Sagebrush & Solar

Look, we aren’t going to beat around the bush: things are expensive right now, and construction is no different. Building supplies are up, and we’ve used a lot more gasoline than we budgeted for (as it turns out, heavy equipment rentals suck down the diesel).

Though we likely won’t be able to accomplish our original goal of building our house with no debt, we will hopefully be relatively close.

First things first — we aren’t eligible for a traditional mortgage. We don’t have a well, and that’s a requirement. It makes sense — if we can’t make payments and the bank has to foreclose, property without a sustainable water source probably won’t go for much. So, if we find ourselves at the end of our savings, a small personal loan is our only option.

Keith and I don’t come from big money — we don’t have trust funds, neither of us has gotten a big inheritance, and we both work for the government. Keith works full-time and can work overtime if needed. I work part-time and can increase my work hours if needed.

My point is…neither of us are making six figures, but we at least have the flexibility to work a little more if we need to. It’s a delicate dance between working overtime and balancing childcare (if one of us is at work, the other is watching Luke) and building the house (if Keith is working on a house project, I’m watching Luke).

My mom is awesome watches Luke on the days that our work shifts overlap. She’s been doing this since November of last year, when I was working full time. We have also been living with my parents since May. We’ve saved a lot of money between having no childcare bills (thanks, Omi!!) and no mortgage (though I’m not sure who is more excited for our house to be done!).

I bought my house in 2017, when the market was on the uptick but before the housing market really exploded. It was a cute little 1975 starter home and served me well. I sold it in 2020 when Keith and I got married, and we bought a house together using the profits. Keith had bought his townhouse in 2019 and we ended up renting it out for about a year. We sold his townhouse in 2021 and sold the house we bought together earlier this year.

We did very well on our profits, which is what we’re using to build our house. Again, we kind of lucked out on these investments, as neither of us are real estate moguls or especially savvy with that type of thing. We did learn the hard and painful way that capital gains tax is “a thing” and those online calculators don’t do it justice when it comes time to write out a check for what you purchased your car for.

I meal plan and use online grocery ordering/pickup to manage our grocery budget. We check out books from the Library (both physical and ebooks). We buy secondhand and try to only purchase necessities. We limit our trips to town to save on fuel; Keith also has a take home car for work, which helps save on fuel costs during his work week.

We will also save money during construction by doing most of the work ourselves — framing, roofing, plumbing, electric, paint, etc. My dad is well versed in many of those things, and is willing to teach us or do it himself. We also plan on using Facebook marketplace, liquidation sales and our local ReStore to hopefully score some deals on things we can touch up (IE, doors) or things we can upgrade later down the road.

We’re blessed to have friends and family who are willing to help out with their expertise, or at the very least, some sweat and assistance. Keith’s dad is planning on coming up soon to help out with whatever stage we’re in at the time. Our friend Coty is experienced in heavy equipment operation, and was instrumental in not only leveling our building pad, but digging out our crawlspace.

We started with about $200,000 in cash from profits and savings. This sounds like a lot – and it is! – but in the homebuild world, we will be lucky if that stretches us nearly to completion. We’re anticipating needing a small ($20-$30k) loan in order to fully button up the house. When you’re talking about $30k for solar, $13k for a mandatory road improvement, $50k for ICFs, a few thousand here and there for septic, water tanks, roofing, windows, drywall, wood, etc; it goes extremely fast.

Between doing things ourself, spending our savings wisely, working additional hours, and budgeting, we’re hoping we can nearly finish the house, even if it’s not picture perfect. We don’t have any additional debt aside from Keith’s student loans, so most of our income is going toward construction.