I hate, loathe, owing people money. I despise making monthly payments. I am sure I am not alone in this, of
course. I feel a bit insane with the
debt cycle. Buy something to provide
stability (i.e. a home) but have to consistently make monthly payments for the
major part of your life until you actually
own it.
We, like most of Americans, bought our house with a 30 year
mortgage and even 9 years later we have only paid off about 20% of it, and
that’s with never missing a single payment.
Really!?! I’d like to be debt
free before I’m too old to be able to enjoy it.
So the wheels started turning in my mind and apparently the
hubby’s as well and we started scheming, okay that sounds bad, like we were
planning on knocking over a bank. Dreaming,
we started dreaming. That’s more like it. Mostly just talking about the “what ifs”,
like what if we didn’t have to make a mortgage payment, what if we had the
security of owning, out right, our home and land, what if neither of us had to
work, full time, outside of the home (homestead) and could spend that time with
our family, teaching, loving, working alongside one another. Those what ifs sounded really good and so we
kept on talking about it and how it could come true.
If you have read some of my other post you’ll know how we
got a great deal on a piece of property.
That was the big break on our dream.
This is the start. The first BIG
step in the right direction, so what is the next step? What is our goals?
Our goals are mostly guidelines for decisions we need to
make in the future. A lot of things are
up in the air still, we’re not 100% on most of the specifics but here are the
goals we have for the future.
Have our land paid
for and build debt free. Now that is
a huge undertaking. We know that it
might seem like a big task to build debt free but it is our goal. We are not looking to build a very large home
since we have some crazy belief that many of our family members grew up in
small homes and it created more togetherness, more family time and, the end
result, a closer family. That is what we
want with our children. We plan to take
a page from our Appalachian ancestry and build a little at a time but more on
that later. Once we get our land paid
for and home built we can start really throwing money into savings for
retirement, travel, cars, emergencies and never have to use debt again
(hopefully)!
Produce as much as we
consume, within reason. It started
out mainly as our edibles. Have a
garden, grow our own vegetables and fruit, our own grains, our own animal feed
or be able to barter or trade for some of those things. Have some animals that we can sustainably
grow and keep. Animals like chickens for
eggs and meat, a dairy animal like dairy goats or a cow, maybe a pig or two to
raise a year, sheep or cow for meat each year as well. Whatever our land can support without too
much burden. Now are also starting to
consider things like our energy needs.
Looking at renewable energy sources, solar, hydroelectric, things we can
produce from our own property. Now I’m
not talking about being completely off grid, though maybe one day, but
producing some of what we consume would be wonderful.
Having these two goals in mind will help us make the big
decision that will be able to provide us with the life we want…but we will have
to make some sacrifices.
I’m sure most folks will think we’ve flipped! We’ve talked about living in a single wide
trailer or in a tiny house for the first little while as we build our
home. Things like that don’t scare me,
I’m not afraid of making sacrifices. Sometimes
the end result is worth all of the sacrifices that we are willing to make.
I am just crazy enough to believe that we can
make these dreams come true and being able to keep these goals in mind along
with our resolve, I am sure we’ll get there one day.
