I, too, was a bit amused by the “advanced age” comment, but I have different spin on this: While reading the case study I kept forgetting that the two are only 39 and 42. Going though university and accreditation as a therapist, having regular jobs, spending quite some time abroad, quitting the jobs, successfully building a private practice with those earnings and that many employees, eventually selling the thing and then starting homesteading – this is a lot! And I (30 years, also a therapist) could not quite fathom all of that happening until one is 39 – so I kept imagining two folks in their early 50s instead 😀

It’s super easy to plug your numbers into something like Quicken/Rocket Mortgage. I got a quote easily! Mine is going from 4.125% to 2.75%. When a chat box opened up I was able to negotiate the fees I was seeing without any discomfort and they waived tons of fees and the appraisal so I’ll be breaking even even earlier. Now I plan to call my current lender and see if they can beat it!

I have Total Wireless which also runs off Verizon. For two lines we pay $65 and get more data than we ever had with Verizon and upgraded our phones for practically nothing during the switch. I really like them. Good luck!

Thank you for this! You’ve given me a good idea as I need to use my points as well!

YES. Love this!

1. Not work full time
2. Manage a remote homestead and make money from it, or at least make it income neutral between income and maintenance expenses
3. Travel or relocate as your heart desires
4. Save for retirement (as noted above, it would be nice if this were finished).

I would suggest you could consider going back into business as independent therapists outside of insurance. My former dentist when I lived in Orlando, FL, Bill Bartling, didn’t take insurance. He has now moved permanently to a smaller town in Florida where he still doesn’t. He charges reasonable fees and thinks insurance is a big mess and problem. He makes a living. He gets great reviews. He is in demand. http://www.bartlingdds.com/ if you want to read about how and why runs his business this way. It’s pretty unusual but proof positive it can work. Since you only want to work part time anyway, it really doesn’t matter if this limits your client base.

I was going to say you could do fully remote counseling, until you mentioned the lack of reliable high speed internet. My teenager is in weekly counseling and with the pandemic it’s often remote via a phone call rather than in-office, depending how the surges are swinging. It works totally fine for both of them.

As others note, managing farm animals is a 24/7 commitment and makes your desire for travel or mobility almost impossible, again, unless you have plenty of disposable $$ to pay people. You (and nearly everyone else on planet earth) simply can’t afford to manage this gorgeous property, avoid full time employment, and do the rest of the things you want. I always love Mrs. Frugalwoods’ lesson number one. Frugality is not about being cheap or unwilling to spend any money. It’s about figuring out what really makes you happy, putting resources toward that, and cutting out the waste.

There’s no single right answer here, only YOUR right answer. Best wishes.

Hi Erin! I’m sorry I missed your post…but we love having horned goats. If we lived within city limits, there wouldn’t be a choice but out here we never really considered it. The horns serve a purpose (helping them regulate their body temp, giving them a little bit of protection from predators, and helping with establishing hierarchy within the herd). Our goats don’t head butt us but I wouldn’t say that they are safe for kids who stick arms into pens, etc. It’s not a issue for us though and we have never seen them get their horns caught in anything ever. They are actually extremely aware of their horns and don’t put themselves into situations where they will get stuck. But we have good fencing and our goats have never escaped either (which is usually the most common complain about goats!)

yes! I’d love to feature a Case Study like this—please send people my way! They can email me at: mrs@frugalwoods.com

I recently refinanced with Starwest Mortgage and it looks like they service Colorado as well. I did a no-cost refi and it was great. 15 yr fixed at 2.5%. We could have gotten 1.9% if we paid closing costs, but the break even didn’t make sense before we move in a few years. Our monthly payment is higher than our previous 30 year mortgage but we are building so much more equity! The only difficulty might be that they required a W-2, but the monthly income from your business sale might negate that need. I think it’s definitely worth looking in to!