I’ve basically learned the hard way over the course of my life that, if you’re going to be anything like independent and live anything like an interesting life, you’re going to crash up against other people’s disappointment.
Mainly: Family.
My wife Britney and I recently sold my house (we’re still in escrow so not “sold” quite yet) and “bought” another house on contingency. (An investment property.) The point is to get some money in our savings and pull monthly passive income from the new rental. Britney’s family is complex. Her step-dad is a real estate agent here in the small agricultural town we live in. Originally we’d planned to use him as our agent back when we figured we’d look locally. That is, until we realized there was almost no inventory for exactly what we wanted; multi-units bringing in max income and with low property taxes.
In the end my good friend—we’ve known each other since sophomore year of high school, in 2000—who’s a real estate agent in Portland, Oregon, helped us find the perfect place. We did all the research. My friend was very thorough. All the inspections were done, contingencies looked at, the foundation and roof checked, etc. The neighborhood was safe and up-n-coming, and the income would be perfect. Plus low property taxes.
All of this is being done so that, finally, come January, we can at last move to Spain. This has been our goal for over a year now, though admittedly it felt very “theoretical” until a couple of months ago. Now it feels very real.
I’d asked my wife to tell her step-dad about the new Portland investment property. She didn’t, though, and I didn’t either and we got busy and the days passed and it just never happened. Finally, a few days ago, we went over to her mom and step-dad’s and broke the news. They didn’t take it very well. They didn’t understand why we hadn’t looked harder in Lompoc, why we hadn’t bought something cheaper, why we hadn’t used her step-dad as our agent, why we hadn’t said anything. Some of this was understandable. But there really, actually hadn’t been any inventory. We’d talked to her step dad earlier on and he hadn’t said much or helped. So we’d moved on.
They seemed to berate us, throwing accusations and questions at us left and right. Her step-dad, when his ego is bright red and shiny, get’s red-faced and becomes absurdly contrarian. *(Takes one to know one.) It’s actually quite humorous on one level. He says the opposite of everything we say, regardless of factuality. He contradicts himself almost immediately, almost in the same sentence.
We answered all his questions and then at one point he said, “What’s the hurry? Why did you buy a house on contingency so fast?”
We responded that we’re doing all this to move to Spain (which we’ve been telling her mom and him for the past year). Angry, he spat out, What’s in SPAIN???
This made me crawl inside myself and chuckle, while simultaneously wanting to punch a wall and laugh.
What’s in Spain? Madrid, a cosmopolis of 3.2 million people filled with culture, art, museums, etc?
Everything is there.
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