Growing up and in my early adulthood, I couldn’t really see past the tip of my nose when it came to life.
It was all about immediate results and living in the moment the way I wanted to.
Now there is definitely nothing wrong with living in the moment. I think the more present I am, the better off I am dealing with life. But back then, I don’t think I could see the value of the long term. Like spending money on the HVAC every year to ensure that the HVAC had an extended operating life would have been just dumb to me. Thankfully, by the time I became a homeowner, I realized that there were such things as long term investments and commitments. When I signed that 30 year mortgage, it got me hip to thinking more long term for sure. That spilled over to my house as well. Part of the deal with buying that first house was that I had to replace the HVAC. When I bought one that was a higher tier model and super efficient, I spent some money. Luckily, I was smart enough to follow that up with consistent semi annual HVAC preventive maintenance. Eventually, I bought another home. But, I kept that first starter home as rental income. And that too ended up being a really wise investment. It’s been just over 25 years since I had that first HVAC unit installed. And it’s still running strong. I’ll have to start thinking about replacing it before too much longer. But the idea that I may get 30 years of flawless service from an HVAC unit is amazing to me.