[oowolf]

4 acres with creek paid off 22 years ago. At end of unpaved road 7 miles to very small town.
Tax 214$/yr
Electricity 300$/yr
Food 400$/yr
Gasoline 4gallons/yr (rototiller, chainsaw)
car-none
cat-stray
water free
time-sleep in every day
clothes 1$/bag church rummage sales
House 1200 sq ft built entirely of recycled materials-few hundred dollars for nails, tools, etc.
Looks like I can live on around 1000$/yr
Debt is slavery.

[pea-jay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ooks like I can live on around 1000$/yr

[JMR]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oowolf', '
')Looks like I can live on around 1000$/yr
Debt is slavery.

[linlithgowoil]

$1000 a year? that is amazing. i spend every last penny of my income, and still have to go into debt too. We get £18,000 per year in our hand ($33,300). Every last penny is accounted for in debt, rent, tax, fuel, food. I actually go over my overdraft sometimes, have to buy food on credit sometimes also.

This is with - never going out, only buying cheap clothes when my current ones literally fall apart. eating cheap low cost foods - lots of vegetables and simple things. using very little gas or electiricty. using very little petrol.

welcome to 'Rip Off Britain'.

[DriveElectric]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jmacdaddio', '
')rent: $1400(!) but sadly it's not far off the area average, and it includes cable tv, internet, and a garage parking space.
car: $445(!) but it's only for another 5 months and I opted for a 3 yr loan to save on interest expenses.
credit cards: paid off every month
student loans: long gone
gas: $60 (2 tanks of premium in most months)
electric / water / heat: $120 combined
cell phone: $40
voip phone: $45 ($30 plus avg toll charges to Europe)
car insurance: $90 each month
food: $200 in most months
beer: $100 (trying to cut back!)
which still leaves me with about $750 in mad money

[thorn]

I built my house a couple of years ago. Passive solar, R70 ceiling, R50
walls with most triple pane windows facing south, slab floor. (sun heats the
house up very well in the winter, in fact in dec the heat did not come on for
over a week that we had sunny days)
2,300 sf.
My electric bill (heating, cooling, water, hot water, cooking) is about
$68/month. Would like to add solar DHW heating. Maybe PV in the far future.

We have about 60 acres, hay and woods.
Taxes are high, $300/month.

14 miles from work, getting around 50mpg in my Prius my last tank.
2 miles from small town, 50 miles from DC (sprawl )

Lot of McMansions going up all around us, no *normal* sized homes.
Someone at work went looking for a new 1,200 sf house, a builder said they will not build them that small

[Claudia]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')omeone at work went looking for a new 1,200 sf house, a builder said they will not build them that small.

[hull3551]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Claudia', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')omeone at work went looking for a new 1,200 sf house, a builder said they will not build them that small.

[lotrfan55345]

Our house was USD 300k when my parents bought it two years ago but now it is worth 370k In two years. Its going to collapse soon.

Electricity (with Climate Control) $150/month, in winter/fall/spring $50/month
Water $15/month (yay!)
Natural Gas $80/month winter, $15/month summer

[ThinkGeek]

Hehe. I live in a Sears "kit home"
These homes were produced from about 1915-1935. You would order the house, and Sears would ship it out in railroad cars. Being a block from a rail branch line, our street has 5 of these kit homes on it. My house, a two story bungalow cost $2300 in 1927. Neat eh? We have no AC because the heating system is hot water, and it would cost a lot to run AC ducts in the walls. I have never lived in a McMansion. I enjoy being five minutes walking time from everything. It takes 5 to walk to the train station to go to Chicago, 5 to go to the movies, 5 to go to the music shop, 5 to go to the grocery. It takes me 10 to walk to my high school. I feel very lucky to live in the town that I do, and our city requires that all parkways have sidewalks, so a lot of people simply walk wherever they need to go.

[cammo2004]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ThinkGeek', 'H')ehe. I live in a Sears "kit home"
These homes were produced from about 1915-1935. You would order the house, and Sears would ship it out in railroad cars. Being a block from a rail branch line, our street has 5 of these kit homes on it. My house, a two story bungalow cost $2300 in 1927. Neat eh? We have no AC because the heating system is hot water, and it would cost a lot to run AC ducts in the walls. I have never lived in a McMansion. I enjoy being five minutes walking time from everything. It takes 5 to walk to the train station to go to Chicago, 5 to go to the movies, 5 to go to the music shop, 5 to go to the grocery. It takes me 10 to walk to my high school. I feel very lucky to live in the town that I do, and our city requires that all parkways have sidewalks, so a lot of people simply walk wherever they need to go.

[jdmartin]

I live in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee, close to 2,000 sf house on a little more than half an acre. Not anywhere big enough or suburban enough to be a McMansion, as I'm kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing close enough to walk to and you wouldn't want to anyway, since everything is tall hills and mountains and blind curves that are suicidal.

Travel 50 minutes to work, each way, Monday-Friday. As I work as a municipal executive, it is difficult to continuously live near your job unless you never change jobs or move every couple of years (city management is a mobile field). No one I know walks to work because there's no possible place to work where I live closer than 2 miles away. If we had a reasonable public transportation system I could easily take it, since I live directly between 2 major cities in the only valley between them; rail lines have existed here for 150 years and are still used on a regular basis (but not for people transport, only goods).

My vehicle gets lousy gas mileage (16mpg pickup) but was chosen because it needs to fulfill a whole bunch of different needs, including hauling the trash to the dump, moving people around in my job (my vehicle is used for work also), and getting me over the mountain twice a day in any kind of weather. Before I bought this vehicle I had two different vehicles to maintain and keep up to fulfill all those needs.

Monthly bills include:

$640 mortgage, includes property tax and insurance
$150 gas bill in winter, 20 in summer
$50 electric, fairly even year round
$40 telephone
$75 cable and internet
$30 monthly water
$70 month car insurance
$350 month gas, estimate, for 2 cars/2 people
Vehicle payment covered by job
couple of credit cards and student loans
food, usually eating out once a week

With all of that my wife and I are still able to put money in savings every month, pay cash for things that come up like vet bills or car repairs, and have some fun with the excess. Naturally I'm in no position to stop working, though my wife could stop working and we'd still get by but not quite as well.

If I was going back in time, I would have most certainly done some things different, but it is what it is now since real estate is not real hot where I live and I've built up considerable equity in my house to just take a loss.

In my opinion, we live reasonably frugal, since many of the things that other people listed for themselves or neighbors is not part of our lifestyle. For example, we have no cell phone (though I have one as part of my job), two cars of which one is paid for, no SUV, rarely use air conditioning as we bought a house surrounded by trees in the mountains that keep it cool in the summer, I cut my own grass, repair and maintain my own vehicles, have the cheapest cable package, etc.

It does bother me that I burn through so much gasoline, but there's no way I could live close enough to my job to walk anyway since the area I work in has become ultra wealthy and I could never afford to live there. I do the best I can under the circumstances. We buy almost exclusively organic & free range foods, use chemicals as rarely as possible (no real cleaners, pesticides, lawn fertilizer except organic), don't shop at Walmart or other hellholes like it, etc.

[oowolf]

I buy and sell on the internet. Do "pickup" jobs: framing, hanging drywall, plumbing, wiring, build rustic furniture, restore and refinish antique furniture, sell organic produce in the summer-all on a word-of-mouth, under-the-table basis. I make much more than $1k but never enough to pay tax.

[drattom]

I live in a place where the house bubble is really small, we have a shortage of appartments and nobody speculate.

I'm always surprised when I read stuff like that.

THE UNITED STATES OF REAL ESTATE

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')ventually, most of the US labor force will be employed in one of a few types of work: real estate developer, building contractor, appraisers, real estate broker, and real estate agent. Some niches will still exist for stock brokers to trade the stocks of home builders. The work of the rest will consist of the construction, financing (and re-financing), purchase, and sale of residential real estate.

Day traders who used to trade NASDAQ issues during the height of the stock market bubble are now able to day trade residential real estate. The process, known as “flipping” used to mean purchasing for sale within weeks or months, but with liquid markets and continuous price quotes people are now able to turn over homes within days, even selling the same spec home several times before it has been built. In the future, it may not even matter whether the home is ever built, as day traders earn a substantial income by simply turning the same piece of paper over multiple times, making a 15-20% profit on each transaction.

[I_Like_Plants]

People are buying 2nd vacation houses when they'd have as much fun going bicycle camping. People are buying huge houses, although in all fairness, in the coming times a huge house can be useful, reconfigure the central rooms for living and use outer ones for keeping rabbits etc. As described in "possum living" which is a must-read.

but yes, the US is in a huge housing bubble. Meanwhile you can rent the same place for 1/3 the cost.

[ubercrap]

Hilarious!

[Markos101]

The United Kingdom of Real Estate too. The old crowd-creator, television, has been pumping out property developer programmes day after day on daytime television for a long time. This has created a huge crowd of people all fancying themselves as getting free of the system via property development. Property prices here are at record levels and have been rising at record rates for the longest time on record.

We will see a crash here very soon. Meanwhile, I think there will be many opportunities at the bottom of the crash. I'm looking out for it.

Mark

[Markos101]

What is a McMansion?

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Markos101', 'W')hat is a McMansion?

[ubercrap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Markos101', 'W')hat is a McMansion?