The 5 laws for Homesteading on a budget
There are tons of great ways to homestead. In fact, one of the beauties of the homesteading gospel is the simple fact that it’s diverse as all get out. You can grow an urban garden in a busy metropolis, raise chickens in the burbs, or fell, split, and burn your own wood in the countryside — and all of it is considered homesteading.
While your geographic location is a key element that affects what flavor of homestead you end up setting up, though, there’s something else that has an even bigger impact on your homefront adventures: your budget.
Can you homestead on a budget?
If you’re well off, chances are you can be pretty picky about what you do and how you do it. If you’re starting a homestead, you can go all-in on a nice tractor, premium-grade solar panels, and you can probably even afford to splurge on that fancy stone garden border for your hip new lasagna garden.
But what if you want to figure out how to start homesteading with no money? What if your budget is paper-thin, and you’re interested in trying to get your hands on some organic, healthy, homegrown products without paying top dollar at the grocery market?
We’ve got some good news for you.
You can absolutely engage in frugal homesteading on a budget.
In fact, there are tons of frugal homesteading ideas that can help you save some cash as you set up an affordable, self-sustaining home base.
However, there’s more to affordable homesteading than simply finding projects that don’t cost too much to pull off. If you want to learn how to homestead on a budget, there are a few important things you’re going to want to keep in mind as you go along. Without these tenets, it can be difficult to keep a frugal homestead going over the long term.
So, without further ado, here are Homestead or Dead’s 5 official laws crafted specifically to help you start homesteading on the cheap.
Law #1: Set some homesteading goals
Homesteading can quickly slip into hobby territory if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish. While that may work for Daddy Twofoot as he putters around his retirement garden with no particular endgame in mind (and yes, that’s a Tolkien reference), if you want to actually save some dough, you need to set up some legit goals.
Take chickens as a perfect example. If you want to eat some fresh, homegrown eggs, you can invest in a coop, buy some hens, and enjoy the fruit of your labor, regardless of the cost. However, if you also want to save some money with your grocery budget, you need to calculate your current egg consumption, add up the costs involved in setting up for chickens, look for the cheapest options, and then forecast how long it will take you to break even on your investment.
It may be more work, but if you want to come out on top, financially speaking, it’s absolutely essential that you set goals before you start spending money.
Law #2: Rule out the expensive activities
Much like any budgeting activity, it’s important to separate your needs from your wants. Your inner prepper may be fantasizing about a massive, sprawling garden with every kind of plant under the sun, but your short-term financial goals may require reigning in those ambitions and aiming for more attainable objectives.
The same goes for other projects, like installing solar panels or buying a cow for milk. They may become financially efficient once you have more resources to work with, but if you don’t have the homesteading infrastructure already, you should probably rule out the expensive activities right from the get-go.
Law #3: Recycle and reuse
Lowes, Home Depot, Tractor Supply, they’re all fun, exciting, tempting, money-sucking black holes — wow, that got dark fast. Sorry about that.
Seriously, though, all of the home improvement/rural lifestyle retail stores are super fun to shop at — and who doesn’t love a quick spin through the clearance section even when you don’t need anything in particular? Nevertheless, more often than not, it’s unfettered, restrictionless trips to the store that end up pushing you up over those project budget limits.
If you want to keep a frugal homestead, it’s imperative that you fight back against this kind of activity by cultivating a recycle and reuse mindset. Rather than opting to head to the store whenever you have a need, look for ways to repurpose existing resources that you already have in order to solve the problem.
If you need a chicken coop, don’t drop $500 on a fancy pre-fab model. Build one for $150 out of an old swingset. Get the idea? We knew you would. Moving on!
Law #4: Don’t prioritize looks
If you want to keep things affordable, it’s important to avoid prioritizing a Pinterest-friendly homestead. We get it. Who doesn’t love snapping a photo of your latest homesteading triumph to plaster all over the interweb?
But if you want to save some moolah as you go, you’re going to have to sacrifice beauty for practicality from time to time.
Say, for instance, you’re tapping your maple trees and you have this romantic picture of old-school metallic taps gracefully dripping into suspended buckets. Sounds great, right? Until you find out that the set up is five times as expensive as buying a plastic bucket and tubing (both food-grade, of course). The point is, sometimes you’re going to need to be okay with putting functionality before looks — and that’s perfectly okay.
Law #5: Always assess your outcomes
Finally, it’s a good idea to circle back around every once and a while and assess how your activities are panning out. If you took the time to set up proper goals before you started your homesteading adventures, you should have reasonable benchmarks to measure against.
Gauging the economic success of your homestead is another crucial activity that helps you stay on the monetarily straight and narrow and keep your homestead alive and well for weeks, months, and even years to come.
Frugal homesteading for beginners
Even if you’ve dabbled with home projects before, if you’re new to the concept of genuinely saving money through your homestead, it’s important to start things off by adopting these five principles. To quickly recap:
Law #1: Set some homesteading goals.
Law #2: Rule out the expensive activities.
Law #3: Recycle and reuse.
Law #4: Don’t prioritize looks.
Law #5: Always assess your outcomes.
If you can adhere to these codes of conduct throughout your adventures, you can turn your homesteading dreams into a reality without waiting for a giant tax return or some other random financial windfall to finally get things off the ground.