Michigan - Saginaw County | With even mediocre farm land selling for $6K an acre and up and tractors holding their value well, the dirt poor farmer often has significant net worth without having significant spending money left over at the end of the year...
That net worth was accumulated over 30+ years by living cheap and putting the cash flow back into the mortgage/equipment/prepay-inputs/etc...
Once the farm is paid for the owners, now usually in their 60's or early 70's, cannot now envision doing anything other than going on with the rhythms of the work of spring/summer/fall/winter that they spent much of their lives doing..
In a rational world they would sell the farm and auction off everything, take the money and move into an adults only coop in Florida and take line dancing lessons and skeet shooting and go on Caribbean cruises... But it is not a rational world and they are hell bent on leaving 'everything' to the children... Usually, the children will sell everything in a heartbeat as soon as the last shovel of dirt is tossed on the parents grave and THEY move to a resort community in Florida... They are the poster children for the old saw that no good deed goes unpunished... |
farm wealth
