The Road Less Traveled

There come times in our lives where we are presented extraordinary choices and opportunities.  Sy and I are at a point in our lives where we have the opportunity to really evaluate a number of different directions for our lives to take. While we have discussed many ideas over the decade we have been together, we really didn't expect to be in the position we are currently in.

We are knee-deep in the foreclosure dance with Bank of America.   We have a small business which is paid for other than monthly expenses.  Unfortunately, we started a business that in my industry slows down when the cold comes.  We have minimized our household bills as much as possible for our acceptable standard of living, and we continue to be behind on our bills.  We are better off than a large majority of Americans who are still struggling with significant debt.  Our only debt is our mortgage and we had one of those mortgages that is in the news right now.  We should not have qualified, and we struggled to pay it consistently the entire time we have lived here.

We are now faced with the question: Where do we go from here.  As I stated earlier, we have discussed where we want to head in life, what our dream house will look like when we build it,  how we want to live our lives.  We both see a huge economic storm still lingering over the United States for the next several years.  We are prepared to use our various skills and trades to make a living.  We seek a simple life without the corrosion of the rat race.  Our long-term dream is to someday buy a small piece of rural property somewhere and build a sustainable, eco-friendly hobbit hole that is off the grid.  We ultimately seek to be self supporting in raising our own food and ply our crafts and trades for whatever else we may need.  That being said, we are not quite in a position to do that just yet.  We have discussed two basic plans with various options.

I will start with the more traditional plan.  That is, we find a place to rent that we can afford.  We are looking at studio and one bedroom apartments.  They are fairly inexpensive and I have found that in the current housing crisis, more rental properties are pet friendly than I remember  from past renting experiences.  Our overhead would be fairly low.  Some of our options for this plan revolve around auto glass repair.  We can rent and stay in Colorado Springs, one of the most competitive auto glass repair and replacement markets in the world, or we can move to a smaller town and ply our trade in a rural area to make a living.  There is very little competition, but some costs of business are higher.  The one foreseeable difficulty with the rent plan is that we are still beholden to pay somebody else for our shelter each month.  If business is bad, or we get sick, things can end badly, with us not prepared to move on.  Landlords have been known to go into foreclosure as well, leaving tenants high and dry.

The second "less traditional" option we have been discussing is to live location independent.  I put less traditional in quotes here because it is actually the way most of humanity has lived at one time and 30 to 40 million still do.  I am talking about a neo-nomadic lifestyle.  The idea is that we downsize our possessions and buy an RV or coach to live in.  Living Location Independent, is not the same as homeless.  It means we live in a house we can drive down the road when we feel like moving.  The one positive thing I will probably ever say about Wal-Mart is that they are friendly to those who live in RV's and will generally let them park overnight in their parking lots.  We can also park at truck stops and in national parks and forests.  One great advantage to this plan is that we can visit family and friends that live in places we generally weren't able to afford to visit.  With the ability to set up any where and do rock chip repairs and sell our craft goods, we only need to make enough to meet our low fuel and food overhead, and pay for our cell and mobile internet service.  This lifestyle is more common than many think.  The term snowbird applies to those who live in the northern climes in summer and then migrate to places like Arizona and Florida in the winter time.  There are many Technomads, who travel around as consultants and freelance software developers.  There are many who write for a living or sell their photography online.  They may build websites or set up networks.  Often they barter for what they need.  Many Technomads travel the world this way.

Sy and I have been through hours of discussion about this and we are both in favor of the location independent path.  With the advent of the internet and cell phone technology, it is easier than ever to be a nomad and still stay in touch with family and friends.  With the lower cost of living a nomadic lifestyle, we would be able to put away for our future plans.  If we do this we know that we are giving up a certain level of comfort, but we are prepared for this.  With the looming economic and social problems piling up in this country, we almost feel as if we can weather the storm better if we have a shelter we own and can move if we need to make our ends meet.  We are both struggling to overcome the modern American consumerist mindset, or the idea that home ownership and possessions are what's best for us.  It is deeply ingrained, and as one goes through the foreclosure process, allows for depression and anger to manifest because of feelings of failure.  It doesn't matter that the system and our mortgage was designed to fail so that Wall Street speculators could rake in billions.  It has been a long arduous process of breaking free from the failure mindset and setting out to determine our next best course.  We have done a lot of research and as I said are in favor of location independent living.  As we have been doing for a few years now, we will make sustainability and eco-consciousness a focus in our lives.

We ask readers of this blog to share any thoughts you may have about location independent living in the comments.