We are just getting out from a multi-day snow storm that left a little under two feet at our elevation which is about 6600'. The highest houses up here are probably 7300' and although there are very few that high, there are plenty in the neighborhood of 7000' and that 400 foot difference can mean much more snow.
We live about 1/2 mile from the county maintained pavement so the way it works out, I need to plow from our house down to the pavement or sometimes just about 1/3 of mile to an intersection close to the bottom. I have an ATV with a plow blade on the front. Plowing snow is very rough on equipment and upgrading doesn't seem to change how rough it can be. I spoke to one guy who said he had a $5000 setup on his ATV and that it broke three times in one day.
When the snow is steep, the only way to plow it with my set up is to skim it over the course of many runs. Going early and often is another work around but it seems that more often than not, the serious accumulation occurs overnight and plowing in the dark is not a great idea. One challenge as was the case with this storm is that the road is narrow such that I run out of room to push the snow so a lot of snow means stopping the plow periodically to shovel the road wide enough for a pickup or SUV.
It's been a couple of days since it snowed so I've been going out trying to improve/widen the road. The plan for today was to improve one last corner and finish digging out Joellyn's car which we left at the bottom of the hill. I went to the firehouse too to take our trash to the dumpsters which are behind the firehouse. I also planned to stop in and check that everything at the firehouse was ok. The door we go in through has a weird combination lock. After you put in the combo, you have to turn the handle just so for the door to open.
Today it would not open. I think the knob/lock assembly is either worn out or needs to be taken apart and tightened up (WD-40 did not solve it). Not being able to get in would have been a big problem if we had a call for service.
The station has four garage doors which is how we get the apparatus out and we have one remote for each door. Three of the four remotes are inside but fortunately, I put one remote in the command vehicle that we keep at my house. When appropriate, I respond directly from my house with this vehicle. Being locked out could have been an all day nuisance but fortunately it was just a 10 minute errand to go back home, grab the remote, go back to the firehouse and then figure out a temporary solution for the broken door.
In terms of financial planning or retirement planning I often use the term "look around a corner or two" and this anecdote might be a good analogy for looking around a corner. A couple of easy, very big picture corners to look around is whether people who are not yet taking Social Security end up taking a meaningful haircut. Congress has to figure something out eventually, who knows what it will be, and while a meaningful haircut may not be morally right, what if that is what they do? Our resilience to that outcome is up to us. Similar if stock market returns for the next 10 or 15 years are lousy. How much grief would that cause you and what could to do for yourself in that scenario?
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