1. I would get a part time job. Homeschooling had really improved our oldest child's education outlook and we hated for him to go backward (he went to public school until 5th grade and really struggled) so I wanted to continue for his benefit and the benefit of the other 2 children. I hoped I could find something that I could still continue teaching them but help with the income deficit we were facing. We lived in a very small town with very few possibilities for income but I had the thought of the little post office suddenly one day and wondered if there was a chance they could be hiring. I searched and they weren't. That search however caused me to be notified 2 days later when the job for the clerk in that office was posted. After taking tests, interviews and all, I was awarded the position which was certainly the best paying job in the area and only had a 5 minute commute.
2. DH would look for a position with a particular income we figured he needed for us to sustain. We knew he had to go toward one of the nearby cities for that level which meant a commute or move. He got the position with the income level we needed but the commute would be rough.
3. We would sell timber from the land around our home and the land at our rental property. If you have a large amount of land with timber, you can always ask for some timber companies to peruse the land and give you an estimate of what they think it is worth. You do not have to do a clear cut and we can hardly tell that anything is missing except we have some small clear areas and we have trails we didn't have before which was an asset. The timber sale would give us some money to pay down some debts to help us financially and later money we needed to move. We were worried about the taxes we would pay on this income but we set aside a lump sum for a while.
4. After getting income from the rental property's timber, we would sell the rental property we had because it was more of an expense than income and we would get our equity and 20% down payment back out of it. By sheer miracle, the loss we ended up with from depreciation, maintenance and more, offset the income enough from the timber sale. We ended up with a tax refund rather than payment.
5. We would move. We weren't sure exactly where or how other than closer to DH's work but he doesn't do "city life", it seems to kill his soul after having grown up in the forests and mountains of Washington State and being a very outdoorsy guy. I was willing to take much less of a home, but it still was hard to completely give up a lovely spacious cabin for a home like the ones we kept seeing for sale. We really saw no possibilities. I kept asking my husband if we could build a home. He grew up helping his father build houses and he has such an engineer-type mind. Finally, after seeing most of what was for sale all around us (and being very disappointed), he proposed that we could buy land, live in a camper while building. He would have a large nice metal building shell constructed that the camper could be parked in. The back part of the building would still be a shop and garage while the front would be converted to a cool living space for our whole family. I wasn't sure until I did some good pinterest digging and found some cool homes that had plenty of potential, so I agreed. We would get to a certain point and put our house on the market to free up more income and funds from equity. Also, we would do as much as we could out of pocket to hopefully increase the room in our budget tremendously.
So this is where we have come, building a home ourselves, living in a camper with 3 children and trying to not do a restrictive construction loan that would put us on a time schedule and in a standard mortgage.
Here is a link to see more about metal building homes:
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