Two plans

My problem is that I have two plans (possibly three).  They cannot occur at the same time in the same universe.  I can't decide between the two of them, and spend most of my days favouring one or the other, but never fully settling on either of them.


Plan Number 1:  Buy an investment property on the Sunshine Coast

I would particularly like a townhouse or something, but with my budget I'll settle for a unit.  The idea is to rent it out while I'm not living/working in the area, and use the rent to help pay off the mortgage while I use the fact that it's an investment property to get any repairs and maintenance as a tax write-off.

Eventually, I'd be looking to get a job in the area and move down into the place I already have while I think about whether or not I want to trade up for a real house or something.

Good plan, eh?


Plan Number 2:  Buy a house in Brownsville and fix it up

With my budget, I'd have to buy a fixer-upper, but still - you can get a whole house in the 'Ville for less than it would cost to buy a unit on the Sunshine Coast.

I'd make it presentable, then rent out the rooms to international students (they're usually only here for 6 months to a year, so if we don't get along all that well I don't have to wait long before they leave).  The rent from the students would to towards paying off the mortgage and I'll probably end up paying that off much more quickly than I would a more expensive unit down south.

Good plan, eh?


The trouble with Plan Number 1

It's, like, totally far away.  I wouldn't be able to keep as good an eye on the place as I would if I actually lived there, and I'd have to ask my family in the region if they could take care of it for me, which is a bit burdensome for them.

Plus, I wouldn't be able to live it it for some time.  It would technically be my "first home", so I'd never qualify for any of the "first home buyers" grants or things in the future, but you don't qualify for them anyway if you don't live in the place - they don't count for investment properties.

I'd be forever putting myself out of contention for any "first home" related stuff, and I wouldn't even get the joy of living in my first home.

So, not the best plan.


The trouble with Plan Number 2

While it would be really nice to stop living with my family for a while (I never intended to stay so long when I came back from Tasmania), it does seem a bit silly to have the three of us each living on our own.

At the moment, I'm the "back up" for my mother and uncle.  If either of them need someone to take care of things while they're away or otherwise occupied, I'm there to do it.  If I get my own place, that will just make multiple houses to worry about during holidays and such.

Plus, I'd be pouring money into a fixer-upper that I could be saving up towards a bigger deposit on a better property later.

And I want to move down south eventually, anyway.  Staying in the 'Ville isn't my long-term plan, and I want to shift everyone down to the South-East Corner so they can be closer to the rest of their brothers and sisters.

So, not the best plan.


So, what's Plan Number 3?

To wait a bit, save up some more money for a deposit and see what everything looks like a year from now.


The trouble with Plan Number 3

"Waiting" has a strange habit of turning into "stagnating".  It's really easy to slide into "no plan at all".

Owning stuff

So, my latest hair-brained idea is to buy an investment property in Caloundra.

Actually, this is just the latest instalment of a hair-brained idea that keeps popping up in various guises and then disappearing again under a mountain of "Oh, maaaaan - even thinking about this seriously is too much effort."

I am now in my mid-30s, and I don't own anything.

Well, I own a car.  Technically, a van.  Theoretically, I could put a bed and some curtains in that van and call it my "home", and then I would own my own home.  This does not seem like something people who actually have jobs should do.

I live with family, or I house sit.  I have rented and probably will again.  I just don't own my own place - I never have - and every now and then a little voice tells me I should.

For years now I have toyed with the idea of buying a unit or a house or something.  I have even gone so far as to actually inspect a couple of units in the past.  The problem is that I have deep philosophical issues with the current property ownership environment.

Housing prices are based not on what you can conceivably afford by saving up your money for, say, five years.  They are calculated on what you can borrow.  No one is going to ask for what you can reasonably afford if they know that they can ask for an extra $100,000 or $400,000 - and you'll just borrow that from a bank because that's what people do nowadays.

Have you ever read a property lift-out from a news paper?  Perfectly ordinary houses are now being sold for over a million dollars - not because the house is worth that much, but just because people have asked for that, and people have been willing to borrow the money necessary to pay it, and now there's a precedent.  It's crazy stuff, man.

Even if you save aggressively and aimed modestly, the whole housing loans things will forever push the prices just a few hundred thousand dollars beyond what you could save for.  There's no option other than taking out a loan - and then you don't really own a house so much as a bank owns you.

I can't possibly save up enough money to buy a place without going into debt.  I don't want to owe anyone more than I can pay back in a couple of years.

This basically puts me out of the housing market.

But, on the other hand, I've played enough Monopoly in my time to know that owning property is a good and useful thing.  Not as useful as owning the waterworks, the electrical company and all of the train stations - but that's not as easy to arrange in the non-Monopoly environment.

Part of the trouble is I currently live in the same town as two other family members, and it just seems weird to buy my own place when that means there will be exactly three of us, and we will each be living in three separate abodes paying three separate lots of rates.  It's actually practical and sensible for me to live with my family and split the "running costs" and house-work duties.  It's what used to be considered "normal" before our Western concept of a nuclear family decided splitting the atoms was the way to go.

So, owning my own place here just seems silly (as well as expensive and debt magnetic).

But, the other day I read an article about people who rent the house/unit/whatever where they live, but still own investment properties.  Apparently, renting your house out to someone else while you rent yourself makes things like property maintenance a tax-deductible thingy-whatnot.  And there's all that negative gearing stuff that people talk about as if those were words describing real things.

And it occurs to me that, while I'm paying board rather than rent, I'm in a pretty good position to take advantage of this.  It could be that buying my own home makes more sense if I'm not living in it.

Since my grand plan is to try to shift the family down Caloundra/Buderim way in the future, it makes sense to try to buy something in that area so I've got property at Caloundra prices to sell when the time comes to buy a house in that area...

So, yeah.  I'm currently toying with the idea of buying an investment property in Caloundra, even though I don't live in Caloundra and I still won't own my own home.

Although, there is always the van...

Things to keep you awake at night

You know, it's no wonder I have difficulty getting to sleep most nights.  I have so many deeply important things to think about and worry over.

Why, take last night, for example.  I was lying in bed for a good hour, wondering how one could convince Australian primary schools to teach Esperanto in years 4, 5 and 6 (I now have a plan - but I'm not sure why), and then I spent some time thinking about the perfect vampire-proof bunker.

These things are important, and it's a good idea to think about them ahead of time.  You don't want to be stuck in a vampire or zombie infested dystopian town without a good plan for how to hunker down and survive the inevitable attacking hoards.

Granted, the odds that I'll actually find myself as the protagonist of an I Am Legend type situation are slim, but you can never be too careful.

Obviously, you want to avoid any of the horror movie cliches that would be involved in using a traditional bunker or storm cellar.  Eventually, if you have a bolt-hole that's naturally dark, you will come home at the wrong time to find something lurking in the dark.  Vampires like dark places, and therefore have the natural advantage.

No, you want it to be full of natural light - so, above ground, away from trees and things that can cast shadows, and plenty of windows.  At the same time, you don't want the windows to be the weak point of the design.  Strong (thick steel) walls and roof with a lot of thin windows and skylights consisting of thick glass bricks should do the trick.  It probably wouldn't hurt to have a couple of spots where you could pull back a small section of steel wall and use it as a gun sight for a rifle or a flame thrower.  It just needs to be too small to fit a hand through.

There would need to be plenty of ventilation that could be quickly sealed off - both electronically and by hand.  Redundant methods of everything.  That's always the weakest point in any plan - relying on only one way to do anything.  If the ventilation can only be closed electronically, and the vampires think of trying something when the generator is off-line...

It's probably an idea if you don't rely too much on a generator, anyway.  There's got to be a way you can keep a stock of batteries charged, and have enough firewood and tinder to keep things lit even without power.  Using fire would create smoke, though, which could blacken the windows.  Better make sure everything is easy to clean.

Still on the concept of ventilation, it would probably help to have some stores of oxygen in the bunker - as long as you understood that they would, of course, eventually explode, and made sure they were positioned so that any explosion would cause more harm to the vampires than to you.

I think a few bolt-holes within the bolt-holes wouldn't be bad for business, either.  A number of holes in the ground with skylights (and mirrors to amplify whatever natural light can get in) - each equipped with water, sugar and battery-powered sunlamps.  If the vampires manage to get into the bunker you can jump down the nearest hole and seal the trap-door.  Then, it would be handy if you had a number of methods for torching everything above ground.  Mind you, if you have designed the bunker well enough in terms of picking up natural light, you really only have to wait until morning (as long as you are definitely fighting vampires, rather than zombies)...

Still, redundancies are always the way to go.

So, it would be useful if you had more than one door into the bunker (and perhaps a tunnel) as long as you understood that each door (and definitely the tunnel) could be the weak point that dooms you to vampire lunch, and prepared accordingly with redundant methods of killing anything that gets through any entrance (understanding, of course, that they could be used against you - or result in a terribly unfortunate accident).

It would also be handy if you had a way to tell if anyone was already in the bunker before you opened any of the doors.  A lack of interior walls would be good, but at the same time it might not be a bad idea to have a series of heavy-duty tables that could be overturned to make "emergency walls" when necessary for shooting things from behind a low wall.

The point is to always assume everything will fail, and have a number of alternatives available.

Then your biggest concern will always be making sure you get back before dark...