Behind the scenes.

Recently my family, hubby Toby, son Kye, dogs, cats and pony all moved to our Dream home. We’ve bought a beautiful property, 33 acres of heaven just outside Gawler here in South Australia.

I feel a little bit like from the outside we might look like we’re doing brilliantly financially and we’ve got some secret that we’ve not yet let the world in on. Truthfully though the secret is that we have bet the farm quite literally on making this dream of ours come true.

So this is my tell all on the behind the scenes reality of what we’re choosing to attempt!

Toby and I plan to be rich. No apologies for that. It’s our dream and we’re working toward being able to live a full and financially free life.- To travel the globe- to live with ease and comfort and to be able to make really BIG contributions to the world at large that’s the dream.

We’ve been working this plan for about the last 10 years.

We decided that property seemed like a good investment to us. We can see it, we can understand it and we really enjoy it.

We started by saving a deposit and clearing up a questionable credit history. 7 years ago we bought our first home. A two bedroom (there are only 3 of us) transportable in Gawler Belt. It was kind of a worst house, best street type deal. The house was small, comfy and affordable. And although it didn’t look much, it was ours; we loved it and were very happy there.

I read plenty of books on real estate and attended lots of seminars. And when we had accumulated enough equity in our own home we bit the bullet and bought our first investment property. We bought a fixer upper in Elizabeth Downs. And boy, did she need some work! After a couple of months of renovating we were finally able to rent the house out.

We prayed for a great tenant that would love the house and happily pay their rent. And we were blessed to get Kerry. She was great!

I have to say, while it felt great to have an investment property, to have achieved the goal. In truth it was a lot more hard work than I had hoped. We were kind of exhausted after that for a bit. Especially as Toby is self employed, so he has to keep working at all times if we’re to have an income.

So we rested for a bit. We bought the Elizabeth house quite cheaply and renovated thriftily so that from the beginning it almost paid for it self. Once it was rented it wasn’t too stressful at all.

Then about three years ago now I saw a property in Jane St, just around the corner from our home. Renovate or Detonate, was the caption. Old house, big block. And I thought beauty! We can do that. We can renovate and subdivide. Why wouldn’t ya?

We bought Jane St also quite cheaply. The amount of work required though was way outside the scope of anything we’d done before. And subdividing, that was all new to us too.

The plan for Janes St was a 12 month plan. We’d renovate, subdivide and sell both. The hope being that we could pay off our own mortgage and be home loan FREE!

Well here we are three years on and we still own the Jane St house and the new block. As it turns out, the best laid plans don’t always go to plan. Sometimes life has other ideas.

And in the meantime……..

In the meantime Toby and I continued to focus on our BIG DREAM. Our big dream has always been to own a property. 22 acres or more was what we’d asked for. I have a pony named Cherub and I had ached my whole life to have her in my own paddock at my own house. And Toby has a secret dream of being a farmer! We both wanted for Kye to be able to ride motor bikes, drive cars, have bonfires and all the other great things that come with fresh air and country life.

We often spent weekends driving around the country side imagining where we would one day live. We looked at real estate and inspected properties from time to time. We would sometimes get excited and crunch the numbers to see if it was possible yet. But for a long time it just wasn’t a happening thing.

One night I woke up from a dream and said to Toby, baby, I had a dream we bought that place on the Sandy Creek Rd. I even knew what we’d paid! I said please can you ring the agent and see if it’s still there.

So weird. The property I’d dreamed about was a real place. It was a place that had been up for auction months earlier and when we’d called to enquire the price they were looking for had quickly squashed that dream. I hadn’t given the place a second thought since then and I didn’t even know if it was still on the market when I had the dream.

So Toby did call the agent and made a time to inspect. Honestly I felt like a bit of a fraud even going to have a look as I felt pretty sure, even though the price was reduced, it was still well outside our reach.

We went, we looked and felt in awe of what we found. It was as if the place had our names written all over it. Right down to the stone out building already painted purple ready for me to offer my massage & Reiki services from home. The whole place just looked and felt beautiful and ticked every box on our collective wish list.

The agent said, so what do you think? I remember squeezing Toby and saying, well this is the dream isn’t it baby.

The agent asked, would you like to make an offer?

Huh! Well I wondered. Could we really make an offer? I didn’t even know. I said that I’d check with our finance man and see what we might be able to borrow before we went any further.

Honestly the only reason I called Paul to ask about the finance was because I’d said I would, not because I thought we had a hope in hell.

To our complete amazement, with interest rates so low and with the equity we had in our other properties and with Toby’s best years of business to date, all the pieces came magically together to allow us to make a low but possibly reasonable offer. So we did!

And to our amazement again the offer was accepted. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

There was a long list of challenges we faced in getting to settlement. Probably at least 5 times the deal could have fallen over but it didn’t.

And even after settlement we knew we had much to do and many more miracles needed in order to make this dream a reality long term.

The loan on the farm (as we affectionately call our new home) is huge! Over $500k, even after we sold our first home and used the profit to pay down this loan. The repayments are huge! And being able to manage the commitment long term depends on many factors.

Like we’ve needed to create an Agistment business where people pay us to keep their horses and more recently alpacas in our paddocks. I also need to create a reliable part time income of at least $400 a week from my massage, Reiki and journaling work. And Toby of course needs to keep himself employed at all times.

So even though we’re here and we LOVE IT! Every day our hearts overflow with thanks to be here on the farm living our dream. There is the risk that financially we may fail. We don’t want to of course. And we will do everything in our power to make sure we keep the farm and this is our home for many years to come. The scary truth is that with out being able to sell the Jane St block and pay down our loan things aren’t looking too good.

We have certainly put it all on the line to be here. And I think I just really wanted to share with you guys that while we might look affluent from the outside with our gorgeous home to live in. The truth is at the moment we are still very much a work in progress. We’re risking everything we’ve got financially (which of course isn’t even almost everything that matters) to be here.

And so I ask you, what are you willing to risk in order to live more of who you really are and what your heart deeply desires today?

With Love and Faith, Soli J