Monday 14 July 2014

Summer vacation during July 2014

baltic sea, vacation, relaxation, investing

Like so many other bloggers it is also time for me to go on vacation. Maybe in the future we should think about a vacation schedule so that there will always be a blogger still pushing out interesting articles and analysis of cheap companies!

Since I do not really like vacation but more or less have to take it from my job there is not really something to do about it but for the blog the story is different. I will therefore try not to take blog vacation but it will however be based on my neighbour... if he still has his internet open then I will continue to write articles at a semi similar productivity level and if not then I will have to every now and then go to the public library for internet access... but then the articles will also be more spread out. Happily there are a couple of articles in the pipeline that will be published so I think it will all work out. Concerning comments that you write my responses will be less quick but rest assure that I will see them at some point and I will respond to them.


This vacation, as so many previous ones, I will go to my family co-owned summer house for three weeks. I must say that I do love my summer house but sometimes it is hard. Every summer vacation I go there doing repairs and maintenance since it must be made and I have not had a real summer vacation (meaning going to an unknown place and checking that out) for the last five years, when I made a Europe road-trip back in 2009, and before that I made my last real vacation in 1998.

One could think that this is financially favourable since I never spend any money on vacation but it is unfortunately not true. Since I have for many years now been living abroad I must always pay the trip back home so I pay the same price as going anywhere else in Europe and yes I do not have to pay for hotel but the cost of owning a house and paying for that all year round more then exceeds the costs of a hotel for a week or two.

Still... I would not change this house for anything and it has become the place that I call home and it is in a strange way the rock and foundation for me. As long as that place stands I think I will have fewer worries in my life and that is worth a lot. However it also means that when I am there I want no disturbances since I do not want any bad feelings to be built up in connection to this house.

For financial reasons I would never advice anyone to be the owner of more than the house/apartment that they live in unless you use it as an asset and rent it out. Anything else is just a waste of money and simply a liability. With this summer house I have been lucky in two ways. We bought it at the very bottom of an exploded property bubble in Sweden during the 90s and secondly it has needed surprisingly few investments once the basic roof thing had been taken care of. The roof is the Alfa and Omega when it comes to caring for a house... never forget that! So even though it is a liability it is currently the best investment I have ever made in my life.

So now we take off with a fully packed car and drive from Berlin to Sassnitz to take the ferry to Trelleborg and then further upwards and onwards!

3 comments:

Chris Bailey said...

Have a great holiday Fredrik. A well-deserved time away from the usual routine. Some of us will remain on duty to keep the financial analysis flowing :-)

Fredrik von Oberhausen said...

I will Chris! Thanks!

My neighbour is still kind to me and gives me internet so I will keep writing this time also!

L said...

See you soon! /L