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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

OK.  I know better but have decided to give it a shot.  This diatribe has 
been courteously received on other fora although there are always those who 
will 
rend their garments and cry "You're saying I'm a......!!"  Yet it has never 
failed that there have always been some that get it.

There are three things that are urgent in the lives of us all:  food, a place 
to live, and the means to stay warm in winter and cook our food.  If those 
three things are threatened, we are thereby, as we used to say, grabbed by 
the 
short hairs.  We are in distress immediately and we will expend whatever 
reserves we have or agree to go into slavery ... eh ... I mean debt ... to 
relieve 
us of that distress.

There are other such constraints you say?  Medicine?  Not for most and it 
needn't be for any?  Clothes?  Most clothes last years and we do not face 
distress and constraint if our supply of new (or additional) clothes are not 
forthcoming.

Now imagine a position where you never pay money for your food, a place to 
live, or fuel to warm yourself and cook your food.  Nor do you pay money 
indirectly for those things.  If all your money were cut off, you would still 
have a 
warm place to sleep and enough to eat.

It would make you a financial superman.

There are many ways of going about getting to that state.  It helps if you 
don't need hard to obtain food, if you don't need or want a large house, and 
if 
you don't require every far corner of that house to be 72 degrees in winter.

What happens in his state is ALL your money becomes discretionary.  If you 
are skilled and clever, the vast majority of your time becomes discretionary 
as 
well.  

When asked the essence of homesteading, Scott Nearing put it: "We grew our 
food and ate it, we cut our fuel and burned it, we built our house and lived 
in 
it."

The trouble in fathoming through this is that people lump all their efforts 
into one pool, all their assests into one pool and thus homesteading appears 
to 
be a difficult and expensive undertaking.  The key to homesteading as I 
pontificate about it is to separate those.

Nearing was wealthy as was his parnter (who later became his wife).  He kept 
separate and strict records of all the goings on of the homestead to show 
that 
it was an economically feasible and sound way of life.

I say that to preface that mortgages are not part of the homestead formula.  
That is a buisness dealing with the greater of society to secure your 
exclusive rights to a parcel of land.  You must needs interact with society 
and the 
world at large to come to peace with that arrangement as everyone, 
homesteader 
or not, must do.

But imagine if, mortgage withstanding, you needed none of your cash for food, 
fuel, or any other such urgent need.  If you chose so, ALL your cash and ALL 
your discretionary time and effort could be devoted to eliminating the 
mortgage. 

This is my version of the Economic Basis of Homesteading.  Eliminate the 
urgencies down to those things you can more or less be 100% in control over 
and 
provide for yourself directly.   It is why we plow with a horse, cut wood 
with 
an axe and crosscut saw, garden with a spade, etc.  Whether there is money or 
not, we will have the three basic necessities of life and everything else is 
negotiable.

What about cars and gasoline?  If those things pay for themselves out of the 
endeavors in which you choose to engage (like a job) then they have nothing 
whatever to do with homesteading or the economics of homesteading.  

When your physical creature comforts are eliminated from the money 
merry-go-round, you will find yourself suddenly in an entirely different 
universe.  It's 
a head game even if nothing materially changes right away.

My formula is this:

Arrange a way (and circumstances) where you can provide your food and fuel at 
no money cost to you.  This means that if there is a money way to do those 
things and a non-money way to do it, always take the non-money way.  Going 
into 
the past or being a luddite or backwards has nothing to do with it.  It's 
money vs non-money.  That's all.

Apply the money you DO choose to make first to anticipate needs you know are 
coming or are likely to be coming.   You know the cow is going to die some 
day.  You know the truck is mortal. You know something is going to break in 
the 
house.  Don't pretend that it isn't going to happen and that it's just a 
matter 
of you being unlucky while others are lucky if it does.

Next build up a personal grudge against your debt.  Be emontional about it 
and even if it's only the deposit on the soda bottle you found in the ditch, 
cackle with avaricious glee at the though of applying that 5 cents to your 
debts. 
  Take no prisoners and allow yourself no respite.  The retirement of debt is 
meat and drink, man and wife, it is what puts the lead in your pencil.  
Remember that you are now the invencible and immortal warrior and it's 
because you 
have food and a place to sleep no matter what happens.

I know people in whom the fires have been lit and five years later they are 
out from under a mountain of debt and their anticipated needs provided for.  
And, says I, all because that bowl of soup on the kitchen table was from 
another 
universe than what was in their purse.


James