Reality vs negativity????

I have three almost ready for self-publishing but, because of an accident over 3 years ago which has seriously set me back big-time, the $$s aren't available.

I thought that no money is needed for self-publishing. Is that not the case?

Nope. Not if you want a proven company with the max in coverage.

I wish I had known how much maintenance there is in owning a home here.
The weather is what keeps me here.

So I am looking at possibly bying a home. Not a whole lot in my range but just curious would you do it again? I HATE to pay someone else's mortgage - renting but I just can imagine houses here have issues that can be major.

We rented for years. Bought about 3 yrs ago. Don't regret buying but maintaining a house here vs the states is a whole new ball game

Self-published myself. 🙂 Years ago. Unless you have your own printer/binder, you'll be paying money to have it done. Good luck OT.

I personally would not buy another house here unless it was basically new construction (and even that still means a lot of maintenance). It just takes up so much time that I find I am less and less able to enjoy the beautiful surroundings I came here for. Not to mention the $$ it sucks up.
We did a quick calculation on what we have spent vs. what we would have spent in just renting and the results really surprised me. If the housing market rebounds more we might still come out ahead but if we had just rented instead, the weekends over the last 10 years would have been full of a lot more fun instead of maintenance.
That being said, the house we purchased was built in the 70's and needed a lot of work so if we'd purchased something newer I would likely be telling a different story.

The nice thing about owning your own home is that you can do what you want with it, paint your own colors, any renovations you do or upgrades you make to enhance it to your liking, are yours and you're not improving someone else's properly on your dime. I don't have to deal with a landlord or other tenants in the building and whatever habits they may have that could be annoying. Sure, it's work but rewarding, IMO.

I agree, maintenance can get in the way of a "fun day" but in the long run, you have something that's yours and, hopefully, improves in value over the time of ownership.

A condo is a good solution for those not wishing to deal with exterior maintenance. I'm not a condo type person plus I have too many large animals for a condo (and small ones too, for that matter). We won't discuss the amount of plants I have either!

Different strokes for different folks.
Some find it more preferable to rent.

Much of the negativity I heard here now seems a bit trumped up in retrospect. The biggest shock was how freakin' long it took to find work. If you are good at inventing a job there should be less of a problem.

Yeah the problem is that on a message board like this you cannot tell inflection. Not sure if that the right...mmm... word but tone is everything when you're having a conversation with somebody it dictates whether you're being funny or sarcastic or serious. I think that a lot of people look at things on the moving form and they read them point-blank they read them like there's no inflection well because there's not because you can't tell if somebody is being a little joking or if somebody is being serious. I honestly don't think that anybody on these moving forms other than maybe a couple bad apples is trying to scare anybody out and living in the United States Virgin Islands I think that some people just read things too point blank.

Maybe we should just ban or delete all negative posts. Let's not scare away people from coming here and spending thousands of dollars. Even if they leave after a few months or years, they've helped our economy, and we can use all the help that we can get.

The inflection or tone is not the issue. It's the repetition. You could get your point across with some occasional negativity, but it's overdone on this forum, and it leaves an impression that does not match reality.

The inflection or tone is not the issue. It's the repetition. You could get your point across with some occasional negativity, but it's overdone on this forum, and it leaves an impression that does not match reality.

Everything on the forum is repetitive. I'm a 10 year contributor and the same questions are asked all the time, the same answers are given all the time, the same positives are mentioned all the time and the same negatives likewise. Nothing much changes except the players. 😀