Carlos Ramirez spent 31 years as a Cal Fire captain in the San Bernardino National Forest. The A-frame cabin he and his wife Teresa bought in Big Bear in 2002 was his reward — a quiet Tuesday-morning coffee spot above the treeline, a place his daughters learned to ski from the back deck.
When he retired in 2022, the pension math worked. But pensions don't grow. And the cabin, which had been their family's touchstone for 20 years, cost $8,400 a year to maintain — HOA, utilities, snow removal, insurance.
Carlos refused to sell. Teresa refused to push. So they asked us what a smart partial-rental strategy could look like.
We built a calendar that reserved eight specific weeks a year for the Ramirez family — Thanksgiving, Christmas week, New Year's, ski-season anchors. The other 44 weeks went to vacation rental. Heavy booking pressure in winter. Steady mid-week family demand in summer. Quiet shoulder weeks in spring and fall when Carlos could drive up alone with his morning coffee and the same view he's had since 2002.
In 2024, the cabin earned $41,200 gross, netted about $28,000 after fees and property costs. That was enough to cover the cabin's entire annual cost structure — and fund Carlos and Teresa's anniversary trip to Patagonia that October.
When we visited the property last month to replace a refrigerator, Carlos was on the deck fixing a ski pole for his granddaughter. He looked at the guest book — a small notebook we keep in the kitchen — and smiled at the entries from families he'd never meet.
