During the cold spell, everything was good at home but the cabin had some issues. We went there last weekend after not being there since some time in December I think. We had water for a bit but then it stopped. The next day we went to the gas station and picked up some jugs of water so we could flush the toilet. Plumber came out on Sunday and determined that the pipe for the well was frozen outside from the house to the well pump. This was the first time this happened and because we don't know how long it had been frozen, he recommends that we replace the pump as it's probably been weakened for working continuiously. We also need to excavate and bury the pipe lower. It's possible the it was fine but because we had a driveway installed that messed it up or that it would have happened even before the driveway was installed because it finally got that cold. I'm thinking it will be like $3k after all is said and done. Sucks but we don't want to run into the same problem again.  We'll get it done in the spring. If we go out there before the thaw, we'll bring water. 

We also dream of building a polebarn/shed with living quarters out there. Apparently they are a thing...called barndominium. In retirement, we could house our RV/campervan and vehicles but also have a homebase. The cabin could be part of family compound...at least that's our dream. We haven't even discussed it with the young people. 

I'm in the midwest so this is familar to me. I don't like it but it's the price I'm willing to pay. At least I'm prepared for it. And I've even gone on walks the last three days because it's gotten up to 10 degrees F. I feel really bad for folks south of here who are ill prepared. Their homes aren't built for this and they are running into problems with the power systems and etc. The house I grew up on had electric baseboard heat but only for back up, otherwise we had a woodstove. We had septic and well water so we usually kept gallon glass jugs full of water in case the power was out for too long. When Y2K happened, I knew that if the world collapsed that I could go and it would be fine. I'm not sure what would happen now. I'm dependent on the grid. This of course has me thinking....

What kind of emergency provisions do you have?

So my spouse and I are dreaming of retirement and travel. We still want to put good and kindness out into the world so we're thinking about traveling and volunteering. I expect that some of this we can do before retirement but also after. Do you have any experience or knowledge of good organizations that help with this both domestically but also internationally? We are both educators so that's are employment skillset, if that matters. 

I think it's possible to retire in 5-8 years so I want to start really thinking about it. 

I know a lot of you all use budgets, I don't because how I've always done it was figure out what my fixed expenses were and the rest was in the flexible spending(groceries, clothes and etc). If money was tight, I spent less on this and if I had more, I was more flexible. As I start looking into my retirement planning, I want to get there faster. I started reading some of the FIRE blogs and learned that for those who used to use YNAB, will appreciate the budgeting through https://aspirebudget.com/ which apparently is very similar. I'm going to look into it more and see if this will help me get to retirement faster. 

The FIRE folks talk about having 33x the annual living expenses and living off of 3%. It's farther away than I thought but who knows. After covid, I will talk to my financial planner some more too. I've read that when folks retire, spending typically goes up for the first few years because folks finally get a chance to do the travel and etc they couldn't when they were working. This makes sense to me.