You may never believe you are able to give up the things you always thought to absolutely needed. But, for the most part, you can! Just check out these back to basics tips and think about the sacrifices you can make for a self-sufficient lifestyle.

 1. Be Frugal
Practice financial discipline by making a commitment to frugality. Forgoing luxuries, such as satellite TV and smartphone service, allows us to live below our means. We’ve never owned a new car or carried a balance on our credit card.

Why rent a movie when you can get it free from the library? “Shop” at clothing swaps, where you drop off the clothes your children have outgrown while picking up something new for yourself. We chop cords of firewood with neighbors and enjoy cooking with our Sun Oven solar cooker. The combined savings from these creative ways to share and use free resources, along with our food and energy production, allowed us to pay off our mortgage.

2. Think Long-Term and Stay Put
Commit to a permanent location and develop a long-term vision. You will want to have a practical plan that you can achieve over a time period appropriate to your current stage of life. Taking on a project in your 50s that would require years to see through is not the same as doing so in your 20s. Be reasonable and honest with yourself regarding your abilities and project time frames.

3. Get Back to Basics
Deciding where to start your journey can feel overwhelming. If you’re like we were — strung out on lattes, hunkered down in cubicles at stressful big-city jobs, living off biweekly paychecks — simply finding the time to think through the how, where and when is challenging. Raising kids and paying a mortgage or student loans can add to the stress.

Start by focusing on survival and sustenance. Six main spheres guide our approach to self-sufficient living: water, shelter, food, energy (including transportation), finances and community (including entertainment). The spheres you decide to work on first will be based on your situation, passions, unique skills and finances. We all have limitations to achieving total self-reliance — but after you know your limits, you can strive to transform them into possibilities.

4. Cultivate Your Relationship
For those embarking on their journey with a partner, not to be overlooked is the commitment you make with one another to find a shared vision. While Lisa and I have different approaches and skills, we support and encourage each other and evaluate our decisions along the way with a good dose of humor. There were no simple answers to the many difficult choices we faced. But splitting wood together, for example, allowed for plenty of time to strategize (and served as great marital therapy, too).

Improving our bodies’ health was also a priority. When we dropped watching TV, we became more physically active and had more time to devote to the projects ahead of us. Working on our farm became our best exercise plan. In the off-season, we view our gym membership as our preventive health care investment.

5. Change With the Seasons
We let seasonality dictate our diet — we gorge on strawberries in June and savor butternut squash soup in January. The seasons also guide the diversity of projects that make up our livelihood. Through the warm growing season, we dwell outside in the gardens and focus on generating income through our bed-and-breakfast and cabin-rental enterprises. During winter months, writing, photography, speaking and consulting generate most of our revenue.

6. Create a Homestead

While not essential, owning some land can become the foundation on which you cultivate self-sufficiency. We quit our jobs and moved from Chicago to our small rural property, committed to being wise stewards of the land — improving the soil organically, planting trees for windbreaks and wildlife, and using what the land offered us, such as plentiful wind and sun.

More is not necessarily better when it comes to owning land responsibly. Create a land-management plan that is both realistic and financially feasible. Your land should be an asset that creates cash flow and appreciates in value over time as a result of activities you undertake. Renting farmland is an option as long as the lease agreement allows for the projects necessary to accomplish your goals.

7. Eliminate Debt
When your backyard serves as a farmers market, your kitchen as a restaurant, and your cellar as your supermarket, you essentially eliminate food costs. Producing most of our food allowed us to pay down our mortgage faster — plus, the quality of our food improved.

We recommend that you strive to never buy anything that you can’t pay for in cash. When you do have cash saved from your various enterprises, invest in real assets, such as renewable energy systems that power your homestead or a fuel-efficient vehicle that reliably gets you around when needed. If you own a hybrid or diesel car, every mile you drive for tax-deductible business purposes can net you more than what it costs to operate the vehicle — another reason to become your own boss.

8. Start a Home Business
Self-employment requires a do-it-yourself mentality applied to personal finance. Explore ways you might turn part of your home into an office or craft a business based on value-added products you can grow or make yourself. (Get dozens of ideas in Home-Based Business Opportunities)

We use about a quarter of our home’s square footage for business purposes — two bed-and-breakfast guest rooms in the house, plus a home office. We sign a “triple net lease” on our bed-and-breakfast, with Lisa and me as the property owners. With a triple net lease, our business pays us rental income — which accounts for the bulk of the income we earn every year — plus three additional items: the business’ share of the property taxes (about 24 percent), insurance and upkeep costs.

While the transition from store-bought modern conveniences to self-sufficient living is tough and requires some research and planning, many find it well worth the sacrifices. While growing your own food, generating your own energy, and work from a home office you will be stunned by how your cost of living evaporates!

For more information, tips and tricks on how to become an independent citizen go to The Prepper Dome. The authors are living the lifestyle we are talking about and thriving!