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DaedTech Digest: Do You Worry about an Unoccupied House?

In past DaedTech digests, I’ve talked about the topic of whether we miss our stuff and about packing.  This kind of naturally gives rise to something that people ask me here and there.

Do you worry about leaving your house unoccupied for long periods of time?

The simple answer to that is no, we don’t.

But that wouldn’t make for much of a mini-blog-post, so let me elaborate a bit.  There is a set of circumstances that apply to us, but may not apply to others.

First, as I mentioned once before, our primary residence is something we purchased originally as a lake house.  We don’t exactly think of it (or anything) as a primary residence, and that informs our lack of concern.  In short, this is a house that we have a lot of practice leaving unoccupied for long stretches.

Also because this is a lake house, it doesn’t exactly make for a rich target for thieves, particularly during the winter.  The house exists in a sleepy little town with the sort of crime rate you’d expect in such a place.  Plus, most of the houses on these lakes around here are vacation properties or rentals, meaning slim pickins when it comes to things of value.  People tend not to stash their bearer bonds and family heirlooms at summer homes.  So, between that and our ADT alarm system and Nest cam, we’re not overly worried about break-ins.

And the final point is that my wife and I have lived life in transit for quite a while now, which creates an existence that necessarily deemphasizes material stuff.  So even if a break-in or Biblical flood or something happened, we’d just be out a bunch of stuff we hadn’t seen for a while anyway.  An insurance check, and we’d be all set.

If you decide to go the slow travel route, it might feel nerve-wracking at first to leave your place.  But practice makes perfect.

And so, without hesitation, we pack up the car, assign one of the cats as navigator, and hit the road.

Picks

  • This is kind of a strange pick because it’s not a service that I’ve used myself, but rather one that someone recommended to me today.  It’s called wealthfront, and it’s apparently a savings/investment tool that lets you specify your risk level, including a “never let this go below my original investment” setting.  So you can get a nicely higher return than a savings account, but without risk.
  • This is sort of a weird pick, because it’s more like a tiny hack.  But if you have a card or a board open in Trello, and you delete the URL information after its basic identifier and add “json”, you can see all of its API details.  This post describes it.

The Digest

And, that’s it.  Kind of a thin content production week for me, obviously.  I’ll have to try to step up my game on various other blogs.  As always, have a good weekend!