How do you cope with the cost of living crisis?

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driving '97 honda. still has only 84k miles, original, inherited it from mom. it has just liability insurance meaning if i screw up, i'm out a car. live in tin can out in woods with all the other pofolk, so for many years until last, my property tax was less than $400/annum. in the dead of winter my electric bill is about $180/month. soon enough, god-willing, i will age into a lower electric bill courtesy my local electric company throwing us oldsters a bone. i eat lots of brown rice, black beans and tuna, but was recently advised to eat more canned salmon, so i've been getting the cheapest [$3/15oz. can] stuff i can find, and drinking more generic veggie juice that used to cost me a buck a gallon until a few years ago, then they tripled it to 3 bucks per gallon, a stinking rip-off but what can i do? at least i don't live in seattle/king county where canned salmon is $3 per 5-stinkin'-ounce can and where the property tax on my tin can on its 1/3 acre would easily dun me $4000/annum. EVERYTHING is at least 3 times more expensive in king county. gotta be a millionaire to live there. anyways, i digress- i have one pair of summer pants, one pair of winter pants, one summer tanktop and one winter tanktop. one good waterproof jacket with hood my late sister gave me. one good winter "joe boxer" fuzzy wuzzy bathrobe, a few pairs of fuzzy sweats, surgical scrub bottoms are my "uniform." i have one decent black funeral suit just-in-case, one white "god suit" just in case somebody takes a shine to me. my internet is slow but it costs $49/month. jitterbug cell phone plan is about $25/month. i save on electricity by lighting the place with surplus LED xmas lights all over the place and the odd LED bulb and one old-fashioned fluorescent ballast and 3' pair of bulbs in the kitchen. my honda gives me 20 miles per gallon no matter how i drive it, but i only go out once per week for groceries and to dan dial's tesla lab. saves a lot of gas to be a shut-in for the most part. once in a while i'll get a domino's half-price pizza or discount at mickey-d's via coupons. no restaurants or movie theatre visits for me, no clubs, no athletic clubs especially. useta swim laps at the Y but they raised their monthly fee to more than i could afford so that hadda go by the wayside. i miss swimming.

It sounds like you have some good strategies not to spend, auntblabby.

thank you blitzkrieg equally important to saving, is INVESTING. i get an income stream from select dividend-paying stocks that i've accumulated on the dips ["buy low, sell high"] over the decades. that comes in handy for sure.

thank you blitzkrieg equally important to saving, is INVESTING. i get an income stream from select dividend-paying stocks that i've accumulated on the dips ["buy low, sell high"] over the decades. that comes in handy for sure.

You sound very money-savvy.

thank you not as money as texasmoneyman here on WP but i've had to learn to maximize my assets. was a relatively poorly paid ['cept for abundant overtime] civil servant for a few decades.

driving '97 honda. still has only 84k miles, original, inherited it from mom. it has just liability insurance meaning if i screw up, i'm out a car. live in tin can out in woods with all the other pofolk, so for many years until last, my property tax was less than $400/annum. in the dead of winter my electric bill is about $180/month. soon enough, god-willing, i will age into a lower electric bill courtesy my local electric company throwing us oldsters a bone. i eat lots of brown rice, black beans and tuna, but was recently advised to eat more canned salmon, so i've been getting the cheapest [$3/15oz. can] stuff i can find, and drinking more generic veggie juice that used to cost me a buck a gallon until a few years ago, then they tripled it to 3 bucks per gallon, a stinking rip-off but what can i do? at least i don't live in seattle/king county where canned salmon is $3 per 5-stinkin'-ounce can and where the property tax on my tin can on its 1/3 acre would easily dun me $4000/annum. EVERYTHING is at least 3 times more expensive in king county. gotta be a millionaire to live there. anyways, i digress- i have one pair of summer pants, one pair of winter pants, one summer tanktop and one winter tanktop. one good waterproof jacket with hood my late sister gave me. one good winter "joe boxer" fuzzy wuzzy bathrobe, a few pairs of fuzzy sweats, surgical scrub bottoms are my "uniform." i have one decent black funeral suit just-in-case, one white "god suit" just in case somebody takes a shine to me. my internet is slow but it costs $49/month. jitterbug cell phone plan is about $25/month. i save on electricity by lighting the place with surplus LED xmas lights all over the place and the odd LED bulb and one old-fashioned fluorescent ballast and 3' pair of bulbs in the kitchen. my honda gives me 20 miles per gallon no matter how i drive it, but i only go out once per week for groceries and to dan dial's tesla lab. saves a lot of gas to be a shut-in for the most part. once in a while i'll get a domino's half-price pizza or discount at mickey-d's via coupons. no restaurants or movie theatre visits for me, no clubs, no athletic clubs especially. useta swim laps at the Y but they raised their monthly fee to more than i could afford so that hadda go by the wayside. i miss swimming.

thank you not as money as texasmoneyman here on WP but i've had to learn to maximize my assets. was a relatively poorly paid ['cept for abundant overtime] civil servant for a few decades.

Being a civil servant is fairly decent money compared to some private sector pay scales, or so I thought?

you have to have key skills to be a civil servant, and compared to the private sector, my compensation for my skillset [a medic with some billing/coding training] was about a third less. but civil service makes up for it with rich benefits, such as unlimited accrual of sick leave, 6 weeks paid vacation/year]. the civilian world offers about half the vacation time and a tiny fraction of the sick leave. and no other job pays double-time-and-a-half plus weekend/nighttime differential [overtime on holiday evenings/weekends]. i was pulling in some fat paychecks there for a while due to abundant overtime, but it gave me adrenal exhaustion so i'd say they got their pound of flesh outta me.

Ah, okay. Sorry to hear about your adrenal exhaustion.

it enabled me to save enough money to retire on the early side.

Every cloud has a silver lining, or so they say?

or every silver lining has a cloud attached to it but i will say it was HARD WORK and they got their money's worth outta me and my fellow coworkers. lotta on the job injuries came with it.

Yes, I imagine it would be hard work. It sounds like a very practical job.