View attachment 6872
In a weird way, I'm thinking this will work to my advantage given my retirement timeline.
Building a vacation house. Own the lot on the lake free and clear. The house we designed (always easier to draw up a house than build one) was going to be between 900 and 1m to build, and a lot of that was lumber and the fact that contractors have been in the catbird seat. "You'll pay it and you'll be happy to wait 18 months for me to start."
Rate hikes have already cooled off housing, and another 100 bps won't help. Eventually, this should catch up to the market. Lumber is already heading back down, and eventually contractors will be hungry again. I've dealt with them when they are, and the conversations are very fucking different. "I can get us a dirt guy who will do that in a couple of days. He owes me a few favors and we can get it for $X." vs. "We need a good dirt guy for that and they're not cheap. At least $X and up from there."
I figure I can finance part of that, albeit at higher rates, and then when rates come back down, and they will at some point, I can re-fi. But I can't re-fi an overpayment on the house. It's a toggle, but I'd rather take the higher financing cost than pay more on the underlying purchase price. The former can be fixed later when rates change; the latter is permanent ink.
Happy to have anyone tell me that's a stupid way to think about it and why.
As to my portfolio, I'll still pour cash into equities aggressively, and an extended dampening of the market will give me better buying.
This all assumes my income is safe. I'm superstitious so I'll pass on making bold prognostications about that. When things get shitty enough, nobody is safe. But I'll say this much ... the nature of my role is such that you don't start with me when cutting time comes, and you'd typically go through several rounds before you got to me. That would hold true at pretty much any organization. But, again, in the end, we are all eligible for the chopping block.
