@shoutcacophony :-D

For me, right now, the focus is mostly on the work side of the equation.

I need to figure out how to maintain (something close to) my current income level, while living too far away from any major cities to actually commute to a job that would pay well.

We're dramatically reducing our expenses, but I want to maintain my current income level for ~3 years so that we can pay everything off, so that I can actually start experimenting with New Work styles.

@ajroach42 *nods* That's one possible trajectory for me as well. It's not my first choice, but it's not bad (for me personally) either, if its done right.

I keep getting the impression that this is the sort of thing that'll have to be invented, rather than existing as a common practice. It'd be great if I was wrong, but it doesn't seem like it, from what I can gather.

@ajroach42 High speed internet access, the challenges of living remotely -- which can cost as much, if not more, than living close to an urban hub, and that's not factoring in wage decreases. All those sorts of things.

@shoutcacophony

I'm not sure I follow, this bit.

I grew up in the sticks, you know? I've done that. I've lived in one of the ten densest urban areas in the country, too.

As for the challenges of living remotely... We won't be *that* remote. It's not Alaska, it's rural GA. I'm not sure what additional challenges you're anticipating that I haven't considered.

@shoutcacophony As far as internet...

For the area we're looking at, I can get a 150 Megabit connection for about $50/month from a local ISP, or I can get a 4g cellular connection (which allegedly has strong coverage there) for $400/year.

I can't guarantee either of those things will actually serve the locations we're looking at until we've had a chance to talk to our (potential) builder a few days after christmas.

But we'll go see the land, and I'll check our 4g coverage.

@shoutcacophony For sure.

Right now, it's something that everyone is scrambling to figure out on their own, but eventually there will be enough of us that we can share tips, and start to form a community.

@ajroach42 *nods* You follow my train of thought here. 🙂

@GrooveStomp That's okay! Jump in anyway!

A lot of the discussion has ended up in direct messages/private threads, but I'm 100% down to talk.

Here's my situation: We're moving from suburban DC to rural GA. We're buying/building the smallest home legal to build in GA (roughly 500 sqft) We are cutting out expenses in half, but I'm not certain that I will be able to keep my job remotely.

@GrooveStomp
My S/O makes enough money for us to get by, and will be able to transfer to GA, but I want us to pay everything off quickly, which means that I need to keep something close to my current income level.

For me, that means remote work, because I'm not commuting more than an hour one way every day. (although, I don't mind doing it once or twice a week, I guess?)

So we're looking at ways to reduce our expenses further (solar! hydroponics!) and new definitions of "work".

@GrooveStomp Any thoughts you have on the subject, or any questions, are welcome!

@ajroach42 I can appreciate what you're shooting for - it speaks to my heart.
My wife does not share those kinds of goals with me; additionally we have two very young kids and live in urban North Vancouver.

Right now we're strongly considering moving to a suburb since it would be a much better lifestyle fit. I would prefer moving to a rural location where we could cash in on our skyrocketing home value from the urban center.

Either situation will require remote work from me.

@ajroach42 My wife is a school teacher, so she will have to find an opening at a local school wherever we move to.

(Just setting the context for communication on this subject.)

I'm very conservative financially. My plan before kids was to just work a steady job and put away as much as possible until we hit financial independence (FI). Kids changes things a bit, but mostly just delays that FI date.

My current plan is to just keep working a full time gig, but remotely.

@GrooveStomp

That makes sense, and is a good and responsible choice.

Do you think your current employer will let you transition to remote work, or are you going to be looking for a new employer?

@ajroach42 We'll see. The current employer is working on supporting remote work, but I'm also keeping tabs on other remote-friendly jobs. There are options, for sure.

I have pretty good confidence that if I pushed the current employer, they'd let me go remote at least 4/5 days a week. We'd be within the geographical area, so I could do a half day with long commutes the other 1/5 of the time.

I haven't brought this up with them yet, but I'm sure it'd be doable.

@GrooveStomp That's a good situation to be in! It sounds like you've got good plans in place to reach financial independence via a much more secure and straightforward route than we're considering.

I kind of envy that. This is going to be kind of scary!

@ajroach42 There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach! :-) Like they say, the grass is always greener...

I always, always think about doing what you're doing. It terrifies me but also feels like such a good route!

@ajroach42 I get frustrated working for other companies and keep coming around to the idea of running my own company. That's a huge topic of its own and I'm a long ways away from being able to do that successfully; but it often seems like calling my own shots is ultimately going to be the route I have to take.

I'm really curious how well pulling in multiple incomes streams would map to that? My impression is that contract work specifically would be more demoralizing than full-time

@GrooveStomp :-D for two-ish years I ran a record store back in GA, wile working a full time job, and freelancing (and doing a million other things because I was depressed and that's what I do when I'm depressed.)

The only part of that that was really demoralizing was the full time job, honestly.

Like, the instability of the rest of it was occasionally stressful, but the freedom was, well, intoxicating.

@ajroach42 This is the other side of it that I *hope* is true. Like if you have a contract with someone and they are terrible to work with, you just terminate the contract.
You bill per-hour, so you don't have to worry about being in a chair for 8 hours a days and potentially being very unproductive in that time; organize your time so productive hours are billable and non-productive hours can be spent on other things (where they can be productive... :-) )

@GrooveStomp

By and large, it worked out well for me.

The hardest part is finding your first few clients. Once you're established, it's easy to keep pulling in more.

It got to the point, though, with all the other stuff going on that I had to start bringing other people in to help out, and that's where I screwed up. Too many balls in the air.

Well, that, and we moved 600 miles, so I lost a lot of clients, and ended up transitioning pretty much all of them over to other folks I trusted.

@ajroach42 Very interesting. Your experience sounds mostly similar to that of a friend of mine who's been contracting independently for over a decade.
Thanks for sharing!

@GrooveStomp

Yeah, I don't think we'd be able to do this with kids. At least, not while we were bootstrapping it all.

It being just the two of us, though, as long as I can sort out a couple of income streams and a remote job, we should be golden (and have our home paid off!) in under 5 years.

@ajroach42 That's amazing!

It seems like you have experience doing contracting? Is that correct?

I tried it once and wasn't fond of it, but it was only the one time.

@GrooveStomp I've done a little contracting and freelancing, yeah.

And there's a decent chance my current employer will let me stay on remotely, I'm just trying to plan for contingencies.

I plan compulsively.

@ajroach42 That's also amazing and practical! :-)
I'm good at big-picture planning for these kinds of things and not so good at sorting out the details.

You've already got a Patreon, right? How is that going? Is it enough to consider as an income stream of its own, or more of a minor boost?

@GrooveStomp I do run a patreon, but it's not something I put any serious effort in to.

Right now, I pull in about $30/month from it, I think?

Hosting costs for this server come out to about $20, so I clear about $10 from patreon each month.

Once a quarter, I put out a scifi pulp.

I have other things that I make that I could turn in to rewards, but I don't release them on enough of a regular schedule to do that yet. (Soon, though!)