And due to those missteps, he noted, "It put my wife and I into an eight-figure hole."

Not that his bride had any issue sinking her teeth into the work. "Eight figures is a hard hole to climb out of," he explained, detailing how he'd put up personal guarantees to a bank for an unnamed clean energy company. "But Nikki and I did it. You know, she really negotiated us out of this deal but we sold houses, paintings, cars, watches, everything."

As for what they gained throughout the process, "I've just started learning how to be a pilot," he explained. "You plan as much for when things don’t go right as then they do." 

And, of course, it helps that they've embraced a simpler life on the farm. 

"Things are busy," Reed, 37, acknowledged to New Beauty in 2023 of the back-to-the-land life she and Somerhalder are leading with their kids (plus horses, dogs, goats, etc.) many miles north of Los Angeles. "I don't want to glorify the overworking culture, but work doesn't seem to stop on the weekends these days!"

Presley Ann/Getty Images for The Art of Elysium

But two actors don't just walk away from their beachside home in Malibu if they're not on the same recycled-paper page about what they really want out of life.

"To be fully transparent about it, I really did not want to be in the public eye anymore," Reed told Santa Barbara Magazine in 2022. So she was onboard with retreating up the coast a bit, noting, "California has the ability to offer seclusion, but you can also be in driving distance to these major cities at the drop of a hat."

Noting their "amazing run" in Hollywood, Somerhalder told E! News at January 2024 screening of Common Ground that he did appreciate the family and community that can be found on set.

"I love what I did for a really long time," said the Brothers Bond Bourbon co-founder, who's in the liquor business with former Vampire Diaries costar Paul Wesley. "I love making films, I just did it for so long."

And Reed was on the same page—reading the exact same line, in fact—about trying to live a more sustainable life.

In her 20s, "I started connecting the dots between what you do for the planet and what you do for yourself," Reed told E!. "It's an evolution and a lifelong pursuit."

And when she and her family hit the road, as they like to do in their tricked-out Fleetwood RV when wanderlust strikes, the destination hardly matters so long as it's off the grid.

"If I could like tell you my dream," Reed said, "it would be to achieve total food autonomy, to have zero connection to a supermarket, to city water, to anything like that—to be able to live without relying on any system. So, you know, we're not too far off from that."

Keep reading for scenes from the road Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder have been traveling together for a decade: