I have this belief that if I buy a nice piece of land off in the country..

@rottenrobi

Oh, you're welcome!

Yes, I know what you're saying about "accomplishing so much", or so it would appear that it was a lot, but I started this journey when I was 19, right after I started my own small business. My small business got started on a dare from a drunken man whom my girlfriend and I never even knew! The rest is history, because I had no intention of starting a small business prior to that evening! Because I was able to make more money in a short period of time from my business, which I had neither fiscal responsibility nor the financial brains at the time to even remotely manage, I decided to buy a house and fix it up and stop renting forever, which seemed like an intelligent idea and also looked rather easy to do. Wrong...

Operating outside my realm of expertise as I embarked upon my first Real Estate deal, I then found the opportunity to make some marginally thought-out residential decisions for myself, which were renovation decisions based on my Barbie Doll house I played with as a kid.

I then ended up selling each place immediately after it was finished, to then make the same incorrect decision yet again, to then sell the place 10 months after that for all the same reasons as before. All I was really doing was playing a shell-game with the original investment, which was the money I had earned from my small business. But as mentioned, these transactions happened about 7 times in total from the time I was 19.

Keep in mind, that I never actually 'made' any money off all of those Real Estate transactions, but I did remain totally debt-free while I was playing the shell-game in trying to figure out where I should live and what that place should look like.

Each transaction toasted about 1 year of time and undivided, dedicated attention, but I got my money back each time and made just barely enough money to cover my expenses each time as well, to the point where getting back into the game seemed like a great idea after the previous experience had started to fade from recent memory. Sort of like re-kindling an old relationship with an old boyfriend over and over again, while getting 'lured-in' each time by the same lure! I use to think fish were so stupid until I realized they are actually tricked! Great Fishermen are really not great, but fish are very, very gullible.

Truth is, I didn't have a clue what I was looking for each time I did buy and then sell a property ..and then buy yet another house, until it finally occurred to me that what I actually wanted, was my NEIGHBOR'S view, not the one I always ended up with!

That little issue was actually brought to my attention when my unknown neighbor, who was basically a slob who lived about a thousand feet away from my place, put a nice note in my roadside mailbox one day, saying..

"Hi neighbor, welcome to country living at it's finest! Thanks, by the way, for improving my view and increasing the value of my house by 50% to what it was! Maybe NOW it will finally sell!".

Turns out, the guy never put 5 cents into his own house the whole time he owned it and it looked like crap on the outside the whole time he lived there. But he had a million-dollar view out his living room window thanks to my reno efforts and matching landscape architecture, which was the catalyst that very quickly sold his house!

But my subsequent 'new neighbor' never spent any money on the house either, which actually hampered the sale of my own house for about a month when I was ready to sell. I had to actually obscure the view of HIS house from my living room window, by having a giant tree planted right in the middle of the sight-line between our two properties, which cost me another $2 Grand.

Hope you can avoid 6 out of 7 moves from my story! 🤦

@swirlie lol! This is great! I have made plenty of mistakes starting with, hey let's start a small business with no clue as to what I'm doing! I've been doing it, learning the hard way, for 30 years now. I'm the sole proprietorship and most times, the only employee, all the while, raising kids. Reading the tax laws and boning up on small business perks and benefits wasn't ever in the schedule.
I've worked so hard, always thinking this job was temporary, I would get a "real" job one day.
The one good thing is, I can say I'm a professional in my field.
Plenty of mistakes have been made along the way. Plenty. Lol.
You sound great and as if you've got a great future ahead of you.

@rottenrobi

WOW! Your life sounds great! Congratulations on managing a successful business for 30 years! The only problem with having a sole proprietorship, is that you are also the one who has to send a gold watch to yourself via FedEx if you decide to retire! Act surprised, no one will ever suspect you!

I have no kids, I have no adopted dogs, I have about a dozen or more boyfriends I take in whom appear needy from time to time, whom I feed, bathe, whom I give a kind word of encouragement to, whom I occasionally take passionate advantage of when they least expect it, but I did manage to focus my attention away from the roof that was over my own head, by providing a roof for a few others I encountered along the path of my journey.

I created two 'almost-half-way-there' homes for teenagers, which are both managed by professionals in their field. One home is a renovated, 10 bedroom all-brick, 3 floor rooming house originally intended for factory workers from a former war plant. Each house was built for communal occupancy in the 1930's, where the residents paid 'room and board'. The other house is identical in structure and is located right next door to the first one and is right across the road from the Police station! Handy!

One house is for teenaged girls and the other is for teenaged boys, both genders of whom would have been taken out of their homes by the Children's Aid Society if they were victims of abuse and violence imposed by their parents within their own home.

The rules are, they can live at 'my place' until the last day of their 19th year. On their 20th birthday, we throw them a going-away party! They can live at my two places from the day they turn 16, which means they are no longer bound by law to be controlled by their parents and can live wherever they want to, which also means they can make their own life-decisions from the age of 16 onward. So from 16 to 20, they can get their life together at my two places!

The place for girls, has a wooden sign over the front door which is called "Jen's Place" (who is me!). The place for boys, has a wooden sign over the front door called "Sam's Place" (which was the name of my dog when I lived at home on the farm as a kid).

They are both financially self-sustaining, thanks to the women volunteers to actually run the show. These kids were not drug addicts living on the street, they are kids who were removed from their homes who have parents who were both working and had steady jobs or professional careers, while living in upscale neighborhoods. Don't ever be deceived by a Mercedes or a Jag parked in a driveway! It's presence in the driveway is indicative of the stark reality of there being no guarantees about anything behind the perception.

I occasionally do fundraising events to keep the places going strong and if there is a shortfall, I just kick in a few bucks myself, but it's rarely necessary. I recently did a car wash fundraiser which was a lot of fun, where I specifically advertised the event for these two places in the newspaper for two weeks. Myself and 5 of my girlfriends did the fundraising event at an automatic car wash facility. The car wash owner let me use the parking lot of his car wash property to set up a hand-washed, car wash with lots of pink bubbles and silly theatrics, which we performed in our bikinis for $100 per car! My 5 girlfriends are professional dancers and I have had a life-long involvement with gymnastics, aerobics and personal body sculpting which targets very defined toning. The theatrics therefore, demonstrated at least 6 different ways of washing a windshield... sort of..😱

We washed 12 cars per hour and we washed non-stop for 6 hours on the hottest Saturday of the summer, I'm sure! We brought in $7200 and when we shut it down at 4pm, there was still a line up on the street that was blocking traffic. Even the Police showed up and we washed their cars for free!

What the event also did, was popularize the car wash facility itself, which was otherwise kind of a dead place most of the time. I have been asked by the owner to make this a standing, weekly event on Saturday mornings, because patrons have been calling him to find out if 'he' was planning on do this again and if so, when!?

What I learned from the experience, was that I never charged enough the first time... $100 per car was surprisingly under-priced for what people wanted to give. I was thinking that the next event would be more like a 'car wash auction', where people could bid online through an online auction company I know of. The highest bidder would then be awarded a voucher after he or she had paid online with their VISA card and the voucher would be electronically sent to them. They would then redeem the voucher at the next car wash fundraiser rally and there would be no real cash being transacted onsite, nor would anyone know how much somebody had paid for a hand-washed, car wash! Or how about squeegee girls...?

"Hey there, sir! Can I clean your windshield for $200..?" 🤔 hmmm...

@rottenrobi

That's what I eventually did as well. I got off the grid, got off the city water, got off the matching sewer charge. The process is no more scary than being victimized by the Utility companies and the municipality. It's not harder, it's just different.

What's hard, is sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of a subdivision, waiting for the power to come back on as the grid goes down for maintenance, watching for lights to come on in your neighbor's windows. Problem is, you cannot even pump water from the well to flush the toilet if you are living out in the country and still on the grid. Country living can be almost dangerous, if you don't think it all the way through.

In the city, at least the toilet will still flush after the power goes out, but it's almost impossible to have a back yard full of adopted dogs!

But country living means that you can set things up to be totally independent of outside utility sources, which also means that you can have it all if you wanted to!