I’ve had a dream since I was a young bitterling. Not the type of dream most of you have, like traveling, becoming famous or writing a novel. Actually, I do have the novel dream, and the getting rich part of the rich and famous, but one dream has always stood above all. The reason I want to write a novel and get rich, is to obtain the real dream. To own a man cave.

The only reason I do anything in this world for money is so I can go back to living like my ancient ancestors. Living in a cave. My ancestors didn’t have 70-inch 4K TV’s or Xbox’s, but they used their caves for the same purpose as me. To get away from angry creatures trying to kill them. The cavemen from dinosaurs, and me from other people wanting to kill my quiet.

When my family moved into our “forever home” in 2018, I was pumped because the house had a basement. Unfortunately, it was unfinished, but my wife promised me we could finish it as soon as we got a few things. Before we got the basement though, she claimed we needed “important” things like beds, couches and a refrigerator. I reluctantly agreed to get those things, but only in exchange for my mancave finished basement.

By the time we finished buying the so-called “necessary things”, she finally got a quote to finish the basement. It came out to around $40,000, which I said was well worth it, but she said we should wait, because we might need the money for something important like food or groceries. I was like, yes, of course, let’s wait. Prices for things never go up, only down.

I’d like to announce a press conference about the current status of the basement. Any questions from the social media about it? Yes, you in the front.

Reporter from the AP: Is the basement finished yet?

ME: No.

Thanks for coming everyone and you will now please leave.

My dream of the mancave finished basement continues to crush my soul. Don’t worry though, we’ve gone through 3 different beds, 2 new cars and our kids keep getting new clothes. The unfinished basement has been highly advantageous for my wife though. She’s stored old couches, Christmas tree decorations, clothes that our kids didn’t want and of course, storage for the three beds we didn’t want.

I don’t ask for much. All I wanted for our wedding was an amazing cake. Instead, we got the Leaning Tower of Pastry that was done by amateurs that were learning how to make cakes. Predictably, they weren’t successful on their first try.

When it came to our “forever home” my wife had a dozen things on her list. I had one. A mancave finished basement.

The lesson here is to lower your expectations. For me, that means to lowering my expectations from 1 to zero.

The ironic part is that the basement would have been finished right away if it had a separate entrance. Then we would have rented it out to other people, and we could have charged people twice our current mortgage and I still wouldn’t have had my mancave.

As bad luck would have it, we have the opposite problem now. We have all these occupants in our house that aren’t paying rent. We have two younger renters that haven’t paid rent for 18 years and 11 months, and 15 years and 8 months, respectively. Economists would call those people sunken costs for the amount of rental income we haven’t collected from them.

On top of that, we now have a pregnant squatter that hasn’t even asked if she can move in with us. She’s occupied the space just below our porch steps in some recently refreshed bark. Not only has she not asked if she could stay, but she hasn’t offered pay any rent. It looks like she is having at least 9 kids, and it could be even more. She’s going to be there for at least a month, maybe longer. We’re not sure who the dad is, because we’ve seen no sign of him. If you have any ideas on how to get rid of squatters, let me know. Here is a picture of the delinquent.

That doesn’t even include some other flying occupants that are building their forever home in the eaves of our roof. And we have some angry renters that are busily building honeycombs and threatening to sting us if we even try to collect rent or come anywhere near their subletted home in the other part of the roof eaves.

I’ve been so angry with some people that they’ve lived rent-free in my head, but this “everyone gets to live rent-free” in, under and around my house is getting a little ridiculous. It’s also a little ridiculous that the birds, bees, any young renters have any right to get mad at me for suggesting they get a job when the bank and I are the only ones that are contributing to the payment of the dwelling they all so ungraciously benefit from.

A little gratitude or a nice birthday or Father’s Day present would go a long way, but they all think living rent-free is just their right and not their privilege.

ARRRGGGHHHHHHHH

Bitter “Living Rent-Expensively” Ben