I am planning to live a very poor life style as much as I can.
Doing Craigslist and Freecycle checking, I have not been buying appliances, construction materials, tools, etc. You can repair many things by going to youtube, I now have 5 working lawnmowers to give away. two extra stoves to give away, two very good mitre saws to give away, computers ----- the list is very long.
I have free veggies from my garden. Free fertilizers from my kitchen, free water from my rain barrels.
Very soon I will have free sunlight indoors from my 1000 watt LED grow lights for year round vegetables. ($10 per 150w COB LEDs. I posted construction of these lights on the Gardening Forum sometime ago.)
But what about electricity?
Last week on Craigslist someone was selling damaged solar panels. Now I have solar panels which will give me 2080 watts of free electricity everyday for the next 20 years (estimated solar panel life). Typically you pay $1.00 per watt for solar panels. I paid $120 for the 2080 watts.
Poor me. :-)
dcarch