couldn't afford to live in the fourplex we bought after all of the debts accrued... we needed that income from renting it out, to pay off the extra debts. It was pretty stressful. In the end, I felt like we would have been better off getting established on our land, and not having an investment property. But in the long run, I imagine that it will still be a good investment. Someday. It seems mostly stabilized at this time, with ongoing repairs and the debts being repaid, but all four units are now rented out and the payments are being made. At the very least, there should be equity in it if we ever decide to sell it someday.
But that is what I have been up to in the last couple of years. Not much progress was made on the areas that I intended this blog to be about. But that's how it goes. Life happens. The important thing is that we keep trying to move forward in a positive manner, little by little, every day. Eventually, it will pay off.
Oh, and try to enjoy it too. This is it--life! It's what we get. We should make the most of it. :)
