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Off grid costs can catch you by surprise, even if you’ve planned carefully. We moved off-grid to save money and live simply, but overlooked a few major expenses that added up fast. From property taxes to winter fuel use, the costs to move off grid are more than just solar panels and batteries.
Like many aspiring homesteaders, we moved off-grid to simplify our lives and cut expenses. We dreamed of spending more time in the garden, living more intentionally, and stepping away from the rat race. And for the most part, it’s worked. But what we didn’t fully anticipate were some of the hidden costs of off-grid living—the ones that don’t show up in glossy YouTube videos or how-to books.
While we had a good plan for building our home and setting up solar, we hadn’t factored in three key off grid expenses that ended up stretching our budget more than we expected. If you’re planning your own transition to off-grid life, here’s what I wish someone had told us upfront.
Property Taxes: The Mortgage You Can’t Pay Off
One of the most surprising ongoing off-grid costs? Property taxes. Even if you own your home outright and generate all your own electricity, the town still sends you a bill every year—and it’s not a small one.
In our town in Central Vermont, the property tax rate is 2.59%. That means we pay the town 2.59% of our home’s assessed value every single year. To put that in perspective, even if you had no mortgage, you’d pay the full value of your home back to the town in about 40 years—closer to 30 years with annual tax increases, which we’ve seen every year since moving in.
So while we don’t have a mortgage to the bank, it feels like we still have a lifetime mortgage to the town.
There are a few strategies to reduce your tax burden, especially if you’re building your off-grid home from scratch:
- Keep square footage to a minimum. Assessments are usually based on size and layout. Fewer bathrooms and no built-in closets can reduce your official bedroom count and assessed value. In Vermont, a bedroom is defined as a room with a closet—no closet, no bedroom (even if someone’s sleeping there).
- Take advantage of land use programs. Vermont offers a “current use” program that dramatically reduces property taxes on land that’s kept out of development and used for agriculture or forestry. To qualify, you’ll need at least 25 contiguous acres, plus 4 acres surrounding your home as a designated “homesite.” That’s a minimum of 29 acres to enter the program.
We enrolled our land in current use shortly after moving in, and it’s made a huge difference. Still, I wish we had budgeted for full taxes during the first year—it would have been a lot less stressful.
Dependable Internet: Off Grid Life Meets Online Work
Our plan was to live off-grid, but work “on-grid” with remote freelance jobs. It’s a pretty ideal setup: you get the low cost of living and peaceful environment of rural life, while still pulling in income from higher-paying urban economies.
But there’s a catch. To work online, you need reliable internet. And off-grid power systems don’t always play nicely with modern connectivity.
During ice storms, our solar panels can be covered for days. And sometimes the panels are working fine, but the local internet infrastructure is down—even if you’re generating your own power, your provider might not be. Ironically, the days you most want to hunker down inside and work are the days your internet is most likely to fail.
If you rely on the internet for income, you’ll want to consider a few options:
- Choose your location carefully. Try to live within reasonable driving distance of a town with a public library, co-working space, or cafe where you can get online when your system is down.
- Have a backup plan. That might mean a mobile hotspot, satellite internet, or simply some offline work that doesn’t require an immediate upload.
- Match your income stream to your lifestyle. Long-term, the most sustainable option is to align match your off grid lifestyle with off grid work. Think: selling soap or herbal products, running a farm stand, teaching workshops, or even tapping your own trees and selling maple syrup. The less you rely on grid-based work, the more resilient your income will be.
These days, starlink is the best option for off grid internet, and I’d strongly suggest investing in a dish if you hope to move off grid. Keep in mind, the dish uses quite a bit of power, so while it’s the most dependable off grid internet we’ve found, it’s going to cost you in power consumption.
Generator Time: Fuel, Repairs, and Learning Curves
If you’re new to solar systems, here’s a heads-up: you’ll probably need a generator more than you think. Especially in the early years while you’re still learning how to manage winter power loads and battery storage.
During the summer, we have more solar than we can use. But in the winter, especially during snowstorms or cloudy weeks, we rely on the generator. A lot.
That means burning through more fuel than expected, but also wearing out your generator faster. And when it breaks? You’ll either need to fix it yourself or call in help—which isn’t cheap.
We’ve had moments when the generator died, the internet went down, and we couldn’t even pull up a YouTube tutorial to troubleshoot. The first year we spent more on generator service than I care to admit. Now, we keep extra spark plugs, fuel filters, and a printed maintenance manual on hand—and I highly recommend you do the same.
Eventually, you’ll get the hang of load balancing, winter power management, and off-grid living without relying so heavily on the generator. But plan for more generator time (and costs) in the beginning. It’s a critical part of the learning curve.
Final Thoughts on Off Grid Costs
Living off-grid has been one of the best decisions we’ve made—but it hasn’t always been easy or cheap. While many of the major setup costs (solar, batteries, building materials) are obvious, it’s the ongoing and unexpected off grid expenses that really catch you off guard.
We didn’t expect our property taxes to feel like a second mortgage. We underestimated how fragile rural internet can be. And we definitely didn’t budget enough for generator fuel and repairs.
Still, we’ve learned, adapted, and built a more resilient homestead year by year. If you’re planning a move off-grid, I hope our experience helps you avoid some of the surprises we ran into.
What About You?
Are you planning your own off-grid setup? What are you budgeting for—and what expenses caught you by surprise? Share your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear how others are navigating the real costs of off-grid living.
Off Grid Planning Resources
If you’re in the early stages of planning your move off-grid, be sure to read How to Prepare to Move Off Grid – Are You Ready to Take the Leap? for a practical look at the lifestyle changes ahead. We also share our experience in Finding Our Off-Grid Homestead, which walks through our property search, and You Don’t Have to Be Rich to Move Off Grid, a reflection on getting started with limited resources.
Once you’re settled, 7 Tips for a More Dependable Off Grid System and Maintaining Off Grid Systems in Winter will help you avoid common pitfalls that can become costly down the road.
And if you’re still figuring out income, How to Earn a Full Time Income While Living Off Grid is packed with creative ideas that actually work in rural areas.
Nice content and informative that everyone can refer through it when they have plans on moving.
Thank you, we’re glad you enjoyed it.
There were several things I wish we had budgeted for before we began our homesteading adventure. But I think the biggest most single item would have to be a tractor with a scoop and an auger. We have so-so Internet through a satellite company, and we keep an eye on the amount of our electric usage so as not to drain our batteries, but the biggest frustration has been not having a tractor that can help us with the very large projects. Digging post holes for fencing by hand or with a small two-man auger is exhausting beyond description. Not having a scoop on a tractor to move gravel, move bales of hay, move compost from the compost bins and a million other things is horribly time-consuming and physically wearing on the body.
It is taking us years longer to get all of the projects done because we didn’t have a tractor. We had read somewhere that if you don’t use the tractor for at least 500 hours a year it’s not worth the expense. We thought we would follow that philosophy and not buy a tractor and in hindsight we’ve decided that what we read was clearly wrong and we regret our decision.
We absolutely love our tractor, and it’s allowed us to do things that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. We used to split all our wood by hand (5 to 6 cords a year), after hauling it out of the woods by hand. A great workout when you’re in your 20’s, but it doesn’t leave much time for doing anything else. In the first 2 years of homesteading here on this land, 80% of our work time was spent hauling or splitting wood!
We got a tractor 4 years in, and though we don’t use it anywhere near 500 hours a year, it saves us easily 500-1000 hours a year in manual labor. The backbreaking heavy stuff that wears you down and doesn’t leave you fit for doing fine work elsewhere…as you say, moving gravel by hand, digging fence holes, etc.
I’d say you don’t have to use it 500 hours a year, but if you’re going to spend 500 hours a year doing it because you don’t have a tractor, and you could do it in 20-50 hours with a tractor, then it’s definitely worth it!
I have two comments. The first would be that if you are considering going off grid before going all-in I recommend buying your land and an RV. I live in Central Utah in an area where a lot of people are living off of the grid. We have a lot of people that sell their homes in the city and go all in on building Off the Grid. As many people on these sites point out it is a definite lifestyle change. Over half the people that move down here want to turn their new home into the city they just moved out of. These people are ultimately unhappy dissatisfied folks. Typically they are upside down on their investment and unable to move back to the city. If you are serious about going off grid buy a piece of property buy an RV and spend every single moment that you can on the property for at least a year before liquidating your assets in the city. If you make it through four seasons and still like it then go for it. You will have a much better understanding of what you are getting into. Even things as simple as local politics can be a deal-breaker for living out your days in happiness.
Excellent point.
i use a thermoelectric generator to produce electricity to run internet connection and lights. wood heat makes basic electricity while panels are covered.
happy new year.
Interesting! I’d love to learn more about yours, is it homemade or some kind of commercial model?
I was curious about the thermoelectric generator from the above comment. I did a bunch of digging and found a small company in Vermont that makes thermoelectric generators for wood stoves: https://www.tegmart.com/
They have many videos, but here’s one that explains the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O3FlujxXCw&ab_channel=TEGproThermoelectricGeneratorExperts
I’m wonder how much they can power in practice… Maybe it’s enough to power an internet router, but I’d think you would need a reasonably sized battery bank to be sure the internet could stay on continuously. I’m curious if you think this set up would be helpful to you.
Wow, that’s crazy, I’ve never heard of them. I have seen portable small wood-burning camp stoves that have integrated generators (BioLite is the brand I think), so it makes sense they’d make something bigger. I’m sending the links you gave to my husband now so we can both check it out. Thank you!
We are looking to advance into the off grid foray. We hope to purchase 20 acres and provide a group forum for people to stay at our place in their own RV or at one of our 3 private double queen cabins. We want to provide a place where we can all learn together in a group to promote collaboration and hands on experiences as we also have 4 quite large greenhouses, outdoor amplitheater and indoor conference lodge with commercial kitchen…. to throw into the mix! any ideas, or suggestions for us?
Your place sounds wonderful! We originally planned to do something similar to what you describe, but we quickly realized we’re way too misanthropic for that many humans. A great idea though, if you love company. Since we’re pretty insular here, I don’t have great suggestions for you. I do have some friends who have a wonderful educational farm setup, and you might check them out (https://www.youtube.com/user/DAcresofNH)
Where are you located? At this day and time we HAVE TO move away from cities.
I agree. We live in Vermont.
I have just recently started reading your articles and have found them not only informative but quite entertaining. As my husband and I are both engineers we have given great thought to going off the grid. Reading your experiences brings many things to consider that most people don’t think about. I completely agree with you in the aspect that off grid living is a complete lifestyle change. If we go off the I am totally getting that whirlpool tub. Thanks for the tip.
I recently accepted a severance package that will put me into retirement 2.5 years earlier than I had planned. I’m selling my property that I had planned to homestead and will downsize from 5 acres to 1/2 an acre. I will be living in a pole building with living quarters, have a garden, chickens and the landowners (my daughter and SIL) raise pigs and beef so I just buy 1/2 a pig and 1/4 of beef. My goal is to be debt free after my property sells and I get the new place built. I will have minimal electricity, pellet stove for heat, the electric Co-Op for internet and gravity fed water supply. I’ve thought about solar panels, at this time they are cost prohibitive, I wouldn’t see a return on my investment.
Whether moving off grid or not, two other costs that increase very quickly, home insurance, and medical insurance, I had budgeted 10 percent a year, sometimes it is 20. Or 25 percent. Always reevaluate coverage and reshop if possible.
Agreed. Thus far, our homeowners insurance has only gone up 1 or 2% per year…but health insurance is all over the place. That one in particular is really hard to plan for.