Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 110 posts

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#21

Post by zwtaylor »

delbel wrote: post #14

I've been able to do this after re-arranging my life over the past 5 years. I bought 7 acres of bare land for $35k and built a 200 sqft tiny house for $4,000. I homestead as much as I can and my bills are approximately $40/DSL, $40/Electrical, $35/Car insurance (I drive a 90s Honda), and approximately $30 a month in property taxes. I spend about $40 in propane for heat in the winter and my air conditioning bill is an…

Very cool, do you have any suggestions as far as finding and purchasing cheap land?

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#22

Post by rtpg »

nightcracker wrote: post #8
Beached wrote: post #4

You may try looking into Tiny houses, they may cause some problems with zoning in some area's so picking a location will require some research. A tiny house can easily run under $20,000 fully equipped. Some people have been able to build them for under $10,000. Fix the house with solar panels, maybe a small wind turbine for electricity. tin roof with a rain water collection, you can run is through a 3 stage or 5 stag…

> Grab yourself a 5-mile wifi- antenna to pick up wifi from coffee shops nearby. This sounds incredibly illegal.

Beyond illegal, it's an abuse of trust. Very much "this is why we can't have nice things" behaviour.

I hope anybody doing this only uses it outside of business hours or something to not be a total jerk.

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#23

Post by format997 »

csallen wrote: post #19
patio11 wrote: post #11

Pick a college town and rent an apartment, optionally with a roommate. In much of the American midwest this implies an all-in rent & utilities expense in the $500 range. If you wanted to try something more exotic, you can do the digital nomad thing and rent somewhere in Thailand for ~$100 a month, but honestly as a programmer I feel that optimizing sub-$500 expenses is not the best use of one's time versus figuring o…

> I feel that optimizing sub-$500 expenses is not the best use of one's time versus figuring out how to make money Second this. You can only save so much, but there's practically no upper limit on how much you can make. Plus making money is more fun than saving it. Saving generally requires sacrifices that decrease your quality of life. And there are diminishing returns, so you'll need to make ever-bigger sacrifices…

I definitely agree with this. I'm just exploring the concept because I have problems that occasionally limit how much I can work - and just playing around with cheaper living arrangements that also work with that. Though, if I can find ways to make a lot of money without working a lot, that would also solve the problem.

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#24

Post by maxerickson »

zwtaylor wrote: post #21
delbel wrote: post #14

I've been able to do this after re-arranging my life over the past 5 years. I bought 7 acres of bare land for $35k and built a 200 sqft tiny house for $4,000. I homestead as much as I can and my bills are approximately $40/DSL, $40/Electrical, $35/Car insurance (I drive a 90s Honda), and approximately $30 a month in property taxes. I spend about $40 in propane for heat in the winter and my air conditioning bill is an…

Very cool, do you have any suggestions as far as finding and purchasing cheap land?

Just look where there aren't people. This is one click from the first hit for "norcal land sales" (selecting the lowest price bracket):

http://www.landwatch.com/default.aspx?ct=r&type=5,30;268,684...

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#26

Post by delbel »

format997 wrote: post #16
delbel wrote: post #14

I've been able to do this after re-arranging my life over the past 5 years. I bought 7 acres of bare land for $35k and built a 200 sqft tiny house for $4,000. I homestead as much as I can and my bills are approximately $40/DSL, $40/Electrical, $35/Car insurance (I drive a 90s Honda), and approximately $30 a month in property taxes. I spend about $40 in propane for heat in the winter and my air conditioning bill is an…

That's really cool and probably exactly what I was looking for. Sounds about as cheap as you can go. How expensive was it to get any utilities hooked up to your property, or was that already taken care of when you bought the land?

The utilities a power pole and a well, were already on the property when I bought it. But the original costs were $6,500 to dig the well and approximately $5,000 to install and green tag the power pole. If you can get your total wattage usage down, you could easily go off the grid with the newer 430 watt solar panels and LiFePO4 batteries. Its almost an impulse buy for me and definitely something I want to do this summer. I got lucky but spent 5 years searching for my property. But, you can find properties with burned down mobile homes that have utilities already setup.

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#27

Post by mandeepj »

csallen wrote: post #19
patio11 wrote: post #11

Pick a college town and rent an apartment, optionally with a roommate. In much of the American midwest this implies an all-in rent & utilities expense in the $500 range. If you wanted to try something more exotic, you can do the digital nomad thing and rent somewhere in Thailand for ~$100 a month, but honestly as a programmer I feel that optimizing sub-$500 expenses is not the best use of one's time versus figuring o…

> I feel that optimizing sub-$500 expenses is not the best use of one's time versus figuring out how to make money Second this. You can only save so much, but there's practically no upper limit on how much you can make. Plus making money is more fun than saving it. Saving generally requires sacrifices that decrease your quality of life. And there are diminishing returns, so you'll need to make ever-bigger sacrifices…

I third this but the problem is it is easier to save the dollar that you already have in your hand than finding a new way to make it. So it is good to cut down on expenses without sacrificing much on life style

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#29

Post by percept »

jws wrote: post #13

Used travel trailers and RVs older than 15 years are ludicrously cheap. Arrange with the seller to drop it at your property if you don't have a big enough tow vehicle. You can find small patches of land in rural America for very little money. Say $10k for an acre in woods of no particular scenic beauty with power and water. Once you pick an area a real estate agent can help you find someone's old wilderness retreat o…

I've often wondered about that limitation.

I submitted this one:

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/12/29/yurt

"high-speed Internet"?

Re: What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

#30

Post by 1971genocide »

Trying to go completely off grid - building your own house - is way too much hassle.

I think of it as an optimization problem. you do not want inconvenience yourself too much with having to worry about your own home being towed !. It will add unwanted stress to your life.

The best approach as someone said - "college town with a roomate" - this is the lowest you should go since college dorms are really fancy these days and are super cheap. the extra saving you will get by going below this ( becoming essentially homeless ) is not worth the other problems associated with it ( security, winter, etc )

Money is not the end of it all. Mental wellbeing and physical wellbeing is always more important.

The other great advantage of college town is its filled with people who want to socialize. You dont want to be 50 and look back at your life as someone who saved a lot of money and lived in a car.

Post reply on HN