Building a Rustic Log Cabin: Wood Plank Flooring and the Cost of Early Retirement

Description

Busy week at the log cabin in the forest as I rush to cut enough firewood to heat the cabin for the winter, add more moss between the logs in the walls, build a new door, build the framing for the floors and install a 2”x6” pine wood plank floor. For the floor boards, I used the same technique as the roof – shou sugi ban, a Japanese wood preservation technique. In the floor, I construct a wood box set into the ground with concrete base, and will insulate it and the entire floor with sawdust next week. With most of the chinking done, the cabin gets up above 20 degrees Celsius with the fire burning.

This week, a deer gets into my hay bale archery target, spending three nights eating it. With all of snow, the deer are starting to move to their winter deer yards, so I’ll know soon if any are going to stick around for the winter. The snow comes and goes at this time of year – 4” of snow on the ground one day and next to nothing a few days later.

I talk more than usual in this video, first explaining why I’m building this cabin and simplifying my life, how much you need to have saved in order to retire and how much this lifestyle costs. Near the end of the video, I talk about Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and our penchant for spending money on too many possessions. I compare our modern habits to laws of nature, and why I believe we will never get our bad habits under control.

Of course, I cook at least one meal in the cast iron pan on the fire, eating prime rib roast two days in a row.

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Video Transcription

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you're doing Kelly [Music]

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instead of chopping wood and stacking it chopping wood was warm with the stocky if it got a little bit cold so the fire died down a little bit nice to warm up in here though it was minus 10 outside which is a bit what 20 Fahrenheit then some windchill factor as well so a little bit colder than that so because I let the stove die down it's about 6 degrees Celsius in here right now so just around 40 over 40 Fahrenheit I have some lunch at fire wood prep uses up a lot of calories getting hungry but I think what I'll do is have lunch finished a little bit of the wood and then just get back working on this floor for the rest of the day it's time rib potatoes and onion [Music]

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warmer in here with most of the chicken gum couple little gaps and then I need to add the clay but it's Moss stopping the majority of the cold for coming in this is not a table by the way I didn't make this at the table this is the crate that I built around the wood stove so that can move it without damaging it that's why it's rickety and not proper height or anything but it's worked out just kind of flipped it into place here and look like a table so used as a table but like I said be nice to get a proper bench table set off and then start working on the kitchen [Music]

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it's good I mention a few other kids in this video that I've been watching but I'll do that next couple of videos got focused on getting this floor done before the Sun went down and I lost my lighting so I'm gonna get some chinking down got some good weather coming up over the next few days like three four or five degrees Celsius so above freezing this clay and moss is now thought out because of the stove being uh running for so long but that tell that's a warm weather that's gonna let me to do some work outside to get some that chinking done especially in the lower lift levels with clay and and ash so sort of like murder so thanks for watching this one really appreciate everybody continuing their follow along and be patient with this very slow build so if you're not gonna stick around for my self-reflections at the end of the video I guess that's it for this segment and I'll see you next week up here at the cabin take care have a great week that something makes me laugh at that makes me look fat I posted on Facebook couple pictures of the cabin that nice one from that angle so I posted that on a couple of cabin pages on Facebook but one of the things that made me think about was the whole purpose of doing this to begin with a couple of comments made by people saying oh nice to see a cabin instead of a lodge or more of a commercialized log home but what I had set out to do was to figure out how cheaply I could live and keep in mind to have a family - right away for two daughters I'm 47 years old my daughters are 18 and 17 they're getting ready to move on start their lives without us and this is sort of a semi early retirement I guess now for my wife and I and have been able to retire early because of some things I mentioned in other videos about how I got into this position I am now but one of the things that I discovered is how much money you need actually to retire and the number is actually basically 25 times your current or your annual expenses not current because that continues to go up you have to continue to have more money in the bank so basically what that means is if you spend $100,000 a year to maintain your lifestyle you need 25 times that to retire so you need two point five million dollars in the bank X and that's let's take a round number let's say you need a million dollars to retire so your annual expenses are $40,000 so that's probably pretty reasonable for a lot of people so if you need a million dollars in the bank your earning interest on that money and that's where the retirement comes in retirement basically when I say that means you don't have to earn any other income other than your investments your return on your investments so if you have a million dollars in the bank and the average income average interest earned on that money is about 7% you have to take off inflation which is about 3% and that's where you come up with a $40,000 net per year so $40,000 in taxes as well so $40,000 a year without lifting a finger to do any work without earning an income this lifestyle I haven't figured it out yet but I'm getting closer to knowing the number what

eliminating inputs like gas fuel with utilities and so on probably get that down closer to ten thousand dollars now I don't need to necessarily have 25 times that $10,000 in the bank because $10,000 is a little enough number that I can earn that where they were having to have a full-time job and I can basically do that even go online I don't even have to have a physical job wanting to do any trade labor barter for my time so that's the beauty of that is that regardless of whether I had money in the bank or not I can essentially retire to this lifestyle now so that's what I'm trying to prove I think that's something a lot of people would like to know and maybe a lot of you have set it to try to figure that out yourself as well as how cheaply you can actually live and does that allow you to basically be free if you can get that number down low enough I think I can do it I essentially did it 26 years ago and I've heard built that first cabin didn't realize how little I would have had to do in the way of work to pay for that lifestyle I had it continued on with it but this is the recreation of that song we'll see so I'm gonna keep calculating and figuring out even what for example I know from some long multi-day fires now and overnight fires that this wood stove burns about a log and a half or a piece of firewood and a half per hour to maintain a comfortable temperature in here so now I have to figure out how much that equates to and then in the way of cords of wood and if I had to buy that wood how much that would cost in this area and or how much labor it's gonna require me to provide that much wood so these are the things that are going through my head all kinds away in ways I'm reducing expenses and started reducing expenses when lost my business initially 2010 things like haircut started cutting my own hair there was a savings of like 25 bucks a month went to a straight shaver straight razor i sharpened myself that saved not tons of money but saved the cost of disposable razors every month all these little things that you start adding up or you start adding back into your life when you start making money or adding into your life if you're just setting out if you can eliminate those things it's called the latte factor so if you eliminated little your Starbucks latte everyday for example how much does that equate to in a year and then of course over a lifetime plus interest so these are the things I'm continuing to work on I want to continue to share with you what I discover in the process of this simplifying so if you have any questions or you have any suggestions or comments appreciate thee here for me actually whether just things that you think I should be or could be doing differently or things that you think I can add to make my life more comfortable and cheaper

beautiful day today sun's out and the temperature is going up to say 8 degrees Celsius so I'll wall above freezing a lot of snow on the ground right now it's gonna be a bit messy but I was thinking about something yesterday was Cyber Monday of course previous Friday a few days before was was Black Friday which is which is part of the US Thanksgiving weekend basically which is Thanksgiving was Thursday Friday being Black Friday is a shopping day it's basically the day that kicks off the Christmas shopping season in North America so the statistician predict that six point six billion dollars was spent online just yesterday buying products and services mostly products just can't help but reflect on the irony of it as I'm sitting up here and I'm actually moving tools and equipment around that I've got stored inside gear stored inside the cabin in the section that I'm not working on right now and having to work around that stuff and how even though it's cluttered and in the way there's really not that much of it compared to normal lifestyle modern lifestyle and I think it's just a reflection of our lack of interest lack of purpose in our in our lives that we fill that void by shopping so if you think about our basic needs of basically shelter water and food it's really all about maintaining core temperature and maintaining calorie intake and outtakes low calorie net calorie balance and we need a certain number of calories calories to survive and a certain number of calories to thrive and of course water on top of that and then shelter is about the body core preservation staying within our optimal core temperature okay what how do we provide those things in this modern age and what is this excess about why are we going over and above well I think there's a couple of reasons for that and I think one of the main ones is that we're hardwired to store so when times of Plenty we acquire more than we need to make up for those times of lack that's why we all binge like when we have that that food availability we fill ourselves up and we convert that those calories to fat for storage for lean times well in our modern day those lean times never come now in this cold weather and going back to simpler times I'm burning a lot of calories so but in store a lot on the on my body in the form of fat then I need to have a lot of food in storage so having food in storage is one of those hoarding behaviors that is natural for all animals look at the squirrels running around and you know some tracks on the snow now but a lot of them are sitting up in their tree cavities in their nests and underground and they're living off the stores their body fat stores as well as the the nuts and seeds and so on that they've stored in their dens or in various food caches so that's very very natural that's our tendency as well but again it doesn't tell we're not really needing that these days we've gone so far beyond that because we've been so successful as a species that we have way too much available to us at all times so we're not able to flip off that switch and turn off the behavior for hoarding and behavior for overindulging because biologically we hard-wired to do that so everything when were younger is about procreation so reproduction and passing on our genes starting a family and replacing ourselves with with the next generation so when we're dressing up and we're taking care of our appearance more so in a lot of cases than our actual you know physical well-being that's simply very basically for attracting a mate so if you think of everything in those two forms everything in those two laws of nature then it kind of makes a lot of our behavior makes sense I think that's what's missing now is that we're so bored because we've had all of our comforts all of our survival needs and a reproduction needs a procreation needs taken care of so now we're trying to fill that void with things like entertainment so it's why your entertainment industries huge or retail spending is just out of control our acquisition of things we don't need of acquiring material things it's absolutely out of control and it's destroying our planets is destroying our home yet we can't help ourselves and on an individual basis I don't think we ever will have that self control that we can turn that off that we can turn the tap off so that's where it requires communities and education and and even governments and other organizations to start people working together cuz I know a lot of people are kind of anti-government but a properly governed society is is being managed for the greater good so if you're able to bring that ethos together where you're thinking about the survival of the species long-term that survival of the planet and the health of the planet and our species then we are working together so we need to start turning off that tap that

that's just overflowing the basin with things like material goods that we just don't need so again this is getting back to basics I guess part of what I'm doing here and I'm going to hand tools so I don't have to keep having inputs fossil fuel inputs to run equipment run run power tools and just providing the energy with my muscles and keeping myself fit as well I think is my way of just getting back in touch with that and trying to distance myself from the destructive part of society so yeah so that's what I was thinking that's what I've been kind of disturbed by after this Black Friday weekend and the spending and then my daughter's so you know what they're expecting or asking for for Christmas that's unreasonable and I don't blame them of course I love them and and I'm just happy that you know they're current and moving on with their lives are at that age where they're transitioning from kids to adults and they're learning these lessons and I'm hoping that that's one of the lessons are gonna learn early that that's not going to make them happy that they need to focus on kind of getting back to I don't think it back to the basics if they don't require or if they don't figure out interest to get back to this level but just to have a better understanding of where their behavior is coming from and that they need to find other things to make them happy not

now shopping and and appearance maintaining it in improving appearance anyway that is my rant for the week so I'm gonna get back to work here get inside the cabin finish that floor up and then we've got to do some stuff to this tour because I've got four or five days of nice dry weather and then when she's gonna return and once it does we're now into December next week temperatures gonna plummet and things like the door being sealed are gonna be kind of necessary so thanks for watching guys I appreciate it have a great week and I'll see up here at the cabin next week take care [Music]