how we save on necessities: shelter

so basically shelter just means where you live. we do own our house, but are not necessarily of the opinion that owning is always the better option. home ownership comes with additional costs, such as taxes and improvements -- there are always improvements (needed and otherwise). so here's how we save.

we got a great deal on our house. fortunately, it was already pretty cute. but even if it wasn't "my style" or what i would have described as my dream house, jake would have bought it anyway, because of it being such a great deal. so i guess the first savings step would be to not be too shallow when it comes to your home. because we saved so much on the house, we were able to renovate the interior. another great thing was that jake has always been a terrific saver. because of this, we were able to put 20% down on our house. this makes our overall debt lower (although we won't really be satisfied until it's all gone), but also allowed us to avoid PMI. don't understand that whole thing completely, but i know finance people say to get rid of it asap, and you can't do that until you have at least 20% equity in your home (i think i worded that right). all of that adds up to mean that our monthly payment on our home is less than what we would pay to rent anywhere. we did finance for 30 years at a fixed rate of like 4%, which is awesome. as i've mentioned, our primary goal right now is paying off student loans. any extra money we have goes to that. when those are gone, we will likely refinance to 15 years, unless the interest rate is crazy, in which case we will just pay extra. either way, it is not our intention to be "slaves to the lender" (biblical description of debt of any kind, fyi) for 30 years of our lives, or even 15 years, if at all possible.

i will also address utilities here. as far as electricity, we do pretty great. we don't leave on lights. we rarely use our dryer. in the summer, our thermostat is at 74, and we leave our ceiling fans on; in the winter it's at 67. i am going to begin using my crockpot as often as possible, because it takes way less energy to heat it up than the oven. we set up the equal payment plan with duke power - it's a free service - so that allows us to plan our budget more accurately.

water/trash is where we find we sometimes go over what we've budgeted. in the winter, when i don't sweat, and even some throughout the rest of the year, i don't shower daily. jake really needs to because of his job and being around animal guts and all. we actually do use our dishwasher, but only when it's full. a lot of our things have to be hand washed, such as wood cutting boards and utensils, pizza stone (not just for pizza), cast iron skillet, etc. i still have no idea which is the greater evil - more energy by using dishwasher, or more water by hand washing - so we try to be wise in our use of both.

i think i've addressed all things shelter-related, but let me know if i've left something out or you have any further questions. :)