It’s an election cycle year so I’m seeing all sorts of the usual debates on various media platforms about climate change and whether it’s a hoax or harbinger of more things to come. I honestly don’t know the answer but I do have 27 years experience and obervations.
Same House 27 Years
I bought my first home in 1997 and I still own that home. Over the years I’ve done the regular routines of house maintenance such as replacing the HVAC twice, replacing the roof once, and remodeling the bathrooms and kitchen twice. While all of those activities were somewhat expensive they were voluntary (except for HVAC) in that my wife and I wanted to upgrade or replace certain things.
What has not been voluntary has been the growing expenses of maintaining the exterior of the home. The outside of the home that gets baked by the sun, slapped by the wind, hammered by rain and occasional hail & snow and the surrounding landscape that gets inundated with flooding water periodically.
The largest amount of money I spend now maintaining my home seems to be on constantly having to replace the grass, trees, and landscaping outside of my home. Most of this isn’t voluntary either because if it isn’t maintained it makes the neighborhood ugly and the HOA will come calling demanding changes.
So what are the things that have happened the last 7 years that didn’t happen the last 20?
I live in an area with hot climate so it made sense to me to buy tropical plants so I did only to have freak winter storms come and kill off all the plants. I switched to hardier plants for my landscaping only to have flooding wipe them all out. I then switched to water loving plants only to have two years of drought that killed all the grass and most of the plants despite spending extra money on water to try to keep them alive.
We are quickly approaching summer again and we are already at record heat temperatures. I have a mix of drought resistant and tropical plants right now including quite a few I bought in Hawaii on a recent trip in December.
I’ve written about the sky rocketing costs of insurance as well which is yet another indicator of something being “wrong” with the whole system.
Future Weather Events?
The key issue with adverse weather, if caused by human activity, is not something that can be easily fixed. Even if use of fossil fuels stopped today it would take decades to correct any damage created from it.
The New York Times has an article on scientists trying to figure out why tornadoes now come in bunches and the distribution patterns have changed. I hope they find the answer soon and tell us where we can expect future damage zones.
And another article about Texas hail being so large that it now requires a new name.
Personal Finance
What does this have to do with personal finance? Well as I mentioned, I am spending a lot more money than I used to maintaining the exterior areas of my homes. I worry about flooding, wind damage, falling trees, and replacing my landscaping every year now. It’s a huge drain of money and it’s causing me to consider possibly moving or turning this home into a rental and moving elsewhere with less weather volatility.
Share The Wealth
What do you think about climate change? Is it a hoax or harbinger of things to come? Let me know in the comments.