Homeownership is expensive. -New fence.-Paint fence and repaint deck.-Dirt, plants, equipment rental, blood sweat and tears for landscaping.-Termite treatment.-New alarm system components.-Tree trimming.-Air conditioner maintenance.-Refinancing. People always say that owning your own home is the best investment you can make! But with the way homes leach money out of you, it’s hard to see the advantages sometimes. I guess I have to believe it since I’m WAY too invested right now to change my mind! Honestly, I don’t know how people do it sometimes… afford everything they want or need. Oh wait, yes, I do; it’s called credit cards. In our family, thankfully, we don’t carry credit balances as a rule. Is that un-American?? Probably so. We don’t buy what we can’t pay for. I don’t count the house in that equation, because if I scrimped and saved long enough to buy a house outright, I’d be moving in by the time I reach retirement age. Speaking of houses, I want to live in an Earthship! Or, at the very least, an earth-sheltered home. These beautiful structures have now supplanted my dream of living in an underground house. And wow, how amazing are these places?! So environmentally friendly, built largely of recycled materials like tires and aluminum cans, sturdy, fireproof, bugproof, requires little to no climate control, generates solar energy, recycles used water, catches rainwater… and more. Check out the photos of The Phoenix near Taos. The bathroom leaves me speechless! You can actually stay in some of these Earthships overnight, like a B&B I guess. I’d love to do that next time I’m in New Mexico. I think you need a good bit of land to build one of these, and probably decent soil as well. In otherwords, no matter how much lottery money I win, we can’t really […]