• Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
    30·
    2 days ago

    I have never paid rent or utilities or electricity.

    Currently live off grid on land I own using solar power. We have all electric appliances. Generator uses propane but only use it 1-2 times a year so it’s rare to refill the tank.

    The dump is only a few dollar when we take our trash (under $10) every few months.

    Self host on a NAS, have home assistant that helps a ton with power monitoring and control.

    My goal in a few years is to provide almost all my needs from my own land. Food, water, shelter, power, etc.

      • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 day ago

        There are a few counties around the US that have zoning laws that let you live in an RV or build alternative houses such as adobe, earth bags, shipping container homes, earth ships, or even shed to homes.

        I did tons of research and picked a county. Then I drove around and talked with realtors until I found the right one that understood what I plan To do. this guy was awesome and directly took my to my dream land. It was 6 times more land than I expected to buy, and the price was amazing. We bought it immediately.

        After buying the land, I bought a $3,000 RV (needed a ton of work) but it’s home until I build my adobe home. Spent the last year collecting supplies for the house, even found 5 new windows for just over $100. Always looking for deals. Also found solar panels super cheap $45 each for 250W panels. Bought a ton of those for the house later.

        It takes a lot of determination to push yourself to go outside and work for yourself, but also a way to have an income in the middle of nowhere. We do ok. But I know things will only get better as we settle more here.

        • Øπ3ŕ@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          …but also a way to have an income in the middle of nowhere.

          Wait. What? Did I miss where you described said “way”?

          • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
            11·
            1 day ago

            There’s many ways, I have multiple income streams from several places.

            Here are a few examples of income ideas:

            Sell online

            YouTube or twitch, only fans?

            Do odd jobs for neighbors and the community

            Sell at local swap meets, fairs, art shows

            Air BNB

            Sell eggs, meat, animals

            Sell homestead tutorials, courses, online or in person

            Remote teaching

            Remote work, telemarketing

            There’s tons of ways to make money from a homestead in the middle of nowhere.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
        8·
        2 days ago

        Land can be bought everywhere in all price ranges. The real hurdle is whether you can legally live there or what requirements there are, due to zoning and building codes.

        I think the easiest way to get a self sustaining home with as little legal issues as possible is to buy an already legal home with the grid connection, but then just don’t use it.

        If I were young and single again, I would look into auctions of derelict farms. Tear down the old building and instead build a small totally legal connected up to code cabin with water, waste and electricity connection. Then use the rest of land to do whatever actually interest me, while complying to the bare minimum of legal requirements for that land.

  • kadu@lemmy.world
    291·
    3 days ago

    I buy single purpose devices that are fully offline, durable, user serviceable, and useful… and then I go for a long time without buying anything but food. It’s almost like setting a new personal record: how many days in a row I can go without buying a single thing?

  • wavebeam@lemmy.world
    48·
    3 days ago

    I pirate my media. The way I see it, I will pull one over on any company I can get away with that would absolutely swindle me given the chance.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    23·
    2 days ago

    Run every reasonable possible method of ad-blocking. From whole-house PiHole with uBlock, Privacy Badger, anti-tracking, VPN, and more. F/OSS software when possible.

  • Cricket@lemmy.zip@lemmy.zipEnglish
    151·
    3 days ago

    I’m not sure if this qualifies, but I have a friend who way back when, like decades ago, probably before the extensive surveillance we have now, would do something rather ingenious and devious to get major discounts on whatever expensive things he wanted at stores: he would print out a sheet of barcode stickers for a product that was similar but much cheaper than the one he wanted and plaster it on a bunch of the items like the one he wanted. Take it to the cashier and get a super discount.

    For example, if he wanted some fancy model of an electronics gadget, he would print barcodes of a much cheaper but similar model from the same manufacturer. According to him, he had even done this for fancy cuts of meat. The reason for applying it to a bunch of them and not just the single one he planned to buy was for plausible deniability. If someone questioned him, he could say, I don’t know, I just picked one off the shelf - they could go check and see that there were many labeled as the cheaper item.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      There was this one time during a sprint retrospective that our PM said we were gonna do an ice breaker. This was a year and a half into my employment, and nobody else on the team had been there for less than 2 years.

      I fucked off for a good 20 minutes on my phone while they were talking about each other’s spirit animals.

      • biofaust@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 days ago

        I do the same as @jaschen306.

        Probably not the same life story, but I started as a Neuroscience PhD escapee (I was pressed by my supervisor to p-hack our results) and at the time, around 2012, this was an easy career to shift to from a scientific background.

        I work more specifically in tracking implementation, and you should all become aware that for one year the ToS for the Google Marketing Platform have now allowed the use of browser/device fingerprinting for user identification aimed at remarketing, etc.

        I am trying hard to go in-house at a company to work in BI, which is something I would be able to do, but not at the level of other people, since the marketing industry has accepted rejects like me setting the bar very low in order to have an army of people feeding Google and the others people’s data.

        But the alternative for me is to be jobless AND careerless.

        I suggest companies to evaluate Plausible and Piwik Pro as a solution, but the people they are as marketers have stopped being marketers more than a decade ago, they are just inside jobs planted by Google et al., and they regularly disregard the alternatives.

      • jaschen306@sh.itjust.works
        11·
        3 days ago

        I literally hate ads. I have a adguad at my house that blocks everything and I use a VPN. Because I’m in the industry, I know what they do. Its awful what they are capable of.

    • nul9o9@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      7·
      3 days ago

      I couldn’t stomach working in marketing. Hats off to you. I took a marketing class in college, just felt icky.

      • jaschen306@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        3 days ago

        I do my best to only promote to keywords with high intent. So people who search for words with the sole purpose to purchase. I avoid doing ads to people who wasn’t looking for someone.

        This help me sleep at night.

        • unsettlinglymoist@lemmy.world
          1·
          8 hours ago

          I always fill my tank completely because that gives me longer range and fewer trips to gas stations. So it rarely ends up being an even dollar amount.

          The numbers move so quickly that I’m not even sure how it’s possible to stop on an even dollar amount unless you go inside and prepay?

    • lando55@lemmy.zip
      3·
      1 day ago

      So - you don’t wait until the nozzle clicks or anything? Just arbitrarily stop pumping?

      • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 day ago

        Some people have to budget how much gas they can fill at once. Maybe the budget allows for $30 a week, so they stop at $30, or in OP’s case something random like $28.73.

        Alternatively, if you prepay at the counter, instead of handing them an even $30, you could hand them $29.39