Our 10-Year Plan that Led to a Paid Off Homestead

Our homesteading goal was to save up $150,000 to buy a distressed property for cash and fix it up. In the end we exceeded that goal.

Reader Contribution by Kerry Mann
Published on January 7, 2022
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Kerry Mann
Homestead Family Finds Freedom

Some time ago, my wife and I found out that we were having triplets.  After the shock of it all, well, things got very serious. We decided to get extremely frugal with our money and set out on a 10 year plan to buy our dream homestead mortgage free. We did a full video showing our journey and our eventual homestead. Watch the video at the bottom. Here is what worked for us. 

I realized early that every decision I made could affect our freedom and ability to pay off our mortgage early. I always tell my girls “Life is a result of the decisions you make.” I believe strongly that wisdom and making wise decisions is the key to long term happiness and balance. 

We knew we had to be frugal- extremely frugal and save every penny we could. Our goal was to save up $150,000 to buy a distressed property for cash and fix it up. In the end we exceeded that goal. I will list our very specific plan and savings below. 

Vehicles

The biggest savings were in our vehicles. We NEVER took out a loan for a car. Nearly every car we’ve owned in that 10 years was between $1,200 and $1,500 cash.  Our first car  (a $1,200 Ram 1500 van) lasted almost 6 years and we drove it across the country several times. We had a few junkers but overall if we prorated all of our cars cost to a monthly payment we were under $50 per month.

The average American pays much more than that. We ran the math and over the course of the 10 years leading up to the cash purchase of our home we saved $74,324 in total! We have friends that pay 700-800 per month for a car payment plus the extra high cost of insurance for that high end vehicle. Some people say but I need a reliable car and I say, “oh really is your car so reliable that it’s worth the cost at nearly 11 times the cost of my used car?” I could literally purchase 11 used cars for the cost of one new car.

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