Living Off The Grid

Educational links for research

– “Melt-Up” movie by Inflation.us and these other videos by them as well.

– Wranglerstar on youtube.com – Very informative channel.

– Solarcabin on youtube.com – homesteading

– The Pathfinder School LLC – Outdoor survival

– JohnjayRambo channel on youtube.com — survival skills

– Good prepping / solar channel on youtube.com

– Peter King interview about tiny houses. I really love this guy.

– http://offgridcabin.wordpress.com/ – Great informative off grid blog. Great solar info.

– Solar forums @ Norther Arizona Wind & Sun

– Scott Davis website on solar projects alternative energy. Solar hot air etc.

– Wind Turbines

– Overunity Alternative energy forums. Lots of resources and projects.

– Back Woods Home Magazine – WOW! great articles and info…

– E26 Screw Base 12 Volt Ac Dc 5.6 Watt RV Camper Marine Low Voltage LED Light Bulb

– Cool solar panel mount design for small scale

Have fun with the above links, more to come!

It’s more than just the problems on Wall Street… The crash in 2008 was just the beginning according to Inflation.us. I spent a lot of time in the last year or so researching the markets, the Federal Reserve policies and the US debt problem. The dollar is crashing and hyper inflation will be here in the next few years. The world markets are going bonkers and no end is in sight.

Furthermore, we had a coastal hurricane and an early October snow storm that had power out for some people for as long as a full week or more in rural areas. Our society is so dependent on electricity. It’s not until you don’t have power that you truly realize how crippled this country would be with out energy to power our gadgets.

I want to be prepared. Call me a “Prepper” but I certainly do not want to be caught holding the bag. I know things are not looking good and I intend to take steps to take my family off grid as soon as I possibly can. I want to use solar/wind/micro hydro for power and grow and raise our own food.

When the excrement hits the fan, I don’t want to be regretting not being prepared. So many people take for granted that they can in a 24/7 world just drive to the grocery and buy whatever they need. It only takes one snow storm to empty most stores of eggs and bread so I can only imagine how quickly the shelves would empty in any more serious event.

Imagine if the dollar crashes? what will you use for money? How will you communicate with your family? Do you have a meeting place in case of emergencies? The list goes on and on and I can’t say my decision to go off grid is because of these things alone because to be honest, being self sufficient and generating our own power is really fascinating as well.

I understand the up front costs of solar arrays and preparing to go off grid. I know this will not be easy. Conservation is is easier than producing and I know our life will be much different going forward. Many people will suffer because they did not prepare for the coming financial brick wall.

Look for my next blog to have some links to information that helped me get to the place where I am today. I am not off grid yet but I pray I have enough time to get there.

After seeing this video by “solarcabin” on youtube, I really started yearning for such a simple lifestyle. I watched every one of his videos and some multiple times and I bought his book as well. My eyes were opened to a different way of life that quite frankly, I wished I had discovered sooner. My family and I have gone through several wringers trying to keep up with the Joneses. what did any of us learn in school about finances??

I’m tired of the rat race. I am tired of spinning my wheels. Life is short and I want to enjoy it. I love the outdoors. I love hunting. I work so much and have little time to enjoy my children because I am working for stuff nation. Things I don’t need… I’m truly tired of a debt lifestyle.

Moving on and looking to simplify and thanks to LaMar Alexander, I have a starting point and a concept for how I would like to live. Off the grid and not accountable to anyone. But how do I get there?

After losing our house through what I believed was a lot of bad decisions and external market forces (housing collapse), I realized we needed to take a good hard look at our finances and how we were spending our money. Sure, we had quicken and QuickBooks and did some basic budgeting but never really had a plan or goal per say. We generally flew by the seat of our pants. The money was flowing with rental properties and my job so we always seemed to make ends meet.

Some time in the last year we were turned onto Dave Ramsey through our church and I would say his program “Peace University” is rather profound. We had become so used to spending on credit, that the concept of actually saving for things was like a foreign language. This short video clip from an old Saturday Night Live skit really sums things up “Don’t buy stuff you can’t afford“.

Things after this got quite radical. Our whole goal was to get out of debt. We realized the mess we had on our hands and things needed to change. Not too long after joining Peace University I stumbled on a link on Facebook in my news feed to a guy named LaMar Alexander and his handles is “solarcabin” on Youtube. The video I saw was something completely unrelated to the video I eventually fell in love with but here is a sample.

I will continue our adventure in my next blog.

In 2007 we went large… After capitalizing on the housing market and remodeling run down homes and selling them, we decided to branch out and buy small city houses for passive income from rent. Initially things went well but in hindsight it was a grave mistake.

We never did our homework. We knew very little about investing but felt comfortable with rehabbing old houses because we had been doing this from the year 2000 when we bought our very first home. It was a run down bank foreclosure that we gutted to the framing and rebuilt. After staying there for three years, we sold for a handsome profit. We did this two more times upgrading the square footage each time.

This brings us to 2007 where in one year we bought four rental properties with our last being a four unit in November. That would turn out to be our last property as soon after, we started to see the first pieces of the credit collapse and we were unable to finance out our money to roll into any more properties.

Our method was to buy a property with cash, rehab it and then when finished finance 80% LTV to get our money back and just buy another. With the housing collapse in full swing in 2008, we were about to experience some major life changes.

Cash evaporated. We tried to hang on but our tenants lost their jobs and were not able to pay their rent leaving 5 mortgages up to me to pay. This I was able to do for a while as something always worked itself out but this eventually that came to a head and I became late on the rental mortgages and soon after our primary residence.

Our houses had lost so much value, we were so far behind it made no sense to carry on. A decision was made to fold and cut our losses. It was very hard on us and with a huge house and six children the choices were few. We decided to downsize. We went from just shy of 4000 square feet to 800 square feet as we went to stay with family in a two bedroom split level where we remain to this day.

Starting over…