Good Debt for the Homestead

I haven’t talked much about financial matters on this blog—although I have discussed our personal finances in my two homesteading memoirs, Little Farm in the Foothills and Little Farm Homegrown.

If you’ve read those books, you’ve probably figured out John and I are of fairly modest means. Back when we bought this acreage, we put more of our resources toward the land (10 acres) and less toward the house (we purchased a new, but definitely plain vanilla manufactured home). 

We don’t take vacations and rarely eat out, since any extra money we have generally goes toward maintaining our place.

The only debt we carry is a few hundred dollars on a credit card, and a 30-year mortgage—which, if my casual calculations are accurate, we will pay off in less than 20 years.

To me, good debt is your mortgage—an investment in your future. Not-so-good debt might be taking out a home equity line of credit so you can take a luxury vacation, or buy a bigger car. So you have probably guessed John and I would need a really good reason to go into hock.

Which we did recently. Big time.

When our wonderful neighbors Alan and Gretchen (also our hen gurus) were building their new home this past year, they included a solar array installed by a local outfit. John and I had long dreamed of having solar at Berryridge Farm, but we figured the cost would be so far out of the ball park for us it wasn’t worth thinking about.

But our neighbors mentioned how affordable solar could be, especially with all the various rebates, and there would be considerable savings on your power bill once the system was up and running. So John and I decided to look into getting solar at our place.

Yes, it was a LOT of money.

But we’d often discussed what we would do in the event of a major power outage—I’m talking about an outage that might last not just days, but weeks. In this kind of emergency, we could probably get along with our wood stove for heat and cooking, and with a few gallons of gas, run the generator just enough to keep our perishable food from spoiling. And if we ran out of gas, there would be canned goods and whatever’s in the garden.

But what about water?  Without power for our well pump, there’s no way to get that water out of the ground. And that really concerned John and me.

So we called the solar contractor that our neighbors hired and invited them to our place. They made some calculations like how many kilowatts of power we generally used each month for both the house and the well, then confirmed how many panels they thought we’d need.

Then we started to talk money.

As it turns out, we were eligible for both the power company’s and the manufacturer’s rebates. Even so, the cost was considerable.

Array for house power on shop

Rough numbers: $30,000 for an array that could produce more than enough power to run our house, and $12,000 for an array for the pump house (which contains a 119 gal. water tank) that would also include a battery system that would run the well pump almost indefinitely.

We definitely did not have that kind of money. But we did have good credit. And with a few adjustments to our budgeting, and reducing the little financial cushion we have each month, we could afford the loan terms: a 20-year loan, at a little over $300 dollars a month.

Additionally, the power company has an arrangement with an area credit union, and the loan process was seamless, done entirely online.

Pump house array, batteries are inside

We are super pleased with this decision. For us, $327 per month is a great trade-off for peace of mind
and helping the environment. And once our array was online in early 2021, our biggest power bill has been from February, $45 for both the house and the well.

Granted, that cost could conceivably go up in late fall and early winter. Here in this corner of the Cascade foothills, November and December are our darkest months, and I imagine the array will be at its least productive. Still, I predict our power bill will be at least 50% less than our previous cost.

What I especially like is the predictability: Since March of this year, our power bills have been limited to the service charge from the power company, $18/month for both the house and pumphouse. 

Living the homesteady life, as Rosanne Rosannadanna would say, "there's always somethin'." But not having to wonder how much you’re going to get socked for your power bills is one less thing to worry about!