It clicked at a barbecue when a guy pointed past his garage

A guy from my old job invited me over for a barbecue and about halfway through he pointed at the back of his lot and said his mother-in-law lived there. I assumed he meant the house. He meant the 500 square foot cottage behind the garage with its own little porch and its own mailbox slot.

I walked back there with him. It was one room, a kitchen along one wall, a bathroom, a bed. Clean, warm, a small window over the sink looking at his fence. She'd been in it four years. When she eventually moves on he rents it, and he already knows what for, because two neighbors on the same street have units and both are leased.

I'd spent months reading about strategies and arguing with myself about which one fit, and none of it landed until I was standing in a room somebody's grandmother lives in. It's a small building on land you already own where a person pays you rent. That's it. That's the whole thing.

I don't own a house yet so I'm nowhere near doing this. But I stopped reading about six other strategies that week.