Advice...if it helps...
About 7 (2001) years ago a building I owned caught fire. The insurance company fought the claim (we eventually won) even though there was no cause to do so. One month later (February) it was hit by an
earthquake . That caused about 10K in damage that most people (myself included) are not insured for.
Then, to top it off...the dot com implosion was full swing and I lost my job as a network engineer trainer. Fire, earthquake...and loss of job.
It was the TOUGHEST time I have ever been through. We managed to make it through that..but we learned a lot from it. It was kind of our own personal version of the great depression, and thankfully I was 31, still fairly young.
Mainly we downsized..downsized...downsized. The house, the car, everything.
Absolute true story here... we lived in an area called Fieldstons Farms at the time in Franklin, TN. When we had first bought our home there we were astounded at the homes we were passing on. We saw HUGE homes for 750K for example, that we about choked over the prices. No way in heck we could justify that kind of money. We asked our banker how the **** people could afford them and she responded that many of them were dual working couples, they literally had no furniture, or little, and if either one of them lost their jobs they would likely lose the home. We found further evidence of that when we were forced to downsize...When we decided to move to a very small town called Lewisburg, one of the wives on my sons baseball team confided in my wife at how jealous she was of our new mortgage (85K), and what the house payment was. She was married to a doctor, and they had a very nice home. But EVERYTHING they had was on credit...it was so bad she was charging her groceries on the credit card (I kid you not!) because they could not keep up with his past student loans, etc. but they wanted, like MANY people in that area, to look and keep up with the Jones'...
My last vehicle I had was an Toyota Echo. It had 105K miles on it before it was totaled by a rear end collision. My replacement was a Toyota Yaris with the insurance money. One of the least expensive, most fuel efficient cars on the market. When the gas crunch hit..yes it was still expensive for fuel...but at 34 to 36 MPG, I didn't feel it much at all.
And yes, being a little brash, I didn't feel to sorry for those driving the hummers and SUVs. But..they had to experience the same pain likely before they would change..so not saying I knew better, just that I already had experienced the pain ;-)
At my last job, I was heckled constantly about the echo. I am in sales, and the company I worked for was based out of California. I love California...but there certainly is that "air" about some Californians when it comes to money and displaying it. My counterparts all drove BMWs, Mercedes, or what have you. They couldn't understand why I wasn't in a shiny new car. I just want to get from point a, to point b, safely. I haven't talked to them in a year or so..but my guess is they are wishing they didn't have a big car and house payment about right now as software sales are way off, and along with that, commission checks. I really...really like my echo (well now Yaris).
We live in a fairly modest home now. The bank claims I can afford a home triple the value, but I don't want my money going into a mortgage. In my case, I usually work in a cube (now work at home), travel due to my job so sit in small seats for hours, get to a tiny hotel, and then come home for the weekend to really spend most of my time trying to get away from the home, or sleeping.. not sure why I would need a 3500 sq foot home to do that. In fact...as soon as my children are gone.. we are certainly downsizing again to a 2 bedroom or smaller. I know this isn't for everyone, but it works quite well for us. In fact, for the last two years prior to moving back to Florida, we lived in a one bedroom home on the same property where I have the building I mentioned, while we were remodeling the buildings we own.
My kids didn't complain...heck maybe some of you remember the funnest times as kids, at least for me, was camping with my dad.. it was never thinking about the home we lived in (ours were pretty basic).
There was a study that in the 1950s it was the "happiest" time in American history. The average home was something like 950 sq. at that time (going from memory, but I believe that is correct(. Now people have 950 sq foot garages and they are still not happy.
Guess I am rambling some...but... as far as the advice... build the airplane. Provided you have the money to do it. If you don't..don't overextend yourself. Buy as you go..use ebay of this forum to find parts on the cheap. But if you cannot...then IGNORE the advice of all these people saying we need to buy ourselves out of this crunch. What we need to do is live within our means...then we can afford to buy what we truly need.. less stress..more fulfilling.
