Weekend Assignment: Best Money Ever Spent

From John's By The Way assignment this week:

"What's the best money you've ever spent? Whether it's something you love, something you use all the time or something that doesn't owe you a nickel, what is it?"

"Extra Credit: Aside from food, what's the next purchase you plan to make?"

Best money I ever spent, or we ever spent, was when we bought a parcel of land in this subdivision and built a home on it back in 1981.

We’d been married about three years when our son was born, and about two years later, my husband got the urge to buy some land and build us a home. He began the process of subcontracting, got the land cleared in March, the foundation was laid, well drilled, septic system installed, and the house was built. By November we had moved in and celebrated our child’s third birthday. We have lived in this house ever since. It truly has been a home for us. Steven does not remember living anywhere else. This is contrary to the lives my husband and I lived as children, both having done extensive moving.

Even after twenty-five years, I still love to look at our home from the outside, and love to come back to it at the end of every day.

The journey began after we were married in 1975, when we bought a used mobile home for $3000 and lived there for over two years while we saved every penny we could make, deferring vacations and gifts and any luxuries. We sold the mobile home for what we paid for it, which was like living rent-free for two years, and put the money down on five acres of land with two little square two-bedroom houses and lived in one while we rented out the other for a couple of years. Even after our baby was born, we scrimped and saved. We sold the five acres and two old houses for an even greater profit and put all the money into the land and the building of our new home, where we have lived ever since.

The house is in a friendly, growing, community, and though our neighbors seem close in proximity, there are so many trees out here that we feel like we are living in the forest sometimes. We love the yard, the woods, the sounds, the smells here.

Sometimes we don’t go anywhere for vacation because we don’t want to get away from home. In fact, we stopped going camping after we moved here. One summer, while hiking in the Carolina mountains, we realized the trees and shrubs and plants we saw all around us were the same ones growing in our yard. The deer and squirrel, the birds were the same. We live a few hundred yards from a major river. We thought, why do we need to pack up all the camping gear to get away for a week, when what we get away to is just like where we live? Couldn’t we just stay home? Not only would we save lots of bucks, which we could spend on other things we like, but we wouldn’t have to drive for four hours to get there. And we’d still have all the conveniences like bathrooms, showers, TV, our own bed, and a kitchen. No packing and unpacking. I hate that part anyway. We don’t need a break from our home…. we need a break from work, so why couldn’t we take our vacation at home?

Yes, I’d say the money we put into this home was the best money ever spent.

Extra Credit: Next purchase we plan to make, aside from food: since we are in our fifties, the likelihood that we need to buy anything more seems very small. Actually, we'd like to downsize. We may have to consider our needs in the future,and sell this house and home to buy something closer to town, something smaller, more practical, with no yard maintenance.

We'd certainly miss this place, and all the memories we have stored up here, but reality will dictate where and what we will do over the next ten to twenty years. That, and our health!