I posed the question:

Are you interested in hearing about how an architect and banker went from being "consumer driven typical Americans who though money and career success were paramount" to a "couple of simple living rural people who have a quality of life that is second to none".

You've shown some interest, but please understand to fully explain this journey would be a monumental undertaking. Adam (Spider Pig) aptly suggested I give an abbreviated version and if someone is interested in a certain topic I could expand upon that specific area. It was a great suggestion so here goes:

I'm going to give a very brief background on who we were:

By the time I was in my mid-20's I was a rising professional with two college degrees, a promising career in architecture, etc. I built my first house immediately after graduation with a $1 down payment. Yes, $1. I also bought a new Mustang that year, and had $35,000 in student loans.

I had a tough childhood, and was never taught proper finances. To me, if you could afford the payments you could afford the product. I'm the first person in my family to graduate from High School (neither parents, or grandparents graduated from HS). My father (Vietnam Vet) left when I was seven while we were living in Germany (he was stationed there). Prior to, and after that, I moved A LOT. I ended up living with a relative that was a "military styled survivalist" quite a lot growing up.

My wife, who is 6 years younger than I, grew up in an affluent family filled with success. Her family is the sort of "middle America" family that most people think are only fictional. Everyone is college educated, very successful, pillars of the community sorts with huge social networks (wine tasting parties, yard parties in the kinds of neighborhoods you see in the movies about "perfect middle American life", etc). She has a Bachelor's degree, and worked in banking for 11 years prior to quitting for our "downshifting" lifestyle. To her, debt is equal to sin.

She was the "mother hen" to her siblings. I barely knew my sister (12 years my junior).

Her parents divorced, but remarried (the same year, LOL) and have been remarried over 20 years now.

My parents divorced, and remarried many times to many people. At one point, I know my father was married to a woman who was younger than me and in prison at the time of their marriage.

Basically my wife and I came from "opposite ends" of the social spectrum. Opposites attract, right? Anyway, we are so similar in our world views as to be able to complete each other's sentences. She is, without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened to me...as you will see.

We started dating when I was 30 years old (she was 24). This was December 2004. At the time, she had just built a nice little starter home with a substantial down payment. I was in the same house I built at age 23 and had managed to owe more than I built it for. I built my first house in 1997 for $87k, but owed $93k in 2004.

When we met it was INSTANT sparks. It was obvious from the very first second that I wanted to spend my life with this woman. This feeling has only grown over the past 9.5 years. Neither of us had ever experienced anything like the feelings we shared. It is magical. I wish everyone could have a marriage like ours (and we believe they can. The formula is very simple: don't be selfish and childish...place the other person's interests ahead of your own in a loving way. As long as they're doing the same thing - you'll live in bliss).

Anyway...

In March 2005 I traded the 2005 Mustang GT I had bought in October 2004 for a new 2005 Ford SUV at my (now) wife's suggestion. This was the first of many good financial decisions. We still have that 2005 SUV, and hope it will last another 10 years!!!!

In April 2005 we bought an eight year old custom built 2100sf house in a nice neighborhood, and moved in together. We were both able to sell our houses and put a 20% down payment on the new home. We spent the next seven years there.

We married in February 2007.

The moment we moved in together she sat about GENTLY teaching me about finances. There was never one argument, or guilt trip, etc. She has a way of dealing with me that disarms me and makes me receptive instead of defensive. One day she came home from the bank where she worked with a spread sheet that showed we could be down to just our mortgage debt in less than four years. That day we owed:

$4,000 My Medical Bills
$18,000 Nissan Car
$24,600 Ford SUV
$33,000 My Student Loans
$36,000 Home Acreage (I had bought 2 acres a little further out before meeting my wife with the intention of building a home on it).
$MORTAGE on our house

It took A LOT of convincing, because I simply didn't believe people could be "debt free". She kept going over the numbers, and explaining reversed compounding interest, etc. Eventually I accepted she was right, and was FLOORED. The feeling of HOPE that poured over me was overwhelming. We could be down to our mortgage in just a number of years! Keep in mind, we never "hurt" for anything or were worried about money. We made plenty enough to continue living the way were living, but she wanted a better life for us.

Here was her plan...

1) She already had us on a general budget, but wrote out every item on a detailed budget. This even included a "snack food" line item.

2) We cut ALL unnecessary expenses. She quotes Dave Ramsey a lot so "live today like no other so we can live tomorrow like no other". This included: no cable tv, no internet, no going out to eat, no vacations, no extraneous travel (gas costs money), no going out to movies, no magazine subscriptions, etc.

3) We placed the 2 acre lot on the market for sale.

4) We placed her car up for sale. We made the decision to drop down to one car so we could save money (cancel the debt on it and eliminate 50% of our car insurance costs).

5) We revisited the budget every week to make sure we're meeting or exceeding it.

We sold her car pretty quickly, and shared one vehicle for the next six years. Remember, we lived 17 minutes (at 70mph) from the edge of town we both worked full time in. This was a big sacrifice, but it paid off.

Selling the land turned into a nightmare. We simply could not recover what I had paid (I paid $40k plus spent $5 building a drive onto it). After YEARS of trying (and exploring the option - IN DEPTH - of building a house on it) we finally sold it for $31,900. This $14,000 loss was painful, but it cleared another line item off the books.

She had a "debt snowball plan" meaning we eliminated the smallest debt first, and then rolled that extra money into the next larger debt item...repeat repeat repeat.

Before long we were down to just our single SUV and house. We paid the SUV off almost six months earlier than she had predicted.

At this point, I think it is important to note: we live in an economically depressed area and don't have "high incomes". Yes, I am an architect and earned my first license a year after we were married HOWEVER, in my area very few architects make more than about $80k a year. Most are in the $50-80k range. My wife was making $15 an hour at the bank. The reason I bring this up is to serve as notice that we weren't making over $100k at any point in this process. EVERYONE reading this can be debt free if you just have the will power to do so.

More to come later.

I have always been into guns, gear, uniforms, equipment, hiking, camping, shooting, training, hunting and fishing (this is the least of these), self-preservation and survivalism. I bought my first AR15 at age 10, and have continuously owned ARs since 1984. As previously mentioned, I grew up with a 1980's style survivalist who heavily influenced me in this regard. In High School I tried to organize a "Survivalist Club". My college apartment had a closet filled with camo, field gear, MREs and water containers. This was just who I was. When the 1999 Y2K scare ramped up so did I. From 1999 until about 2009 I was in a flurry of training and assessment.

My wife came from a "guns are scary - who needs anything other than a phone and car to survive? You can call the police or drive to a Hilton" family.

Our decision to not travel or vacation meant we needed to find alternatives for "down time". We decided to go camping since it was only $5 at a local State Park. My wife LOVED it. This was her first introduction to a "wilderness lifestyle". She thought cooking on an open flame, sleeping in a tent and watching "her man" baton through firewood with a Bussekin in the rain was "sexy". We started camping A LOT!

I had already given her basic instruction on firearms usage, and she had a scheduled amount of training she was putting in. The first camping trip kicked everything into motion. She applied for her Carry License, started looking at food differently, etc.

At this point, we had already left the "consumer" life but now were were leaving the "matrix" life too.

She had been interested in conservative politics but became involved and started researching all of the topics we discussed at the dinner table (world government, carbon taxes, etc). It wasn't long before she was leading the conversations.

We also started looking at food differently. We were given some "free range" turkey eggs to take on one of our camping trips. After tasting them she jumped head first into "natural food" research.

While she was getting up to speed with libertarian politics and safe food knowledge I was EXCEEDINGLY busy training, testing, and teaching (online) all things survival related. This was a period of hyper activity for us. She with the food and I with the survival.

All of these factors combined into a single epiphany.

Her efforts to be politically involved was a huge learning process wherein she found that there wasn't any real desire to fix the problems that exist. There is just greed (for power over people and wealth). I had reached this conclusion years earlier, but she had to find out we cannot change the system. Her interest in "natural food" lead her to "organic food" research which resulted in us both reading DOZENS of books and concluding that "American table fare" is absolutely AWFUL for you and the environment. Being down to just our mortgage allowed us to start buying organic food. We instantly starting losing unwanted fat, and our general health improved.

My intense survival activities (building a food pantry that was very well stocked, extensive bug-out bags, etc) resulted in me starting to question the "internet philosophy" and "truths" of preparing for disasters. I started asking questions like: where are you going to go if you bug out? What happens if you have 3 months of food stored and "it" lasts 6 months?

We sat about trying to "live more independently" on our 1/8th acre sub-division house lot. We grew a raised bed garden, and planted some fruit trees. We started considering how to use every square foot of space on the tiny lot for food production and considered putting a storm shelter in the ground (the house didn't have a basement).

One evening after working on our tiny raised bed garden, and after spending a lot of time drawing plans in CAD on how to use EVERY SQUARE FOOT of our 1/8th acre lot to grow a fruit and vegetables we concluded that this wasn't going to work.

We had already spent an enormous amount of time trying to find a way to build an economically feasible house on the 2 acres (about 25 minutes from town) that we eventually sold. We felt the 2 acres would enable us to have a large garden, fruit trees, etc. This plan failed miserably and we sold the lot at a huge loss.

Simultaneously, we also became interested in environmental issues and "1800's homestead lifestyles". We started visiting orchards, vineyards, etc to observe what it would take to actually LIVE a simple self-sustaining lifestyle instead of just buying products made by someone else.

We also learned about the "downshifting movement" where professionals who had become dissatisfied with the "rat race" and chose to give up on suburban "consumer driven life" for a quiet rural simple life. Basically trade potential earned dollars for personal fulfillment and growth.


We spent the next 18 months INTENSIVELY planning, researching, reading, visiting, and looking for a place where we could have build a simple ecologically friendly, organic food rich lifestyle.

Our foray into organic food had become a lifestyle. This is NOT an exaggeration. In our area, to purchase all of the organic food we eat we have to visit: (1) Co-Op, (2) Natural Food Stores, (3) Super Markets, (2) Wal-Marts, (1) Target, and (1) Fresh Market.

It takes 8 hours of shopping to accomplish this. It became such a time burden we knew something had to change.

This was the driving factor behind our property selection.

We sat down and started to identify what we wanted to accomplish and how we would get there. Here's a brief list of those criteria:

1) Food independence. The food system in the US is fragile and dependent on fossil fuel transportation. The average meal travels over 1800 miles before it makes it to your table.

2) Food safety. I can talk for hours about food safety, but for the sake of my sanity suffice to say we don't believe in: GMOs, petrol-chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, irradiation, or preservatives. We also don't believe in processed foods or foods containing artificial flavors, colors, or additives.

3) Water safety. Municipal water supplies are filled with biological waste, FLUORIDE (the Nazi's were the first people to use this as a pacifying agent...), residual chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Think about all of the Round-Up run off that goes into your water system.

4) Financial Freedom. We were down to just our mortgage, but we wanted a smaller house that could be quickly paid of so I could retire earlier (and work on our farm together).

5) Breathing Room. We didn't want noisy neighbors watching everything we did. At our sub-division house it took 2x longer to complete a task because every busy body had to stop and ask why we were planting a Cherry tree.

Lastly, we wanted a SIMPLE OFF THE GRID life.

We didn't want to be dependent (on anyone but ourselves) for any of these items:

1) Water
2) Food
3) Sewer
4) Electricity
5) Gas

These criteria led us to search for the following property:

HOME: 1200-1500sf
HOME AMENITIES: Full Basement, Wood Stove + Forced Air Heat
LAND: 20-40 acres
LAND AMENITIES: Barn, Septic System, Well Water, Propane Tank For Gas
COST: Less than $250,000

After a lot of prayer, and searching we bought:

HOME: 1300sf Main Level + 300sf Open Loft
HOME AMENITIES: Full Basement, Wood Stove + Forced Air Heat
LAND: 11 acres
LAND AMENITIES: Barn, Septic System, Well Water, Propane Tank For Gas
COST: About $250,000 After Extensive Interior Remodel.

My wife quit her job to manage the remodel and run the farmstead.

Our property is 35 minutes (at highway speeds) from a town large enough to have a WalMart. We live seven minutes (at highway speeds) from a town with a population of 780.

Our 11 acres was about 40% timber and 60% till when the original owners built the house. However, over time the timber has taken over a larger portion of the property. It is now 60-65% timber and 35-40% till. We're in the process of reclaiming the timbered land for use in our organic farming operations.

To date we've completed the following "small holding farmstead" improvements:

* 9 month long total remodel of the interior. I have pictures in another thread that I'll bring in here later.

* EXTENSIVELY designed and revised the design on CAD of our entire property. We have full color plans of every tree we've planted and will plant, etc.

* Bought 32 6"x6" non-treated cedar posts and installed 28 of them in our "vineyard". The posts were over $1000 (cannot use treated posts in organic farming).

* Planted blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and grapes. Have had to replace many plants due to weather, local "big box store plant quality" and our inexperience.

* Planted 4 variety of: apple, peach, plum, cherry, and 2 variety of nectarine and apricot trees in our orchard. As with the brambles, we've had to replace several due to rabbits eating the bark, deer rubbing felt off on them, weather and our inexperience.

* Built a 48" sheep and goat fence around our 0.33 acre garden. We added 24" of chicken wire to the bottom and three electric wires (up to 8') above.

* Built a 48" sheep and goat fence around our rotational grazing sheep paddocks.

* Built a 8' six wire electric fence around all of the tillable area to date. This was 7280 linear feet.

* We built a 6'x7'x12' mobile chicken coop.

* We have raised 10 chickens (2 roo and 8 hen) into a good laying flock producing 6-8 eggs a day. We currently have our "first broody hen" who is sitting on a clutch of eggs to hatch. This takes her out of egg production for six weeks.

* We have raised 16 hens into pullet stage. We hope they start laying in a few months.

* Planted a garden last year before the fence was complete. We didn't get one tomato from our 107 tomato plants due to deer.

* Planted a MASSIVE garden in our fenced garden this year. As an example: I planted over 1500 peas by hand in ONE bed. My wife spends sun up to sun down working on the farmstead.

Our current lifestyle is like this...

Monday thru Thursday I get up at 5:15am and leave for work by 5:45am. My commute is 55 minutes each way. I work 10 hours as an architect, and get home about 6:45 pm each day. This is unless I need to stop at Rural King, Lowe's, Menard's, Home Depot, etc for farming related items. I have to make a stop about twice a week.

Friday thru Sunday I work on the farm sun-up to sun-down.

My wife works on the farm everyday except 1 day per week which is the day she comes into town for grocery shopping and to have dinner with her family.