The idea of Montanada started 12 or more years ago in an offhand conversation between my wife and me. On a trip to visit family in Victor, MT, one of us commented to the other how much we loved the area. We thought it would be great to eventually retire to Montana.

As such conversations go, it started as a benign “wouldn’t it be nice” type of conversation. Then it turned into a “how can we make this happen?” and eventually into a “we have to do this” dream. The name? The name we can thank our son for. 11 years ago, we were planning another trip to Montana. This included trips to Glacier NP and a possible side trip into Canada to see their “half” of the park. Our 5-year-old son kept combining Montana and Canada; Montanada. A more fitting name for our future was unimaginable.

The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly my opinions based on my own experiences. You will likely have different opinions based on your own experiences, these are mine.

The next several years were spent trying to figure out how to make our dream a reality. What did we need to consider? What were the risks?

We started by defining exactly what we wanted. We aimed for at least 40 acres with lots of trees. We wanted year-round accessibility. We also needed it to be within a couple of hours of a larger city for supply runs. Next step was determining the timing. We definitely wanted to move while we were young enough to still enjoy it. However, we had two young children who were very active in sports and school. Moving somewhere that forced them to either commute to/from school for an hour or more was not an option. Forcing us to home-school them wasn’t an option either. That meant we had to wait until they were out of high school and out of the house at college. Luckily, even before Covid, both of us were able to work remotely. At the time, Starlink was not yet invented, so that was also a consideration. Ultimately, that gave us a “deadline” of 2026 for the move.

Next step was to figure out how we were going to afford it. We wanted to avoid putting us heavily in debt just a few years before we would be of retirement age. Having a financial plan is an absolute must. We decided that we wanted to be able to move completely debt free. No mortgage, no car payment, nothing. It was at this time that I discovered the “Snowball” method to pay down debt. It’s really a simple way to rapidly pay down your debt. Within a few years all we had left was our mortgage. On the mortgage, we were paying extra towards the principal every month. This amount was almost equal to our monthly payment. That meant that we would be free and clear by late 2025. We also started dumping everything we could into savings. We were not forced to give up much. We just got smarter about what we did do. We drove our vehicles “until the wheels fell off.” We did not splurge on frivolities very often. We continued to work hard towards what we wanted.

Finally, we had a basic plan: we had the timeline, and, we hoped, a way to pay for it. Time to put things in motion!