Even if you’re not considering an off-grid lifestyle, this couple’s efforts to make their own are truly impressive. The ability to travel at a moment’s notice while being self-sufficient is something we all aim to do. This couple just does it in an innovative and clever manner!

I know that the typical “off grid” bundle is returning to the land, growing your own food, raising some domestic livestock, hunting and fishing for what you can get, etc. And I’ve no particular issue with any of these chores as long as they work — I’m a huge fan of whatever works. But the big problem with all of these typical approaches is they require a major investment in land and infrastructure = which is a major investment in the dominant paradigm as it now seems to me . . . little more than perpetuation of the status quo.

I’m suggesting there is a cheaper way to live and live quite well. We call it “seriously offgrid on a shoestring.” It’s the way we’ve been living fulltime for 18 months now and we plan to keep on living this way as long as the powers that be will let me keep driving. There are people living this life for $500/month and some couples do it for $300/month. I took the 25% cut and retired early at 62 (my wife won’t be eligible for early SS until Feb 2020) but I also got a pension after 15 years working for the State of Idaho as a carpenter. So we currently live — and live well — the two of us — for about $1,650 per month. And, trust me, we could live on a lot less if we had to but we eat fresh salmon as often as we want, we eat well, and we like wine so we buy it. I hope to get back into making our own homemade wine as I had that down to a fine art for about $1 per bottle. We also have two large cats who travel with us so we cover their minor expenses as well.

We live fulltime in a 1994 33′ fifth wheel that we bought in 2015 for $4,200 and we tow it with a 2000 F350 (7.3 diesel and 4WD) that I bought about three years before I retired so it would be paid for when we hit the road. In 18 months, we have only spent $150 for a place to BE — and every dollar of that was discretionary. We already had four RV/Marine 12-volt batteries and early on we paid $1,350 to get our initial solar system up and running in one day. Our guy (Solar Mike at The Sun Works near Niland, CA) provided all the equipment, materials, and labor and we lived with that system fulltime for 14 months — a 420 watt PV panel and a 100 volt/40 amp MPPT charge controller. A few days later we bought (less than $200) a 300 watt pure sine wave inverter from the same guy but I installed it myself.

We almost always get our water for FREE and we never pay more than $5 to dump our holding tanks. More often than not, we’re able to dump them for FREE in various places as well. Because I was 62 (now 63), we paid $10 for what we call my ‘geezer pass’ and that gets us (*and* up to four people in our truck) in FREE to any of the 400+ national parks in the US. We typically find a FREE spot to camp close to whatever park entrance and then do multiple day trips to explore, hike, ride our mountain bikes, and check out the park.

Would you consider living off-grid like this couple does?

Article and Photo Source: Off Grid World