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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I’m personally in a small 3 bed 2 bath single family house in MN. The place looks like a crack den on the outside but the inside is cozy enough. It’s not even rural, it’s technically in a “minor metropolitan area” (aprox 70,000 population).

    I pay about $950 per month for mortgage, taxes, and insurance. (It’s all in escrow so IDK what they are individually off the top of my head). I pay about $120 per moth for 100GB down 20Gb up internet. I pay on average about $200 per month for electricity (more in summer less in winter). My water and trash are a basically just a rounding error alongside the rest (less than $100 per month combined).

    As far as unexpected expenses go, the big ones are furnace and water heater. I had an emergency furnace repair last winter and that put me back like $500 despite the issue just being a bad gas valve and him having to do all of 5 minutes of troubleshooting because I had identified the exact issue prior to the tech showing up. If you can do your own work then you can mitigate these costs quite a bit but generally you’re best off having like $5,000 laying around in case of any emergency issues not covered by insurance.

    When it comes to more rural my dad lives not far from me and he has a well and septic tank. Both are nearly 2 decades old and have not needed any maintenance other than getting the septic tank pumped every few years which costs about $300. Well expenses are just maintenance costs (like I said his hasn’t needed any in nearly 20 years) and the electricity cost for pumping the water which is negligible. Regular water testing is also generally recommended but generally speaking if the water starts out fine then it will stay fine unless something major happens in the area. He only heats his garrage via oil but it’s really not too much different from other methods. Generally you will pay a company that fills your tank at regular intervals and they’ll just bill you for how much they have to put in. So it winds up being much larger payments but you also only make them once or twice per year.

    I have some relatives who are really out in the boonies and their internet is really garbage but they could also probably get better internet via satellite and I’m not sure how that works. If you’re really remote like that you will also want things setup like backup generators and you will need to know how to do your own emergency maintenance because sometimes you just can’t make emergency service calls. You also need equipment to manage your land, most of those relatives have at least a tractor with a bucket and blade attachment. You will also need a vehicle that can handle unmaintained roads especially in areas that get heavy snowfall.







  • The Silt Verses - A fantasy horror podcast where gods are real, spawned solely through belief, feed on sacrifices (usually human), and have been corporatized. It’s amazing and the series just recently finished so there’s no waiting for the next episode to drop. Easily the best podcast I’ve ever listened to.

    Sawbones - An awsome medical history podcast by Justin and Dr. Sydnee McElroy. Sydnees part is pretty obvious, she’s a family medicine doctor and she researches and presents historical bits about all the ways we have tried to do medicine throughout history. Justin is just Justin, he’s a podcaster and games journalist by trade so he’s mainly there as a layman and as comedic support.

    The Magnus Protocol - Fantasy horor that I’m having trouble expplaining but it’s damn good. It’s made by the same creators that did the magnus archives. When they announced it on kickstarter after the magnus archives was finished they quickly earned over $700,000 so that should be some indication of how much people liked the magnus archives and the budget for the show.








  • It’s a timeshare and it is basically a scam for most people. Basically you’re buying time to stay at the place that you can technically use at any time year round as long as you book it in advance. The problem is that all of the days that most people go on vacations (spring break, summer, holidays, etc) will already be booked by the 500 other people who also bought the same thing. So really the only times you will actually be able to use the place are when no one else wants to be there.

    If you have the ability and desire to drop everything and vacation there on a random week whenever it happens to be available then it can still be a good deal for you, but most people have obligations like work, school, or family that limits when they can just drop everything and leave to spend time at their timeshare.