I was a part of the "back to the land movement" where young people (mostly with some college or degrees) decided to move out of the big cities where often they went to college and back to the country to live simpler lives by buying often beautiful country land. This happened especially from the late 1960s to the 1980s the most.
But, to some degree this hasn't really stopped either.
The main problem now is that land prices (in relation to people's income) is much higher than before.
For example, I could buy 2 1/2 acres of incredibly beautiful land at 4000 feet with a beautiful view of Mt. Shasta and a spring on the land for $8000 dollars cash in 1980. This might be difficult to impossible right now.
Then I built my own A-Frame by selling a VW Camper van that we owned A Westfalia and buying plywood and other lumber and built my own A- Frame house for my wife and then 3 older kids to live in.
We home schooled our children there for 5 years using Oak Meadow School distance learning independent study to educate our children which was extremely reasonable to do then and now.
The point of all this is that at one point inflation reached about 14% in 1982 which was one of the main reasons we did this to save money on rent which was going higher every month just about even then.
The point of all this idea was NO mortgage was necessary and after we paid for land and lumber to build it since I and my father and my wife and my friends and kids built it ourselves it was paid for and all we had to pay then was land taxes per year.
What was the drawback of all this?
The drawback was that we could and did get up to 7 feet of snow at a time there in the winter which meant that we might have to park our 4 wheel drive International Harvester Scout II a mile or more away from where we lived and put on our cross country skis on our kids and ourselves and put groceries in a bobsled and tow the bob sled from the vehicle to our home.
The other drawback was that there was no electricity there and solar energy was too expensive for us then to consider going in that direction (at least at that time). So, we didn't have a TV there for this reason. And we lighted our house with candles and Aladdin Kerosene lamps at night for reading and playing games with the children.
What was the good side of all of this?
No mortgage and owning both the land and the house outright and having a spring on the land and home schooling our children for 5 years there. Eventually we moved back into the SF Bay area and bought another business after the economy recovered somehow from loans from other countries we bailed out after World war II like Europe and Japan who had recovered by the 1980s. So, even though the U.S. almost went bankrupt then from excesses of the Viet Nam war, Japan and Europe bailed the U.S. out with loans so the country didn't go bankrupt in the early 1980s.
My idea that I have always followed in life is to never have a mortgage on any property I owned. I did take loans to buy cars but that's all. Also, I never used credit cards and instead wanted only to pay cash for everything or I wouldn't buy it.
I remember I got a credit card with a 500 dollar limit for emergencies and this is what happened. We used it in emergencies and then paid the minimum and found paying the minimum would NEVER pay it off ever.
So, one day I just paid the card off and cut it up. Because I just didn't want to be in debt at all because this is how you never get ahead in life when you work by the hour and have a mortgage it often is like people are in prison who do this.
And to top it all off then the Great Recession happened which put so many people underwater between 2008 and 2012 that they had to lose their homes and go bankrupt when they walked away from their loans.
This never happened to me because I understood finances enough to know to never have a mortgage on anything I owned or wanted to own.
This allowed me to save money and we even were able to travel to India and Nepal and Thailand and Japan for 4 months as a family of 5 because we never owned a mortgage.
Besides if you ask anyone knowledgeable about finance a HOUSE is NEVER an asset unless it is paid off it is a liability. This is an important thing to know about a house with a mortgage.
And friends of mine had the same idea. For example one friend bought land for Cash in Mt. Shasta City area for around 5000 dollars for 2 1/2 acres of land so he paid it off within a year at that time. Then by 2000 after he had developed it without ever getting even one loan on his property he was offered about 1 million dollars for the developed property with several houses on it. This is the kind of thing you could do if you started in the 1970s for example.
However, I'm not sure you could do this now.
I remember him with snow blowing into his windows because he couldn't afford windows then the first winter. But, by the 2nd winter he could buy windows for his first house on his land. But, no mortgage so after the first year his land and home were always an asset because they were ALWAYS paid off after the very first year. So, he got his master's degree and by the next year he had an asset of his house and land.
WITHOUT EVER HAVING A MORTGAGE!
When everything is paid for (your land and home) you don't have to pay rent ever and you don't have mortgage payments for 25 to 30 or more years to pay either.
So, instead you can save all this money you are not putting out on mortgages or rent and travel the world if you want to instead.
Several of my friends and I and my family actually did this and it worked for us.
Was it easy? No of course not. But, if you have a goal and stick with it it might work for you too!
If you can do this and if you are self employed too this is a winning combination in my book at least!
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