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SW WI | Clay, the different places where you are in life is amazing to me. My wife and I have had this conversation a lot over the years.
Her mom and dad were in their early 60's when crap hit. Paid for farm, paid for machinery, money in the bank drawing very good interest, raised a nice small amount of hogs but a couple of very good years for that in the 80's. They were ready to call it a day, her dad went thru the depression as a kid, saw what was happening in the 80's and there was no way he was going to gamble with his bank money drawing double didget interest to "gamble" on land. They lived a nice retirement but talk about a missed opportunity on the land deal. My wife never knew the struggles of the 80's.
Now my family... Well other end of the spectrum. My parents bought the family farm from my grandparents in 1980. Floating interested to match bank rate. Grandpa wouldn't negotiate on that. Small dairy farm, milk support was being pulled out, both mom and dad had to work off leaving me at 16 to milk twice a day and try to make hay with worn out equipment by myself. My brother and sister were away in college. I answered the phone calls from people wanting to get paid....some weren't so nice. Local paper always published the names of people behind onreal estate taxes, yep, there we were. Pretty self-conscious going to school for awhile after that. Hell, when I started dating my wife, one time her dad had all the names he knew highlighted in the paper that were behind on taxes. That was awkward to say the least. Mom and dad plugged away and finally came out of it. Run up in recreational land values helped them, sold off some woods to clean up last of the debt in the early 2000's.
Just amazing where you are in life when opportunity presents itself or when crap hits the fan. | |
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The 80's then... The teens now
