Ask someone what visitors should see in their town and they will rattle off a confident list: the museum, the overlook, the historic district, that one restaurant. Then ask when they last went themselves. The silence is usually about a decade long.
We save our curiosity for places that require a boarding pass. Meanwhile the place we actually live sits unexplored, five miles in every direction, waiting for us to notice it the way a visitor would.
The Five Mile Rule
Here is a small challenge with a big return: once a month, visit something within five miles of home that you have never seen, or have not seen in ten years. That is the whole rule. It costs almost nothing, it requires no packing, and it reliably produces the thing we usually fly somewhere to find, which is the feeling of discovering something.
Familiarity is not the same as knowledge. Most of us have a commute-shaped map of our town and call it the whole city.
Where to Start Looking
- The attraction you send visitors to. Go stand in your own museum, garden, or historic site on a quiet weekday morning. It is a different place without an itinerary attached.
- The farmers market you always mean to visit. Go hungry, talk to the growers, and buy one vegetable you cannot identify. Dinner becomes a small adventure.
- A walking tour of your own downtown. Many towns offer them through the historical society, and being a tourist on your own main street is a strangely delightful experience. You will learn three things you will repeat for years.
- The restaurant one neighborhood over. Not the famous one. The small family-run place with the hand-lettered specials board that you have driven past two hundred times.
- Live music in a small room. A local jazz night, a brewery with a bluegrass trio, a community theater. Talent is everywhere, and it is ten minutes from your house.
Bring Someone Along
Exploring locally is even better as a shared project. Trade picks with your spouse or a friend, alternating who chooses the month’s outing, with a standing rule that nobody is allowed to veto. Grandkids make outstanding tour companions too, partly because everything is new to them and partly because their questions force you to actually read the plaques.
Some couples keep a running list on the refrigerator, adding every place a friend mentions or a local article praises. The list does the remembering so a random free Saturday does not default to errands.
Fall Makes This Easy
The next few months are peak season for exactly this. Harvest festivals, fall markets, high school football under the lights, studio tours, and small-town main street events all crowd the calendar between September and Thanksgiving. Check your town’s event listings once a week and you will find more happening within five miles than you can possibly attend.
So here is the question for this weekend: what is the one place in your own town you always recommend but have not actually visited in years? Go be its tourist. The line is shorter than you think.
Want to learn more?
Fill out the form and Caitlin John will be in touch.
Caitlin John
Caitlin John, LLC is a Private Wealth Management Firm based in Brighton, Michigan. As an Independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) firm we work with both individual and institutional investors. Our asset management style focuses on educating our clients on common misconceptions in key areas of investing: true asset class diversification, benchmark correlation, standard deviation and how important risk-adjusted returns are in today’s market environment. As a fee-based assets management firm, educating our clients invokes commitment on their part and accountability on behalf of our Advisors and the firm as a whole.
Our client services extend beyond asset management to provide strategic tax planning and wealth transfer strategies for both retirees and persons preparing for retirement. With our family lineage extending beyond fifty years serving clients, Caitlin John is the culmination of our experience and passion. Our mission is to seek, introduce and deliver the most refined and forward thinking financial strategies and management techniques to our clients. Our foundation of ethics and performance standards are driven by one thing: Stewardship.
Equity compensation arrives with no instruction manual, just a vesting schedule and a portal login. This guide covers what you hold, when each piece becomes taxable, the concentration trap, and the selling discipline that turns grants into diversified wealth.
Get the Free Guide →