The counter offer

Today is the big day, for the big deal the family has been working on. Being from the woods of New Hampshire I never thought I would be involved in this kind of stuff, but it's the family I've been married into for almost 17 years.

They are an oil family from New Mexico and Texas, with large tracts of land that they have mineral rights on/in. The current offer on the table is just about all of the property not currently under contract, enough to put 40 oil wells on, in a proven area. Most of the family doesn't care about a signing bonus, that's more of an upfront rental payment for the land. What we care about is them getting production up and running and moving on to the next well, repeat. $7 million for the first oil well from start to finish, and once/if they get the money back out of the ground they will start on the next well and repeat this process. It's cheaper after the first well but still a lot of money.

The worst case is that nothing happens and we continue on perfectly happy the way we are. Worst case is $0, we have signed deals before and some of them have produced but nothing large scale.

It's exciting to think about the best case; mortgage free with a large plot of land and cabin next to a huge garden. The kind of place where a bad day is spent working hard for yourself instead of someone else. It would be several years before that happened and we have zero expectations.
When we discussed it this morning, I mentioned we had to get the last water barrel hooked up this weekend and what direction should we route the ivy that's exploding up. I'm also going to try some grape plants I found that are supposed to be hearty enough for this area.
We laughed talking about the simple things to do around the home while knowing that the best possible case in a few years could see us making around $750,000 per month (yes, each month) before taxes. We still car pooled this morning since I get free gas in my company car

Dog and house sitting for the next 2 weeks is going to kill my time but always happy to help out great friends. We have a lot of projects to do this weekend and my body is already hurting from my crazy fast downhill running last night. We are too cheap/frugal for massages.