It came to pass that the lion kingdom started snoring at 50.  It currently only happens when lying face up & it has yet to become as loud as the attainable women.  The soft palate has grown over the years & sagged down.  It started making noise when doing normal tasks at age 49.  It has grown in frequency since then.

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Noted universities have all dropped standardized testing, while the industry has gone all in on standardized leet code testing.  It represents a decline in enrollment with an increase in labor force.  

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So the lion kingdom finally realized a huge 36% loss on real estate after a 20 year battle.  For many years, the old man encouraged buying land.  He drove around the sierras & Fl*rida looking at 5 acre plots of land for decades, eventually buying 2 5 acre plots to live on.  Real estate never had a prolonged downturn.  It wasn't on anyone's mind in 2006.  It would secure a very luxurious retirement home before prices increased.  The alternative in those days was a truly bleak future of just having CD's at 4% & committing to an overpriced, tiny house near silicon valley.  So the lion kingdom bought a 5 acre plot next to the old man's.

Helas, the world changed in 2008, in ways no-one envisioned.  Many real estate investments, including the lion kingdom's, never regained anything close to their 2006 level.  2% permanently became the high water mark for interest rates.  Except for 1 very brief period in 2024, 4% interest is never coming back.  Finance tubers now extol the virtues of a 4% CD.

The lion kingdom never saw the deed or the fine print.  It was all delegated.  The deed required further investment in mowing it, landcaping it, pruning weeds, removing dead trees, fencing it.  This & the real impact of property tax ended up being significant.

For 11 years, lions ambivalently paid the full property tax & costs to have the old man manetain the property.  It amounted to some $2.5k per year.  Lions continued renting, sacrificing the present for assured access to housing in the future, while watching everyone else buy overpriced, tiny houses in their 30's & 40's.

Then for another 10 years, lions managed to get out of the property tax & manetenance costs by donating the land to agricultural users.

Helas, the tide began to change after 2023.  It became harder to find agricultural users, as the community became more urban.  In 2024, the parent's health rapidly declined & they would no longer be able to manetain the property for the previous cost.

Don't think they were aware just how quickly their health would decline.  They thought they would be the lucky ones, because they didn't get fat, ate authentic food, exercised, & weren't couch potatoes.

The lion kingdom got a fortune cookie that week, which said "your luck is about to change".  Having always known they were extremely lucky, lions knew it was bad news.  Then there were thoughts that luck is relative, but no, the luck was really over.  It was necessary to either take a significant pay cut & move in or sell the property in a forced sale of up to -36%.  

To move in & take a pay cut, the lion kingdom could become house rich & cash poor.  The lion kingdom would dispose a significant amount of cash on the house, up front, making goals in liquid net worth unattainable.  The house was adjacent to the property & it could be subject to the same type of losses, leading to a house poor, cash poor situation. 

Over the years, lions desired a more walkable neighborhood & milder climate, but would now be committed to that location.  Lions could easily get into any low income rental in much better locations.

On the other paw, the lion kingdom could have more space, stabilized housing costs, no realized losses.  The house could be somewhat of the man cave lions always wanted.  Lions could own a real piano & a real stereo.

Not realizing losses is sort of a bragging right.  Lions lost 50% on much smaller positions before.  The realized -36% would be comparable to a routine stonk market dip.  Lions had enough cash to reinvest in the next stonk market dip of -36%, in an act of revenge.  The plan would be to reinvest the proceeds from the forced sale in the next stonk market dip of over a certain percentage.

Many animals believe the stonk market is poised for an imminent, significant decline & it normally does in the quarter after a santa clause rally like right now.  Deferring capital gains to the new year, raising money to pay taxes are the mane causes.

Lions have noted many advantages to liquid investments over a primary residence.  In the current net worth category, lions are probably better off in stonks.  Primary residences tend to benefit only lower net worths.

Revenge investing is a thing, basically adjusting your strategy & trying again at hopefully wiser investments, instead of giving up & stuffing it in a mattress.  In times of extreme market downturns, it pays to invest in higher volatility, while in times of extreme market upturns, it pays to invest in lower volatility.

The property had 20 years of memories in it.  For all those years, it was always going to belong to the lion kingdom.  A large man cave was going to be be built & lions were going to live out their days there.  It was going to have a large piano that very few animals could afford because very few animals had enough space.

Lions imagined a routine of waking up to the sunrise in 1 window & practicing to the sunset through another window.  Each part of the man cave would serve a different time of day.  Lions would work from east to west in each hour.  There would be nothing but a grass plain outside, like the ranches on Finley Rd lions once marveled at.  Lions pondered assembling a weather station, off grid solar, starlink, a robot to monitor the exterior.

At minimum, lions would either buy or inherit the parent's house.  They showed how to drive the tractor in preparation for that day.  There were further emails about grading & tree removal required before building on the plot.  All that would not happen.

 Sometimes, lions still ponder attaining such things somewhere else, on another plot of land.  Gradually, it began to feel unlikely that lions would ever have the stomach to spend the amount needed for such luxury.  After attaining a liquid net worth goal, could lions really give up that number?  The reality of manetenance, property tax, walkability started favoring remodeling an old tract house, at most.  Lions were very car dependent in 2006, could scarcely imagine going more than 3 miles every day by paw.  That wasn't the case anymore.

 It gradually became clear the man caves on gootube weren't really as cheap as they looked & to be remotely affordable, they had to be far from walkable, far from roads, in very harsh climates. Off grid power is super expensive.  The vanwives somewhat described these aspects, but definitely not Texas Best.  What the vanwives do is very physically demanding & has caused the short one back problems.  Lions believe they had to move closer to town to deal with health problems of both the dogue & the short one.

Lions sometimes pondered if only they weren't locked into such a luxurious future, they could quit working years sooner, but over achieving was always the goal since school.  For 20 years, the old man considered it a failure to never achieve a luxurious house on 5 acres but to have to retire in low income housing or a trailer.  The combination of the inflation of 2023, hurricane in 2024, & health problems changed everything overnight.