I grew up in a small community In northwest GA. I remember playing out in the woods behind our house with my brother and friends anytime we got a chance. Today those woods are neighborhoods. The “castle” I built with sticks is long gone, but the memories are still very vivid in my mind! I had the best of childhoods in that community and in those woods. When I was in middle school we moved to a very small town in south Georgia, but we lived on the main street in town right down from the busy railroad tracks. It took me a while to grow accustomed to the constant train whistles and the loud trucks crusin’ Cherry Street. Even though the actual town was smaller, I was away from the woods and loved when my friends invited me to their house to ride 4-wheelers and swim in the lake. There’s just something about land and trees that makes a childhood magical, so my husband, Kyle, and I have always tried to give that to our children. Because we do live in south Georgia, our subdivision is very private. We own 3 acres, which I know to those in Atlanta and surrounding areas, would think is a lot of land to run around on, but all of our land was clear and there weren’t woods that were ours that our kids were able to play in. We bought a camper in 2016 when our son was 4 and our daughter was 4 months old. We wanted to take them on adventures, but we quickly learned that having a camper was great, but because of maintaining a home, paying a mortgage, and other responsibilities of life, we didn’t have a lot of extra time to get away in the camper.
Kyle is a real estate broker specializing in land for sale in Georgia. He recently took a course towards his continuing education where he heard an economist give some pretty grim details on where he thinks things will be going financially in the months to come. This economist said that he and his family were getting out of the Atlanta area and were getting out fast. He said he was looking to buy land in rural Georgia for him and his family. I wouldn’t say this man’s opinions made Kyle and I jump into the next phase of our lives. We had already been talking about it for several years, but it was the proverbial last straw that made us come home, find some acreage in a more rural setting, list and sell our house, and begin the process of building a barndominium (my husband thinks that’s a ridiculous word!)
We hope you follow along with us on this journey as we try to live as debt free as possible while providing a childhood for our kids that they’ll remember as much as I remember my castle in the woods!