How to Afford a Homestead
One of the most popular questions I get in regards to homesteading is, “How do you afford your lifestyle?”
We afford our lifestyle the same way anyone else does… we work. The difference between us and most people is that we are 100% self employed. Jason and I make our own schedules and create our own chaos when it comes to working!
Jason runs his own construction company. We built this company up in 2020 after Jason had been wrongfully let go from his position (long story short, he was making too much money for the budget and his new boss cut him to hire someone cheaper). At the time, I was very active in running my own business, Mom Meet Up Jax, and the moms from that community rallied around Jason and I and gave him work. From then on, his business has run 100% off of work of mouth marketing and relationships. It’s a beautiful thing!
As mentioned above, I run a community called Mom Meet Up Jax that provides an outlet for moms to find their mama tribe and be surrounded by women to do life with. I create events for the mamas, but if I’m being honest, it is more of a charity service than a business. It’s a need our community has and I try my best to help foster friendships among local mamas. That community has blessed me way more than dollar bills ever could.
Aside from Mom Meet Up, I run Farm Fresh Family - you guys already know I have this community and I create cookbooks, ebooks, and courses to help share good things with good people. I can’t say thank you to you guys enough… you literally help put food on my family’s plate - we are so grateful.
In addition to working our butts off to run our own businesses, we live on a generational farm. We are all technically first generation farmers, but my parents live on the property with us. Honestly, it helps so much having them here to help with projects and farm builds both physically and financially. We all have the same goal of living off of our homestead, and we use our resources to work together and accomplish goals. Don’t overlook the blessing it is to have other people on a homestead with you. There is a reason families used to live so close together and help one another.
As much as I’d love to have a one size fits all answer to the question about how we afford our lifestyle - there isn’t one. This is just what we do… it may not be a solution for you and your family.
All I can do is encourage you to think outside of the box. If you want to stay home and raise your babies or move out to land and homestead on a large scale, be willing to sacrifice things to get there.
There are many sacrifices our family had to make to be where we are today, and I’m sure the same likely goes for you!
If you want this lifestyle badly enough, you’ll find a way.
Want to stay home with your kids? Find a way to live on less and make one income work. That might mean you stop eating out, start cooking from scratch meals, sell a car to get rid of a payment, start babysitting from home to be present with your kids.
Want to get land? Get a second or even third job and save up your money for a payment. Rent a property until you can buy one. Lease land that someone else owns and offer to work it free of charge.
There are so many different work-arounds, you just have to get creative.
One thing I will say is that God will make a way for you. He will always provide. I remember when I quit my job 6 weeks postpartum to stay home and raise Landon. I had no idea how we were going to pay our bills or stay afloat long term - but here I am 6 years later and God had provided every single step of the way.
Making big life changes is intimidating, but it always leads to where you're supposed to be…