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Comment by shishcat | Hacker News Reader

60€ a month (tplink smart plug, calculated on the cost per kwh and other taxes). I try to pay most of it myself with money from side projects

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Good on you and all but I wanted to note that its weird how persistently people are focusing on the powerbill. It is a drop in the bucket for many households monthly bills and very cheap as hobbies go. I think my mother would have killed for that deal.

As a 15 years old, I desperately wanted to keep my old desktop running 24/7 to run my own website, learn PHP, linux and do some selfhosting. I wasn't able to run it more than 2 days in a row as my parents would always shut it down to save in power

60EUR absolutely isn't a drop in the bucket for households in the EU, that can be a monthly bill for someone living in a smaller apartment.

Yeah, it is still a relatively small increase considering all your other bills, and rent, and food, and etc. what are you estimating the monthly budget to be for these small apartments?

60EUR a month is also pretty cheap for a hobby. If you can't count on your parents for even that level of support you might be better of getting emancipated.

Really depends on the country and how small we’re talking, but I’d guess somewhere between 500-1000€. At 16 you’re getting quite old so you probably also want some kind of allowance, if this is on top of that then it can add up.

Because we've all felt the pain of power bills shooting up by 2-3x in a very short period of time, perhaps?

The cost of running a PC 24/7 used to feel insignificant, but not so much any more. I've been running an old PC as a home server for years, but should probably find a more power-efficient NAS box to replace it with.

Still feels weird to take that out on a random 16 year old.

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