Not having a second / vacation home makes me feel poor & depressed. Anyone else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve own my weekend place for 15 years. A small cabin in Shenandoah Valley. Bought it outright for $185k in 2009. Not all vacation homes have to cost $2 million. Since it was so cheap I don’t feel bad if I can’t make it there for months at a time. I guess I don’t consider it a vacation home because I don’t vacation there. It’s just a place to go relax on free weekends. Overall cost of ownership is about $6k a year.

I went to the beach last weekend. Six hours to get there and four to get back (should have been just over three). It was soul sucking.

Wait… this is what passes for this luxurious second home that most of us can’t afford because we are “proles”? Ok guys. Stop pretending. I get it’s a nice thing to have - but you’re not going to be mistaken for an oligarch. But even a 700k second home in a good location isn’t all that great. You need to start at 1M and 2-3M is really where things start to get luxurious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP feels poor bc he is poor. If you are able-bodied, college graduate, how is it possible to not own a second home by the time you are 40 if you want to? I bought mine when I was 34 - a little place near Inn at Little Washington on 3.5 acres. Modest, but an awesome getaway. I was Big Law associate at the time. No parental help of any kind - no down payment assistance, I had student loans from under grad and law school. There comes a point in your late teens (for me), where you have to ask yourself, am I willing to be destitute all of my life. And if the answer is, no, you just work like hell, do absolutely anything you possibly can do in your twenties, thirties to make sure you are not poor.

LOL. 3.5 ac and a cottage in Little Washington? That’s what farm hands live on there.

Come on guys - stop calling other people poor.

[Anonymous]

LOL- that’s 850k. No farm hands. Not bad for a 34 year old and his first, second home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does the 15, 20 or 50 million include real estate holdings?

Do you know anyone with $15 million plus net worth who are renters? I’m sure there are a few, eg, E. Musk, but not many.

[Anonymous]

I can barely keep up with one home. I cannot imaging maintaining and furnishing two. No, it does not make me feel poor or depressed.

[Anonymous]

This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

Thanks for passing out knowledge of the obvious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

[phone]

It’s like my NYC friends who are 40 and still renters. Suuuuuure you have money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

Sorry we're too busy enjoying our lives to join your "club"!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

You seem to have a lot of your self esteem tied up in owning a second house. It’s certainly an accomplishment to be able to support so much financially.

I come from at least 3 generations of having multiple homes with basically all of my family tree going back to the 18th and 17th centuries here. But here’s the thing, I’m not “old money” more like old middle class. I have successful land speculators out west that preceded me, my parents owned commercial real estate in a major metropolitan area but nothing approaching the sort of wealth that affords the type of homes you “summer” in.

I like my parents’ second home and I hope they keep it to pass on; a phenomenon that is sadly uncommon in my family. The truth is, most have been *fine* but not extraordinary. My predecessors who’s thinking I know about thought their place wasn’t special and when they no longer wanted 2 homes, they got rid of them in preference for being close to emergency healthcare.

It’s not some elite club. People have been owning average second homes for sometime. It’s just a question of priorities.

Stop putting on airs like you own the Breakers or a mansion in Newport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

We just use our parents’ ski and beach homes. We have no desire to buy more homes until kids are launched. We’re too busy. At most we have 5 weeks away per year and at least 2 of those are for new experiences - Alaska coming up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the 15, 20 or 50 million include real estate holdings?

Do you know anyone with $15 million plus net worth who are renters? I’m sure there are a few, eg, E. Musk, but not many.

I thought Musk was living in a tiny house at SpaceX in Texas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

Or you don't. My grandparents were self-made millionaires who never felt the need for an investment property. They had a big house with 80 acres and plenty of recreational fishing and hunting on the property. If they wanted to travel, they traveled. They had no desire to go to the same place every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

Sure, but does this apply to DC? There isn’t a lot of wealth in DC compared to other large metro areas, and not a lot of great places to own a weekend house. It’s not like someone living in Manhattan who can choose from Litchfield, the Hudson valley, Hamptons etc.

Even wealthy people in LA often own beach homes still technically LA but 1-2 hours away.

My point is that it’s not really a bragging point to own a home in Shenandoah or Easton. It’s fine and better than nothing if you must live in DC. But it’s hardly someone leaving their classic six in Manhattan heading to Sag Harbor for the weekend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This forum is funny. A bunch of miserable envious wannabes sitting in their muggy sh-t shack all summer posturing as prudent investment gurus. Renting a vacation home for a week at a time makes you a loser. You know it, we know it. You’re not fooling anyone. Once you hit a certain financial tier you buy a second home, period. It’s basically a welcome to the club moment.

Sure, but does this apply to DC? There isn’t a lot of wealth in DC compared to other large metro areas, and not a lot of great places to own a weekend house. It’s not like someone living in Manhattan who can choose from Litchfield, the Hudson valley, Hamptons etc.

Even wealthy people in LA often own beach homes still technically LA but 1-2 hours away.

My point is that it’s not really a bragging point to own a home in Shenandoah or Easton. It’s fine and better than nothing if you must live in DC. But it’s hardly someone leaving their classic six in Manhattan heading to Sag Harbor for the weekend.

You phony hypocrites oscillate from you're above it all modesty to name-dropping status consciousness. Which is it, you're above a vacation home and hotels and renting from a landlord is bliss... or you're a status-obsessed striver who can rattle off vacation home rankings and look down your nose people who have second homes in lower rung locales?

As far as D.C. second homes... if it's not a Delaware beach house, it's a Florida home in a golf community or near the water, or summering all the way up to Maine, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, etc... or property out West where you can ski in the winter and fly fish and hike in the summer... or maybe a lakefront property near a hometown (D.C. is full of transplants, of course).