Tag Archives: Beta Site

The back end of the deal

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Still going through the process of purchasing my little chunk of dirt. How am I financing it, you might ask. Well, ever since I got out of school I’ve had a different relationship with money. I’ve been sticking aside as much as I could and invested almost all of it. I also bought as much gold and silver as I could, consistently, over the years. Now, before anyone gets their aluminum foil panties in a twist about selling precious metals instead of hoarding them for the upcoming apocalypse, thats a completely separate stash. I set aside gold and silver specifically for the land purchase.

How’d that strategy work out? Honestly, fairly well. Most of the gold I’m selling is going out at about 60-100% more than I paid for it. Does this mean gold and silver were good investments? Well…compared to what? $1000 of silver five years ago, sold at todays price, gives a far better return than if that money were invested in anything else. However, you have to admit, the last decade has been nothing if not pretty wild and unpredictable. Also, I made it point to only buy gold when I could get it at spot, rather than pay hefty premiums. As a result, my gold stash is a wild mix of mints and weights….coronas, ducats, roosters, generics, rand, pesos, etc. But…theyre all gold and thats all that matters. The end result is that it winds up, on paper, shaving off a good $10k+ chunk off the purchase price.

So was it a good investment? In this case, I’d say so. But that doesn’t mean I’d do precious metals as my main form of investing. Candidly, the vast majority of my investing is dividend stocks, then covered calls, and then buy-and-hold equities (looking at you KO). But Im also a really pessimistic guy so I also put money into cash and precious metals. (You could argue I invest in guns but its only an investment if you actually sell them.)

But, as diligent as I’ve been, I was still just a wee bit short and had to borrow a small amount from a friend who offered it. It galls me to have to borrow money but on the bright side its a pretty small amount ($30k),,and I should have that wrapped up fairly quickly. So, on the bright side, I’ve no banks to deal with or their attendant nuisance procedures.

The financial part of this adventure has been a bit of an experience as well. I kinda sorta proved to myself that, even on a rather lower-middle class income, I can manage to live a life where I can get some money in the bank. And it isn’t just a matter of saving for the land purchase. I have to have enough in the bank so that even after pulling out the money for the purchase, I still have enough to generate dividend income, cover emergencies, cover other emergencies, pay taxes, have retirement, etc, etc. Not the easiest thing in the world but so far I seem to have done an okay job with it.

 

Weekend plans

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So whats on tap this weekend? Well, moving a buncha stuff to the storage unit to stage it for what I am expecting will be an interesting spring and summer next year, assuming this land purchase thing goes as hoped. I mean, yes its under contract and all….but there is still plenty of room for the wheels to fly off on this thing. I won’t consider it done until all the paperwork is signed, sealed, posted, and undeniably finished. Then I’ll consider it done. And mine. In the meantime, its still ‘the property that I amn looking at buying’.

Next spring will include setting up a semi-permanent campsite, securing access points to the property, installing security measures, redeveloping the overgrown and sapling-sprinkled ‘driveway’ onto the property, and doing a whole lot of walking the property to see exactly what is where. I’m rather looking forward to it, although its going to be one of the biggest money-sinks of my life. But, just because something is a money-sink doesn’t necessarily mean its a bad thing. If its something youve always wanted, then whats a few bucks? It’s sinking money into something you don’t want that is a bad experience.

So, its up to the storage unit, set up the wire shelving and start moving a few things. And after that its back into the spreadsheets and the internet to make lists of things to purchase, tools to investigate, plans to read, etc. I’ve already ordered several ‘how to’ and DIY books from Amazon on a couple subjects. I will, though, be holding off on some of the more expensive items until I’m dead certain this deal is done. Posting might be a little sporadic here and there as I’m spending a good chunk of time realigning myinvestments in order to accommodate this sudden outflow of cash, as well as doing all this research. But…it’ll be an interesting (and hopefully enjoyable) adventure that will give me plenty to blog about.

So…thats the plan for this weekend.

Waiting

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I did, in fact, wind up leasing a storage unit today. I need a place to store things like water barrels, wheelbarrows, coils of wire and piping, etc, until I’m ready to move them to the Beta Site. Since that’s not likely to be until spring is well under way, and I already have too much stuff cluttering my house, a storage unit makes sense. And, before anyone gets their knickers in too much of a twist, I have no intention of parking anything terribly valuable there. No guns, no ammo, etc. However, being the cautious type, a game camera or two with cellphone messaging will probably get set up in there.

Waiting for the property owners to come back with their approval of the buy/sell and then I suppose its just a matter of signing the papers and handing over more money than I’ve ever spent on any one thing in my life. (So far.)

In the meantime the ranks of spreadsheets and bookmarked links are growing as I try to force-feed my brain all the things I have to take into consideration for this new undertaking. Like I said, the land purchase will probably be the cheapest part of this whole endeavour.

I was really, really hoping this would close before the end of hunting season so I could actually go out and hunt the property but it doesn’t look like thats in the cards. But next season…oh yes.

Nope, not this one……..

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You’re not stupid, so Im pretty sure youve figured that your buddy Zero found himself a property that caught his interest. Indeed I did. It caught my interest so much, in fact, that I drove out there today to look at. Glad I did because, in case you didnt know, what you see in a Google Earth satellite pic and a real estate website gallery may not always jibe with reality. In the words of the War Department “There is no substitute for boots on the ground.”

The property in question was two 20-acre lots that butted up against a couple thousand acres of private land that was in a conservation easement. Nearest power was a long ways away. The property had two storage conexes already on it. My biggest two concerns were the terrain and the roads. I don’t mind driving a dirt road but if the road was a winding, torturous affair that precluded things like a well-drilling rig and the like….well, thats gonna be a problem.

I knew it might be a challenging drive so I packed for it…shovel, hilift, straps, chains, extra fuel, extra water, radios, flares, smoke, first aid, rations, etc. Because in Montana you just don’t know.

We’d made it about 3/4 of the way to the property (amazingly staying on course, which was an incredible accomplishment all on its own) before I had decided in my head that this was going to be a ‘hard pass’ just on the strength of the truly horrific road. There was one stretch that was such a steep downhill run that I seriously doubted my ability to climb it on the return. In rain or thaw it would have been a Slip-N-Slide. How a couple conexes made it to this property is utterly beyond me.

Once there it only took a few minutes to see that this was not gonna be the new Beta Site. Altitude was a bit up there at 6000′. Terrain was all distinctly stingy with the flat spaces. And, more importantly, there were more houses up there than my careful Google Earth reconnoitering had shown. Combine that with the Highway To Hell and I couldn’t salvage the rest of my Saturday fast enough. SO, since I am definitely not taking it…here’s a link to it.

I have almost always regretted spending money more often than I have regretted not spending it. I am certain that this will be a case where I won’t regret not spending money.

But, for the last week, while waiting to get a chance to go look at this piece, my mind had to go and start addressing concerns that I really hadn’t given too much thought to. Things like maintaining privacy in the purchase, fuel logistics, septic logistics, water logistics, fuel selection, structure type, internet access, neighbor politics, vehicle considerations,  etc, etc, etc. Some of these issues I’ll be bringing up in the blog later to get the opinion of the hivemind.