If you hit the local farmers markets, fresh food is way cheaper than grocery store prices. Also, lots of pick your own places. Most let you keep half of what you harvest as payment for harvesting for them. My grandmother would go to the local pecan orchard and rake up the pecans for the owners who gave her half. We never had to buy pecans. We had back yard pears, plumbs, figs, and apples in season. Also walnuts. My grandmother canned pear and fig preserves, made pecan pies, apple jelly, plum jelly, muskedine jelly and wine from wild muskedines in the woods. We also picked wild blackberrys and had blackberry jelly and preserves, as well as blackberry cobblers, also blueberries. All of this free with the harvesting and canning work. We grow and grew back then, corn, okra, onions, turnips, collards, cabbage, carrots, beats, English peas, field peas, butter beans, green beans, raddishes, strawberries, watermellons, various peppers, cantelops, squashes, and peanuts. Much of it year round. Deep south can have year round gardens. Alabama also has the most diverse plant life of any state in the nation from the Appalatian foothills to the Gulf coast. By having such a diverse plant life and various in season crops, and lots of farmers markets, you can keep food costs down. Not like that in the big cities up north. Also, my wife is from Milwaukee. I lived in Dearborn, Mi as a child.
Our power bills are about $0.11 per kilowatt hour. Probably not that cheap up north. Production is about 25% natural gas, 25% from nuclear, 10% from hydro, and 40% from coal. Alabama also has coal and natural gas sources within the state.
My stepson lives about 2 hours from Chicago. Don't know why his taxes are so high.
