If your escape from the rat race seems a long way away, there are steps you can take right now to bring your dream closer every day. Many people are tied to living on-grid and need a full-time job to survive, but this doesn’t mean you can’t start taking steps towards a self-sufficient future! For most of us, the first step towards homesteading is figuring out how to get the essentials in life. For as little money as possible. I started this years ago when I dreamed of reducing my working hours to free up more time for things I loved. To do this, we needed to spend less money. So, I sat down then and wrote all our household outgoings to figure out how we were spending our budget. I then challenged myself to get this figure as low as possible. I started by reusing, making, mending, upcycling, swapping, and preserving. I also noted the essential homesteading skills that could save us some serious cash. And incidentally, also the things I loved doing!) This initial homesteading inventory took a lot of time at first! But as we got more skilled and organized and built up a store of supplies, it got much less hectic. It also gave us a reliable foundation for when we finally got the money together to leap into full-time homesteading – which we would never have managed without our money-saving strategy! As time goes by, you can learn many aspects of homesteading, such as compost production, keeping backyard chickens, and food preservation techniques. Before you know it, you’ll have become a homesteader without needing an enormous sum of money to get started!