How old are you? I am 21, and I am already obsessed with the idea of owning land.
My colleague says that it’s a good thing that I have started planning for it from now on because apparently, people start planning about real estate quite late in life.
I dunno, I have become so obsessed with the idea of owning land that my goals have changed. I remember, 6-7 months ago, my goals were quite…flimsy if you ask me now.
Now I have scratched out most of them and the only thing in my mind is land, land, AND LAND!
And I am a very relentless person when it comes to planning. Until I have a plan in my head about my future, I feel restless and I can’t sleep at night. I embody the Taylor Swift song lyrics “I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost, the room is on fire, invisible smoke”
“I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost, the room is on fire, invisible smoke”
– Taylor Swift’s The Archer
And I don’t just want to have A plan. I want to have a plan, think ahead of possible accidents, make different plans for each consequence and what would I do in that case and all.
I keep, like, 4 Plan B’s handy every time.
CAN YOU BE TOO YOUNG TO SET TO PRIORITIES?
Can you be too young to set priorities? This is a question that has been hooking me for quite some time now, and I will try to answer it in this post.
Everyone talks about setting priorities, especially father. It annoyed me back when I was younger, but now, I feel it’s time to set priorities.
I think you can set priorities anytime, anywhere. Even the small decisions a 3-year-old child makes to choose peer over parents can be called significant, from the child’s point of view, maturity and specific needs and wants. It all comes down to the why.
HOW MY PRIORITIES CHANGED
You see, 7-8 months ago, I had seen this Warren Buffet interview or article I guess which talked about how he set priorities and basically, because successful in his life. His favourite quote is “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” ― Warren Buffet.
And it was about how he set priorities in his life.
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
Warren Buffet
So basically, he said that write down 25 most important goals of your life, and then choose only five of them which can be achieved in a few years (like 5 years). And then you ignore the rest of the goals until you reach these five.
My five chosen goals were:
- Saving money for the next city.
- Make contacts
- Learn cooking
- Get tattoo
- Becoming creative head in the next 5 years.
Why had I chosen these 5 goals as the ones I need to focus on first? Because 7 months ago, I moved into a new home and learning how to cook fresh and eat fresh food was essential to surviving in a home without a refrigerator. And I also want to get one tattoo in every city I live in, and my initial plan was to make a base in each of the major 5 cities of my country, gain exposure and experience on the way to becoming a creative head within 5 years. Hence the saving money part.
Like I said, very flimsy.
Except for the saving money part.
Fast-forward 7 months aaand it looks like this:
- Saving money for buying land.
- Making contacts.
- Get that high-end laptop within 18 months.
- Get a credit card and make a pretty credit score.
- Live as minimalistically as possible.
Well, to be honest, I wanted a credit card just because I wanted to get that $5 Medium subscription plan and also to support one of my Instagram influencers’ as a patron. But now, I want to make a pretty credit card report so that I can get the best interest rates for the land or home loan.
I have become so monomaniac with it that every time I feel like making impulse purchases (ordering food), I shove my butt towards the kitchen and start chopping vegetables. That’s because rent, food and transportation are the biggest costs in any person’s life.
I want that bomb laptop because it has all the technical specifications I need for running all the bulky graphic designing software I need to learn to become a creative director
I sometimes feel like my anxiety or paranoia gets the better of me when it comes to planning or strategizing a battle plan for achieving something.
I have scoured the internet for knowing what are the possible creative things you can do with a piece of raw land and going with whatever light research I have done about the state of real estate in my country, I have even decided which two cities I want to buy land in.
RECESSION
There is a fear of recession hitting my country soon (my economics-lover acquaintance says recession has already started), and though I am not on very chummy terms with father, I think there is a grain of truth in what he says (finally). You see, father has a hobby of blowing even the smallest jokes out of proportion that it is no longer funny.
The first question I asked is the effect of the recession on the real estate sector. Because I plan to buy land within the next 7 years.
I want to know the effect of this economic slowdown on each and every sector of the economy. I want to know how each sector reacts to the economic slowdown and how this whole cycle runs around. I want to know which industries are resistant to recession and what side-hustles can I stoop down to (I don’t mind cleaning restaurant kitchens, really) if I really have to make ends meet in dire consequences.
As if I wasn’t getting enough sleep at night already, I am also thinking of jumping jobs. And though I have a multitude of reasons to jump jobs, one of the contributory factors is that I want to live in a city I plan to buy land in. Because it’s only after I live there for at least three years that I find a handful of contacts AND real estate agents who have a good reputation.
And I have also found out how much would the monthly living expenses would be reasonably made in my new city, how much does a good rental place cost and how much would my groceries cost and how much would the public transportation cost and what government hospitals are situated where and which doctors are specialists I am looking for and what their names and qualifications and how the weather is like in the new city and how the people are and, and… and I could go on and on…
Like I told ya, this paranoia gets the best of me when I am planning. I ought to be in the urban planning department. That way I would know where and how each land plot can be used to the best of its purpose.
Okay, okay, before I start teaching you why I can’t sleep at night well enough again, let’s stop.
Oooh, but planning is such a delicious pet peeve of mine.
Setting priorities is a survival instinct, developed throughout generations of human epochs.
Does that mean this is why paranoia and anxiety have been seen as a survival instinct, that it is always preferred by Natural Selection?
Is it bad being too much money-minded? Is it bad having set monetary goals for yourself in life and then being inundated by Instagram posts which say that money isn’t everything in life? Is it bad for you to think that yes, I want to own land by the time I am 30 or yes, I want to make sure I own a refurbished Beetle fitted with CNG fuel and green energy by 40? That’s gonna cost a lot of money, cause Volkswagen decided to stop Beetle productions worldwide this November. I am heartbroken.
Is it bad setting priorities?
Psst… I have enough found out possible side-hustles I can take up during a recession so that I can survive. I don’t know if you needed to know or not, but I just thought that… well, never mind!