I Already Live In A Post Peak Oil World.

NugBlazer

Yeah, I've decided not to have kids and PO is a big part of the reason why.
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I tread lightly as I can on the Earth.

MonteQuest, "Same thing."
yesplease, "What's the same thing?"
MonteQuest, "You and a troll."
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elocs

Cheap housing is the cornerstone of my survival. I own a small mobile home in a good part of town and pay $200/month in lot rent. Last November I quit my job of 11 years, ala the movie "Office Space" when I decided I just didn't want to do it anymore. I am 54 and it is tough finding a job, but I do temp work and its like dating before marriage for both sides. Here a good and dependable worker will always get called for work. My expenses are small and I make payments on nothing and pay off my credit card each month (this makes me a "freeloader" to the credit card company. I do have a nestegg that will keep me for a few more years if I keep working even only temp work.

Fortunately I have only myself to care for and that simplifies things. I live within my means and adjust my lifestyle to fit what I have coming in. I have little money coming in, but I am enjoying what I do have and my free time. I could work like a dog for the next 11 years at a job I hate and still have little, so right now I am actually enjoying a semi-retirement while I am still in good shape and health. My philosophy now is to enjoy life and to only be concerned about making enough money on which to live.

Frank

Sorry to hear about your situation...

Why don't you move? If you don't own your own place it's not that hard, is it? Anywhere in the T.O. area is expensive to live in. How about looking into the maritimes or out west?

Kfish · Tar Sands Joined: Mar 31, 2006 Posts: 92

Re: the bean sprouts, yes it really is that easy. Mung beans make the best sprouts IMHO, but just about any beans can be used the same way. It takes 3 - 4 days. For the sweetest sprouts, make sure they're kept in the dark between rinsings.

LETS stands for Local Energy Trading Scheme. It's a 'currency' that is created and supported by a group of members. Each person agrees to provide services in return for 'units', which they then spend on another person's services. It's like bartering. Instead of using cash to hire other people, you use units.

You generally start with zero units, but you can go up or down from there. A negative balance is no big deal because there's no interest. A negative balance simply means that you need to give back to the community at some point, no rush. People who hire you for units will generally be more flexible than those paying cash.

The system was actually founded in Canada. A guy named James Taris recently travelled around the world, only using cash for his plane ticket. Everything else - room, board, transport - he traded labour or units for. His website is at LETS Linkup - it's a great example of the community building and local economy that many posters to this board advocate.
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Build your soil
Build your skills
Build your community

Revi · Fusion Joined: Apr 25, 2005 Posts: 3273 Location: Maine

I already live in a post peak oil world, only I still have a job. There is a lot of cool stuff going on around here. The small farms are reinvigorating. I know two young farmers who have gotten a dairy and an orchard going again. The farmer's market features more and more local produce. Bicycles are in, there are a lot of people who are riding around. The price of wood has gone up, but is still cheaper than oil heat. We have done a lot to our house and our lifestyle. We've probably cut our fossil fuel use by half. Check out my website below. We're also getting a solar car to get around town. A friend designed it and is selling kits in the spring. Life in our post peak oil world isn't all that bad. Here's the link to the solar car website:

http://sunnev.com/

Pretorian

captain_planet · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 28, 2006 Posts: 23

Paying $1000 a month to rent a 2 bedroom apartment is nuts. My family was poor when I was growing up and we had 9 people living in 2 bedroom apartment. My father and mother slept in 1 room while 4 boys slept in the other room, and 3 sisters in the living room. Rent was like $350-$400 a month with free water, this was 12 years ago but it is still no where $1000 a month. $500 saved/extra a month can buy 166 gallons of gasoline at $3.00 a gallon, enough to power a 30mpg vehicle 5000 miles. There must be something cheaper in the radius of 2500 miles.

It does not cost a whole lot either to feed a family of four even with a limited budget. You can start by buying simple staple foods: rice, beans, oatmeal, skim milk, orange juice, whole wheat bread, eggs, cereal(whole grain), potatoes, pasta. I am not a big fan of meat so you are not missing out on anything, although I do eat seafood almost everyday which is not expensive as you might think. Sure society does throw away a lot of food but that is something that can be avoided because of sanitary reasons: example is e coli infected spinach or food that was thrown away because it was rotten/infected.

Your 16 year old boy can now get a job and do the jobs that you won't do or to proud to do. Getting a job at mcdonalds and getting paid the minimal 5.15 x 40hrs=$206.00 a week that is probably $150 after taxes, still better then dumpster diving and you might get some left over food from work. Your 16 year old boy should not work the full 40 hrs a week, but he surely can do 20hrs.

FourOfSwords

Capt. Plan. I live in Kanada, where everything is considerably more expensive than the US. Rents in large urban area's of Kanada are much more expensive than what I pay $1,400-$2,000 for a 2 bedroom. This is the sorry truth of renting here. Ask any of the Kanadians who post here what the cost of a 'modest' bungalow costs in a large urban center here...can you imagine, $250,000+ sorry but you hve to be related to a Gates or a Rockafeller to be able to reasonably afford these prices. Land reform is sorely needed in this country.
Your statement that it doesn't cost that much to feed a family of 4 on a limited budget is just not so. I do not know what the prices of foodstuffs in the US are like but here they are 'less than cheap'. Every foodstuff youention we are able to buy, but thats about it.
As for dumpster diving it may seem dangerous health wise, but if you use common sense you greatly reduce your risk. I think issue here with most folks is the stigma that goes along with DD...well when my family is suffering for lack of food and social assistance, my answer is tough. I have to have the mindset that 'I will do what I have to' to survive.
Without airing 'dirty laundry' my 16 year old is strickly into video games and MP3 music, outside of that he doesnt get it. My fault there.
And for the record I am certainly 'not too proud' to do ANY work, other than 'whack' somebody for the Mob...hmmm future employment opportunity methinks. Wink

Sorry to round out on you, if you've not 'walked this road... the same road billions of others are walking worldwide, much to my shame as a human being.
As an addendum, I'd like to appologize to my fellow Canadian posters for using'K' instead of 'C' in Canada...I'm in a fay mood.
Alex

captain_planet · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 28, 2006 Posts: 23

I was 16 once too, and I too was into video_games/mp3's. I still play video game and own a ipod, but I had to buy those video games and mp3's with my own money. Although my mother did buy the NES and super NES for us because I was not 16 when it came out. At 16 I bought the N64, but I have not bought a console system since. We have a PS2 now which was given to my niece so I didn't pay for it. I rarely even use it except to watch DVD's. 16 is not far from 18 so your son will stay to help the family or go seperate paths.

I don't believe children will make you poor, because if a huge family sticks together they will eventually become more powerful then a single entity. I guees what I am describing a family that works like communism/smurfs(yes those little blue guys). I am not sure how big a house $250,000 will get in Canada, but I just bought a house currently valued at $350,000 /3900sq. ft./ 3 car garage/ 7 room 4 bathrooms in the midwest. I only bill I pay per month is the $1500 fixed mortgage, but my mother pays for the electricity, food, water, trash, satelite, and internet/telephone. I don't ask for rent because the house belongs to the family, my mother does not ask for money but she does receive money from my brothers or sisters.

Communism works for an ant colony and so too can it work for a family. A post peak oil world will be easier for a close knit family then a family with 0 children. The parents gets older and the children takes care of the parents is what has been going on for centuries.

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard," King Solomon advised in the Book of Proverbs Chapter Six, "consider her ways and be wise".

Doly · Expert Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 4035

lowem

duke3522

Hey All,

Man I really feel for you. DW, DS, and myself have been living below the poverty line ever since my DW became ill about 5 years ago. Since then we have learned that folks can do without a lot of what most folk consider necessities. We have no cell phones, we don’t go out to movies, and we have been in exactly 5 restaurants since fall 2001.

We are very lucky though. Our housing expense is just the insurance and taxes on our old farm house, and we have a pretty good garden that gives us lots of fresh veggies for the table and canning. And just a few weeks ago, my newly minted high school grad son got his very first full time job. Only $9USD an hour, but he will get health, dental, and a 401k after 90 days. So he is not only able to chip in a nice chunk of money towards the house and food, but, since he spends next to nothing, he is building up a nice bank account.

The main problem we will be facing is that I have no health insurance and very little hope of ever having any heath insurance. DW has her Medicare and DS will soon be covered by a company plan. But, unfortunately, I have no coverage. To help with this I have quit going to our family doctor at $65 a pop and have begun using the local state health clinic. And the place isn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined. Yes, there is usually a wait, but I am using this time to sharpen my Spanish listening to all the illegals in the waiting room. But the place only costs me $15 to see a nurse practitioner, and they get me most of my meds, except for the pain meds, for very low cost.

What really gets me though are the folks who think you can just go in and apply for social services and they hand you a check, or start paying your medical bills right away. Before my DS graduated and went to work, we were living on $1300 a month, and here in Indiana a family of three bringing in $1300 a month does NOT qualify for Medicaid. But hey, they did kick us $32 a month in food stamps up until this month.

I know learning to live a much lower life style can be very difficult, but just keep your head up and your ears open. Also, don’t be so prideful that you don’t take advantage of local food banks and church second hand stores. The food banks around here are always pretty well stocked with an excellent selection. And my DS simply will not buy new clothes when he can go to the church second hand stores and get lightly worn clothes for pennies on the dollar. Heck, we were at a church food bank a week before he started his new job, and the guy running the second hand store, a neighbor of ours, just gave him a bunch of good work shirts and pants.
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I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.
Craig Volk, Northern Exposure, A-Hunting We Will Go, 1991

aussiefarm · Coal Joined: Oct 16, 2006 Posts: 1

Hi Alex,

Sadly you are not alone in the world and the reality is that life daily is becoming more and more expensive and looks to me the way that Post Peak will be, nothing totally gone just too damn expensive for anyone and everything privatised!

Gideon · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Aug 29, 2006 Posts: 1142

MonteQuest is a certified asshole.
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Chief of Asshole Certification

Jenab6 · Last edited by Jenab6 on Thu Oct 19, 2006 12:22 am; edited 1 time in total

My life paralleled that of the original poster in the beginning, except that I sort of expected a worsening economy and the inevitable round of layoffs. So, when I got my pink slip, I had saved up enough money to get out of town and into the countryside. I moved from Huntsville, AL, to Hillsboro WV, where I worked as a volunteer book & magazine editor for National Vanguard Books, while Dr. William Pierce was its owner.

An elderly man who had been living here alone wanted to move back to North Carolina (so that relatives could take care of him), and he needed to sell his house on the hill. So I bought it from him and got a good deal. It's fully paid off and I don't owe anything except the yearly property taxes.

I had the gas company haul off their propane tanks and put in a used woodstove that Dr. Pierce sold me for $50. I put the chimney in myself. I installed a system of 110 gallon rain barrels to catch some extra runoff from the roof, to augment the capacity of the underground cistern.

I planted three dozen apple trees and a couple dozen nut bearing trees (walnuts, pecan, butternut, shellbark hickory), plus some pitted fruit trees and a couple of pears. They started out little and I had to keep the deer away from them, but I had a few apples and a pear this year, and I expect that in a year or two I'll have part of my annual food requirements coming off my trees.

The nuts, unfortunately, won't bear much for another eight years or so.

In the meantime, I've socked my house full of dry foods. I have almost a ton of dry rice and dry legumes, which is cheap if you know where to buy it, and I've found an even better deal.

Animal feed. Specifically, wheat grain sold as animal feed for goats and chickens. It's the same stuff that you might buy in a health food store, except there's more dust in it. And weevel eggs. But you can wind winnow and wash the wheat, and it's still quite edible. Soak the wheat in water for 2 days, and it sprouts, and it tastes like salad. Lots of vitamins and fiber. Gets you going and cleans you out too.

Anyway, I eat the stuff. You can get 100 pounds for about $12 at the local farm supply store. Don't get more than 100 pounds at a time, though, unless you are feeding many, because the weevel eggs will hatch into bugs after three months or so, and the bugs will eat up and nastify any grain that remains uneaten by then.

The wheat isn't all I eat, of course. My main food is my "Apocalypse Beans and Rice Soup," which is a spicy soup with long grain white rice, great northern and cranberry beans, salt, red pepper, cumin, garlic, onion and cajun spice. Plus some other stuff. The soup is fairly cheap to make (especially if you leave off the less essential spices) because rice is 33 cents a pound at Dollar General, and beans are $1.70 cents for two pounds, and that much stuff will make 15 quarts of soup.

I hear a lot of people talking about how expensive it is to eat, but really, there's edible carbs and protein that can be acquired for a lot less than most people spend.

I'm trying to transition to a comfortable post peak oil lifestyle. It does help to see things coming at you from afar off, you need maneuvering time in order to land well.

Gideon, you could easily be wrong. I know from experience that bad things happen to people even when they don't do anything wrong. Like getting laid off from work and then not being successful in regaining employment. I tried every week for three whole years before I got wise to the fact that a reentry probably was not possible for me.

I quit smoking about the time I was laid off because I knew that I wouldn't be able to afford to continue. Quitting is very hard. (I lost a girlfriend not long ago who didn't have the willpower to stick with her earlier decision to stop smoking. In her mind, I went from being a nice man who was trying to help her quit to being a mean, mean man who wouldn't let her have any tobacco. She wanted to go back to her daddy, so I told her to pack up, and then I took her back to her daddy. Told him why his daughter was coming back home and he just grinned at me.)

If you see the inevitable on its inexorable approach, you can jump into a new situation of semi-equilibrium. It takes planning and time to gather the necessary resources. If you get hit by surprise, though, you can go all the way to the bottom and stay there until you die.

Jerry Abbott