I can feel a little Charlie Brown about the end of the year. Oh bother, another one down. In full disclosure – I wrote the text for this cartoon strip, but it’s all Charles Schultz – with all his brilliant insight into the frailty of the human condition. Must we….really…do an accounting? Yes indeed we must.
This decade I sold my very first house. I bought it in the previous decade, but didn’t sell it until 2013, after three extensive renovations, and out of the wreckage of the worst financial crisis in any living person’s memory. It was hard and gritty, nail biting (if I bit my nails, which I don’t), and many a night’s sleep was lost – well over considering the possible loss of my job, my very first house, and a place to store my beloved shoes. Well, you can’t imagine the stress I was under – or at least I hope you can’t.
The decade followed along with the purchase of four more properties and the sale of three others. I experienced roof leaks, ground water surges, heat that didn’t come close to heating, a door that knocked me on the ass every time I entered or departed, leaving me to believe it wasn’t all that happy that I had taken up residence. Sometimes a building issues its objections louder than its residents, though mostly it’s a close contest. No one loves it when you begin construction. They only want it to end – resulting in the increased value of their own – no personal equity having been contributed to the cause.
I made bet after bet after bet, and traveled with my winnings, berating myself when I lost, and hung my head when others said I should have known. If I am leaving this decade with anything – it’s this thing…the amount we don’t know is enormous, the amount we CANNOT know – incredible. I’m in it for the long game, each property a piece in the overall portfolio. Some will be winners, some will be losers. Some of the winners will be due to my skill and experience while others will be pure luck. Some of the losers, I’ll have done absolutely everything right, with the information available to me, and they still won’t net a win. That too will be luck.
I’m sticking to the plan. I’m going to take the wins and the losses, analyze them with a detached clinical scrutiny, and strive to do better in the next decade.
Happy New Year’s Eve.