is the economy affecting your cabin life?

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Small Cabin Forum / Off Topic / is the economy affecting your cabin life?


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cabingal3 Member	# Posted: 20 Mar 2011 01:38am Reply hi everyone.just wondering if the high gas prices are making u space your trips to your cabin further apart-not going there so often?? or are u having to put off purchasing so much wood and using more natural found woods and less costly items??

rayyy Member	# Posted: 20 Mar 2011 07:23am Reply FOR SURE!expenses for gas and building materials,permits,insurances,transportation,taxes,equipment,,,It's killing my wallet but I am surviving.That viscous cycle of ...work to make money to live to work to make money to live to work,,,lol.

turkeyhunter Member	# Posted: 20 Mar 2011 07:44am Reply i have gone down to my cabin 5 times this week 55 mile round trip, and to home depot 6 times,between the home depot's wood prices and gas at the pump for the truck while pullling a trailer loaded with wood/blocks etc.....it adds up for sure.

bobrok Member	# Posted: 20 Mar 2011 04:35pm - Edited by: bobrok Reply You know, my wife and I have worked all our lives, raised kids, educated them and I'll be marrying off our daughter this summer ($$$). We've lived frugal and hard working lives and I don't want to deny ourselves the fruits of our long effort. Our cabin is a refuge. I would live there if I could. High gas prices will not affect our going there. We have a 4-5 hour drive so when we go it is for long-ish stays anyway. It's definitely not worth a weekender, so we bring a carload of clothes and food and stay until we run out, usually a week or so. There is a laundromat in a nearby town and a grocery store, so I'm good. It also helps that I am able to work from up there (to an extent) but that'll be ending soon :-P

Vince P Member	# Posted: 21 Mar 2011 09:29am Reply Yes and No. On one hand I'm losing my job in three months due to the economy, so I've not made any of the 9 hr round trips since Dec., not to mention I haven't planned any more work for the cabin. The upside is that if I am indeed unemployed this Summer, then what better way to save cash then to shut of all utlities at home and spend a month or more at the cabin?

Erins#1Mom	# Posted: 21 Mar 2011 07:14pm Reply Vince P, Hope things look up for you soon....

bobrok Member	# Posted: 21 Mar 2011 07:25pm Reply Vince P, Good luck in finding new work. You were one of the 1st ppl to reply to me when I joined this forum. I was wondering where you've been, or maybe I haven't been reading the right threads. I didn't know you were from NY. We're near each other. I'm up near Rochester. bob

Gary O Member	# Posted: 22 Mar 2011 08:44am - Edited by: Gary O Reply Quoting: Vince P On one hand I'm losing my job in three months due to the economy Is it 'part of the territory' in your vocation, or will it be a deciding factor in possibly 'making the move'? You mentioned a couple years ago that you would 'if not for'....... As bob, really have appreciated your pop ins with quite informative verbiage. Gary O'

Vince P Member	# Posted: 22 Mar 2011 09:07am Reply Quoting: Gary O Is it 'part of the territory' in your vocation, or will it be a deciding factor in possibly 'making the move'? You mentioned a couple years ago that you would 'if not for'....... As bob, really have appreciated your pop ins with quite informative verbiage. Gary O' I guess you could say its the field I'm in (pharmaceuticals) as a function of the economy. I saw this coming though and even so, six months of job searching have been fruitless. I'd love to relocate to the cabin, but it would not be ideal with the ages of my three daughters. The taxes on my proerty have skyrocketed and are approaching the amount of my permanent residence. And though times have been tough, it could be much worse. My wife has been like a rock. Unwavering in her support and dealing with all the other serious "issues" in our lives much better than I could hope to. Enough doom and gloom for now. Thanks everyone... for your kind words.

Gary O Member	# Posted: 22 Mar 2011 09:16am Reply Quoting: Vince P And though times have been tough, it could be much worse. As always, well put. Keep a fire, VP, keep a fire

nicalisa Member	# Posted: 8 Apr 2011 01:14am Reply We were hit by the economy when my hubby was laid off 3 years ago. We figured that if worse came to worse we would have to sell the cabin. It was pretty bad for a while. We had many talks and the main thing that we both wanted was to hold onto was each other, our family and the cabin. Hubby started working again, albeit at half the salary and we hung on through the past couple of years. This year, I have been promoted and my hubby is back in his industry, so in the end, we were able to keep our piece of paradise! The expense of the trip out there (ferry and all) does not deter us even if it is for just one overnight. Our time with the family is more important to us than a night out to dinner. We have made the choices about how we live each day to allow us to take this time together more often.

turkeyhunter Member	# Posted: 8 Apr 2011 08:34am Reply Quoting: nicalisa Our time with the family is more important to us than a night out to dinner. We have made the choices about how we live each day to allow us to take this time together more often. so very true..........life is so short..glad things are doing better for ya'll.

nicalisa Member	# Posted: 8 Apr 2011 09:54am Reply Quoting: turkeyhunter so very true..........life is so short..glad things are doing better for ya'll. thanks turkeyhunter:) in hindsight it was likely the best thing that happened to us....it gave us the opportunity to reduce expenses, and cut back costs. Monthly bills have been reduced to nearly half by making choices that we should have made before we needed to (sold our house in the city, moved out to the burbs, found that the kids love it so much better as there are a million kids out here...cost of the house was 60% less than the one in the city!!! Mortgage cut in more than half) I learned to cook and learned that I love it! Now that things have gotten much better WRT $$ coming in, our cost of living is low enough to let us get ahead of the game instead of always running to catch up. So perhaps in this interesting an amazing world, everything happened the way it was supposed to.... Vince P. hang in there. Make the best choices you can to reduce any possible expense and ride this through. Glad that your family is pulling together through this. It was the best side effect for us in how we all pitched in to make things work. Hugs to you and your whole family.

Vince P Member	# Posted: 28 May 2011 09:21pm Reply Quoting: nicalisa Vince P. hang in there. Make the best choices you can to reduce any possible expense and ride this through. Glad that your family is pulling together through this. It was the best side effect for us in how we all pitched in to make things work. Hugs to you and your whole family. Nicalisa, I just noticed this post to me. Thanks for your kind words. Vince

cabingal3 Member	# Posted: 29 May 2011 11:47am Reply We are staying home more.I hear gas is going up.My daughter and the grandsons moved back in with us.Hubbys company is having lay offs.Thank the Lord Gar missed that one for the most part.Makes u think that maybe more lay offs are ahead.I stay home and get the daughter back and forth to work...We are definately staying out of restaurants.We always talk of looking on cragis list for building supplies and we find some but then get busy and do not go get them.A loss but at least we save gas. We are saving up for a trip for 3 days to our cabin and woods in june. We are taking the grandsons.they will have to get use to the fact that they will not be eating fast foods.I think the fun they have out there will offset the fast food factor.maybe i will take hot dogs and buns and let them enjoy cooking the hot dogs over a fire. i will put water in plastic milk containers and freeze them.we did this last time and we never had to spend money on ice.it was great.the ice in the milk containers lasted way longer. i cannt wait to get out there and explore the new property we bought this year.and get things cleared up.

Erins#1Mom	# Posted: 29 May 2011 11:56am Reply I don't understand gas pricing. Here in NE Tennessee, gas has dropped app. 0.20 cents in two weeks. Its dropped 0.04 cents since yesterday. I am hoarding away a few dollars every payday ($5 - $10). It's adding up. My husband, RN, lost his job two years ago when his position was eliminated. Worked for same hospital 33 years with perfect attendance for 29. He was told he could apply for other positions but there were none. Had been given to new grads at a fraction of the salary. We were lucky that he had such a good reputation in the nursing / medical community and was offered a job in a nearby town.

avan Member	# Posted: 29 May 2011 12:24pm Reply Yep! as it take 3 hour to go to our land, we think twice before planing week end travel. We have a small sx4 awd and it take 1 1/2 tank for the trip both way.

smitty Member	# Posted: 29 May 2011 08:42pm Reply This economy is THE reason for us, if money and jobs were still plentiful. I'm no so sure we would have wanted to leave that. Now there's really nothing holding us back, except for our budget. In a way, getting laid off, was the best thing that could have happened.

PlicketyCat Member	# Posted: 31 May 2011 11:16pm Reply We're living at our site in a wall tent while building our cabin, and the economy (and weather) has certainly slowed down our progress and made us scale down some designs. When the nearest lumber and hardware store is at least $150 in gas away, you really start thinking about whether you really need that extra window or if anyone can tell you scabbed together some trim in that corner rather than "popping out" to the store to get a brand new piece. We tend to write down everything we need as we come to it during construction and then finally go into town when we have a full pickup load unless something is 100% critical and we can't proceed without it. Luckily, the village down the road just implemented a bus into town (up one day, back the next). As long as what I need small/light enough for me to lug around town on foot, or on transit buses (taxi fare is astronomical), then I can save about $50 a trip ($20 each way, and overnight in a hotel) and all the wear and tear on our truck. I usually end up staying a NoTell across from the main transit depot and hoarding my purchases in my room after smaller forays (yay for the $3 daily bus pass) until check out when I drag everything across the street in duffel bags and rubber totes so I can cram it all into the bus's cargo compartment. That sort of expense on a fixed income is tough, but part of what we signed on for as full-timers... I couldn't imagine forking out that much cash and going through all that hassle just for a part-time recreation cabin unless I spent a good portion of the year there. Of course, once we're all set up, then it will be exponentially less expensive for us to live in our little self-sufficient cabin at the very end of a very long road than it would be for us to live anywhere near town.

holyoak2 Member	# Posted: 9 Jun 2011 06:34pm Reply I think that we just need to spend more time at the cabin and less time going back and forth.

Erins#1Mom	# Posted: 9 Jun 2011 10:25pm Reply PlicketyCat, What part of the country is your cabin build?

Rob_O	# Posted: 9 Jun 2011 10:54pm Reply Quoting: Erins#1Mom PlicketyCat, What part of the country is your cabin build? They are in Alaska URL

trollbridge Member	# Posted: 21 Jul 2012 08:55pm Reply Well...it's been over a year since the last few post here. I noticed gas has risen again so that is twice in this past week. We are at 3.69 gal. and yes indeed it has made us stop and wonder whether we should be spending the $$ to go to the cabin. There is always a bit of uncertainty that comes when you are self employed. I can't say the economy has improved for us-the only improvements I've noticed are the changes we've made ourselves in order to cut back and save a buck.

Kharkov43 Member	# Posted: 21 Jul 2012 09:44pm Reply As long as I can afford go go to the cabin I will, by the grace of God our house will be paid for come this January. it's all down hill from there Lords willing. we've a 3200 mile round trip to cabin but its worth every milewe drive to here.

rayyy Member	# Posted: 23 Jul 2012 07:52am Reply In my area the economy has just ground to a stagnent halt.People are trying desperately to sell their houses and move out of state.Every street in town has 3 or 4 (for sale)signs up in front of their homes.With company's and businesses down sizeing,outsorceing our job's over sea's,laying off workers,cutting corners and raising their prices to try and survive.It's really starting to hit home that we are in big trouble.I try to remain optomistic,but things are not looking good.

Sustainusfarm Member	# Posted: 23 Jul 2012 01:13pm Reply Quoting: nicalisa in hindsight it was likely the best thing that happened to us....it gave us the opportunity to reduce expenses, and cut back costs. Monthly bills have been reduced to nearly half by making choices that we should have made before we needed to (sold our house in the city, moved out to the burbs, found that the kids love it so much better as there are a million kids out here...cost of the house was 60% less than the one in the city!!! Mortgage cut in more than half) I learned to cook and learned that I love it! Ditto on that!! After Jasons layoff last year and me being in Realestate we were getting pretty tight....Now since we are both doing so good in our jobs we actually have a surplus of $ (small) every month! We really didn't need 200 channels of TV!!

countryred Member	# Posted: 23 Jul 2012 04:35pm Reply Knock on wood,. I just changed jobs after 19 years to a much closer, better paying job. The economy was really dragging down the old job ( electrical sales)along with some corporate issues. My wife changed jobs about 6 months ago too, closer and better paying too. Now when I say better, I don't mean big or great, just better than before. We have lived pretty cheap. No cable or dish, couple of paid for 100,000 mile cars. Our plan is to move to our cabin someday, when we find our land ,etc..

Borrego Member	# Posted: 23 Jul 2012 10:10pm Reply It's sure slowed us down, economy s**ks for construction,,,,but we keep doing what we can, just slowed down a lot......

beachman Member	# Posted: 24 Jul 2012 09:20pm Reply Things in eastern Canada always seem to lag so I suppose we will get hit eventually. Traditionally there has been no boom or bust but a gradual surge and then a withdrawal. Things have been starting to boom around here lately and it is making me nervous. The camp we are building is off-grid and very small so maybe it can sustain us for past of the year. We are dependent on LP for appliances and lighting - still pretty efficient but have to truck and boat it in. Self-employed in a pretty stable industry right now but that is no guarantee of the future. I am enjoying it while it lasts. Hope everyone who writes in will be able to ride this thing though - you sound like a hearty bunch. Best of luck!