Given your druthers, would you be working in the job you currently hold? I mean, if it weren't for things like the mortgage payment or the utility bills, would you still be getting up every morning and going to the same place to make a small amount of money for you and a large amount of money for someone else?

Let's say you could find a piece of land that you could buy outright and then build a house on it for say, six thousand dollars. And have no utility payments. Would you still get up every morning to go work for someone else?

Here's what one guy did:

He built his own home. Out of scrap wood. Using a chainsaw, a chisel and not much more.

Looks kind of like a hobbit-hole, to be sure. But take a look at the inside:

He uses solar panels to power the lights, the computer and for music. The water is gravity-fed from a nearby stream. The sewage system is composte. There is a roof collection well for the garden.

You know, there are many ways to live, and everyone is different. But for less than six thousand dollars in cost to build this house, (and, of course, the cost of the land) this is a very viable option that gets overlooked by most of us. We pay the builders, the developers and the utility companies to make things easy for us, and end up overpaying by gross amounts for the basic necessities of life.

Something to think about, anyway. You can find more information at the builders website.

Joseph Haines, signing off from The Edge of the Abyss.