Simple living housing options
Our microbusiness ebook is premised on the notion that you can make a living in just a few hours a week, but that only works if you don't need to own a McMansion and a new car every year. Housing is one of the biggest hurdles for many people who want to cut their expenses so that they can quit their job. The average American family spends 20% of their income on housing, with the average price tag for rent or mortgage being over $16,000 per year. Yikes!
Except for living in the
dorms at college, I've never spent a penny on rent or a mortgage.
No, my parents didn't give me a house at birth, and everything I did
can be repeated. Here are a few options:
- Barter services for room and board --- I spent several years performing biological inventories on people's private properties. Since I needed a place to live and wanted to be able to easily hit the woods at all hours, I asked for a room as part of my recompense. I wasn't paying for utilities, rent, or food, so I saved up a few thousand dollars very quickly despite a low income. You don't have to be a scientist to barter for room and board --- I had someone approach me asking if I'd keep an eye on his elderly mother in exchange for a place to stay. I'll bet you have several skills you could barter.
- Acquire
some roommates
--- While I was bartering for a place to stay, my husband-to-be was
renting out a whole building and then subletting rooms to
housemates. The rent he took in was often the same as or greater
then the rent he sent to his own landlord, although he admits that he
constantly had to be on the lookout for new roommates as people came
and went.
- Live in your car --- A friend of mine got into debt and needed to save up some money fast. He was living in the city and paying and arm and a leg for rent, so he decided to spend a few months living in his car. Before he knew it, he was paying off his credit card bills and getting out of debt. I know that this sounds too extreme for many people, but it's good to have a fall-back plan!
- Buy an elderly mobile home
--- After hopping from home to home for several years, I wanted to
settle down, so I used the money I'd saved while bartering for room and
board to buy some land. The land didn't have a livable structure
on it, though, and I refused to go into debt to build or buy a
house. Luckily, my husband-to-be came up with a great plan ---
find a free
trailer to move onto our land. Old mobile homes can often be
bought for next to nothing (or actually for nothing) if you commit to
hauling them away. To find one, drive around trailer parks as
close to your land as possible and look for decrepit mobile homes
missing windows or doors. Stop and talk to the owner of the
trailer park, and chances are he'll be glad to be rid of the
eyesore. Hauling will be your biggest expense --- it cost us
$2,000 to get our trailer moved in, but that's mostly because we needed
them to bulldoze a road and haul it half a mile through the woods in
the process.
For the last three and a
half years, our housing expenses have consisted of property taxes (very
low when your only building is a "worthless" mobile home) and
utilities. We've saved up yet more money, and are now building
a small, well-insulated addition to our trailer to expand our
living space (and lower our utilities.) By keeping our housing
expenses within our means, we've managed to stay out of debt while
barely working.
Do you have a simple
living housing tip? I'd love to hear it!
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I've enjoyed reading your blogs for the past few months. This post reminds me of a question I had when I first started reading regarding what you do for health insurance. I feel that health insurance, not housing is the biggest factor tying most people to their traditional jobs. The options you mention for housing in this post seem reasonable for someone seriously wanting to switch to a microbuisness model from the traditional 9-to-5 but the lack of health insurance seems like the gordian knot, especially if you have a spouse and small child. I'd be very interested to see a post (posts?) on this topic.
Thanks for your time.
I'm always so glad to see that someone's reading over here. Sometimes I feel like I'm writing into a void.
That's a really good question --- I'll put together a post about it next week!