I didn’t always want a cabin. It seemed like a lot of work to me when I saw my friends in 20’s going to their families’ cabins every weekend. About 10 years ago, while sitting home with my little boys on 4th of July weekend, I was perusing Facebook and saw dozens of pictures of my friends, family & acquaintances boating, grilling, smiling, & chilling together on lakes all over Minnesota. I got jealous. Very jealous. It looked so relaxing and the perfect way to make memories. Meanwhile, I was sitting there land-locked in the suburbs watching my neighbor almost burn down the hood with his own display of cheap fireworks.
The next few years we started renting cabins at different resorts on different lakes around northern MN with my whole family. Those were very memorable times and I loved it. In 2020, I started looking online at cabins on one of the best lake chains in northern MN. I wasn’t super serious about buying one, but then we made a big mistake. We started telling our friends about our cabin search. Once it was out of our mouths, it took on a life of its own. We started getting suggestions, referrals, offers to tour places on our behalf. I hadn’t even made any real calculations to determine what we could afford at that point.
One thing you must know about me is that I LOVE spreadsheets. Yes, I am a bit of a nerd in that regard. I keep track of all our finances and am pretty diligent in sticking to a budget. My husband is the free spirit and visionary that believes everything will work out. He is frugal, but he is also creative in finding ways to buy the things he wants. He doesn’t even look at our spreadsheets unless I force him to (which I do once a month to make sure he understands the budget). We both work full time and while we both do well, buying a 2nd home is big deal. It has to fit into our budget without being too risky.
Do we buy a fixer upper? Do we rent it out when we can’t be there? How often will we be able to really be there with our kids’ busy schedules? Should we be doing this now? I had a lot of questions and doubts around the 2020/2021 years.
Do you remember what interest rates were back then? Pretty GOOD! If we could’ve agreed on what we were looking for and where at that time, we might’ve been in a good situation. Now, we can’t get nearly as much cabin for our money. The search continues…
