Two years have slipped by. It's the end of August and I have to start thinking about moving out so that my winter tenants can move in. The first couple arrives early December and they were here last year so I have met them before. I love return guests. After them, I only have one tenant for 3 weeks of February because my people who were going to rent for 2 months decided to just buy a home here. So sad for me. Hopefully I will get a few more tenants for January and March. I don't know how long I will keep renting out my house in the winter. It is a lot of work. 

Last December, I decided to quit selling on eBay for the local animal shelter because the items were taking over my house and consuming all of my free time. It was stressful and not fun. I reached my retirement savings goal in January and, although I am not retired yet, I started focusing on my personal to-do list. I joined Weight Watchers in January and lost 25 pounds which was my goal. I took a 9 hour road trip to visit my uncle in Colorado. He built his own strawbale passive-solar home and has a huge garden although he is in his late 80's and doesn't plant as much now. From that trip I decided that I don't want to pursue van-life like I thought I might. Perhaps a casual camping trip now and then. And I still want to visit friends and family, maybe I will just fly there.

I lost 4 of my dogs to age-related diseases last year, heart disease, kidney failure, etc... That was tough. Before I quit volunteering at the shelter I thought about what part I liked the most and that was fostering so I still foster kittens and dogs in the summer when there is the most need. Of course, I ended up keeping one. This one, to be exact.

My property, where my nephew lives, needs some work so I hired someone to pull weeds and paint the mobile home. They only painted half and gave up. Then I hired a group called Primavera Works, who hires people who live in shelters and are looking for work, to install a gutter and water tank for my tiny house. That is scheduled for next month but I went out there last weekend and painted the fascia board. The morning temperature was in the high 90's and I was in a rush but was able to get a quart of white paint on it where the gutter will go. The water tank will go near the steps because it is the flattest place for it. 

Every year when it rains, I check nearby homes for sale, check the price of building a home on the land, and check the price of bringing out a new manufactured home. Every time, I am shocked at the prices. Nearby tract homes starting at $300k, site-built home $400k, lowest priced single-wide manufactured home $110k ($70k home plus $40k for deliver, set-up, A/C). 

My nephew can't afford to buy his own home yet and would rather fix the old mobile home than buy a new manufactured home because he knows I will raise his rent and he wants to save a bigger down-payment for a house. Maybe we can come up with a mutually beneficial arrangement. I was just considering having a well dug and shared with the neighbor. We discussed it before and I said no but since I have reached my retirement goal, maybe I could do it. The quote I got a couple years ago was $70-100k. Yikes. At least that would raise the value of my property. I could also get a $500k construction loan to build a custom home on the one acre piece of property, include the well drilling in that and just have a big mortgage. Then sell the home but keep a share of the well. That seems like a risky investment when I am wanting to retire soon. On the other hand, I am in the best financial position to qualify for a construction loan. It could payoff for me but depends on a lot of variables like the stability of the housing market, the stock market, how long I am able to keep my job and all of the other things that could go wrong. I'm supposed to be simplifying my life.  More analysis is needed.