Originally Posted by tony1679
Originally Posted by Win
Originally Posted by tony1679
Originally Posted by clinebarger
At 29 years old....NO WAY, NO HOW!!
I don't have a Mortgage or a Car Payment. And even if I was single, I couldn't see 200K getting me very far!
Owning a home & land is expensive!
I have two ways to easily do this.
1. I can buy an acre of family land with an existing well and septic for $5k. I can then build a small, simple, extremely energy efficient house for well under $75k, as I've already had multiple estimates based on what I want. Then pay off both cars (rounding way up) for $20k. That's only $100k. I have no debt other than that, so that's $100k I can put in savings, invest, etc. With no real bills, $100k will last a very long time with my lifestyle.
2. I can buy my current house I'm renting for $125k. I'd instantly have $25-50k equity in it (again, family deal). Paying off the two cars would leave me $55-60k, plus $25-50k in equity. My lifestyle consists of surfing BITOG and the everlasting hunt for the motherload of clearance oil. Not to mention the things I could do for income in all that free time that I couldn't do now.
Of course, as ad244 said, assuming I don't rack up millions in medical bills.
It wouldn't be that hard around here - I bought a couple of lots at a tax sale a few years back, 1/4 acre each, adjacent, on a small lake about twenty miles south of here, all paved roads, for < $7K IIRC. City water, but no sewer, so I would have to add septic. Big mobile home dealer used the biggest double wide they sold as a sales office, when they wanted to rotate it out, I bought it for $15-20K ( don't remember) and moved it to some land over in OK where I planned on renting it out, but has just sat there unused ever since.
So that's $27K, figure another $20K for septic, moving the thing back to Arkansas, and fixing up / repairs, and a small boat to fish from, and that's < $50K to be living on 1/2 acre on a nice little lake. I would think if you were frugal, another $400 / month would cover your other expenses. Take a part time job greeting at Wal Mart.
For a while I sold pre fab buildings off one of my empty lots - I had a cabin size building with a porch, etc., that people would finish out as a hunting cabin, lake cabin, etc. for not much money.
See? I'm not the only one who gets it.
Pretty admirable, but not for me--married with two kids, need a house larger than a minimum.
I've thought about moving south when I get close to retirement, make my money up here, move south, but I'm not sure I could convince the better half about that.