How did you get to your stage in SS living?

[k0xxx]

For us, it was health. I had a six figure job in the oil industry, a 5400 sq. ft. house, new cars every few years, and credit cards. However, I had a huge mortgage and monthly payments. So 10 years ago when I was forced to medically retire at 40 years old, we had sell everything and cash in the 401k, so as not to go bankrupt. The remaining money from the 401k bought us a small house and 15 acres, in the Ozarks. Our income now is SSI and a very small disability pension. We've never been happier.

We enjoy a relaxed life of "porch settin" in the mornings, gardening and taking care of the animals during the day, then "porch settin" again in the evening while we watch to light show (fireflies).

We are learning to can our vegetables, raise our animals and chickens, about heating with our wood stove, raising catfish, and a lot of other "frugal" things. Most importantly, we are doing it all together. I can honestly say that I am probably one of the few people on earth that actually feels blessed, for having poor health.

 

[MorelCabin]

Wow, very interesting stories everyone. Mine is boring in contrast:>) We moved from a small city 4 hours drive away where my family is. I have a huge family and ended up very homesick for them. Not only that, we moved to a country setting and it was a whole new experience for me. I spent the first two years feeling sorry for myslef and getting more and more lonely (stay at home moms have a hard time meeting people it seems)
So I eventually started doing alot of different things to keep busy. It started with work on the house...whoa! too much watching Mike Holmes will get you in trouble! I started by tearing out the walls between my dining room and my kitchen one day when hubby was away on a bussiness trip.
Well, after the house was done I had to find something else to do...my daughter wanted a horse...so I convinced hubby to help me and we cleared a pasture. Horse didn't last long...the novelty wore off pretty quick after being kicked a couple of times and bucked off everytime that crazy mare decided she wanted to do something other than let anyone ride:>)
So I had this empty horse stall and a huge field. Chickens! I soon had over 100 of them. At that point I started playing with gardens, but didn't do well for the first few years:>)

Y2K really kicked my butt into gear as far as self sufficiency goes. Ever since then I have been paying attention to what's going on in the world. Now I just keep working toward it one step at a time...and trying to convince dear hubby that I am not just a bored housewife or a nutbar...

 

[unclejoe]

We also didn't plan on SS, it's just been happening over the last 5 years or so. The dw has always had horses. A few years ago her son decided he wanted goats to clean up the pasture , so we got a couple. About that same time the 30 year old oil furnace gave up. I pulled it out and replaced it with a wood furnace. It made sense since wood is a by product of my business. That cut our shackles from the oil truck and even if the power goes out, (the furnace is in the cellar) the hot air rises through the house so we don't freeze.
Back in Feb. on a trip to the store, we noticed that packaging was a few ounces smaller on a number of things we buy. I decided that day to plant a large garden. We always had a few tomato and pepper plants but that was all. In March I borrowed a tiller and turned 4400 sqf of lawn into 2 garden plots. With all this potential produce I started reading up on canning and dehydrating to save what we couldn't eat fresh. We don't have enough to get through till next harvest season but we made a good start.
We started talking about chickens in May and by July we had 8 hens and 1 rooster. They were given to us by a friend who was overrun. Another friend had built a coop that he didn't like and gave it to us. Over the winter we are going to look into a dairy goat or two.
So you see, we didn't set out to become self sufficient. One thing led to another and now here we are making a serious effort at providing as many of our needs as we can right here at home. We do however have a long way to go.

 

[poppycat]

Not sure how self sufficient we are but most of our movement in that direction has backfired.

I've always been pretty frugal, but DH was raised dirt poor and in a horrible family environment, no educational opportunities etc. etc. Put ourselves through college via GI bill (him) working butt off (me.) House and kids followed.

Two years age we got what we (and others) thought was a steal on a piece of land that was close to work and but we could raise animals and a big garden etc. It was a big "investment" but we had savings and stocks.

The company my DH worked for imploded. Fortunately we were able to make our savings last a lot longer than they were supposed to by being very frugal but we may have to sell our house at a gigantic loss because we can't continue to pay that much money in mortgage.

I start a new job next week, after having been home for eight years. I'm very worried about how my youngest is going to do. He has "special needs" and has historically had a hard time with big changes.

So Dace you are not alone.

 

[keljonma]

ok, so different spin on my question for you....on a small budget, how are you achieving a level of self sufficiency?

Dace, We piddled around for more years than I care to admit doing the corporate ladder crap before we quit our jobs, moved back to Ohio, and started living the life we had been talking about for over 25 years.

I think being self-sufficient is a state of mind in some ways. When your world isn't perfect, you have to take an idea and work it around in your mind, until you can make it work for your new situation.

When we lived in apartments (between houses) we grew a lot of food in containers on the porches and patios. It is just as easy to grow food as flowers in containers or potting soil bags. We had potatoes in a very large container, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, cukes, peas and beans on mini trellises. Lettuce, sorrel, beets, carrots, anything you want to grow can be. There are fruit trees and bushes meant to be grown in containers. Sometimes you can find the containers for free on garbage days or at minimal cost at thrift stores. Otherwise, look in your area for community gardens and see what it takes to get a plot of your own.

Want to cut your food bill? Can, freeze or dehydrate the food you grow. Purchased food (like berries) can be portioned off so you can freeze some, can some and eat some fresh. Try to eat seasonally and locally if you can't grow it yourself.

See if anyone selling an item you want is willing to barter with you. We recently got 50 pounds of grapes for free from a local farmer who said she had more than she could use. I'm giving her some of our farm eggs in exchange. You may find you are able to get something useful (seeds, local honey, maple syrup, corn, etc.) in exchange for babysitting, housesitting, gardening, sewing.... whatever you are skilled at.

We eat very little meat, almost to the point of no meat. We eat lots of eggs, cheese, beans, lentils, grains, fruits and veggies. The eggs are from our chickens and we have used the eggs in exchange for fruits, veggies, grains and locally produced hard cheeses.

We make our own bread and yogurt because it is healthier and less expensive than from the grocery. I make as much as possible from scratch, including mixes. We don't eat out, except when we go visit friends or relatives. Our church holds a free community dinner twice a month where we could eat, if we wanted to "eat out". We belong to a fellowship group at church and have pot luck dinners once a month, and these are very economical ways to eat away from home.

We pay cash for what we purchase, so if we don't have the money, we don't buy it until we've saved enough. We shop the consignment and thrift shops first, auctions and yard sales (if available) before going to the store. We try to re-purpose items we own so we don't need to purchase new. I sold a number of "gadgets" acquired throughout the years, as I found them space takers and power users that weren't necessary. Simplifying where we could really helped.

We do a lot of the "do I NEED this or do I WANT this" when thinking about making a purchase. We cut the tv cord over 6 years ago. It's amazing how very little these days we actually NEED... maybe because we aren't watching a million commercials telling us what we "need" to purchase everyday.

If your dh's idea of success is very different from yours, talk to each other about what you want out of life and where you think you might be in 5 or 10 years. Sometimes people have to fall on hard times to discover what they really find important in life.

Take it a day at a time and try not to overwhelm yourself with the "whatif's" of life. There are ways to be self-sufficient in the city or suburbia.

 

[Beekissed]

I was raised extremely self-sufficient...you know the story...two room log cabin, no electricity, no running water, hard work, living off the land, etc.

Years later, as a single parent raising 3 boys(translation~poor), I found more and more ways to live frugally. I also have always been the kind of person who abhors being a sheep...following the crowd has never been my style. So, I set out to live under the radar, within my means, and up out of the rat race.

I rent a place now that has a lot of what I need to live SS. My boys are all getting up in years and about to leave the nest, but I know I will still maintain this lifestyle. For me it is the only true way to live...simply and honestly, close to the Earth and enjoying life at its basic best.

If you do one thing for yourself, don't get wrapped up in your "failures" and start thinking that living SS is being forced upon you...that takes all the fun out of it. Start each day with a dream. If that one doesn't come to fruition, feel sorry for yourself for a couple of days, eat some chocolate and then...form a new plan, get a new project outlined, dream a new dream. I would have never gotten this far to anywhere in my life if I hadn't reformatted, restructured and simply started from scratch on a new dream for my life every time I got knocked down.

At least you're looking in the right direction...you are exploring ways to decrease your need for the extraneous, the superfluous, the material fluff of this world and get down to real living. Good for you!

Oh...and don't forget to laugh a lot and build up the most important treasure available...lots of love. I think that's the basis of SS, a strong love for your family, their health, their values, and their place on this Earth.

 

[poppycat]

I was raised extremely self-sufficient...you know the story...two room log cabin, no electricity, no running water, hard work, living off the land, etc.

Years later, as a single parent raising 3 boys(translation~poor), I found more and more ways to live frugally. I also have always been the kind of person who abhors being a sheep...following the crowd has never been my style. So, I set out to live under the radar, within my means, and up out of the rat race.

I rent a place now that has a lot of what I need to live SS. My boys are all getting up in years and about to leave the nest, but I know I will still maintain this lifestyle. For me it is the only true way to live...simply and honestly, close to the Earth and enjoying life at its basic best.

If you do one thing for yourself, don't get wrapped up in your "failures" and start thinking that living SS is being forced upon you...that takes all the fun out of it. Start each day with a dream. If that one doesn't come to fruition, feel sorry for yourself for a couple of days, eat some chocolate and then...form a new plan, get a new project outlined, dream a new dream. I would have never gotten this far to anywhere in my life if I hadn't reformatted, restructured and simply started from scratch on a new dream for my life every time I got knocked down.

At least you're looking in the right direction...you are exploring ways to decrease your need for the extraneous, the superfluous, the material fluff of this world and get down to real living. Good for you!

Oh...and don't forget to laugh a lot and build up the most important treasure available...lots of love. I think that's the basis of SS, a strong love for your family, their health, their values, and their place on this Earth.

Listen to Beekissed. She is a wise woman.

 

[Beekissed]

Awww, shucks! Not too wise...still poor! But at least I don't hate it so much now!

Interesting side note...a time when being more SS really put me in a place of safety...

A few months after I bought my first house, my company went on strike. We were on strike for 5 months and it started right before Christmas. I participated for awhile until I saw tactics with which I didn't agree, then I just sat it out. Guess who was whining about breaking the strike and going back to work? Was it the only single parent with a single income? Nope...it was all the folks whose husbands had good jobs. They had dug a hole of debt so deep that they were enslaved to their paychecks. They were in danger of losing homes, cars, lifestyles, credit ratings. I was in danger of getting my utilities shut off a time or two(my credit rating was safe...it was as low as it could get already . )

This whole living frugally and SS really pays off in times of crisis. We barely feel it when everyone else is in a panic.

 

[FarmerChick]

This whole living frugally and SS really pays off in times of crisis. We barely feel it when everyone else is in a panic.

********that is so true beekissed. when times are hard and panic and such is getting more out of control....being responsible, frugal and SS means that you can cruise thru easier. It makes a difference in my daily stress levels!!

 

[pioneergirl]

Our transition has been slow. DH is a truck driver, and I stay home. We live waaaay out in the country, and our house sits on an acre, +/-. Anyway, I had to be persistant, but after 3 years we got chickens. Same with the garden. He kept laughing at me, but I kept telling him how I would be so happy if I could have a garden, can our food, and do the whole 'farm girl' thing. Now, keeping in mind even though he is 1 of 4, he and his siblings never had a want for anything. They were indulged to the excess, and it shows in things he does around here. Me? I was raised poor. My family had gardens, canned, we burned wood and coal in the winter, etc. So we are quite the contrast.

That being said, he is taking it to extremes, lol. Like I said, excess. HUGE garden, TONS of canning, way too many chickens, ...you get the idea. But I'm not complaining. We have loads of food, (haven't been on a true grocery shopping trip in eons), and even now he is looking to restore a wood burning stove to help supplement our heating cost. I'm also looking into a small wind turbine that mounts on the roof.

He also chuckles at my ideas for re-purposing things, like my feed sacks (Nugget, I'm working on those for you! lol)....I repurpose all kinds of things around here, and he is slowly seeing the savings. My grocery list has dwindled to very few items. He asked me the other day "Do you need to get a couple loaves of bread?" ....."No, if I need it, I'll MAKE it!"....he smiled and was good with that, especially after only spending $20 at the store!

It is possible, just go slow, figure out small ways to cut back, make your own, or buy cheap. Look into alternative means of making money, (I'd like to sell my feed sack totes), and try to subtly easy the DH into it. Before long, you can say "see, by making this, we saved 'this'" and he'll love it!

FarmerChick...my DH is the same way...he wants to buy me 'stuff' and I keep saying "Please stop, where am I gonna wear that? " or "what do I do with that???" ROFL