Jeff visited his aunt Dolly early one sunny afternoon to probe her memories and hopefully work out a plan for his own survival. There were several avenues possible. Jeff could change professions entirely or he could develop a companion field to real estate like learning residential structural inspection.
The Great Depression occurred when his aunt was just a child, so she had ‘real time’ memories of how people survived years of low or no employment when one third of the population had no income. Being mentally nimble, even as she aged, provided even more value to the advice being offered.
As Jeff talked with his aunt about solutions to his situation, it became clear that there were solid options. Aunt Dolly remembered that some fields of employment disappeared forever while entirely new ones were developed. She asked Jeff to explain how residential structural inspection worked. Jeff knew this was a relatively new field in the area of real estate so was not surprised that his aunt has only sketchy knowledge of it. Jeff explained that with 60 percent of most family’s wealth being invested in their homes, it was critical to know how sound the property was before purchasing it. As often happens, a whole new field developed to provide this service. Currently real estate agents train to do residential structural inspection as another stream of income. They could do the inspections for financial institutions or private individuals separately from their real estate sales work. Other persons, such as building contractors, were also interested in learning residential structural inspection both to provide additional ways to earn income and to know if a property was worth an investment.
Aunt Dolly asked Jeff how he could learn how to do this work. Jeff explained that he would have to obtain a state recognized certificate by completing a short, but intensive, study course, take a state exam and pass successfully before he could do this type of work. At this point Aunt Dolly asked two critical questions; how much would the instruction cost and how long would it take. As he had said, the course was short, as little as two to four weeks, but he could continue to take instruction up to a year so he was guaranteed that he would pass. The cost ranged from as little as $250.00 to $450.00 depending on his choice of home study, or on site classroom participation.
Jeff just had one large problem and that was that he had continued to work in real estate, but had no income for over a year. His savings were exhausted. Aunt Dolly asked him to look into possible student loan financing, but if he really needed the help she could loan it to him. Jeff was shocked. He thought the only thing she could offer was good advice. She said living through the Great Depression had impressed on her the need to be frugal.
