How Do I Get Started With campFIRE?

Plant something you can eat! Even in a studio apartment, you can grow something.

For example, when we were apartment living, our AeroGarden grew tons of amazing, fresh basil. My Love makes amazing basil pasta. Even with “just” growing herbs, we were really enjoying our fresh counter produce!

We think of campFIRE as the coming together of two kindred spirits, homesteading and financial independence, so we see it as doing two related things at once. But initially, it might feel more like two separate things if you’re unfamiliar with either (or both!) concepts. Food independence and self-sufficiency, and financial independence. Clearly, there’s a strong word that links the two together.

This isn’t about striking it out completely on your own in the mountains. Although you certainly could shoot for that if you’re more of a hermit than most. For us, we like that big box stores are less than an hour away. Close enough for trips every so often to restock, but far enough away that the people in city, stay in city. We like our space, and slower pace, with the freedom to do what we need to get done.

To get started with campFIRE, we recommend learning as much as you can about homesteading, because there is so much to learn, while getting your finances in order.

Find your spark!

For homesteading, you might dig into finding a state to live in with water, growing seasons, and laws that allow you to have animals, and build things. Zoning is (unfortunately) still a thing even in rural areas. Some states are certainly more ‘homestead friendly’ than others. Or, maybe you just want chickens in the ‘burbs to help make compost for your garden, with the awesome perk of fresh eggs. While doing your research, we recommend you write down what you learn.

Yep, old school, hard copy, notes. This helps you articulate what you’re learning, because if you’re like us, you’ll be learning far more than you ever realized was possible to learn about seemingly simple things, like growing gardens and raising chickens. This is also defense against decision fatigue. More importantly, you’ll see what you focus on, and you can find patterns in what you’re interested in. These notes will help you draft your homestead goals and plans. Maybe that’s just a plan for how to replace store-bought canned tomatoes with your own! Write down why you want to homestead, and what that homestead looks like to you. This is especially important if you have a significant other—you can literally compare notes and share with each other what you’re after, so you can be after it, together.

We also highly, highly recommend finding YouTubers doing exactly what you want to be doing. In real life. Every day. A few of our favorites are: Simple Living Alaska, Appalachia’s Homestead with Patara, The Hollar Homestead, and Good Simple Living. There are tons more, but these are the ones we always watch first when new videos are up! They are inspiring and informative in ways you don’t realize… until you’re standing in your garden, asking, ‘wait, how did Patara show us how to prune our tomatoes?’ Or standing in the kitchen staring down your zucchini harvest, trying to remember how Eric and Arielle canned that zucchini bread they were still eating around Christmas that looked so amazing? (Why yes, those are videos we re-watched just this week!)

Fuel your FIRE

Meanwhile, we recommend you simultaneously get your financial house in order. Pay down all of your debt and save for an emergency. The first three baby steps of Dave Ramsey’s financial wisdom are an absolute must. After you’re debt free and have expenses set aside for the inevitable rainy day, then you’ll have a financial foundation to build your homestead dreams upon. (See what I did there??)

To get squared away and money smart, we recommend Dave’s Total Money Makeover (affiliate link), and J. L Collin’s The Simple Path to Wealth (affiliate link) for the foundations, and Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad (affiliate link), the Mr. Money Mustache blog, and Kristy Shen’s Quit Like a Millionaire (affiliate link) for financial independence, retire early (FIRE) inspiration and motivation. If you start with Dave, and Mr. Money Mustache, you’ll get your spending/expenses/debt under control, before expanding into passive income builders (aka investing).

You can get creative with lot of low-cost, DIY solutions, but everything you put into your homestead will have some sort of set-up cost. And just like construction costs, it can easily take twice as long and cost 3x as much as you planned if you’re careless. Start up “costs” might be manual labor and hours, or it might be the traditional approach of writing a check for someone else to do a major project for you. It might be networking and bartering for a few baby chicks, or it might mean a trip to your farm store. But either way, those little darlings need bedding and feed, which means you need a way of paying for their care. Ya gotta have homestead funds on hand. DO NOT ACCUMULATE DEBT. Debt is the opposite of independence. Independence is what we’re after, remember? NO DEBT.

Whatever you do… avoid debt. It’s a four-letter word for a reason. Cough cough don’t-you-dare-take-on-debt cough cough.

Ahem. Excuse me! Anyway, grow something you can eat. Map out your plan. Get rid of any debt and build a savings account.

Debt-free and built up with Murphy repellant? (You know, Murphy’s law, what can go wrong, will.) Get cracking on building passive income. Learn about investing. Learn about creating a company. Make your money work hard, for you, so you don’t have to work for someone else.

Improve your campsite

After that… your homestead is what you make it. If you need to relocate, and you’re debt-free, think about taking trips to the location you’re after, in all four seasons, to see if it’s as wonderful as you’ve made it to be in your head. Build your plan, with steps for success, not just an outline, so you can see how to get where you want to be, on a homestead that you’re legally able to build the systems you want to build. Believe it or not, not all states allow you to collect, retain, and make us of, drumroll please, rain water. Having a detailed plan to build the systems you want, on the land you want, gives you a lot of clarity during a time susceptible to great decision fatigue.

But wherever you are, I sure hope you’ve planted your garden. I hope you’re enjoying the fruits of all of your labor, with the satisfaction of “put-up” jars, frozen veggies, dried herbs, and any other way to enjoy the garden spoils.

Make excuses? Or make it happen?

Our homestead… is our dream. It’s not perfect, we’re just getting started and weeds literally grow like weeds, but we’re really, really happy here. Even in the middle of a global pandemic. We didn’t get here overnight, and have a long way to go. But we’re enjoying trying our best, and ever so excited to completely quit the rat race once we reach our FI number.

Just remember: the FI journey can be long, but it’s a journey to enjoy. We think homestead meals of food that’s more nutritious, grown in our yard, is one of the best ways to celebrate the milestones along the way.

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