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My third choice was to gamble by moving from DC metro to Phoenix AZ. It has less mass transit, but still has enough where you could use it in a pinch. It was also on Forbes’s top 10 places TO DO BUSINESS several years in a row. It also had a reputation for the heat keeping several cultural groups out. This in turn lowered the number of technology workers. (Nerd hate to sweat). The cost of living was nearly half that of DC. This allowed my wife to stop working and us to live the same or better. I also gave the office notice of my move and let them choose. Let me go and take their chances in the job market getting a specialist like me OR allow my 80% to become 100% work at home. They choose the latter.
Once in AZ, we RENTED a nice 2300 Sq foot house with 3 car garage, NO APPLIANCES. We had the in-laws looking for the perfect house weeks in advance. The house is less than a mile from shopping and entertainment and about 10 miles from a state park for hiking.. The garage is on the south side and shields the house from much of the sun. The rest is under a wide porch. The ceilings are 20 ft tall in the main living area with windows to match. The house may be harder to heat, but great in the summer. With the windows open we see temperatures in the low to mid 80s when it is 95 degrees outside. Since we own the appliances, we bought energy star appliances which lower the energy cost. We also changed every bulb to CFL, some that even dim.
We did not buy a Hybrid. I still drive my 165 MPH modified Subaru WRX that sees track time every year. We use 10 gallons by not driving. We drive to the shopping and walk. We keep a 20 gallon cooler in the car and put the cold stuff in there as we move from store to store. If we go down town, sometimes we drive but more often than not we drive to a mass transit depot about 5-7 miles away.
We recently relocated from Seattle to Philadelphia for some of the same reasons. I was considering law school and the only option I would have had was to either drive for a hour+ in traffic each way. We found a house right on transit and we have gone from using 3-4 tanks of gas per month, to having refilled the tank once since we arrived in August. The only real driving trips we take are to costco 2x/month or to home depot to work on our fixer house.
The older house is much more energy efficient than we expected. The brick kept the house much cooler in the summer than we had predicted, only needing a window air conditioner for a west facing western bay window in the master (we are wusses so we need a normal sleeping temperature). We swapped out all the bulbs for the CFL ones. We are just getting ready to do that super cheap, shrink-wrap looking seasonal window insulation that works wonders for the $.
A huge chunk of our savings in moving also came from not eating out as much. If you are trying to snip your budget, Costco is fantastic! We go to the year-round farmers market every week for supplemental produce. Just by moving and renting our house we have snipped about $2,500/mo from our expenses - virtually making law school free.
I'd love to see tactics others have used to save $$$. It seems like a skill set we have forgotten as a society.
Screens! We moved in and out house had solar screens on the east and west sides but none on the north side 0.o With open windows and 2 large dogs to discourage would be robbers, we see more fresh air than AC year around and we live in the hottest metro area in the nation. We spent $210 for custom screens and had the owner reimbursed us.
Garden! We grow much of our own veggies and jar our own salsa, sauces, and jams(buy over ripe fruit at discount from the farmers market for this). 50 bucks invested in canning jars will pay for itself in a year.
The house we bought has a sun porch. I figure with a little effort I can probably grow a good chunk of my herbs year round. How you seen the price of spices on the jar per pound? Yikes! Rosemary grows so fast, but it is extremely expensive in the little jars at the grocery store.
I have rosemary shrubs 3 feet high and 9 feet wide. It's a weed! :-D
My Basil plant is over 3 feet tall and my cilantro planted last month is topping 2 feet. I burn pounds of herbs in my fire pit at night.
We are down pretty low on gas usage also. We did it by having hub's work supply a vehicle.
hmmm...so I should start eating cookies to insulate myself :)
The one thing that horrified me when I moved to Philly was that you cannot buy wine @ the grocery store...and to make matters more complicated, I drink wine, hubby drinks beer...you can't even buy beer & wine at the same store!
Sheesh. One of my hubby's colleagues (a salty sea dog) made the mistake of carrying some porn into the middle east...that was almost some jail time.
I love the Ct religious legislation...if you are a jew you can be open Sunday, what if you are agnostic?
No sale of beer after 9 pm too!
Jeeze…ya’ll make me feel as though we are living in some kind of “heathenistic” “free for all state” (California:)
I saved energy by moving into a house that is smaller than my old master bedroom.
We won't talk about how much gasoline I use every month...I alone am the demise of all civilization as we know it :-o !
Sorry ;-(
Maybe I haven't done as much as you guys but I have done a little. I drive a little four banger and wash my dishes instead of dump em into my dishwasher. I shut off all the lights during the day and when I go to bed.
I have made sure that I drive vehicles with no less than 8 cylinders and 6.0L of displacement. The faster the car the better.
I just live close to work so my cars are parked for all but 1 day of the week.
LOL @ Nuts.
We are actually thinking of buying a Hummer comming off lease if our "mad money" stock picks do well. It can tow the Subaru to the track, take us to the camping areas, and act as a support vehicle for the Baja 100/500/1000. :-D
I got one.
I am a substitute teacher and I try to fill up my 2000 Isuzu Rodeo once a month. Before the Summer started I realized that it was time for me to start saving money so I got my Mongoose mountain bike out of hibernation, dusted the cobwebs off, and spent 35 bucks at the bike shop on getting it all tuned up and ready to go. I also bought an older 10 speed Centurion racer as a back up plan for emergencies (just in case). The emergency bike has come in handy a few times. (Once I was ready to go to work and I noticed I had a flat. No time to fix it before work, so I took the extra bike.)
Two things:
1. I am saving all kinds of money by not buying gas.
2. I have lost over 10 pounds biking to and from work. 4 miles each way. I started in May and I am still going strong. It is tiring at first, but you get use to it.
I got the emergency bike for $50 bucks on ebay. No shipping and handling. I picked it up near by.
We are actually thinking of buying a Hummer comming off lease if our "mad money" stock picks do well. It can tow the Subaru to the track, take us to the camping areas, and act as a support vehicle for the Baja 100/500/1000
Hey, you talking H1 or the H2 ?
Obviously there is a price difference... but, some thoughts (in favor of H1):
1) could probably pull 6 of those Subaru's
2) If you need to suddenly really start conserving fuel, you could run the thing on waste vegetable oil (after a bit of modification to have a dual fuel system of course)
I know a guy who has an F350 dually as a daily driver... he pays about $0.45/Gal to fuel it. Cost him less than $500 in parts to do the conversion (including the 100 gal tank he's got in the back to hold waste vegetable oil). Of course, the guy is very hands on, and has worked as a mechanic.
Actually was going to go with an H2 and get the 12K dolalr diesel conversion that gets close to 30 MPH and bumps the H2 to 450-500 Foot pounds or torque. I like having complete control over my ECU. :-D
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How I cut my energy and $$$ consumption (For Sunnyview)
Valhakar
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In another thread, I mentioned I used about 10 gallons of premium unleaded a month and Sunnyview asked “how”. I had mentioned it had taken years of choices and planning.
Back in 2005, I saw this economic mess coming and how much of it would be based on energy use. I then decided to make less and use less to ride out the possible (at the time) economic meltdown.
I made my first choice by taking less money to work from home 80% of the time, I would drive into the office one day a week. This was to ease the company into the idea of me not being there but still being a strong asset. This was done over a year and a half.
I made my second choice by deciding to get out of the urban area I was in. The DC metro area has some of the best mass transit in the country, but even it is lacking. While I could ride mass transit to go shopping, I could not get to the office the one day a week I had to go in. My wife was still working at the time and her commute across a couple of counties and a state line was 90-120 minutes each way. In all fairness, she got in allot of reading and continuing education on the metro. However in really bad weather, I would have to go get her from the metro station as the bus lines would get bogged down.
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