I am not off-grid, but many of my neighbors and close friends are and I can speak intimately about their experience.

For one, many of the examples in the comments below are really quite extreme! By homesteading folks seem to be implying that you're looking to live in the middle of literal nowhere, alone and surviving off your wits and the grace of god. You can do the homesteading thing in lots of different contexts.

The town I live in is ~1k people on the west coast US, about 2 hours away from a major city and about 10 miles from a small 12k pop city. We've got a nice grocery store about 5 minutes away from where we live, and a few restaurants here and there. It's a very rural farming town, but there are a lot of young people around that live interesting lives. Musicians, artists, etc. Nobody makes a lot of money, but its not a community of dire poverty by any stretch. People just get by with very little, and are conscious of that in a deliberate sort of way.

My next door neighbor (a family of three) catches water via a collection tank that they then filter into a cabin, and during dry spells order extra in. Generally speaking, its more than enough to do dishes, wash laundry, drink and whatever else you might need to do. Electricity-wise they live 95% percent of the time off of three fairly small battery packs that run low-power LED lights that feel as cosy as you could imagine for a small cabin. They have more than enough lighting than they could need. Obviously, no TV or anything like that, but they don't want that. When one of the batteries gets low, they charge it up at work. They live pretty normal lives all said, and you would never guess that they get by on next to nothing.

Another friend lives (mostly) off grid in a small house he built. Put solar in along with a huge battery bank and runs all kinds of appliances from TV to washing machine, to all kinds of power-tools and lights for their house and barn, etc. Water comes from a combination of catchment and a well that his neighbor generously offered to share with him in exchange for some excavator work. He runs a very successful landscaping / earthworks company and again, wouldn't guess for a moment that him and his partner are homesteading.

Yet another completely off-grid friend (with 2 kids, partner) lives in basically the most beautiful house you could imagine, like something straight out of a magazine. He's been working on it (and reworking it) for about 15 years. You walk inside and there's a fancy kitchen, beautiful bathrooms (with composting toilets), three floors, four bedrooms all fully wired, etc, etc. Whole thing is powered by a solar kit purchased from Backwoods Solar for about 15k. He told them what he wanted and they designed it up and shipped it to him for him to assemble, which he did with no specialized knowledge. It was all pretty effortless. He catches water, filters it. Has got a garden with all kinds of fruit trees, a greenhouse, chickens, rabbits for fertilizer. All the basics are covered without too much work required. He owns a happening restaurant in town, kids go to a nice private school, and so on. Again, would never guess they were "homesteaders".

The above examples aren't to say that this kind of living is easy. Each of these friends have serious building skills and were fortunate and wise with their time / money. And in each case they bought bare land (5 to 15 acres) and built things from scratch. So its like, you've got to go into it prepared. But assuming all of the requisites are met, or you're the type of person who is prepared to learn what's necessary, being a homesteader does not mean that you _have_ to live this crazy rugged life. None of the people I listed above do. They put in a lot of upfront work to set their lives up by their design using the skills they had. And now just about every cent that comes into their bank account goes right into savings or other projects / hobbies / businesses that they want to work on. It's remarkable, and I reflect on this every month when I pay my mortgage bill.