Our journey toward financial freedom and living on less to bring Dad home.
Hello! I’m Jen. My husband, Tim and I got married in 2008 at age 19 and 23. We were so young!
At age 19, I didn’t have a many expectations as to what direction my life would take, but it sure wasn’t this!
Number 1. I definitely didn’t imagine financial struggle. Period. (Money grows on trees)
Number 2. I never would have pegged myself for a ‘crunchy’, home birth, homeschool, homesteading mama. (Nope, too weird)
Number 3. Renovating a bank-repossessed, abandoned farmyard didn’t enter my juvenile thoughts, not once. (I already hear mice and rats scurrying)
But I am happy to say, here we are!
Roots in fertile Canadian prairie soil
Both Tim and I were raised outside of small farming communities, where life was ruled by the ebbs and flows of seasons; planting and harvesting. We took for granted the open spaces to wander and explore; climb trees and ride dirt bikes, pick fresh raspberries and skate on dugouts.
As a young married couple, we bought a little house in the closest city. Tim put to use his new carpentry skills moving some walls, a facelift with new exterior siding, even ripping out bright green shag carpet (It was completely useless since I didn’t have that little rake to comb the shag fibres, so I guess it had to go). We were so proud of our first house.
However, we eventually moved to the “Big City” for Tim to pursue an education degree. We were both ready to make a change and take a risk. With a 6 week old baby and toddler in tow, we packed up and moved from our old stomping grounds.
Forecast: Possible drought
I don’t remember giving a whole lot of thought to our financial plan for this season. We probably should have, since both of us were technically unemployed; me, a stay-at -home-mom and Tim, a full time student. We were forced to embraced frugality.
Thankfully, Tim’s tuition was covered. For the rest, we scraped by on child tax benefit, some side carpentry jobs when time would allow, and a line of credit that we tried to avoid. During any school break, Tim would work as many hours as he could, to make as much money as he could, to pay off the line of credit, and save a little nest egg for the coming school year.
After the first year of university, it became apparent that we weren’t going to be able keep our head above water with the rent prices increasing like clockwork.
We began to look for the cheapest house in a decent neighbourhood.
We were able to get a mortgage because Tim had been self employed as a Carpenter for a number of years prior, and the bank looked at the last three years of records, so it showed that we still had a decent income. ha…
Just as Tim’s second year of university was beginning, we found a tiny two bedroom house. It was 680 sq ft with no basement, but it had a little fenced yard and a single garage. We were thrilled! Our living expense dropped by 2/3.
We continued to live ultra slim as Tim finished university.
Then finally, convocation! Graduation!
Now it was time to start living our lives. Chasing our dreams.
By this time, the longing to raise our children with the same quiet country childhood we knew, had grown. We were ready to find our little slice of land and enjoy some peace and quiet. This desire for peace and quiet was amplified by an interesting smattering of neighbours, with some colourful past times.
HONK! Reality Check
You need a butt load of money to buy any land within driving distance!
Money we didn’t have. We were a single income family with little kids. We had just avoided drowning in debt by the skin of our teeth to finish four years of University.
It felt so discouraging. Tim and I weren’t on the same page at all. We would start talking about our plans to buy an acreage, yet we would never reach any sort of conclusion.
I had my list of pros. All pros, of course, because every con can be turned into a pro if you look at it from the right angle! And Tim had his list of hesitations.
We were at a maddening stand still.
Tim didn’t feel peace about diving into a cess pool of debt. I wanted some sort of momentum, anything!
Forcast: Thunder showers
I was frustrated. How else were we supposed to do this?
This was our DREAM. Wasn’t it supposed to be fun?
I would spend hours scouring MLS listings and suggesting acreages to go view. We would go see them, but Tim was overwhelmed with the price tag along with the amount of updating all of these houses would need. He was (is) our family’s sole breadwinner. It was adding a huge burden onto his shoulders! He would have no choice but to work overtime every holiday and weekend to afford to renovate a dated bungalow.
Unfortunately, all I would focus on was that we wanted to raise our children in the country and their childhood was fading away! (dramatic much?)
Forecast: Heavy Fog
We had some interesting conversations with loan agencies at that time,
“Ok… you’ll use all your savings for the down payment… good… and you have that home equity line of credit, you can definitely use that as leverage…. 40% debt service, that’s approved … a 30 yr term, of course…you could even get a note from family stating they borrow you ‘X’ amount of funds to boost this forward… voila!”
(And we can use our credit cards to do the house projects!)
“There you go! Your dream home!”
Wait a minute! More like a nightmare when you put it like that…
In spite of that ridiculous summary, my head was full of reasons as to why this would be a good idea! I was just doing what I thought you were supposed to do. I trusted their advise because it got me where I wanted to go. Banks are there to help you reach your goals, right?
It’s not difficult to see how this was causing tension in our relationship. Admittedly, I sounded like a spoiled brat pursuing ‘my way or the highway’. I truly didn’t see any other way. I didn’t know there could be another option.
Option A:
Spend the next 5-7 years in our tiny house, with now 4 kids. Our ‘master’ bedroom was a Murphy bed in the living room. We made that petite house function incredibly, but I undeniably anticipated the end I thought was insight.
The next 5-7 years with unsavoury neighbours. Tim didn’t enjoy visiting them at 2am weekly. Not to mention the stolen car that crashed onto our front yard at 6 am, where people tumbled out and stumbled in opposite directions.
The next 5-7 years scrimping and scraping to finally get a bigger down payment.
Option B:
Borrow as much money as possible and bask in beautiful country bliss today!
There was a clear winner in my opinion!
Around that time a friend asked me, what season are you in? “Waiting!” I answer right away.
Waiting …. to be able to move out of our tiny house.
To live out our dream of being in the country.
Waiting… to have clear direction in this new season of our life.
“Is that what God says?” My friend prods.
“Um…. well…. I’m not sure …. “
“Why don’t you ask him? Right now. “
I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes before I said, ok, but immediate I had the word “building” come to mind.
Building.
Building our family.
My character.
Building our marriage.
Forecast: Partly cloudy
By divine coincidence, shortly after that conversation we stumbled upon Dave Ramsey and his counter cultural way of viewing money and debt. This began a whole stream of valuable, fruitful conversations between Tim and I. Conversations that were no longer, ‘when are things going to change’, and ‘ I don’t see a way out’.
Sound advice, coupled with changing our mindset from a ‘waiting’ mentality to a ‘building’ mentality brought peace. I was more content to stay in our little house when we had a clear goal and a way to accomplish it, for ‘without vision people perish’.
Waiting and building looked similar on the outside. Our circumstances didn’t change, but it was very different on the inside. It was a heart shift.
What were we actually ‘building’?
The good news is, after we realized that we would be completely house poor if we did what we thought was ‘normal’. We decided to wait, but we weren’t ‘waiting’, we were ‘building’ with a goal and a plan.
We were going to go crazy bananas and saving every cent to buy that country home.
Build a household emergency fund; a cushion with 6 months of expenses.
Our mortgage budget was only going to be 25% of our take home pay.
Tim felt great relief! I felt momentum! We were on the same team, on the same track, going the same direction.
We felt peace.
Seasons changing
Slowly, we began to believe that it could be possible to focus so intensely on our goal that we could reach it faster. That gave us a tiny sliver of hope to dream a little more… a little wilder. What if we not only had an acreage, but we were completely debt free, mortgage free before 40?! That would be crazy, unbelievable! I’m not sure we can even say that out loud. It was too radical to even think in our situation; single income family, a bunch of little kids, insane housing market.
As we began to tackle it together, battle that giant as one, we gained momentum.
Momentum and progress we never imagined was possible.
Well, I guess we had imagined it because we wrote it on a piece of paper, but it seemed embarrassingly ridiculous at the time.
We (you too!) can do anything for a short period of time!
After two years of cutting back every expense imaginable (and unimaginable- no Netflix?), taking literal cash to the grocery store and putting items back (yes, it felt humiliating), two years of Tim working on carpentry jobs at 530 am before school, after school, and every holiday and weekend.
After two years of dedicated, singular focus, we had a wad of cash. We were ready to look for our little oasis.
No white picket fence
Our criteria was along the lines of: neglected, abandoned farmyard with tones of potential if you really squint, tilt your head to the side, and clasp your hands in prayer.
A listing caught my eye and we went for a drive, a drive turned into a showing, a showing into an offer, and an offer into keys in our hands. We were the proud new owners of 13 acres of ‘Dreams Come True’.
The farm was a repossession, therefore the bank was requiring a 35% down payment. That was not part of our plan! Yet, we were able to take it in stride, dip into our renovation reserve and make up the difference. Because of our savings, we were in a competitive position and able to negotiate the purchase. Being a bank repossession, we made an insulting low-ball offer and danced away with a ‘deal’ (my Step-dad called us thieves).
Forecast: Sunny
Needless to say, the property needed a lot of TLC, so we drove our camper trailer 40 minutes from the Big City, parked it in the driveway, and got to work.
Pause.
Insert birth of our fifth son.
Resume.
That summer was filled with stories that we will fondly recount with “remember when… “
Remember when Daddy’s leg crashed through the roof and rat poop water and mouldy insulation splashed into the kitchen, narrowly missing the slow cooker filled with our supper?
What about when Tim was in the crawl space and something scurried and scrambled across his legs?
Remember how we mowed for hours and hours using a push-mower when the grass was 2 feet tall?
Or when the tiny, newborn fawn sat so still by the deck while we cleaned up the yard?
Remember when we braced the quonset so the wind wouldn’t blow it over?
Or how about when Daddy hauled 5 gallon pails of water from the dugout, up a ladder into the bathroom to flush the toilet, then little crayfish and shrimp were swimming in the toilet bowl?
Remember when we hooked the well to the house and water started flowing into the cistern from 1 km away without a pump? Hallelujah!
Remember when our friends and family gave of themselves to come and help us? So. Immensely. Thankful.
Can a season of life be outrageously overwhelming and delightfully rewarding at the same time? If it can, that was us.
Tim worked full time as a teacher and then worked every spare moment to get our house functioning. We gutted almost every room in the house. We did major additions: moved staircases, added part of a second story, built a garage with an apartment above it for grandma and grandpa.
It’s been three years at this time and there is still a hefty to-do list.
What has kept us going through this intense season?
A high value for freedom has fuelled us.
We admired the freedom of country living; being able to roam and explore, grow and plant, learn and contribute.
We were also seeking financial freedom. Freedom where we didn’t owe anyone anything.
The privilege to be able to choose what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do it.
Freedom to be able to stay home with our children. My hardworking husband has already gifted me the opportunity to experience the joys of childhood with our children as we homeschool and embrace curiosity.
Even more so, we want the freedom to choose to be together.
All of us. Our whole family. Dad home.
Working together, learning together, building together.
Freedom for Dad to choose to spend the best parts of his day with his children, to give the best of his time and energy to raising these five amazing sons we have been given.
The liberty to choose. Freedom to invest.
Forecast: Clear Skies
We’re debt free!
That brings us to today: We have paid off our mortgage! We are debt free!
Those years in our tiny house pinching pennies paid off. We don’t owe anyone anything; no credit cards, no car payments, no line of credit, no tractor payments. Nothing. We’ve chosen to make do or do without, in our pursuit of freedom.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not been easy
It was annoying, frustrating, and a whole lot of extra work for Tim to haul loads of demolition garbage to the dump and unload it by hand. How many times did he wish for a dump trailer! How many times did the landfill employee raise his eyebrows and say, ‘what are you doing buddy? Thats going to take a while!’
Sometimes it was embarrassing driving our older van as it got louder and the rust marks got bigger, especially when we first moved to our new community and I drove up to baseball practice in front of a bunch of people I had never met before. This was their first impression of me. I felt insecure.
I had to remind myself why we were doing this.
Occasionally even our own parents thought we were a little nuts-oh. They wondered why we didn’t take out a loan to finish the renovations and just enjoy the end result. They came around right quick as huge supporters with practical gifts or cash that went straight to the house fund, then hours and hours of labour helping us renovate and paint, often doing awful, dirty work!
Or, just making sure Tim didn’t die while he pumped out the well, hung a ladder over the cribbing, and climbed into the dank, dark cavity to hook up the water pump.
Important things like that.
Step 1- Live on less. Keep expenses minimal. Be debt free. Check
Step 2- Bring Dad home. In progress.
We are in the middle of this journey. My husband hasn’t quit his day job, we aren’t making big bucks on our farm; off the land. It’s a vulnerable place to be, what if we fail? It’s another one of those big, wild dreams that, do we dare say out loud? Maybe I’ll just whisper it.
Our goal is to make a full time income through self-employment streams, so Tim can stay home while our children are young.
Audacious? Sounds like it. More complicated than one sentence? Definitely.
But ultimately, it came down to:
Would we regret it if we never tried to make this a reality?
Yes.
Yes, we would regret not trying to make a way to have Tim home more, simply because we want to! We don’t want him to have to go away to work, we want to work together; side by side, hand in hand. We feel like our best selves when we are united working toward a common purpose.
Yes, we would regret disregarding the dreams and ideas in our heart ( because we’ve done that before and we regret it).
So why are we sharing this?
1. Be a spark
If our story could inspire just one person, one family, to chase after the hope in their heart; pursuits of togetherness and freedom, however that may look, it would be worth it.
Everyone’s journey is different.
You don’t have to quit your job and move to the boonies to lead a purposeful, intentional life!
I encourage you to chase after your own aspirations no matter how outrageous they seem, and strive for deeper connection with those around you by embracing an intentional, simple life, one small step at a time.
If we can do it, so can you.
We aren’t anything special. We don’t make a lot of money, we have a bunch of kids that take a lot of our time.
Don’t be afraid to dream. And while you’re at it, choose a really big, crazy one.
2. Hello Farm Fresh
We grow and preserve as much food as possible in the most simple, organic ways.
This blog will be a vehicle to share updates and availability of farm products as we work on our homestead as a family growing vegetables, chickens, eggs …and who knows what else!
3. Listen up, class
Time is money so in everything we do, we DIY it all the way, simply because we are looking for the cheapest way to make things happen! We will share farm and house projects for you to glean helpful tips from Tim’s journeyman skills.
We also raise and harvest our own chicken and pork with nothing but the basics. You will brush up on the old fashioned skills our grandparents used.
4. Hello Rest
The peace and quiet of our rural life, even in the midst of busyness, truly restores something in our hearts and we look forward to sharing those moments with you. Along with the surprisingly ridiculous moments that go hand in hand with animals and kids.
Ready, set, go!
Like I said before, you don’t have to quit your job and move to the country to be an intentional, present parent or to pursue endeavours you’re passionate about.
Right now, we can cut away some of the excess; like fear, and worrying what people may think, and being too plain-old busy, and instead focus on what we believe is truly valuable; like meaningful connections, our families, a relationship with God, growth.
Let’s share our vulnerable dreams with someone trusted and set a goal, make a plan. Let’s take one small step toward a life we love, today.
Simply Restored
That’s what simply restored means to me: one small step at a time, nothing complicated, just back to the basics.
Restoring connection through quality time; simply restored families.
Partnering with the Restorer of our faith through nature, prayer, and authentic relationships; simply restored hearts.
Restoring health through real food and skills that have been lost; simply restored gardens.
Forecast: Chinook
We hope you’ll join us on this journey as we encourage one another in our unique, authentic pursuits.
What idea have you been treasuring? I’d love to hear it. You can email us at jen@simplyrestored.ca Its a great privilege to play one small part in your voyage. We are cheering for you.
Glory and honour to God, none of this is possible without Him,
Jen
P.S. You can read more about how this dream sprouted with shaky hands behind the wheel of a pick up truck here.
Meet Tim and Jen!
Hello Jen
- loves perennial flower gardens, especially growing Granny’s lilies and tulips.
- always reading historical fiction, possibly born in the wrong era
- takes care of the daily animal husbandry with her boys, consisting of Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats and egg layers at the moment, looking forward to bringing some Kunekune pigs home again soon
- wages war against refined sugar, but will sacrifice for everyone’s well being and eat the whole bag of chocolate to get it out of the house as quickly as possible. You’re welcome.
- Tim hides his chocolate.
Hello Tim
- recharges by playing guitar and making fires
- makes better pancakes than Jen
- in his free time, googles outdoor survivalist tips; History Channel’s next “Alone” contestant?
- high school shop teacher and journeyman carpenter
- unexpectedly delivered his fifth son at home with the midwife on the phone
- Jen might be a dreamer, but Tim makes things happen
