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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.