Building a country home in 2009?

[glenn kangiser]

We're not real sticklers on thread drift here, John.  Carry on.... .

Fritz - wonderful points and comments... thanks

[Okie_Bob]

Super tread John and excellent responses too. I too am amazed that everyone seems to be thinking along the same lines or at least
searching for solutions that are logical and productive. It has been pointed out, not only here but, in the news, that debt is bad and one of the first things we need to fix in our own lives. I have been working towards that for some time and it is happening. We have no credit other than our mortgages and car loans, one if which is paid by my company. But, still, with the hit taken recently in my savings, I am forced to continue working for the foreseeable future. Not a problem, I had just hoped to retire before now as I was about to do about now.
Anyway, I wanted to share this website with everyone www.daveramsey.com as Dave Ramsey has developed a system that helps anyone get out of debt and prepare for the future. I suspect eveyone on here had lived like Dave teaches but, maybe didn't think about it like he has. Anyway, if you want a plan that will get you out of debt, follow Dave's plan, it costs you nothing and is the fastest way to become debt free that I know of.
Okie Bob

[countryborn]

One more point to consider when preparing for the future -take care of your health & stay strong.  We cannot know for sure everything that is coming, but strong physical health will be every bit as important as financial health.  Especially when building your own home, or retrieving a hammer that somebody threw somewhere.

[hnash53]

OK, here's my two cents... and it's probably just two cents worth...but it's worked for me:

Our/My/Your standard of living is too high.

By too high, I mean this:  A standard of living as high as it is here requires that Americans make oodles of money to pay for that standard of living.  That's why jobs are going overseas AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO until our standard of living is lowered.  I'm not talking quality of life but 2500-10000 square foot homes, new cars, etc.  How can we really blame businesses for sending jobs overseas where people will work for pennies on the dollar compared to what we required to be paid here to maintain our lifestyle.

If mortgage payments were $600 a month instead of $1500 a month, and a used car payment was $200 a month instead of $550 a month for 6 years (yikes!!), we could work for less, still have a quality life and more jobs would stay here.

The only debt I have is a mortgage payment and I hope to end that this year.

We can lower our standard of living/lifestyle and probably end up living longer if we were to do it the right way. 

Our lifestyle/standard of living now is actually working against us and likely decreasing average lifespan and/or quality of life.  At some point, and we are probably there already, an increasing standard of living suffers from diminishing returns.

I don't know if you know this or not, but providing clean water and proper treatment of human waste AND KEEPING THOSE SEPARATE has increased human longevity more than any other single technology...even antibiotics.  Higher and higher and more and more technology is not the answer.  The greatest leaps and gains in human longevity AND quality of that longevity have been pretty low tech.

Blah blah blah rant rant rant....

[glenn kangiser]

Good one, Hal.

My standard of living is below ground level...

[considerations]

Yeah and below the radar Glenn....good move.  Now, if it just was invisible.

[glenn kangiser]

I'm going to work more on that, but I brought Whitlock's well driller and son here the other day and they couldn't see it though they were within 50 feet of it.  The out buildings -garage - greenhouse and shop are quite visible though.

[Bill Houghton]

We are waiting for a call from our bank to come sign the paper work to refinance our house.  The day I called, the rate was 4.375, the bank lady said that would be our rate.  We are actually raising our payment ($88 per month) but we are going from a 15 year (which we just did in April 08) to a 10 year.   I told the wife after the first payment we would be down to 9 years and 11 months.  The first single digit mortgage I have ever had.    I hate to admit that I am not very motivated when goals are long term (read lack discipline), but once a goal gets to where I can be excited about them (read impulsive), I usually keep putting effort into them regularly.  So, we are thinking we could shorten that 9 years and 11 months quite a bit now with some focus and just the emotional excitement of what it will feel like to be without a mortgage for the first time.  It is a terrible time to try and sell property, but we have a couple of rental houses we bought a few years ago (the down payment was borrowed on our house mortgage) so if those sell, we will be putting those proceeds on our mortgage too. 

Whew, this is a long post.   Must be cabin fever.  Anyway, in the meantime, I am going to try and piece together our cottage.  I still have not settled on what type of structure though.  Could be pole building with cement floor or stem wall with a crawl space.  I suppose the pole design would be the least expensive, but the least expensive isn't always the best way to go.

Bill in the U.P.