Continuing where I left off on yesterday’s post here are some more extremely frugal housing options. They are not quite as frugal as the previous options but still much less expensive than average.
One option would be to buy a small house in a small town. In the town my mom lives in it is possible to buy a small, old home for less than $25,000. I’m sure the same is true for many areas of the country. You could even buy a house for less than that here in Kansas City. The house might not be inhabilitable and the neighbord wouldn’t likely be one you would want to live in though. I think this could be a viable option if I could find the right small town.
Another option would be to rent or buy a large house and rent out all the rooms individually. My best friend has lived in houses like this on a few occassions. It definitely kept his rent down. He lived in the SF Bay Area last year and was only paying $400 a month for a room. This option doesn’t really appeal to me though because I value my privacy too much. There is also the occassional hassle of roommates that are late paying rent, are messy, and such. The cost savings are not worth the drawbacks to me.
A less extreme option would be to rent a small house or apartment. There are small rental houses across the street from us that are only $600 a month. That would be just $300 each for my GF and me. The drawback to this option is that those rents will eventually increase. I would only consider this option as a temporary measure while preparing to transition to one of the other options.
It looks like the RV option is the most popular among the readers so far. It isn’t really a good option here though since lot rent would be almost as much as renting a house or apartment. None of these options will happen until at least next year but I like to have some options in mind.