[Ludi]

Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:04 pm

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'H')i, I've been reading this messageboard for a few days, mostly concentrating on the Planning for the Future forum.

With so much to do, I'm having trouble prioritizing. For one thing, I'm unclear about how desperate the situation is, how many years I have to prepare.

I'm trying to assess my financial situation and decide what to do on that front. Should I pay off the mortgage? Or invest that money in alternative technology? Or buy gold (yikes, expensive!)?

[Ludi]

I STILL have trouble prioritizing...

[strider3700]

ahh the good old days... err I seem to have been correct in most of my concerns
http://www.peakoil.com/post92868.html#92868
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')ost subject: Upgrade housing or pay down the mortgage?
I've known about peak oil for a little over 2 years now and have been doing my best to prepair for it. Unfortunately I was just starting out at that point. I was debt free but had nothing of value. When you have nothing you need to work so I decided to stay in my hometown since I knew it and I eventually found a good job here.

This made me decide to buy a house, but I chose one with peak oil in mind. A red hot realestate market didn't really help things but I decided that I would buy the smallest place that I figured I could fit in, on as much land as I could afford easily. So in the end I have a converted mobile with about 900 sqft of living space on just shy of 1/2 acre 16 km from work. It backs onto corporate owned untamed wilderness that goes for about 30 miles so I have room to grow if need be Wink. It's water comes from a spring, it's on septic and although close to the highway is relatively remote from town so I can do a lot without anyone caring. It's far from hidden though.

This little purchase however leaves me with about a mortgage of about $114,000 and payments of about $800/month. Now I make conciderably more then this and spend very little of it so I'm wondering what to do with the extra. I legally can't pay off the place for 4.5 more years. I financially can't realistically pay it off for 7-10 more years. I strongly believe that things will be screwed before I get my 10 years to pay it off. I also have my doubts that my sizable slushfund sitting in the bank will be worth anything once things start to get bad.

So I'm left wondering should I take all my extra money and put it towards prepairing the house? I'm already putting some towards adding wood heat and a second 2500 gallon water tank(spring runs dry in late summer) but beyond that I'm not sure. I could add solar panels to give me some electricity although we're mostly hydropower around here so I expect the grid to stay up a fair amount of time. I could also make the place bigger, A real shop would be nice to store my tools/extra supplies/food. a nice chunk of change sunk into the front yard would give me a lot more garden space with some good soil instead of blackberries on clay.

The other option is pay down the mortgage as fast as possible. This is the action I would take if I wasn't worried about the economy drying up and cars becoming permanent yard fixtures. I hate debt as I've been burned by payements in tight times before. I just can't pay this one fast enough.

And I suppose my third option is sit on the extra cash and pray that interest rates outrun inflation and I don't have colorfull toilet paper in the end. I'm not at all happy with this option, I'd much rather convert it into supplies/planning or precious metals of some form at the least.

when things do get bad the logging trucks will probably stop rolling, which means that scalers won't be grading the logs, which means they won't really need software to make it easier to do, which means my job will dry up so I can't rely on that. Where is that winning lottery ticket when I really need it?

Any advice on what to do with cash when I still have it?

[DomusAlbion]

It was December of 2004. I was in my basement office, cooling off after a hard day of torturing computers with my code.

It happened between PenultimateManStanding and myself.

It was good for me, was it good for you PMS?

I had a cigarette after.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', ' ')
It happened between PenultimateManStanding and myself.

It was good for me, was it good for you PMS?

I had a cigarette after.

[DomusAlbion]

PMS wrote: "you are saying that my posts are erotic"

Well, not exactly. I was inspired by the title of the thread "Your Very First ..." It sounded rather suggestive of a different kind of reminiscence, so I just went with it.