About that community project

Okay, so tell me more about that community project you’ve supposedly been building outside your laptop for the past month.

Of course, I’ll be happy to.

This is going to be a longer story than I expected, or than I’d like, so please bear with me, hold attention, or I don’t know, put a background video if that helps.

Where it all started

Back in 2015, my parents came up with a fantastic idea of living in community with some of their friends. What they wanted was to grow older and kind of live in their own Melrose Place without the drama. You know, sharing drinks at night, watching movies, maybe doing stuff together, but at the same time keeping their own autonomy, having their own house, their own separate space. On paper, this sounded like a dream to me. I thought, ” Wow”. I mean, not right now, but even today, if I had the chance to live in the same building as some of my best friends while each of us had our own flat, wouldn’t that be awesome? Wouldn’t we do great barbecues in the backyard and invite all our friends over? I always liked that plan, but I also knew that something like that takes a monumental amount of work and a lot of money.

When it comes to community projects, you usually need one or two things:

• Someone extremely motivated who’s going to pull the whole wagon, ideally more than one person, and the rest with a lot of money, or at least some money.
• Or, if you don’t have money, many people are very motivated to carry this forward.

The situation of my parents was neither, and somehow I knew this was going to end up nowhere. Not because they didn’t want it, not because they wouldn’t do it, but because, for whatever reason, deep down, they always thought it was beyond their capacities. As someone who has gone from pretty much living under poverty to where I am now, and seeing how my parents most likely still earn in a year what I earn in two months, I understand where that comes from. They didn’t need much money. They’ve made their lives financially stable, thanks to my brother and me, their own investments, and their own choices, but I think they really lacked that vision of capacity.

How does it relate to me?

Anyway, fast forward. I always liked that plan, but I’m not 65. In the back of my head, I always thought the last investment I’d ever do, or the last one I’d really care to do, would be something like this. I’d like to make sure I have a place where I can lay low when I’m old, and ideally, a place where I can lay low with community. I don’t plan on having kids, and a lot of the fears people throw at those who don’t are, “Who’s going to take care of you when you’re older?” which is bullshit. In any case, in general, I think growing up in community is so underrated. I’ve seen my parents, even with kids, build their own, even if they don’t all live in the same house. I’ve always felt kind of jealous of that, and I’d like to have it.

Then there’s the other reality, as your parents grow older. Not having a community to support them doesn’t mean you’re forced to, but I’d want to, because I really, really love my parents and I appreciate everything they did for me, because they did it very well. Carrying that somehow was something I’d have to foresee for the next 20 years, maybe when they’re 85, and things get harder. If I could find a way for them to live in community, maybe it would be easier for me too over the next 20 years. I wouldn’t have to worry that much. So somehow, it was a double investment.

I’ve been putting my finances in order, clearing things up across countries, because I’ve been living a bit of a nomadic life, and I don’t have the best profile for loans. Everything I’ve achieved so far has been buying in cash or getting personal loans, or super-high-interest loans that I had to pay back very fast. For the last year, I’ve been doing this very religiously in Spain, thinking, “One day, not too far, maybe in the next two years, I’ll get a loan and potentially make this happen.”

As with everything I do, I’ve been looking for houses that could fit this project for about three years, not even knowing how I’d pay for them, because in all fairness, I couldn’t. I found some that were very close or very interesting, but in general, they were always out of reach or just not a good idea. Until quite recently, I found one that was very, very close. I ran the calculations and got to the amount I could pay, which was about 15% under what they were asking. I abandoned it because I thought 15% was a non-negotiable gap. Still, I shared it with my brother, who is also a very motivated human being, and just let it pass.

Ok, so what happened!?

Three weeks later, my brother messaged me. He’d gone to see the house, told me it was perfect, and that the owners would basically sell it for the price I’d calculated. As you can imagine, this started a whole mess in my head, because suddenly it was a reality, fragile but possible. Then things started moving. We decided we were going to buy the house if everything allowed us to. We paid for the reservation. I started working on the financial plan for this community project, which has both generation one and generation two, because I’d also spoken with some friends about a year or two ago, and everyone was so on board with the idea. I also knew that if I didn’t push it, it most likely wouldn’t happen.

Now there are seven people involved that I’m trying to convince and share my vision with, and I’m so excited for what’s about to come. Even if it doesn’t turn out the way I imagine, I also know this is a good investment for my future. I want to retire early. I want to make sure I have about 2,000 to 3,000 to live on monthly, and from there, just work if I want to, which is pretty much what I’ve been doing already. So this is also a long-term play, maybe in the next 10 years, a good investment in that sense too.

So here I am. Building financial plans, P&Ls, visions, and missions for a project to live as a community in the middle of the Catalan mountains, and it’s a very, very exciting time. The house hasn’t been fully purchased yet. We’re going to pay the first 10% ideally on the 14th of May. There are still things that need to happen. We still need to figure out the loan process. We know it’ll be approved, but we don’t know exactly for how much, and based on that, other decisions will follow.

Anyway, I’ll be sharing the financial planning and all the mission and ambition with the newsletter readers, so if you’re interested in learning more, just join!