Benedict option: Go rural.

I have some problems with this post. Not the tenor: I think that most office jobs are gone, if not going. Look, I’m a knowledge worker. And I have a model that works in my field for semi-retirement: writing reports. I need a laptop. coffee, accounting systems and a good CV.

If I move to that — and it is not in the plan for the next few years while my kids go to the university in the town where I teach — then I won’t live in a university city. I will find a small town within a two hours drive of a reasonable airport and internet. And land. But land down here is for dairying, and that land is expensive.

Good arable land is always expensive. Less of an issue for a garden if you have good compost and you are good at gardening, but I kill things.

(Hat tip Free Northerner).

Many of the issues, including skyrocketing property taxes, drastic property value decline due to invasion by inner-city blacks, decreasing safety (i.e. Ferguson, MO), etc. are issues that are almost exclusive to suburban areas. The answer then, is not so much “don’t buy” as it is “don’t buy suburban.”

Rural life offers significant advantages over suburban life. Buying rural land is one of the best moves you can make. Rural land is often inexpensive–get as large a plot as you can. Make sure there’s a couple of good tillable acres for vegetables. Try to get a little woods for hunting and heating. If you can find a place that includes some water as well you are golden.

Now, I want to answer one objection right away. You’re not a farmer, you have a normal job. You have to drive to work every day, and living in the boonies makes that drive uncomfortably long. And why plant vegetables when you can just go to the supermarket?

Well, cupcake, you are going to lose your job.

It’s not if, it is when. If you haven’t come to terms with that, you need to do so now. When it happens, you want to be more than ready. That’s why you’re going to plant vegetables. That’s why you’re going to make sure you can hunt. That’s why you want to own your own (rural) land.

Yes, there is some cheap land in NZ: this bit is tempting (it is in the far north, and I’m sick of winters) but the reason its cheap is that it is at least three hours from a decent airport, and those locums or consultations. And it would be too far from work for a tradesman.

My advice, however, to the young professionals, the young skilled, is to do pretty much what the Norseman says. Find a provincial town you can ply your profession in and a couple of acres you can homestead and stay there. Use the church schools: stay out of the state system (it is imploding even in Dunedin). In New Zealand, that means the unpopular and unpopulated parts of the Central North Island, Westland: the centre, for the irrigated land, the arable land, and the coast are expensive.

You can (and should) travel for the Opera and Orchestra, but it will also mean being in the local orchestra, the local Operatic society, and not being that choosy with your church.

(A quick note on the preppers and survivalists: don’t. Not that I think having a cache of food (frozen, canned, and dry) is not a good idea, and that being fit is good, and hunting legally or fishing or growing a garden is bad. They are all good: stick within the regulations. But better is to be part of a community: better is to work together. You can manage as a family when isolated; but clans and villages survive better.

And when our society implodes, be where the crowds are not. I live in a university town of 120 000 people, where I can if needed walk everywhere (it still fits within the footprint the Victorians used). That is about as big as one should go.

But the Norseman has some good advice. Added to the blogroll.

UPDATE

Provincial land that is far from towns is still relatively affordable: the big issue is getting through immigration (if not an ANZAC) or finding work (if you are). There is a regional airport in Gisborne. 2 hours from this property.