My idea is crazier than yours

Welcome to Weirdos in a Grain Bin! We are excited to share our story. This story is not only about building a grain bin house, but being self sufficient, debt free, simple living and life hacks.

We decided to quit our jobs. Sounds crazy right? But we’ll get back to that.

We are just like every other American trying to live the American dream. What is the American Dream, you say? Let’s see — get married, buy a house, get a decent paying job, maybe even start a family, yada yada yada, and then what? Over-worked, under-paid, stressed out, mortgage, car note, credit cards, etc.; you know your everyday rat race.  After years of the same rat race, we decided that there had to more. This can’t be the only way to live life. So we came up with a plan to have less stress and be debt free in 5 years and to be able to do what we want.  We started by looking at the interest we were paying on our smaller loans that could be paid off in a few years. For us, it made sense to make short term sacrifices now – not eating out as often, cutting cable TV, cellphone plans, etc. These sacrifices allowed us to pay off smaller loans by paying down the interest, which saved us money to be able to put more in savings. This was not an easy thing to do because we work hard; we should be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor, right? These things are only temporary enjoyment. At the same time, we decided to use our well-landscaped yard to grow a few fruits and vegetables, which cut down on the grocery bill to help save even more money. Believe it or not, it really did make a difference and it tastes better than store bought! I know what your thinking, I don’t have a green thumb, well neither did we! Try it, you just may shock yourself, we did.

After a year, we were shocked by the amount of money we were able to save and the debt we were able to pay off, which reduced stress and that was an awesome feeling. But, like most Americans, we had extra money so we started spending more on other activities. We kinda lost sight of the main goal of being debt free. We buckled down and got refocused. We soon realized that our stress free, debt reduced life was not truly stress free or debt free because of the ever present 30 year mortgage monster and working 50+ hours per week. This is when the new plan: operation quit job was born. We figured out the only way to quit your job is to own your land and home.

At this point we decided we needed to find land, which was not an easy task. We looked at land for 6 months without any luck, so we became discouraged for operation quit job. Then one Saturday afternoon, we decided to take the back roads home, that we normally do not take and we stumbled upon a property for sale. As we walked around the property my husband was rambling on about how perfect the property was and this vision of his. Meanwhile, the only thing, I can think about is we are trespassing because the property had “NO TRESPASSING” signs posted everywhere. Of course, my husband continued to trample all over the property because he (not me) was interested in buying this property. As I make my way back to the vehicle (shaking my head the entire time), he was already on the phone with the owner. Soon after, we purchased the property, which was a mess,  and I still wasn’t even sure of his “so called” vision. The sacrifices that we made early on allowed us to purchase the property.

So after his crazy idea of purchasing the land, I came up with a crazy idea of my own from Pinterest. When I jokingly showed him my amazing idea of building a grain bin house, he had the same look that I had to his “perfect land vision” maybe even slightly more shocked. Pinterest is NOT a husband’s friend. He did not say much about it until a month later, out of the blue he says, “yeah, we can probably build a grain bin house.” Coming from a man with no prior building experience, but I must admit, he is pretty handy. My shocked response was, “Are you serious?” A couple weeks later, he says, “We’re going to put the house on the market.” No discussion, nothing, just putting the house up for sale with no where to live. Sounds like a solid plan! “Maybe we can live in a RV on the land,” he says. I do not think so, so the house sold within 3 weeks of being put on the market. We were both super happy which turned into being shocked, scared and nervous all at the same time. So, we settled on renting an apartment, Thank God.