In 2012, my wife and I spent our nest egg on our homestead. $42,000 for five acres, a small concrete-block barn, a detached two-car garage, and a run-down house.
I spent a ton of time and about $6,000 fixing up the house (roof, plumbing, flooring, paint, and a lot of odds and ends).
We're not working it as a homestead, in the sense of living off the land. We had a big garden this year, plus
chickens, ducks, and geese. But that's it. No surplus to
sell, and not even
enough that we grow everything we eat.
The land doesn't provide us our income- I work a "city job" for our money. We COULD live off the land, given a year or two of notice and a willingness to cut our luxuries down to zero (luxuries like health insurance and more than one phone). Five fertile acres with a
pond and the outbuildings already built, that's adequate for subsistence. But those luxuries are important enough to us to be worth it.
You asked about expenses. Our bills are about $2,100/month. Largest item is health insurance at $565. Next is groceries, $500 (five people). If the house weren't paid-for, that would be a whole lot higher.
How old are you, Alex? And are you married? Do you live in Nebraska now? What do you do for money?
I'll back up what Jay said- no
mortgage, no partner. Almost everybody who's dreaming of homesteading is picturing
freedom.
Starting a homestead with a mortgage is like wooing a woman with lies- it might get you what you're after, but it will ruin what you're after, too.
That's going to ruffle some feathers, I know it is. I'm not saying a mortgage is a bad idea for everyone, everywhere, every time. But it's a bad idea for you. Here's why:
1. You've got a trade but not a career. If somebody's got a steady, boring, reliable career underway, where they're pretty positive that their income is going to increase slightly for the next few
decades without any gaps or up-and-down swings, fine, take a mortgage. That's not you. If it were you, you wouldn't be asking us about moving to Nebraska and building a house.
2. The mortgage isn't for making money. The people who are going to chine in here are going to say "Hang on, mortgages aren't bad, I financed $150k on my farm and it's been a good successful moneymaker ever since, and I couldn't have done it if I'd tried to scrape together $150k in cash first. I'd have never gotten there." I know that's not what you're talking about because you didn't mention any farming. You asked about minimum numbers. You said "take out a loan" instead of "finance it."
So please, please, please, let me discourage you from chaining yourself up in order to get your freedom. Or enslaving yourself to capitalism to get back to the land. It's much better to be patiently do it a little bit at a time and get it right than to hurry up and get a sad, distorted version of your dream as quick as you can.