So, I ABSOLUTELY know there's massive variation in this. Just want to get ahead of that.
What I'm looking for is...what do finances look like, casually, when you have a 100% paid off small (SMALL!) home. When a mortgage is out of the way, what's left to eat up your paycheck?
I suppose I'm looking for the sort of casual knowledge of expenses for this sort of life that your kids might pick up if they lived in your area with you in your home. En mass, pulled from multiple lemmy folks, so I can get an idea of general trends. I'm partial for info from the USA, but others reading this might appreciate statistics from other areas. :)
(People mistake how valuable this sort of "general idea" info is, I always see people going into the weeds on how every situation is different without bothering even giving a crappy signpost so I can see if I'm looking at a $5 expense or $500 or $5000. Knowing if something is going to be $5 or $5000 is very valuable, even if it's not some exact precise number. But I don't need to know if it's going to be exactly $392.29 if I wiggle my ears and tug my nose to get the right loophole, I just need to know that closer to $500 is correct, or whatever.)
I don't have family, so I missed out on "casual learning" opportunities, and don't have anyone to talk to IRL to get this info, so it's really hard to apply my city-living experience to try to extrapolate what life might be like if I make a goal to buy a small home in Nowheretown, USA to retire in 20 years down the line.
Anyway. So what do expenses look like if you have a small paid off house? What range do utilities run in for you (in your particular climate), what's home insurance like, what sort of unexpected expenses pop up when you own instead of rent?
What's utilities like for sewer and trash, especially? Those have always been rolled into my rent. Is rural internet still limited to DSL or satellite (or Starlink I guess these days), or has better infrastructure been rolled out in places over the past 20 years since I last looked for this info?
Edit: Also...talk to me about well water and well expenses, and septic tanks instead of sewer lines, and oil heating. I promise I'll listen!
Edit 2: Also talk to me about how propane works.
Thanks everyone. :)
I've been thinking of getting a motorcycle, and Harley has no entry level bikes So new riders try a Honda or Kawasaki when young and broke and build brand loyalty to that, I'm sure.
Not surprising Harley is dying. All their stuff is so expensive you never get to figure out if it's good or if they're coasting on reputation while quality goes to shit or something.
Duality exists. He might have been awesome in a way they saw, even if his loud pipes were annoying to you.
Don't know if he was, only that you got a limited view of this person, and it seems cruel to degenerate how other people mourn.
Because most people run on their personal experiences, and don't do great when they have to think very far ahead or extrapolate and make connections.
If you're lucky enough to be born into a conservative home that's not bugshit crazy, and you're lucky enough to not be TOO smart, neurodivergent, gay/lesbian/trans/etc. then you've probably never seen the full ugly face of conservatism because you were treated nicely.
Lots of conservatives will treat you perfectly politely...if they get to know you, and as long as you look white and clean-cut enough. As long as you give the right social signifiers, basically.
Most of my ex-conservative friends group was driven away from conservative family because we were abused in some obvious fashion, were gay/lesbian/trans, were neurodivergent, etc. We were different in ways that, ultimately, after a lot of pain, forced us to cut ties with family. (It was never our first choice though.)
But a woman who was lucky to be born into a family that treats her halfway decently won't experience that sort of ugliness until an emergency happens and it's leopards-eating-faces time.
And it's VERY hard to rock the boat BEFORE something bad happens to you, when you know rocking it will have really bad consequences immediately. People don't like to be shunned or kicked out of families, so if they're not treated TOO badly they'll toe the line and conform out of fear of the unknown and fear of losing everything they have and know.
I turn myself inside out in so many ways and places to "be a good person" that when I'm McSuburb land and someone's letting their nasty rotten fruit fall onto the ground from a branch hanging over onto the public sidewalk to rot on the ground with wasps and flies, I'm going to take some.
I value myself, a real living human being, AT LEAST as much as the vermin feasting on people's fallen fruit.
Am I going to denude the whole tree? No, I'm not an asshole. But if you're letting rats and flies and maggots eat it and it's getting all over my shoes as I walk past...I'm going to rate myself at least as worthy as a maggot.
If the homeowner was truly bothered they'd trim the tree to keep it out of public spaces.
I used to do that sometimes. But I did on purpose, and I resent nowadays due to inflation that in order to get the old "adult meal" price I HAVE to choose a kid's meal.
Mine--don't laugh--is random fruit from fruit trees hanging over walls and over the sidewalk.
Although, I once tried to take a plum from a wasp who was sitting on the fruit, and she turned and looked at me, and I quickly let go and let her have it.
I'm curious about two things. Will nesting birds or animals find this material tasty or good to gnaw on?
I always ask that ever since I learned vehicles using a more organic plastic for wiring harnesses suffer from shorts due to animals like mice nibbling the plastic because it smells tasty.
I remember as a kid, I was mystified by this other girl on the block who could do this. I didn't understand why anyone would care. A car is a car?
Eventually I realized it's because she was super into external social status signs. She wasn't a gearhead, so she hadn't picked it up the way guys do bonding over technical stats of whatever, but she was hyper-sensitive to social status, so she picked it up along with anything else related to fashion. And cars can be considered fashion, right up there with makeup and having the right purse.
Random addition to your post...
There's early/limited studies suggesting the drug valproate, which is used for bipolar and epilepsy sometimes, can re-open the perfect pitch acquisition capabilities of the human brain even if the individual is no longer an infant and has aged past the language acquisition stage of childhood development.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/
Different use of it in an 8 year old girl with language regression: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11230735/
Acting, literally. Playing a character to entertain. Some characters are villains.
I think this is why random wrestling dudes sometimes successfully slide into Hollywood acting careers.
The thing that makes me cackle about this movie, as a Fandom!Old, is that it's basically written as the crackiest crack-ship you could ever find on AO3.
And yet...it's had one of the biggest box-offices ever.
This brings me no end of glee.
Doesn't help you now I'm sure, but I've found gently banging around the rim or lid of a jar on the concrete outside usually loosens the seal enough to open the jar.
(Outside on concrete because I don't want to dent anything inside.)
I finally realized this guy's name reminds me of some in house menswear brand at Sears or K-Mart or some other department store that suffered and wheezed and whimpered before going out of business.
I wonder if Ukraine is having an effect on attitudes.
Anyway, I can't speak for others, but one thing I've come to realize through life experiences is that the best way to resolve differences is to behave civilly and talk. BUT. I've also seen that there are people who do not ascribe to or live by my preferences and ideals for this. There are people who don't value rationality, there are people who can't be shamed or pressured by society into behaving nicely and getting along with others. Those people respect the stick, and only the stick. I don't want to use the stick. But these people do not live by my ideals (which are to talk things out and behave civilly), no matter how I say pretty please to them, and it's foolish to project my values onto them when I see with my own eyes that they behave and react in patterns different to my own. They respect things that scare them or directly threaten them only, and continue to misbehave if all they're going to get for it is a finger-wagging and a scolding.
So it seems very wise to "speak softly and carry a big stick". The military is our stick. There are people out there who will behave in the most horrific uncivil ways right up until the moment they realize you have a big stick, then they'll suddenly rein themselves in, and you can then be civil and talk things out. But that opportunity to talk doesn't appear unless you actually have the stick when you're dealing with folks of that sort of mentality.
It's very important to look at your opponents with clear eyes and see what they ARE doing, not what you wish they would do, and not what you would do if you were in their shoes. As the saying goes, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."
Weirdly enough, the only game I tried to play that didn't run was this random Indy game. Didn't even have fancy graphics, it was one step up from macromedia flash games
The AAA games I've played are fine on Linux. Baulders Gate, No Mans Sky, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, Crusader Kings III.
Without laws letting child workers maintain their own bank account in their own name without parents being co owners allowed to drain it at any time, children working become money pinatas for abusive parents.
I say this as someone who would have benefitted from being independent earlier. My uncle did have me work at 14, and when I went to the bank I found he had stolen every penny, and because I was a minor I had no legal recourse to get it back.
A few years later the courts emancipated me, but it didn't return the money he had stolen. Mind you, he was not working at the time himself and he got a few hundred from the state a month to care for me, and he spent what he stole on computer parts so he could game.
Children working only is in the child's benefit if there are ironclad laws allowing them to keep their money, and right now there is not.
I remember my grandma being referred to like that, and I always felt it horrifying that women essentially lost their own names in this way once in married Society basically changed your name to make you an accessory to a guy.
If you explore the dynamics of people migrating en masse and severe drought causing crop failures and small countries mismanaging famines you jump right into war which makes for exciting movies
People who go into back yards for a living - what's the coolest or most beautiful thing you've seen?
(Reeaaally not looking for terrible or horrifying things here. Want happy or cool stories! And I'll start.)
My job currently has me going into random people's back yards. I see immaculately groomed lawns, overgrown lawns, perfect shrubs, imperfect shrubs. I see weeds up to my hips, I see junk, kid toys, dog toys, real grass, astroturf, basically everything.
But today, I think I accidentally kind of walked into a modern fairy tale setting. Not a beautiful Disney type of fairy tale. More of an urban fantasy sort of thing--like if Abandoned Porn did gardens.
So, the place was a small suburban yard. House was probably built in the 70s, and has been neglected as of late. I had an impression of faded yellow siding, discolored, peeling.
The front yard had an old chain link fence, and was kind of overgrown with some gnomes and such, but that part didn't really register on me too much as I'd seen places similar to it from the front with overgrown plants and junk, and it usually just got worse in the back. On most homes, the front is the nicest part, and everything hidden in back is not so nice.
I go up to the door and ring the bell. An older man with hearing loss answered the door and I eventually got permission to go in back after pantomiming why I was there and what I was going to do. (I wasn't smart enough to get my phone out and type in it...next time, I guess, hah.)
So I tramp around into the back past a few cars that probably don't work, 90s era stuff, and one truck that might have been 70s or 80s.
And at first, all I see is weeds. Weeds, sticks, a gnarled tree that got knocked down in some storm and was still laying there, a wrought iron table that it'd landed on bent and deformed underneath it.
There seemed to be some paths through it all, but still, I was not able to easily move about, and I'm not a large person. My progression into the yard was: Crunch crunch, crack, OW, crunch, brush, rustle.
However...as I worked my way further into the back yard, I began to realize that even though there were clear signs of neglect, this yard wasn't actually ugly. Yeah, it was totally overgrown. Yeah, it needed considerable yard work done to get the old branches and that dead tree out.
But it was also beautiful.
And I realized that, once upon a time, someone with a creative touch had really, really loved this yard.
There were little stonework paths going everywhere to little places that had once been important, lost underneath the overgrown weeds and leaves underneath my feet. Not cheap fake stone or brick crap that someone artistically lacking picked from a catalogue or whatever, I actually kicked some of the leaves aside to see what was underneath, and found that it was nice stonework, the really well-planned kind with the type of artistry you only get if the homeowner themselves has a creative touch. (Basically, you can't buy that type of art, especially not for the tiny back yard of a 70s-built suburbia house.)
There was a gazebo with stone benches, there was a well (probably decorative, but not made cheaply). There was a bit of "cottage chic" stuff about--but it wasn't new, and the yard had grown around it. Tumbled some of it over artistically, tin watering cans lost in stalks of grass, giving it an air of veracity that it might not have started with.
I saw what seemed to be an old grindstone, for sharpening knives, covered in ivy and webs. It looked straight out of Skyrim...if a bit smaller than I expected. Speaking of webs, those were everywhere in the ivy, covering it and other plants thickly, catching detritus from spring like dead flowers and petals.
There were some weeds, but (astonishingly since I'd just tramped through yards full of weeds a few hours prior) they were scarce. The original plants were overgrown but had NOT been pushed out by weeds like I usually see. I'm not gardener enough to know how this even happened...I can only figure the original gardener was very clever at picking their plants to begin with, and chose ones that would strangle any weeds, instead of being strangled by them.
The entire back yard was overgrown, though. Just with those nice garden plants instead of weeds. There was ivy spilling everywhere, there were low-lying evergreen bushes creeping out of old stone planters.
I saw some dry rose thorns in the corner by the AC unit where I was doing my work, and thought, "I'm glad they didn't plant those roses where I am working...but they look pretty dead from neglect and too much shade".
My job had me moving about the entire yard, and I ended up approaching the AC unit from the other side--and saw a single dry rose bloom jutting straight up next to that AC unit. I hadn't been able to see it from the other side, the overgrowth was too thick, but approaching it from the gazebo, there it was. It was half-dead, probably from the rose bush being in total shade, or being choked out by all the ivy. But it was there. One bloom, pale pink and dying, sticking straight up like it was saying, "I'm still here!"
That flower, jutting up in the most inhospitable part of the yard, in this ruined garden that probably only I had set foot in recently, made me take a second look around, and I realized I was in the perfect setting for a modern "Secret Garden", or a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
I thought about it a bit, wondered how everything had come to be in this state, and concluded that whoever had loved that garden had probably become disabled, or had passed on, and the people still living in the house had no ability or desire to go back there and start to clean things up and make it bloom anew.
And I found that sad, because this wasn't a regular bit of landscaping. So much work had gone into it at one point that now, probably at least 5 years later if not 10, I could STILL see the beauty it'd once had, shining through all the dead plants and spiderwebs and fallen objects on the ground. What would the original gardener have thought, to see it neglected like this?
The whole situation sticks with me. An interesting experience, and now a memory I'm grateful to have.
Like, here I am, in this little random back yard with a beautiful abandoned garden that nobody goes into and nobody has seen recently but me.
I think I have to write a story about it someday--a story better than this post. But I'm hoping a post will share a little bit of what I saw for now.
(I don't have a photo because the guy at the front door was near-deaf and could hardly understand why I needed to go back there--didn't want to take advantage of him allowing me back there in the first place by taking photos and putting them online. He deserves privacy. But I might very well write a retelling of some fairy tale, with the deaf guy answering the door...and what might happen when you go in back and get pricked by that rose next to the AC!)
Anyway. What are some things that you guys have come across, if your job takes you onto people's property for a living?
I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It's such a small specific thing, one I'd never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now.
What are your small, "random" or "junk drawer" type of gadgets that you actually use or like having around?
It's been a week since I posted the last one...right?
I'm afraid I haven't been very frugal this week. Got some things mildly on sale, but still too much, so I don't think they count and won't post them.
I know someone would immediately jump in with water if I didn't caveat that, haha. Tap water is the most frugal drink, yes I know, but for me plain ol' water more of a basic survival thing. And I like to be happy too, not stuck permanently in survival mode, even if I'm also being frugal.
So.
One of my "vices", if you can call it that, is fancy tea.
I'm American and we're not really a tea-drinking culture, so I was taken by surprise when I got into drinking tea and learned you can get surprisingly nice quality loose leaf tea online that blows grocery store tea bags out of the water, and it's not a terribly expensive habit. Grocery store tea in tea bags is basically 'tea dust' left over from processing better teas, and basically almost any loose leaf tea is a better quality than bagged tea dust, so you don't have to break the bank to see immediate improvement in your tea quality.
And that surprised the heck out of me!
I eventually realized that's because tea is a dry good and cheap to ship--it's light, dry, packs small, ships well. Much easier to get your hands on than, say, alcohol or liquid drinks that are heavy or distributed in glass bottles.
So yeah. It's not as frugal as water, but I found I can usually still have some nice tea around even if I'm pinching every penny, and it can help tide me through tough spots without the downsides of other vices (like drinking, smoking, etc.)
What are your guys' favorite frugal drinks?
I was just thinking in the back of my head about how cheap LEDs have made types of lighting that would've cost way too much (both to install, and in electricity usage) no longer stupidly expensive.
For example, I noticed on Amazon some cheap furniture that has LEDs/power outlets sort of integrated right into them. Looks pretty cyberpunk-ish to my eyes. And I know years ago that sort of thing would've been marked up to high heavens.
Fancy lighting in general has changed drastically in price/design.
So...what are some things, due to changes in demand or changes in tech or changes in anything...that would've been really expensive back in the day, but which no longer seem to be, making them more frugal than they used to be?
Just curious what you guys have been able to score recently.
I don't have anything really good to share, been spending too much. Let me live vicariously (and frugally!) through you!