We are a young, child-free by choice couple. We live totally debt-free, including our home. Nothing was given to us, we worked and paid for it all. We lived well within our income, but have still traveled and enjoyed rich lives. For refrence, our household income is less than $70,000 annually.
We have a large 20' x 25' victory garden that we work 4 seasons (Yes, we have winter here) and raise chickens and ducks for eggs and meat. We can and store everything that we do not eat at time of harvest, giving us at least a few months of food security.
We recently began purchasing beef by the 1/2. This lead us to think about freezer and refrigeration reliability in relation to power outages. What started out as a search for a DC freezer and a single panel & inverter system quickly morphed into us buying a fully home sustaining (minus HVAC) off-grid solar system. It can accept grid power, should our system go down, but it does not "sell" excess power down line to the electric company as a "grid-tied" system would. It has a battery bank and it can store power for up to 72 hours of use in case of panel issues. We plan to expand it to 5000w capability within the next 6 months, possibly within the next 3 months.
We are not doomsdayers. We are not nutty preppers. We like being self reliant, prepared, knowing where our food comes from and most importantly, we enjoy the homestead lifestyle as a hobby that keeps us active, involved and working together.
We don't live way out in the boonies, or far out in the countryside. Most people who meet us would never even know that we have these tendencies.
We are well armed, but of course, no one would know or suspect that.
Not sure why I'm posting this, but we are proud of what we have accomplished, and we don't do any other online communities or social media, so I guess I just wanted to share with some people I respect, and perhaps, do just a little bit of bragging.
Carry on, fellow centipedes.
Tell me more.
I'm open to playing around with it in the background, but am not well versed it how it works. Not asking you to give me the full Monty, but perhaps a short ELI5 on how it works?
I do a fair amount of investing, relative to our small income, via a work tied 401-k and a private ROTH account at vanguard. also a very small amount on a taxable brokerage acct at vanguard. Just basic setback for a respectable retirement.
For the record, I do not know modern coding. My computer skills are limited to typing, markets, banking and The_Donald.
The good news is, I know very little coding myself and if I can do it, you can do it lol.
There are a lot of different possibilities. One easy-peasy way to get started is to find an old windows computer and add a graphics card to it. Then go to "whattomine.com" and it will help you figure out what coins that card is good for.
Even easier is if you have a windows PC you go to betterhash.net and it will figure out the best coins for you to mine with your excess power.
You can step up and buy a specialized miner like a bitmain L3+ and it can mine litecoin or digibyte.
Keep in mind, you're likely looking at very small rewards but the idea is if you have excess power, you are converting it to cash that is off the grid :)