Digging Deeper
I can't say the concept of transparency is a new one for me. The idea has been more of an evolution than anything else. I used to hide a lot about myself and my life from the people I loved and trusted for many reasons too deep to go into in this post, but much of that started to change when I began my recovery process back in 2007. An instrumental part of working my program and self-work has orbited around the notions of vulnerability, moving from isolation to connection, and honesty/transparency/authenticity. It is always a work in progress, and I still have much to do. I am always fascinated when I think about the big picture and revolving themes over the years and how interconnectedly they show up through the different threads of my woven life; recovery work, work-work, parenthood work, relationship and friendship work, community work.
It is this last one that I've dwelled on a lot since moving to Madison County. As I talked about in my previous co-creating community post, in this tiny rural community there are principals at work, and etiquette to abide by (both implicit and explicit). What I yearn for most deeply is to dig under the surface of things and get at the why and the how. To ask the awkward and sometimes socially inappropriate questions and deconstruct taboo subjects, particularly around money. For the sake of the topic of this post, I'm challenging myself to open up about my painful ideas around money and privilege.Â
Moving Through the Discomfort
In the most memorable years of my childhood and young adult life I grew up not wanting for anything. We traveled extensively as a family. We lived in the town known to locals as "the rich town" in Maine, and we lived in what I consider to be a large house in a neighborhood with other large houses where the neighbors were doctors, lawyers, and other well-to do types. I was never able to recognize my privilege then, although I had glimpses through middle and high school of what different looked like, from a friend who openly expressed she was ashamed to have friends come over because of the state of her small and humble house; then friends in college who had to leave because their financial aid didn't come through, or family work situations changed. There was a long period of time in which I omitted details about my privilege to friends and partners, scared of being judged. I often asked and still ask the question, why me? Why was I chosen to have that life, especially when things could have so easily been very different for me if I hadn't been adopted? This is a deeply rooted shame that lives inside me. Only in the last 5 years or so have I been learning how to un-knot and examine these feelings through the lens of service. Not from a guilt-based point of view, but from the understanding that if I am privileged, then I have a responsibility to do all I can for those who have less.Â
Shifting Perspective
My parents did not come from old money. They looked for the cracks of opportunity between where my dad worked as a truck driver when I was little and utilizing his best skill: working with people and making shit happen. Combined with my mom's ridiculously keen money-managing sense, they found a niche to start their own business and worked so hard together to create everything in our comfortable life. My mom stayed home (her sacrifice), while working as part of the business, to take care of me and my sister. But what I most love hearing is their stories of their cobbled doing whatever it takes in life to get by. The what-it-took stories to get to where I remember life always being like growing up. The tales of painting houses together, and other odd jobs. Our current life feels a little like that at the moment. That delicate balance between getting by, being happy, and sacrifice.Â
I am now 3 months into my new job and love it. While I would rather be homeschooling/unschooling Calla, I also see the big picture of our future and the long-term benefits that will come from the shorter-term sacrifice of me working while she is younger. I will work as long as it takes for our family to get our financial feet under ourselves and pay our debt down, but I know doing this now leaves more opportunity for me to come back home with Calla in her older years to homeschool again if that's what she wants. But for right now we cobble. We patch together a balance between what feels right and what is necessary. Life feels a little harder in lots of ways now that I've returned to work, like how long the dishes stay in the sink unwashed and I haven't even thought about or touched my garden yet this spring. Our overall rhythms have settled in more which feels better, but I can tangibly feel the relieved stress from David in having help with paying the bills. That part of our life will feel even more at ease when Calla starts Kindergarten in August (!) and my income almost doubles from not paying for school anymore. We are just rolling with life trying to make things work and not add (too much) to our debt load while working towards financial freedom. It is moments like this in reflection that I am coming to respect and be proud of my parents more and more for what they cultivated together.
My parents were limited in the support their parents could financially provide while building the initial infrastructure for their life, and while I know both my parents would help us in any way they reasonably could (and have), I have had a strong desire to forge my way independently since after college. During college my sense of privilege felt crushing as I learned about the bigger world around me and the intertwined inequities it holds around class and race. Refusing financial help in exchange for struggle was a choice I made shortly after graduation and it's one I don't regret. I have surrounded myself with friends and partners who have helped me learn many lessons about money and worth and privilege, but still recognize that the privilege I grew up with gave me choices while many have none.Â
How Do We Do What We Do?
The seeds for our vision of financial freedom were planted when David and I met 8 1/2 years ago, but then exacerbated when we moved to Colorado for a couple years where Calla was born. We lived near Boulder, trust-funds and independently wealthy types abound. As we met more and more people there in our endless quest for friends we could relate to, we always found ourselves asking each other, "yes, but how do they do it?" So many people we met worked part-time loving what they did, or didn't work at all and volunteered, or had started 12 companies and sold them all. It was rare to meet someone who would spill it all about how they had all the things and experiences they had. That transparency just didn't commonly exist. This question packed itself away for our journey back east across the country as we sought to find our home. We learned quickly in settling in to Asheville that it wasn't what we imagined it to be and that transparency was severely lacking here as well. It was one of the major reasons I wanted to push away from the city - move somewhere more humble, more open to the hard questions.
In moving to Marshall we ask ourselves this question less frequently, as people more freely share about their situation openly here, but I think it will always still be there. There will always be people who don't feel comfortable sharing about their financial situation. But for me it's a part of creating community. Sharing resources and problem-solving together through each other's experiences and hard knocks or awesome successes. I try to be as open as possible about how we are accomplishing building our homestead and especially why we are doing it, all while examining and acknowledging our privilege.
Here is how we are making this all happen:
Supplementing Income
I had to go back to work. With David working as a realtor, our previous income, while great when a commission came through, was spotty and unreliable at best. While I saved us a significant amount of money by not working for several years, I needed to help in providing some source of steady income stream. This has allowed us more flexibility to pay down debt quicker, and push projects on the house through the pipeline more quickly.
The 5 P's: "Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance
We have fine tuned our planning and communication skills around making big decisions over the years.
We are honest with each other about what each of us wants and work towards compromises that we both will be happy with.
We make lots of lists (well I make lots of lists with both of our input) and check them off as we go along.
We consistently reassess where we are in our progress and then make more lists.
Careful & Respectful Use of Our Community & Family
Most projects with our house we are doing ourselves. We have only so far contracted out electricity and plumbing.
We consciously and sparingly choose which projects we can accomplish with just the two of us, and which projects really need more people or time than I can give since I also care for Calla.Â
We draw on the resources of close neighbors who offer their assistance knowing that we will be able to reciprocate some day, and perhaps already do.Â
For larger projects we ask specific friends with skills that fit the project, or will arrange small work parties.
Cautious Budgeting and Not Overextending Ourselves Financially
We had to carefully consider asking for family loans as ultimately it adds to our debt load, but we didn't want to ask for or accept more than we can realistically pay back over a short period of time. Ultimately my dad provided us a loan for our driveway, and David's family helped us with a small loan for installing our well.
While we are financing our land, our primary goal was to not take out a construction loan for the house to put ourselves further in debt, so we are paying for building our house as we go.
We have put some of the house building stuff on a credit card (about $15,000), but this is a short term goal for payoff since it has the highest interest rate.
David's student loan is almost paid off, so that extra amount will snowball to then payoff his car, thus snowballing to then payoff the credit card and chunk higher payments towards my student loan.Â
This year we are selling David's house in Virginia, so unloading that debt.
The mid-process goal is to then pay off our mortgage quickly thereafter while making small, reasonable improvements to add value to our land creating short and/or long term rental options to increase our sustainable monthly income.Â
I hope our openness invites dialogue with each other to learn and grow closer in community and better share our resources here. How do you make homesteading work financially for you? Share your story below!