Homesteading is often touted as one of the most frugal ways to live, and a great way to save money. But what is the honest story behind homestead costs? Does homesteading actually save money? And if so, on what?

(Don't want to read all the words? This blog post is also a podcast—just press the triangle play button on the little black bar at the top of this post!)

In 2011, my family and I moved to a 5 acre piece of property with a little white house and a big red barn on a dead end dirt road in Minnesota. I had all the plans to make all the things happen. The gardens would be ginormous. The barn would be filled with animals. I would add grapevines and apple trees and we would convert the unused hay shed into an aquaponics area. We would go off-grid.

Y'all, I had all. the. plans.

And the great thing was that these plans were going to net me a life where I lived even more frugally than I already had been in my pre-homesteader life. I was gonna be a homesteading rockstar on a shoestring. Because homesteading saves money, right?

Well.

Homesteading can save money. But don't forget that running the homestead costs money, too.

We need to make sure that we're framing the whole "homesteading saves money" thing correctly, because some people are confused about what that phrase actually means. Living frugally while trying to run a homestead is a different story than most people realize.

((I talk more about this frugal living thing in my most recent book: It's Not About Money...except when it is. Check it out on Amazon!))

In your adventure as a homesteader, sometimes you'll come out ahead, other times behind. Most times you should just pray to break even.

Now. Lest I get messages and emails from people telling me their own experience of how they moved to the country and now live on practically nothing a month, I want to assure you—there are ways we have saved money by homesteading in the country. Lots of them.

But I also think we need to be honest about the fact there are a whole heck of a lot of people out there who have a fantasy that they are going to move to the country and have little to no bills because they're going to go off grid, put in a huge vegetable garden, and raise some chickens.

A zest for the possibilities of what lies ahead in homesteading is a great thing to have, but we need to make sure we don't plow ahead blindly with a misunderstanding regarding what we're in for as a homesteader.

Some of that honesty and truthful homesteading education begins with those of us who are writing the articles, making the YouTube videos, and producing the podcasts that people are listening to to learn about the homesteading life. It's important that we're all honest enough to help people understand that sometimes the idea of moving to the country to become a homesteader can sometimes be cheaper than actually moving to the country to become a homesteader.

We forget to talk about all the homestead costs. Homesteading is not free, y'all, but some people out there are selling it as such.

Homestead costs are real.

I hear so many people say they want to move to the country and get a fat piece of land. To be completely honest, I was one of these people. When we were first looking for a farm, we didn't want anything less than 40 acres. Why? Because we were going to do all the things and we needed a lot of space to do all the things.

But what we realized at one point while driving around looking at properties was that the more land you have and the more things you want to do with that land, the more money it costs. Not just in seed or head of cattle, but in things like machinery and fencing.

Oh, the homestead costs! The pigs and chickens and turkeys cost money. Feed costs money. Hay costs money. Garden seeds still cost money. Repairs to the barn, fuel for the tractor, a new axle for the horse trailer, materials to fix the fence—they all cost money. So do pressure canners and meat grinders and de...