5 posts shown.
redfox57 said:My wife and I are both working, and we just looked at a mortgage for a place around $115,000.
Monthly payment is $800.
Total you hand back to the bank? About $240,000.
Term: 25 years.
I look at my buddies and they're all drowning in debt without a clue, then I sit down and run the actual numbers.
$115,000: 25/12 = $383.33 per month.
Basically, if I just rented an apartment for $400 a month for 25 years, I’d still have money left over after paying interest.
What's the point of chasing these loans when the place isn't even truly yours until it's paid off anyway?
Just rent, stash the extra cash, and hope interest rates and wages don't stay this garbage forever.
Honestly, I don't even know if I'll have a job in two months, let alone twenty-five years from now, so why bother with a mortgage?
Drew Mitchell76 said:I’ve got about 50 walnut trees planted on my property, along with a few hazelnut bushes that mostly just serve our own kitchen needs.
The walnuts went into the ground back in '95, and honestly, I’m pretty happy with how they’ve turned out. They aren't some fancy, specific cultivar—just a solid, homegrown variety I picked up from a local nursery—but they produce these large, pale nuts. Back then, you didn't have nearly as many options to choose from as you do today. We stay on top of them, though—liming, weeding, and fertilizing regularly—plus we keep the grass mowed around the trees all summer long with the mower. Because of that extra care, they've grown surprisingly fast for their age, especially since walnuts can be such slow starters. Right now, the yield isn't massive—maybe around 50 pounds once you shell them—but we’re hopeful those numbers will climb in a few years.
It’s a bummer... I really wanted to post two photos, but I can't get them to upload because the allowed file size
is absolutely ridiculous; whenever I try to shrink the images down, they become completely invisible...
I was hoping to ask some of the fellow members here—since I see quite a few of you have committed to growing walnuts—how you deal with the leaf situation. It’s becoming a real headache for us. Every autumn, we gather up all the leaves; usually, we just haul them over to my uncle’s farm to be plowed under, or we toss them into the compost pile. But as the volume keeps increasing, hauling them to my uncle’s field and managing the compost is becoming a massive chore. I’d love to hear how the rest of you handle this mess...