CampFIRE

Pursuing financial independence while growing our homestead

How do you start a fire? You need a spark of some kind, on some fuel, within conditions to enable success!

I’ve been following the FIRE movement since a colleague mentioned Mr. Money Mustache in 2016. I binged on every single blog post and subscribed so I wouldn’t miss any more snark from the gregarious character writing about badassery. Then I started reading a bunch of personal finance books. Despite graduating high school, and college, twice, I have never taken a personal finance class. You know, a class on the stuff that seems to make the world go round, that would actually be informative for a functional adult in our society??… Sadly, nope.

So I created my own personal finance/financial independence syllabus by: 1) checking out every possible book from my local library, and by that I mean 15 at a time, although there was a lot of skimming once I hammered down the basics; 2) downloading as many audiobooks as I could from the library, and a few with my Audible membership, and; 3) built my syllabus out with even more with books to read and authors to track down based on the references cited within the first two steps.

I think I read 20 books, easily, that year, and have been on the hunt for more goodness since. The FI spark was lit.

One of the first books I got was, no surprise here, Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. He had an actionable plan! And it made great sense! And it was motivating! Emergency fund? Check! Debt snowball? GONE! 3-6 months of expenses, yep! 15% in 401k, heck yes, bring on the tax break! There was fuel for this spark, and the FIRE was burning!

Now, My Love and I are on our homestead. We’re a couple months shy of being here a year. We’ve built our financial plan to flexible this year while we get our homestead, self-sufficiency systems established.

I’d like to take a media timeout here and brag about how absolutely wonderful it is to fall in love with your soulmate. He’s amazing. And he, Lamare, writes on the blog too!

Anyway, part of our bliss stems from our alignment. Not just our connection, but our the dreams we have for our future together. Dave Ramsey posted a quote on Instagram a while back, (my rendition on the left), that “Goals are dreams with work boots on,” and that resonated with both of us. We want to actualize these wonderful dreams of greater independence we talk about together. We are building an even better life for ourselves, together, by planning out the next thing, and getting it done.

A big part of our dreams is independence, not only financial independence, but also food independence. We’re rolling up our sleeves and building our skills to be less reliable on the metro area we moved away from. Our 5 acres is a “close enough” commute while we continue to work, but we want to shift our “work” to homesteading. That’s work worth doing.

However, we are unwilling to finance our dreams. That is, we’re not willing to shackle ourselves with debt beyond our mortgage (that’s more than enough debt all on it’s own!). If we can’t afford extra things, they will wait. We’ll either re-evaluate our options, invent a new solution, plan and wait for savings to cover the expense, or decide we don’t actually need it at all.

This means we are constantly chatting about our priorities and micro goals, or way-points, against our longer-term goals. Someone we recently had dinner with, who grew up on a farm, cautioned us against pursuing the nostalgia of homesteading. To that, we just smiled. And then acquired rabbits to breed, chicks to raise for eggs, we built a couple of raised beds with hoop house lids to extend our growing season, and began turning the acres of lawn we have into plots for our seedlings.

Let me be clear: being independent is tough, but oh so worth it. You are working, but you are working for you. In FI, you are putting your money to work for you. In homesteading, you are putting your energy into your own nutrient-rich food.

It used to drive me nuts to hear the different “types” of FIRE. To me, it was variations of the same theme. It didn’t seem like it was worth splitting hairs over; you were pursuing financial independence, in whatever way worked for you.

And then… my love and I were watching a YouTube video of a couple comparing FIRE and homesteading. I argued at them while watching the first part of the video, critiquing their comments. But by the end, the gentleman offered up that there are similarities in homesteading and FIRE, and he called it campfire.

YEHSSSSSSS! Halleluiah, he saw the light. And suddenly, I understood why so many of us have fallen in line with the various “types” of FIRE–to keep that spark fueled, to hone your focus, and to maintain that environment to fuel your FIRE. Whatever it is you want to call it, that’s up to you, but I applaud you for going against the grain, and getting after securing your freedom.

As we continue to improve our camp, and fuel our FIRE, we’ll post blogs about what we learn, how our experiments go, and updates along the way. We want to build a simple, fulfilling life, but we know that takes a lot of hard work and deliberate choices. Our hope is that you’ll learn along with us, and maybe find your own spark!

Are you ready to start your campFIRE journey? Check out our free resources to help you get started!