The argument for buying ahead

Don and I have been engaged in several heavy-duty projects lately. Of course you know about the milking stall and calf pen:

Now we're consumed with getting the garden properly fenced against deer. We've foregone making the remaining garden beds in favor of getting the entire garden area covered with weed cloth, rocked in with gravel, braced by extravagantly tall poles, and netted in deer netting. (Don't worry, I'll put up a full blog post on the project when it's complete.)

But here's the thing: We're hardly spending any money during the process of working on these projects. Since my job loss in mid-February, we've cut back our discretionary spending by well over 90% and now purchase very little beyond groceries and our regular monthly bills. This is nothing unusual; over the 35 years of our marriage, frugality has been the norm, not the exception, so tightening our belts is second nature.

However during the last four years since moving to our current home, we were in a unique position with no debt and a modest-but-steady income. During those four years, we bought things.

Lots of things.

We bought things we knew we would need for future projects with the goal of transitioning our property into a homestead. Field fencing, horse panels, hardware cloth, drip irrigation supplies, hog panels, T-posts, cinder blocks, lumber, plywood, wire (various gauges), weed cloth, gravel, sand, rope, fasteners (screws, nails, bolts, hog rings, etc.), tools, deer netting, sheet metal, the 1500-gallon water tank ... the list goes on and on and on and on and on.

During those heady days, even the merest passing fancy could become reality. Don mentioned one day last year that a tool he'd love to have but didn't want to spend the money on was a T-post puller; I bought it for him for Christmas.

Well, those days are over and our spending is done. But you know what? Now we have the tools and supplies we need to bring endless projects to fruition with very little additional outlay. With our current project, for example (the garden), the only thing we've had to purchase was some hardware (hose clamps, notably) and an extra dump-truck load of gravel.

The peace of mind that comes from having all those things poised and ready to use – especially now, with our severely down-turned income – is hard to describe. We're not handicapped by a lack of money in accomplishing our homesteading goals and striding toward self-sufficiency.

Some might argue that we should have spent those four years saving our money or putting it into intelligent investments. Well, we did put some money in savings; and literally everything else was invested. It's just that our form of investment isn't what Wall Street has in mind for high yields.

Now those investments are paying big-time dividends.