Do You Feel Like Burying Your Money in the Ground? Buy Land.
There’s a reason why wealthy people like Bill Gates,Ted Turner, and Thomas Peterffy buy land and lots of it.
It’s an asset with increasing value. It has great intrinsic value, too,and beyond that, it’s a limited resource.
I know. I know. Bitcoin and stocks etc… have attracted many, many investors, including those who really can’t afford to lose money. It feels like a big boy’s game, slightly akin to gambling. Yeehaw! Let’s make money. And some do.
I come from a humble background, however. Although I enjoyed a career as a public educator, I never had enough money to lose.
I’ve been very, very conservative about any type of investing.
Land appeared on my radar screen early in my adult life when I bought my first home. I knew from the git-go that I wanted not just a house, but a house that sat on some land. My husband and I ended up buying a rough little four room, unfinished camp sitting on about five acres in Maine.
For the next twenty years we worked on expanding and finishing the house. We did a lot of the work ourselves.
We loved having not only a huge yard but several acres of woods. We lived at the end of a gravel road which turned into a logging trail that ran through three miles of woods beyond our house. Anyone who was driving to the end of the road was most likely coming to see us. Snowmobilers enjoyed the logging trail. Occasionally a dirt biker or two as well.
But mostly, we were privy to an immense amount of privacy.
We sold our house sixteen years ago and most of our personal belongings in order to travel the world for a few years. Then, we resettled close to our granddaughter. We paid cash for what I hope will be our last home. Our first home was almost paid off when we sold it. The money from the house remained untouched until we bought our current house.
We lucked out because we bought our second home not long after the 2008 crash.
Houses were going for cheap and even more so in the region where we resettled. We even had money left over from the sale of our home in Maine after we bought our house.
My idea of security starts with owning my home and cars.
Until I did, I felt vulnerable. No debt has always been my top priority. Until I got rid of any and all debt, I felt like an indentured servant. You know, working to give all my hard earned money to the bankstahs.
I’ve been living debt free for several decades now.
I began to have a hankering for the wilderness again, however. We’d lived off the beaten track in Maine for a long time and I enjoyed it.
So, I started thinking about buying land.
Here’s where my deep insecurities take me whenever the US is going through challenging financial times. And, let’s face it, those times are guaranteed. In fact, recessions seem to take place closer and closer together the older I get. It makes me feel very unsafe even if I have money in the bank.
Why?
Because that money isn’t in my hands. It’s in the hands of the bankstahs. There’s something very strange about working hard to save money and then turning around and handing it to the very scumbags that brought about the 2008 crash.
“Would you hold on to this for me, please? I’ll even pay you to do so. It’s my life’s savings but I have no idea where to keep it. Could you take care of it for me?”
You see what I mean? Weird.
How often have I heard someone say that they felt like burying their money in the backyard. Actually, after my grandfather died, my parents were cleaning out his house, barn, and outbuildings. They had built a fire pit where they were burning stuff that they considered sheer junk.
That’s when they almost burned a plastic trash bag full of cash. I kid you not.
My grandfather had grown up in the Great Depression. He never trusted banks. He loved money, but he loved land and a full larder even more. We’ll never know if there were additional bags of money hidden on his small farm.
I don’t think burying money in the ground makes sense. Unless, of course, you’re going to buy land. In a way, that’s equivalent to burying your money in the ground, the safe way.
Recently, I bought land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A place that is surrrounded by 20% of the entire world’s fresh water during a time when droughts and wild fires are becoming a big challenge. I think I understand something that crypto enthusiasts and Wall Street tycoons may not get.
Land is a limited resource as is water and clean air. As climate change creates climate refugees, land above the 45th parallel is going to become the new prime properties.
Watch out Canada. Your wasteful, gambling neighbors to your south will eventually try to steal your land. We may be the world’s biggest procrastinators but once our houses keep burning to the ground and the cost of insuring them continues to soar, we’re going to redefine the best places to live. It’ll be a tiny sliver of our northern states and then YOU, Canada. Mark my word.
You can give me land over paper money that disappears into thin air once I hand it to a bankstah any day of the week.
Suddenly, I don’t feel quite so vulnerable when the rumblings of stock market crashes, inflation, and artificial wealth starts feeling like a ponzi scheme.
Think about it.
You can’t eat money. You can grow food on a piece of land, however. You can build a house on a piece of land. If worse comes to worse, you can even put up a tent on a piece of land. Land is a tangible but limited resource that’s becoming scarcer by the day.
All you can do with paper money if the shit hits the fan is wipe your ass with it. Unless, of course, the bankstahs lose it first.
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
