Lots of Changes & Lots of Dreams

Gods, it's been years since I wrote here. Literally! My last post was in January of 2011!

Here's where I am now:

Married to my beloved Rush, still in East Point, GA, but now with the addition of our baby Bonkers. Not so much a baby anymore, though- he's 19mos old and too damned smart and agile for my own good! We still live in the same small house I did when I first started posting here, but other than that, life has changed a lot.

I graduated with my BA in Psychology, and I work helpdesk now for law firms. It can be.... interesting.... LOL
Rush works as a driver for an apartment building/renovation company, but we're trying to get him into where I work, regardless of how useful his job would be for home construction soon.
Despite being a "Christian company" his boss has been extremely unsupportive of the fact that Bonk has been sick a lot lately and Rush has had to stay home with him. Family values FTW...

We are steadily planning for and working toward buying acreage and building a tiny house, but first we have to take care of some smaller and closer to home things. We're tightening up our budget pretty severely, finally got a new roommate (which helps immeasurably!) and are down to one car and the two bikes. Mine's currently out of commission until I find time to replace the bolt that secures the gas tank, and clean up the repaired gas tank.

Once that happens, we'll be down to no car payment (this will change in February to a very modest car payment as our Civic is on its last legs), no bike payments (both bikes were bought cash), rent helped by roommate, and some attempts made at reducing our (astronomical) utility bills.
Our goal is to start rebuilding our credit and by next year, be able to start seriously saving to buy acreage.

I have some money set aside that I can't access right now, the specific use of which is to buy property, and Rush and I want a tiny house.

Our goal is this:
To live mostly self-sustainably on our own property.

Sounds simple, but it won't be to get there.

Things we'll need:

This is the Tiny House I want

Acreage
Our house (Tiny House!) with an independent source of water & power
Storage (we're planning to put our house on a basement, which should help)
Livestock cover/safety (I'm thinking a half barn/half lean-to so that chickens and other vulnerable livestock are safer)

This is the one Rush wants

I'm estimating that we're looking at a mortgage for about $100,000. Ouch!
And that is assuming:
*We get the acreage in foreclosure
*The cost-to-build on the tiny houses is reasonably accurate (taking into account the additional cost of putting it on a basement and not on a slab)
*I am able to put down approximately $75,000 from my trust fund.

Things we will probably do all at once for simplicity's sake:
*Have builders lay barn slab at the same time as house
*Have builders also lay slab for small Japanese style bathhouse
*Buy an old but working truck for hauling or material
*Build outbuildings and raised gardens from scraps of house-building as much as possible
*See if builders can help put in well & pumphouse