Off the grid: The great transfer of wealth

I saw a graph last week in the New York Times about the great transfer of Boomer wealth in a reasonable distribution spread among various subsequent generations.

While it seems like a thoroughly researched economic theory, they clearly left out the important factor that I am building a house.

As far as I can tell, the building of a house creates a kind of cosmic anomaly in which wealth amassed by generations, nations, plundering, lottery or hard work is sucked into an infinite vortex of inexplicable quantum physics, a black hole of banking, and then neatly labeled “tile package.”

No one really talks about this phenomena because economists don’t have an answer and Gen X-ers don’t want to get blamed for squandering the money on 9-foot windows. And Millennials can’t afford houses anyway.

In any case, if the U.S. economy crashes in the near future, the remnants of it can be found in a line on my build budget called “excavation” or “truss engineering.”

Subcontractors are the economic variables of this system, and every time I read a quote by one, I ask my husband for their direct phone number so I can pick their brains on the marriage of astrophysics and finance.

Also, I want to understand why it takes so long to hand-place tile. If I bring the coffee to support improved fine motor skills, will they give me a discount?

The problem is, my husband needs to continue working with these fine folk long after our house is built, so I’m not allowed to apply my Indian-Bazaar-Rupee-Haggling technique.

Also, they probably have children of their own to feed, or worse, are funneling money into a similar gap in the space-time fabric (boats, dental work, and houses are all sources of the same curiosity).

Months ago, we had declared that we would build a house for X number of dollars, mostly because X number of dollars was all the number of dollars we had.

But, as you know, most equations related to construction are warped by a kind of algorithm – I think in mathematical theory it is called “The Optimist Factor.”

It divides your estimates by cynicism to the power of 14 months, multiplies that by a 40,000 feet of cedar siding, subtracts the number of hours you’ll spend in marriage counseling, then adds a delivery surcharge.

This is a more accurate way to estimate your project costs.

For work in which one-eighth of an inch can be an impactful measurement, one might expect the accuracy of monetary math to be equally important.

This is misinformed and fails to consider the astrological influences on our pocketbooks, where the gravitational pull of wallpaper and light fixtures are that of dark matter.

As far as I can tell, the expansion of the universe is propelled by the velocity at which our money disappears.

Thankfully, there are banks everywhere that are more than willing to generously finance any discrepancies between the original, naive number you began with, and the contractor’s cosmically adjusted reality number.

They explain the astral size of your 30-year mortgage with the only thing less predictable than a black hole: Interest rates.

I’m well aware these are privileged problems to have, if one can call them problems at all.

In the end, we’ll have a home and I’ll be surrounded by trees again and the distribution of monetary wealth will feel like a distant concern.

It’s just money, I reminded myself today as I trotted along the trails that border our land, breathing in the thick scent of spring growth and soil.

I want my wealth to come in memories, songbirds, lupine blooms, trail miles, exposure to nature.

I want to be rich in love and friends. In the end, it’s all just stardust anyway.

I’m not sure what we take with us to the other side, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a clawfoot tub.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammimarie@gmail.com