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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • So I’m not low low cost. Live on the east coast after moving from a high cost area of living so I could buy a home.

    Median household income is ~$80,000 here or $40k per person

    I spend ~$3300 a month for two people and pets living comfortably. I removed my mortgage and any car payments but that includes everything from auto insurance, home insurance, auto maintenance for two relatively new cars, groceries and utilities.

    Home taxes are $1600/year and home insurance is $550 but average around here are closer to $800. Not included in the total above.

    Home is ~1500 sqft

    • ~$200 for electric, no gas so that’s mostly air conditioning/heat. Prices go up in summer, don’t get much snow here so Winter is mostly off.

    • ~$50 Water includes sewer since we’re connected here. Other commenters can share about being on a well but if your buying off main sewer, expect to pay $$$ when it needs to be replaced. Set aside money as if you had a water payment and take care of it with maintenance.

    • HOA includes trash at $70 a month.

    • Internet, fiber is $50. Subscriptions are ~$45 on top. Phones are $60 for two lines. Most friends in more rural areas have cable/fiber but a few have satellite or just mobile phone Internet. About 2+ hours from nearest metropolitan city. Satellite is terrible and expensive so recommend checking https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/ before you buy if that’s important to you.

    • Car insurance $200 for two cars covered 300/100. Gas is $200. Auto maintenance is $165 and includes taxes, and all the other fun stuff related to owning cars. – If your young, a guy, have accident history insurance will be higher. Don’t skip if you can’t afford to replace your car and don’t get budget insurance to save. Gas is probably going to depend on your commute. And maintenance is going to depend on your car. Taxes are $300-600 a year each car including property taxes, DMV registration, etc.

    • Groceries, $400-600. Eating out $200. This is probably the biggest variable expense.

    • $400 misc spending for two. Includes random shopping for the household and any fun money.

    • $300 for various gifts birthdays, Christmas, and extra spending to host Christmas or other events. Half of this is just building up for winter where we spend a decent chunk. Sometimes this is used to fly home for the holidays.

    • $400 home maintenance budget. Saving for big fixes or general repairs. This will be much higher there first two years. For reference I’ve got a few pending maintenance repairs that are likely to cost ~$6,000 each expected in the next 5-8 years. (HVAC, water heater, roof, landscaping to deal with erosion and eventually some remodeling). Budget also includes collecting tools.

    • Pets $200. Food, litter, toys, etc.

    • $130 Health related expenses. Doesn’t include insurance which is $400/month out of the paycheck.

    And I’m going to plug YNAB which is why I have these numbers, it costs $120/yr which is included. Highly recommend doing some kind of budgeting even if it’s on paper in a notebook once a month because all these costs can creep up. If you want free electronic use a spreadsheet.



  • Apparently you can save it to Google drive then download the Google drive program and make that folder available offline so it downloads it to the computer.

    1. When you setup the Google Takeout export choose Save in a Google Drive folder

    2. Install the Google Drive PC client (Drive for desktop)

    3. It will create a new drive (i.e. G:) in your explorer. Right click on the takeout folder and select “Make available offline”. All files in that folder will be downloaded by the Google Drive Desktop in the background, and you will be able to copy to another location, as they will be local files.




  • I’m using a commercial desktop with an i5 Sandy bridge. I maxed out to 32Gb of ram only because I’m running trueNAS, debian with containers, and home assistant. Most RAM goes to trueNAS and trueNAS doesn’t accurately report ram. For CPU, mostly just task limited but I don’t really think thats a proxmox issue. Obviously it’s not going to support an enterprise or even small business but it works for what I need of less than 4 users on my budget.

    Proxmox doesn’t really ask for much but I probably would recommend docker for your arm devices.










  • On Android and I believe IOS it’s a single connection. I would start with the basic functionality (also don’t create a tailscale account with GitHub bc it does weird things with sharing if you ever want to have multiple users).

    Once you’ve got the VPN and storage working I can think of two options to give you the functionality of 2 vpns

    1. tasker is an android app that can let you automate a lot. It might let you switch vpns when opening say your storage app and switch back a bit easier than toggling it in settings.
    2. setup your lap-server at home with an outgoing public VPN so traffic goes mobile device> tailscale> public VPN. Essentially acting like you’re home using your public VPN. This may take some tinkering to work properly, especially when you’re home on the same network. Plus you would definitely see a Network speed impact on your phone.


  • I setup openvpn on my network originally + duckdns on a dynamic IP in 2021/2022. It’s an “older” protocol but I felt it was easier to setup since it’s been around longer and the tools just make it easy.

    Wireguard has speed advantages but being newer, takes more work to see those speed advantages. There’s a docker container called wg-easy that I’ve heard mixed things about (speed in a docker container vs easy to setup).

    I used tail scale when I rebuilt my VPN server because I was originally using Oracle Linux (wanted to learn it more but went back to Ubuntu).

    If you can get certificates working, wireguard shouldn’t be too difficult. I prefer VPN over exposing multiple ports/protocols for a family or small userbase. If you’re sharing libraries or other services with extended family, I’d probably expose those to the Internet and work on hardening/having that server in a demilitarized zone + certificate based authentication and MFA on any public admin accounts.


  • My choices are Verizon FiOS and Xfinity. I’d rather stay with FiOS than move to 5G because I do have some applications that benefit from 1% highs being <20ms ping. Plus when I looked at 5G the pricing was still around that $40-50 range for a decent line of service.

    It’s just annoying because FiOS has a “2 year price guarantee” for new subscribers but is shafting my prices after 12 months. Xfinity is ~$5 cheaper but setup fees are ~$200 and I have to buy my own modem if I don’t want to pay the $10-20 rental fee. All that assumes Xfinity doesn’t raise their rates in 2 years.