Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Congrats. The timing sounds great related to stock and real estate prices.

What's your plan for the two extra bedrooms? Office? Tenants? (I'd also guess workshop, fitness area, etc. but those might be in the garage or basement.)

@s10y - Right now it's just a boring lawn. I have plans though.

@C40 - Potential plans include home office, craft-room (instead of the middle of the living room), BnB (for visiting ERE people, airbnb, couchsurfers, ... ) or in-laws (on a more permanent basis). For now, it's just divided into his stuff and her stuff.

Congratulations on the house purchase!

Smelting in the garage, that should be interesting. I am curious, what sort of output would come from your home smelting system?

@bluenote - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery

Why are costs of houses so low in USA compared to Canada? It's not easy to find a house like that for less than $300k in Toronto for example. $100k sounds like a great deal in comparison.

Canada just kept going higher after '07:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/04/28 ... 27782.html

JamesR wrote:Why are costs of houses so low in USA compared to Canada? It's not easy to find a house like that for less than $300k in Toronto for example. $100k sounds like a great deal in comparison.

You could live in Oshawa and get a decent house for $300K and commute (train, bus ) into Toronto to work, its a popular option these days.

I think the US has cheap houses because they built too many on the back of ultra cheap mortgages. This created a supply/demand problem exacerbated by the great recession. I think there are also psychological reasons because of the crash causing people to be biased against housing as an investment in the USA. I think Americans see a house as a place to live in more then an investment. On the other hand the Canadian banking system is way more conservative then the US system and never had the liar loan, jingle mail, Florida real estate bankruptcy shelter shenanigans they have down there. If you want a house in Canada you generally have to come up with a reasonable down payment and have good credit. Often if it's your first home you need to get a co-signer on the mortgage. If you can't pay the mortgage the bank will promptly take possession and sell your home. Combine these banking virtues with ridiculously low interest rates, large influx of new people, limited space to build houses and you get the right combination of psychology (attitude is that "a house is a great investment and I can live in it!") and economics (low supply relative to demand) which is causing the prices to sky rocket in TO, and Vancouver. It also doesn't help in TO when the public transportation infrastructure is way underbuilt for the population compared to places like Chicago, New York, London etc. that have at least decent train systems to take away the road clog. Living closer to work makes way more sense in Toronto because it saves you a slow train ride clogged with people or a slow car drive with daily hour long traffic jams (DVP). That's my observation anyways, I am sure theres more to it then that.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the house. Any "extreme" ideas in mind for cutting costs with the cold winters?

Brick house from 1950s, very nice, craftsmanship should be excellent... Really excited to see what clever things you think up for it.

I might need to do 2 new kitchens. Am thinking about getting into concrete countertops as low cost alternative to stone... I'll probably practice with a workbench surface for garage, if that goes well I'll take it inside.

A rare update on my journal!

I quit my finance job, so I'm once again a free agent.

jacob wrote:I quit my finance job, so I'm once again a free agent.

Woohoo... I think.

Are you happy?

Why did you quit ? Do you intend to work again ?

What new projects are you thinking about with your new free time?

Can I hope that you can now remove the 'I will not talk a finance' muzzle. I miss the old Jacob finance thoughts.

The usual "to pursue other interests"-check box; company interests increasingly misaligned with my own interests ("it's not you, it's me"-refrain); had the FI option even as I went in; my apparent 3--5 year attention span has been exceeded; no longer learning new things; I've maxed out my potential; law of diminishing returns/Pareto optimal; DW just went all gung-ho into full-time (from part time) making it better if I was part or no-time as somebody HAS to be at home to pet the pug all day ...

Basically, it's complicated, think web-of-goals. The quit-solution was better than the not-quit-solution.

Incidentally, this means that I'm no longer under the standard blanket "we can neither confirm, nor deny"/"don't discuss anything investment related in public, ever" CYA-rule of the finance industry. If I had a dollar for every "bang my head against the wall" post I'd written and deleted before posting on the forum because of that over the past 3 years... I'd have about $15 by now!

Most likely I will work again. If by work you mean using some personal competence to provide value for others. I like being/becoming competent AND improving the world, so it's hard to avoid in the long run---developing competence or providing value.

For example, I just picked up a woodworking job rated at about 35 milli-ffj: I'm fixing my neighbor's bed frame. Also I'm discussing a start-up with @bryan. And there are a bunch of books to write. Meanwhile, I need to catch up on the dishes and renovate the kitchen. Also, I'm back on dinner-duty.

jacob wrote:A rare update on my journal!

I quit my finance job, so I'm once again a free agent.

Yay! Looking forward to hearing of more adventures.

thumbs up! looking forward to updates.

That all sounds good.

Your lack of blind, droning work-ethic is an inspiration to us all.

What's DW up to full-time? Was she studying accounting IIRC, Is she enjoying it? Is she competing with you for X years of expenses saved?

So, now that you have a home and some extra time, I wanted to bring this to your attention.

http://buildingscience.com/documents/pu ... stems/view

Your house is old enough that I'm sure the Masons who did the brickwork placed weepholes, but you've had 65 years of homeowners to plug them up. When the weather cooperates, you should just take a few minutes to check them. Sometimes people decide that weep holes are how vermin are getting in, and plug them. Sometimes vermin ARE getting in, and that needs fixing, the right way. And sometimes homeowners just do their own repointing...

And congratulations on taking the next step!