Guest post by Joetta
I was recently asked how we manage self sufficiency on our
minimal income. I gave an answer that while adequate I feel left a lot out of
our story. I didn't start out to write a blog and meant to keep my answer to
the person who asked short and simple but I recall a teacher saying once that
usually if one person asks a question at least three more students have the
same question but won't ask. However, before I say exactly how I do it I would
like to point out a few facts.
First: we are a family of three: 2 adults and a third
grader, a sometimes additional family of three consisting of our elder child's
family of two adults and an infant, plus our dog, cat and a recently acquired
rabbit. We do have extended family as well.
Second: minimal income in our case is defined as around
$15,000.00 a year.
Third: I feel it is important to note our individual
backgrounds and personalities as we had always primarily been city dwellers who
felt somewhat out of place. We had a really nice dual income when medical
issues resulted in filing for disability for one partner and the other was left
out of work due to outsourcing and the recession. It was harder to come back
down than it was to go up in income without a doubt. We could not afford to pay
for electricity, phone, gas, clothes, rent, food, car maintenance or anything
else and homelessness and divorce was looming large on the horizon.
My husband, your usual author of this blog (Noel), was
offered an opportunity in an MLM selling emergency preparedness supplies. We
had to do something, disability had not yet been settled and we were losing
everything but our shirts. That was the start of our journey. Income-wise, it
was a short trip but it was the beginning as we delved into the emergency
preparedness research that lead us to where we are today. Luckily, my
disability was approved as it’s our main source of income but it’s not much.
After our experience we have decided that those emergency preparedness
recommendations are the barest minimum in our opinion and as we've moved
through the learning curve we've blogged, researched, written notes, saved
things to a dozen files moving further away from preparedness and more into
self sufficiency.
I am hardly an expert or even proficient on these topics in
my own opinion but I am stubborn and persistent. I also don't mind doing the
research so much as long as I have a reason or personal interest in it. Noel will
research anything you ask that he doesn't know or point you to someone who
does, that's his passion. That is why Kaya the blog, Kaya the Facebook page and
group, and Kaya the website exist. Unfortunately at the moment it's a poor
living but it makes his soul happy so it has great value in other terms. Terms
he would not find elsewhere.
So here goes! Basically I try to find out how my great
grandma would have done it and see how it's changed since then and pick a way
in the middle. I was lucky I had her to smack me in the head well into my
twenties so it's not as big a jump of imagination for me. In fact I owe a lot
of my attitude towards self sufficiency to her unfortunately I didn't realize
how much influence she had on me until a couple years ago and did not get to
say thank you properly. I also grew up basically dirt poor, as did my husband,
so it’s not as big a divergence in lifestyle as it is for some, sort of more of
a return to one. Only major difference as I see it is we're finally out of the
city. That said we do follow some pattern or basic set of rules:
1.
Make a list
2.
Trouble shoot it
3.
Make a Budget and stick to it
4.
Allow for some extras
5.
Garden
6.
Learn something new.
The first thing that we do is to make lists of our desires,
needs, and goals. Whether it’s for the year’s garden, tools we need, a vacation,
long term storage and rotation, potential blogs, subjects we are interested in
or this month’s shopping and supplies we start with a list. Lists help us to be
subjective, prioritize, budget, track progress and (the way our brains work) remember
things. They also help when enlisting the aid of others. Most things are
subjective and will vary given your location, available equipment, knowledge
base, time and space available, and personal interests. Lists can you narrow
down your available options. For instance
in the mobile we rented we had no place to store a large quantity of water,
after listing various options for storage, their prices, and the necessary work
entailed in each, we found that had we stayed there we would have been better
off getting a secondary hand pump for the well. While here in the house we
purchased we have a basement that is cold and damp with ample room for storage
(which I hear is also good for storing root veggies) as it was on the list of
desired features while were house hunting.
In the city one of our apartments had a walk-in closet
suitable for storage of extra water and food but we would never have been able
to sustain even a container garden there. Still another place we lived had an
actual storage room and room for a garden. Unfortunately they all took the bulk
of our income. By listing these things originally in the BIG discussion we
found that we wanted a garden very badly as it kept coming up repeatedly and
that trapping ourselves in an endless cycle of debt was not smart budgeting nor
smart preparedness nor smart self sufficiency nor smart anything and was in
fact the largest factor in our stress and unhappiness.
That brings us to number two; Troubleshoot it and evaluate
all your options ~ can your situation be changed or optimized to your benefit
in anyway? Discuss it. Be open minded and open to change. Give it time. A lot of
it really is about how you think of going about things. What are you willing to
give up or exchange? What is not negotiable? It can be a simple change or a big
complicated one. For example in order to get our budget under control we moved.
That was huge and complicated, physically, emotionally, and financially. The
town we moved to was tiny, about 100 people total, maybe 25 people actually in
town, no stores, no entertainment, not even a stop sign. We separated siblings,
moving a hundred plus miles away from our oldest child and downsizing into a
mobile home as old as we are, giving up almost everything for affordability and
a garden. It was well understood though that leaving state was not on the table
and not negotiable. It took quite a bit of time to find that trailer in our
budget for rent in the middle of nowhere. It can be hard when you don't know
where or how to look.
However changing our method of food storage was as simple as
changing our shopping from once a week to once a month. It automatically
created a situation where we had 35 days food, at least half of which were
pantry items ~ like canned goods such as veggies, fruits, soups, chicken, tuna,
rice, beans, spices, potato flakes, flour, pancake mix, sugar and coffee. After
that we added and still add one extra or over sized item each month. Water
storage came down to the simple decision of saving milk jugs, putting them in
the basement, and rotating them out for now.
Number three on the list is: Get control of your budget as
much as possible, Make a plan and stick to it! As I said, we had a really nice
dual income for awhile and it was harder to go up in income than it was to come
back down. There was a lot of strain on us and our marriage for awhile when
that nice income suddenly stopped. If we had not taken the time to evaluate
every last detail our life, write down what we truly wanted, and hash it out
with more open mindedness and honesty about the reality of the situation than
we had before, we wouldn't be here. If we had not chosen to move to a location
where we could live within our budget we would not be here. We would be a
statistic. We would not have lasted another year in the city under the
financial strain, struggling just to get a gulp of air. Divorce was a strong
possibility. What we have isn't paradise and isn't perfect however it is much
better than what it was.
In some ways it’s even better than when we were both working
and no matter how you look at it, it is way better than what my great
grandmother went through with four kids in the depression. I figure that if she
managed to have a good life, raise a family, buy a house, have savings and
retire so can we. I'd like to be able to save something, as on our budget there
isn't anything left to save or spend after the first week of the month but
it'll come in time. Having enough to eat and a roof over our heads that is
actually ours is a huge number of steps up the ladder from a few years ago and
we can see the progress we've made all around us.
My great grandmother actually had a fantastic philosophy
about it ~ you worry about the basics, housing, food, clothing; those should be
provided by your regular source of income and should never exceed in cost what
is available to spend. You live off your regular pay minus a small amount for
savings/tithing but any and all overtime pay, bonuses, and the ilk went
directly to savings. If you had to buy something you paid cash. The only thing
she ever held a loan on was her house. It’s those things that made her self
sufficient. Those are the lessons she learned in the depression and so it is
with us now. The only loan we hold is the house and we follow our budget
closely. We have a standard monthly
budget with certain items that are always on the list regardless of need. This
list includes the standard household bills: the mortgage, propane, electricity,
water, sewer, and trash, TP, pet supplies, dish soap and other basic everyday
needs.
We offset expenses
where we can for instance there is a food box available once a month for our
income bracket if we need it and in the winter we do get it sometimes simply
because heating costs are so high. We work on projects during the summer when
we don't need as much propane and look for stuff to recycle and reuse as much
as we can. We are currently working on DIY house projects as the home we bought
is nearly a hundred years old and a fixer-upper, which helped us keep the
payments in our budgets. There again we were given some windows for the rabbit
shed and to replace the broken one in the garage instead of buying them and I'm
going to make an attempt on a tiny area of the wood flooring to clean it with a
solution of vinegar and orange peels as its been badly neglected over the
years.
We do allow certain extras in the budget for sanity's sake ~
like an occasional meal out and the phone/internet. We also check regularly to
see what our community resources are. We get DVD's from our library instead of
going to the movies and participate in community events like movie night in the
park, the town celebrations, and school plays.
Moving to a small town and cutting our commercialism was
definitely a complete change of lifestyle for us at first and it definitely
takes patience. It does not however mean no shopping. It can mean rather the
opposite sometimes as you rarely find what you want at the first thrift store
and you may end up with more purchasing power than you think. Unfortunately it
can also mean that if you are out of something, it’s gone and that’s that.
Sometimes at the end of the month you don't want to eat what’s left on the
shelf in the pantry at all, so I like to make sure most foods I buy have
multiple uses and multiple combinations (the garden helps here tremendously).
Otherwise, our single car is 13 years old and needs tires, most of our clothing
is second hand, being either hand me downs, pass arounds, or thrift store
items. That's the biggest part of how I do it. I plan ahead and I shop my
budget, not my wants or morals, or even my needs on some occasions. There are
two more integral parts though, one I mentioned ~ our garden ~ and the other I
did not ~learning.
I strongly suggest you at least try to have a garden; in
your yard, in containers on the porch, deck or patio, in a plot in a community
garden etc. It's well worth the investment. It can offset your food costs, it’s
healthy, natural, and feeds your sense of independence and well being as well
as your belly. I offer one or two caveats ~ grow what you like to eat and have
patience! If you are like us there will be a learning curve. We have had a
garden for four years and this is the first year we will reap the harvest. We
did however buy a house and move before harvest time last year so maybe someone
else got to enjoy a small bit of our handiwork.
Our final piece of advice is this ~ Plan to learn
something new. Do research. Use the Internet, library, join a group, take a
class etc. The goal is to change how you think about things or develop a skill.
We have vastly improved our knowledge on a myriad of subjects. We try to focus
at least a little on old fashioned know how and more traditional skills that
don't always require power. For myself, this is primarily focused on whatever
project is at hand, crocheting, and weeding the garden is ok too but I haven't
quite found my homesteading passion yet. For Noel it would be all things Kaya,
gardening and possibly traditional wood working. We live a pretty quiet life.
Don't let all this fool you. We still fall flat on our faces
sometimes. There are medical issues and medications, moodiness and we do get
sick and tired of scrimping and being broke. Especially around the holidays,
birthdays, and back to school. Everyone likes brand new stuff once in
awhile and on a tiny budget there are always bound to be some pitfalls. The
biggest one we've encountered so far is that new equipment is expensive. It doesn't
matter if its garden tools, a pressure canner, lawnmower, sewing machine,
canning jars, wood stove or a dehydrator. So I cannot emphasize enough take
care of what you have. Read the manuals. When it is time for a purchase most
folks we have talked to recommended that we look for good used first and brand
new second.
Some of the suggested sources I've received are: thrift
stores, estate sales, garage sales, junk shops, Craigslist, Freecycle, eBay,
Habitat for Humanity's Home Restore and just recently it was suggested I put up
notices on local bulletin boards of what I'm looking for. I personally like Freecycle,
though you have to be quick, I see it as a challenge and it fits my values.
It really is all about how you think of going about things.
It's about fostering your own independence and abilities, whether they be in an
emergency or in day to day life. It's about saving some money and being
productive. It’s about knowing that you can live a life without debt, chemical
additives, genetic modification, and destroying the planet. It’s knowing things
can be simple again. Simpler isn't always easier but a small change can bring big
results. It's about having good friends, a strong support group and good
community that we can rely on instead of the government. I certainly hope Kaya
is a part of that community and support group. Hugs to you and good luck!
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