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How are you financially?

• PaulHoule 2y ago
  Could be better, could be worse. I am living in rural upstate NY close to a college town and bought a 70 acre farm for a fraction of what a small ranch house costs in the Bay Area. My wife teaches people to ride horses, her business is probably the most profitable horse operation I know of because (1) it was bootstrapped up from 2 horses to 8 and (2) we never bought large amounts of heavy equipment; the average horse barn has a big-ass truck and a horse trailer, we can pay somebody to haul a horse somewhere for a fraction of the monthly payment on a big-ass truck. We have two houses on the lot and get usually get rental income from two units in the second house (though we are renovating it now and I'm using it to gentle a feral cat right now) I've had some terrible years where I ran up $20k of AWS bills and had no income, I did run up a balance on my HELOC which I later paid off. The good years paid for the bad years, I consistently put money into retirement funds except for the absolutely worst years. I always had health insurance except for a summer that I worked at a web dev shop that didn't offer it.
  • atlasy1 2y ago
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  • freedomben 2y ago
    Interesting, thank you for sharing! I have about 9 acres and have been seriously considering getting horses, but the big-ass truck and trailer has been a point of hesitation for me. I did not know you could pay somebody to haul them somewhere when needed!
    • PaulHoule 2y ago
      If you go this route you should make friends with local farmers who have the equipment and can help you out with little random things. If you want to go to shows or visit distant trailheads you need the trailer but we have an area of trails on our farm that I’d compare to Het Vondelpark in Amsterdam and can ride out on the road to some nice dirt roads.