What are people cutting back on?

[Car-Guy]

Well we certainly have had enough sunshine and the heat to go with it this year... Hit 103 today. I do use solar panels, but they are only used to charge the batteries for our electric gates.

 

[MC Rider]

My Grandfather had 2-3 acres and called it a garden.


An actual farm these days needs 100's or 1000's of acres.

 

[RobbieB]

With 3 acres you could get all you need plus a booth at the farmers market.

 

[Car-Guy]

With 3 acres you could get all you need plus a booth at the farmers market.

The land around here pretty much only grows grass (sorry, not the smoking kind) and lots of trees... Maybe a few corn fields but that's about it... But it's great cattle country. Some folks do plant small gardens but the soil really needs a lot of conditioning for them to produce well. Plus, they need to be well fenced since the deer and hogs will eat or destroy everything.

 

[UKadventurer]

I'm thinking about telling the DW I shouldn't cut the grass as often due to the price of diesel. (Takes about 10 to 12 gallons each time I cut it) I don't like to lie to her but it is sort of true.... Right?

I almost have myself convinced to try it....

We have a piddly 2 acres of mountain grassland with exposed rocks. Other people’s cows, horses, goats and sheep cut our grass. We get nicely kept grounds and free manure. At no cost.

 

[aja8888]

My Grandfather had 2-3 acres and called it a garden.


An actual farm these days needs 100's or 1000's of acres.

I had 3 acres in Connecticut back in the day. Except for where the house sat, there wasn't a level spot anywhere. Minimal cutting, all woods.

 

[Koolau]

I'm thinking about telling the DW I shouldn't cut the grass as often due to the price of diesel. (Takes about 10 to 12 gallons each time I cut it) I don't like to lie to her but it is sort of true.... Right?

I almost have myself convinced to try it....

That's a lot of grass! How about renting to a farmer for hay. We had 6 acres in front of our old place at one time and cash rented it for hay. That left me less than an acre around the house to mow. YMMV

 

[Scuba]

That's correct. Like I said, electricity costs about 4 cents per kW but there's a free allowance up to 250kW per month for yurts and 350kW for houses, at the moment. At times, the government has offered free night time electricity in winter. We are using about 100kW per month, so it should be free for us. Even if it wasn't free, that's about $4 per month.



However, we had to pay for a 600 meter line and poles so we could connected to the nearest transformer. That cost us $8000. We'll also need a deep well which is estimated to cost $5000. It's typical to have some setup costs for getting established on virgin land. If we ever want to sell up and move elsewhere, the added utilities make the land considerably more valuable. Monthly costs overall should be very low and we'll spend about $35-40k to get established (land, 2 modern yurts, one traditional yurt, 2 shiping containers, grid connection, fresh water well). Only 2 acres of land is technically ours but, because we're surrounded by common land or undeveloped land, we have a lot more land we can use.

It’s a beautiful setting. I checked out the photos on Facebook. Thanks for sharing!

 

[isisdave]

That's insanely hot! My suggestion is to purchase a small AC for just one room, just for emergency usage in case your present AC breaks. The older we get, the more deadly intense heat like that can be.

We have one of these (DeLonghi Pinguino rollaround) that we use in the bedroom overnight. It draws only 1 kW instead of the 4 kW the central system uses, so we let the house go up to 78 while keeping 72 in the bedroom.

It's also a hedge against failure of the big system, and even power outage as I could run the small unit on the emergency generator (well, for a while).

Meanwhile we spend hot days in an added-on room which has its own motel-style heat pump. This is also a cheaper alternative and we supplement the ceiling fan with a couple of others.

 

[pacergal]

We just cut our Dining out budget by half, as it had crept up more than budgeted.
I include everything not eaten at home in this category, from full meals in restaurant or pick up, to drive thru coffee or even DQ for ice cream.

Well, our experiment seems to have worked! Cut the budget by 50%, and carried it in cash only. Here we are almost to the end of the month and we have about $200 left.
Good for the budget, also tells us how much we ate out-- so now, much better for diet, also!
We will keep this up, I think.

 

[W2R]

We have one of these (DeLonghi Pinguino rollaround) that we use in the bedroom overnight. It draws only 1 kW instead of the 4 kW the central system uses, so we let the house go up to 78 while keeping 72 in the bedroom.

It's also a hedge against failure of the big system, and even power outage as I could run the small unit on the emergency generator (well, for a while).

Meanwhile we spend hot days in an added-on room which has its own motel-style heat pump. This is also a cheaper alternative and we supplement the ceiling fan with a couple of others.

Several good ideas there! I hope that your post gets the readers to start thinking about backup plans in case of AC troubles. We haven't done any of those things, and should be thinking about them as well. We dp have the advantage of living next door to each other which means we have someplace cool to go to in case on an emergency. When Frank's AC broke last week, he stayed over at my house for a couple of days until the repairmen could get it fixed.

 

[REWahoo]

We have one of these (DeLonghi Pinguino rollaround) that we use in the bedroom overnight.

It's also a hedge against failure of the big system, and even power outage as I could run the small unit on the emergency generator (well, for a while).

Meanwhile we spend hot days in an added-on room which has its own motel-style heat pump. This is also a cheaper alternative and we supplement the ceiling fan with a couple of others.

Several good ideas there! I hope that your post gets the readers to start thinking about backup plans in case of AC troubles.

+1

We have a Plan A and Plan B in case of central air failure.

Plan A is to use the PTAC (motel style) unit in our playroom (screen porch conversion).

Plan B, in the event of total power failure, is to stick the two small window units I have collected over the past few years into the playroom windows and use our portable generator.

 

[Car-Guy]

That's a lot of grass! How about renting to a farmer for hay. We had 6 acres in front of our old place at one time and cash rented it for hay. That left me less than an acre around the house to mow. YMMV

At this time, there is more hay around here than is needed. Everywhere you look there are these huge round bales out in the fields or in really big covered sheds. A few folks still crank out square bales but not many. So yes I could probably get someone to cut my fields and rake and bale the hay but the few acres I have to cut, I'm not sure it would be worth it to anyone. Plus, I cut it so often I'm not sure they'd get that many bales. It might have been a different story a few years ago, but I sold off some land that I wasn't really maintaining.

There are some serious land owners out here (100's or 1000's of acres) and many of their fields remain uncut. A few years ago during a bad drought, they were trucking it in from Louisiana. Classic feast or famine situation.

 

[corn18]

First fill up for the truck since dropping the tune. Paid $4.89 / gallon for 87 octane vs. $5.79 for 93 octane. Saved $27 for the fill up (30 gallons). Between that ($81 / mo), quit smoking ($230 / mo) and no more doordash ($480 / mo), that's a reduction of $791 / mo in expenses. $9,492 / year. That means we need $237,300 less over the next 25 years using the 4% rule. Awesome sauce!

 

[aja8888]

First fill up for the truck since dropping the tune. Paid $4.89 / gallon for 87 octane vs. $5.79 for 93 octane. Saved $27 for the fill up (30 gallons). Between that ($81 / mo), quit smoking ($230 / mo) and no more doordash ($480 / mo), that's a reduction of $791 / mo in expenses. $9,492 / year. That means we need $237,300 less over the next 25 years using the 4% rule. Awesome sauce!

Nice work! You need to change your signature line now.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

I’m cutting back on speed to improve my Prius’ mileage:

At 70 mph I average 35-40 mpg
At 50-55 mph I average 55-60 mpg

VERY noticeable savings!

Don

And noticeable in a different way by all the people trying to get around you.

I must admit that w/my Hybrid and its "driving coach", I am now a slower to accelerate and more regenerative slowing down than before.

 

[W2R]

Frank finally cancelled his land line! He has been thinking of doing that for years. Then they increased the monthly fees and he decided he'd rather keep the money and ditch the land line. Smart choice for him, since he hardly used it at all. Now he has a little extra money to help with inflated food prices and such.

 

[Koolau]

I’m cutting back on speed to improve my Prius’ mileage:

At 70 mph I average 35-40 mpg
At 50-55 mph I average 55-60 mpg

VERY noticeable savings!

Don

So in a 350 mile trip you save about 4 gallons of gas ($24 at $6/gal) but it takes an extra 2 hours. That comes out to about $12/hour. You can make that at McDs and get all the left over fries you want. YMMV

 

[isisdave]

Frank finally cancelled his land line! He has been thinking of doing that for years. Then they increased the monthly fees and he decided he'd rather keep the money and ditch the land line. Smart choice for him, since he hardly used it at all. Now he has a little extra money to help with inflated food prices and such.

If he wants something "wired" for security, I can recommend Ooma for about $5 a month, or even MagicJack for about $35/year. Both are VoIP systems. Ooma (now) seems a little more "together" than MJ did 5 years ago, but that's my take at two different times.

You do have to but the Ooma Telo box ($80) or MagicJack "thingy" which they pretty much throw in free with a year's signup.

Google Voice with Obihai ($99) is another option. Of the three I'd pick Ooma for least hassle.