Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Are you totally sick of doing what they say? I am. I'm so sick of it. I just want to do my own thing. Well, in this episode, this is the big instead episode.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome back, insteadters to episode 26 of the Duster Mud podcast. Today we're talking instead.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: We came up with some ideas after the last couple of chats that we had about things that we like to do instead of what they say we're supposed to do. And in case you all kind of haven't figured it out, we sometimes kind of go against the grain, do our own thing.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Truth.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: We do. We like it like that. We home school our kids.
Yes. Instead of sending them to public school.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: We send them to public school for a long time, way back in the day. And we finally just kind of had it ran into a situation with a particular high school and just said, that's it, we're done.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So there we were sitting at the dinner table when our oldest daughter, Rebecca, let us know that her guidance counselor said that it didn't matter who we were or what we said. She could not change classes. And that was it. That was the straw that broke this camel's back. And we went straight to the school and went through the process of unenrolling her.
I've had it. I'm fed up.
They pushed us just one step too far. And what we said to each other was, these are our kids.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: These are not wards of the state. No, they belong to us.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: That's right. And so we said, that's it. It's our kid. And we're going to take care of her schooling ourselves. Period. That's the end of it.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: And so we did. We went in, we took her out of school. The principal really, really wanted us to change our minds, but at that point, we were so relieved with the decision that we'd made that there was no going back. Like, there's nothing you can say or do to keep us from changing our minds, but you might want to get a handle on your guidance counselor. And so it felt so good, we went home and talked about it, and we took the other three out.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: And they never went back to public school.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: No, they didn't.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: No. There's a story with Michaela. You could check back a couple of episodes where we had an interview with our soon to be twelve year old and she's home schooled as well. She did go to public school for a little bit. That didn't work out super great either. And we wound up pulling her out as well. A couple of benefits that we have found to homeschooling is freedom. The freedom to allow them to learn at their own pace, to learn what they want to learn, and to choose our own path for their education.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And we've now had kids all the way from elementary school, all the way through high school in the homeschooling scenario. And some have gone on to university, some have gone on to the military. And so we've had them transition from school to multiple different paths. And the bottom line is it all worked out great.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: It works out. Yeah. And especially after Covid 2023, homeschooling is a super easy thing to do. In the majority of the states, there are some that are more friendly than others. But in most of the states, it is easy. If you're interested in homeschooling and doing something that's completely different and getting your kids outside of the public education system, homeschool Defense League association is a great place to start in looking up what the rules are for your state.
I used them. I used them quite a bit. And they can tell you exactly what the. What fours are, state to state.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: It may be homeschool legal defense.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Oh, you're right.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Association.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Okay. I should have in my brain a little bit better. Home school legal defense association.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Okay. Check that out. That's a great place to start.
Some of the negatives. Of course there are negatives to doing your own thing.
First of all, sometimes people look at you like you're strange, but you're going against the flow. You're doing something that's outside of the norm. Instead, you're doing something that's completely. Instead of what everybody else is doing, perhaps in your area.
And so they're going to think you're crazy. That's okay.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Sometimes some people do.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Yeah, they might.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: They might.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Let them.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Let them. But take control of your own know. It's so liberating. It's absolutely empowering decision to make.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah. One thing I can tell you right now for Michaela, she's not going back. Ever. We 100% do not agree with a lot of the things that are being taught in the public schools these days. And that's just it. It's not going to happen.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Yeah. The end.
I don't care who they say she's behind or in front of or any of. No, it doesn't matter.
Yeah. The day that we decided they weren't wards of the state was an empowering day.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: So I was on my motorcycle, on my harley, riding to the base. I was going through a school. And it hit me, it just dawned on me that the only thing in adult life that was comparable to the life of a child in school was prison. It's the only thing I could come up with where you're forced to stand up and sit down at the ring of a bell. You're forced to eat when you're told to. Whatever the lunch is that's delivered to you. You're forced to socialize with the group of folks that you're told to socialize with. I couldn't come up with anything else in adult life that had that same type of oppression outside of prison. That's the only thing I could come up with.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: You weren't wrong.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: And we didn't want our kids doing that anymore.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: We decided we didn't want to prepare them for prison. We wanted to prepare them for life and being adults and being able to think for themselves versus prepared for a life of not needing to think for themselves. Yeah.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Do what you're told. Exactly what you're told, exactly when you're told. Sit down, shut up, stand up. Move, walk single file.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And be quiet.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Well, we're done. Let's move on. So that covers homeschooling. That's our instead on that.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Diet and health.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: We've been talking about this.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: We've been talking about this one a lot. So they say we're supposed to eat this pyramid with all these grains on the bottom and limited oils and fats, and we flip that instead. And we eat exactly the opposite of what they say we're supposed to eat. So we eat fats and proteins and some vegetables and a ketogenic style, low carb lifestyle. We don't get our whole grains in. No.
So we do that instead of what they say we're supposed to, because the evidence in all of these things to me is it's very visible that plan is not working.
What they are telling us to do, as far as what we should be eating, it just isn't working. You can see that it's not working. So instead, we go against the grain.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Yeah, we do.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: And cook ourselves something completely different if we have to.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: This one, I don't know.
You may even be looked at more like you're crazy than the homeschooling kids.
Because you don't eat whole grains.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: No, we do not.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Surely you eat rice. What about brown rice?
[00:08:25] Speaker A: No, don't eat that.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: No.
But you do eat french fries at McDonald's, right? I mean, everybody.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Gosh, no. Right? Yeah. No, we don't eat that either.
And so, again, against the grain, doing our own. Take our own food on a trip instead of stopping and eating fast food, cooking our own food at home every single day, multiple times a day if necessary, instead of getting doordash.
They don't have that out here anyways. But if they did, we still wouldn't. We lived in the middle of town, and we did not doordash cooking instead of eating what the corporations say that we should be eating.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah, this is another one.
Vehemently disagree with the federal government on what I should be putting into my body through my mouth.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Don't tell me I should or should not drink raw milk.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Don't tell me I have to eat whole grains.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: No, I'll just decide because the evidence is there that what you have said is not good.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: It's crystal clear at this point. It's right in front of us everywhere we go.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: This one was one that.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that was easy for us at this point.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: We don't got up all in it today.
I don't know why I woke up going, I'm all sick of a.
Yeah, okay. How about jobs?
Well, we did it 25 years.
Well, actually longer than that. Since out of college.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Yeah. It's been almost 30 years since out of college.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: And leaving the air force career I was set up to continue into anywhere in the department of Defense, be it career civilian, DoD, civilian or defense contractor, either one. Or continue a flying career airline pilot, cargo transport, something like that. And so what they say I was supposed to do is continue on that career path for sure.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: Yes, they did.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: And it was another one that just hit me one day, and I was done.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: I don't want to work for somebody else anymore. I don't want to do what I'm told, show up when I'm told, act like I'm told, really wear my hair like I'm told.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: All done, got.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Being all done. Being told what to do. Now, there are jobs where it's a lot more relaxed in the atmosphere that you were in, but there are still standards, and we live by high standards, but we do it by choice.
The freedom to do it by choice, rather than the constriction of doing it because you were told to do it on your mental.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: And so we chose a lifestyle that would allow us to step away, even if it wasn't farming and doing all of the things that we were doing.
We were done with that.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. We were going to do what we wanted to do with the rest of our days to the best of our ability. And if you're thinking about doing something else instead of what you're doing now, and there's a passion or a dream, and you have the means to step out and go and do that thing that you're thinking of, that's not what they said you're supposed to do. Really liberating and empowering to take that step. It's scary. It's really scary. But sometimes the scariest things turn out to be the best things.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: So our career choice now is farming, selling dirt to plate food and YouTubing, which is a new found. We're accidental youtubers, but we're loving it. And I don't know, we're being able to talk about the things that we want to talk about and work out our thoughts and passions and share them with other people. And as it turns out, there's a whole bunch of you insteadters out there that think like we do. So that's super fun.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's cool.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: It's really cool. Really cool to see financially things changed.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah, they did for us.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Whenever we decided to do this sort of lifestyle, we had to make some financial decisions that would see to it that we would be secure and not dependent on a job, working for someone else, employed by someone else. In order to make this lifestyle work, we had to make some decisions and set ourselves up. And one of the things that we really focused on was trying to become as debt free as possible in the process taking some of the assets and proceeds and cobbling together the things that we had and turning them into financial security through zero mortgages, not having to have a house payment for the rest of our days if we so choose, getting things paid for so that we don't owe banks large percentages of the income that we get in order to be able to keep as much as we can and not be beholden to a financial institution.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I pulled just a few numbers right before we got started. The total personal debt right now in the United States is $25.2 trillion. So that's about $75,000 per person.
Debt per household is $241,815, about $12.1 trillion of mortgage debt.
So when we say that we're doing something instead, this is another one of those cases where instead of paying a bank lots and lots of money for.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Interest over years, over years, over years.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: We'Re just not doing.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: We're just not doing that. We decided to do something instead of that. Do we live in a McMansion? No, we do not. Do we live in a house? That we built with our own hands? Pretty much, yes, we do. Is it perfect? No, it is not. Is it good? Yes, it is. And are we happy with it? Couldn't be happier. And I'll tell you, when you're real, real happy is when you realize month after month, year after year, I don't owe anybody for it.
It goes from good to amazing real quick.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Sure does.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Whenever you know that the world can fall apart if it needs to. I got somewhere to live and that is a huge thing that I did not know at 50 a was even possible.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Because that's not what they say we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have a mortgage so that we can get tax help.
What?
How are you going to write off on your taxes? Trust me, we spend enough money in a business to write off our tax on our taxes.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Form a business.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Form a business. Yeah, form a business. And there you go.
You don't need a mortgage.
They have gotten us all just absolutely 100% financially imprisoned to that banking system that we can't hardly find our way out.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: And it's such a burden on every single family. And we're watching the housing market do what it's doing. That'll be interesting to see where that goes.
Can't be anywhere good anywhere anytime soon. But the security that it feels to own your own house, no matter what.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: The dwelling is, it's amazing.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: It is amazing. It really is amazing.
And another one of the things that we have done over the course of our marriage was we decided a long time ago that we were going to function with one income as a married couple. We knew we wanted a family and we knew that one of us was going to go to work and one.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Of us was going to stay home.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: And one of us was going to stay home. Both of us capable of going to work. Both of us capable of staying home.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: And both willing to do both things.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: We made a decision based on timing and all of the stuff that you were going to go to work now. I was going to stay home with the kids. Most everybody does not know me. I am not your typical stay at home mom. I want to be a mommy and ooey ooey type person. I mean, you could probably tell just from me talking, but a job that needs to be done that's important is raising kids. And yes, I like them when they're little, but as important as raising a.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: You like them when they're big too.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: I do. I took my job very seriously, because that's our future and somebody needs to do that.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Making money. What do you do for money? That's just what keeps paying the bills.
Literally, there's impact. You're at the job, but when kids are walking out of the house, that's the future of the whole dad gum system.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: And if we don't put into our kids what we want them to do and get out of it, you can't put in crap and expect to get back something amazing.
You have to work hard at building the character and the people that you want to be the future. You have to put the good stuff in. And so we did that. You worked. I stayed home and forever and always one income.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: And the reason we made that decision was because I was a year further along at the university.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that was it.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: So I could graduate and get into the workforce the soonest and make some.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Money so we could live and pay bills.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: That's truly the only reason that we made the decision as to who was going to go to work and who was going to stay home.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: But the thing that it required was for us to live beneath where everybody else around us was living. Yeah, because in 1994, women went to work, right? They went to school, they went to work. We were this generation, these Gen Xers that were working hard, and I was supposed to go get well, that's what.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: They say, at least.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: They said I was supposed to go get a career. They said I was supposed to go to work. They said I was supposed to send my kids to daycare, especially in the 90s, especially. And we didn't do it. I was one of the only stay at home moms, really, that I knew for a while, budgeting and our finances and living beneath where everyone else was in status was a requirement.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: It was. But it was so worth it to us that that's the sacrifice we made.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Yes. And so whenever it came time to make other financial decisions, whenever you retired, hey, we're just going to live on this thing over here instead of all of this and the financial choices that we'd made. That wasn't hard.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: What certainly wasn't the first time we had made that decision.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: No, we're going to live on this and we're going to hang out together and have fun. Okay.
Yeah, that wasn't hard.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: But it goes against what they say it does.
You're doing something instead of what you're.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Supposed to be doing, whole bunch of, instead of, for you stay at home moms out there or your stay at home dads out there, keep doing what you're doing. Raise your kids, love it. Raise your kids, put into them what you want to get out of them.
Give them the time, give them your resources, give them you for as long as you can. And give them the opportunity to grow and turn into the adult and the next generation of citizens that can do good in this country.
They do exist. You just have to create them though.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: A little passionate about that, in case you didn't know.
I don't know. I just don't think that the people at the day care really care what the result is.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: I don't know that they can care as much as the parent does. Okay, they might care, but I don't think it can be to the same level. Just can't.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: They just can't.
Yeah, that's true.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: To me, what just popped into my mind was that it's comparable to the discussion we had last time about comparing the products that we produce versus the products that the large corporations produce.
They cannot spend that same time and care and effort in each individual product. They just can't.
System isn't designed for it.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: That's true.
Back today they didn't design it that way.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: No.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: So we live a very, I guess just an unconventional lifestyle through our decisions of what we choose to do with our time, resources and people instead of.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: What they say we should do.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. In statters.
I'm going to get t shirts.
Who wants a t shirt? You all let me know.
I'm going to get them made.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: I do.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: You want one? I think you need one instead of in charge.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: I don't know about that.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Well, I can tell you that choosing to do something instead of what they say you're supposed to do can often be very empowering and bring freedom to your life if that's what you're looking for.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Yes. Totally liberating.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Very, very liberating.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: And in our life, we are absolutely after freedom and liberation.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: At this point, no matter what, it's from education, diet, finances, jobs and more finances, we're just going to just all love it. Literally, one way or another.
Well, guys, if you are enjoying our podcast and our YouTube videos, please take a second and share it with your friends and family and loved ones. And let's get this insteadter movement moving.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: I'm telling you, I'm making my own movement.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: You are.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Well, here we go.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Here we, here we go.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Anyway, and thank you guys for listening and watching. And until next week, bye, y'all. Bye.
