Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I'm your host. And today I want to share with you one couple's story and their answer to a question, namely, can you afford to work nine to five?

I'm often struck in my own personal perusals as I enjoy reading older books and older magazines, I'm struck at how little is new. Truly, I think Solomon had it right in most things when he said, "There's nothing new under the sun." Much of many of the questions, much of the advice that we receive and give in today's world, it's not new.

It's just a slightly different variation of what's happened before. I recently was reading an older book, a compendium published 35 years ago by Mother Earth News. And in this compendium of articles, I was struck by so many of the articles and how applicable they were to today's world. The same problems that people were wrestling with back then are the same problems that certain people are wrestling with today.

I have a soft spot and an interest in reading some of these old back to the land stories. And even the current back to the land stories. But when I use that phrase, I'm referring to the movement that came out of the 1970s and the 1980s with a fairly broad section of US Americans trying to pack up shop and leave the urban centers and move out to the country.

And it was a movement of mixed success. There certainly were some people who were able to make a go of it, but there were a lot of people who really failed. And I think the reason many of them failed was the inability to create an income in a rural context.

It's a problem that people in a rural context frequently face. And it's a problem I think that has new solutions in today's world. The challenge is if you're going to move out into a rural context, how are you going to provide a living for yourself to be able to buy the things that you need to buy?

If you want to be the poorest person in the world, just go and become a subsistence farmer, trying to be 100% independent and self-sufficient, and you will live a lifestyle of poverty. It is impossible to be wealthy and to live a fully independent, self-sufficient lifestyle. So the challenge is how much dependence do you build?

And many people want to go out and take responsibility for many of the functions in their life, but they still need some source of income. And one of the major areas where the back to the land movement of the '70s and '80s came to really break down was how to create that income.

If you want to move into a rural context, you're limited to either selling your services or certain products to create cash for yourself. In selling services on the job market, a job market in rural areas where land is cheap usually is much more constricted than in an urban market.

And usually you can't do quite as well with your specialized labor as you can in an urban area, so your wages are likely to be lower or non-existent. And the same problem you face with products. Many of the products that you could sell in an urban context frequently just aren't saleable in a rural context.

But I think we have new solutions now. And although there have always been people who figured out how to go out and move to the country if that's what they wanted to do, there have always been people who've been able to do that, whether they worked the mail order business or they did their work by correspondence.

There are a bunch of models that I've found from the old days. But today it's much easier because you can take almost any mainstream profession today and digitize it in some way. And if you can digitize that work in some way, then you can disconnect yourself from a geographic location.

In the early days of online businesses, when I first became interested 15, 20 years ago, you basically made your money by teaching people about online business. And it was a very new and weird thing. But today it's a very normal thing. And there are dozens and dozens, a lot of paths into that type of lifestyle.

So in reading these articles from this compendium, I was struck by a few of them in particular. And this one that I'm going to share with you today is called, "Can you afford to work 9-5?" And the article succinctly demonstrates something that I've talked about extensively on the show.

One of the challenges with rural living is creating income. One of the challenges with urban living is creating savings. Because it seems like the whole urban lifestyle that so many of us are accustomed to is built around constant and never-ending consumption. And in a way, you are like a hamster on a treadmill, or on a wheel, constantly just going around and around and around, but not making any progress.

It doesn't have to be that way. But a lot of people start to wake up and look around and say, "I'm just getting older and older and I'm not making a lot of progress. I'm not saving a lot of money. I'm not living the life that I want to live." And that's what the Back to the Land movement of the 1970s and 80s has in common with the Back to the Land movement of today, 2018.

People are still looking for that sense of an appropriate pace of life. And again, my personal ambition is to be a gentleman farmer. I think that's a great pace of life. You have time for physical manual labor and time for intellectual stimulation. In my mind, that's ideal. Let me share with you this article because it's super fun to read other people's contexts from many years ago, but then to apply them and to think about them in today's world.

So enjoy the lower numbers and recognize the constant and never-ending destruction of your wealth that inflation brings. I enjoy listening to the older solutions. And then think about your own situation and see if you have some creative ideas to work in your own context. The article is called, "Can You Afford to Work 9 to 5?" from a Mother Earth News publication published back in the mid-1980s.

While many people yearn for a lovely and conventional suburban home with a predictable 9 to 5 routine, that kind of security had lost its charm for at least one couple. Their dream was of a place in the country and of a way of life inextricably bound to the land.

Both husband and wife were employed, but after each tightly scheduled and often unsatisfying day, their dream of a simpler existence had become ever more appealing. One night, the wife, armed with pen and paper, decided to analyze the economics of the job she held. She had been hoping that it was helping them to reach their "back to the land" goal, but her computations indicated otherwise.

The hard, cold figures showed that she was not only failing to save money toward the goal, but she was actually spending more money on job-related expenses than she had supposed. Her startling discovery was that she could not afford to keep her job. Her salary as a teacher totaled $9,000 a year, yet her spendable income, consisting of net wages minus work-connected expenses, came to only $2,530 annually.

The cost of working was quite amazing. Here is how her income was being distributed before any personal expenses. Salary $9,000 State and federal taxes $1,500 Car payment $135 a month for $1,620 per year Gasoline for commuting at $160 a month = $1,920 per year Auto repair tolls miscellaneous $480 per year Vehicle insurance and registration $350 per year Working wardrobe repair cleaning $600 per year for total work-related expenses of $6,470 $9,000 of salary less $6,470 of work-related expenses = a net spendable income of $2,530 She decided that if there were no greater benefit than that to be had from her 9-5 routine, it was time to let go of it.

So with little hesitation, she did just that. From then on, she managed to augment her husband's salary by cashing in on her love of horses. Years of training and riding, combined with her teaching experience, blended to produce a career instructing young horsemen and horsewomen that provided not only an income, but lots of outdoor activity as well.

The new "job" also afforded her more leisure time to develop home and garden skills that helped to stretch what money she did bring home. The new occupation eliminated the need for a second family vehicle, so they were able to barter their car for two acres of remote New Hampshire land.

Once they acquired that property, they immediately wanted to relocate to it, and upon closer examination of the husband's earnings, they realized that the idea of simply packing up and trying to make do in a rural setting wasn't too far-fetched at all. The following figures demonstrate how much of his income was being used each year to do no more than maintain their suburban lifestyle.

Salary $16,550 per year State and federal taxes $1,800 per year Mortgage payments at $235 a month $2,820 per year Property taxes $1,200 per year Electricity at $75 per month $900 per year Telephone at $40 per month $480 per year Oil heat $1,000 per year Truck payment of $107 per month $1,284 per year Gasoline at $100 per month $1,200 per year Truck repair miscellaneous $360 per year Vehicle insurance and registration $350 per year Food at $250 per month $3,000 per year Dining, local travel, entertainment $1,200 per year Clothing $480 per year A $16,550 salary less total living expenses of $16,074 equals a net spendable income of $476.

Faced with those facts, the couple made the decision to abandon their suburban way of life. They sold their house and moved on to the two paid-for country acres, where they built a small, mortgage-free camp. They now cook with bottled gas for a mere $6 a month, and their light is produced by economical kerosene lanterns.

A small barrel stove has taken the place of a costly oil furnace, and wood obtained through barter provides all their heat. A brook on the property supplies all the water they need. The husband's financed pickup truck, and its accompanying payments, has been replaced by a used van (completely paid for) that has been converted into a camper.

In a short time, the annual budget looked more like this. Present combined income $7,400 per year Rent and mortgage $0 Car payments $0 Electricity $0 Wood heat $0 Income taxes $120 per year Property taxes $75 per year Telephone (occasionally use of payphone) $100 per year Bottled gas and kerosene $120 per year Gasoline (errands and travel to seasonal work) $600 per year Vehicle insurance and registration $300 per year Food (to supplement the edibles they produce, hunt or forage) $1,400 Clothing (leaving city jobs really cut this expense) $300 So annual income of $7,400 per year, less total living expenses of $3,055 per year, equals a net spendable income of $4,345 per year, whereas previously the net spendable income from her job was $2,530 per year, and the net spendable income for him in his lifestyle was $476 per year.

It's easy to see that their change of lifestyle has resulted in having more cash to spend than they did before. Because both are finally free of the 40-hour week, they can devote themselves full-time to gardening, foraging, fishing, hunting, freelance writing (which helps to pay their bills) and traveling. The couple's pleasure expenses have actually increased since their move to the country.

For example, they rented out their camp, another source of income, while they spent a year exploring in Alaska. After three months on the road, with expenses totaling $2,900 for 12,000 miles of unforgettable experiences, they took jobs as caretakers of a remote cabin on the Alaskan coast. There they enjoyed the icy splendor of glaciers and snow-capped peaks while they continued to expand their knowledge and skills.

This man and woman are living their dream, but what it took was the conviction to free themselves from the life they thought they couldn't afford to leave. Until they faced the facts and figures, they never realized the astronomical costs involved in maintaining a suburban lifestyle. It seems that the solution to money problems sometimes lies not in earning more, but rather in simplifying one's way of life and perhaps even earning less.

Moving from a dwelling in an area with a high cost of living, to a dream farm or camp in the country, to that place where you can garden, cut your own wood, and possibly even raise your own dairy or meat animals may be the answer to your financial dilemma.

In fact, you may be able to eliminate entirely that tedious 40-hour work week and meet your reduced expenditures with a part-time or seasonal job or a home business. The transition from a life in suburbia to one on the farm does take time, thought, and money. How much of each you'll need will depend on your skills, level of determination, desired lifestyle, and current equities.

You may have to cash in some assets and deplete your personal savings, devote extra time to honing a talent that will bring in the income you'll require, and learn the skills necessary to live in harmony with the earth. Whatever method you adopt to rid yourself of those Monday morning blues, rest assured it can be done, and the entire process can prove to be an exciting journey, one that may far exceed all of your original dreams.