Mrs. Bug-out renter is supposed to be moving sometime mid-September. She knows she can't stay at the bug-out place by herself. Five minutes after Mr. Bug-out renter left she started talking about finding a new Mr. Bug-out renter. Stop it! Stand on your own two feet for a while before you choose another wrong "perfect" match.
She finally realized that she can't afford to live in a huge 2 bedroom apartment in the most expensive town around here like she been hoping. She will probably end up with a nice studio in a pretty good area. This will leave the bug-out place empty...but not for long. Son has decided that his family should move in. Why would they do this? Sure the rent will be cheaper than in the apartment they are renting in a good area of town, in fact, it will be about $500 a month cheaper. That sounds good until you add the commute into it.
Daughter-in-law got a just above minimum wage part time job. Son is still a bum, or as he puts it, "a stay at home dad"...except one kid is in school, the other is in preschool, and all he does is play video games. Not my idea of what a stay at home parent does. How about cooking, cleaning, helping with homework, and when you are not too exhausted from doing your chores all day, perhaps then you can sit down to 10 minutes of video games before you pass out from exhaustion. But I digress...
I explained that their car won't make the three or four times per week drive into town. It's an hour each way. No problem, they will go get a loan with their lousy credit and buy another car. Do you know what that will cost in gas? And you will be out in the middle of nowhere. Do you really know what that is like? Or does it not really matter because you can play video games anywhere?
Oh no, I've been assured that son will be spending all of his time working on the place. He will rebuild the bathrooms, do yard work, put in a nice garden, chop fire wood, the list goes on and on and on.
In the mean while, Mrs. Bug-out renter tells me that she doesn't want anyone else living in "her" house. She will pay the rent in both places. Really, what bank did she rob?
Now I don't think son would make the decision to move to the bug-out place if it was him doing the commute into the city, but since it's his wife, he doesn't mind the commute. He wasn't brought up that way so I'm not sure what screw loosened in his brain.
Just wait until the rains start. Are they willing to heat the house with wood? Are they going to store some water in case the pipes freeze for a couple of hours so there's no water? Are they willing to do any form of work at all? I doubt it. I give them two months, three tops. Sure I'll make some money from their rent. I wonder if I will come out ahead or behind...depends on what projects he wants to start and not finish. The good thing is he can't really hurt anything and whatever projects he starts will need to be done, it's just that it will change my time table a bit. That's OK.
After they move out I will do a lot more work on the bug-out place to really prepare it. If they do stay and he really does work on the place, all the better. I just won't be holding my breath.
Renting to family and friends never works out in my experience. All the tenants I had in my place back in NH all said they wanted to build this or that, have a big garden, do this or that, etc.
ReplyDeleteAlways ended up behind, and nothing ever got done.
But you already know that. Maybe it will work out amazing. Just this once!
You make a great point about commuting. We look at the house in the country as a great place to live and all of the things we can do there, but forget the cost of the commute in gas and time. My wife talks about growing up in the country and her parents looking forward to the day when the older children got their driver's license and the parents no longer being the taxi service.
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