Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ways to live cheaply and cut costs

The thread on internet services caused me to finally start this thread that I have been thinking about here for a while.

With my early medically neccesary retirement and the wife cutting back to part time due to the side effects of her cancer treatments we have been looking at many ways to cut down our monthly bills. I figure that with the economy in the tanker and many folks out of work or underemployed it might be interesting and helpful if we had a thread about how to cut down on various bills and living expenses. We have found that we can have an AWSOME quality of life at a lower cost than what we had been spending. I will start with some of the things we have done so far to try and live within our means:

No TV service of any kind. I won't miss my TV until football season, and will try to find other places to view football games when the fall arrives.

Dropped Verizon cell service and went to a pre paid cell plan. For only $39.95/mo we get unlimited calling and texting from Page Plus, and they use Verizons towers etc. Great coverage and service so far

Dropped Charter cable internet and switched to Century Link. Faster service and downloads than Charter, for only $40 month.

No land line telephone

All meat eaten is from wild game killed (probably quite a few of us in that mode, but maybe for other reasons). On top of saving cash, wild game meat is not injected with steroids etc. and Sherri is avoiding farmed, injected meat for that reason as well, as a measure to try to keep the cancer at bay.

We now buy our home cleaning supplies from the dollar store. Great copies or knock offs of 409, Simple green, and dish or laundry detergents that work just fine for $1.00 per bottle or box.

Switched from name brand sodas (when we drink such) from Pepsi to Shasta. We looked into this at first due to the Pepsi supporting Obama thread but find that we like the Shasta stuff better. Not as overly sweet and only .22 a can.

Ride our motorcycle as oft as we can to Church, errands etc. as much as possible. 55MPG, even with an older Harley as the ride.

Lowered the liability limits on our auto insurance. We are "judgement proof" in so far as there is nothing that a trial lawyer is going to get from us in a lawsuit so why carry huge liability limits? We have enough to be responsable and more than legal, but no reason I can see for $300,000 or higher limit of liability. KEep the high limits if you have significant assets or a high income as we live in a very litigous society now.

Cheap beer can be quite allright if you keep it really cold and maybe add a twist of lemon or lime to it. Putting it and your glass or mug in the freexer 30 minutes before dinner is a great way to make it taste better. A $1.00 plastic bottle of lime juice or lemon juice will flavor up about 100 cans of cheep beer. And, I only drink any beer 1 can or bottle per evening with dinner etc. a couple of times a week.

Sell your recyclables instead of throwing them away. Aluminum cans, paper products etc.

Our health and now much lower energy levels plus high pain in my case do not allow us to garden, plus we live in a rocky former river bottom which would be a real pain in the butt to try to till or we would have a garden, too.

Obvious to most of us would be to re load one's ammunition, but I have been doing this for a long time anyway. I am glad that I bought some good guns and stocked up on primers etc. when the Communist in chief was elected the first time and I was still healthy and making good money. Very glad that I bought some good guns and a paid for truck and motorcycle when I could, also.

There are my ideas, add in yours! This thread might be really helpful to us and others here. Here's hoping....

Raised bed or container gardening will help with the soil problems plus you do not have to do all your work on the ground.

Our soil has enough clay we could make pottery. Good soil thrown on top a foot or so thick took a lot of work but has been worth the effort. With good soil on top of the clay and no tilling worms bring the mineral rich clay up into the raised beds and then take the better soil down into the clay making a much deeper bed. Sounds funny but it works.

You have seen our place, the long rows of raised beds works and you will have the benefits of fresh produce and greens for almost no cost.

A hoop style greenhouse will allow greens year round even in your climate.

i was gonna suggest raised beds aswell.....while alot of work initially to make with all your friends through church and such i bet you could get enough to volunteer to help yah out and get them put together....

BTW if you know someone that has old tractor tires that will donate to you they make pretty good raised beds, in your area i would hit them with a coat of white paint so they dont absorb to much heat....

I am also looking to cut costs. I need a new suitcase, my old one was ripped and broken.
Looked at a lot of alternatives, and wound up with buying a plastic box at WallyWorld. Most all of my constant travel is via my own 4Runner. Back and forth to Miami, Virginia, Alabama and other places. Only on rare occasions do I fly.
This will hold all the clothes I need, and was about $150 less than the most inexpensive suitcase.

I spent that saved money on a new Spyderco Native 5 folder.

Get a plastic 55 gallon drum from the feed store, drill a bunch of half inch holes in the bottom. Add six inches of dirt in the bottom, plant potatoes. When the green get six inches tall cover with dirt again. Keep doing this all the way to the top. They will set potatoes at every covering of dirt. When the plants die back in Fall tip the drum on it's side and harvest a drum full of potatoes.

My wife and I are still young in our late 20's with a little baby and to help with our costs we have done a lot such as not tv etc. But what has saved us the most is our house needed alot of work when we bought it and we have done most of the work ourselves and saved thousands of $$$. Its amazing what you can learn on the internet and reading of a few books and the building code. A little effort has saved us alot of money in the long run.

Hanging pots are beautiful. Try some with tomatoes and cucumbers. A hanging pot with a cherry tomato, and yellow pear tomato and one of the smaller cucumber plants will not only look nice it will provide a summer of salad extras.

I should give y'all my wife's email to see if you can give my wallet a break...

Send her out for a month. We will give her a place to stay and teach her how to grow even in the big cities.

Turn off the hot water to your washing machine.


Mike

An old watering trough or bathtub will grow enough mixed salad greens to keep a family of two for a summer.

She actually has a pretty good green thumb...

my wife and i looked at every bill that comes in. we found ways to cut here and there and saved ourselves $100 or so a month. we set the heat and a/c at levels we're comfortable with, and stick with them. we don't have video game systems and we don't have the latest flashy cell phones. i went to a prepaid plan and saved $50 a month right there. we cut cable tv to basic, another $47 saved there. we shut off lights when we're not in the room, etc. we eat at home when we can. it's not even stuff we notice anymore, so we don't even think of it as being a sacrifice.

we also adjusted the water heater down a notch since neither of us like scalding showers. same with washing clothes. no reason to wash with hot water, can use cold for most and stuff that needs hot, gets hot.

no home phone, no subscriptions since we can get anything we want online.

The newer LED bulbs are a big cost saver in the long run. At fifteen bucks each they are a little hard to buy but ours are rates a little brighter that a standard sixty watt and use 13.5 watts. They last longer the the curly bulbs and do not have the mercury problems.

We converted all our bulbs to LED but we only have two in our 420 sq ft so it was easy.

If you're only drinking two beers a week you can probably swing something decent instead of jumping through all the flavor doctoring and freezing hoops trying to mask the crappy beer flavor.

BTW Mark if your ever feeling bored and decided you need some reading material to get yah by i know where there is a hell of an Africana and other hunting library you can borrow from

One of the best ways is to have a budget and "stick" to it. We spend cash only on everything except bills that are paid by electronic transfer or check.

Name every dollar and have categories for everything. I spend money on guns and such but I have a gun fund and only spend my small weekly allotment. I gave up eating lunch at work to put $35 a week into my gun fund. $1820 a year buys me a very nice gun every year.

If you can heat with firewood, that would save on heating. We turn our tstats to 80 in summer and 60 in winter and wear sweaters or sweatclothes. In summer just shorts and t shirts.

Buy some food in bulk like at a Sam's club and bring home and repackage. We do our chicken and hamburger that way, repackage with vacuum seal bags. Bulk dry goods like 50 lbs of rice will last us about 5 years. Store canned goods when on sale and cycle them using oldest first. You can store up to a two year supply this way. Growing your own food, in containers if necessary or make some raised beds in your yard and fill them with topsoil. Hunting and fishing is good. Also consider trapping for some things that are legal. Years ago we bought one or two florescent bulbs at a time once a month until all were changed out. Today you could do that with LED bulbs, one or two a month over a year or so might change out all your bulbs and last 10 years or so and use far less energy.

Insulating your attic, installing storm windows or plain plastic in winter over your windows.

Find an old projection TV that is junk, take out the lens and mount it towards the sun. Get a piece of flat steel for it to focus on and use cast iron skillets and you can get it hot enough to fry fish. Just wear good sunglasses or welders glasses while cooking. It is very bright. Build you an outside wood BBQ pit and cook outside in summer more or even in spring.

Use bar soap instead of soft soap, it lasts longer and costs less. Use bleach or ammonia for most cleaning (not together makes clorine gas), instead of other cleaners. Also vinegar can clean a lot of things.

You can brush your teeth with baking soda and salt. Cleans cheaper and just as well, but it doesn't have floride.

If you have a diesel, you can make your own diesel fuel from waste cooking oil from fast food places. Actually without processing it, just filtering it, you can mix it with diesel and burn it straight as much as 50-50 mixture. Can't in winter though.

You can make your own wiskey using a pressure cooker, corn mash, and some charred oak wood.

Keep honey bees in your yard for honey.

We use Netflix streaming video for movies and Hulu for tv shows instead of cable. We have a computer hooked up to our tv for this to happen. Regular Hulu is free, Netfilx streaming is about $9.99 a month with unlimited movies, old tv shows, etc you can watch each month.

I reload, clean guns, work on my fishing tackle, sharpen knives, ride and exercise bike or treadmill while watching TV. I feel like doing nothing while watching is a waste of time. My wife exercises, but hasn't tried anything else. I do not load powder while watching TV, but decapping, sizing, and cleaning primer pockets can be done.

During summer, snaping greenbeans, shelling peas, and such can be done. Also, during fall cracking pecans. (Pecans in the south can be raked up and gathered, usually the owner will go in halves, you keep half of what you gather.) Pecans are expensive so this is a good deal. Lots of pick your own peas or other fruits and veggetable farms around. Usually they will go in halves. They can sell their half, you keep yours. That way they don't have to hire Mexicans to harvest everything.