Wish List

A few months ago, while opening up a letter regarding the pension fund, I read the blurb which came with it. I don't remember if it was on a separate insert or on the letter, but it said that the pension fund had been started when a social worker discovered a retired teacher living in a chicken coupe. For the past several weeks, I've been obsessively scouring web pages about "Tiny Houses." As you'll see from the picture in this posting, some tiny houses are, perhaps, smaller than a place one would house fowl. From my research, it looks as if now, should I want to retire in a 96 square foot house, it will cost me something like 55,000 dollars. I hope that original teacher's family kept the coupe! I understand that I would have far more amenities than an ordinary shed, and that I can even get a small house I can pull by car. The prospect of several tens of thousands of people in their sixties driving tiny houses all over the country and, eventually, fighting it out for who gets the best wi-fi and is closest to the water source, doesn't do much to calm my nerves.

This afternoon, after watching a PBS NOW documentary on Child Marriages, I noticed a story about allowing homeless people to live in foreclosed homes. The could lead to a paradoxical situation: imagine being kicked out of your foreclosed home and then being moved into another one after you've been living on the street! However, two similar practices in NYC called, "Squatting" and "Homesteading" allowed some fortunate groups of people to eventually buy abandoned buildings from the city and renovate them. The practice was illegal, but for a few lucky groups, it became a means by which they were able to own their own apartments. I remember being just out of college in the early 90's and contemplating joining a Squat or Homestead, but I didn't have the courage. I don't know if I wish I had as it would have changed the course of my life. Literally taking over and renovating an abandoned building while living in it is very much a way of life. Even if I could've mustered the courage, I'm awful with my hands. Had I somehow managed, I don't know if I could've begun my teaching career. Ironically, I might have an apartment of my own right now. Sure, I could've saved enough to have one either way. Let's just say I am about as good at saving money as I am with my hands. Don't think I've spent my life vacationing in the South of France. I've spent a good many years in which I've supplemented my classroom with the rent money. I'm not the only teacher I know who has lived his/her life in the ironic cycle of spending the paycheck to keep earning it. This is what leads me to scour the internet looking at tiny houses in the first place.

So, the first thing on my wish list is the time to think through...how to think this through.