The Student Loan

The student loan is the only piece of debt we have besides the mortgage on the Town House. When I was going to school I was lucky to have a combination of an academic scholarship, frugal living skills, and help from my grandmother which enabled me to get through college debt free. That's not to say things were a cake walk for me, I had to keep my grades up, live in a shitty apartment with 5 roommates, eat oatmeal and peanut butter for 3 meals per day, go to school year round, work part time jobs and walk everywhere but I did it. BV was not so lucky, he was the first person in his family to earn a degree, had no help from his family and couldn't give up his full time job. That lead him to seek his degree from a for-profit college and his work schedule meant it took him a lot longer to get the degree. Hindsight is 20/20 and now we can think ways he could have done things better but the past is the past and we are where we are. Where we are is holding a sizable student loan debt. Paying it off hasn't been the top priority until now. We have been spending our extra cash on other things such as renovations on 2 houses, school tuition and a big expensive fruitless project that came to nothing. Now that the end is in sight for my masters degree and we are making our final tuition payments, Paying off the debt makes a lot of sense, especially since it is a higher interest rate than our mortgage.  I have come up with a plan that will enable us to pay for the renovations and pay down the student loan at the same time. Hopefully this begins January 2015.

The Remodel

The Town House is a fixer-upper. Again when BV bought the place all he truly cared about was the garage. Since moving in we renovated the basement, living room and hall areas which was a major undertaking since we had to strip the place down to the studs. We did all the work ourselves and BV added to his building skill set. The kitchen and bathroom will likely be pretty intensive as well. We get 2 advantages out of this, it will make Town House more marketable when the time comes to sell and BV gets to refine his building skills. A third advantage is no longer having and ugly bathroom and kitchen.  

We have been accumulating(hoarding) the building supplies for the remodel for over the last year so that we have less out of pocket costs when the time comes. This also allows us to buy materials when they come on sale or before they are discontinued even if we aren't in the position to use them. This is tricky habit to have sometimes, right now an entire bedroom of our house is filled with building supplies for several future remodels. We had the flooring for the living room for almost 2 years before we finally uses it, yikes!

The Masters Degree

The masters degree will hopefully allow me to not only increase my earning potential but is needed to land a very desirable telecommuting job which will be ideal for when we move into the middle of nowhere. Right now my profession is a fairly hands on one but with this masters degree I will qualify for jobs that can be conducted remotely. If I can stay gainfully employed with a organization that provides benefits such as health insurance* and retirement, bringing in dependable earnings while working from home on the Future Homestead it will be a huge advantage. True self sufficiency will take a long time to achieve and is truly difficult in this day and age so this will keep us going until we are truly ready. 

*As a health care professional I know how important it is to carry health insurance. Every one of us (unless we belong to the one percent) are one heath crisis away from financial ruin unless we are well insured. While we are young and healthy it is easy to put this thought from our head but I have seen time and time again people being financially ruined by illness and not being able to pay for the care that they need. In addition to a job that provides healthcare BV and I are also contributing to a health savings account that will help us pay for health care down the road as well as cover premiums for personal health insurance if we find ourselves in the position for me to quit my day job one day. 

The Plan: Phase One

The eventual goal is to move to the Pacific Northwest (where I am originally from) and buy some acres. Currently I am stuck in a Town House in the middle of a desert (Utah). In order to get from here to there a few things must happen.

• Sell Town House
• Find and buy Future Homestead
• Get finances in order
• Be economically viable
• Bring skill set to a whole new level

We are going to spend the time we are stuck here getting our finances in order, building our skills, getting the Town House ready to sell, researching the topic of land buying and coming up with an economic viability plan for when we buy our homestead. On the horizon we have a few major projects that will get us closer to that goal: Finishing my masters degree, renovating our bathroom and kitchen and paying off my husbands student loan. 

The Town House

Right now I am about as far away from my goal as I could possibly be. I'm stuck in a town house with a postage stamp yard and due to current market conditions we may be stuck here for a few more years. My husband, who will be known as BV (Bearded Viking) from now on, bought this house in the middle of the real estate crash when everybody thought prices had reached rock bottom (they hadn't). He also got the first time home buyers tax credit which meant he had to live in it for 3 years as his primary residence. Since he is a gear head he was not interested in the yard, just the 2 car garage. He never guessed he'd meet a hard core gardener a few months later and want to spend the rest of his life with her. When the time came in to move in together we had no choice but to move into his place due to the tax credit. Also as a single family home with more equity, my place would be easier to sell. The final nail in the coffin was that it had no garage which was a deal breaker for BV. So with all that working against me I moved in to the Town House.

Jack

Jack is my ridiculously tall, bearded viking, VW fixing, booze making husband. He is hands down my favorite person. When I met him I was pretty settled and had my life all planned out. He managed to turn that all upside down. With in a year I moved out of my Urban Homestead, moved in to a town house with almost no yard (there are reasons for this) and got married (something I was never going to do). For awhile I lost the plan and got side tracked by life. After emerging from a rather chaotic time of my life I realized that with Jack added to the mix that a whole new possibility had opened up for me... Rural Homesteading. Before Jack I would have not had the skills, muscle/manual labor, or even the companionship needed to move out to the middle of nowhere and set up house.  Jack brings his mechanical abilities, building experience, hard work and patience to the table. I bring gardening knowledge/ability, mad composting skills, creativity, imagination and drive to the table. With both of us working together we might be able to pull this off.

Introduction

Hi my name is Willowpigbelly. Actually that's one of my nicknames for my dog but I thought it would make a great pen name. I have been interested in self-sufficiency for a long time, but my journey to where I am now has taken many twists and turns. I bought a house in 2007 close to the urban center of Salt Lake City but with a large yard. At the time I was interested in Urban Homesteading.  I ripped out my lawn, planted corn in my front yard (Daria reference anyone?) and even briefly dabbled in chickens (my neighbors were not thrilled) and was plugging a long when I was thrown my first major curve ball.... Jack.