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We quit our jobs to build a cabin

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Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#301

Post by sushshshsh »

sethammons wrote: post #294
ChrisLomont wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I really hate this notion of "just pay someone to do it correctly", because this proposition also has a ton of risk and expense associated with it as well. For almost any task you'd consider hiring a professional, there is less risk and less cost, which is why professional exist. They are the best option for a wide range of cost/risk tradeoffs. >Not every contractor who takes a job is Bob the Builder But the maj…

I'm on the fence. With youtube, you can find so many things tricks and suggestions, things that professionals don't even know. With my current home, I've brought in contractors half a dozen times. Half of those were terrible, terrible experiences. The other half saved me vast amounts of time. However, even with the solid contractors, for them it is a balance of time and money leading to some cut corners that, as the…

Totally agree with this, I replied similarly to the same OP. If a job is extremely complex and dangerous, but I have all the time in the world, I will find an extremely time-inefficient but safe way of doing it.

Contractors usually will cut a corner to save money and time, for example they may not tighten everything back up as well as it should be when operating on a furnace, only for you to encounter the smoke/leak next year when the machine vibration finally kicks those bolts loose.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#302

Post by krn »

ghaff wrote: post #263
evandev wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in Vermont, a lot of the rural area is conservative. Consider that ~1/3 of the population lives in the Burlington Metro area, add in a bunch of other small college towns that are more liberal and you can see why Vermont votes more liberal. Indeed the rural parts are probably more liberal than other parts of the country, but you'll still see quite a few trump signs and places the vote strictly Republican/More Con…

Although only one county in the state, Essex, went for Trump--which is in the extreme northeast of the state and, unsurprisingly, is the poorest county in the state.

I guess the basic algorithm for finding the most rural progressive places in the US would then require selecting the most rural liberal counties[1] that are also in liberal-led states.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/20...

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#303

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

kossTKR wrote: post #192
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well my youtube recommendations have certainly gone that way too, but I think it is a reflection of my growing hatred for IT as an industry and my desire to leave it behind forever.

I feel the same way. If i am going to continue in this business it's going to be "very freelance", "very on my own terms" whatever that means. I am in my thirties, and a career shift seems more and more inevitable. I seem to have swallowed several blackpills about various industrial complexes and see no bright future of the internet/tech in general, rather the opposite. What's your age and what is you plan? I am acti…

I'm 36, and I have less of a plan than a daydream of financial suicide at this point. I just want to finish fixing up my house, sell it, and live in a van or something with my dog, some bikes, and maybe some low power computing kit for rainy days (maybe build that desktop operating environment that doesn't suck that I've dreamed of building for years now).

I have no plan for making money, and I doubt I have enough stored wealth to last more than a decade. Health care in the US being what it is, probably not even that long. These are so far the only reasons I haven't already done it.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#304

Post by boring_twenties »

stef25 wrote: post #194
djsumdog wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took two long journeys in my life, one for 11 months and another for 5: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/minimalism/ https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/a-tale-of-t... I lived out of two bags the first time and a car the second. I learned a lot about myself and the world. I had a good amount saved up, but I've met people who've done similar trips and haven't. I got the idea from a guy I…

Did that for a while in my early 20s. Spent a few months in Asia with just a 35L backpack of clothes on my back and the odd book. This was before wifi and smartphones. Happiest time of my life.

I did something similar after wifi and smartphones, and I don't think either made it any worse.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#305

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

dkn775 wrote: post #224
kossTKR wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. If i am going to continue in this business it's going to be "very freelance", "very on my own terms" whatever that means. I am in my thirties, and a career shift seems more and more inevitable. I seem to have swallowed several blackpills about various industrial complexes and see no bright future of the internet/tech in general, rather the opposite. What's your age and what is you plan? I am acti…

Go into government and use your expertise to ensure vendors aren’t misleading the government about capabilities, that contracts have the right technical provisions to benefit the people, orgs aren’t employing nefarious technologies, ensuring they are using good methodology to track data, etc. IMO just being a person who can bring up the concerns makes a huge difference and eventually you’ll be able to move into a mor…

I've worked in public sector, they don't care. The same people who make decisions based on golf-course handshakes and frat membership in private sector also do it in public sector, only there's extra political pressures to deal with too.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#306

Post by oblio »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #81
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> find a youtube subscription that satisfies the urge to tinker on a particular topic. I think my life got measurably better when I pivoted from "I want to do this myself" towards "It's just as satisfying to watch someone else do this". Downhill extreme mountain biking is really cool. And fun to watch. And expensive. And requires much more physical fitness than I've got. And dangerous (esp. given my physical fitness…

I think my life got measurably better when I pivoted from "I want to do this myself" towards "It's just as satisfying to watch someone else do this". So true! Works for a lot of things. It's why I stopped playing dota.

You just opened Dota Players Anonymous, it seems :-))

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#307

Post by azernik »

atwebb wrote: post #166
azernik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that would be less bad than trying to start a normal cafe. Part of the business case for food trucks is that the capital expenses are so much lower than buying and configuring a fixed space - the trucks themselves are more or less mass-produced, and servicing/cleaning can be taken care of by an specialist contractor. Now wouldn't be the time to do it, though, most of the coffee business is commuters and offic…

Wouldn't now be a great time? Drive to different neighborhoods kind of like an ice cream man for adults (you could also have ice cream). Many, many planned developments aren't within walking distance of a coffee shop and a few bucks for some normality might fly. I've always thought the idea had legs, you can offer hot cocoa in the winter and setup a mobile fire pit for smores.

The key to such a business surviving is volume - there are lots of fixed costs and very narrow margins, so you need to be getting lots of people per operating hour. Driving around to various residential areas will just never get you nearly as many people as a busy street or an office district will, and the driving time itself will also kill your efficiency. (Generally, lunch and coffee places near offices do well, because office density is a LOT higher than residential density.)

This is part of why food in less-dense areas dominated by big chains - when all your customers need to drive half an hour or more to get to you and food culture isn't driven as much by novelty-seeking, it's hard to get a following before your runway runs out. Big chains are very experienced/cost-efficient, and have the capital to last if things start slow.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#308

Post by boring_twenties »

bluGill wrote: post #285
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My overall point is... let's dispense with the libertarian yeoman self-sufficient fantasy: if you want to save money, live in the place where economies of scale have been achieved... towns. People have been doing it this way since the neolithic. Should you really like nature and having space and big gardens and farming and the like, then be prepared to pay for it.

I find the opposite : towns are more expensive. Towns have libraries, and other nice things that might or might not be worth the cost.

How are those things paid for? Property and sales taxes, neither of which you save by not living in town?

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#309

Post by azernik »

stef25 wrote: post #133
azernik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that would be less bad than trying to start a normal cafe. Part of the business case for food trucks is that the capital expenses are so much lower than buying and configuring a fixed space - the trucks themselves are more or less mass-produced, and servicing/cleaning can be taken care of by an specialist contractor. Now wouldn't be the time to do it, though, most of the coffee business is commuters and offic…

Yeah, it seems like the people in that article didn't even do the most basic napkin calculations. My estimate is: you could start a towed coffee trailer for 10-12K, about 8K of that on the trailer, the rest on some basic equipment and decoration. Rent the espresso machine & grinder for 150 / month (including maintenance & repair) instead of buying for 8K. Food & drinks wholesale: croissants are 0.2, donuts 0.5, fancy…

I would argue that you're underestimating labor costs - your baristas still need to be paid even in between customers, when there's no latte-making to do. At my work, labor costing is something we don't even try to model, because it's much more complicated than food costing.

Food cost at 30-35% of sale price, as it sounds like your latte cost indicates, is pretty much in the sweet spot for food service; it's also nice in that most of the ingredients for coffee keep well enough to minimize food waste. Pastries are more of a challenge to do efficiently.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#310

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

wolco wrote: post #6

They got the property for 3,000 and sold for 115,000 (with cabin) Where can you buy so low for so much land?

Somewhere in my post history is an answer to this question: a couple minutes of googling turned up land in West Texas for around $250/acre.
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