Fiscal Fowl Alignment for the

Potential Homesteader

- Five Tips to Get your Financial Ducks in a Row

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by Andrew Mueller   

FRUGALITY:  Frugal is often confused with cheap, but frugal is not always about the lowest price.  It’s about the greatest value.   A person can be frugal and still spend a hefty sum in order to obtain function and quality.  In real world terms, frugality means that if you’re going to spend your hard earned money, you should do so on stuff that works, and stuff that lasts.    

Around my 10 acres of Ozark woods, there are not many farmers, but there are a few.  The soil in the Ozark hills is rocky stuff, and is definitely not a farmer’s best friend.  As a result, small farmers here have a pretty tough go of it, and if they have two nickels to rub together they are doing pretty well.   To say that they are “frugal” would be a vast understatement.   These farmers would sooner stab themselves in the eye with a rusty screwdriver than spend $4.25 to buy a cup of Starbucks coffee.  They’ll stick to brewing their own Folgers, thank you very much.   Yet each of these very same farmers will invariably be wearing Carhart coveralls.  Carhart coveralls are definitely not the cheapest you can find, but they have a reputation of being nearly indestructible.  There are plenty of other brands that are lower in price, but these hard-scrabble farmers consider the more expensive Carharts to be the better value.    

EFFICIENCY:   Don’t buy anything unless it will do its job better and more economically than whatever it is replacing.   

Let’s say for instance that you love ice cream, and you and the kids have been making it at home with an old-fashioned hand cranked churn for years.  On a trip to town, you spot a gleaming, shiny new electric ice-cream maker.  It promises to make gallons of ice cream at the push of a button.  Seems more efficient, right?   Wrong.   That button makes ice cream, just the same as your old-fashioned churn.  To do so however, it’s requires electricity, which costs money.  It’s also more liable to break than your simple old-fashioned churn.   So unless your arms fall off, that new machine is not adding any efficiency to your current situation.       

Another efficiency concept calls for you to try to spend as much of your money as possible on things that appreciate (increase in value), and to avoid as much as possible, buying things that depreciate (lose value).   Now, we all have to buy things that lose value quickly, like food and clothes.  I’m not saying you can’t buy them.   I’m just saying don’t go overboard and buy more of these things than you actually need.   When you want to splurge, do so on something that will maintain or increase its value over time, like a quality tool, an improvement to your home, or fun new educational materials for your kids.     

TIP #3 – AVOID THE SCAMS

The genetic makeup that makes many of us want to homestead, also makes us more susceptible than average to the countless “work from home” or “make zillions in your spare time” scams out there.   I’m embarrassed to admit that in my younger days, I fell for more than one. 

That’s not to say that you can’t make money from a home-based business, nor am I suggesting that you can’t earn a living without wearing a necktie.   If that were the case, our cause would be lost.    No, what I am saying is that you need to be cautious in separating the wheat from the chaff.   A friend of mine likes to say, “If you’re invited to play poker with a group of strangers, and you don’t know who the pigeon is, then it’s you.”     If you’re looking for extra income, here are some things to watch out for:  

•           If you heard about this great new opportunity via email, an internet ad, or a sign tacked up on a phone pole at an intersection, don’t walk away – run. 

•           If the opportunity involves sending any money to the person or company that is pushing the idea, then it’s not about getting YOU rich quick.  It’s about getting THEM rich quick.  Tell them you’ll think it over.  Then don’t.

•           If it suggests, infers, or outright promises you income that is equal to, or greater than, that made by a skilled individual (carpenter, bricklayer, etc), and yet it doesn’t require you to have skills or experience, it’s a one-way ticket to Scamsville.    

•           If the money you will supposedly make is not payment for physical labor, skilled services, or the sale of a physical product, then you are about to receive a lesson in modern skullduggery.    

The old adage still holds true: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.     

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