Comments on: Hidden costs of small-town life

By: Becky P.

Becky P. — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 06:44:07 +0000

Some of your costs are a bit “funny” to me. We live in another country and have chosen not to get tv either. We miss the shows. Oh well. We can’t even get Hulu.

We do other things. Much of this is mindset. Some people love the city/suburbs and others miss it dreadfully. Most of these are just adjustments that you’re making because of trying to live with one car. When you have your child, you will continue to make adjustments. :)

How much did public transportation cost in NC? Most places I know–it’s not cheap, and in our home town, which has started it now–is mostly not convenient at all.

Mostly if you learn to stay home more and not need to go to town so often, things are cheaper. When you have a child and it becomes more of a hassle than it is easy, you may actually prefer staying at home.

However, not everyone is wired that way. Not everyone likes the isolation and quiet that can come from being unplugged.

Probably the best thing you could do is develop some wonderful hobbies and utilize the library more for entertainment. Very few people are sorry at the end of their lives that they didn’t watch more tv.

By: Lisa Cooper

Lisa Cooper — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:53:46 +0000

This might help: http://www.newcomersclub.com/in.html. I belonged to the MOMS Club when my children were little and it was a great way for the kids and me to find friends. Plus other moms helped me learn about the best doctors and places to shop.

By: Dorinda L Oakes

Dorinda L Oakes — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:13:19 +0000

I love it! We Homeschool so we don’t have many trips. Hubby does the shopping on the way home from work. Saves us a lot of money and headache!
We also have no TV, To be honest even when we could have we did not because even if the show was clean the commercials were not!
We buy the seasons of the shows we love either on DVD or on Itunes.
Dori

By: Teresa

Teresa — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:12:41 +0000

This is the country life I grew up in Northern Wisconsin. Hours playing outside, a “treat” to go McDonalds in the “big” city (10,000) people, 1 hour away. I loved it and sometimes think of the lovely days I spent as a child playing on the beach (we happened to live 2 blocks from lake superior). My mom has a different perspective, for her it was a bleak, snow filled 1 hour commute to work. Now, as an adult, I can see it would be nearly impossible to maintain a life there, mostly because there is very little opportunity. But it sure is great to experience this kind of life for even a small part of one’s own life.

I just found your blog and enjoy it. Keep up the good work!

By: Alison

Alison — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:46:32 +0000

We used to live in a small town and were also bugged by the lack of free TV! And this was before it was easy to watch anything you wanted to on the internet, so we decided to pay the cable fee because we wanted TV!

We don’t live in a small town now, but we live on the outskirts and are a good 20-30 minutes away from anything but the grocery store. It would be most cost effective to just pick a day and do all my in-town errands, but with young kids I find it very difficult to get to more than one place sometimes (need to return home for lunch or nap or to do a school pick-up and errands just take longer with kids!) and my errands often have to spill over to another day. As a result, lots more money is spent on gas than we would if we lived just a few minutes away from Target or Home Depot or the doctor’s office.