By George Howe
There was a time when October was one of my favorite months of the year. The weather cooled off, football was back, the leaves were changing, we had a killer neighborhood Oktoberfest party, and Halloween was right around the corner. When the kids were little, October was a pretty exciting month around our house.
There were trips to the pumpkin patch and apple orchards, discussions about Halloween costumes, carving pumpkins, decorating the front yard, and figuring out which neighborhood offered the best return on investment when it came to candy. Halloween was serious business.
I had responsibilities, too. I was in charge of accompanying the kids trick-or-treating and in our neighborhood it required a four-wheel carriage with an attached Yeti cooler, some adult apple cider, walking several miles in the dark, and periodically inspecting the candy inventory for quality control purposes. Particularly the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
But somewhere along the way, the kids grew up.
Nobody is asking where we stored the Halloween decorations. There are no last-minute costume emergencies or frantic trips to the store because somebody suddenly decided they wanted to be something completely different. And apparently, with all this newfound free time, I’ve been reassigned to property management.
Welcome to October homeownership in New England.
October is no longer about Halloween. It’s about preparing your house, yard, and everything you own for the possibility that Mother Nature is about to spend the next five months trying to destroy it.
There’s the annual ritual of cleaning gutters, cutting back shrubs, putting away patio furniture, winterizing outdoor faucets, storing garden hoses, and dealing with the approximately 14 million leaves that fall on my property every autumn.
I’m not sure exactly when this transition occurred, but I don’t remember agreeing to it.
And the leaves. Good Lord, the leaves.
You can spend an entire Saturday blowing leaves, only to wake up Sunday morning and discover that the trees have apparently decided to start over. I’ve come to believe that trees deliberately wait until you’ve finished cleaning the yard before dropping the remaining 40 percent of their leaves.
And why is it that the leaves from your neighbor’s trees always seem to end up in your yard? I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything, but prevailing winds appear to have a very selective understanding of property boundaries.
At some point in my life, I went from being excited about buying a new baseball glove to getting genuinely interested in the performance specifications of a backpack leaf blower. I now have opinions about two-cycle fuel, air velocity, and the proper technique for moving wet leaves.
This is not the person I imagined becoming.
And then there’s the generator.
As a financial advisor, I’ve spent the better part of my career helping people make sound financial decisions: proper estate plans, portfolio management, tax strategies, real estate purchases, retirement accounts, etc. But I can tell you, without hesitation, that one of the best investments I’ve ever made was installing a whole-house generator with an automatic transfer switch.
Forget the S&P 500. This thing has delivered returns that are difficult to measure.
For those unfamiliar with the technology, a whole-house generator automatically detects when the utility power goes out, starts itself, and restores electricity to the house. No extension cords, no trips to the garage, no standing outside in a blizzard trying to start a portable generator that hasn’t run since the Bush administration.
So, a tree falls in our neighborhood, the digital oven clock shuts off, there’s a brief pause, and suddenly everything comes back on. Heat, lights, refrigerators, televisions, internet. Life goes on. Meanwhile, somewhere down the street, a neighbor is searching for flashlights, locating candles, and trying to remember whether the garage door has a manual release.
Now, I’m not suggesting that I take any pleasure in watching the rest of the neighborhood go dark while my house lights up like a Las Vegas casino. But I will admit there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that my coffee maker will be operational in the morning.
Of course, the generator requires an annual inspection and maintenance, which has become another item on my October homeowner’s checklist. Oil, filters, battery, and making sure the automatic transfer switch does what it’s supposed to do.
And yes, there may have been some sticker shock with the original price and install, but I’ve never once questioned its value. In financial planning, we talk a lot about risk management, protecting assets, and preparing for unexpected events. Well, after living through enough New England winters, I can confidently say that having heat, electricity, and a working coffee maker during a three-day power outage qualifies as a pretty sound risk-management strategy.
So this October, I’ll probably spend another weekend cleaning up the yard, putting things away for winter, checking the generator, and trying to convince myself that I enjoy it. And when Halloween arrives on Saturday, I’ll leave a bowl of candy by the front door.
Naturally, I’ll have to inspect the Reese’s first.
Some traditions are worth keeping.