The middle class will soon by an old fable in most Western countries. Know that by no means am I a communist but at the same time when we look at trends we see a couple of things. First off wealth is becoming concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. During the pandemic, depending on who you ask, the rich got 62%, 54%, or 40% richer while everyone suffered and many lost jobs or took an income loss.
And by rich I don’t mean successful small business owners or even small time CEO’s, what we’re talking about here is the uber-rich. The limousine liberal type rich. The billionaires, the multi-millionaires. Not the guy who has a nice house and a boat. That’s not what we’re talking about here. More and more you see wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Those at the top get more and more of it and dole it out to those at the bottom in exchange for control.
Leaving the middle screwed. Because of this many are having to adjust. Multi-family living, moving towards living off the land, smaller homes, less “luxuries”, and so on and so forth. Granted this will change a little soon, most likely, but overall things are becoming more expensive, the average person is making less, and wealth is becoming more concentrated.
What’s The Average Person To Do?
Now many different people, all with something to sell you, will tell you what the reasons for this are. From evil capitalism, to world domination, to basic human nature and more, and frankly none of that matters for our discussion here. Whatever the cause, we’re not fixing it as individuals and therefore we must do as all intelligent organisms do to change and adapt where we can. I’ve listed some of the most common adaptions above, multi-family living, apartments, though even those are crazy expensive, and moving out to the country to live off the land.
What I want to do here is take a look at some more affordable and feasible options for those that are struggling and looking to have a home. The first thing is to understand what you want. A lot of different types of people read this site, different ages, races, nationalities, and even genders. Different people have different goals and therefore will have different strategies that’ll work best for them.
For some they just want to move out from under their parents and experience freedom for the first time. For others they’re tired of the high costs of living where they’re at and are looking for something more affordable. And with the pandemic many are working remotely or from home or have lost their jobs completely, giving them an opportunity to up and move locations if they want.
But first what’s your goal?
Different Options Based On Your Goals
So let’s look at cheap options first.
There are a variety of new options coming up for homes. From ADU’s (Accessory Dwelling Units), to premanufactured homes, to good old fashioned trailers, to tiny homes and more. When done right, all of these can be affordable. The first thing to do is search, when you DuckDuckGo tiny homes you’ll be presented with a list of extremely expensive homes that are made for rich yuppies that could easily afford a noble home but want a tiny one for whatever reason.
However with a little more research you can find tiny home plans and with sourcing the right material can put one together for relatively cheap. Same with Accessory Dwelling Units, some cost 200,000 America dollars for what is essentially a room whereas others cost around 50k. Still expensive but if you can find the right land cheaper than other options. And these are something that should be coming down in price soon as they’re still pretty new.
Then there’s attached apartments. With the kids and grandma often having to live together now because of housing costs, add-ons and the like are becoming more popular. Put an apartment on top of the garage, finish the basement, add on a “in-law” suit or whatever. Move to a rural area where land is cheaper, buy a premanufactured home or trailer to put on that land.
The biggest thing is to search, search, search. You have to look for things. Use the myriad of sites available to find cheap land. One place that is 20 minutes from work can be twice as expensive as another that’s 20 minutes away even with the same crime rate. Look, look, look. Keep your eyes and ears open and always be looking for deals and things to leverage.
Learn what you can do to build your own place and what you’ll need professionals for.
Other Things To Help
I want to take a second to look at a few other things that may help you in your quest for affordable living. First off, government aid. Now I know many look down on government aid and feel wrong if they take it but here’s the things. Governments, taxes, civic pride, in this day and age all are jokes. If you don’t take the aid it’ll go to ridiculous things or horrible people. Governments are scams, which is whatever because the world, life, is essentially a scam depending on how you look at it.
But anyways take whatever you can get from the government and don’t feel bad about doing it, because everyone else is and you “being a good person” by not taking government aid is just foolishness. Your government has no problem using and abusing you, taking your money and giving it to things you hate and people that often hate you. So don’t have any qualms about taking whatever you can for yourself. This isn’t an anti-government rant, this is just how the world works.
Next is side jobs. Can you turn your hobby into income? Because in today’s world if you have a hobby the only way you’ll be able to keep doing it instead of working is by finding a way to divert it into income. You like to write? Then write books and sell them on amazon. Like to do woodwork? Then get the proper paperwork and start making wood stuff for people. And so on and so forth.
The last thing I’ll mention is lowering cost of living. Things like chickens can be great when you eat 4-6 eggs a day. Likewise hunting for your meat is another big one. Garden frankly just isn’t that cost effective because of the time involved and the low yield but if you enjoy doing it for kicks hey by all means go for it. But going hunting for 4 hours plus processing to yield you 50+ pounds of meat is just good sense. And so on and so forth.
Find what works for you and be ready for the changes that are taking place throughout the world.
