30 Jun We Left Our City Lives in Miami and London 12.5+ Years Ago to Create Our Off-Grid Homestead Life… and We Did It On the CHEAP!
Posted at 17:39h
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A quick break-down of how we afforded to create our “luxury” Off-Grid Homestead Lifestyle!
Needless to say we aren’t financially rich in any way of the imagination… in fact, we decided to leave our city lives in Miami 🇺🇸 (John) and London 🇬🇧 (Fin) to create our off-grid tiny house lifestyle due to how financially ruined, broke and in debt we were after John’s head injury and the 2008/2009 financial crisis👍👍🏽
When we started out in 2010/2011 we sold all our belongings to begin our journey… and we didn’t spend all our money and do everything overnight, but instead began by living in an old musty dark leaking 1978 29’ Coachman camper John bought for $700.
For our first 4 years we leased a hunting tract for $1.2K ($1200) annually while we saved lots of $$, paid off our debt, built our shed-to-house DIY conversion, and searched for land we could afford that would allow us to legally live the lifestyle we wanted… then in 2015 we purchased our first 3.16 acres in Middle-Georgia 🇺🇸 about 1.5 hours outside of Atlanta through Zillow… the owner was asking $7K ($2,215 per acre)… we made a cash offer of $5K ($1,582 per acre) and she accepted. (We then started looking into all the connecting/adjacent lots… we purchased our last 7 acres in 2019 and now have a total of 16.2 acres.)👍👍🏽
Our original shed-to-home conversion cost us $6.5K for the empty shed shed ($109.00 a month payment) and an additional $6K to do our original full shed-to-house conversion for a combined grand total of $12.5K for our forever home. 👍👍🏽🥰
We spent an additional $6K in January 2023 to build our greenhouse-kitchen addition and in 2019 we spent $1.5K to build our greenhouse-bathroom👍🏽👍😊
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It was rough, especially at first… no water, we hauled in 5-gallon water totes we would fill in town at a gas station and at a boat ramp, no electricity, living in the dark at night, crop failures, cold nights, etc.
We don’t come from wealthy families (Fin’s parents are humble farmers in NE Thailand & John was adopted by an Amish couple at a young age after the death of his biological single mother. What we were gifted from our parents is we both were taught to believe we can accomplish what we want through hard work, saving $$, not projecting on others instead of focusing on ourselves, and with the understanding not to assume anything in life is free👍👍🏽😊
One of the biggest reasons some people do not live the life they want is because they make assumptions and have self-defeating thoughts… for us we believed in ourselves and didn’t make any excuses to live this lifestyle full-time 24/7/365 these 12.5+ years.
Wishing you the same happiness and success we have been able to create for ourselves.🥰
– John & Fin –
🙏+🙏🏽=❤️
Please check us out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook for videos, reels, stories, posts about our off-grid lifestyle & homestead life, and our many DIY projects using salvaged, repurposed, FREE, and dumpster-dived materials.
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#johnandfin #belovedcabin #tinyhouse #unitedtinyhouse #homestead #offgrid #diy