You Should Drive a Clunker, Young Feller

Sometimes it seems that the younger you catch the "Agrarain Vision" the better. By the time your in your 30's or 40's it seems you have made so many mistakes in life that you'll have to settle for building a farm for the kids and not yourself. Lets face it, debt is the norm in our culture. If your debt free, your the oddball. If you want the kind of farm we talk about here, you better plan on being a real oddball in your youth. Sure some folks will come in later in life and pull it off, but we need to really aim a lot of our teaching to the 20 something crowd. If we can drive home the No Debt message to the kids we'll really start seeing the fruit of this "movement" in a few generations. This leads me to todays thoughts on New Cars.

Don't do it. Don't buy a new car if you want to get started in farming. A used car will do you fine, you don't need to rammin' all over the countryside anyway. Joel Salatin says that in his 17 years of marriage they have spent a total of $6000 on cars. Heres the deal. One of his costomers who is in real estate says that the average couple spends enough money on car payments in the first 10 years of marraige to buy a small home with cash. Buy a $15,000 car and you will make $20,000 in payments. Most regular folks get a new one every five years. Wow, just think of the money that could go toward land or critters, that is instead buying something that loses value every day you own it! If we can teach the younger folks that they don't "need" a new car, we would hear a lot less of the "I want to farm but don't have the money to get started" crying.........crying that most of us have heard out of our own mouths, unfortunately.