RPF-0079-Little_Bus_on_the_Prairie
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00:00:29.440 | What's it actually like to live in a converted school bus with three small children while you're saving money to build a house?
00:00:42.440 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast for today, Friday, October the 10th, 2014.
00:01:04.440 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:01:06.440 | Today, contrary to what I said yesterday, I'm not going to be bringing you a show on education, but rather bringing you a show which is an interview with Sarah and Noah,
00:01:18.440 | who are currently living in a converted bus with their three children while they try to figure out how to build their new house out in California.
00:01:26.440 | A fun adventure, so to speak.
00:01:33.440 | The show today, I think you're really gonna enjoy it because it's gonna be a little bit
00:01:37.220 | different than many of the shows that I have played previously.
00:01:40.940 | Now, let me be specific and give you a quick note of introduction here.
00:01:45.060 | Today's show is very chatty, and it's more of kind of two new friends getting to know
00:01:50.460 | each other over a Skype connection on a late at night telephone call.
00:01:54.700 | So, it's very chatty and it's not specifically point point point point on here's what you
00:01:58.940 | should do; here's what you should do; here's what you should do.
00:02:01.420 | If that's going to annoy you, flip forward or flip backwards to another show and don't
00:02:06.700 | bother with this.
00:02:07.700 | But I think that you may, many of you will still enjoy this kind of show.
00:02:10.740 | It's a little bit different.
00:02:12.420 | And you'll benefit, I think, from knowing a little bit on the background.
00:02:15.620 | So I've been interested for years in bus conversions, and I've always watched online at different
00:02:20.740 | people converting school buses to live in and people living in RVs.
00:02:24.380 | I think it's a pretty cool financial strategy for some people.
00:02:27.380 | So I was Googling around and found a website called Little Bus on the Prairie and was impressed
00:02:33.180 | that there was this family of mother and father, so a family of five, and three small children
00:02:38.500 | that was living in a bus.
00:02:39.500 | And I shot off an email and set up an interview.
00:02:42.300 | Now it was actually, I arranged the interview, I think, probably about a month before I actually
00:02:46.260 | did it.
00:02:49.340 | And so there was a lot of time that had passed.
00:02:52.940 | And usually, generally, oftentimes, I'm very much a person who's expecting someone to say,
00:02:58.020 | "Hey, this is great.
00:02:59.020 | We're loving our alternative lifestyle.
00:03:01.140 | We love living off-grid and doing this."
00:03:04.020 | Whatever this thing is.
00:03:05.020 | That's how my mind works.
00:03:06.060 | But I recognize that's not reality.
00:03:07.620 | And what happened was a fascinating peek into what it's actually like sometimes to scrimp
00:03:14.700 | and save.
00:03:15.700 | And sometimes the radical side is maybe really challenging.
00:03:21.660 | It's not so necessarily so easy.
00:03:24.140 | So I think this story is going to be a very interesting story, which you may enjoy.
00:03:31.060 | And in speaking with Sarah and Noah, they had just come off of three days with triple-digit
00:03:36.460 | temperatures with them being on a bus with three small children.
00:03:40.340 | And that is a challenge.
00:03:41.700 | And Sarah is very pregnant with a baby expected soon.
00:03:45.700 | I think it's a month or two, something like that.
00:03:48.060 | And so it was neat to kind of capture some of that emotion, but it wasn't what I was
00:03:53.420 | necessarily expecting in the interview.
00:03:55.460 | The other thing that's interesting about this interview is that Sarah and Noah are an everyday
00:03:59.260 | normal couple just simply trying to work their dreams.
00:04:01.860 | In fact, as we were emailing before the interview, they were very clear and kind of a little
00:04:06.100 | bit surprised that I'd reached out to them and saying, "We're not millionaires.
00:04:09.940 | We're just trying to kind of figure things out."
00:04:12.080 | So instead of today bringing you an expert on something, rather we bring you a conversation
00:04:16.900 | between a couple of people who are just working to figure things out.
00:04:20.120 | And I think you'll enjoy that.
00:04:23.380 | And so the first part of this interview, the interview is about 54, just under 54 minutes
00:04:29.020 | long.
00:04:30.020 | The first part of the interview is talking about the bus living, the story of how they
00:04:32.720 | wound up in a bus.
00:04:34.320 | The middle part is talking a little bit about what it's been like as far as them trying
00:04:39.060 | to figure out how to build a house, how to build a house that would be affordable, that
00:04:42.900 | would work and actually work for their family and the location that they have.
00:04:47.140 | And they're having some real challenges in making that happen.
00:04:49.460 | You can read on their blog some more details about the challenges that they're having.
00:04:53.380 | And then kind of the final third is a little bit on education as far as I noticed that
00:04:58.140 | they were educating their kids and I was interested in why because that's a subject of interest
00:05:02.460 | to me.
00:05:03.460 | And I think it's also a subject that has a lot of applicability to personal finance.
00:05:07.820 | I had a comment on the blog from yesterday's show that seemed to indicate that maybe the
00:05:13.780 | connection between education and personal finance was not exactly clear.
00:05:17.540 | And this show is absolutely dedicated to personal finance.
00:05:20.900 | We're not going to spend all our time on education, but I think it is actually an incredibly important
00:05:25.420 | aspect of personal finance.
00:05:27.420 | And on the next show, I will bring out some of the details as to why I think the connection
00:05:32.440 | is so strong and why I think it really matters.
00:05:35.640 | But I won't do that anymore for today.
00:05:38.100 | So enjoy today's episode.
00:05:40.740 | Enjoy listening and hearing from Sarah and Noah.
00:05:43.980 | And I think it is a much needed refresher to a lot of times the world that I live in
00:05:50.260 | about everything is great about living a radical lifestyle.
00:05:54.340 | Sometimes living in a bus is not so fun.
00:05:57.380 | Sometimes you're really, really ready to be in the house.
00:06:01.100 | Enjoy the interview.
00:06:04.820 | So Sarah and Noah, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:06:07.660 | I appreciate you making time to chat with me tonight.
00:06:10.060 | Sure.
00:06:11.060 | Yeah, it's good to be here.
00:06:13.260 | So I've been looking forward to talking with you and I'm interested in just simply having
00:06:18.900 | a conversation and hearing a little bit about your story.
00:06:21.940 | The way that I found you is that I was out browsing around on the interwebs one day and
00:06:28.300 | I was looking for, I've always been interested in bus conversions.
00:06:32.140 | I always thought it was cool when people would buy these old school buses and convert them
00:06:35.420 | into an RV, it's like a cheap RV.
00:06:38.100 | I'm not sure if you guys, I would imagine you probably have seen a lot of that.
00:06:42.580 | But I've always been fascinated by people who've done that and just some of the craftsmanship.
00:06:46.700 | And then I was looking, I was wondering if anyone was living on a bus and that was how
00:06:49.540 | I came across your website called Little Bus on the Prairie.
00:06:52.940 | So what I would love to do is share with me just a little bit, what's your background
00:06:57.420 | and how did you wind up living in a bus?
00:07:01.860 | Well, the bus itself is a 1970 international school bus and we found it on Craigslist.
00:07:14.860 | It was already converted, it had already had the second story added on and we found it
00:07:20.900 | on Craigslist for, if you can believe it, only a thousand dollars.
00:07:28.020 | And then we had already purchased an RV that we were planning on living out here in and
00:07:33.180 | my husband sent the Craigslist listing to me as a joke.
00:07:37.380 | Totally joking.
00:07:38.380 | And I was like, yes, let's do that instead.
00:07:46.340 | How much were you going to spend on the RV?
00:07:48.300 | Well, we had already purchased an RV for, I think it was 22,000 or 2,500.
00:07:55.540 | Yeah, something like that.
00:07:57.100 | We still have the RV too and we just never use it.
00:08:04.780 | It's kind of like Ishmael, it wasn't the chosen vehicle.
00:08:10.140 | So that seems odd to me.
00:08:12.420 | You have them both, why did the bus win?
00:08:15.260 | How did you end up with the bus?
00:08:16.260 | The bus, it had a lot more space for one thing because it does have the upper story with
00:08:24.100 | the upper living space.
00:08:28.300 | She couldn't have a blog called Little Bus on the Prairie with an RV.
00:08:31.300 | There's nothing exciting about that story.
00:08:33.220 | I never would have found you, right?
00:08:34.700 | If it were just a little RV on the prairie, I never would have found you in my searching.
00:08:41.140 | Just me personally, my family, my dad actually, since I was little, has had several buses
00:08:48.380 | that he's actually converted himself.
00:08:49.980 | Really?
00:08:50.980 | Yeah, a little bit of a bus affinity, I suppose.
00:08:54.340 | So you know all about that.
00:08:55.820 | I've never seen one in person.
00:08:57.140 | I've only just read them.
00:08:58.740 | I've looked at people's photos of them on the internet.
00:09:01.940 | So you've got quite a history in the bus conversion space.
00:09:04.420 | Yeah, I remember helping my dad when I was little going out and drilling cabinets and
00:09:09.780 | stuff.
00:09:10.780 | But yeah, we've done that forever.
00:09:14.140 | It seems like an incredibly massive amount of work, frankly.
00:09:17.580 | Every time I've ever looked at them, I've said, "Wow, there are some amazing craftspeople
00:09:21.820 | that have put together some amazing projects."
00:09:24.100 | My dad has put a lot of work into it.
00:09:27.380 | We didn't convert this one ourselves.
00:09:31.940 | It was already pre-converted, but Noah did a lot and family members and all came and
00:09:42.740 | really updated everything.
00:09:44.620 | It was really gnarly inside.
00:09:45.980 | It had carpet that was probably 20 years old and everything was mildewy and it was really,
00:09:52.860 | really gross inside.
00:09:55.460 | So what were the circumstances that led to your actually wanting to live in the bus?
00:10:04.180 | Well, it kind of goes back to when we were first looking back in 2012.
00:10:15.260 | We were looking for a house to buy and everything back in 2012 was priced really, really low.
00:10:23.620 | All the houses that we were interested in kept getting snatched up by investors.
00:10:28.980 | Noah, when he was a kid, built a house with his parents out of adobe out in Arizona.
00:10:36.340 | He'd always wanted to build his own house as an adult.
00:10:40.980 | So we started looking at vacant land and we found the land that we were on that we eventually
00:10:47.700 | wound up buying.
00:10:48.700 | It was just a steal of a deal.
00:10:53.060 | Once we started looking into what building a house would entail and the fact that it's
00:10:59.540 | very, very expensive, I think that we just kind of, both of us were like, "All right,
00:11:06.420 | if this is the route we're going to take and this is the path, then we need to be able
00:11:14.060 | to afford it."
00:11:15.940 | It's really difficult to afford interest payments on a construction loan and pay rent at the
00:11:21.980 | same time.
00:11:22.980 | So it was the idea though must have come from your dad's, did the idea come from the fact
00:11:31.580 | that your dad had done various bus conversions?
00:11:34.740 | It's just the reason I'm asking is it's not most people, many people that I've worked
00:11:39.580 | with, if you want to build a house and you're living in an apartment, you just continue
00:11:42.780 | as is and you just borrow a little extra money.
00:11:45.380 | It's really not that big a deal.
00:11:46.680 | Most people that I've worked with don't often say, "How can I again move into a bus?"
00:11:52.920 | Was it the fact that your dad had done it or does this just seem like a good idea you
00:11:56.240 | guys came up with?
00:11:57.240 | Yeah, I don't think, I think it was just a good idea.
00:12:00.240 | We kind of thought it was going to be an adventure and a little more exciting.
00:12:07.120 | We had to be out on the property and kind of see it.
00:12:09.080 | We also thought the process was going to go much smoother and faster.
00:12:12.080 | But yeah, it seemed like it was going to be interesting.
00:12:17.640 | So what's great about it and what stinks about it?
00:12:21.240 | It's probably not the best time to ask.
00:12:27.840 | We just got off a couple weeks of triple digit heat wave out here and I am about eight months
00:12:36.440 | along in my fourth pregnancy.
00:12:41.200 | So the good things have, the bloom is off the road.
00:12:46.200 | Right.
00:12:47.200 | There is a lot of fun stuff.
00:12:49.000 | I mean, being out here with the kids, there's plenty of stuff to run around and do and power
00:12:53.920 | wheels and quads and all that kind of stuff.
00:12:57.400 | That's a lot of fun.
00:12:58.400 | As far as being in the bus, I think the funnest part is staying outside of it.
00:13:05.760 | So this is actually what I was interested in because what happens is that we as a society,
00:13:13.680 | we tend to spend most of our time writing and talking about things that are awesome.
00:13:19.640 | And so if you were to guess just by the internet memes that go around, then you would assume
00:13:29.720 | that living in buses is awesome.
00:13:32.560 | Living full time in RVs is just the way to live.
00:13:36.320 | Tiny houses are practically just the greatest gift from heaven, allowing you to get rid
00:13:40.720 | of all your stuff.
00:13:44.000 | And just these kind of wild and radical and crazy things are, again, awesome.
00:13:50.200 | And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
00:13:53.000 | I think that they can be awesome adventures, but yet I think I take a little more realistic
00:13:59.400 | view and I could imagine your bus doesn't have air conditioning, is that right?
00:14:05.760 | No.
00:14:06.760 | Right.
00:14:07.760 | So triple digit temperatures in your eighth month of pregnancy, that would be a challenging
00:14:15.400 | couple of weeks.
00:14:16.400 | I certainly recognize that.
00:14:18.400 | Essentially, we're in a tin can which reflects the heat.
00:14:22.680 | But yeah, there's a lot of people at work that kind of know what I'm doing and the conversation
00:14:27.400 | about tiny houses and minimalist living and all that kind of stuff comes up quite a bit
00:14:31.920 | because they think that that's kind of my mentality and it's not.
00:14:38.760 | So I think it kind of seems like a romantic kind of thing.
00:14:42.560 | I think people kind of put a lot of emotion into it and it's a nice thought.
00:14:47.680 | But in reality, it's hard.
00:14:50.720 | I mean, I think your circumstances are different.
00:14:54.320 | With three kids, a small space becomes very, very small.
00:14:58.720 | I think the thought of it gets a lot of people excited, but actually getting down to it,
00:15:04.720 | it kind of rubs off quick.
00:15:06.640 | It's so interesting that you say that though about the internet and all that kind of stuff
00:15:09.960 | because when we first embarked upon this journey, I was totally taken in by that.
00:15:18.640 | I was actually just writing a post the other day.
00:15:21.920 | It's hard to put into words because I feel very disillusioned by the allure of small
00:15:28.960 | space living.
00:15:31.040 | We're living without 80% of our belongings right now.
00:15:34.960 | It's all in storage.
00:15:36.840 | Although we have less stuff, we also have less space.
00:15:41.360 | On the one hand, there is the appeal that it's like we have all the stuff that's gone
00:15:44.720 | and I don't, for the most part, miss it.
00:15:47.560 | I kind of miss my blender.
00:15:52.960 | So on the one hand, I can see that totally.
00:15:55.440 | You don't need nearly as much stuff as you think that you do, but on the other hand,
00:16:00.400 | trying to cram even 20% of your stuff into a smaller space with three children and being
00:16:05.720 | pregnant, it's not ideal.
00:16:14.120 | Have you done any traveling with your bus?
00:16:17.800 | Is it mobile?
00:16:18.800 | There's some kind of problem with the radiator, which would probably be an easy fix, but we
00:16:25.480 | drove from where we lived to where we picked up the bus.
00:16:30.640 | It's probably 40 or 50 miles and it took us almost eight hours.
00:16:37.240 | So it's not the most effective means of transportation.
00:16:40.880 | I would guess not.
00:16:42.880 | But that's another thing, too, that lately I've been thinking so much about because like
00:16:49.280 | you said, there are so many blogs out there about living in an RV and I stumbled upon
00:16:54.720 | this blog that was linked to on another blog or whatever about this Tickner family.
00:17:00.080 | I think it's like T-I-C-N-O-R, TicknerTribe.com.
00:17:04.800 | And they have 12 kids and now they're down to nine or whatever and they all travel across
00:17:10.000 | the US.
00:17:11.000 | Is that what happened to the Tickner family?
00:17:12.000 | Yeah, they grew up and moved on and they're off doing their own thing now.
00:17:20.760 | So they have the nine youngest.
00:17:21.760 | Right, they're the nine youngest.
00:17:22.760 | And like you said, they write about it and they're so exuberant about it and this is
00:17:30.480 | just the best life and all this stuff.
00:17:34.840 | And then looking at their space, they're in a brand new RV.
00:17:39.360 | Not brand new, I shouldn't say that, but it's much newer than 1970.
00:17:43.440 | You know, they're in a new RV with slide outs and they've got TVs and they've got couches.
00:17:47.560 | Even though I'm sure it's a super small space and they've got a ton more kids than I do
00:17:50.880 | and they're also mobile, too.
00:17:52.560 | They're moving from place to place to place.
00:17:55.440 | And I think I read that they have like a 15 passenger van that follows along with their
00:18:00.320 | RV and all that kind of stuff.
00:18:03.760 | So it's like every situation is totally different.
00:18:06.760 | They have more kids but a newer space and they're mobile.
00:18:10.640 | And we're in a much older vehicle, I guess, with smaller kids but I'm also pregnant and
00:18:21.840 | we're just kind of stuck out here in the heat.
00:18:26.280 | And then I had another reader of the blog had emailed me and it was just her and her
00:18:30.640 | husband and they were going to be moving into an RV, just the two of them while they built
00:18:35.880 | a house.
00:18:36.880 | Same kind of situation.
00:18:37.880 | I think it was out in the Midwest somewhere.
00:18:38.880 | And she was like, "Do you have any suggestions?
00:18:41.880 | What was the hardest thing?"
00:18:42.880 | And it was like it's a completely different situation.
00:18:45.760 | You know, again, like a newer RV, just the two of them.
00:18:47.920 | I think they had a couple of dogs.
00:18:49.960 | And it was like, "You guys are going to be fine.
00:18:52.240 | You're great.
00:18:53.240 | That's golden."
00:18:54.240 | You know, a lot of the challenges that we're facing have to do with our particular situation.
00:19:00.160 | Right?
00:19:01.160 | Also, probably because you're in something of a transition between lifestyles.
00:19:06.800 | And my wife and I learned this when we first got married.
00:19:10.400 | And when we first got married and after getting married, we moved in together.
00:19:17.280 | We lived in a studio apartment that was a total of 243 square feet.
00:19:24.840 | And it was really small but we loved it.
00:19:27.800 | It was just the two of us.
00:19:29.640 | And it was just, again, a studio.
00:19:32.360 | One large room.
00:19:33.360 | One medium-sized room.
00:19:36.920 | And a very small kitchen and a bathroom.
00:19:40.760 | And everything worked great about it.
00:19:43.380 | It was right in the middle of downtown West Palm Beach.
00:19:45.840 | It was super cheap rent.
00:19:47.360 | We could walk to the beach.
00:19:50.960 | Sometimes we could easily walk to the downtown areas.
00:19:54.320 | It was just a perfect...
00:19:56.080 | My wife could walk to work or ride her bike to work.
00:19:59.040 | I needed to drive still to my job.
00:20:01.360 | But it was just a super great living circumstance.
00:20:04.760 | And what I observed was that in the first couple of days of my being there, it felt
00:20:11.840 | really claustrophobic.
00:20:15.400 | It felt really physically small.
00:20:17.460 | But after about three or four or five days, it just felt like this is what we do.
00:20:22.520 | And then when we moved out of that little tiny apartment into the massive, I don't know,
00:20:27.040 | not massive, but I guess 2,000 square foot house or something like that that we live
00:20:30.640 | in now, it felt massive for a couple of days.
00:20:34.800 | And then it just felt normal.
00:20:36.160 | So I noticed that we adjusted quickly.
00:20:38.920 | But the thing that was the most frustrating about being in the studio was that we knew
00:20:43.480 | it was a transition time.
00:20:45.020 | We knew this wasn't a permanent lifestyle.
00:20:47.380 | And we had certain lifestyle factors.
00:20:50.960 | What do you do with the snorkel gear?
00:20:53.520 | Do you keep it?
00:20:54.520 | Do you get rid of it?
00:20:55.520 | What do you do with the ski gear?
00:20:56.520 | Do you keep it?
00:20:57.520 | Do you get rid of it?
00:20:58.520 | What do you do with all of this gear, this stuff that just goes with life?
00:21:01.400 | What do you do with your book collection?
00:21:03.240 | Do you keep it?
00:21:04.240 | Do you get rid of it?
00:21:05.240 | If you were going to live in a bus forever, you would probably downsize a lot of those
00:21:08.460 | things that you needed in order to make it work.
00:21:12.480 | But if it's just a transition time, then you're kind of caught with the lifestyle that fits
00:21:17.200 | into a house that doesn't fit into a bus.
00:21:20.280 | And that was just my observation is that the people who seem to, I would say, kind of live
00:21:25.880 | those lifestyles most successfully and with the greatest joy, it's because it's not for
00:21:32.040 | the purpose of glorifying living in a tiny house.
00:21:35.400 | It's what that tiny house opens up for them.
00:21:38.440 | It gives them an opportunity to experience something they wouldn't otherwise have the
00:21:44.120 | opportunity to experience.
00:21:45.120 | Or if you're living in an RV because you're traveling, that's a very different thing than
00:21:49.040 | if you're just living in an RV because that's what you do.
00:21:51.240 | Yeah, yeah.
00:21:52.240 | I think that's a really good point.
00:21:54.400 | If you're dropping your baggage and getting on the road or doing whatever you're doing,
00:21:59.240 | that's a really different situation.
00:22:00.880 | I think that's, you're looking for a freedom there.
00:22:06.400 | You're able to kind of do that.
00:22:09.440 | If we were looking at this as a long-term thing, then I think, well for one, mentally
00:22:15.200 | I think you prepare a little bit differently.
00:22:19.000 | And like you're saying, you make different decisions to get rid of some of that gear
00:22:22.880 | and pass that stuff on or whatever you're going to do as opposed to, yeah, the transition
00:22:27.640 | area is kind of what makes it more difficult because you're kind of caught in between,
00:22:32.800 | you know, this is only temporary.
00:22:34.560 | And I've noticed that with getting utilities out here and running water and getting hot
00:22:38.400 | water going and my solar panels and all that, it's always kind of with the caveat that,
00:22:43.440 | well it's temporary.
00:22:44.440 | I'm going to have to take all this down.
00:22:46.160 | So if it's a more permanent fixture, I think you can kind of dig in a little more.
00:22:52.440 | And you can customize.
00:22:53.440 | You can customize things more to a permanent lifestyle.
00:22:57.080 | Like as far as even making things comfortable, there are things that we've talked about where
00:23:02.360 | it's like, well is it worth it to do that?
00:23:04.160 | If it's only going to be for this long, is it worth the money and the time investment?
00:23:08.680 | Those kinds of things to where it's kind of a difficult tradeoff sometimes.
00:23:14.640 | Right.
00:23:15.640 | If you're not going to be somewhere for a long period of time, there seems to be little
00:23:19.560 | sense in putting a lot of effort into improving it.
00:23:23.080 | Yeah.
00:23:24.080 | But I mean there's still the thought in my mind that's like, alright, well how can I
00:23:27.040 | make this work?
00:23:28.040 | You know, like if we don't want to go into debt with this huge house, what could we do
00:23:32.400 | to really dig in here and make this work?
00:23:35.040 | And usually it's a pretty short thought, but it would be possible and change things up
00:23:40.080 | a bit.
00:23:41.320 | So are you thinking about doing that?
00:23:42.640 | Are you going to take out a loan?
00:23:44.400 | Are you going to kind of build the house little by little while you can?
00:23:48.400 | What are you thinking about doing?
00:23:50.800 | We've weighed a lot of options.
00:23:53.400 | I think we're still, I mean we're so far down the path with the house.
00:23:59.080 | You know, blueprints are done.
00:24:01.920 | Well we thought we were a lot further along.
00:24:03.200 | We just found out the other day that our contractor didn't pass the credit check.
00:24:07.760 | So we're like two weeks out from closing on our construction loan and now we don't have
00:24:11.640 | a general contractor.
00:24:13.080 | Ooh, bummer.
00:24:15.680 | So you know, some interesting thoughts go through your head.
00:24:18.840 | I think we're still going to stay the course and do the loan.
00:24:22.440 | With the kids and everything, I think we've talked about it and that's kind of the lifestyle
00:24:25.880 | we want to have for them to grow up in.
00:24:28.600 | Not necessarily this.
00:24:30.440 | Right.
00:24:31.440 | Yeah, and we also, I mean when we first were looking at the land and I think when we first
00:24:36.800 | bought it, we talked about so many different options.
00:24:39.600 | I mean I was checking out books from the library on like straw bale and adobe and just all
00:24:45.560 | sorts of alternative building materials.
00:24:47.520 | We've talked for a long time about SIPs or structurally insulated panels.
00:24:55.960 | Growing up my parents built their house and they used adobe and they did it all themselves.
00:25:03.760 | Growing up it was a great experience and I got to see them do that and be a part of it.
00:25:08.240 | I've always kind of thought that's what I would do.
00:25:10.440 | The original plan was to buy some land and I'll build a house myself because I can do
00:25:14.400 | that.
00:25:15.400 | The more we got into it and everything and where we live, permits are insanely expensive.
00:25:24.880 | I can't be a husband and a father and a good employee and do all this while I'm building
00:25:29.480 | a house successfully.
00:25:31.720 | So you know.
00:25:33.840 | You're in California, right?
00:25:35.520 | Yeah.
00:25:36.520 | Southern California.
00:25:38.000 | So you're right in Code Happy, in the middle of, sounds like Code Happy Municipality, is
00:25:45.000 | that right?
00:25:46.000 | Yeah.
00:25:47.000 | Yeah, we're in San Diego County.
00:25:48.880 | What made you choose to move there?
00:25:52.800 | I grew up here.
00:25:55.600 | I spent some time here as a kid and then my parents moved to Arizona when I was in middle
00:26:01.200 | school or something like that.
00:26:02.200 | It took me a while to get back but I can't imagine being anyplace else.
00:26:07.400 | I spent some time on the East Coast and up in the Northwest and there's just really no
00:26:14.040 | place like it.
00:26:15.040 | And we have family close too.
00:26:16.600 | One of Noah's sisters lives close and my parents are just like 10 miles away or something.
00:26:23.560 | Right.
00:26:24.560 | So you're going with more just traditional kind of mainstream construction methods then
00:26:28.920 | on the house project that you're working on?
00:26:31.760 | Yeah.
00:26:32.760 | After looking at a lot of the options, I mean it's hard to find a general contractor that'll
00:26:36.520 | do alternative building.
00:26:38.720 | And then I looked at things like shipping container homes and a whole bunch of different
00:26:44.200 | stuff.
00:26:45.200 | But it's harder to get them permitted a lot of times, especially shipping containers specifically.
00:26:49.240 | I was really excited about those and getting them permitted and letting, the county letting
00:26:55.960 | you build that way is really difficult.
00:26:58.560 | And it's like you were saying, Code Happy.
00:27:01.000 | So greasing all those palms is not financially viable.
00:27:06.160 | So after looking at all the options, and I wanted to try to stay as green as possible.
00:27:13.160 | So the SIP panels and stuff like that, great insulation, all this kind of stuff.
00:27:17.600 | But the more research I did, the payback on it was like 80 years.
00:27:23.240 | So it's great that I'm saving electricity but if it takes me 80 years to pay them off,
00:27:26.360 | I'm not really helping me out.
00:27:29.400 | Right.
00:27:30.400 | It's interesting because it brings up a, brings up the conundrum.
00:27:36.440 | And I face exactly the same thing.
00:27:38.760 | So I live in West Palm Beach, Florida.
00:27:41.200 | And I'm very interested in, I don't know what the right term would be, I guess I'm interested
00:27:48.800 | in architectural methods.
00:27:51.000 | And I find it a constant learning curve.
00:27:55.920 | Because it's easy to dismiss everything that we do today as being without form or without
00:28:03.200 | reason.
00:28:04.200 | Why do we build these houses out of this material?
00:28:05.760 | Why do we build it in such a way?
00:28:07.760 | And it's easy to kind of just on the one hand dismiss the work of many knowledgeable people
00:28:15.640 | who have developed the systems that we use.
00:28:18.080 | And I'm guilty of that myself many times, of just kind of saying, "Ah, this is all stupid.
00:28:21.520 | This stinks.
00:28:22.520 | We should all go and live in rammed earth houses.
00:28:25.560 | We should all build earth ships."
00:28:27.400 | Something like that.
00:28:29.160 | But as the more I look at it though, and the more I study, I see that there really are
00:28:32.440 | some interesting techniques that just don't seem to be applied.
00:28:39.280 | I look around and I look at the developments in the communities and things around here
00:28:43.840 | and I just say, "They all look very pretty.
00:28:46.320 | And they're very strong for hurricanes, but they're woefully inefficient as a energy inefficient.
00:28:53.400 | And they're just expensive to live in and expensive to maintain."
00:28:58.020 | But the problem is I choose to live in West Palm Beach, Florida and the code system is
00:29:02.000 | very well intentioned to keep everyone safe and to keep the houses safe, but it destroys
00:29:06.560 | any possibility of using some of the alternative methods.
00:29:13.520 | So I look longingly at some of the alternative methods and think and constantly design in
00:29:18.040 | my head how I could design a house that wouldn't need to run an air conditioner year round
00:29:22.560 | in West Palm Beach, Florida.
00:29:24.000 | And I've got some pretty good ideas that I think would work, but I can't do them.
00:29:28.400 | And it's very frustrating, at least to me.
00:29:30.680 | Yeah, I hear you.
00:29:32.760 | I'm kind of in the same boat there.
00:29:36.720 | I think, I kind of go back and forth.
00:29:40.360 | I know the codes are there to help protect people and stuff like that, but essentially
00:29:44.400 | I'm kind of like, "Well, it's my land.
00:29:45.880 | It's my house.
00:29:47.640 | I will take those risks."
00:29:50.120 | But I guess down the line that would matter more.
00:29:54.680 | But a lot of the alternative methods and stuff like that, a lot of it is code issues or just
00:30:02.000 | the price points haven't gotten down to a point where it's reasonable to do those things.
00:30:07.760 | It's unfortunate that it's worse for the environment, but it's more financially viable to run your
00:30:13.160 | air conditioning all year long as opposed to doing a poured concrete house or using
00:30:17.400 | the SIPs.
00:30:19.000 | That's unfortunate, but until more bigger builders start using those, that technology
00:30:23.880 | isn't going to come down in price.
00:30:25.120 | Until they're able to mass produce and market it in such a way, you're going to have those
00:30:29.560 | high prices.
00:30:31.840 | I think in our lifetime, I think we'll see it where we really adopt those methods and
00:30:37.480 | the price comes down to a point where it's sustainable and it makes sense for builders.
00:30:42.080 | Unfortunately, we're not there yet.
00:30:44.320 | Here's what I want, and maybe you've seen it.
00:30:46.200 | I haven't seen anyone do this yet, but I want completely modular building structures.
00:30:51.200 | I want to buy when getting started.
00:30:54.520 | I want somebody, and I don't care if this is built off of shipping containers, built
00:30:58.320 | it on trailers, built it with ... It should be easy to create this, but basically, build
00:31:05.400 | for me a ... Let me buy a living room unit, a bedroom unit, a kitchen unit, and a bathroom
00:31:11.440 | unit and start my house with that.
00:31:13.080 | Let's say the thing costs me 20 grand, 5,000 bucks a unit, and put it on my land, put a
00:31:18.760 | concrete pad in, whatever needs to be done.
00:31:21.040 | Then when I have a baby, I need another bedroom, I call up and I order another bedroom unit
00:31:25.840 | and bolt it on.
00:31:26.840 | If I need another bathroom, I order another bathroom and bolt on another bedroom and bolt
00:31:32.280 | on what I need.
00:31:33.280 | Then when I'm done with it, I just turn around and I sell ... Kids grow up, move out of the
00:31:38.480 | house.
00:31:39.480 | They sell one of the bedrooms and the truck comes by, picks it up, takes it on to somebody
00:31:44.200 | else who bolts it on to their house.
00:31:46.480 | That's my idea for how I think housing should work.
00:31:48.960 | I think it'd be great.
00:31:50.520 | It'd be like the IKEA kind of housing.
00:31:52.720 | You just pick this model and bam.
00:31:56.360 | I just found somebody in France who has built a house.
00:32:01.840 | It wasn't quite this way, but they built the entire thing out of rigid foam, structural
00:32:08.600 | foam panels, almost maybe about three feet wide, about two feet thick.
00:32:14.640 | The panels were about 40 feet long.
00:32:17.160 | They put the entire thing together with these panels, 40 feet long, meaning the floor and
00:32:22.080 | the ... Not the floor, the roof, the actual ceiling.
00:32:25.280 | It was load-bearing foam.
00:32:26.640 | It was fascinating.
00:32:27.800 | The video online looked awesome as far as the technology.
00:32:32.040 | I think it's silly that we're building with the same technology that we've been building
00:32:35.400 | with for basically hundreds of years without any changes and without any updates.
00:32:41.040 | As we said, codes seem to get in the way.
00:32:43.920 | Yeah.
00:32:44.920 | I looked at those.
00:32:45.920 | The structural insulated panels, I think that's similar to what you're talking about.
00:32:49.960 | It's like a particle board on both sides with a sandwich of high-density structural foam
00:32:54.560 | in the middle.
00:32:56.880 | They're awesome.
00:32:57.880 | I think Europe's a little bit, quite a bit ahead of the curve as opposed to us here on
00:33:03.920 | adopting stuff like that and making those changes.
00:33:07.680 | Even just taking the smaller step and even just looking at what we call a modular home
00:33:14.000 | today or a manufactured home, which we also attempted, being more environmentally friendly
00:33:23.680 | because it's all prefab.
00:33:24.920 | There's not as much waste.
00:33:27.040 | Everybody that we've talked to and told about our project or what we're doing has said,
00:33:31.400 | "Well, have you tried modular?"
00:33:33.800 | It's unfortunate in some ways also that for one thing, that manufactured housing still
00:33:44.120 | has a pretty strong stigma about it as far as resale value and that kind of stuff and
00:33:49.720 | having to have it on your title that it's a manufactured house.
00:33:53.200 | It really brings down the value of the home still in a lot of cases.
00:34:02.080 | In our experience, what we've looked at, the quality in some instances is not as high.
00:34:10.560 | In our attempt, actually, the main reason we wound up not going with modular had to
00:34:15.160 | do with the company that we were working with primarily more so than those reasons.
00:34:23.480 | It turns out, too, that going with a traditional build, the projected value of the home is
00:34:29.160 | way higher than it would have been with a modular, which is unfortunate.
00:34:34.960 | This is interesting how the interplay between the financial markets affects the technology
00:34:41.080 | that's used.
00:34:42.420 | One of the major problems, at least that I've observed, of all of the alternative designs,
00:34:47.840 | whether you're going to build with a geodesic dome or whether you're going to build an earth
00:34:51.600 | chip or whether you're going to build a straw bale or a modular house, the problem oftentimes
00:34:58.160 | with all except the modular house comes with how do we get financing.
00:35:03.080 | Let's say the house is valued at $50,000, $100,000, $150,000.
00:35:07.640 | There are many fewer people who are able to simply pay cash for the house no matter how
00:35:11.480 | great it is versus being able to finance it.
00:35:14.280 | If you don't fit into the traditional mold, then the finance company often has little
00:35:21.120 | ability to know how to work with you.
00:35:24.000 | You're right, exactly on the modular home, is the technology, at least just from my understanding,
00:35:29.560 | is vastly superior.
00:35:31.280 | There's no reason why you can't use a modular approach to create a phenomenal house.
00:35:37.760 | In many ways, some of the biggest buildings in the world are modular buildings.
00:35:42.080 | They're all prefab.
00:35:43.400 | They're all planned to bolt together.
00:35:45.440 | A skyscraper is basically a system of girders that is you have a certain amount of poured
00:35:50.520 | concrete and then the girders are all bolted together and it's all planned out, designed
00:35:54.000 | and constructed offsite and disassembled onsite.
00:35:58.040 | The financial system and the financing system doesn't support it and then the market has
00:36:02.400 | that perception.
00:36:04.600 | We continue to perpetuate the broken cycle simply because that's what is better for our
00:36:11.240 | situation.
00:36:12.240 | Right?
00:36:13.240 | Right.
00:36:14.240 | Just because it doesn't fit.
00:36:15.240 | Right.
00:36:16.240 | If we would have had more, I think we talked about building it a little bit as we go so
00:36:26.720 | we wouldn't have to really play that financial game.
00:36:32.080 | But then you're in a situation where the longer it goes on, if you're doing it piece by piece,
00:36:39.480 | it goes back to the codes as well.
00:36:41.920 | You've only got a certain amount of time where you have to show a certain amount of progress
00:36:45.160 | and all these kind of things.
00:36:46.160 | Yeah, maybe it's saving up that much money in a short amount of time wasn't viable for
00:36:51.520 | us either.
00:36:52.520 | Right.
00:36:53.520 | Well, good for you for working hard with what you got.
00:36:58.560 | San Diego County is probably not a great place to try to be innovative.
00:37:02.160 | Neither is Palm Beach County.
00:37:04.560 | But I pay a lot of attention to what some of the guys out and gals up in Utah or up
00:37:11.160 | in Tennessee or up in Montana or Wyoming or out in the middle of nowhere or in Texas and
00:37:17.800 | non-incorporated areas in Texas where you can just do it.
00:37:20.520 | That's where a lot of the real innovation is happening and I'm excited to see some of
00:37:24.320 | the technologies that are being developed there.
00:37:27.000 | But good for you for working with what you got.
00:37:30.680 | I have one other question for you and then we'll wrap up and anything else that you have
00:37:35.320 | to say.
00:37:37.400 | I noticed on your site that you guys do home education with your kids?
00:37:43.720 | Yeah, we're actually part of a local charter school.
00:37:49.360 | I really like the program a lot.
00:37:53.360 | It's a hybrid program.
00:37:56.160 | So my oldest, the only one that's formally in school right now, she's in first grade.
00:38:01.440 | So she goes to what they call workshop two days a week with a teacher in a classroom
00:38:07.480 | environment.
00:38:09.920 | And then the other three days I teach her from home.
00:38:15.040 | They provide a standard curriculum and they guide it day by day.
00:38:21.080 | This is what you should be doing.
00:38:22.080 | But they also allow you a lot of freedom to do things how you want to do them, how best
00:38:28.560 | fits for your student and your lifestyle and stuff.
00:38:33.160 | Is that sponsored by the public school system?
00:38:35.840 | It is.
00:38:36.840 | It's a public school system.
00:38:37.840 | It's a public charter.
00:38:42.120 | So it does still have to go through all the state standards and all that kind of stuff.
00:38:49.640 | But just the actual program itself allows for a lot of individuality and freedom.
00:38:59.920 | How does that benefit you?
00:39:00.920 | Why did you decide to participate in that versus just simply designing your own plan
00:39:05.880 | for your kids?
00:39:08.040 | Well, when we first started considering homeschooling, I thought that that kind of what I thought
00:39:14.880 | I did think that it was kind of like either or.
00:39:16.760 | Either you go to public school or you go to private school or you homeschool.
00:39:20.720 | I wasn't aware of the hybrid program at all.
00:39:25.480 | And I think for a lot of parents, even just considering the choice to homeschool, it can
00:39:29.280 | be really intimidating, you know, taking that huge responsibility onto yourself.
00:39:33.640 | I did a ton of research and I was all prepared to go it on my own when somebody introduced
00:39:42.800 | me to this model.
00:39:43.800 | And I guess my first reaction to it was kind of like, "Wow, it sounds like homeschooling
00:39:49.040 | but with training wheels."
00:39:50.040 | Yeah, right.
00:39:51.040 | It's just kind of like you get to put your feet in the water.
00:39:54.800 | What is it like to actually stay home?
00:39:56.840 | I mean, I was staying home with my kids all day anyway, but to actually have a formal
00:40:01.040 | schooling environment and what is that actually like?
00:40:08.120 | And my daughter, my oldest, she's in first grade, she really, really, really wanted to
00:40:15.280 | go to school.
00:40:16.760 | And she loves going to class and she loves seeing her friends.
00:40:21.600 | So for her, I think it's mainly a social drive that really keeps her wanting to go those
00:40:34.960 | two days a week.
00:40:37.560 | As we've gone along these past couple of, you know, kindergarten was our first year
00:40:40.880 | and this will be our second.
00:40:42.640 | I have.
00:40:43.640 | I've kind of craved a little bit more freedom.
00:40:47.520 | I've written about it a little bit on the blog, just a little bit.
00:40:50.240 | My instincts kind of tend a little bit more toward like the unschooling school of thought
00:40:59.360 | where I do, especially at these younger ages, I just kind of want to let them go and play
00:41:03.200 | and learn naturally rather than sitting down and here now we have to do this and now we
00:41:08.720 | have to fill out this worksheet and that kind of stuff.
00:41:12.600 | So I would like to have a little bit more independence, but she just loves going to
00:41:19.880 | class.
00:41:20.880 | First grade is fun, right?
00:41:21.880 | Oh yeah.
00:41:22.880 | So we're just kind of taking it as it goes.
00:41:28.160 | Right now this really works for us.
00:41:29.640 | And it is nice to be able to spend time with my younger two, those two days when she's
00:41:34.720 | in class.
00:41:35.720 | Yeah.
00:41:36.720 | I can't imagine anybody objecting to first grade.
00:41:40.200 | First grade is fun.
00:41:41.200 | Now fourth grade on the other hand, or sixth grade or seventh grade, that's a different
00:41:46.760 | question of a first grade.
00:41:49.560 | The children are sweet and the activities are fun.
00:41:53.720 | You go coloring with your friends.
00:41:55.080 | That's a good day.
00:41:57.080 | Exactly.
00:41:58.440 | It's when you sit at the desk all day and study a textbook that was put together that's
00:42:08.800 | boring as anything.
00:42:10.520 | That's when you start to have more challenges.
00:42:14.600 | It's interesting that you talk about the new model.
00:42:16.200 | I have some good friends of mine who have gone back and forth and they're currently
00:42:19.920 | using that model out in Texas.
00:42:22.720 | And they're using, their version is not a charter school.
00:42:26.520 | It's a private independent school.
00:42:29.000 | But they do, I think it's two days in class and then three days at home.
00:42:35.560 | And I think that can really be an advantage for families busy.
00:42:39.560 | Especially if you're expecting a new baby.
00:42:42.540 | That can really help with some structure that takes a little bit of the stress and the pressure
00:42:46.680 | off while still retaining many of the valuable benefits of basically not being in school.
00:42:54.800 | But hopefully avoid the problems of being in school.
00:42:58.400 | And I think that's a really great model.
00:42:59.880 | I would love to see, one of the things I personally predict, I'd love to see hundreds and hundreds
00:43:04.280 | of new models created and new people try things and compete.
00:43:07.960 | And I love that that charter school has that model to compete with the other approaches.
00:43:12.280 | What was your path to, why did you, what even raised the idea for you of considering taking
00:43:20.380 | charge of your kids' education?
00:43:23.840 | I think for me, well, for me, I was public school raised all through K through 12.
00:43:29.840 | And I always thought that homeschooled kids were kind of weird.
00:43:33.960 | And so it never really occurred to me to do it until my oldest probably hit around two
00:43:40.160 | or three when you start thinking maybe a little bit about preschool or school or just what
00:43:45.960 | your options are and that kind of stuff.
00:43:48.400 | And it just kind of occurred to me that even within the next couple years or whatever,
00:43:52.240 | I wasn't going to be ready to send her to somebody else eight hours a day, you know,
00:44:00.600 | and see her less than somebody else was seeing her, you know, and kind of give away that
00:44:05.480 | influence and that priority in her life.
00:44:10.360 | And so that's when I really started researching.
00:44:12.680 | I started going on homeschooling blogs and I started talking to women that I knew that
00:44:17.440 | were homeschooling.
00:44:19.280 | And it really changed my perspective on it, you know, because one of the most common questions
00:44:25.800 | and the question that I had too was like, "Well, you know, they're never going to be
00:44:28.040 | socialized."
00:44:29.040 | It's just such an obnoxious question to homeschool moms I have since discovered.
00:44:37.080 | And just kind of having people sit down and be like, "No, no, no.
00:44:42.320 | That's silly."
00:44:43.320 | Because actually, you know, in many situations, a homeschooled kid is being socialized much
00:44:53.320 | more naturally than sitting in a classroom with 30 of his same-aged peers, you know,
00:44:59.360 | to only interact with.
00:45:00.360 | You know, they're going, they go with me to the grocery.
00:45:03.200 | They go with me everywhere, you know, so they're getting more of an idea of what real life
00:45:07.640 | is like.
00:45:08.640 | They would just sitting in the classroom eight hours a day, five days a week.
00:45:14.520 | Is that what was the, is that the argument that was compelling for you to allay your
00:45:17.960 | fears about socialization?
00:45:19.680 | Yeah, pretty much.
00:45:22.560 | And just the fact that, I mean, not with regard to socialization, but just the fact that,
00:45:29.600 | you know, up until they start school, you teach them everything they know.
00:45:33.640 | You know, there's no reason why as soon as they turn five, you know, and that cutoff
00:45:37.640 | date passes that you stop knowing more than they do.
00:45:41.840 | You know, you don't lose your ability to teach your children right at that instant, you know,
00:45:47.840 | because you don't have a certification or accreditation.
00:45:49.840 | Right, right.
00:45:50.840 | Yeah, for me, I went along with it because I didn't want to let her go.
00:45:55.640 | She's, you know, come back with, and they're like different kids, you know.
00:45:59.800 | I saw it like with my nieces and stuff like that, you know, you kind of see it change,
00:46:03.920 | you know.
00:46:04.920 | So when Sarah started bringing up, you know, thinking about homeschooling, I was like,
00:46:07.600 | yes, let's keep her sheltered some more.
00:46:09.640 | I'm not quite ready to let her go.
00:46:11.840 | Right, right.
00:46:12.840 | And I think also with the homeschooling model that the charter introduces, I've heard it
00:46:19.680 | referred to as a university model, you know, where it is just a couple days a week or whatever,
00:46:26.520 | that the family environment in comparison to a public school is a little bit different
00:46:31.280 | because there does have to be at least one parent at home with the kids, you know.
00:46:36.560 | One parent has to be involved with that child, you know, day to day and with their education
00:46:41.600 | and that kind of stuff.
00:46:43.760 | And I think that there's a difference, you know.
00:46:48.000 | There's a difference in the culture of the school and in the classroom and the parents
00:46:54.840 | that you meet, you know, and then the kids' behavior too, I have to say.
00:47:01.480 | My wife and I, we have one son and he's one year old, so we haven't been, you know, you're
00:47:07.080 | a few years ahead of us as far as actual experience.
00:47:10.480 | But in watching it, and we hope to take charge of his education at home as well.
00:47:19.200 | But in watching it, one of the things that I observe is many times people mix up a lot
00:47:24.120 | of words and they use them interchangeably.
00:47:26.260 | So for example, oftentimes we use interchangeably the word school and education.
00:47:32.220 | And those words are very different.
00:47:34.260 | School versus education is very different if you actually kind of explore some of the
00:47:39.620 | nuance.
00:47:41.140 | And other things, so for example, I've got issues with, I personally have some issues
00:47:45.640 | with how the schooling system works for the negative socialization for the way that you
00:47:50.420 | say, like exactly the concern that many people have about kids that are educated at home.
00:47:57.740 | The same concern that they have, I have the opposite concern.
00:48:01.060 | And I've observed that kids are probably going to turn out just about like their parents.
00:48:06.500 | So if the parents are awkward, socially awkward, it's likely that the kids are going to be
00:48:12.820 | socially awkward.
00:48:14.460 | And if the parents are socially adept, then it's likely that the kids will be socially
00:48:19.560 | adept because they're going to model their parents.
00:48:21.940 | So people oftentimes have met, we've all met, man, there are some awkward kids in school
00:48:28.700 | every day, right?
00:48:29.700 | There are some very socially awkward kids.
00:48:32.700 | I mean, there are some socially awkward parents in every part of society.
00:48:36.540 | So I think that's a poor basis of judging the results that somebody gets with an educational
00:48:42.660 | system.
00:48:43.660 | I look at it and I say, the idea that the valuable socialization is from a classroom
00:48:50.840 | filled with eight year olds or filled with 15 year olds, that that's the valuable socialization.
00:48:56.900 | This is a very strange concept in the history of the world.
00:49:00.120 | Throughout history, society has always been integrated.
00:49:04.160 | And you've had an integration of children, fully integrated with parents, grandparents,
00:49:10.600 | uncles, aunts, the entire community.
00:49:12.880 | I forget the person who popularized the saying, but the saying of it takes a village to raise
00:49:18.560 | a child.
00:49:19.720 | Life has always been integrated.
00:49:21.040 | This is how we learn.
00:49:23.320 | And yet in our society and in modern society, we've embarked on this very strange idea that
00:49:29.160 | somehow the best person to teach a 13 year old girl socialization skills is another 13
00:49:35.560 | year old girl.
00:49:36.560 | Right, exactly.
00:49:37.560 | Really not the best plan in my opinion.
00:49:41.640 | I think we see the results.
00:49:42.920 | Look at the frustration in children.
00:49:47.760 | And I learned this even from my own personal experience.
00:49:50.000 | I was, with the exception of third grade when I was in public school, I was educated at
00:49:56.200 | home through seventh grade and then I went to a traditional private school.
00:50:00.520 | And in seventh grade, I always felt like I got along great with adults.
00:50:06.840 | I just fit in well in society.
00:50:09.460 | And then I had to learn all these new skills of somehow fitting into these weird cliques
00:50:12.980 | and the cool kids and the not cool kids and all this weird stuff I'd never had to deal
00:50:16.480 | with.
00:50:17.480 | And it wasn't until I finally got to college again that I started to feel kind of more
00:50:20.200 | normal because people backed off of the silly high school stuff.
00:50:26.560 | And then when I became an adult and I recognized, wow, people don't care about what I look like
00:50:31.220 | and they don't care about these silly things.
00:50:33.000 | It's just they're interested in my ideas.
00:50:35.280 | It was such a freeing concept that I hadn't had since I was in sixth grade.
00:50:39.500 | Well, it's interesting too that you bring that up because one of the conversations that
00:50:44.400 | I have with one of my brothers, he doesn't have any kids yet, but he's so interested
00:50:49.320 | in our journey with the homeschooling and stuff.
00:50:51.600 | His point is that we went through school and I have four brothers and I think all of us
00:50:56.960 | kind of took our knocks as far as getting picked on.
00:51:02.180 | And it was kind of like, well, even though that was a terrible experience, bullies and
00:51:08.100 | having to deal with that kind of stuff, it teaches you empathy.
00:51:12.580 | And he was like, "Do you feel like your kids are going to be missing out if they don't
00:51:18.700 | experience that or just being picked on by other kids of their age?"
00:51:25.860 | And I don't think that there's any parent out there that's like, "No, I really want
00:51:30.220 | my kid to get picked on for a little while."
00:51:33.980 | But I think that one of the biggest things is that most of our generation was public
00:51:41.020 | schooled and that's all we know.
00:51:44.260 | And if that's not the right way or if there's other ways, it kind of makes it feel like
00:51:52.220 | our experience wasn't necessary.
00:51:55.380 | It makes it invalid almost.
00:51:59.500 | I feel like a lot of people feel in danger of having their experience invalidated.
00:52:05.260 | I went through public school, so you have to go through public school.
00:52:07.700 | You're going to learn the same things that I learned.
00:52:09.500 | You're going to go through that school of hard knocks.
00:52:13.580 | And I think it takes courage to look back at that and be like, "No, maybe that wasn't
00:52:16.620 | necessary.
00:52:17.700 | Maybe there is a different way.
00:52:18.700 | Maybe there is a better way for my kids."
00:52:22.180 | I think you just proved your concern even in the statement that you just made.
00:52:27.760 | If school were about education, then we wouldn't have any concerns about the social fear of,
00:52:35.540 | "Well, no.
00:52:36.540 | You've got to go through what I went through."
00:52:39.060 | If school were about education, we would applaud those who had achieved an excellent education.
00:52:45.100 | But our concerns are generally from a social perspective.
00:52:48.700 | If people aren't taught their place, if people aren't taught their class, if people are not
00:52:52.700 | taught these certain things, whether it's -- I won't give any examples, but if people
00:53:01.180 | are not taught this common core of what they need to know for everyone to be the same,
00:53:09.900 | then how can our society function?
00:53:12.060 | I think you just proved the point, even in what you were saying, logically, that it's
00:53:17.620 | less about education and it's very much about organizing society, at least in my observation.
00:53:23.860 | Yeah, I think that's valid.
00:53:25.860 | It is interesting, though.
00:53:26.860 | I have a friend, a close friend, who was homeschooled her whole life, but she grew up very isolated.
00:53:37.300 | She was raised on a mountaintop, actually.
00:53:40.300 | Really?
00:53:41.300 | The neighbors who lived in a bus, but that's beside the point.
00:53:49.780 | She actually went through kindergarten through her sophomore year of high school before she
00:53:53.700 | finally was like, "Okay, I'm going to public school now."
00:53:57.100 | She really felt like she was missing out.
00:53:58.740 | She felt isolated.
00:53:59.740 | She felt like she didn't want to be homeschooled anymore.
00:54:05.420 | She kind of held her hand.
00:54:06.420 | She said, "I'm going to high school now."
00:54:09.420 | It's interesting talking to her.
00:54:10.500 | Her kids aren't at school age yet.
00:54:13.740 | As far as I know, she hasn't decided what path she's going to take.
00:54:17.900 | From talking to her, she said that one of the things that was really neat was that when
00:54:20.660 | she went to high school, she had so many fears that she was going to be so far behind in
00:54:25.500 | her education.
00:54:26.500 | She felt like she'd missed out on all this stuff.
00:54:29.180 | Then going to school, she was like, "Oh, no.
00:54:33.780 | I'm ahead.
00:54:34.780 | I know all this stuff already."
00:54:38.340 | It didn't take very much at all for her to figure out where she was and what she was
00:54:45.980 | doing and to assimilate into the culture.
00:54:50.140 | I think that that's another fear, too, that people have is that, "I take my kid out of
00:54:54.060 | this environment and someday they want to go back.
00:54:56.220 | They're going to have this huge gap, all these learning gaps or something like that."
00:55:05.740 | I just don't think that that's necessarily a realistic fear because there are so many
00:55:09.460 | things that we think that we have to teach children and that we have to cram into their
00:55:13.100 | brain at a really early age.
00:55:16.020 | They have to read by this age.
00:55:17.020 | They have to know their numbers and how to add and all these things.
00:55:20.780 | As you get older, those things are really, really easy and quickly taught and quickly
00:55:24.180 | learned.
00:55:25.180 | Any learning gaps that there might be are pretty quickly covered once you realize that
00:55:31.940 | they're there.
00:55:32.940 | It's like being an adult.
00:55:33.940 | You realize, "Oh, I never learned about this era of history."
00:55:38.380 | Then you pick up some books and you read about it.
00:55:39.900 | You watch some movies and there you go.
00:55:42.180 | Gap filled.
00:55:43.540 | Right.
00:55:44.540 | Right.
00:55:45.540 | I'm interested, even on this show, about some of the ways that if we take a little bit more
00:55:54.260 | interest in thinking farther ahead than general society does.
00:55:59.820 | The problem that general society has, especially the problem that politicians and policymakers
00:56:07.420 | and bureaucrats face, is that they have to think of the common good.
00:56:12.020 | They have to think of all people.
00:56:13.660 | They have to design systems that work for all people.
00:56:17.740 | If they're going to design a schooling system, they need to design it in a way that's going
00:56:21.560 | to work for everybody.
00:56:22.880 | Maybe they'll have a little bit of variability there.
00:56:25.580 | You may have a gifted program, but there you have two programs.
00:56:29.100 | You've got to fit everybody into one of these two tracks.
00:56:32.900 | As individuals taking charge of our own lives and hopefully our own children's educations,
00:56:40.980 | we don't have that same constraint.
00:56:42.860 | We can customize things exactly based upon our goals and based upon our kids' goals.
00:56:48.940 | When you look at the incredible start that you can give to a child, whether it's from
00:56:54.380 | an educational perspective, connecting them not with the teacher who happens to be the
00:56:59.820 | teacher in the local school, but rather with a world-class teacher who's the best in the
00:57:04.340 | world in the subject that they're interested in, or whether it's not designing the curriculum
00:57:09.940 | that has to work for everyone, but rather let's do this world-class curriculum.
00:57:13.660 | We don't read textbooks.
00:57:14.660 | We read primary documents or something along those lines.
00:57:19.340 | Or whether it's just the financial perspectives.
00:57:21.180 | I know many have read and met many home-educated kids who finished their bachelor's degree
00:57:28.060 | from an accredited university by the time of 18.
00:57:31.220 | You can basically dispense with the idea of having to deal with that stuff after the primary
00:57:36.900 | years and you can really help a student go out ahead if they're academically gifted.
00:57:42.060 | Or you can do, I'm getting ready to bring a guy on the show who all of his sons so far,
00:57:47.420 | his three older sons and his two others are on track for this, have been able to purchase
00:57:52.140 | a home debt-free by the time they were in their 20s and got married.
00:57:56.740 | Well, that happened because they were educated at home and were able to really focus on vocational
00:58:02.060 | skills that then they could use to enhance their life.
00:58:04.300 | So I think even from a personal finance perspective, it's an incredibly exciting opportunity when
00:58:10.580 | you think of how we can really set our children on a stronger course than perhaps we had the
00:58:16.100 | opportunity to go on.
00:58:17.940 | Absolutely, yeah.
00:58:19.980 | So anything else, any other ideas that you have or anything else that you'd like to share
00:58:24.580 | before we wrap up?
00:58:25.580 | I don't think so.
00:58:26.580 | I think we've pretty much covered the bases.
00:58:27.580 | Well, I would just encourage you guys to keep doing what you're doing and keep writing honestly
00:58:35.620 | about what your experiences are.
00:58:37.740 | And remember the famous wise words of philosophy, "This too shall pass."
00:58:44.460 | So hopefully soon you'll meet your new little one and all will be forgotten as you watch
00:58:52.140 | the house go up.
00:58:53.140 | And in the meantime, I wish you great wisdom as you face all of the challenges with getting
00:59:01.860 | the project done.
00:59:02.860 | I know it's going to be a draining, it's going to be a very challenging and draining process,
00:59:07.140 | but the end result, I'm sure you will enjoy living in your house much more after having
00:59:12.140 | spent the time in the bus.
00:59:13.340 | So your website is...
00:59:14.340 | I should mention we're cultivating a lot of gratitude.
00:59:18.100 | Exactly.
00:59:19.220 | Your website is littlebusontheprairie.com.
00:59:21.580 | Is there anything else you'd like to mention before we wrap up?
00:59:25.900 | As we go here, where people can find you or anything like that?
00:59:28.180 | No, we're not very social media savvy.
00:59:30.740 | That's all we got.
00:59:32.980 | You've got three kids.
00:59:33.980 | There's your social media.
00:59:36.660 | Turn off the phones and spend time with your kids.
00:59:39.140 | Thank you guys for taking the time to come on the show.
00:59:40.820 | I really have enjoyed chatting with you.
00:59:43.260 | Thank you, Josh.
00:59:44.260 | It was a pleasure.
00:59:45.260 | Told you it'd be fun.
00:59:50.380 | So happy Friday to you.
00:59:51.900 | Let that send you off with an idea and maybe this weekend you could be thankful for the
00:59:57.980 | house that you're living in with the air conditioner that you're living in.
01:00:01.380 | I think that it may have helped to bring out some information as far as some of the good
01:00:06.660 | things and the bad things and just the challenges of life sometimes of working through with
01:00:11.460 | contractors and working through trying to figure out how do we afford the lifestyle
01:00:16.100 | that we have.
01:00:17.100 | In many ways, it's just kind of a dose of reality.
01:00:22.060 | So thank you for listening.
01:00:24.820 | Have a great weekend, everybody.
01:00:25.980 | Next week, I've got a number of shows lined up for you.
01:00:29.060 | I've got three interviews at least in the hopper already which are excellent interviews.
01:00:33.700 | I think you're really going to enjoy those details next week.
01:00:36.340 | I'm not sure what order I'm going to play them in.
01:00:38.380 | And then I may actually run a couple more interviews next week because I've got some
01:00:42.140 | projects I need to finish up and I may not have the time to finish the teaching shows
01:00:48.100 | that I need to do prior to next week.
01:00:52.820 | Thanks so much for being here.
01:00:53.820 | Have a great weekend, everybody.
01:00:54.820 | [Music]
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