Posted by Dave on November 17, 2009
Could you live in a 100 square foot house?
In my initial post when applying for this job I wrote of my smallish 1,000 square foot house. Some of the comments stated that 500 square feet per person is large in comparison to global standards. Having recently scoured a city of 120,000 for small houses, I can comfortably say that the house we bought is one of the smallest available. After doing some reading I found that there really aren’t any smaller houses available due to building codes (something to do with the buildings being uninhabitable or something).
In addition to the connected townhouse we ended up buying we looked at condominium apartments, the square footage for the vast majority of places was somewhere around the 800 to 1,200 square foot range, which is not really small at all.
An alternative to all of these conventional condominium townhouses and 1,200 to 2,000 square foot detached homes was a Tumbleweed Tiny House. These houses range from 65 to 800 square feet, significantly smaller then what would conventionally be seen in Canada and the United States in homes being built. There were several qualities that piqued my interest in these homes:
1.) Cost – these houses can be built for approximately $20,000, most people that choose to live in one of these homes build them themselves. Depending where you build, you could easily have a house and land for the price of a new SUV.
2.) Larger houses have a negative impact on the environment. It takes a lot of energy to heat and maintain a 1,500 to 2,000 square foot house, it also takes significant amounts of raw materials that are required in constructing them (more trees cut down, fossil fuels spent).
3.) Most houses that the majority of the population lives in have a lot of unused space (For example, I moved in to my current home at the end of June and still haven’t really utilized the basement for any reason other than to dry clothes). Living in one of these might be more cramped then inefficient, but I think this is a better result.
4.) A smaller house would mean less “stuff”. I would love to live a less cluttered, more simplistic life with less room available. With a larger home there is no incentive to get rid of accumulated things that I have and don’t really need.
The house that I really like is 251 square feet. Its footprint is 18’x 14’ and allows for a queen – sized bed in the loft, with a small living room and kitchen. Generally, the place is just like any other, just significantly smaller and more efficient.
In the end, we purchased a more conventional townhouse. This decision came came after my spouse stated explicitly “I will not live in a garden shed no matter how ‘cool’ you think it is”. Also, we decided we wanted to live in the city for at least another few years. The house is significantly bigger then we need, but it’s close to both our places of work and was as small as we could find. I think it will be easier to entertain guests in our new house compared to a tiny home, but for the one weekend out of every two months we have visitors, I’m not sure this is worth the extra cost and essentially wasted space (two people can only use so much room on a day-to-day basis). Maybe in a few years we will revisit moving to one of these houses (I think I have to work on my “pro” side argument of living small, and maybe find one that looks less like a garden shed…)
I’m interested in other people’s opinions on these houses. Do you think you could be comfortable in an 18’x14’ home? How much room do you use in your current house, are there rooms that are not used very often?
Posted by Canadian Dream on November 16, 2009
Personal finance is an interesting place to spend your time in study. There’s the obvious side of things, the cold hard numbers of what we should do. It’s the place of interest rates and savings plans on neat spreadsheets. Then there is the emotional side of the numbers, the illogical and strangely self reflective part that will either keep you saving more than you should or spending more than you earn regardless of what the spreadsheet says you should do. That second side is where the heart of personal finance really is and that is where I recently determined: I’m ashamed of being wealthy.
Yes, it’s true. Well sort of, actually I’m ashamed of appearing too well off. I can handle being wealthy, but I dislike showing that I am to anyone. It’s an interesting insight for me to realize since it really does guide a lot of my reluctance to spend money on some things, even when I do need or want it. It’s the reason why I own a small car and wear my clothes until the actually start to wear out and why I’ve delayed buying an ebook reader for four months when I could pay for it today with barely a dip in my monthly savings.
So where did this shame come from? Well I’ve personally watched a few people in life that have been well off and the problems that came with being well off and having others know about it. In one case it caused a family rift between two relatives for about five years over a loan that one co-signed for the other and then the other defaulted on. In another case I literally watched someone be driven out of their hometown over being well off and everyone knowing it. The person in question was constantly being bothered to give people money outright or invest in stupid business plans. The constant stress of bad loans that were ruining relationships was too much and to solve the issue he moved away.
Up until recently I didn’t consider how those moments in other people’s lives have affected me. Yet it obviously it has since I’m reluctant to show too much wealth to anyone. This small fact drives a number of behaviours for me including:
- I dislike brand name clothes. I won’t buy them, but I will wear them if someone else buys them for me.
- I have an aversion to being in upper management since I dislike wearing a suit. Despite looking good in one and being able to afford a suit.
- I’m guarded with my face to face conversations with money. I’ll discuss the logical side of it, but I won’t mention my own situation like how I want to pay off my mortgage in the next few years. So as an outlet I discuss money on blogs including this one.
Yet I’m trying to achieve financial independence which can potentially be one of the bigger displays of wealth out there. So what gives? Well that is a bit easier to understand. You see if you doing something that appears to be a job, regardless of how poor you do, will outwardly explain the income. People often don’t look past the obvious. So this explains a bit of my drive to have something of a ‘job’ post retirement, yet at the same time I don’t plan for making any money at that job in my retirement plan.
It’s interesting that in personal finance we like to say you should suppress your emotions in a lot of decisions, but it’s your emotions that direct a lot of your behaviour in the non-obvious parts of your life. So in my case my shame of showing wealth drives a lot of my low spending habits which in turn feeds my savings rate. At the same time that shame can prevent me from enjoying my money to a degree if I’m not aware of the issue and try to over ride that response once in a while.
So do you know what emotion drives you with your money? If you know, please share.
Posted by Canadian Dream on November 13, 2009
The Globe and Mail first reported on this report a while back, but I thought I would bring a few items that it contains to your attention. You see the report was written with a simple goal. If we had to make the governments currently weak targets of CO2 reduction (20% below 2006 levels by 2020) what would you need to do and how would that look across the country in terms of jobs and GDP (It also looked at a deeper target, but I’m ignoring that for now).
The answer was somewhat surprising in the regards any cap and trade system simply won’t be enough to even get to the current modest target even with a carbon price starting at $40/tonne and rising to $100/tonne by 2020. The government would have to do a lot more. How much more? Well here are a few items:
- Oil and gas companies must stoke venting and flaring unless needed for safety reasons.
- New commercial building would need to be at least LEED Gold standard and new homes must be 50% more efficient. All buildings in BC, MB and QB would use electricity for heating (all high hydro power generation locations).
- All new vehicles would need to meet the California standards for emissions and switching to zero emitting by 2040.
- All appliances would have to meet the highest efficiency available by late 2008 and tighten over time.
- All landfills would capture methane for power generation and/or heating.
Now of course the Globe and Mail had to make a splash with their headline saying the West will pay. This is hardly news, actually it is common sense. Who’s economy is the most reliant on coal, oil and gas? Well that would be Alberta and Saskatchewan and BC in third place. Guess who then would pay the most under a cap and trade system? It’s hardly rocket science folks.
Another interesting fact was we would have less jobs by doing nothing. Yes meeting these targets will drop the GDP by a little (1.5% by 2020 for all of Canada), but in exchange more people will be working (+0.5% higher employment across Canada).
Now the really useful item in this report is the estimate payments to each person the government will give you to help offset your rising fuel and power bills (see the first table in the Globe article). On average it will be $109 per person, but the amount per province is very different. In Alberta it’s $501, while in SK it’s $372 while QB is $21. Basically this means your bills would be going up by at least these amounts and in all likelyhood going higher still.
That in a nut shell is the issue with CO2. In the end, anyway it goes it will cost you a lot of money. How much? Well this report gives you an idea. It won’t be a perfect estimate, but at least it’s a number to discuss. No wonder the government is dragging its feet on the issue. But the real killer is this, the longer they wait the more it’s going to cost you. Change is always expensive, rapid change is very expensive.
So what did you think of that report? Are you willing to pay that much to stop climate change?
