Cool and wet. Damp at a minimum. Misty rain most of yesterday with occasional downpours depending on where you were. Where I was it rained pretty much non-stop, just slacking for short periods.
Spent the day getting ready then driving north to look at a property. It’s pretty much what we expected, and we’re making an offer on it. It’ll be another house that sold “before it was ever listed.” We only learned about it through a friend. Meatspace and tribe came through.
I expect there will be a LOT of things to share about the process and the work. This is intended to be a ‘weekend’ or vacation home, but will also function as a retreat if we need it. I hate to think ‘bug out location’ because you don’t get much use from a bug out place if things go well. It does give us somewhere to go if we need to go, and that has been a major prep that was missing from our capabilities.
It’s also supposed to be a financial move to get something real instead of a rapidly inflating currency. Our timeline is long. If the world somehow manages to not go to helI in the next year or two, it will be a fun place to go on summer weekends and lakefront property always finds buyers, if there are any buyers at all.
Which brings me around to the title of the post (which most of the time is an opportunity to sneak in a joke or quick hit commentary, or is totally unrelated to the post, which is a tiny little joke in itself) and relates to CommanderZero’s post today. How do you know when it’s time to pull the cord and bail? ESPECIALLY when that moment hasn’t come despite looking like it was imminent any number of times, and when the consequences for NOT going can be dire. I’ve mentioned in other contexts that ‘if you think it’s time to leave, it’s probably too late…” And I’ve mentioned that it helps to set trigger points so that you don’t have to second guess yourself.
But specifically, how the heck can I be willing to spend the money on this place after a day, and seeing it for only a couple of hours? Weeeeelllllll…… because we’ve done lots of thinking about it before hand. We have been looking at lake properties for three years. We feel like we’ve got a pretty good understanding of the current pricing and current demand. We’ve been looking at houses for a lot longer than that, and have a lot of confidence we can evaluate the condition and potential of the property. We had the money in place, and although we had to revisit that, another year of putting money aside for the purpose made the pot big enough, as it turned out. It’s still a stretch, but my wife agrees that time is getting short, the money we had saved was losing value every day, and we’re not getting younger, and the kids aren’t either.
I had a similar situation with my replacement truck. By the time this one came up, I’d looked at a lot of trucks, knew a good price when I saw it, and knew I needed to act swiftly. The house we live in took only a few minutes to convince us this was the house for us, mainly because we’d looked at more than 60 and rejected them.
And in the case of my truck, along with our previous ALMOST purchase of the prepper retreat, we were ready to change our minds if the information or our needs changed. The first truck I almost bought, I didn’t understand the warranty situation. Once I did, we bailed on the deal. With the great looking property with all the animal protein, and smokehouse, and artesian well… once we understood where the flood line was, and that the property was unbuildable for the most part, and that we wouldn’t ever be able to sit on a dock watching the sunset, we bailed.
Be ready to move when the opportunity presents itself. But be ready to stop moving if things change, or you change.
Finally, in answer to CommanderZero’s question, when do you head for the hills and burn the bridges and boats behind you? I’ve got a rule that none of my prepping can be irrevocable. Even if I decide to head for the hills I’m going to do my best to not burn the bridges behind me. Because I make mistakes. Lots of them and all the time. And I believe that “there is ALWAYS another way.” Searching for and finding that way made my career. Those two things make me strongly biased against the dramatic exit… and so far it’s worked for me.
The other thing that works for me is stacking up the preps, because it gives me choices. Give yourself some, and stack up your own preps. You know you wanna….
nick